The Secrets We Kept(79)

“Sister Alyona. Welcome.” The sound of my new name caused my chest to loosen.

I shook his hand firmly, as Sally had taught me. “Pleasure.”

“We started without you.” I didn’t know his real name, nor did I know if Father Pierre was even Catholic. He wore the collar but had an ivory cashmere sweater draped over his shoulders as though he’d just returned from playing golf. In his early thirties, Father Pierre was blandly handsome with thinning blond hair, cerulean blue eyes, and a reddish beard. He ushered me in, and I followed him upstairs.

The flat was furnished with the luxurious but eclectic décor of someone who was new to money and had hired someone to give him taste. The mix of modern Danish furniture, seventeenth-century tapestries, and folk pottery gave the effect of wandering into a museum that had been shaken up inside a snow globe.

I was on time to the minute but the last member of our team to arrive. A man and a woman were already seated on a kidney-shaped couch, sipping cognac in front of a barely lit fireplace. The man known as Father David was the agent in charge of our mission. The woman, Ivanna—her real name—was the daughter of an exiled Russian Orthodox theologian and the owner of a Belgian publishing house that printed religious material. She was also the founder of Life with God, an underground organization that smuggled banned religious material behind the Iron Curtain. Her group had been working in conjunction with the Vatican since the fair had opened, and we were to follow her lead in how to most effectively distribute Zhivago.

Ivanna and Father David looked up when we entered but did not smile or stand. There was no need for introductions: they already knew who I was, just as I already knew who they were. I sat on the edge of a white linen lounge chair and they continued.

On the sleek black coffee table in front of them was an exact model of Expo 58, complete with blue-tinted mirrors representing fountains and pools of water, miniature trees, sculptures, flags of every nation, and the Holy See’s ski-sloped, white-roofed City of God pavilion—the location where the mission would take place.

It had been Ivanna’s idea to use the fair as a means of proselytizing, but it was Father David who took the idea and made it the Agency’s own. He believed Expo 58 would be the perfect location to get the book back to the USSR, and with it, to incite an international uproar over why it was banned.

Father David was soft-spoken but commanded attention, steady and confident as Chet Huntley on the nightly news. He also looked more like a priest than Father Pierre did, with his Boy Scout haircut, delicate pink mouth, and long fingers that one could picture holding up the Host.

Father David pointed to the model, showing us the separate routes we’d take in and out of the fair each day. If we suspected we were being tailed, we were to duck into the Atomium—the fair’s centerpiece, which stood a hundred meters tall and depicted the unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times. We were to take the lift to the top of the aluminum structure, where there was a restaurant boasting a panoramic view of Brussels and a waiter ready to assist.

After giving us the overhead view, Father David moved the model to the floor and unrolled blueprints of the City of God. He pointed to the spot where Rodin’s The Thinker stood. “Father Pierre will be stationed here, circulating within the crowd to evaluate any Soviets who might make for potential targets,” he said. “Once they are identified, he will signal Ivanna by scratching his chin with his left hand.” He traced a path from The Thinker to the Chapel of Silence, his long fingernail scraping across the paper. “Ivanna will then usher them to the Chapel of Silence, where she’ll screen them for propaganda interest. If a target is receptive”—his finger moved around the Chapel’s altar to a small, unnamed square room—“she will escort them here, into the library, where I’ll be waiting with Sister Alyona.” He looked at me, then continued. “After a final assessment, the handoff will occur.” He pulled his hand back from the blueprints. “Oh, and one more thing: from here on out, we will only refer to Zhivago as the Good Book.” He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. “Any questions?” When no one answered, he took us through the plan again from start to finish. Then he took us through it again.

With the plan cemented in our minds, we sat and talked, drinking red wine from teacups and smoking. Only then did I ask it: “The Good Book—is it here?” Ivanna looked at Father David and Father David nodded. “They were taken directly to the fair earlier today, but we have one here.” She walked to the foyer closet and pulled out a small wooden crate covered by an old mat. She removed the mat and picked up a book. “Here,” she said, handing it to me.

I was expecting it to feel illicit. I was expecting to itch with dissidence. But I felt nothing. The banned novel looked and felt like any other novel. I opened it and read aloud in Russian: “They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the ‘blaze of passion’ often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet.” I shut the book. I didn’t want to think of her. I couldn’t.

“Have you read it?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Ivanna said. Father David and Father Pierre shook their heads.

Opening the novel again and turning to the title page, I noticed an error. “His name.”