The Diplomat's Wife (21 page)

Do I care? I consider the question as I climb into bed and turn out the light. Things have been this way for so long. And it is not as if I have ever felt passionately about Simon, not in the way I did with Paul. In the early days of our marriage, his lack of interest came almost as a relief, matching my own ambivalence. But his near-constant disinterest bruises my ego, and inside, I ache for affection.

My thoughts are interrupted by noise from below. The front door opening, I realize. Simon is home. I hear him walk into the kitchen, open the icebox door and close it again. Then there are footsteps on the stairs. I sit up. I do not dare to hope for physical attention; our lovemaking is perfunctory and scheduled, thirty minutes on Saturday nights after we’ve finished dinner and he has had two gin and tonics. But perhaps he will tell me about his day, and then I can ask him about skipping the morning meeting tomorrow. Then I hear him open the study door and close it again behind him. My heart sinks and I lay back down, closing my eyes and willing myself to sleep.

The next morning at eight-twenty-five, I pick up my notepad and make my way back down the hall to the conference room. Most of the secretaries are already seated, the men clustered around the table, talking. The diplomats’ conversations, I know, are cordial, professional. But below the surface there is fierce competition and politics. Who has the most relevant information? Whose point of view will hold most sway with the D.M.? We should all be focused on a common goal, but the disputes are petty, the games personal.

The D.M. enters the room and the men quickly take their seats. “Let’s move on to Bucharest,” he begins, as though we had only taken a short break and not adjourned for the evening. Looking down at my blank notepad, I realize I wrote down nothing of the discussion yesterday regarding Hungary. I scan my memory, trying to remember what was said, but it is useless. I should pay attention, I know. Simon will want me to prepare a memorandum.

Instead, I look out the window across the conference room where the morning sun shines brightly through the bare tree branches. Delia will take Rachel to the park today. Having Delia to watch Rachel made it easier for me to return to work, a decision that had been a source of disagreement between me and Simon. At first, he flatly refused. “None of the other diplomats’ wives work. And now with the baby, it would be unheard of.”

“But my work is important to me. Remember how much you said you needed me, back when we first met?” Simon did not answer, but ultimately he relented, as I knew he would. The truth was, we needed the money. Simon’s family had been wealthy, the kind of money, Delia told me once, that had been handed down for generations, rather than earned. But Simon’s father lost nearly everything in the stock market crashes, leaving Simon with only the house and a little money for its upkeep or the small fortune to heat it in winter. Simon’s government salary had barely been enough to keep the house going when he was a bachelor, I discovered soon after we were married; it would not stretch to support a wife and child. So I continued working at the Foreign Office, though many days like this one, I wished I was home playing with Rachel.

Of course, part of me still wants to work, still believes in what we are trying to do. But that part is getting harder to find anymore. All of my days at the Foreign Office are much like this one, taking notes in endless meetings, then typing up the notes afterward or preparing correspondence that Simon dictates. No one ever seems to actually do anything but talk. Watching the bureaucracy, it is easy to understand how Hitler was able to walk over Europe while the West dithered. Meanwhile, the countries of Eastern Europe keep falling: Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary. Simon keeps a map of Europe over his desk and puts a red pin on each country as it falls. I know he shares my frustration at our inability to stop it.

My thoughts are interrupted by a banging sound. I look up as the door to the conference room swings open. The D.M. stops speaking and all heads in the room snap toward the door. The briefing is classified. Everyone who is allowed to be here is already present and interruptions are nonexistent. A young man I recognize as one of the office messengers pauses in the doorway. “My apologies,” he mumbles, then walks directly to the head of the table, looking neither right nor left. He hands a piece of paper to the D.M. “Urgent from the minister’s office.”

The D.M. scans the paper, pressing his lips together tightly. “Send word back I’ll be there within the hour.” The messenger nods and flees the room as quickly as he came. The D.M. turns back to the men gathered at the table. “I’m afraid I’m going to need to terminate the general meeting. Intelligence principals stay, please.” There is a shuffling of chairs as about half the men at the table stand and leave the room, their secretaries in tow. The remaining half, including Simon, move closer to the head of the table. When the door has closed again, the D.M. addresses the remaining group. “Bad news, I’m afraid. One of our foreign nationals has been killed.”

