The night of New Year’s Eve, Louise had managed to steer Arnie to several parties before going to the one at the Soviet envoy’s residence. Now, despite being purposefully fortified by several drinks, walking through lightly falling snow, her arm linked with Arnie’s, she began to worry she’d had too much fortification. She was afraid she’d say the wrong thing. Just being around army officers and their wives, having drinks, she knew a great deal that most governments would want to classify. Suppose something that would hurt the United States slipped out. Maybe something she thought was harmless. But, if she wasn’t sociable, she’d be that awkward wife that hurt her husband’s chances for promotion.
They reached an open gate with two sturdy brick pillars about five feet high on either side. Up a stone path was the large front door to the Soviet envoy’s residence, an imposing brick building. Before the 1944 armistice agreement, it had been the German embassy. It was lost on no one that the Soviets made it the residence of their envoy extraordinary to send a clear signal of Soviet triumph. To the victor go the spoils.
Two guards stood at each side of the door. Arnie touched Louise’s mitten.
“What?” she asked.
“Just be careful. Remember, the walls have ears.”
“Mum’s the word,” she said brightly. She wished she felt as brave as she sounded.
Arnie presented his identification to one of the guards, who to Louise’s delight came to attention and saluted him. The other guard opened the door.
They walked into a large, brightly lit room filled with the babble of a party in full swing. Looking for familiar faces and finding none, Louise realized they must be the only Americans. There were numerous elegantly dressed women in formal gowns and men in black tuxedos and a large number of Russian army officers, already well-oiled and as loud as any Americans.
“Geez, Arnie,” she whispered. “It looks like the whole Red Army is here.”
“Most likely part of the Allied Control Commission,” he whispered back. “More accurately referred to as the Soviet Control Commission. When the Finns signed the treaty with the Soviet Union, England also made peace. They formed the Allied Control Commission, two hundred Russians and fifteen Brits, to make sure the Finns were complying with the terms.”
“Are they?”
“There’s a whole Red Army on the border, just waiting for an excuse to come across. They’re complying alright.”
Overhead was a high ceiling and carved plaster coving. The large room had classic clean lines, which she liked. However, it had been filled with Russian furniture that had the ostentatious bad taste of a sirdar’s throne room. Heavy velvet drapes, dark green and maroon, framed tall windows. Just outside the windows, light reflected off falling snowflakes into the room. There were several tables loaded with ornate silver and gold canapé trays. Bowls of caviar rested on ice in prerevolution silver containers decorated with scenes of wolf hunts. There were dozens of champagne and vodka bottles. The champagne labels were varied and in French. The vodka labels were in Russian, identical, all from the one official government vodka factory. The walls had been decorated with hammers and sickles, making it clear that everything was done for the benefit of the working class. The irony was not lost on Louise.
A small orchestra of two violins, two trumpets, two saxophones, a clarinet, trombone, tuba, and snare drum was playing sedate dance music, strictly on the beat. Behind them on a pedestal was a large electric clock with a second hand jerking toward midnight.
A soldier in a dress uniform took their coats and wraps. Then a beautiful young woman in a turquoise silk cocktail dress that tastefully highlighted every curve, presented them with a silver tray holding several crystal flutes of champagne.
She moved on, and Louise watched Arnie watching her leave. It amused her. Given the way this young woman looked and dressed, it would worry her if Arnie didn’t watch—within reason.
Louise noticed two men looking at them, one around forty, obviously informing the older about something. The older man smiled and started toward them, the younger man in tow. It had to be Aleksandr Abramov, the Soviet envoy. Louise tensed. This man personified the power of the Soviet state, power that not only menaced Finland, but with each news article she read about what was happening in Germany and Eastern Europe, menaced democracy, menaced her.
“Envoy Abramov,” the younger man said in accented English, “may I present Colonel and Mrs. Koski of the American legation.”
Louise smiled as brilliantly as she could and held out her hand, remembering to keep it soft, but not limp. She was relieved when Abramov took it gently and, looking directly into her eyes, said in accented English, “Mrs. Koski. Welcome to Finland.” He immediately turned to Arnie, who put his own hand out, which Abramov seemed to grasp like he was going to pull Arnie out of a hole or something, repeating the greeting. Abramov parted hands with Arnie who had been enduring the vigorous pumping of the man’s handshake with a near-frozen smile.
Indicating the younger man beside him, Abramov said, “Colonel and Mrs. Koski, may I present Colonel Oleg Sokolov. He is responsible for security here in Finland.”
Holding her hand out for Sokolov, Louise smiled, looking directly into his eyes as she’d been taught. He took her hand and smiled—with his mouth—observing her rather than looking at her with cold Uranianblue eyes. She had an awkward moment, not knowing when to withdraw her hand.
