A Shadow in Moscow, page 32
Leo sat fully dressed in the living room, swirling a glass of vodka in one hand. A single ice cube clinked the side of the crystal, which meant he was sipping, pondering, assessing. He’d also pulled out his best, the Mamont.
What did surprise her, however, was that he was alone.
Her heart softened at the sight of him. It had been years since what they shared could be called love, yet love it still was, of a sort. She knew his vulnerabilities, his fears, his demons, and his triumphs. She knew he gave his best to both his country and his family. To Leo, there was black and white, right and wrong, and, above all, loyalty to the Soviet State—blind and misguided as it seemed to her. It was the lodestar of his life and she, oddly, had always respected that, even envied his surety in many ways.
Ingrid kept her coat on, her handbag tucked close. She surveyed the room and wondered where they’d placed the bugs, because by now they certainly had, and most likely with Leo’s permission.
She was thankful for that. It would make this next step easier. It could be done quickly with a few sentences and her confession would be recorded. What came next, she didn’t want to fathom.
“I’m sorry . . . It was—it is—me. I betrayed you and Anya, and all you believe. You and she are innocent of this, Leo. I hope someday you can forgive me.”
Leo took a long drink. His eyes darted to the chandelier hanging above them. It was fleeting and involuntary, but revealing. Ah . . . She thought and stepped forward to position herself directly beneath it.
“Where have you been all night and all day? You’ve been gone for over thirty hours.”
“I needed time to think, to pray. There was no point in running.”
“All along . . . it was you.” Leo’s expression clouded, as if his assessment of the spy could not be reconciled with the reality of his wife. “Was this your plan when we met, Inga?”
“Let’s be honest now, Leo. My name is Ingrid. And you pursued me.” She took a breath and, with the exhale, felt her facade melt away. Who and what she appeared integrated into a whole. She almost smiled. Almost.
“When Anya was born, you said you wanted to make the world a better place for her. So did I. Our ideas of what that world should be differed. They still do.”
Leo nodded, accepting her tipping point. After all, it had been his. Everything he did had been in service to the State for the glory of its future, his liybimaya’s future.
“I asked to escort you in for an interview. Alone. Is that acceptable?”
She knew what he was asking. Was she going to go willingly, or did he need to employ force? She appreciated being given the dignity of choice. She had not expected it.
Ingrid crossed the room to pour herself a drink. Her hand hovered between two bottles—their finest vodka and the one bottle of scotch they kept, simply because it was in vogue to do so. No one they knew touched the stuff.
She selected the scotch. Why play games any longer? She had never enjoyed vodka. She poured a small glass of scotch, watching as the brown liquid took on the red and gold tones of the room.
She took a sip and turned to him. “I am happy to come with you. Now?”
Leo tossed back the last of his drink and stood. “I think it would be best. I can’t imagine you or I will sleep tonight.”
She did the same, letting the burn in her throat subside before answering. “No, I suppose we won’t.”
Thirty
Anya
Strasbourg, France
June 16, 1985
2:00 a.m.
The car’s engine and the heat make for a sleepy time. We stop at another petrol station and I wake. I feel movement at the back of the car, and I suspect the driver is leaning against the trunk while he fills the tank. He is chatting in German.
After a few minutes, we drive on and I sleep again.
The car finally stops and the trunk pops open. I close my eyes, expecting the brightness of the day to hurt them, but it’s dark.
“Are you okay?” A woman’s voice greets me.
“I am.” I push myself up.
A strong arm reaches in to help me out of the car. I try to get my bearings. We stand in a parking lot surrounded by buildings. I assume I’m somewhere in Paris. My legs feel wobbly and weak. I take two steps, crumple, and throw up on the pavement.
Someone gathers up my hair and holds it away from my face. I swipe my arm across my mouth. Everything is dry now that I’m empty. I shift to sit on the cool pavement.
The man holding my hair drops next to me.
“Scott?” I push away and stand, unsure what to feel or think.
“Your mother thought you might need a friendly face.”
“My mother?” Tears fill my eyes. “Then you are CIA.”
“What? . . . Not at all.” He shakes his head and chuckles softly. “I’m still a market analyst, but for the State Department now. I switched jobs, but it wasn’t something I could put in a letter, could I? I’m not a spy—or is it operative? Not like you . . . I had no idea.”
I hear the warmth in his voice as I tip into him. I believe him. Tucked within his embrace, I speak to the woman watching us. “Did she get out? Is she okay?”
Rather than answer me, she hands me a bag of clothes. “We need to keep moving. I’m sorry we had to risk driving you through Germany in the trunk, but we wanted the most direct route. We need to get to Paris and get you out of Europe as soon as possible.”
While I could remain in Scott’s arms right here forever, that isn’t the plan. Not caring that three people are watching me, I slide out of my skirt and pull-on jeans and sneakers. My blouse is stuck to my skin. I replace it with a soft cotton T-shirt. So American.
“Did you suspect Peter? Is that why you changed the Vienna Demel meeting?” the woman asks.
“Peter?” My brain isn’t firing.
“He was the KGB’s man, Anya. They recruited him as he was promoted back to DC. We caught him right before your meeting. We thought you were lost.”
