A Shadow in Moscow, page 15
When switching sides from Hitler’s ally to his enemy, Stalin claimed the Germans were responsible for the Katyn massacres—and that deception lived on. Even now, eighteen years later, the world’s accusatory finger still pointed at the Germans.
“You must hate the Germans.” Ingrid stopped there. The lie tasted bitter in her mouth.
“I was there.” Dolores stared at her. “I heard the screams. I saw the uniforms.”
Ingrid swallowed. An electric charge, not a shock but a sustained surge, passed between the women. “Why are you telling me this?”
“You will now keep my secret.” Dolores leaned forward. “As I will keep yours.”
“Leo hired you to spy on me.” It wasn’t a question. Ingrid found it easier to simply state the fact.
Dolores nodded. “He hired me to assist you, to train you, and, yes, to keep an eye on you. He wanted to keep you safe, perhaps quiet. There are many who would like to see him fail. It is not uncommon.”
“I am a liability.” Ingrid closed her eyes as the truth, finally stated, washed over her.
Leo’s need to conform, excel, deliver, direct, and his hunger for acclaim didn’t come from a place of confidence or peace as she’d once imagined. Yes, he had been “rehabilitated,” and he was thankful for that. But more important, he was keenly aware that as one arbitrary act made him whole, another could easily rip it all away. And that act needn’t be large or even real. Something insignificant, such as a petty jealousy, a misstep, or the fact that his wife was Austrian—or worse, that she carried British blood in her veins—could ruin him.
Ingrid sank against the kitchen chair. The metal shifted under her weight. The sound reminded her that she needed to tighten the screws where the plastic seat met the framing.
Dolores shifted her chair closer. It, too, groaned in protest. “English, not German, is your first language.”
Of its own accord, Ingrid’s hand moved over her belly. She only noted the gesture once complete.
Dolores’s gaze dropped, settling on Ingrid’s hand. “You coo to your growing baby. In English.”
All the blood that had drained from Ingrid moments before flooded back with red heat and anger. She shot forward and seized Dolores’s hand and squeezed. Although her hand could barely wrap around the larger woman’s, Ingrid felt she could break her bones if necessary. “I told Leo my mother was British, but I was born in Vienna. I speak fluent German. He never questioned further and I—” Ingrid cut herself off, afraid to venture too close to the truth. If she told one truth, where would she stop? Where would it end? And what might Dolores do with such power?
“But your first language, as a baby, was English. You think in English.” Dolores’s words dropped between them with all that “thinking” in a language implied.
Ingrid opened her mouth to deny it, but searching Dolores’s wide pale eyes, she found no condemnation—and she was so tired of hiding.
She nodded so minutely she wasn’t sure Dolores, or anyone, could see the gesture. But Dolores was right. English, not German, had been the language spoken in the von Alton home. Her mother had only learned German after her marriage and, in private, never felt it conveyed her true feelings.
“I understand. I think in Polish. I am Polish.” Dolores clapped her free hand over their bound ones. “I will never tell your secret.”
Ingrid’s fight drained away. Her hand felt boneless now trapped between Dolores’s, who tightened her grip in companionship.
“Leo didn’t, doesn’t, speak English.” Ingrid shook her head. “I never meant to hide it, but the lies started long before Leo, and when I tried to tell him the truth about my family, he didn’t react like I’d hoped. Nothing was what I thought. And we married so fast and . . .” Ingrid paused. “Everything changed.”
“You must be more careful,” Dolores countered.
“I am. Everywhere. All the time.” Ingrid felt the emptiness of her loneliness wash over her.
“You aren’t . . .” Dolores shook her head. “Not when you think you are alone. Not when you are scared or when you are sad. You forget and you go back to your roots. I sing in Polish. You sing in English. It’s soft. I don’t think a recording device could even capture it, but perhaps . . . You must never forget, even here in your home.”
Dolores scanned the kitchen, pausing on the cream corded telephone hanging from the wall, the light fixture above the table, the vent in the ceiling.
