Louise's Blunder (17 page)

Gachev shook a finger at Rose and Clark. ‘What errands she has been running for OSS may matter nothing, depending on her answer to our request for her help.’ He turned to me. ‘May I call you Louise?’ Gachev said.

‘Yes.’ Can I call you spymaster? I wondered how many rings Gachev operated.

‘Let me assure you how safe your association with us would be,’ Gachev said. ‘We require nothing written from you. No notes, no documents removed from your office, no copies, nothing. You and I would meet alone, sometimes in my store where maybe you would stop by to buy another Baby Ruth. Sometimes in a safe room, like this one. You would tell me what intelligence you think our friends in the Soviet Union would be interested in knowing. In my cables to the NKVD I would assign you a code name that no one would know but me. There would be no evidence against you at all. And, of course, you must tell us everything you know about Paul Hughes’ murder.’

Peggy clapped both hands over her mouth to keep from crying out.

‘Yes, my dear,’ Gachev said, turning to her, ‘Paul was murdered. I don’t know by whom.’

Clark was speechless, staring at me as if he couldn’t believe I knew more about Hughes’ death than he did.

‘What if I join your little spy ring and you’re arrested?’ I said.

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘I fought for the Bolsheviks during the Revolution. At one point I spent some months in the custody of the czar’s interrogators. They got nothing from me. In the end I became so thin I was able to squeeze between my cell wall and the iron bars of the cell and escape. Nothing you Americans could do to me could force me to talk.’

I wondered where his radio transmitter was located. Maybe at the Soviet Embassy?

‘I don’t know,’ I answered him. ‘I’d have to think about it.’

Clark was nervous, flexing and relaxing his fists over and over again. ‘Louise! I don’t understand what you have to think about!’ he said.

‘You agreed with us about everything we talked about!’ Rose said. ‘And at the restaurant you backed up those black girls with us!’

‘None of the opinions I expressed were any different from Eleanor Roosevelt’s. Why don’t you go ask her to spy for you?’

Peggy, one hand still covering her mouth, turned back to her post at the window.

‘This is a very dangerous situation,’ Gachev said to Clark, shoving his hands into his pockets where I was quite sure he gripped a gun. ‘She could report us. Me, I could take refuge in the Soviet Embassy. What would happen to you three?’

Rose stood up from the bed, her face pale as a ghost. ‘Louise,’ she said, ‘you wouldn’t!’

‘Of course not,’ I said, lying with a straight face. I turned to Gachev. ‘I don’t want anything to happen to my friends here. I’ll make a deal with you. You let me go, and I won’t say anything to OSS Security. But you all,’ and I caught Clark’s eyes, ‘must stop spying for the Soviet Union. Now.’

‘That sounds fair,’ Rose said, eagerly turning to Gachev, her eyes pleading with him.

‘Clark,’ Gachev said, ignoring Rose. ‘It is up to you to convince Mrs Pearlie to cooperate with us.’

‘I will, absolutely. I’m sure I can convince her.’

‘You have twelve hours,’ he said.

Or what? I thought. I’d wind up floating face down in the Tidal Basin like Paul Hughes? Had Hughes changed his mind about spying for the Soviet Union? Was that what his Sunday meeting with ‘G’ – Gachev – was about?

‘This is what we are going to do,’ Gachev said. ‘Peggy, you take Paul’s suitcase down the front stairs and leave through the main entrance. Make sure that scraggly woman sees you. On your way home dump the case into a garbage bin.’

Peggy still hadn’t spoken. She tied her trench coat belt, then reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a scarf splotched with yellow flowers. My God, she had been Paul’s lover! That explained her inappropriate grief after his death. I wondered if the others knew. Peggy lifted the suitcase and left.

‘Rose, in five minutes you leave by the side door,’ Gachev said.

Before Rose left she turned to me. ‘Louise, please!’

I had to drop my eyes from her face, she looked so terrified.