I thought back to how I was “stood down” for all those months and wondered if my impetuous mistake might have saved me—along with LUMEN’s caution. “What about Skip? I don’t trust him.”
“You should. He’s the one who caught on to Peter and asked a colleague to set a tail on him. But he’d already passed your Demel location to the KGB. If you hadn’t changed it . . . They had Demel surrounded. Think about that win for Moscow—you and LUMEN in a single day.”
The woman whistles. “Then MI6 here”—she gestures to the man who met me in the alley—“handpicks me for this and Director Casey himself flies him in.” She points to Scott. “Honestly, this is the craziest operation ever. But it worked.”
“What about LUMEN? Is my mother okay?”
Now the woman looks like her brain isn’t firing. I get the impression that she has no clue how “crazy” this operation truly is, and what’s just happened.
She glances to the older man, who answers me. “We first learned your mother is LUMEN a few hours ago. No one knew. Not the CIA, not most at MI6. Only three people in the world, outside Ingrid herself, ever did, I gather. But the KGB had your last name. And she had a solution.”
“What solution?”
“Kadinova was the name on the list. The KGB needed a Kadinova . . . It was always her plan to offer herself. She gave them easy bait in hopes they’d stop fishing for you.”
“But her last name is Bauer. She’s never been called Kadinova.” I scrub my eyes, trying to clear away exhaustion, confusion, and dehydration.
“It was a risk, yes, but the list came from the West so she hoped the KGB would simply overlook that incongruence, and it seems they did. She made a call from Vienna to tell the KGB she was the Kadinova they wanted.”
The horror becomes clear and my knees buckle.
Scott pulls me into his arms. “I’m sorry, Anya.”
“They only had me?” I twist to face the woman again. “No one knew about LUMEN at all?”
She doesn’t want to answer me, but her eyes finally meet mine. “No. She wasn’t compromised.”
“But Peter will name me. He will tell them they have the wrong Kadinova.”
“We’ve got Peter contained, and we don’t think he’s the leak. He didn’t have access to all those agents. Another traitor is still out there, Anya, but our hope is that by getting you out of Europe, you’ll be safe. Beyond KGB hands. It’s the most we can do right now.”
“I don’t care about my safety. What about my mother? They’ll kill her.” I push out of Scott’s arms. I step toward the man who stands on the far side of the car. “You have to save her. You have to call somebody, somebody in charge, and tell them she’s the wrong Kadinova. Give them me. I’ll go. Don’t you see? They’ll break her, torture her, kill her.” The image of Dmitri at the morgue rises before me. I feel his ring circling my finger. “I’ve seen it . . . You have to get her out.”
As I say the words, I realize how vapid and silly they sound. Give the KGB the bumbling fool and surely they’ll release the greatest espionage asset in history.
With tenderness the man walks to me, takes me by the arm, and leads me to the back seat of the car rather than the trunk. He opens the door, gently places me within the car, and crouches to bring our eyes level.
“Your father walked your mother into the Center at Lubyanka just after midnight Moscow time. He exited twenty minutes later, at which time she was escorted alone downstairs to the prison. We have not learned anything more, and we cannot get her out.” He shakes his head, eyes never leaving mine. “No one can, Anya . . . But please remember, this was her choice.”
Thirty-One
Anya
Washington, DC
September 10, 1985
Upon landing in Washington, I underwent days of debriefing until the CIA said I should rest. But after a few days of “rest,” I needed back in. The silence within my own brain was terrifying. I needed to be busy. And as I still had tremendous insights into the Soviet Union, I was assigned to the Soviet / East European Division at Langley under the watchful eye of Director Aldrich Ames.
They still hadn’t discovered who leaked the twenty-five names, so they put a protection detail on me for several weeks. Every day, I was safe as a new death was reported or an agent simply vanished from somewhere in the world. It was horrible.
While work filled my days, I spent my evenings quietly with Scott, mostly watching movies from a Blockbuster Video that opened down the street. I’m sure I stifled his social life, but he never said a word. I sensed he understood I wasn’t yet ready to engage with the world. Guilt, remorse, and sorrow draped over me like a heavy coat.
Shame too. Because I finally understood what my mother meant all along. When faced with the final reality of danger, after I photographed the nuclear missile, I resisted it. I asked for a cyanide pill. Put in far more certain danger, my mother did the opposite. She consented to all that faced her and she turned herself in. It didn’t change the external horror of what came next, but it changed her internal landscape. She chose it. She chose it to save me.
One night, thinking about her, I picked up The Man Who Knew Too Much on my way home from work. It was one of my favorite movies in college. Scott and I had watched it on his apartment’s new Betamax, and I had reveled in the perceived glory and glamour of being a spy. Knowing my mother would love hearing about it, especially as she had devised all those spy games for me and my friends growing up, I had made one of my only calls to my parents the next morning.
Her excitement was intoxicating. She sounded so free and eager, wanting to hear every detail and my every impression. My delight fueled hers. Those tiny fissures into my mother’s heart were rare, and in them I glimpsed the secret dreams and desires she hid there.
