Justine Saracen - The Sniper’s Kiss

“That’s right. All that time I was at the front, he was campaigning. Hmm. I’m beginning to see what Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Stalin have in common. Of course one is a tyrant while the other’s a good man and a pragmatist, but still, both look over the heads of the suffering masses at some future ideal. Machiavellian, come to think of it.”

“It was ever thus.” Hopkins tapped the ash off his cigarette. “Your time in Russia has made you philosophical.”

“I was always philosophical. My time in Russia made me ruthless. Do you know I killed a man? Dozens, in fact, though I looked into the eyes of this one before I shot him in the face. The women I was with call that ‘the sniper’s kiss.’”

“I don’t think that makes you ruthless. We in government don’t pull triggers, but we kill thousands, millions, I suppose, by our actions or our agreements. It’s a sobering thought. I wonder sometimes how we can call ourselves Christians.”

“I don’t. I scarcely did before, but now religion doesn’t touch me at all. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go finish my report.” Without waiting for him to reply, she stood up and strode from the room.

The work was a therapy of sorts, and she was able to keep despair at a distance by composing, formulating, typing, until she had some ten pages of report. The numbers would follow the next day, and he cared less about those anyhow. At this late date, Hopkins no longer needed to justify the expenditures with Congress.

At six o’clock, she trudged up to her chilly room. It was a depressing kind of cold, not like the cold of the battlefield she’d shared with comrades. That she could endure, like the hunger and the pain.

“Oh, Alexia,” she moaned out loud. In shame, perhaps, or from some strange urge for self-punishment, she unwrapped her bandage and let her arm fall to her side. The sudden tug on her fragile shoulder caused a sharp pain. Then she dropped onto the bed and fell asleep without supper.

The next morning she rose early and went down to the White House dining room. She forced down toast and coffee without tasting it, then trudged up to her cubicle to work. Mechanically, she collated the pages of her report, inserted the schedules, lists, and columns of numbers into their respective places, and took them to Hopkins’s office.

She knocked and entered at his response and laid the report on his desk. Instead of acknowledging it, he picked up a yellow envelope at the side of his desk and handed it to her. “It’s for you, from Ambassador Harriman. It arrived in code, so of course we had to read it in order to transcribe it for you. Interesting. Perhaps you will explain it to me.”

Perplexed, Mia drew the paper from the envelope and unfolded it. Between the coded lines, which were gibberish, someone had glued in strips with the decoded message.

Contacted Ustinov who claimed innocent and proved it by saving A from execution stop sent to labor camp Vyatlag where he assures me she is alive stop.

“You could start by telling me who A is, why she is in a labor camp, and how this is of interest to you.”

She sat down, a flutter of emotions making it hard to order her thoughts. “In the embezzlement, at the bottom of the chain of authority was a man called Leonid Nazarov, who had oversight over a string of factories. Above him was the commissar of armaments, Dmitriy Ustinov, whom you know, and above him was Molotov. I had assumed all three were guilty, along with a pack of Nazarov’s men who fenced the goods on the black market.” She waved the cable. “This tells me I was partly wrong. I’m glad. Ustinov did seem like a decent man when we met him.”

“Who is A, and what does she have to do with the diversion?”

“That’s my friend Alexia, who was really an innocent bystander. In fact, she and her sniper friends saved my life on two occasions. She was put on a suicide battalion for leaving her post to carry me to the medical station. I thought I was saving her, but I’m afraid I condemned her by blackmailing Molotov into freeing her. In the end, when he couldn’t get to me, he took her, and I was sure he would execute her. But apparently Ustinov intervened. Now I need to find out where Vyatlag is.”

“I wouldn’t hold out much hope for her if she’s in the Gulag system. It’s only a few notches above a suicide battalion,” he said, coughing smoke into his fist.

“I know. You die from overwork after a year instead of immediately from a grenade. And she won’t be released while Molotov is in power.”

Hopkins shrugged. “I’m sorry about your friend. We all lose people we care for.” He crushed out the last inch of cigarette in his ashtray, and a tiny part of her mind registered it as a waste of tobacco. But the rest of her was depressed by his cavalier attitude toward Alexia.

“Will you at least show the president the cable?” she asked. “Just so that he’s aware. She saved my life and… well… that’s all…”

“Of course. He needs to know about every communiqué that comes in from the Soviets. Anyhow, thank you for your report. I’ll show him that as well. In the meantime, I’ve laid another assignment on your desk. Can you work on it first thing today?”

She was being dismissed, obviously, so she stood up. “Certainly. I’ll start right away.” With a faint wave of the hand that felt a bit like a civilian salute, she left his room for her cubicle.

