John Schwartz - The Red Daughter

Beverly says your life is in danger? What the hell’s going on?

I tell him about the man with the black glasses and the fake newspaper in the Chevy Impala, Bel Air, Caprice…

Maybe he’s just waiting for the street cleaner, Peter suggests, no longer sounding much concerned.

I point out that today is not an official street-cleaning day on Wilson Road.

Or he had a fight with his wife and just feels like reading the newspaper in peace, Peter says. I’d put money on it.

I am the only house he’s watching like this.

Peter allows himself a very faint grunt of frustration. Okay… So what would you like me to do?

Ask Dick Thompson.

I’d rather not bother Dick with something like this unless absolutely necessary.

Or Kennan. I have George’s number and will call myself.

Please don’t do that. I’ll call Dick. Wait by the phone. He hangs up.

Not feeling better yet, heart racing, I use the time to return to Yasha’s room and peek out the window again.

The black sedan is gone.

The phone rings. Dick says he’s sending someone over to check on the situation. He should be there in about twenty minutes.

It left.

What?

The car has driven away.

Peter’s silence now like a stone dropped from the heights of Olympus. I’ll tell Dick it was a false alarm, he says tersely.

What if the man goes to Yasha’s school and kidnaps him?

I promise you that’s not going to happen in a million years. I have to go now, Svetlana. I’ve already missed half my meeting. We’ll talk later.

3 April

I went down to Urken Hardware to buy a peephole for my front door. This was Dick Thompson’s idea of comfort for me after he finally heard from Peter about my alarming visitor the other day. Though Dick did not offer to pay for my peephole. What’s more, it strikes me that if peepholes are the best the CIA can come up with to protect its charges, the Cold War must not be going very well on this side of the ocean.

Mr. Urken himself came over to install the apparatus, complimented me on my new backyard swimming pool (covered with a tarpaulin ever since completion last fall), and as he was getting into his pickup truck to leave asked if I’d heard the news that my pool laborer, Nelson, was deported back to Guatemala last month. I said no, I had not heard, what a terrible disgusting thing for the American government—any government—to do to a nice hardworking man like that. And Mr. Urken, for his part, did not reply, did not in fact seem clear in his own mind that this deporting of my Nelson back to a country with the highest murder rate in the world was a terrible disgusting thing. And then he drove away.

I think I will take my hardware business somewhere else from now on. Although it may be difficult to fully separate from Urken; it is a complicated arrangement that we now have one way and another, all these installment payments I owe for my various pieces of home equipment. Very capitalist, indeed.

7 April

Mama, why are we here?

It’s a friend’s house, I explain to Yasha, curled up beside me in the front seat of the Dodge, which is parked, in the fading twilight, in a street unfamiliar to him, across from a house he does not know.

Is someone sick?

No, darling. Don’t worry. We’ll go home soon, I promise. Try and go back to sleep.

I watch my son until his eyes close again.

Across the road, in Peter’s house, lights have come on. That must be the kitchen, I realize.

And Martha, setting the table for dinner.

10 April

Seen through my new peephole, Dottie Carpenter looms larger and more influential than I recall from real life.

I consider not opening my door to her, but in truth my options are limited. She will have seen my shadow blocking the peephole; yes, my shadow, like a calling card with no person behind it.

Hello, Dottie . I do not smile.

How are you, Lana? I just thought I’d take the plunge and drop by. I haven’t seen you in weeks. Oh, and I brought this . She holds out something not previously captured by the peephole.

A home-baked apple pie.

I invite her in to tea. Will she take a spoonful of jam? She will. And a slice of her pie? Well, if I insist… She and Thomas have missed me at All Saints’. Am I truly all right? And Yasha? Truly? Yes, yes, and yes, I answer her. She hopes—doesn’t want to assume, of course, but hopes—that no feelings of lingering embarrassment or… or anything like that from my birthday dinner might be keeping me from expressing my faith at church? Because the last thing she or Thomas would ever want is to think that they might have somehow inadvertently… impeded … rather than encouraged— do I understand?—my faith in the Holy Spirit.

My faith is not impeded, I assure her. It is very much the same as it was before. More pie?

As soon as I can, I walk her out to the street. Practically hand her into her car.

Your son … I say.

Billy? What about him?

Please tell Billy from me that he is a brave boy. Please tell him that from Mrs. Evans.

Dottie Carpenter’s face hardens. And I am suddenly quite satisfied that this is the last truly personal exchange we will ever have together.

13 April

I’m being watched, Dick.

I don’t think so, Svetlana—we’ve checked it out carefully.

You think I’m inventing this black car?

Inventing? No. But you’re under a good deal of stress. And it’s natural that this stress might make you sensitive to certain… let’s just say, certain threats that understandably feel real but aren’t.

You agree with this, Peter?

A brief pause from Peter, weighing his words on a scale. I think Dick’s right, Svetlana.

You think he’s right. Then why would the same car always be parked so near my house?

Many possible reasons. And many possible cars, Dick answered. But believe me, Svetlana, the least likely of all the reasons—by far—is that the KGB is pursuing you in broad daylight. They’re not that stupid.

No, I agree. They’re not stupid.

Dick pats my hand and tries on a smile. Feel better?

A little, I reply, which is almost true.

Well, says Peter grimly. Why don’t we order?

Good idea, Dick agrees, scribbling his name and member number on a lined card with a truncated pencil . What’ll everyone have? Chicken pot pie’s always reliable . And the crab cakes . Lobster bisque is good too.

Just the bisque for me, thanks, Peter says.

Come on there, Pete. You’re too skinny to be on a diet . Dick is teasing his compatriot, I see, though Peter doesn’t smile. Suit yourself. Dick writes down the order . How about you, Svetlana?

Crab cakes, thank you, Dick. And one vodka martini, please .

Two sets of eyes, which they think I don’t notice, land on me at once. “1 Vodka martini,” Dick writes in his spy’s cryptic hand, along with iced teas for himself and Peter, and passes the card to a waiter in a beige jacket.

Our table sits in the corner of a high-ceilinged side room lit by brass chandeliers and one extremely tall window. Like most Party officials and mafia dons, Dick tends to position himself with walls protecting his back. His university club is said to have a number of authors and diplomats in its members book, rather than assassins or spies, though looking around the place I see no boldface names that immediately spring to mind. I confess I find it surprising that my CIA minder would ask me to lunch in a place of such public visibility—his usual preferred atmosphere being a bit more surreptitious, not to say cheaper—but then perhaps today’s setting reflects some accounting on his part of my own diminished celebrity in this country.