“You are never alone in this city.”
* * *
The life inside Ingrid changed her.
All her hesitancy about her marriage vanished at the baby’s first kick. She was besotted and determined. She would be better; they would be better; the world would be better. Because she was needed. She was wanted. She would be seen. She would love and be loved. Ingrid laughed at herself. She, the mother, was to give everything to her baby, but already the baby was giving Ingrid’s greatest desire to her—a place to belong.
Flooded with second-trimester energy, Ingrid tried to find ways to let this growing love spill over to Leo. She settled upon meeting him in the one thing he truly cared about—his work. Whatever love they once had shared might have grown cool, but she could step into his world where she could, try to want what he wanted, and perhaps bridge the chasm between them.
After all, they were a family.
One evening, Ingrid suggested hosting a series of dinner parties. Her offer pleased him and Leo sent out invitations the very next day. His bosses came. Another night, neighbors came. Soon he asked his wife to host a series of small parties within a single week. Diplomats from various embassies came.
At every party Ingrid listened and learned. She memorized her guests’ tastes, habits, and quirks. She paid attention as to when to insert herself into a conversation and when to become invisible. Over a couple of months, she became the consummate hostess. She became her mother.
Through these parties, she found a way to connect with her husband. She had a purpose, one valuable to him, and, once again, he began to regard her with something nearing love. He was delighted. And with Dolores helping her, Ingrid no longer felt small and alone.
She set herself to the task of hosting a few dinner parties each month, and within four months, Leo was awarded another promotion. And they were assigned a new apartment. They moved within a week. Two weeks before Ingrid was expected to give birth.
It was a stunning new building and Leo stood, shoulders back, chest out, staring up at its twenty floors rising in stone and cement above them.
“Twenty-eight Ulitsa Novatorova.” He sighed. “This is one of the finest apartment buildings in the Obruchevsky District. That’s where we are.” He gestured to the streets surrounding him as if, after four years, they were new to Ingrid. “This is Moscow’s top administrative district . . . Come.”
He pulled at her hand with one of his own and waved to the young men from the moving company with the other. “We are on the fifteenth floor and our apartment has a direct view of Vorontsovsky Park. It’s beautiful. The best.”
Leo was right. The building was grand on a scale beyond her imagining. It was not one of the hundreds of Khrushchyovka, the low-cost cement apartment buildings that now dotted the city, but a brand-new design with a central tower, twenty stories tall, flanked by four corner towers, rising ten stories each. Shops and cafés filled the first floor with tiled floors and glass chandeliers. Stores she’d never had access to before now became the places she was expected to shop. The lines were few and far between at such select and exclusive stores.
After several days of unpacking and cleaning, Ingrid and Dolores put the final touches to their preparations for Leo’s open house. He had invited a small group from work, but an important one. Ingrid could tell by the way he fussed with his clothes and gave a last polish to his shoes moments before he answered the door.
That night his guests were louder than usual, as men often were with wives not in attendance and with food and drink in endless supply.
Additionally, from the kitchen Ingrid heard Leo make an unusual announcement before dinner began. “I scanned today and we are completely clear.” He offered a boisterous, arrogant laugh. “I can’t promise about tomorrow, but I can vouch for tonight.”
“Good for you.” Another man chuckled. “This morning I scheduled phone taps for a new diplomat and got my ear chewed off by some youth in the Twelfth Department for sidestepping the approved processes. They’ve got us coming and going now.”
Ingrid didn’t hear what came next, as she was preparing a platter of meats and cheeses in the kitchen, but she noted a change in tone with whatever had been said. Something about the stillness pricked at her senses and her memories. Something deep within her shifted. She set the platter down on the counter. But rather than retreat, she stepped closer to their living room’s entrance.
“Yuri Vladimirovich is furious.” She heard Leo cut into the silence. “He wants immediate military reprisals, and if we aren’t shrewd, he’ll get his way soon.”
“Yuri?” a deeper voice questioned. “What does he have to do with this?”
