Beautiful Assassin (50 page)

Charlie grabbed my arm, but the two
chekisty
wouldn’t relinquish their hold on me.

The dark-haired man, the American I’d spoken to earlier, said something to Charlie in English, and then in Russian Charlie translated to Zarubin, “We have the authority to take her into protective custody. Now stand back.”

“You are going to be in a lot of trouble, Captain.”

“Not as much as you if you don’t let her go.”

Zarubin looked from Charlie to the other men surrounding him. “Release her,” he commanded the Soviet agents. Staring at me he said, “I hope you appreciate the implications of your decision, Lieutenant.”

“I know what I’m doing, Comrade,” I replied.

As Charlie took my hand and started to lead me away, Zarubin called, “You haven’t heard the last from us, Lieutenant.”

We headed inside, and Charlie brought me up to his room. Once he shut the door, he put his arm around me and held me. “You’re shivering,” he said. I hadn’t even been aware of it. “Let’s get you out of those wet things,” he said to me. While I undressed, he got me a blanket. When he saw the bruises on my side, he cried, “Those bastards. I’ve a good mind—”

“I’m all right, Charlie,” I said, putting my hand on his cheek.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I’m just tired.”

He wrapped the blanket around me and led me over to the bed, where he pulled the covers back and we lay down together. I remember how I couldn’t stop shivering, as if I could never get warm, but after a while I slowly felt myself relax. It felt so good to be held by him. Safe, comforting. Everything—the war, my personal losses, the business with the
chekisty
—all of that seemed to fade far away, and it was just Charlie and me in that room. Nothing else seemed to matter. I had no idea what would happen after that, what my life in America would look like, but for that moment at least I felt I was someplace I was supposed to be. Charlie and I didn’t talk much that night. We just lay quietly in each other’s embrace, savoring the brief time we had together.

“I love you, Tat’yana,” Charlie said to me.

“And I love you, Charlie,” I replied.

Despite all the death I had seen and been a part of, despite the fact that I had convinced myself the war had left me an empty shell incapable of feeling anything other than anger and hatred, here I was, in love with another human being. It all felt so strange and incomprehensible, yet so wondrous at the same time. I thought of what Mrs. Roosevelt had said, how we had to do something each day that frightened us. Perhaps this was the thing that frightened me the most, permitting myself to love again. And I thought once more of that line from Tsvetaeva:
Ah! is the heart that bursts with rapture
.

After a while I let myself go and I drifted off to sleep in his arms. I slept for a long time.

W
hen the old woman had stopped talking, Elizabeth looked up, her neck stiff from being bent over for hours. She noticed, for the first time really, that night had slowly given way to dawn. To the east, the sky was a lighter blue, thin and diaphanous as gauze, the air on the porch having grown uncomfortably cool. Some time during the night the old woman had gone and gotten Elizabeth a blanket to throw about her shoulders. A single lamp cast a fine, pale light like dust over everything. Elizabeth glanced across at Tat’yana Levchenko, who was staring intently toward the dawn. She appeared almost in a trance, her gaze that of one hypnotized. She didn’t seem to be aware of Elizabeth’s presence. Her eyes were tired, her face haggard. But there was in her look a certain expectancy, a solemn concentration, as if the dawn would bring something she’d been waiting a long time for.

Elizabeth hesitated saying anything, like someone reluctant to interrupt a sleepwalker near a cliff. Softly Elizabeth finally ventured, “Tat’yana.” When the woman didn’t seem to hear her, she offered louder, “Tat’yana, are you all right?”

Gradually, almost grudgingly, the old woman came back from wherever it was she’d been. Her eyes slowly adjusted, and she sighted in on Elizabeth, bringing to bear on her the same sort of cool intensity she would have had looking through the scope at those doomed Germans half a century before.

“Ah! Where did the time go?” the old woman said.

Elizabeth wondered if she meant by this more than the previous night.

“What happened after you defected?”

“They gave me new name, new identity. I had to move about several times.”

“Because of the Soviet agents?”

“Yes. I was told they were getting close,” replied Tat’yana Levchenko. “The Americans were afraid they would find me. Finally they moved me out here.”

“Did you fear they would find you?”

The old woman stared at Elizabeth. “I was certain they would.”

“Even after all these years?”

“You don’t know those people. They were not the sort to give up. They were…” Here she paused, searching for the right words, and, not finding them in English, she fell back on her mother tongue. “
Bezdushnye
. How you say, without a soul.”

“What was it like to feel yourself hunted all those years?”