A low murmur ripples across the table. “Where, sir?” one of the men asks.

“St. Petersburg. He was supposed to meet his contact but he never showed. He was found dead in his apartment, supposedly of a heart attack. It’s the third one in six months.”

“Fourth, if you count Tersky,” Simon replies. I remember hearing the name before, a contact in Odessa who had survived an attack meant to kill him, but which instead left him in a permanent coma.

“I don’t think we can avoid the truth any longer. We have an internal leak. Someone is tipping off the Russians, providing them with names of our contacts and their meetings. We need to find him. Until we do, our intelligence operations are hobbled.”

“What about the list, sir?” one of the men asks. Though I hadn’t heard it discussed in the meetings before, Simon mentioned a list that had been intercepted by our station in Vienna last month that was believed to contain the names of those working for the Russians.

The D.M. shakes his head. “So far no one has been able to break the code. The cryptographers are working on it, but they say it will take time. Time that we don’t have.”

“We need to get our hands on the cipher,” Simon remarks. Heads around the table bob in agreement.

“I agree, but how? None of our contacts in Moscow are well placed enough to access it, and even if they were we would have to assume that their identities have been compromised.”

“What about Jan Marcelitis?” a voice at the end of the table asks. All heads turn in the direction of Roger Smith, the youngest of the intelligence officers. Jan Marcelitis. A ripple runs through the room. I cannot help but shiver. Alek and Jacob used to speak of Marcelitis with near-reverence for his work crossing enemy lines to get information to the Allies, and I heard of him again soon after arriving at the Foreign Office. Yet despite all of the talk, no one seems to have ever met or seen Marcelitis. Conversations about him are always mired in legend and myth, the stories as implausible as they are contradictory: He took on a whole unit of the SS single-handedly during the war. He is really American. He is really a communist. Recently I’d heard that Marcelitis had grown distrustful of the West during the war and now worked independently fostering grassroots opposition to the communists. Smith continues, “I mean, isn’t it true that when Dichenko disappeared from Soviet intelligence a few weeks ago, one of the ciphers went with him, headed west? Surely he was taking it to Marcelitis.”

“That’s a rumor,” one of the other men replies. “Dichenko is in all likelihood at the bottom of the Moscow River and the cipher—if he ever took one—is with him.”

The younger man shakes his head. “I heard that someone saw him in Riga not two weeks ago on his way to see Marcelitis.”

“Saw Marcelitis where?” a voice farther down the table asks. “We have no idea where to find him.”

“He’s like a ghost,” the D.M. agrees. Around the table, heads nod. The communist authorities in various countries have long sought to arrest him, as had the Gestapo before them. As a result, Marcelitis operates from behind the scenes, not keeping a permanent address or residing in one country for very long. I remember Alek saying once that Marcelitis was able to do what he did so well because he had no ties, no wife or family to keep him in one place.

“I’ve heard that Marcelitis may be on the ground in Prague,” Roger replies. “It would make sense with everything that is going on there.” Czechoslovakia, I knew from past meetings, had managed to resist Soviet domination, its government a delicate balance of communists and noncommunists. But the situation there had grown increasingly unstable, the communist interior minister, backed by the police, trying to force out government ministers with pro-Western leanings. There was talk of a possible coup.

“But even if Marcelitis is there, and has the cipher Dichenko stole, that doesn’t mean he’ll cooperate,” Simon adds.

“Perhaps,” the D.M. concedes. “But we have to try. Marcelitis is our best, make that our
only
option, for getting the cipher.” He looks down at his chargé d’affaires, seated immediately to his left. “Johnson, who are our contacts in Prague, the ones who may be able to access Marcelitis?”

Johnson rustles through his notes. “There aren’t many. Karol Hvany, for one…”

A voice comes from farther down the table. “I’m sorry, sir, but Hvany was arrested a few weeks ago.”

Johnson continues reading. “Demaniuk, the fellow from the countryside.”

