Beautiful Assassin (37 page)

“Do you see those men over there?” he said to me once in a factory in the Bronx. We were giving a speech to workers in a munitions plant and he was pointing at two men standing off by themselves.

“Yes.”

“G-men,” he said. When I frowned, he explained that they were with the FBI.

Wherever I spoke, looming just offstage would be Vasilyev, watching me carefully, ready to whisper something to me or Radimov, or step in to clarify a statement I had made (“What Lieutenant Levchenko means by that is…”), or offer the precise response he wished me to give to a reporter’s question: somewhat like an understudy for an unskilled actor who might forget her lines. And he watched too whenever Mrs. Roosevelt or I would say something to the other. Afterward, he would want to know what it was she had shared with me, or what we had discussed over a luncheon with military personnel.

Once Mrs. Roosevelt and I were onstage at Cooper Union, speaking to an audience made up largely of college students. I happened to glance backstage and saw that Vasilyev was talking to someone. It took me a moment to recognize the man as Zarubin, the one I had met in the shed behind the Soviet embassy. After my speech, we headed back to our hotel.

“Let me buy you a drink, Lieutenant,” Vasilyev said to me.

We went into the bar and sat down. He ordered whiskeys for both of us. In front of him on the table, he had placed a Russian newspaper.

“Comrade Zarubin has informed me that his superiors are getting anxious,” explained Vasilyev.

“Anxious?” I said.

“Yes. They expect some results,” cautioned Vasilyev as he nervously downed his glass of whiskey in one gulp and waved to the waitress for another. “You haven’t been holding anything back from me, have you, Lieutenant?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t be coy. Regarding the First Lady.”

“Of course not,” I lied. “Why would I do that?”

“Misplaced loyalties perhaps.”

“You don’t have to lecture me about my loyalties.”

“Good. It would be unwise to cross Zarubin. His methods are coarse but effective.” Vasilyev then slid the newspaper across the table toward me. “There is a very nice article back home about you, Lieutenant. Praising your gallantry.”

As I opened the paper, I saw my picture with a headline that read, “People’s Hero Welcomed in the States.” It was that silly photograph they had taken of me in the tree outside of Moscow. Yet what caught my attention was another article to the right of mine, about another Soviet soldier. He wasn’t being praised for his heroism, though. Rather the article was about his recent arrest and conviction for being a
vrag naroda,
an enemy of the people. He had written a letter to his parents questioning the high command’s tactics. The letter had been read by Soviet censors, and for this he’d been sentenced to seven years at a reeducation camp.

“What do you think, Lieutenant?” Vasliev said to me.

When I looked over at him, I got the feeling that he wasn’t so much referring to the article about me as to the one about the other soldier. A kind of warning.

“I wonder who the real enemy of the people is,” I said.

“I would think that would be abundantly clear to you by now, Comrade,” quipped Vasilyev, downing his second glass of whiskey.

During my stay in New York, I met a number of dignitaries and celebrities. One was the actor Charlie Chaplin, a delightful little man whose silent films had been permitted to be shown in the Soviet Union. Against the strong isolationist forces that held sway at the time, he had supported the United States’ entry into the war against Hitler, and he helped raise thousands of dollars for the Soviet war fund. Mrs. Roosevelt had arranged for a private screening of
The Great Dictator,
with Captain Taylor whispering a translation in my ear. I laughed until my sides ached at the slapstick antics of Mr. Chaplin, who played both the role of Adenoid Hynkel, the pathetic dictator of Tomania, with his twitchy little mustache, as well as the part of the Jewish barber. After the film, Mr. Chaplin came up to me and personally thanked me for killing all of those Nazis.