“Like an animal, I suppose. Each time I see stranger in town, I fear it’s one of them. That they find me at last. Once these two young men come to my door. They are dressed in suits. Strangers don’t come here. I was home alone, so I went and got Walter’s rifle. I open door with gun in my hands, ask them what they wanted. It turned out they were those religious people. Mormons. I scared those poor boys half to death.”

With this the old woman let out a dry cackle, which made Elizabeth laugh too.

“And you thought I was KGB?”

“Yes. But…” Here the old woman paused, waving her hand before her face. “Does not matter anymore.”

“Did you ever hear from Mrs. Roosevelt?”

“I received letter. Many years ago. After her husband had died. After the war too.”

“What did she say?”

“She asked how I was. But she spoke mostly of her husband. How
surprised she was at the pain she felt at losing him. That she cared for him much more than she ever realized.”

“Did you ever write back?”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“And your husband?”

“You mean, my first husband?”

“Yes. Did you ever find out if he had lived or not?”

“No, I never find out.”

“Do you think they were trying to trick you into returning to the Soviet Union?”

“Who can say?”

“Did you ever hear from anyone else from home? Zoya?”

“No. It wasn’t permitted. I could have no contact with anyone from my past. It was as if my previous life had never happened. It was suddenly gone—like
that,
” she said, snapping her fingers.

“That must have been hard.”

The old woman shrugged. She seemed to be distracted again, stared vacantly out the window.

“What happened to Vasilyev?”

Tat’yana Levchenko pursed her lips in thought. “I do not know. But I owe him my life.”

“Why do you think he helped you?”

The old woman shrugged. “I think he was good man at heart. Like many of us who suffered through those times, he lived two lives. The one he needed to survive and the private one. The private one finally won out.”

Glancing at the photo on the wall, Elizabeth asked, “Did you tell your husband about your past?”

“No.”

“He knew nothing about what you did during the war?”

“He knew it was something I didn’t want to talk about. And he respected my wishes. Only because he’s dead I am talking to you now.”

“Did he know about your daughter Masha?”

“He knew I had been married before. That I lost my family in war.”

“And what of the captain?”

Elizabeth saw the old woman’s mouth harden, as if she’d just jabbed herself with a needle while sewing. Even after all these years it was evident that his memory was still very much with her.

“He died.”

“Oh, no,” Elizabeth exclaimed. “How?”

“He had to fly to Moscow for meeting. As interpreter. The war was almost over. On the return trip plane he was in ran into bad weather. They think it crashed into the sea. They never found any bodies.”

“But you had a chance to spend some time together?”

“Not very much, unfortunately. I had to go into hiding and he had his work. We did have one night, though.”

“Would you mind telling me about it? If it’s not too personal.”

The old woman smiled ruefully. “Everything I’ve told you is personal. What can one do that is more personal than to kill another human being? Back in Washington I was interrogated by American agents. They want to know what I knew, about Soviet spy network, about project called Manhattan and how much our side knew about it. I was shuttled from place to place, trying to keep one step ahead of
chekist
agents, who, it was known, had orders directly from Stalin himself that I was to be silenced. The last night Charlie and I had together was in hotel room in Washington. Mrs. Roosevelt had arranged for us to spend night together. We made love and later we lay in each other’s arms. We spoke of our future together, our life after the war. How we would get married. The places we would go, things we would do. He spoke of children again as he had that one time, and I just smiled and pretended it was something that would happen. I could not bring myself to tell him the truth.”

“Do you think if he’d lived you would have gotten married?”

“Who can say?”

“Oh, how very sad,” Elizabeth exclaimed.

The old woman nodded. “But it was long time ago.”

“And Walter? Did you love him?”

“We had a good life together.”

“That’s not the same as loving someone.”

“My mother was right when she said one can learn to love.”

“So you were happy?”

Tat’yana Levchenko smiled. “You Americans and your happiness. Let’s say that I was as happy as one can be who has seen so much sorrow. I consider myself very fortunate. America has been good to me. I had full life. I have no complaints.” She paused and glanced over at the photo of the young blond woman on the bookshelf. “I have wonderful daughter too.”

Elizabeth followed her gaze over to the photo. She assumed it had to be her husband’s daughter.

“Was that his child?”

“His?” she said, frowning. “No. Both of ours.”

Elizabeth frowned. “But I thought—”

“We adopted her.”

“I see. What is her name?”

The dog happened to wander in then, its nails clicking on the floor. It put its muzzle on the old woman’s lap and stared expectantly up at her.