“Mrs. Koski. My great pleasure.” He spoke English, but with a Russian accent, reminding her of Arnie’s father, whom she liked very much.
Then Sokolov raised her hand and bowed just enough to kiss it. That had never happened to her before. It felt like being in a Tolstoy novel.
Sokolov, still holding her hand, looked directly into her eyes. She felt that he knew this was a first for her. His knowing this about her, reading her so easily without her saying a word, made her feel vulnerable and uneasy. At the same time, she felt a stirring of excitement. There was something about this man. He was like one of the bad boys her mother would never let her date—but, oh, had she wanted to.
Arnie came to her rescue, holding out his own hand. “Colonel Sokolov. I understand you were there when the Red Army took Berlin.”
Sokolov released Louise’s hand and smiled at Arnie, in the same way he had with Louise. “You have been doing your homework, Colonel Koski.” He shook Arnie’s hand.
“It’s a pleasure to meet one of our allies,” Arnie replied.
The brief Gone-With-the-Wind moment was gone.
It was the first time Louise heard Arnie talking like a diplomat. Maybe somewhere in those seventeen weeks of Strategic Intelligence School there’d been classes on charm like the ones they’d given the wives.
Abramov broke into the introductions, saying to Louise, “I apologize. My wife is somewhere or I’d introduce. I hope you understand. She is hostess.” He chuckled. “Many social emergency to solve.” He smiled and turned to Arnie. “Welcome. And best wishes for the new year.” He nodded and, gesturing to the party, said, “Please, enjoy yourselves.” He left, Sokolov following.
Arnie very quietly said to Louise, “Sokolov is MGB. Ministry of State Security. Secret police. Viktor Abakumov’s crowd. It used to be called the NKVD.” He gave Louise a meaningful look. “They make the gestapo look like amateurs.”
She felt herself tighten, trying to check the uneasiness that came from hearing the names spoken aloud.
A particularly gorgeous auburn-haired woman with exotic, slightly slanted eyes approached them with another tray full of champagne flutes. It wasn’t lost on Arnie that the drinks were being served by beautiful Russian women. Alcohol loosened tongues; it was the lifeblood of diplomacy and espionage. The girl brushed her hand on Arnie’s sleeve when she took his glass. Then she walked away, balancing the tray on one hand and herself on high heels.
Louise looked up at Arnie impishly, signaling she knew he was watching the girl’s backside.
“Also MGB,” Arnie said. “They drilled us on honey traps at Strategic Intelligence School. I’m surprised they didn’t make us take a vow of chastity in front of the Senate.”
“The last place a vow of chastity would be taken,” Louise answered with an eye roll. Then she said, “That’s four for both of us.”
Arnie would have preferred not to hear Louise announce drink number four, even though they’d long ago agreed that he would follow her lead when it came to drinks at any party. He was feeling uncomfortable, and drinking helped.
Arnie had been in uniform since he’d entered West Point, the summer of 1932, but now, because his dress uniform hadn’t yet arrived, he was in a rented tuxedo. Unlike civilians, career military people wear their resumés on their shoulders and chests. Any career military person would have seen from Arnie’s ribbons that he’d been in combat and had fought courageously, as attested by a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. The silver oak leaves of a lieutenant colonel on his shoulder would have immediately placed him—and Louise—in the appropriate place in the social pecking order.
The Russian military men were all in uniform. Arnie had been told they eschewed civilian tuxedos as symbols of class decadence. The irony wasn’t lost on him, however, that wearing uniforms only made fine gradations of class totally and easily readable, as well as telegraphing who was more powerful. Almost all the military men working for Western embassies wore civilian clothes. No one would know if Arnie was a colonel or a decorated combat veteran—or even a civilian. Without any of the props, he realized he would have to establish himself in the eyes of others by talking about himself. He felt awkward doing that. In addition to his stereotypical Finnish introversion, he’d been told all his life not to brag. A fine standard in a culture where everyone knew if you had what it took to be a good logger or fisherman. Courage and skill were exhibited openly. Not so at cocktail parties.
Arnie, however, knew tooting one’s own horn, as his mother used to call it, was important, and not just here in Helsinki. He also knew he didn’t have the social skills—skills Louise seemed born with—to do that subtly. He looked at her fondly. It was another of the many reasons he’d married her—along with knowing she had his back with his other weak points. “You’re right,” he said. He held his glass up in a partial salute, drained it, and put it down firmly on a nearby table.
Arnie and Louise watched the crowd with forced smiles.
“I hate this,” Arnie said, not breaking his smile.
“I never really liked it either, even though in college I did this all the time.”
“But you were good at it.”
“Sure. In Oklahoma. But I knew what I was doing. Everyone else was from Oklahoma, too.”
“At least you got some training. Socializing wasn’t in the West Point curriculum.”
