She sat back, pleased.
“What if she just missed the bell?”
When he said it like that, the story did seem improbable. Still.
“I don’t think it’s just a coincidence. Arthur treated Maxine terribly, he hit her, abused her. But she never left, which didn’t seem like Maxine at all. The Maxine Mead we knew would have dumped a loser like that in an instant. Whenever I questioned her, she’d say that she loved him, but there was something empty in the words, like she didn’t really believe them. I always thought there was something odd going on, but I could never put my finger on it. Now it makes sense. Arthur and she were more than lovers, they were both spies. Which was why she couldn’t escape his clutches. Or maybe she really didn’t want to.” She let out a sharp laugh. “To think I just made a speech chastising those who were paranoid about spies, when one may have been standing right beside me.”
“What did you say to her, as you were going offstage?” Charlie asked.
“I told her that I knew the truth.” She should have never let on, but she couldn’t help herself. “Do you think I’ve ruined your opportunity? What if she runs for the hills?”
He considered it. “She’s too famous. She has to show up at the party, and probably thinks it’s safer in a crowd. We have to figure out a way to get her alone.”
“It’s better if I do it. It’s the only chance that she’ll open up.”
“You’re not trained, no way.”
“She’s emotional, vulnerable, and we have a long history. I’ve got this, I promise. Inside the ballroom, there’s a long balcony that overlooks the room. I’ll lead her up there for a private talk, and you take the opposite stairs and sneak over. Don’t let her see you, though, or we’ll lose our chance.”
A band played as they entered the grand ballroom of the Plaza Hotel, a space that would have looked at home in Versailles, with its gold leaf plaster and mighty columns. They were escorted to a table where Lauren Bacall and Carol Burnett sat engrossed in conversation.
“Well, this will be easy.” Hazel pointed to the placards, where she and Maxine were seated next to each other. For a brief moment she doubted herself. Maybe she was just jazzed up with adrenaline from the unexpected turn of events, indulging in conspiracy theories. But the guilty look on Maxine’s face after she’d spoken the words out loud was undeniable. She’d known what was going on, one way or another.
“Excuse me, coming through.” An older man Hazel recognized as Maxine’s agent pulled out a chair. Maxine, behind him, didn’t take it. Instead, she froze when faced with Hazel and Charlie. Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times but no sound came out.
“Max, it’s been too long.” Charlie leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
Maxine responded with an enigmatic smile. “Look at that, the gang’s back together. Lovely to see you, Charlie.”
Just then, a couple of photographers pushed Charlie aside. “We need a photo of the two of you, Miss Ripley and Miss Mead.”
Hazel put her arm around Maxine’s waist and drew her close. “Say ‘cheese.’”
After a couple of flashes, Maxine tried to pull away but Hazel spoke through gritted teeth. “Come with me. We have to talk.” To her surprise, Maxine softened in her arms.
“Fine.”
They cut through the surging crowd and up a wide set of stairs. Hazel unhooked the velvet rope that limited access to the balcony and let Maxine through, before clicking it back in place behind them.
Once they reached the top, Maxine moved into the shadows, out of the view of the crowd below. “I’m so sorry about this evening, Hazel. I had no idea they were going to pull that stunt. I would have never agreed if I’d known. But your speech was marvelous. I hope you know that.”
“Don’t flatter me.”
“I’m not. It’s the truth.” Her hand fluttered to her hair, a nervous tic Hazel knew well.
Better to get straight to the point. “Maxine, I know about your activities with Arthur.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Charlie approaching. He stayed glued to the wall, out of Maxine’s line of vision but well within earshot.
“My activities?”
Her pretend innocence infuriated Hazel, she couldn’t hold back. “You were a spy, just like Arthur was. You were spying on all of us. How could you?”
“I wasn’t spying on you. What on earth are you talking about?” Her face was open, childlike. Confused.
What if Hazel was completely wrong about all this, and had simply gotten caught up in the drama of the evening? She charged on, anyway. “I know it all, Maxine. I know that Arthur was known as Silver, that he was at the top of a network of spies that included Julius Rosenberg. You were his protégée.”
A leap of faith, that last statement, but Maxine wouldn’t know it was just a guess.
“No, that’s not true. None of that is true.” The words came out robotic, the worst line reading ever.
Hazel softened her voice, let her hands fall to her sides. “That was all a long time ago, Max. A lot has changed since then, we all know that. I’m just trying to make sense of it all. We all did what we could to get through, in a terrible time. I want to hear your side of it.”
Maxine responded with a tiny sigh. The air around them shifted, and Maxine’s face went slack. Not with fear, but with relief. Hazel suspected she was desperate to confide her side of the story.
“You can tell me, Maxine,” said Hazel. “It’s water under the bridge. After all this time, I deserve the truth. That’s why you stayed with Arthur, right? Even though he was a beast. I realize now that you didn’t have a choice.”
Her gaze flickered. “I wanted to tell you for so long, but I couldn’t. It would put you in danger, but hell, let’s be honest, I didn’t have the courage.” Maxine paused. “I met Arthur, like I told you, long ago, when I was still in Seattle. I didn’t realize it until later that he was grooming me, training me from the very beginning. I was young, a teenager, and he was powerful and smart. I thought I was in love. With him, with the Communist Party. The two were one, in my mind.”
“Did he bring you to New York?”
“Yes. I was sent there, to work as an agent. Soon after, I was told I’d been made a member of the underground. It was an honor, it meant they regarded me as important. It also meant I cut off all contact with regular communists, didn’t go to meetings, distanced myself from the Party. Not even the communists knew I was a communist.”
A terrible realization dawned. “What really happened with you and my brother? Was he trying to recruit you or was it the other way around?”
Maxine’s face crumpled. “He was on our list of potential recruits. I was told to get a sense of where his political sympathies lay, but when he took me to that protest, I was completely blindsided. That was exactly the type of scene I was supposed to avoid, being deep underground. I let him go after that. I told them that he was too patriotic, that he wouldn’t be turned.”
Hazel wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not. In fact, she was having a difficult time aligning the woman before her—someone who had been trained to lie and scheme—with the changeable drama queen she’d met in Naples and practically lived with in New York. Which one was the real Maxine?
Hazel backtracked, returning Maxine to more comfortable territory. “Did they make you join the USO tour?”
“They thought it’d be a good way to monitor what was going on in Europe, but the controls were too strict, I couldn’t get word back to Arthur, so for a time I was told to cut off all communication. That was the first taste of what it’s like to be a normal person. When we met, when we were trying to help Paul. That was all true. You know that, right?”
Hazel stayed silent.