The Last Secret, page 19
The children’s teacher was leading them in a song for the Kolomyika, an ancient Ukrainian folk dance, and Savka smiled through her tears. She’d never seen Zoya so excited and happy. How could Marko continue to ignore her, when she was learning the language and dances of her people? Moorby’s annual Harvest Supper was approaching, and the Ukrainians had planned a pageant, keen to convince their hosts that they still celebrated their culture and traditions, despite what the war had done to them.
The children sang as they joined hands, rollicking one way and then the other with a great deal of giggling and mishaps. The teacher coaxed a young boy into the center of the circle to attempt some squats and high kicks, which made the other three mothers who were watching laugh. Savka beamed at Zoya, who looked decidedly English in her hand-me-down skirt and blue cardigan, white socks, and a pair of worn brown Mary Jane shoes.
Shivering, Savka pulled her coat close around her to keep out the cold. She and Zoya had been here for almost a year, but she was still not used to the rain and damp. At least Belyakov and his men could not follow her to England. Three months ago, the USSR had blocked Allied access to Berlin, and tensions were high between Russia and the West. She picked up her market basket and moved closer to the stage where the Ukrainian mothers were standing. She’d just waited in line with them for their weekly rations. Everything from clothing to tea, meats, sweets, and soap were doled out with precision and care, the coupons in their ration books stamped to cancel their allotments.
Surely Marko didn’t wish to remain in this godforsaken country. The food was awful, and although Savka had learned a decent amount of English, she still couldn’t understand a word the locals said. Yet away from the dark eye of Belyakov, she’d let her guard down. It was all too easy to lapse into her native language rather than speak English, with so many men here from Marko’s battalion and a few of their families who’d managed to escape eastern Europe during the war, along with several nurses and a priest, who’d also been with the division.
The mothers were twittering, sending coy glances at the door to the hall. Savka turned her head to see what they were so excited about. A handsome man was leaning against the wall near the entrance, smoking, a tweed cap set like a tea cozy over his dark, unruly hair.
Savka felt a scream in her mouth, her muscles twitching in a desperate need to run, and an unbidden image of Ewa swooning on the train to Berlin.
Don’t tell me you wouldn’t kiss him, given the chance.
It was Ilyin. Somehow, Belyakov had managed to get one of his spies into England to watch her watch Marko.
Savka held her breath and closed her eyes, striving to remain calm. She had to relax, pretend that she didn’t recognize him. Yet, she could feel Ilyin’s eyes on her. The scar on her chest burned with memory and other images of that day she was shot—Russian leers, guns, threats, and Taras’s pale, frightened face as they stole him away. When she opened her eyes, Ilyin was still there, inclining his head ever so slightly as he turned to leave.
Intent on confronting the man who had shot her, Savka followed Ilyin outside. It was dusk, the rain had stopped, and the sky was rinsed free of cloud. On the air was a smell of meat cooking in broth from the canteen, and the unnerving sight of the Russian waiting for her, the end of his cigarette glowing like an otherworldly creature.
Savka glanced around to make sure no one had seen her slip between the community hall and a series of tents and prefab huts the British had erected to house the Ukrainian men from the Waffen-SS division. In a flash, she crossed the space between them and planted two hands on Ilyin’s chest, giving him a shove that made him stumble backward. “Where did you come from?” She glared at him, but he simply brushed off his oilskin coat with a wry smile. “If Marko, or any other Ukrainian man sees you here—”
Ilyin frowned and gestured at his get up. “I look Russian with this?” She had to admit that he did look remarkably like a British farmer, completing his disguise with corduroy trousers and muddied rubber boots. “Besides,” he added, speaking English with a surprisingly genuine accent, “your men are all down the pub.”
Savka exhaled with annoyance. “Why are you bothering me? I’ve looked everywhere for the Rimini list. Marko doesn’t have it.”
He turned his head at a sound from behind one of the huts, and she grudgingly admired his profile—his lips full and sensual as a woman’s—in the dying light. It wasn’t easy to admit with a hot course of anger vibrating every cell in her body, but Ilyin was a good-looking man.
Confident they’d not been heard, he turned back to her. “You have a new assignment,” he said, continuing in English. “We’ve received confirmation that Marko has been recruited by MI-6. He leaves tomorrow, yes?”
“He…he told me he’s going to London,” Savka sputtered, confused. “To petition authorities for English language lessons for everyone in camp—”
“Lies. MI-6 is sending him to Ukraine.”
Savka struggled to understand. “But why would he go back into enemy territory, where the NKVD want to kill him?”
“That is what you will find out,” Ilyin said, creeping closer to her. “I want to know how many of his old and trusted soldiers are going with him. And what kind of arms MI-6 is supplying to the underground.”
She could smell cheap British ale and the bangers and mash Ilyin had eaten for lunch. “How would they get back to Ukraine?” she asked, bewildered.
“A transport plane will parachute them into Czechoslovakia—they’ll cross the border into Ukraine at night. We need confirmation of a landing site.”
“My husband will not tell these things to me,” Savka said, but couldn’t help picturing Belyakov when Marko’s parachute landed, waiting to arrest him. She choked back panic. “And I will not send him into a Soviet trap.”
