“I am Shpak. And you—Aurora or Dawn?” was how the man began their conversation.
The first of many, perhaps? She had no idea who Shpak was. He was dressed and groomed to seem older than he was. Very little remaining hair. Rimless spectacles. Clean-shaven, dressed in a suit and tie. He could have been a lawyer in Winnetka or an accountant in Berlin.
She had been awaiting him for half an hour in this office, which was part of a jail complex to which they had suddenly relocated her the day before. She was back in her civilian clothes. And she was well rested, for they’d put her in a little cell all her own. The darkness and isolation would be hard to take after awhile, but she’d slept like the dead.
“Aurora is the name under which I entered the Soviet Union, and by which I intend to live the rest of my life,” she answered.
“Don’t mistake me for a bureaucrat,” Shpak chided her. “I’m not asking what you are called. I’m asking what you are. That’s my job. To find out such things.”
She considered asking him whether he was a psychologist—Dr. Stasova’s boss, perhaps? But they wouldn’t have moved her to a jail for a psychological inquiry. And a shrink probably wouldn’t be accompanied by soldiers. Two of them, she knew, were out in the hallway, flanking the office’s door. Seemed like overkill, but she could well imagine how useful it might be to go everywhere escorted by men with rifles.
She let her gaze wander about, searching for clues. Shpak’s first act, after hanging his massive wool overcoat on a rack by the door, had been to approach the oak swivel chair behind the desk and examine it with the same wary skepticism he was now directing at her. The seat was padded by a fabric-covered cushion. Before removing his leather gloves, Shpak picked this up between thumb and index finger and tossed it onto the floor in the corner of the room. A very sensible precaution against lice. Aurora’s chair was unpadded and so she was probably safe. Anyway, this wasn’t Shpak’s office—he had simply ejected its usual occupant—and so there was no point in trying to glean clues from it. The overcoat told her nothing except that Shpak had access to the special stores where Western goods were for sale. Back in the early days of the Revolution, Chekists had favored black leather garments because lice couldn’t live in those. But those guys had been living together in squats and barracks. Shpak lived somewhere nice. People did his laundry.
They had not crossed back over the dam on the way here. They were still on the west shore of the Industrial Lake, in one of the buildings that had been thrown up a couple of years ago at the inception of the project. In due course this thing would be superseded by a new jail in one of those brick structures being hurled up in First Sector, just to the south of the factory gates. Some of those things looked to be as high as eight stories. But looming above them all was the two-story headquarters of the OGPU, for that was being constructed on a hill off to one side. It wasn’t finished yet.
Sometimes the most obvious interpretation was actually correct. In this case it was that Shpak worked for the OGPU—the Cheka—and that they were using this old jail as their lockup until the new place was complete. The only part that didn’t add up was that Shpak seemed important, and Aurora didn’t get why someone important would bother with her. Maybe it was because she had met high-ranking American officers in Washington. Maybe her father’s martyrdom accorded her some exalted status.
“This doesn’t look like a psychiatric facility,” she pointed out.
“It is not. You have been given a clean bill of mental health by Dr. Stasova.” Shpak reached into a leather briefcase, which he’d set on the floor next to the desk, and drew out a typewritten document perhaps ten pages long. He licked a finger and turned a few pages. But it was clear that he had already perused it. “You must understand that certain aspects of your story had struck Comrade Tishenko as bizarre, causing him to suspect some kind of mental disorder. Tishenko—” Shpak sighed. “Tishenko is loyal, energetic, fully committed to socialism, but not well traveled. Not well educated. Certain things are difficult for him to fit into his limited view of the world. Once you explained matters to Dr. Stasova, however, all became clear. We have been able to verify certain details. The existence of polo-pony ranches in the vicinity of Gillette, Wyoming. Your late father’s heroic martyrdom in the streets of Washington. These hooligans Bonnie and Clyde whom you are so enamored of. The disturbance in North Dakota. It all checks out!” He punctuated this by flipping the document facedown on the desk. Turning the page. “But why? Oh, it’s no longer a psychiatric question.” He held his hands out, palms up toward the ceiling, and looked around, reminding her, perhaps a little unnecessarily, that they were in a jail. Not a hospital. “Why did you go to such lengths to ‘kill’ Dawn? And is she truly dead?” Are you who you say you are?