“We have reason to believe he’s been compromised,” Simon replies.

The D.M. takes the paper from Johnson and scans it. “And Stefan Bak died six months ago.” He throws down the paper. “Damn! There has to be someone.” A few of the men at the table exchange furtive glances, surprised at the D.M.’s uncharacteristic outburst.

Johnson picks up the paper from the table and scans it once more. “There is one other possibility. Fellow named Marek Andek.”

Marek Andek. Suddenly it is as if someone kicked me in the stomach, knocking the wind from me. Marek Andek. I repeat the name in my head, wondering if I heard him correctly.

“What do we know about Andek?” the D.M. asks. My heart seems to stop for a second and then beat again very rapidly. Marek was one of the resistance leaders, second in command under Alek.

“Not much,” Johnson replies. “Except that he is a civil servant and loosely affiliated to the opposition leadership. Andek is known to have gone to Berlin to see Marcelitis a few months ago. Problem is, we don’t have anyone who knows him.”

“I do,” I blurt out. All heads snap in my direction.

“Excuse me?” Johnson asks, his voice a mixture of annoyance and disbelief. “Did you say something?”

I take a deep breath. “Y-yes, I said that I know Marek Andek.”

CHAPTER
14

T
he room is completely silent. I look down, desperately wishing that the floor would open and swallow me whole. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Simon’s stunned expression. Secretaries do not ever speak in meetings. To do so in here, where the D.M. is present, is unthinkable.

“You know Andek?” the D.M. repeats incredulously.

I hesitate, wondering if I should recant, say that my outburst was a mistake. But it is too late to stop. “Y-yes,” I reply, my voice trembling. A murmur ripples through the room.

“Marta,” Simon warns in a low voice, then stands up to face the D.M. “Sir, I am terribly sorry for this interruption. My assistant seems to have forgotten herself.” His assistant, not his wife. “There is no way she knows this man. I’m sure there’s some mistake.” I open my mouth to say that there is no mistake. Then, seeing Simon’s furious expression, I close it again.

The D.M. looks from Simon to me, then back. “Very well.” He turns to the table. “Keep looking for contacts in Prague who…” I sit motionless, unable to hear him over the ringing in my ears. Marek’s fat face and squinty eyes appear in my mind. I never liked Marek. He was boorish, with none of Alek’s charm or Jacob’s wit. I last saw Marek at a cabin outside Kraków that had served as one of our hideaways, the day after the resistance had bombed the Warszawa Café. He was going over the border to Slovakia, he said, to try to make contact with other resistance groups. Watching him as he stood in the door of the cabin clutching his rucksack, I was flooded with disbelief. He was the only one capable of leading our group now—how could he possibly be leaving? Alek never would have abandoned us if he had lived. But Marek fled, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves. Within days, the remainder of the resistance had disintegrated.

It is the same Marek Andek, I am certain. He must have survived the border crossing and the war, then somehow linked up with Marcelitis. Had he seen or heard from Emma and Jacob? Digging my nails into my palms, I force myself to concentrate on the meeting once more. The D.M. is making some concluding remarks, ending much sooner than I had anticipated. Does the abrupt conclusion have to do with the message from the minister’s office? Or with my outburst?

When the meeting ends, I slip quickly from the room, not wanting to face Simon. He is usually so calm and even-tempered, I reflect as I make my way down the corridor. But decorum and appearances, his place in the department, mean everything to him. No wonder he was furious. I stop at the ladies’ toilet. As I wash my hands at the sink, I berate myself inwardly. I should not have spoken out like that. I have never told Simon about my work with the resistance. I had to tell him the truth about my coming to England on Rose’s visa so that he could straighten out the paperwork when applying for my residency and our marriage license. Beyond that all he knows is that I was liberated from the camps. Why hadn’t I said anything? In the beginning, I feared that the truth would be too much, that Simon would not want me working for him for fear that my past would come to light and taint him. And later, when we were married and it seemed that I should have told him already, the not telling became a bigger problem than the secret itself. More recently, it had simply become a part of my distant past that I seldom considered, something that no longer mattered. Until today.