Ilyin’s hand shot out, lightning quick, clutching her forearm. “Whose life do you value more? Your husband’s or your son’s?”
Savka stood perfectly still. It was an impossible choice. I can’t make it, she thought, then paused. Or can I? It was Marko who’d sent her and Taras into that forest. Since they’d been reunited, she’d wrestled daily with the feeling that all of this was her husband’s fault. Although he’d promised to get exit visas for Mama, Lilia, and Sofiy, those had never materialized. Did she still love her husband enough to save him from the Soviets? Or could she send him to his death in the hopes of getting Taras back?
She swallowed a sob. It seemed incredible that she hadn’t told Marko the truth by now, that she’d been turned into a Soviet spy, with their son Taras dangled as bait. But her husband was a different man after receiving a wound near the end of the war, when a bomb went off as his unit crossed a bridge in Slovenia, the shrapnel missing his right eye by inches. He suffered now with debilitating headaches and his temper was terrifyingly short, usually directed at Zoya, who’d done nothing to deserve such treatment. This Marko would not tolerate a wife who’d agreed to spy on him. He would send her and Zoya away immediately—and then how would she survive, a woman with a daughter, stranded in England?
Now, Ilyin’s fingers on her arm reminded her too much of her impossible predicament. “I will do nothing until I know Taras is safe.” Savka stared him down in the fading light. “Marko already doubts me. If I ask him these questions, he’ll know I’m a spy.”
“Find a way to get it out of him in the bedroom—when his defenses are down.” Ilyin raised an eyebrow and flashed her a vulgar grin. She flinched when he lifted his hand to touch her shoulder-length hair. “I like this style on you.” His insolent gaze traveled over her body, that disturbing half smile still playing on his lips. Then, hands in his pockets, he slouched away and disappeared like the shadow he was.
* * *
A week later, Savka found herself striking a provocative pose in the living room of their house in Moorby, wearing the rose-colored silk slip Marko had gifted her the night he came to visit in Dermenytsia. Shortly after she and Zoya had shown up, their family had been allocated a two-room prefab home near the edge of town—a special privilege, she speculated, that he was afforded by MI-6.
That afternoon, while she’d been kneeling in a field with the other Ukrainian women, harvesting potatoes, she spotted Ilyin beckoning to her from behind a shed. She made her way down the rows toward him, and he passed her a note from Belyakov.
Your son has been taken off the mining crew, the note read. He works in the camp infirmary and receives extra food.
When Savka cried out and clutched it to her chest, Ilyin glanced around to ensure none of the women in the field could overhear and told her that Marko would return that night.
Although she was relieved that Taras now worked in a safe, warm place instead of the mines, and was getting extra rations, she couldn’t hide her frustration. “I told you Marko wouldn’t admit he was going anywhere but London.”
Ilyin made a gesture of dismissal. “You must search his pockets for valuable intelligence he might have brought back from Ukraine.”
Terror and anger roared in her ears. “You expect me to rummage through his coat?” she almost shouted.
To subdue her, Ilyin pushed her against the shed wall. “He’ll be tired from a long flight back to London and then a train to Moorby.”
“I can’t do it.”
Ilyin, standing too close, looked into her eyes. “You’re expected to do it. Or…”
Savka turned her head at the implied threat. Do it—or Taras will be sent back to the mines.
Now, hours later, she stood like a common whore in the cramped English house, waiting for her husband to come through that door. She’d arranged for Zoya to spend the night with one of her friends, so that she and Marko could be alone. But it was too quiet. She hoped that seduction might work on her husband when vague questions had not. The thought of what she must do—draw Marko into the bedroom, and afterwards, while he lay in post-coital oblivion, steal into their cramped living room to search his coat—left her mouth dry with fear. She was no better than Ewa with her SS officer in Kraków, using sex to get information. Savka pushed the thought away. She would never be like Ewa.
She didn’t have long to wait, for the door opened abruptly and Marko came in, looking tired, his face bloated with drink.
“What is this?” He demanded, taking in the silk slip.
Savka closed the door and threw her arms around his neck. Snaking a bare thigh up the side of his leg, she felt the bulk of something in his left coat pocket. “I missed you.”
“I have just come back…”
“Yes?” she breathed, waiting for him to admit he’d just returned from Ukraine. But Marko was more interested in what she was wearing, leaning in to sloppily kiss her neck.
“Come,” she murmured in his ear. “Make me pregnant again.” The word pregnant gave her the chills. She’d been with child a few months ago and was allowed extra rations of milk and cod liver oil, but she and Marko had suffered another heartbreak when she’d lost the baby. He desperately wanted another child to make up for his groundless suspicion, she knew, that another man had fathered his daughter. Marko hadn’t accused her outright, but his disregard for Zoya was shameful. Savka wanted to scream at him, remind him that she’d never been with another man—Zoya was his. But he refused to accept their daughter.
She kissed him and Marko responded swiftly, violently, all but devouring her naked breasts, hardly pausing when she stripped off his coat and threw it on a chair. Soon he led her into their bedroom, and she lay on her back in the small bed, staring, eyes wide at the ceiling, dreading what she must do next.