Yes, Shpak was OGPU. The Cheka, minus the black leather. The Flaming Sword of the Proletariat.
“I had to kill Dawn because of Silent Al.”
It took him a moment to absorb this. He hadn’t been expecting an immediate, direct answer. “The federal police agent,” he said, glancing down at the report. “Who infiltrated your cell in Washington and betrayed your father.”
“Yes. He knew everything about Dawn.”
“If you could convince him that Dawn had died in a shoot-out, Dawn’s file would be closed. You’d be safe.”
“Exactly.”
“Your interest in Bonnie and Clyde was motivated by something deeper than mere adolescent hero worship.”
Actually, it had been adolescent hero worship. But Aurora saw where Shpak was going and decided it was best to agree. “Of course. They are just hooligans, as you said. Oh, their actions reflect legitimate grievances of the oppressed classes. That’s obvious. But they have no concept of revolutionary discipline and could never contribute to an effective proletarian revolution except as agents of chaos. No, I was interested in them for the reason you have already perceived: by modeling Dawn’s actions after the likes of Bonnie and Clyde, I might be able to stage Dawn’s death in a way that would confirm everything that Silent Al and the other feds probably had in my file.”
“And then Dawn’s file would be closed. You need not fear any further investigation.”
“Exactly.”
“What cause did you have to believe that Silent Al was still pursuing an investigation into Dawn?”
There were two. Aurora wasn’t sure whether to mention the first of them. But she had been thinking about her interrogation by Tishenko, and the way that he had reacted to emotions passing over her face. The power that it gave her. And there was something in Shpak’s reaction to the mention of Silent Al.
“For one thing,” Aurora said, “when you are a woman, you can tell, sometimes, by the way a man looks at you, by certain clues in his behavior, how he is thinking about you. And if it feels wrong, you know that you had better be careful around him. And Silent Al was always one of those.”
“You are referring here to your interactions with this man in Washington. Before you knew him to be a federal agent.”
“Yes. But that’s just a woman’s intuition and might not be worth writing down in an official report. The real answer is that Silent Al saw me in Chicago. He recognized me. I’m sure of it.”
“Chicago.”
“Yes. Soldier Field. That’s a stadium along the shore of the lake.”
Shpak was interested, and pleased in a way, that Aurora had broached the topic of Chicago. “It had not escaped my notice,” he said, “that between your father’s martyrdom in the summer of 1932 and the shoot-out in North Dakota in September of 1933 is a sizable gap. We have been able to verify the truth of your claim that you spent most of those months living in a kommunalka in Chicago. Sharing a bedroom on the third story with two other women, a Latvian and a Jew.”
Aurora felt herself blushing. The OGPU watches night and day with a million eyes. Lie to me, girl, and I’ll know it.
“You spent much time away from the house. The nature of what you were doing is unclear. You’re saying you attended at least one sporting event at Soldier Field? An American football match, perhaps?”
“A balloon launch.”
She now had the minor satisfaction of seeing Shpak gobsmacked.
“August of last year,” she continued. “Your sources in Chicago can easily verify it. It was covered in all the papers.”
“Why would they do such a thing from a stadium? And why did you attend?”
“This was not just bourgeois recreation. It was a scientific event.”
“Studying cosmic rays,” Shpak said with a nod. It was her turn to be surprised that he knew this. “An interest of yours?” he asked, a bit snidely.
“Of my boyfriend’s.”
“The same boyfriend who got you pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“The father of the ‘monster’?”
“Apparently.”
“By the way,” Shpak said, waggling a fountain pen at her, “your lurid tale about the monster continues to raise eyebrows. But Dr. Stasova confirms the, ah … obstetrical evidence. Seeing no other symptoms of schizophrenia, she believes that this detail will be resolved by further investigations.”
Aurora nodded.
“Tell me what you were doing in Chicago during 1933.”