“Everything,” another man scoffed. “He was our ambassador to Hungary in ’56 for that debacle, and he certainly did nothing to end that affair quietly. He had the whole world watching and condemning our private business. He now claims that without immediate action, the Grozny riots will escalate to the same scale.”
“Hungary? That was nothing,” another man commented with condescension.
“Don’t be foolish. We lost seven hundred of our soldiers with only twenty-five hundred Hungarians killed. It was an uprising that carries repercussions to this day.”
“You’re talking nonsense. It was rabble we dealt with.”
“Rabble that made international headlines.” Leo’s calm voice inserted itself. “Boris is right. The Hungarian Uprising was poorly handled and was made worse as over two hundred thousand fled West . . . No, if we aren’t careful, Yuri Vladimirovich makes a strong case for military intervention. The numbers leaving the German Democratic Republic grow alarming.”
“The Grozny riots are over. That was two months ago,” a firm voice chimed in.
“Risk still remains.” Leo’s tone was gentle, consoling. Ingrid knew those notes. He was drawing his listeners to his side. “Bricks were thrown. Mobs swarmed government buildings. It sets a bad precedent to let things go so far. We must be more vigilant.”
Ingrid felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. Leo’s soft delivery grew menacing.
She flinched as someone barked a derisive, bitter laugh, and the mesmerizing effect was broken. “Vigilant? Who do you think Yuri Vladimirovich is? He will squash this. He’s rabid, and now that he’s been promoted to lead Directorate K, expect our counterintelligence division to grow and squash this, with more funds of course. That’s how he’ll destroy this uprising. He’ll send illegals and kill it from the inside.”
“And he’ll bug our homes to learn how we feel about it.” Another laughed. “There’s no quarter with Andropov. He sees dissent everywhere and he’s on the rise. He’s chasing promotions so fast he’s got the Politburo paying attention now.”
Ingrid froze as the man’s name became complete. Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov. She noted that each man in the living room said Andropov’s name differently, signaling how well he knew him. Some used only Andropov’s last name. Others his first and his patronymic—they knew him better. Others still, just his first—those men knew him very well indeed.
She only knew what little Leo had let slip, but—listening to how he talked rather than what he said—she knew Leo feared him. Yuri Andropov was climbing the KGB and Party ladder quickly. He was the type with whom “rehabilitation” would not be possible, dissent not tolerated, and British blood a deadly liability.
Leo spoke again. She could tell by the lilt of his voice that he was bringing the conversation to safer ground. “To tomorrow. To a new dawn.”
The men chimed in accord and Ingrid heard the clink of their crystal glasses in toast. The successive tings made a hopeful sound, clear and beautiful. One completely discordant with the dark thoughts pressing against her temples, her heart, and her baby. Ingrid turned back into the kitchen and sank onto one of the chairs tucked close to the table. Her baby kicked inside her, and the platter of meats and cheeses rested forgotten on the counter.
* * *
Three days later, Ingrid gave birth to a baby girl.
“You are finally here.” Leo gently lifted his daughter from her hands. “My beautiful little Liybimaya.” My darling. My love.
Ingrid smiled at her husband’s gentle tone and his endearment. Every note that had once been hers, now long dead, rose anew to be lavished upon their daughter. Yet rather than feel any jealousy, she felt hope at his tenderness toward this beautiful little baby.
Leo glowed, unable to tear his eyes from his daughter’s small, perfectly featured face with rosebud lips and tiny button nose. “We will make a better world for her. A new tomorrow. A new dawn.”
He repeated his toast of a few nights earlier, making it a promise between them.
“Yes.” Ingrid tucked the hospital’s thin blanket more tightly around herself and reached for the baby. She, too, had felt something change within her during that dinner party. She’d still host parties, but not to support Leo’s career any longer. She had an entirely new purpose in mind for her efforts.
Ingrid looked down at her daughter’s dark eyes and the shock of dark hair sticking up from the crown of her head. She kissed her forehead, pressing her lips firmly against her daughter’s soft skin.