Ten minutes later, with Marko asleep, Savka drew back the covers and tiptoed naked into the living room, heading straight for his coat. She knelt on the nubbly rag rug, searching his left coat pocket. Instead of a document, her shaking fingers closed around the unmistakable handle of a revolver. Slowly she drew it out. Not the German Luger she’d seen in Deremnytsia, but what looked like an English gun, a Webley Mark IV, its manual safety lever in the off position. Marko had carved M.I. into the stock and Savka thought of the Luger he’d had in Ukraine, how he’d scratched over a dead man’s initials. Did her husband covet his firearms so much, he had to personalize every gun he owned? Ilyin was right. It was obvious that Marko had been recruited by MI-6 and been given this gun on assignment for them in Ukraine. Another memory intruded, of Ewa taking the pistol Kuzak had given her to shoot her Russian handler. No, she thought, banish it.
She still had the gun in her hand as she fumbled his coat open to search the inside breast pockets. Something was there, sewn into the lining…
“What are you doing?”
She yelped in surprise as Marko appeared in the doorway of the bedroom in his underwear, rubbing his eyes.
Her pulse jumping, she lifted the gun. “You think I didn’t feel this in your pocket?” she said, finding her voice. “Why have you brought a loaded weapon into the house where there’s a young child? It’s too dangerous.”
Marko snatched up the revolver and opened it, removing three remaining bullets from the cylinder. “Now it is unloaded.” He regarded her for a moment, hopefully ignorant of the many secrets she was keeping from him, then carefully hung his coat on a hook and lowered the kitchen table from the wall—the room was too small to have it down at any time other than at meals—and pulled up one of the chairs.
The knife wound Marko had received in Ternopil was now a jagged scar across his cheek, which somehow made him look more handsome—not to mention deadlier. The scar would turn a frightening white when he was angry, which it did now. Savka watched as he field stripped the gun with well-rehearsed movements. Her eyes went to his coat hanging on its hook. She’d felt the outline of a document in his pocket. If Marko hadn’t caught her, she’d have found what the NKVD wanted, some kind of intelligence or information—maybe even the Rimini List—and secured Taras’s release. But she’d missed her chance.
She glanced at her husband and tried to remind herself of his sacrifice. The fight for Ukraine’s independence had taken him from the underground to the SS, then to a prisoner of war camp, where he’d stolen the only list in existence of those Ukrainian men now being protected by the British. He had never turned from the ongoing struggle. Savka was the one expected to betray Ukraine.
You must ask him direct questions, Belyakov had said in the ruins of the Pergamon museum.
“There’s talk…” she began, her voice calm, even as her heart pounded in her ears. “That some men have been parachuted back to Ukraine.”
Marko’s head snapped up. “Who told you that?”
His expression was shrouded, and she was unable to read it. “I heard women talking, in the fields.”
“Back to Ukraine?” he scoffed. “That would be madness.” He massaged his temples, a tell-tale gesture she’d become familiar with over the past year. Another headache.
“You would be proud of your daughter,” she said, changing the subject. “She’s learning the Kolomyika.”
Something moved like a shadow deep within Marko’s blue eyes, and his brows knit together with a look of disdain. “Get your things together. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
“Where?” Savka whispered. Ukraine was out of the question of course, but she hoped for somewhere in eastern Europe. “Yugoslavia?” she asked. “Or Hungary?” It would mean struggling with another language, but at least she would be closer to finding Lilia and Mama.
“Have you learned nothing?” he said, lighting a cigarette. “All of eastern Europe is behind the Iron Curtain. We’re going to Canada.”
Savka hardly listened as Marko outlined plans to move them to a country even further from Ukraine, and from Taras. She allowed herself one bright spot of hope: her son was safe, working in a Gulag infirmary. Canada was not a dictatorship; it was not war-torn Europe. Marko would no longer take orders from MI-6 and with the USSR’s growing dominance in eastern Europe, cold war animosities between the Soviets and the West were escalating. Surely Canada, a dedicated ally to Britain and the United States, had strict emigration policies and would be alert to Soviet spies trying to cross its borders. Belyakov and his men could not follow her there. Someone in Canada would help her find Taras, get him out of the Gulag, and back into his mother’s arms.
24
JEANIE
Salt Spring Island
december 9, 1972
the stairs squeak as the intruder prowls upward, so close now, I can hear his breathing. I back away, almost tripping over Pat’s bed, trying to keep myself from screaming.
A face comes into view. I brace myself to scream at the sight of a stranger, but it’s someone entirely unexpected, someone I know so well. Someone I love.
Kay.
I utter a cry of delight and rush at her, pulling her close, then hold her at arm’s length, hardly able to believe she’s actually here. When I last saw Kay, back in 1959, she wore her mouse brown hair in the same shoulder length style but now it’s long and straight, parted in the middle and combed Madonna flat over her ears, then gathered into a no-nonsense bun at the nape of her neck. An enormous pair of glasses amplify her kind brown eyes.
“Pat’s in Vancouver,” I say, squeezing her in another hug. “She’ll be back in a few days. I’m so happy to see you.”