“You should have been a Delta Gamma.”
“You wouldn’t let me in.”
Louise laughed, then looking around, said, almost to herself, “Arnie, look at that couple over there, the Russian uniform. They’re about our age.”
Arnie looked at the woman first. She was striking—tall and elegantly thin with long lustrous black hair—and she carried herself like a dancer, fitting one of the two stereotypes with which most Americans viewed Russian women: they were either hardened road workers in shapeless dresses and scarves, or they danced at the Bolshoi. She had almond-colored eyes like creamed coffee.
Arnie shifted his gaze to the man he presumed was her husband. Red Army. A podpolkovnik, the equivalent of a lieutenant colonel, his equal. Lots of medals, including the big one, Hero of the Soviet Union, their Medal of Honor. If typical, the man had been at war continuously for seven years. He looked at the man’s face and took in a short breath.
“What?” Louise asked. “She’s not that gorgeous.”
“No,” Arnie replied. He pulled her a little closer. “I know that man.”
“You what? How?”
“I’m trying to remember.”
Then it all came back.
May 8, 1945, just outside of Linz, Austria. Arnie’s Seventy-First Infantry Division had just reached the Enns River. Arnie had been driving a jeep, his M2 carbine on the passenger seat, Sergeant McCormick in the back with a Browning Automatic Rifle. They’d been looking for a way to cross the Enns. They’d also been looking for the first signs of their Soviet allies. Linking up with the Russians would be proof that the Germans were now surrounded, with total surrender or annihilation their only choice.
McCormick shouted, pointing across the river. Soldiers, perhaps an infantry company in size. At first there’d been the fear, scrambling to get the jeep between them and the soldiers across the river, the quick calculations, coming so fast it hardly seemed like calculating. Chambering rounds. Bobbing up for a quick look and back down. Bobbing up again.
The soldiers on the other side of the river were standing still, looking at them, not throwing themselves on the ground, scrambling for firing positions. Then he and Mack looked at each other, both with mouths slightly open. They rose slowly. They were looking across the river at the famed Red Army.
He remembered their boots, no laces, straight up above the calves, trousers tucked in, belted, quilted overcoats. Oddly, to him, the soldiers had a curious lack of steel helmets. Most were wearing light wool garrison caps, the kind that could be folded flat when not in use, but about a third were still in their winter caps of fur with the earflaps tied together above the crown.
A man in a greatcoat stood up on the passenger side seat of a Lend-Lease American jeep and raised a Shpagin burp gun above his head, easily identified by the round magazine that made it look like an American Tommy gun. As with American combat troops, officers looked identical to everyone else, but he could tell by the assumed authority that this man was the group’s leader.
Arnie came out from behind the jeep, his carbine raised above his head. Then the man with the Shpagin opened fire into the air. Arnie ducked and McCormick hit the ground, but the Russian soldiers began shouting and cheering, pounding each other on the back, some also firing rounds into the air, many waving their arms.
The man who’d fired the Shpagin was gesturing downstream, spreading one arm wide and then back to join the other forearm. Arnie pumped his carbine up and down to acknowledge he understood.
“Mack, I think there’s a bridge.”
Arnie always remembered that moment as the moment he’d declared personal victory over Germany. He also remembered it as the last day of good feelings between the soldiers of the East and the West. Now, the Red Army controlled Eastern Europe from the Adriatic to the Baltic, and it didn’t look to Arnie like they would be leaving anytime soon—not without a fight.
Arnie was also remembering the swollen bodies and dead horses, the bottom half of a corpse, trailing intestines, all slowly turning as they floated down the river.
Louise saw that Arnie had that look, the one where she knew he was seeing images that he wasn’t talking about. She elbowed him gently. “Talk,” she said.
She watched his eyes come from gazing far away to look at her, once again present with her. “They were ski troops,” he said. “Like the Tenth Mountain. Heading for the Austrian and German Alps. We beat them to it.”
“I met him on the Enns,” Arnie continued, bringing her back to the present. “After the Tenth crossed the Po in Italy, I was transferred to the staff of the Seventy-First because they were heading into the Alps. I was trying to find some intact bridges. I remember thinking, They look just like us. Kids. But with bad teeth and knee boots without laces.” He smiled. “And they smelled.”
“As if you didn’t,” Louise said.
“No. Truly. You have no idea. You could smell them across the river.”
“Oh, Arnie.”
It annoyed Arnie when Louise did the “Oh, Arnie” comeback. It felt to him as if she thought he were exaggerating or being funny. Louise had no concept of what he was trying to communicate, nor could she, nor could anyone who hadn’t seen combat. That left him feeling isolated.