‘I will take my usual path down the fire escape,’ Gachev said. ‘Mrs Pearlie, remember, twelve hours.’

The door closed and we could hear the window in the hall open, then shut, as Gachev climbed out and started down the fire escape.

‘Clark,’ I began.

‘Don’t say it, Louise, I’m so sorry. I misjudged you. You seemed to agree with so much we talked about.’

‘I thought Rose just wanted to be my friend. I thought you might be vetting me for a new OSS job,’ I said. ‘Instead you were trying to convince me to become a traitor.’

‘We’re not traitors!’ Clark said. ‘The Soviet Union is our ally! The Soviet people need us, God knows the NKVD is not getting the intelligence it needs from the allies.’

I looked him straight in the eye. ‘Under no conditions am I going to cooperate with Gachev,’ I said. ‘I’d rather die first.’

‘Jesus,’ Clark said. He sank down on the bed. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘We must go to the OSS Security Office and tell Major Wicker everything.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d be ruined. Rose and Sadie’s lives would be ruined. And Peggy and Spencer’s. It’s unthinkable! There must be another answer.’

‘Was Spencer a part of this?’

‘No, he has no idea. Peggy and Paul had an affair. Spencer was always working. Paul convinced Peggy to memorize parts of the strategic memos she typed and pass them on to him.’

I edged toward the door. I could kick off my shoes and take off. Once I got out into the street I would be safe.

Clark smiled at me like a child distracting me before he stole my candy. He pulled a derringer out of his jacket pocket. ‘I have no desire to hurt you,’ Clark said, ‘but I will if I need to. I need time to think.’

‘I suppose Gachev killed Paul Hughes. Did Hughes change his mind about cooperating?’ I asked.

Clark shook his head. ‘If Gachev had killed Paul he would have done a better job of it. Shot him between the eyes and hidden his body where it would never be found. Not floating in the Tidal Basin right out in the open.’

‘Then who sent the telegram?’ I asked.

Clark’s hands shook. I could see the derringer barrel quiver.

‘I have no idea,’ he said.

‘Rethink this, Clark,’ I said. ‘Let’s go to OSS. It’s inevitable. Security can keep you all safe.’

‘Shut up,’ he said, in a harsh voice I hadn’t heard before. ‘Put on your coat.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘I’m going to stash you somewhere you’ll be safe for the twelve hours I need to figure our way out of this.’

My heart started to pound.

‘Don’t mistake me, Louise. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want Gachev to hurt you or Rose or Sadie. But I am not going to be revealed as a double agent and have my life ruined. You do as I say or I can’t protect you.’ He tossed me my raincoat.

‘Button up,’ he said. ‘The weather is turning.’

Be tactful in issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive; they can’t shrug off harsh words in the way that men do.
Never
ridicule a woman—it breaks her spirit and cuts off her efficiency.

‘1943 Guide to Hiring Women’,
Mass Transportation
magazine, July 1943.

C
lark gripped my arm tightly above the elbow and shoved me out of Hughes’ room. His right hand went back into his pocket, where he no doubt retained a firm grip on the derringer.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

The custodian’s window was open but I couldn’t see her, though I could hear her radio playing distantly.

Outside the sky was dark and the wind had picked up. Trash skittered along the sidewalk. The wind lifted my hair, but I had nothing to tie it back with.

Clark urged me along the sidewalk. Instead of going to his car we walked around the corner and two blocks north. We came to an informal taxi stand, a café with four cabs parked out front. The drivers were drinking coffee inside.

Clark opened the door and lifted his hand and one of the drivers nodded, draining his coffee cup and meeting us at his taxi. Clark beat him to the rear door and opened it for me, scooting me along the back seat as he joined me. The cabbie started his cab and flipped the meter.

‘Where to?’ he asked.

‘Maine and “O”,’ Clark said.

‘You sure you want to go down to the water?’ the cabbie asked. ‘There’s a big storm coming.’