Throughout my tour of the United States, most Americans, despite their naïveté about the war and their general ignorance of or disdain for “Red Russia,” treated me rather well. They came in droves to hear me speak. Doubtless it was partly due to their curiosity about such an oddity—a woman who not only killed men but, at least according to one newspaper article, “seemed to enjoy her sanguinary vocation,” and was, in their opinion, attractive. Still, they came and cheered loudly and seemed genuinely to appreciate both my and my countrymen’s efforts against our common enemy. They dropped their coins and dollars into donation cans. Little girls would come up to me and hand me a dollar and talk to me. Old men would come up and thank me. Afterward various groups would present me with gifts. Mostly they were only of symbolic importance—a bouquet of flowers or some sort of medal, oc
casionally the key to the city, an honorary degree from some university. But other times it was something of real value. From the labor union of the gunmaker Colt, I was presented with a silver-plated .45 automatic with “Beautiful Assassin” engraved on the side and a single bullet that had stamped on it the number 316 (presumably for the next German I would kill once I returned to the front). And from the furrier workers’ union of New York, I received a full-length mink coat. They said it was to keep me warm at the front during the cold Russian winter. I don’t know if they thought that we women fighters could wear such things at the front, but I accepted it with gratitude. Afterward, Miss Hickok ran her hand along the coat and said, “It looks stunning on you, Tat’yana.” However, after the “show,” as I had taken to thinking of each appearance, Vasilyev quickly confiscated it, as he had the gun. “I shall keep these safe for you, Lieutenant,” he said with an ironic little smile. My guess was I would never see them again. That the fur coat would end up donning the soft white shoulders of some politburo member’s mistress, and the gun, like Vasilyev’s cigarette case, would adorn the collection of some higher-up NKVD member.

At every show, the American press flocked around me, as if I were, as Gavrilov had accused me of being, one of their motion picture actresses. Journalists were quite different from the average American: they were prying and meddlesome, tedious in their badgering, usually trying to trick me into saying something I would later regret when I saw it distorted in the newspaper. Whereas the facts of a story in
Pravda
or
Izvestiya
were conjured up by government officials to achieve some predetermined end, in America, I learned, they were manipulated and given shape by the writers’ desire merely to sell newspapers. They wanted to know my opinion on all manner of subjects. They would ask what I thought of some recent defeat back home or if I believed Japan would invade Siberia or whether or not the Germans would take Stalingrad. They asked what life was like under communism and how it compared to life under capitalism. They wanted to know what I liked most about America—what were my favorite foods, movie actors, perfume, what items I most wanted to bring back with me to Russia. They especially wanted to know my opinion on various topics related
to women, as if I were some sort of expert on all things feminine. One female reporter even wanted to know if Soviet women shaved their underarms. They wanted to know what I thought a woman’s role should be in society, if American women should be able fight in the war, if they should be allowed to smoke, wear trousers, work outside the home.

“Let me apologize for the stupidity of my fellow journalists,” Miss Hickok offered.

I had, of course, to watch myself during such encounters with reporters, because I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and be harangued by Vasilyev. In fact, before each show, Vasilyev would coach me, going carefully over what I was to say, what I was to avoid, and afterward he would be sure to point out my “indiscretions,” as he called them. Sometimes he’d give me hypothetical questions that the American press might ask me. “If they bring up the matter of detention camps in our country, tell them you have no such knowledge. Say that we have, as America does, only prisons for the criminal elements.” He’d even taken to rewriting my speeches, going over them so that I wouldn’t say the wrong thing. Sometimes he would insert words or phrases into my speeches. One time he wanted me to use the word
achievement,
several times, as in “The Allies’ great achievement will be in ridding the world of fascism.” A number of times he slipped in the word “
ogromny
”—enormous—as he had for my speech at the student conference. “We face an enormous challenge in defeating the Germans.” Or, “We Soviets acknowledge an enormous debt of gratitude to the United States for all of their assistance, but we strongly encourage our good friends to open a second front with all due haste.” In fact, he used the word in three speeches in a row, so that it seemed rather peculiar to me.

“Why this particular word?” I asked him once as we sat in the lobby of our hotel. It was right before we were to leave for a speech I was scheduled to deliver in Battery Park.

“What word?” he responded, pretending ignorance.

“Enormous.”

“I don’t know. It just seems to fit.”