It would never be OK to tell Louise about the memories of that day. Every night those images turned in his mind before falling into restless sleep. During sleep, however, the dreams were always of Italy, floundering without his skis through snow mixed with blood like macabre rust-red shaved ice of snow cones. Then the avalanche would come thundering down on him, and Louise would wake him up to stop his screaming.
He watched the Russian officer say something to his wife, a look of astonishment on his face, and then he was holding his arms open, pointing at a wristwatch, and rushing toward Arnie shouting, “Tovarishch! Tovarishch!” Comrade. Comrade.
Podpolkovnik Mikhail Bobrov, military attaché to the Soviet legation in Helsinki, hadn’t initially recognized the tall American standing across the room from him because he was in a civilian tuxedo. When he’d last seen the man, he’d been in US Army battle dress.
Upon recognizing Koski, Mikhail was filled with joy, remembering, almost to the point of feeling it all again, the incredible relief that the single vehicle across the river from them was American and not German. For years there had been talk of the Americans opening a second front in Europe, but for years they had done nothing, taking their time in North Africa, then Sicily, then Italy, all the while leaving the Russians to fight around 80 percent of the German army and take the brunt of the casualties. That bitterness had vanished with the elation of finally linking with the Americans. German surrender had to be imminent. He’d let loose firing nearly half a magazine into the air. His men started doing the same, all whooping with joy.
He’d signaled to the two American soldiers about the bridge they’d found intact, just downstream of where they were. He remembered paralleling the two men, he in his American jeep and they in theirs. When they reached the bridge, he pawed through his gear in the back of the jeep and brought out the brandy he’d been saving for months to celebrate victory. He hadn’t expected to share it with Americans, but how could he refuse them? They were comrades in arms.
He’d watched the American officer talking on a radio, its antennae waving, thinking to himself the man must be at least a regimental commander. He’d been surprised when he found out that he was only a major on a reconnaissance mission. It seemed the American army had more radios than God himself. And jeeps. And trucks. Did these soldiers not walk?
He’d sent his driver and jeep back to find his division commander and report the good news.
As more Americans arrived at the bridge, they mingled with his own men, opening small cardboard boxes filled with an inconceivable variety of canned food. And American cigarettes! Every box! His men were laughing, lighting up, some two at a time.
Half an hour later, the brandy was gone. He remembered singing “Katyusha,” with Koski trying to join in, obviously not knowing the words. Then Koski was singing something about Stalin wasn’t Stalin, which made no sense, because how could Stalin not be Stalin? But they both hit their stride with the one about not sitting under an apple tree. He remembered being happily drunk in the back of Koski’s jeep, when another jeep pulled up. Its passenger had two stars on his battle helmet. However, unlike a Russian general, he seemed to be laughing while he was clearly issuing an order. Koski had stood, wavering, making a sloppy salute as the general drove off. Officers and sergeants began shouting, the soldiers all scrambling into various vehicles. Koski nodded at him to get off the jeep. Then, Koski took off his wristwatch and handed it to him like he was bestowing a medal. Without another word, Koski climbed into the jeep with the other soldier and drove away.
Mikhail was waving Koski’s watch above his head as he charged across the room.
Louise knew that Arnie hadn’t told her everything about his encounter with the big and obviously friendly Russian coming at them holding one arm up and pointing at what looked like a wristwatch. The Russian officer holding Arnie by the shoulders and kissing him on his cheeks, which she knew was embarrassing the hell out of Arnie. She smiled, thinking about how she would kid him about doing his diplomatic duty for the country later that night when she was kissing him on his lips.
The elegant Russian woman was slowly walking toward her. Louise struggled with a moment of panic. Did Russian women shake hands? Was she expected to air-kiss her? The briefings hadn’t covered that.
She put on her best Delta Gamma smile and the woman smiled back briefly, clearly more reserved than her husband. Holding her drink in her right hand so it would at least make sense she couldn’t shake hands if she was supposed to, she said, “Nimeni on Louise Koski,” drawing on Beginning Finnish, Lesson One: My name is Louise Koski. She nodded at the two men who were excitedly talking in fluent Finnish. “Mieheni nimi on everstiluutnantti Koski.” That had been in Lesson Three: My husband’s name is Lieutenant Colonel Koski.
The woman wore an elegant black dress that came nearly to the floor, showing only a glimpse of somewhat clunky high heels. The dress had a white lace collar at the throat that looked to Louise like it was pinned there as an accessory and not part of the dress.
“Yes, my husband also,” the woman replied in somewhat easier Finnish, smiling at the two men. “Podpolkovnik Bobrov. Mikhail,” she added. She looked back at Louise. “My name Natalya Bobrova.” She again smiled briefly, then resumed an interested look but with no smile. “My Finnish not so good. Can read OK, but not talk. My English … no English.” She stopped there, not even blinking. How could someone so gorgeous be so, so unsmiling? Clearly not Dee-Gee material.