‘We need to check on our boat, don’t we, honey?’ Clark said, squeezing my arm.

‘Yes, yes we do,’ I said.

Maine and ‘O’ was a damn long way away, many blocks, almost to the mouth of the Washington Channel. I did not miss the irony of passing the Tidal Basin on our way. When we went under the railroad bridge, where the Pennsylvania RR tracks crossed the Potomac, we kept driving past the Municipal Fish Wharf, the Capital Yacht Club, the Norfolk and Washington Steamboat Line, the Harbor Police and the Potomac River Line. Along the way I saw boat owners tying down deck furniture and toting gear down to their boats’ cabins. Most of the boats flew American flags of various sizes; they all fluttered furiously in the wind. Raindrops began to spatter the taxi windshield.

When the taxi dropped us off the fare was about half of my monthly salary, which Clark paid in cash without batting an eye. I wondered if Gachev paid Clark for his espionage.

‘Come on,’ Clark said, pulling me down a wharf that extended out into the Washington Channel. We stopped at a small wooden runabout rolling in the swell. ‘Get in,’ he said.

‘Clark,’ I said. ‘Please don’t!’ I thought he might be planning to take me out to the middle of the Potomac River and drown me.

‘Be quiet,’ he said, climbing down beside me and tossing off the mooring line. ‘I’m trying to save your life. And mine too, for that matter. I’m putting you somewhere safe, where no one will find you, until I figure out just how to handle this.’

Clark pushed off from the dock while I crouched in the rear of the runabout. It had no awning, so soon my hair dripped from the soft steady rain. Clark reached past me to crank up the inboard motor and we slowly turned and made our way south and west, out of the Washington Channel and into the Potomac River. It was slow going. Since the war began the Potomac had become a parking lot for all kinds of vessels. Navy and coastguard ships were anchored everywhere, but also sailboats, motor launches, yachts, anything that floated where someone could live. The housing shortage in the District was that tight. We had to creep around until we reached open water where the larger yachts were moored. Then we motored further west until I could see lights on the Virginia shore.

I had no idea where we were, except we had passed under no bridges, which meant that we must be south of the railway bridge.

We drew alongside a small sailboat moored in the sheltering arm of a short peninsula off the Virginia coast somewhere. There were several other boats moored nearby, but not nearly as many as clustered on the District side. They all seemed unoccupied. Clark cut the motor and tossed a rope over one of the sailboat’s cleats and pulled the two boats together.

‘Get into the sailboat,’ he said. I complied and he followed me, lashing the two vessels together. The sailboat itself was tiny. The deck was just large enough to hold four people seated on the two wooden benches, one on each side. The small sail was neatly furled and the boom secured. A hatch sealed with a heavy padlock led to below decks.

I knew what Clark intended to do.

‘Don’t, Clark, please,’ I said. ‘Don’t leave me down there!’

‘You’ll be perfectly safe,’ he said, drawing a key from an inside pocket. ‘There’s a lantern and some tinned food.’

‘So,’ I said. ‘This is your solution to your problem? Leave me here to die?’

‘You stupid girl,’ he said. ‘I’m hiding you where no one can find you until I figure out a way out of this mess. No one I have ever tried to recruit has turned me down. Why didn’t you agree, at least until Gachev was gone? I’ve not seen him look like that before. Brutal.’

He was right. I’d made another stupid mistake. I should have agreed to join the spy ring, then turned Leach in to Wicker as soon as possible. Instead I was so irate I refused his offer and found myself in another dangerous mess.

Clark unlocked the padlock and opened the hatch to the cabin and, grasping my arm, shoved me inside. There were only four wooden steps down, but I stumbled and fell, hoping I could take Clark off guard. No luck. He jumped down from the ladder and hauled me to my feet. The cabin was so small we could barely stand upright together.

Clark gestured to the only bunk. ‘Sit,’ he said. ‘I’ll be on my way.’