I thought viewing the movie might draw me back to good memories, but I was wrong. Scott pushed Play and I was in tears within minutes. I never even got to Doris Day’s “Que Sera, Sera” song.
I sobbed into his shoulder. “Her cover hadn’t been blown . . . It was me.”
The tears didn’t faze Scott. I’d been blubbering for weeks and was beginning to wonder how he could stand me. I didn’t dare ask in case he realized he couldn’t.
That night, he pulled me close. “Give her some credit. She was that good, after all.”
He was right. He is right.
It’s taken me months to accept, but the more I learn about her at Langley, the more I understand the legend she truly was. It is also true some answers are not mine to grasp and are never going to be.
How she did it, for one. There are endless stories of spies falling apart and either drinking themselves to death or committing suicide. No one seems to escape the game unscathed. Even the great Kim Philby was a drunken mess at my parents’ home most evenings. But my mother was at peace. Yes, she was a good actor, but I sense there was more to it than that. Dmitri’s ketman didn’t apply to her because, unlike the rest of them, she was never divided. Like she told me, she gave conscious agreement to her circumstances and thereby transformed them. She was free amid the most extraordinary constraints, all while doing her best to destroy them. She laid down her pride and truly became the shadow she needed to become.
Other answers, I don’t have to wonder about.
A few days after the movie failure, Director Ames called me into his office to meet with a visitor from MI6.
Former chief Adam Weber.
At first I was surprised to be left alone with such a high-ranking officer—until he started talking. Within sentences I realized this man knew my mother best, possibly better than anyone in the world. Better than me. Better than my father. He also knew what happened to her. Mr. Weber told me she was transferred and survived in a basement cell of Lefortovo Prison for six days, and according to one of MI6’s deep-cover informants, she never cracked.
“Everyone breaks. Everyone talks.” I pushed back.
“Not Ingrid. She never revealed a name. She never gave up an operation. She never even complained. It’s unheard of, but that’s who she was.” He smiled, small and intimate, and I got the impression it was for my mother rather than for me. “The only words that left her mouth at the beginning of every ‘session’ were duc in altum.”
At my blank stare he explained, “It’s Latin for ‘push into the deep.’”
I knew what it meant. I just couldn’t believe she had said it. It was her code phrase for me when I was young and doing the right thing was going to be hard and it was going to hurt. And it was a message now. It was her way of telling me I can survive and rise above the pain—that “right” has its own rewards, especially when I choose it myself.
Although I wasn’t sure I wanted the details, Mr. Weber paid me the respect of giving me the whole story. In the end, he recounted that my mother was killed by a single gunshot to the head at 6:00 a.m. on June 22. My father was not present and, by last report, was under house arrest at a new apartment in the Tverskoy District. But he was still alive and he was still my father. So, with Ames’s permission, I started a calling campaign from Langley.
My father picked up his telephone occasionally but, upon hearing my voice, hung up each time.
Last week, he stayed on the line. “You should stop calling me, Anya.”
Anya. My father, never once in my entire life, has called me by my name. I am no longer Liybimaya, his “little darling.” It had to be, but it was still hard to hear. I have truly lost both my parents.
“I need to talk to you. Explain. Say I’m sorry. Something,” I pleaded. The line clicked and I knew it was bugged, but I didn’t care. There were no secrets to share.
My father sighed. “She made her own choices and so did you. Is that why you left? Were you ashamed, or did she make you go to avoid this?” He paused, then added, “This humiliation?”
My jaw dropped. He still didn’t know about me. My mother, of course, hadn’t told him. And if the KGB now knew the full truth, they wouldn’t tell him because he was disgraced and on the outside. Their paranoia, once again, had turned on one of their own. They didn’t trust him.
I leaned back in my office chair, marveling at what my mother had accomplished. She had claimed my last name, my very identity, and everything that came with it.
“She told me to leave. She didn’t tell me what she was doing.” I told my father the barest of truths. To tell him all of it was unnecessary and beyond cruel.
“She’s gone now, Anya. It’s over. Will you come home?”
I paused. I couldn’t say more. What if the KGB had truly not discovered me? I couldn’t put my father in further danger. It wasn’t just myself I was protecting. To a degree, I could perhaps still protect him. “I’m sorry. I returned to Washington, DC. I will not come home again.”
“I see.”
I was sure he didn’t, but I couldn’t explain. Or maybe he did. My father is not an unintelligent man. Following that call, I stopped crying.
Duc in altum.
I “put out into the deep” of this life I created, the life my mother died to ensure for me—I am not going to waste a minute of it.
Well, I haven’t stopped crying completely. I cried when Scott asked me to marry him tonight.
Epilogue
Ingrid O’Neill
Washington, DC
June 13, 2023
I fidget outside the door. Her assistant just said, “You may go in,” but I can’t step forward. No first-level, first-day field agent gets called into the director’s office.
What have I done wrong? What unwritten rule have I already violated in my first hours, and how I am going to tell the Big Five I failed before I launched?
Director Weston’s assistant waves his hand at the door again. “Go . . . Go . . . She’s waiting.”
I gulp and turn the knob.
“Please come in, Agent O’Neill.”