“My Russian not at all,” Louise answered in English.
The Russian woman simply looked at her, bringing on an uneasy feeling for Louise. They had been warned to be careful when talking in public, even with people from allied countries like England and France, and it was well-known that the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union was deteriorating, particularly around governing Germany. Even though officially an ally, this woman could be cozying up, seeking information. Maybe she was a spy just posing to be married to the Russian officer. Louise inwardly chided herself for spinning fantasies and forged ahead.
“They meet … Enns River in Austria,” Louise said in Finnish, unsure she had the tense right. The woman smiled and nodded, but Louise wasn’t sure she’d understood her.
Always draw the other person out: her mother’s first rule of good conversation. “Other languages?” Louise asked. The woman blinked slowly. Louise took a stab. “Français?” It had been the language of Russian aristocracy before the revolution.
The woman lit up.
Feeling encouraged by Louise, Natalya Bobrova could hardly hold back the rush of French, knowing here was someone with whom she could talk about a passion she’d suppressed for far too long: French literature. She knew she spoke French with a Russian accent, but she could hold her own with this woman who spoke it with an American accent and looked like some girl in the Coca-Cola ads she’d seen in American magazines in the Soviet legation library.
She quickly sized up Louise. Unstylish forty-millimeter heels. Seams straight. No earrings. Most of the American women she’d met stupidly wore screw-on earrings that they were constantly taking off and on because their ears hurt. It baffled her. Her ears had been pierced since childhood. The woman’s dress fit well but was untailored. That seemed odd. She’d assumed that any American woman with diplomatic status would be from the capitalist class and rich enough to have her clothes tailored. Since the dress wasn’t tailored, however, she now wondered if the pearls were fake. Not short but not tall. Well maintained. Nails polished. Probably had never worked a day in her life. Still, there was something engaging—wholesome—about her.
After a few minutes of conversation Natalya learned that this woman, Louise, had studied French literature at someplace in the middle of America called the University of Oklahoma—openly. She felt a little touch of envy. Natalya’s passion for French literature had started with reading French books on her mother’s bookshelf before—She stopped herself. After leaving the orphanage, she’d read French literature in secret. If the NKVD had found out, she would have been suspected of being “under foreign influence.” The People needed economists. That is what the People paid for, not self-indulgent and polluting foreign studies. That could send her to the gulag—or worse. She was aware of the irony that the first time she’d been able to talk openly about French literature was in a foreign country with an American.
Louise hadn’t talked about French literature since college. She glanced away from the Russian woman to see Arnie raising a shot glass of vodka and loudly toasting the Red Army. Clearly the four-drink limit had been forgotten. She wanted to slow him down but knew that would embarrass him. Besides, Arnie was clearly enjoying himself, so why be a wet hen about the drinking.
The two men tossed back their drinks. Immediately one of the waitresses brought them two more.
Louise sighed and gave Natalya a quick smile.
Natalya smiled back. “There will be no stopping them,” Natalya said quietly. “He forgets the war by celebrating the comradeship.”
“They’ll pay tomorrow,” Louise said.
“So will we,” Natalya answered.
They both laughed, beginning to bond over this all-too-common experience of army wives dealing with bringing their husbands home from war.
They both turned back to look at their husbands when they heard Bobrov shout in English, “To the American Tenth Mountain Division! The second-best ski troops in the world!” Bobrov threw his head back, laughing, holding his glass up for Arnie to touch.
Arnie slowly lowered his own glass, still smiling. Louise knew that smile. It did not indicate happiness.
She quickly translated for Natalya and both looked at each other, both hoping the insult would pass.
“Mikhail fought with our ski troops,” Natalya said in French, calling them chasseurs alpins, “against the Finnish Fascists in 1939. Then against the German Fascists. He’s very proud of them.”
Louise couldn’t help a slight movement on her face, startled at hearing this woman call Finns Fascists. She instantly regretted her visible reaction. She’d always been terrible at poker. She reminded herself that she had no idea who this Russian woman really was or what her real job was. She did know that she’d already provided the woman with a tell, which she’d clearly read, because she answered Louise’s unspoken question. “The Finns stubbornly refused to allow us to provide for our own safety against the Nazis,” Natalya said stiffly. “When, they shelled Mainila in November of 1939, we had no choice but to defend ourselves. We, against our own interests, stopped ourselves from taking the whole country. The result of that decision was that they joined the Nazis and invaded us again in 1941.”
Louise swallowed her indignation. Telling this woman that the shelling of Mainila was suspected to have been an NKVD operation—and what she thought of the Soviet Union savaging a country one-sixtieth its size—would not help Arnie’s cause. There were parts of being a diplomat’s wife that were starting to annoy her—like being diplomatic.