I tried again to stall him. ‘How did you even meet Gachev?’ I asked.

‘At a Communist Party of America dinner. Don’t look at me like that. The CPUSA is a legal organization. General Secretary Browder spoke. Gachev and I were at the same table and we became friends. Later he asked me to help funnel useful intelligence to the NKVD. I was happy to do it. I still believe in the cause,’ he said, staring me down. ‘The current world political and economic system won’t survive the war. So I recruited Paul and Rose. Rose brought in Sadie and Paul brought in Peggy.’

‘Not Spencer.’

‘No. Spencer is a capitalist through and through. When Rose met you she thought you were a possibility.’ Because I believed in the same things Eleanor Roosevelt did – desegregation, women’s rights and the labor movement – this amateur spy thought I was traitor material. Good God.

A vicious lightning bolt, visible through the port light, cracked through the sky, then lit up the night. Thunder rumbled and the boat’s gentle rocking motion grew more agitated.

Heavy raindrops spattered on the boat deck, sounding loudest on the hatch door.

‘There’s a thunderstorm coming, Clark!’ I said. ‘I could die here!’

‘Don’t be foolish. It’s just another spring storm. This boat has been moored here for two years. You’ll be fine.’

Clark turned and climbed up the ladder to the deck, closing the hatch behind him. He turned the key in the heavy padlock and I heard the lock engage.

I pulled myself up the short ladder and screamed at him through the hatch. ‘Liar! Traitor! You’re not coming back to get me! You know I’ll turn you in to OSS Security! You’re leaving me here to die! I’ve got a pen in my purse!’ I screamed. ‘I’ll write down everything! All over my body if I have to! When they find me it’ll all be there! They’ll hang you!’

‘Louise,’ Clark shouted at me, ‘Don’t be so melodramatic! I’ll be back for you! I just need time to think!’

Shortly I heard the runabout’s engine engage and the boat pull away. Leaving me in the dim sailboat cabin alone.

The cabin was bigger than a coffin and smaller than the bathroom I shared at ‘Two Trees’ with Ada and Phoebe. I felt panic rise for a minute, shivering fear coursing through my body, as I wondered if I would ever see ‘Two Trees’ again. Or my parents, whom I hadn’t written in a month. Or Joe! To think I’d hesitated to visit him! What a little fool I’d been.

I suppose it was possible that Clark did intend to come back for me, but I wasn’t going to count on it. So I explored my diminutive prison for supplies and maybe a potential escape route.

First I smacked my head on a kerosene lantern swaying overhead. I heard liquid sloshing and found matches in the only drawer in the cabin, one next to the tiny two-burner propane stove. The flame rose in the lamp and cast its light over the warm wood that paneled the cabin and instantly I felt more hopeful. There was something about the light that was reassuring. In contrast there was very little light coming in now through the two narrow port lights, one on each side of the cabin. Even if they hadn’t been rusted shut only a cat could have got through them.

The only bunk stretched along one side of the cabin. Opposite it was the tiny galley with a sink and the stove. A shelf that held a few cans of beans and soup and a jar of instant coffee restrained by a rope ran along the cabin wall over the stove. Thank God for the coffee.

A narrow door at the rear of the cabin opened into the head. The toilet hadn’t been pumped out recently but I had smelled worse. And there was toilet paper.

If I was convinced that Clark was returning to me the facilities were bearable for a couple of days. But I was not convinced.

I noticed one encouraging prop. A life preserver hung on the wall next to the door to the deck. So, I thought optimistically, if I could get out of here I could paddle to Virginia safely. But not during a storm. I would need to wait until it passed. And I had no clue how to get out of the cabin with the hatch closed so securely. I edged myself as far back in the cabin as I could. The rear hatch, which opened so a winch could raise the sail, was locked from the outside too. It was too small for me to climb through anyway.