“I love you, Anya Leonidovna Kadinova, and I will make this a better world for you. I promise.”
Thirteen
Anya
Moscow
April 16, 1983
Everyone wonders what’s happened to me. I wonder, too, when I let myself think about it. But I don’t think about it. Stepping close to it all proves too painful, so I tuck and roll like that American animal, the possum, hoping that if I deny I’m still alive, living won’t hurt so much.
I’ve become the most diligent worker ever, and it’s angering my coworkers. They say I’m purposefully making them look bad as I arrive early, leave late, and, other than a quick lunch, don’t take cigarette or tea breaks anymore.
I also haven’t answered my apartment phone much in the past four months—my door either. When Sonya pounded on it a few weeks after Dmitri died, I let it go on so long my neighbor came out and shooed her away. But there’s no one I want to see or talk to. I tried to write Scott a few times, hoping that pouring out my heart to him eight thousand kilometers away might help, but I destroyed each attempt. I couldn’t lie about what happened to Dmitri, and I certainly couldn’t write about it.
Then, one night at the bar a couple weeks ago, Sonya poked me. Pointer finger right beneath the shoulder bone where you get your immunization shots. It hurt.
“Hey—”
She drove her finger into the nerve again. It took me a second to remember. Her brother learned this, and he said it was an easy way to “break a friend.” Gentle, he claimed, no permanent damage.
I swiped at her hand. “Stop it.”
“Make me.”
“I will. I swear to you.”
“Really?” She pressed again. And again. “Come on, show me. What are you going to do about it?”
Instantly she reminded me of a secret book that same brother got us years ago. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. I have no idea how he got it. We never share that information in case someone gets caught. But I’ve never forgotten the protagonist, Holden Caulfield. He was so lost and in pain. He needed a Sonya.
However, if he’d had one, we never would have had The Catcher in the Rye because he’d have dealt with all that pain and “phony” stuff, not ended up in a mental hospital. He would have recognized he had a true friend—not in a hug but in a fight. Because that’s what he was searching for. He didn’t need someone to pat his back and whisper platitudes; he needed someone to challenge him to live, to rage, to mourn his brother, and to grab on to his life again.
He may have needed a Sonya, but I guarantee he didn’t want one. To get pushed like that is almost more painful than the slough through which you’re treading. I slapped her hand. At least, I tried to. Sonya always was a better fighter than me. She even won a ribbon in Class Ten. Dmitri was first in our class; Sonya was second.
Sonya raised her arm to deflect mine, sliced down, and in a single swipe, captured my hand and twisted it between us. “That’s how you try to stop me?”
With her free hand, she had the nerve to poke me again. I pushed her back and found myself stumbling instead. People started to stare, but we weren’t making a ruckus. Only a few inches apart, our “fight” was tight and compressed.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered, no longer struggling as she gripped my arm to hold me steady.
“You can and you will.” She twisted my hand until I yelped. It broke the dam between us and she pulled me close. “I loved him too, Anya, and I still love you. Stay with me.”
I hugged her with all my strength. “I’m trying, but . . .”
“I understand.” She smoothed my hair with one hand. “I really do.”
Things got better after that night, but I’m still struggling. I’m struggling because something has happened over these past three months. I reached my line. My Thomas More line that I cannot cross. I knew it that day in the morgue, and I feel it with blazing certainty now. I cannot and will not accept the lie about Dmitri’s death, and that means I cannot and will not accept the entire foundation upon which it stands.
“Jacket.” Comrade First Lieutenant Wadim Rogov nods at me. I decided to be good to my coworkers and leave on time today, and this is what I get: Rogov. A far nicer guard goes on duty next. Grigor has waved me by without a second glance almost every night these past months.
I shake my head. I’m not wearing a jacket. It’s a light sweater over a thin blouse, and I am not taking it off. Anger burns within me. Small gestures. Make a stand. “No.”