Louise regained control, suppressing her reaction to the Russian woman’s misunderstanding, or perhaps deliberate distortion of history. “I didn’t mean to pass judgment,” she said, repressing her desire to counter a lie—and even a little confused about when or even if she should. “It’s just that my husband is a Finn.” Louise smiled. “We all support our husbands.”
Both women turned from each other to again look at Arnie and Mikhail, wanting equally to overcome the sudden tension. The two men seemed to be arguing about something, intensely, but without anger.
“Mikhail said fighting the Finns was hell,” Natalya said softly. “Our soldiers were without experienced leaders, food, or winter uniforms.”
“I’m sorry. The war was hard on everyone.”
“Yes.”
Louise tried to think of something neutral to say. “Where did you spend the war when your husband was away?”
Natalya struggled to control her anger, forcing a smile. Was this walking Coca-Cola ad really that naïve, like most Americans? All her rage against the rich American capitalists who’d escaped the horrors of the war came boiling up. She could not help herself. Very slowly she said, “Leningrad.”
“Oh.” The woman at least had the decency to blush.
“We ate rats.” Natalya paused. “Some of us ate each other.”
She knew she was now unnecessarily piling on, but it felt so good. It was clear that the American woman was embarrassed. There was half a minute of uncomfortable silence.
Coca-Cola put on a smile and, hesitating only a moment, deftly changed the subject, asking, “Do you have children?” Natalya had to hand it to this woman. This was soldiering on in a vastly different context. But maybe the apparent naïveté was a cover and she was an American agent? She fought down the familiar feeling of not knowing if the person you were talking to was speaking the truth. She now wanted desperately to rescue the struggling conversation that, she had to admit, she’d done her best to make difficult. She wanted someone she could talk to, someone she could trust. She wanted a friend.
“Two,” Natalya answered her. “Alina, just three, and Grisha, one and a half.”
“Alina, that’s a pretty name. And is Grisha a boy or a girl?”
“A boy.” Where was this Oklahoma place?
“Are they here with you?”
“Yes. I work for the economic section at the temporary legation building on Kalliolinnantie. The legation gives us a young nyanya to look after them,” she added.
“Our legation doesn’t provide childcare. You’re lucky.”
“Well,” Natalya said, her head cocking sideways as if considering what Louise just said. “I suppose you could say we are lucky.” She left it at that. She was sure that the “nyanya,” Fanya, worked for the MGB.
Natalya tried to have a good attitude about sharing their flat with Fanya. She knew that the MGB was there to protect the People from internal enemies. Capitalism could not be eradicated without eradicating all counterrevolutionaries who secretly supported it. That’s why the People needed an organization like the MGB. So, perhaps some of the men who ran the MGB were overly enthusiastic doing their job, but you wouldn’t want a watchdog that didn’t scare people, would you? At least, that’s what everyone said. Fanya was just a part of how things were.
Natalya, of course, would never express any of these thoughts aloud, not even to Mikhail. Saying nothing is how one survived—how one got good postings outside of Russia.
Louise had, of course, heard of the siege of Leningrad. She knew there had been starvation. But starvation had been an abstract word—until now. She knew the Europeans had it worse in the war. She wasn’t naïve. But without American aid they’d all be Nazis now. It seemed to her that there should be at least a little gratitude.
She realized that Natalya had just asked her the children question. She recovered. “No, not yet.” Was this woman only trying to appear to want to make friends so she could pump her later? She suddenly felt a weary loneliness.
“Will you be working at the legation, then?” Natalya asked, changing the subject quickly.
“No.” Louise gave a self-deprecating smile. “Don’t speak Finnish. Maybe if we were in Paris. Don’t I wish.”
“Me, too,” Natalya said, showing a pensive mournfulness, which she quickly covered.
Louise was about to ask if Natalya had ever been to Paris but thought better of it, instead saying, “I’ve never been to Paris.”
Natalya smiled. “Nor I.” She paused and then said with a bit of a smile, “So, you and I have never been to Paris together.”
Louise laughed at the deliberate nonsensical juxtaposition, relaxing with Natalya a little. “It’s nice to have something in common.” A brief smile flickered across Natalya’s face. “I’ve been mostly house hunting,” Louise plunged on. “And going to parties.” She gestured at the crowd.
“It is part of the job,” Natalya said kindly.
“Yes,” Louise answered. “Yes, it is. So is finding housing.”
“You’re having trouble?”
“Quite frankly, yes.”
“I guess we are lucky. Our legation supplies housing for us. No searching.”
“I wish ours did,” Louise replied.
That hung in the air. Clearly Natalya had nothing more to say on the subject. To fill the space, Louise went on. “Once I find housing, I thought I might help out a distant relation of Arnie’s who runs an orphanage. There are a lot of orphans. I see them walking on the streets roped together in single file being led to God-knows-where.”