“Do you have to go out, old girl?” the woman asked, petting the dog. With difficulty the old woman got to her feet and shuffled off toward the front of the house, the dog following on her heels.

She was gone for a while. Elizabeth stood, stretched, her muscles aching from sitting so long. She went over and picked up the photo of the young woman and stared at it.

When the woman finally returned, she was carrying something. She handed it to Elizabeth. It was a small black leather book, frayed with age. Opening it, Elizabeth saw that it was a notebook, the yellowed, brittle pages filled with words and numbers. There were what looked like poems and random thoughts and journal entries separated by dates. As she read along, she realized it was Tat’yana’s private notebook from the war, which included the log of her kills. At the back there was a single photograph wedged among the pages. Elizabeth removed it and stared at it closely. It showed three people, two adults and a child standing between them. The man was thin, with a serious expression, the woman pretty, dark-haired, the girl blond, perhaps two years old.

“That was us before war,” Tat’yana Levchenko said. “Kolya and Masha and me.”

“Your daughter was a very pretty child.”

“Yes, she was.”

Elizabeth turned back to the photo on the shelf.

“And your other daughter. What is her name?”

“Raisa,” the woman replied.

Elizabeth stared at her in surprise. “Raisa? Not—”

“Yes. That Raisa.”

“Oh, my God. How did you find her?”

“Why don’t I make us some tea and I shall tell you all about it,” the old woman offered.

“Yes. That would be nice.”

This novel is, first and foremost, a work a fiction. However, like almost all historical fiction, it combines the work of the imagination with real people and real events. In the novel, much of the fighting that is reported as having taken place during the siege of Sevastopol is based on fact. I tried to remain faithful to what is known not only about the fighting on the Eastern Front, but also to what was taking place in America during this early part of the war. My main character, Tat’yana Levchenko, does bear some striking similarities to an actual female Russian sniper of World War II, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, and yet, despite those similarities, Tat’yana is solely a creation of my imagination. Her thoughts, feelings, and actions are independent of any actual people.

Regarding Eleanor Roosevelt, I tried to remain faithful to what is known—or at least to what can be reasonably inferred by those more knowledgeable than I—about her personal life. At times I did consciously telescope or rearrange time sequences in her life as well as in the larger historical context of America during the war. For example, exactly when Enormous—the Soviet term for the Manhattan Project—was known to Soviet operatives working in America may have been premature by a few months, but certainly by late 1942 Soviet agents were on the trail of our atomic bomb project and already infiltrating it with spies. Also, I eliminated or combined some of the Soviet agents that were heavily involved in spying for atomic secrets.

The following books proved to be invaluable for research regarding the war on the Eastern Front:
Russia’s Heroes
by Albert Axell;
Heroines of the
Soviet Union, 1941–45
by Henry Sakaida;
War of the Rats,
by David L. Robbins;
Stalin’s Other War,
by Albert L. Weeks;
Treasonable Doubt,
by R. Bruce Craig;
The Sword and the Shield,
by Christopher M. Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin;
WW2 People’s War: An Archive of World War Two Memories,
developed by the BBC; and
Women in War and Resistance: Selected Biographies of Soviet Women Soldiers,
by Kazimiera J. Cottam. Regarding the extensive network of Soviet spying in America before, during, and after the war,
The Venona Secrets
by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel was of enormous help to me in understanding just how extensive the Soviet spy network was in America. Regarding the life of Eleanor Roosevelt I am indebted to Blanche Wiesen Cook’s wonderfully frank but impressive portrait of Mrs. Roosevelt,
Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. I, 1884–1933,
and her relationship not only with Franklin but also with her lifelong friend Lorena Hickok.

I would also like to thank several organizations and individuals for their help in writing this book: the staff of the library at Fairfield University, who provided me with much-needed research materials, in particular Jonathan Hodge; Eastern Frontier Society and Steve Dunn for allowing me the time and quiet on Norton Island to work on the book; and Linda Miller, in the Department of English, dear friend and supporter in everything I do. I would like to thank my neighbors and good friends, Rita and Art, who often fed my body and nourished my soul when I most needed it.

My editor at William Morrow, David Highfill, is a writer’s dream of an editor and advocate, who not only supported and encouraged me in the writing of this book but also pressed me again and again to make it better.

Finally, and most important, I wish to acknowledge my ongoing gratitude to two dear friends and longtime supporters of my writing, my agents, Nat Sobel and Judith Weber, who continually amaze me with their penetrating insights into my writing, both when it works and when it doesn’t, and with their emotional support to help me carry on with it. Thanks for more than a quarter of a century.