A giant crack of thunder made me jump while a lightning strike coursed across the bit of sky I could see through the port light. Wow, I thought, that wasn’t far away. The boat’s rocking intensified. I hoped I didn’t get seasick. That was all I needed.

The trapdoor to the hold took up much of the cabin floor. I grasped the ring handle and pulled the door up easily. Holding the lantern over the dark opening, I saw what seemed to me to be a normal amount of water sloshing around. Closing the hold I hung the lantern on its ring on the ceiling again. The light swayed as the boat rocked, more than it had just a few minutes earlier.

I wasn’t afraid of the water. I was born and raised on the coast of North Carolina and had been in so many boats, sometimes in stormy weather, that I couldn’t count them. And I swam like a fish. What concerned me, what terrified me, was the prospect that this little sailboat couldn’t withstand this storm, and that locked below I wouldn’t have a chance to escape.

I forced myself to be calm, reassuring myself that Clark was right. This boat had weathered many a tempest right here in this anchorage. It would be unpleasant to be locked down here during a thunderstorm, but after it was over maybe I could think of a way out.

Royal stared down at Clark Leach’s corpse. It lay face up, eyes wide open, legs tangled around a chair that had toppled over when he fell. The bullet had entered his skull precisely between his eyes. Whoever had executed him had done this before.

The deceased was easily identified by his driver’s license and an OSS identification tag. The thought that the dead man was OSS, like Paul Hughes, made Royal feel tired.

The woman who owned the little café, just four tables in the main room of her row house, waited in the kitchen with a policewoman. Rain pummeled the metal roof of the house and a flash of lightning lit the dim room briefly.

‘I do not need to have restaurant license,’ she said to Royal immediately. ‘Small. Only four tables. I cook for homesick Russians.’

‘Ma’am,’ Royal said. ‘I am not interested in your business. I just want to know what happened here. Now, what is your name?’

The woman was not young but still handsome, her dark hair bundled on top of her head and covered with a knitted cap. She had a good, if matronly, figure under her spotless apron. Her grey eyes hadn’t left his face yet. She wasn’t afraid, she simply didn’t want to give Royal her name. She came from a place where the police were thugs.

‘You must, you know,’ the policewoman said to her.

‘My name is Ekaterina Korobkina,’ she said. ‘May I have a cigarette?’

‘Of course,’ Royal said. ‘Would you like one of mine?’

‘No thank you,’ she said. ‘I smoke Sobranie.’ She pulled a single cigarette wrapped in black paper out of her apron pocket. Royal offered her a light and she accepted it.

‘You’re Russian,’ Royal said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My husband and I emigrate to America in 1937, from Novgorod.’

‘Where is your husband?’

‘At work. He has a night shift.’

‘Please tell me what happened.’

‘Two men came in to eat. The one that is dead and another. They ordered
pirozkhi
. While I am cooking I hear them arguing. Then a gunshot. I call the police. I hide in the pantry with a stool shoved under the doorknob until I hear police siren. That is all.’

‘Did you know the men?’

‘No I did not,’ she said. ‘I have never seen them before.’

‘Mrs Korobkina,’ Royal said. ‘The dead man isn’t Russian. You cook Russian food for exiled Russians. I will bet you my pension that the other man, the murderer, is Russian and that he has been here before. What is his name?’

She shrugged, crossing her arms. ‘I do not know him,’ she said. Royal didn’t interrogate her further. He could tell from her expression that she’d rather go to an American jail than reveal the man’s name.

The crime team arrived, a photographer and a fingerprint expert. The morgue wagon parked at the curb, waiting to receive the body. Royal directed the policewoman to sit with Mrs Korobkina until her husband came home from work. He left the constable who had answered the original call with him to keep everyone except Mrs Korobkina’s husband out of the house. Then he dashed across the street in the rain to wait in his police car so he could take some weight off his bad knee. Once inside he stretched across the front seat and lit his own cigarette.