“We know about orphans,” Natalya said.
Louise caught the sadness in Natalya’s voice but couldn’t help thinking, It was you Russians who created all the orphans in Helsinki. This time the dark thought didn’t cause a flicker. She was learning rapidly. “I thought, maybe I could lend a hand. I’m good with organizations.” Then she added quickly, “And I love kids.” She waited, expecting the then-why-don’t-you-have-any question. Louise was thankful Natalya didn’t ask it.
This was because, even if Natalya had thought that she would ask the question, she was stopped by the room going quiet.
Louise followed the gaze of those around her to three men entering the large room from an interior open door. Two of the men, big and well-built, flanked the third, a man in his midforties with a receding hairline, wearing rimless pince-nez glasses. He wore the uniform of a marshall of the Soviet Union. But for the military uniform, the man looked to Louise like a college professor or librarian. She glanced at Natalya, who had visibly stiffened. Natalya’s eyes were darting ever so slightly, as if looking for somewhere to escape. It hit Louise that they were eyes that had seen much sorrow and not just in Leningrad.
The man raised his hand, in a gesture both of hello and carry on. The buzz in the room slowly restarted. Louise watched Aleksandr Abramov and his wife scurry to meet the man from the far side of the room, followed in a bit statelier manner by Sokolov.
“Who’s that?” Louise asked Natalya.
“Lavrentiy Beria,” Natalya said quietly. “Head of the MGB.”
“Oh.” Louise had heard the name.
One of the waitresses was hurrying over to the three men with drinks. They took them. Beria raised his in a greeting to the young woman, smiling. She smiled back a little awkwardly and, almost bowing, quickly backed away. Beria turned to one of the flanking men, said something, and they both laughed. Then, Beria engaged in conversation with Abramov and Sokolov, while Abramov’s wife looked on a bit nervously and with a smile that showed no pleasure.
Louise looked to Arnie for a clue. He caught her eye and cocked his head just slightly, shaking it very discretely.
Beria raised his glass again, indicating that the conversation with Abramov was over. He slowly made his way through the crowd, pausing to make a comment to an acquaintance or two. The two bodyguards followed. They were nearing Louise and Natalya, and Natalya moved in much closer to Louise. She started talking animatedly about her love of music in French, her back turned to the small group making its way slowly through the crowd. Louise, facing the group, felt like Beria just briefly sized her up and then moved on to look at others, paying most attention to the young waitresses. The waitresses were clearly avoiding looking at Beria.
Louise was trying to stay in the conversation with Natalya but all the while couldn’t help watching Beria’s progress through the crowd. She watched him make a slight nod in the direction of the waitress who had initially served them their drinks and, smiling, went to say farewell to Abramov and his wife. He left the room without the bodyguards. The conversation level rose almost instantly.
The two bodyguards were quietly talking with the original waitress. She had a slight but frozen smile on her face. The man escorted her toward a table while whispering something to her. She set down her tray.
Louise watched her being walked from the room between the two large men, her entire body awkwardly stiff. They were then gone.
Louise looked across the room at Arnie again. The Russian officer’s face was very close to Arnie’s, his drink perilously close to spilling. Louise glanced at Natalya, who was also watching the two men. They both simultaneously averted their gaze and their eyes met. Louise felt that there was someone inside of Natalya looking at her through Natalya’s eyes. She wanted the woman inside herself to get to know the woman inside Natalya, but she also knew that it would take considerable time to penetrate beneath their respective roles as wives of intelligence officers. She wondered how it was that a few men in Washington and Moscow could create a world where two women at a party in Helsinki couldn’t talk openly to each other.
Arnie and Mikhail had no difficulty talking openly. Up until the crack about the Tenth Mountain being the second-best ski troops in the world, both had felt good remembering their meeting on the Enns.
Arnie, rather clumsily, put his left hand on Mikhail’s right, which held the glass.
“I’ll not toast to that, you Russian son of a bitch,” Arnie said in Finnish. He knew that they were playing the good-natured game played by soldiers the world over: putting each other and their units down.
Mikhail instantly raised his glass and shouted, “I’ll drink to that.” He threw down another drink and Arnie followed.
Mikhail immediately shouted something in Russian to one of the waitresses peregrinating the room and within seconds he and Arnie again had full glasses.
“We are, you know,” Mikhail said, “the best.” He was holding his glass just in front of his chest.
“No, yarntnt,” Arnie replied. He shook his head at his slurred speech. “Are not,” he repeated distinctly.
The two men looked at each other, professional soldiers sharing mutual respect. They both also knew that a challenge had somehow been issued and challenges among warriors could not be allowed to pass.
“If we were younger, we’d get into a fight over it,” Arnie said.
“If we were younger, we wouldn’t be here insulting each other.”
