Copyright © 2005 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.

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Intersect: Danger

a novel

by John T. Cullen

36.

July 15, 1945

Meg waited until dark before she cried.

As the sun sank down into the Pacific Ocean, she stood looking out over the city and considered what she must do. Her choices were limited now. She loved Corie and Tim—but she would never see them again.

Ferenc, her Bulgarian lover, had spoken of using Corie as the pilot for this new venture. What could it be that was so important that the Rezident had pulled Ferenc off the U.N. Case and put him on this new thing? She had decided to blow her own cover. She had gone to the FBI and told them about the uranium. What else could she have done? Now, however, the Soviets were probably on to her. It was only a matter of time before they came, to take her away to the USSR for a final date with Stalin’s torturers. They had a long bill of accounts with her, and she would pay dearly. She knew all this, but at the moment she could only think of how lovely life would have been with Tim and Corie. She smoked cigarette after cigarette as she thought about these things. She carried a hankie wadded up in one hand. It was soaked from the tears she had cried and the twisted knots in her stomach.

Meg stood at the high window and contemplated the yawning, dizzying distance down into the courtyard below. Only days ago she had stood there with Tim, passionately kissing. Now that all seemed so far away. She looked down and contemplated taking the quick and easy way, rather than letting the NKVD do their creative work inside Treblinka.

San Francisco seemed to feminine, so pretty, so safe, such a mix of Occident and Orient. Every breath of life here brought exquisite pleasure to one who knew she was condemned to die soon.

Soon enough...

For now, she stripped her clothes off and prepared a long, hot bath. She sat in the bath tub smoking and drinking, but it gave her no pleasure, no relief. Her entire life was a lie, a horrid mess, even when she was trying to serve her new country and do right. It would all turn out badly in the end.

She felt the water growing cool around her, even as the walls and the windows dripped with perspiration.

She toweled herself dry and went into the living room. She poured herself a full martini glass of vodka, not bothering to add ice in the American manner.

It was just a matter of waiting now. Soon, all too soon, it would be over.

She turned on the radio and sat in the living room listening to Glenn Miller. In her soul, she took a ride on the A Train. How she loved America! She loved every breath of its air, every beat of its music, every grin of its raw and trusting but powerful heart. She loved the U.S.A. as she loved life itself, even with her shining dream of a future Jewish state.

Tears ran down her cheeks. Eyes closed, she sobbed. Their ghosts were there, laughing around her: Tim and Corie, her loves. Would they understand how much she loved them? Would they understand she had spared them by not trying to contact them now?

Then, too, there was the new baby growing in her womb. Was it Tim’s? or Ferenc’s? How stupid she had been, to lose her head those two or three times, when Ferenc plied her with vodka and sweet talk. Tim had been away, mad, probably never to return, and she’d stupidly failed to take precautions. It was like that when you felt depressed and sad and hated yourself. She turned the radio off and stubbed her cigarette out.

What use was anything? She wiped her eyes with her sleeves, sniffling. She did the only thing she could then, and started packing a small suitcase. No baby things. That would not be necessary. What few things she had hidden way, saved up from the long-ago summer when she’d almost become a mother, but for the kicking and beating by her Turkish monster, when he’d thrown her down a flight of stairs in Ankara. She had never loved him but at least she had tried to respect him. At that moment the last shred—

Sobbing again, she placed her clothing, a piece at a time, carefully folded, into the valise.

Then came the knock at the door.

She whirled. So soon!

The knock came again, more urgently.

“Yes?” she wailed.

“Umnitsa...Vladimirovna Ivanova. Open this door now.” It was Mutsev. He had come for her as she had known he must. He was just following orders, as she had been. He must be NKVD. He knew her father’s name had been Vladimir Ivanov. Then it was all over. They were on to her. They could not be stopped.

She walked over and turned the latch. She let the door shudder open, and he pushed it open with his hand. “Are you ready, Umnitsa?” he asked, using a term of endearment, as if she were a child. Good girl.

“I’m ready.” She put in a small doll of Corie’s, and a book Tim had been reading. Then she closed the suitcase. She put on her long, drab overcoat and green hat with the feather in it. She looked at herself in the mirror, and noticed that Malone and two other men were waiting silently. Like rocks, these NKVD men. They knew they would own the world soon enough.

She picked up her valise and turned out the light.

The men waited in the hallway.

She took a last look around and then pulled the door shut behind her.

Mutsev took her elbow and pushed her along. The walk down the stairs with these big, rock-like men, through the courtyard, took minutes but seemed like hours. Her heart felt as though it must burst out of her chest with sadness as she looked for the last time on this lovely free city, from the car, as they took her past the Rezidentura at the Soviet Consulate—no need to stop there, all the arrangements were made, she was sure—and then down to the harbor. There, a ship awaited, the Kalinin. In a few weeks, the ocean would lie behind her, with this whole glittering world, and the vastness of Russia would swallow her back into its bosom, never to let her go again.

Carrying her valise, she walked from the car to the gangway, followed by the NKVD men and Mutsev/Malone/Jaguar/whoever he was. Fog roiled up as she walked across the rickety wooden bridge, and a sailor leaned above, looking down at her with his arms folded on the damp steel railing. Here and there, under greenish tin shades like Chinese hats, glowed small islands of light, 75 watts against the vast night and the sea.

When she walked into the dim corridor that smelled of sweat and cabbage, she knew she was almost home again. Not in the home she had chosen, but the hell from which she had escaped, from the Middle East to the lower Caucasus.

On the empty dock outside, fog swirled in. A single light stayed lit a while, and then it too winked out.