“By order of the boss,” Molotov said dismissively, as if her release meant nothing to him. He slapped an envelope into her hand. “Here’s her exit visa. Now get her out of the country and out of my sight.”
“Just like that? She’s free?” Mia stammered, taking the first steps toward Alexia.
Molotov’s face grew hard. “On this condition. Not one word. Not the slightest hint to the press about our arrangement and its history. And if you believe you can break this agreement once you are in your own country, let me disabuse you. We have men in Washington who will be watching, reading your newspapers. If this story appears, something very bad will happen to you. Immediately.”
She was certain his threat was real. “Do Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Harriman know about this?”
“I presume the boss is telling them now. What they do about it is no problem of mine. Her name is removed from the military records. Just take her out of here.”
He did an about-face and strode from the hall.
Chapter Thirty
Five days later, Mia and Alexia stood together among the spring blossoms in the Rose Garden.
“So this is the White House,” Alexia said. “I hadn’t expected it to be so simple.”
“Compared with your tsarist palaces, I suppose it is. But then, we didn’t have five hundred years of autocracy flaunting its wealth.”
“Your head of state is now…?”
“Harry Truman. Much less scary than yours. He’s less inclined to execute people who disagree with him. I wish I could have brought you back to more stability, but everything changed all at once. The war in Europe ended, Mr. Roosevelt died, and my job has almost finished. I’m at loose ends myself.” She touched Alexia’s hand lightly, not daring to hold it. “But I’m sure it’s much worse for you.”
“Yes. I feel like I’ve leapt a great chasm and that I’m still in mid-leap.”
Mia turned to face her directly, smiling at the new hairstyle. “Are you having any regrets yet?”
“Many of them. That I was not kinder to the friends I lost. That I wasn’t present when my grandmother died. That I wasted so much time as a Kremlin ornament rather than as a soldier. But no regrets about coming home with you, my dear Demetria. None at all.”
Mia began strolling again. “Well, the US is not paradise. We have our own problems. Negroes still don’t enjoy the ‘freedom’ we’re all supposed to have, and people like you and I must still live in secret.”
“But at least we don’t have to fear labor camps or execution,” Alexia said.
“No. No execution. And can you feel it? That both our countries are changing? Perhaps one day, before we’re too old, we can return to a kinder Russia without Stalin, and locate Kalya and Klavdia.”
“Yes. That’s something to look forward to.”
“In the meantime, you have a job at Georgetown, thanks to Miss Hickok, and we have a sunny room in a boardinghouse until we can get our own apartment. I still have to tie up the loose ends of Lend-Lease for Mr. Hopkins, so I’m employed for another month. After that, we have our whole lives to do what we want.”
“And you’re still allowed in the White House?”
Mia laughed. “Don’t worry. Mr. Truman has given me all the time I need to transfer my records to Mr. Hopkins’s Washington office and move my belongings from my room.”
“So we can sleep there tonight? That’s good. I want to be able to say one day that we made love in the White House.”
Mia snickered lewdly at the thought. “We’ll have to do it quietly, you know.”
Alexia brushed one shoulder against her. “We can be quiet. We’re snipers, remember?”
Postscript
World War II: September 1939 (invasion of Poland) to September 1945 (surrender of Japan.) The US supplied its allies with war material from August 1941 but sent troops initially to Asia in 1942. The first frontal assault on occupied Europe was not until June 1944, and the Soviet Union, by far, suffered the most casualties. Wikipedia estimates: USA: 420,000, England: 451,000, France: 600,000, China: 15–20 million, Soviet Union: 27 million. Recognition of Soviet casualties and victory in Berlin makes it all the more disturbing that many Americans today do not know that Russia was an ally and believe that the US won the war.
Women in Soviet Military: Women began in the usual support roles: administration, industry, medicine, traffic control, communication, laundry, political education, partisans bands. Due more to the dire threat posed by the German invasion in 1941 than to the Communist policy of egalitarianism, women were gradually accepted into active combat. By the middle of the war, they were fighter pilots, tank commanders, machine gunners, artillery and anti-aircraft gunners, and snipers. Soviet policy remained ambivalent, however. Although some 800,000 women served actively in battle, women were not allowed to march in the Moscow Victory Parade, and after the war they were pressured to return to the roles of wife and mother.
Central Women’s School of Sniper Training: Between 1943 and 1945, the school at Vishniaki graduated seven classes totaling more than 1,000 female snipers and 407 sniper-instructors. The most conservative estimate is that female snipers eliminated more than 18,000 fascists, equivalent to an entire division.
Stalin (Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhughashvili) 1878–1953: Supreme ruler of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until 1953. Though he oversaw the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, he did it at the cost of millions of his people, a ruthless “not one step backward” frontline policy, and the abandonment of Russian POWs. He deeply resented the delayed entry of the Western Allies into Europe while Russians were dying by the millions, but the advance of the Red Army to Germany without the aid of allies meant communist domination of virtually all of Eastern Europe after the war.
STAVKA (Russian Ставка): Soviet High Command, a term taken over from tsarist times. It consisted of Stalin, his defense minister, chief of staff, foreign minister, several marshals, a commissar, and an admiral. It also established “permanent counselors” of more marshals and heads of air force and police. Membership shifted throughout the war as people fell in and out of favor.
Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986): As Stalin’s “right-hand man” and foreign minister, he played a prominent role in all negotiations with the Western Allies during and after the war. Infamously, he was the chief negotiator of the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact until the Germans violated it by invading the Soviet Union in 1941. He also held the title of first deputy premier from 1942 to 1957, when he was dismissed by Khrushchev. While he apparently did visit the White House with a hidden loaf of bread and loaded pistol, he did NOT siphon off Lend-Lease supplies to the black market or kidnap an American investigator.
NKVD: The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the principal law-enforcement agency of the Soviet Union. It consisted of regular, traffic, and military police; firefighters; and border guards. As a state security force, the NKVD managed the Gulag system (see below) and conducted deportations, espionage operations, and political assassinations. Its responsibilities were later subdivided into specialized groups, of which the best known is the KGB.
Lyudmila Pavlichenko: Celebrated Soviet sniper, with a tally of 309 recorded Germans killed. She was invited to the White House by the Roosevelts in November 1942, then toured several American cities and Toronto to encourage American entry into the war. She made her “you have been hiding behind my back” speech in Chicago. She survived the war and worked as a researcher at the Soviet Navy headquarters. The film Battle for Sebastopol, released in February 2016, supposedly is based on her life, with a purely fictional romance interjected.