“I’m not too old to fight, just too old to want to,” Arnie said, suddenly serious.
“And I,” Mikhail said equally quietly. “Six years fighting the Finns and the Germans is enough for me.”
“I would never want to fight you,” Arnie said, his Finnish ever so slightly slurred.
“Nor I you,” Mikhail repeated.
The two of them stood very close together—in the Russian way, not the American—swaying slightly from the alcohol. Neither spoke. The challenge had been issued, but neither knew how to deal with it.
“Too bad we couldn’t just set up a race. We’d beat the pants off you,” Arnie said.
Mikhail slowly started to smile. He leaned into Arnie. “But we can set up a race.”
His bad breath made Arnie pull back slightly. He recovered quickly and leaned back in himself. Diplomacy in the trenches, he thought.
Arnie’s eyes were drawn to the dark window behind Mikhail. Out there—out there in the dark and in the cold—was where the challenge would be taken up. And settled. He felt a slow awakening of his leg muscles, the familiar feel of adrenaline building before a race.
“You mean the two of us.”
“Yes, Comrade. The two of us.”
“The loser has to tell the winner that his troops are the best in the world.”
“Yes, Comrade. That is what you’ll have to do.”
Arnie studied Mikhail for a moment. “Ten kilometers. You’ll be so far back when I finish, we’ll have to send out a search party.”
“Hah! You call ten kilometers a race in America? One hundred kilometers.”
“What, a day race? Fuck that. Five hundred kilometers.”
Mikhail and Arnie stood there, both a bit blindsided by the escalation.
“You’re serious,” Mikhail said.
“Yes.”
“It would take around ten days.”
“Yes.”
“My friend,” Mikhail said. “I have been in the forests of Northern Finland. In the winter,” he added. “The days are cold. The nights are brutal.”
“I imagine they are.”
“I no longer have a little toe because of frostbite.”
“Are you trying to scare me?”
Mikhail smiled, then grew serious. “We would be skiing alone. If one gets into trouble, the other most likely won’t know.”
Arnie looked over Mikhail’s head to the dark window and the beckoning space beyond it. He felt the old excitement and fear.
“Ultimate things,” Arnie said softly.
“Yes,” Mikhail answered.
The two were silent.
“Winning is about the honor of our units,” Arnie said. “Doing it is about—” He stopped himself. “Don’t you miss it? The feeling that what you’re doing, right now, really matters?”
“I do miss it,” Mikhail said. He looked down at his glass, then back to Arnie. “But it’s also about … the actual challenge … whether we can do it … whether we still have”—he was searching for the right word—“the heart.”
“Heart,” Arnie agreed.
Mikhail raised his glass solemnly in front of Arnie’s face. “Five hundred kilometers it is, my friend.”
“You’re on,” Arnie replied.
“To ultimate things,” Mikhail said and touched his glass to Arnie’s.
“And heart,” Arnie replied.
They both tossed down the liquor. Then Mikhail hurled his glass against the wall. Stunned for just a moment, Arnie threw his.
The room had gone silent. Louise and Natalya looked at their husbands, their mouths open.
“What was that about?” Louise asked.
“Some sort of wager.”
“God. Couldn’t they just shake hands?”
“Not Mikhail.” Natalya looked at her husband fondly, then turned back to Louise smiling. “Not my Misha.”
Louise’s attention turned to Natalya’s husband, who must have realized that the party might have interpreted the gesture wrongly. He started shouting in Russian, “Comrade, comrade! A toast to our American allies,” looking around and gesturing for one of the waitresses to bring them another drink.
One of the women plying drinks came up to the two men, clearly suppressing her own laughter, holding out a silver tray with two more glasses on it. The buzz in the room slowly resumed.
The two men were now leaning into each other, one hand holding a vodka shot glass, the other on the other man’s shoulder. They were clearly engaged in some sort of mutual project, one bringing something up, the other either nodding or shaking his head and countering with something else. They were also clearly drunk. Just what Louise had feared.
Suddenly, it seemed to her that the room had collapsed to an island in the sea of alcohol, chatter, and canapés, just the four of them, she and Natalya and their husbands. She intuited that Natalya felt this as she did. The two men stood upright. They shook hands solidly, but it didn’t seem like the usual pleased-to-meet-you and goodbye at a party. Although Arnie and she had been separated for nearly half of their marriage, she was keenly tuned in to his body language. The two held up their shot glasses and Arnie proposed another toast of some kind and Natalya’s husband repeated it. They threw back another shot. Louise looked at Natalya. Natalya looked back with her striking almond eyes. Louise had a vague yet unsettling premonition that with that handshake and toast, she and this woman before her had been joined in some sort of shared fate, like lone passengers on a bus with an invisible driver, hurtling through darkness.