“But you’ve used it several times already.”

“Have I?” he said with a shrug. “I wasn’t aware.”

“I shall cut it then?” I offered.

“No. Leave it.”

I would shortly learn the word’s importance, a word that would become important not just to Vasilyev but to the entire world.

My most important public address in New York came at a big rally in Central Park sponsored by the Russian émigré community of the city. As it turned out, some ten thousand strong had come on a bright, cloudless, autumn morning to hear what I had to say. Actually, to hear what Vasilyev had to say. On the ride over to the rally, he had handed me an envelope.

“That’s your speech for today,” he said.

“But I’ve already written my speech.”

“Change of plans. Just read it as it’s written, Lieutenant,” he advised me. “Don’t improvise. There will be reporters today from around the world. Everything you say will get back to the Kremlin. So we don’t want any slipups. Is that clear?”

I nodded, though inside I felt like saying why not let Gavrilov be his mouthpiece. He’d have enjoyed that.

The late morning sun exploded into a million diamonds off the buildings, and the park was dazzling, green and lush and ornate as an emperor’s private garden. With me onstage that day was Mayor La Guardia, as well as a number of other city officials and dignitaries, including the folksinger Woody Guthrie, a thin, gaunt man wearing the plain garb of a peasant and with a cigarette dangling from his lips.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Miss Levchenko,” he said as he shook my hand. He told me he had even composed a song in my honor, called “300,” for the number of Germans I had killed.

“But she’s shot three hundred and fifteen,” Vasilyev quickly piped up.

Smiling amiably, the man explained, “I wrote the thing when I’d first heard about you. Sorry, but you’ve been too quick on the draw for me to keep up.”

Mr. Guthrie opened the rally with his song:

After Mr. Guthrie finished singing, Mayor La Guardia introduced Mrs. Roosevelt, who talked about the Soviet War Relief Fund for a while before introducing me. Even after having spoken so many times, I was still a bit nervous as I stood behind the microphone gazing out over the sea of faces, and beyond to the park’s trees and ponds, and in the shimmering distance the glittering skyscrapers of the city. I suppose it should have been easy enough, just mouthing what Vasilyev had written, but I hadn’t had a chance to go over it and so was a little worried.

With Radimov translating, I began to speak. I talked of the need for more American support to defeat the Germans. I called on our “American friends” to understand the “enormous” sacrifice the Soviet people had made to stop Hitler. I spoke of the “tide of war” slowly turning, of the German advance being finally halted, of a new Soviet offensive about to “drive the invaders from our soil.” However, despite the optimism, after a while Vasilyev turned the speech into a personal plea for help. “Please, I beg you from the bottom of my heart,” I read, “help us. It is not just our fight, but yours as well. We need more assistance from our American friends. Try to imagine the loss of your own dear children to these heartless monsters.” At this point in the speech, in parentheses, Vasilyev had written a note to me: “Try to summon up a tear or two here.” I ignored it, continued to read. “But Soviet parents take an enormous pride in sacrificing their sons and daughters whom they send willingly to the front to fight the Germans. They gladly forfeit their children to defeat Hitler. I plead to every single American man: join me in the fight for freedom. Don’t let a woman do the fighting for you. Be courageous. Stand up for women and children everywhere. Thank you, my friends.”

When I finished, I went over and took my seat. Evidently they liked the speech. The crowd clapped and whistled and called out my name, so much so that finally, on the urging of Mrs. Roosevelt, I got up and acknowledged them with a bow, which sent them into another frenzy of applause. Afterward, the press came rushing up, peppering me with questions.

“Lieutenant Levchenko, aren’t you throwing down the gauntlet to American soldiers?” one asked.

“Well…I suppose I am.”

“Are you saying our boys are cowards?”

Before answering, I glanced at Vasilyev, who drew his lips together into a puckery ball of warning.

“No, I didn’t say they are cowards,” I replied. “You Americans have fought bravely in many wars. But I do think actions speak louder than words.”

“What do you mean by that?” another called out.