Our Woman in Moscow(102)

I remember something else Fox told me. I turn to Iris and ask quietly, “When Sasha does his training lectures, how many of the candidates are women?”

“None,” she says.

Sure, you see women agents from time to time, Fox said. You see handlers, couriers, that kind of thing. But not case officers. Not our side and especially not theirs.

I said that was unfair, but Fox shook his head.

It’s an advantage, he said. You’re invisible to them. If we split up, they’ll run after me, not you. They’ll figure I’ve got the football, because what kind of man hands off the football to a woman?

The rabbit. The football. Whatever it is, it’s sitting right next to me. Hiding in plain sight, while the watchers watch someone else.

I settle back against the seat and close my eyes. “It figures,” I mutter.

But I don’t fall asleep. I just lie there staring at my eyelids and pray that Fox knows what he’s doing.



As the train gathers speed, out of the Moscow suburbs and onto the vast western plains, I keep an eye out for KGB watchers. We have lunch in the dining car, but among the other passengers I see nobody who takes much notice of us. Iris doesn’t eat much. She looks a little pale, but what do I know about the aftermath of childbirth? She says she feels fine, just tired as you might expect. Outside the window, the landscape rolls by, green fields and hills, speckled by lakes. The clouds break up a little, exposing a pure blue sky. Sometimes we come to some village or town, gray and spent. I don’t know much about this part of the world, but it seems to me that the land has been trampled on somehow, that that past half century has left the people exhausted.

Only Kedrov eats heartily. He recommends various dishes for us, points out features in the landscape as we rattle westward. Riga is about six hundred miles away, a full day’s journey. Occasionally I spot a car or a truck, trundling down some road, or a horse and cart, and I send out a prayer for Fox.

We return to the compartment. I pull out a cheap paperback novel from my pocketbook and pretend to read, while Iris, holding Gregory, leans against my shoulder and falls asleep. Gently I pry the baby loose from her arms. He doesn’t even stir, just collapses against my own weary bones as if he belonged to me. The sun inches ahead of us. Kedrov’s eyelids droop.

Behind us, Fox has either succeeded or has not—drives with the children in a KGB car along some highway behind us or does not.

Is alive or is not.



Soon after we cross the border into Latvia, the train staggers to a stop and the border guards come aboard to check our passports. Kedrov rises and speaks with them, shows them some papers from his briefcase. There are two guards—both raise their eyebrows and regard us curiously. Iris is awake, holding the baby. She has that wan, innocent, maternal look about her. Her eyes are huge and wet. Her bones are tiny and delicate. The guards nod and duck out of the compartment—Kedrov straightens his jacket and sits down again, pleased with himself. A half hour later, the train lurches back into motion.

I glance at Iris; she makes a slight nod.

I stretch my arms luxuriously. “What time is it? I wouldn’t mind a little tea.”

Kedrov looks up from his newspaper. “Tea? Of course.”



Fox showed me how to do it. He made me practice with sugar, over and over, until I had the timing worked out exactly right—the misdirection, the infinitesimal flick of the wrist, the expressionless face, the bright chatter that continues without a break.

Kedrov never suspects a thing. He drinks his tea and falls asleep right on schedule, as we pull into the station at Ogre, the train’s last stop before Riga.

We leave our suitcases on the luggage racks above our heads. I sling my pocketbook over my elbow and carry my nephew and the soft valise with Gregory’s things inside it; Iris takes my arm and leans on it heavily as we descend the steps to the platform. I make the signal for a cigarette to the conductor, who nods and promptly forgets us.

The sun still shines high and white above the horizon, even though it’s well past seven o’clock. Iris and I walk down the platform steps so nobody can see us from the station house, which is on the other side of the tracks. When the train moves off, we cross the tracks and sit in the waiting room for an hour or two.

The building is small but not unpleasant. By the look of the red bricks and creamy masonry, it was built around the turn of the century with some aspirations to grandeur. High ceilings and pretty plasterwork, that kind of thing. I smoke a couple of cigarettes and try not to check my watch. Iris feeds the baby. She had a couple of biscuits with her tea but nothing else since her meager lunch, and her movements seem sluggish, her eyes unfocused. I take Gregory and tell her to lie on the bench and rest.

I pace the width of the waiting room, over and over, because every time I stop his eyes fly open. What do I know about babies? At one point I realize he needs a change of diaper. I rummage in the valise until I find the clean cloth and the safety pins and whatnot. I guess I manage all right. I didn’t know what to do with the dirty diaper—I can’t just put it back in the valise like that—so I head for the bin to throw it away.

Iris’s eyes fly open. “What are you doing?” she calls out.

“Throwing away the diaper.”

“No, bring it back.”

She sits up and wads the soiled cloth carefully into a ball, which she puts in a separate pocket. I walk with her over to the ladies’ room so we can wash our hands. The journey nearly finishes her entirely. We return to the benches. She curls up and closes her eyes. I pace the floor with Gregory and smell the brown hay smell of the fields outside, the reek of coal smoke and of steam. The station’s empty, except for a ticket clerk who reads some book behind his glass window. Above his head, the station clock ticks and tocks.