Diligence was one of her strengths, and it served her well in this case, too. Manipulating numbers, categorizing objects by various criteria, calculating depreciations all required a mechanical part of her brain that allowed her to shut off her emotions.

She worked steadily until lunch, grabbed a fried baloney sandwich, and went back to work until five. With no desire to make small talk in the cafeteria and even less in retelling the story of her Russian adventure, she fetched another sandwich and a 7 Up for supper in her room. Then she moped. Still travel weary and lethargic, she dozed for a while, then woke later in the evening with her bedside reading lamp shining in her face. A knock at the door made her realize that was what had roused her in the first place.

Rubbing her face, she stood up and opened the door. Lorena Hickok stood in the corridor holding two bottles of Rheingold beer. “I heard this morning that you’d reappeared and was hoping to run into you in the cafeteria. You never showed, so I thought I’d celebrate your arrival personally. I hope you don’t mind.”

Mia stepped back, admitting the visitor. “Uh, have a seat.” She pointed to the only chair in the room and sat down on the edge of her bed. “I had a lot of work to catch up on,” she said dully. “After all those months, you can imagine how it piled up.”

Lorena handed her one of the bottles. “Eleanor, I mean, Mrs. Roosevelt and I feared you were missing in action.” She sipped from the bottle, and Mia followed her example, odd as it felt. The beer tasted surprisingly good.

“I almost was. But that’s another story. How are you?”

“I’m fine, thanks. Working hard for the Democratic Party in the election campaign, of course. We both are, even though his reelection seems a pretty sure thing. It’s obvious how sick the president is, but who would be crazy enough to change administrations so close to the end of the war?”

“After all the negotiations, he’s the only one who can bring it to a close. But I can see how all of that is wearing him down.”

“It is, but my dear, you don’t look so good either. What happened over there? I know you’ve told the story to Hopkins and to the president. Maybe you can summarize for me.”

Mia took another swallow of the beer. She’d eaten so little in the last week, she feared it might make her sick. “Summary, eh? Let’s see. Stalwart civil servant sent to Russia to uncover source of major diversion of Lend-Lease supplies into black market. Civil servant is successful but gets into trouble for it, arrested, escapes, joins Red Army, is saved from death by young woman sniper. Sniper arrested while I escape. She’s sent to a penal battalion and later to the Gulag.”

Her throat tightened and her voice rose in pitch. “And it’s all my fault.”

Lorena stared at her for a long moment, but it was a kind stare. “Is that all?” She tilted her head back and took a long drink from her bottle. “Well, I always thought you were the kind of woman who took control of events. But the loss of your friend explains that new stoop you have, like you’re carrying a great weight.”

Mia imitated her, feeling a slight light-headedness after the third swallow. “Well, I also had a broken clavicle and scapula, and just today took off the bandage. It stoops all by itself.”

“Even so. Something in your face looks like bereavement.”

“You’re very discerning. I made several good friends among the women snipers, and most of them were lost. Except the most important one, and she’s in the Gulag. Because of me.”

“You loved her, didn’t you?”

“Don’t talk about her in the past.” Mia felt tears welling up and pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling. She took a breath. “I told Mr. Hopkins about her, but he only offered some platitude like ‘we all lose people we care for.’ I might have been talking to a wall.”

“You mustn’t be so hard on him. He just lost one of his sons. In the Pacific. He never talks about it, though.”

“Oh, I didn’t know. Then he’s stronger than I am.” The beer was making her reckless, but she didn’t care. “I’m choking with guilt, and I can’t bear it. If she hadn’t become involved with me, she’d still be with her friends at the front.” The pooling tears flowed over onto her cheeks, and she sniffed noisily.

Lorena bent forward across the small space between them and laid a plump hand on her good shoulder. “I understand more than you know. I mean about loving someone.”

“Do you?” Mia was certain Lorena was hinting at Eleanor Roosevelt, but she dared not ask.

Lorena nodded somberly. “Loving someone doesn’t do anything to change the world, but it changes you. Being a person who loves, that makes you somehow a superior being. I don’t believe in God, but if there is a divinity in us, that has something to do with our capacity to love. I’m sure that’s not much comfort to you.”

She finished her beer and added, “Do you have any idea where she is?”

“Somewhere in Vyatlag. I don’t even know what that means. Only that bastard Molotov knows exactly where she is. He’s the one who sent her there.”

“Molotov? The one with the gun and the sausage in his suitcase?”

“Yeah. I caught him stealing Lend-Lease supplies, presumably to sell for profit on the black market. His revenge, since he can’t kill me, is to arrest the woman I love.”

“But she’s alive? You’re sure she’s alive?”

“At least so far. Mr. Hopkins showed me a cable from Ambassador Harriman today that said so. He’s going to pass it on to the president. That’s all I know.”

Lorena glanced down at her bottle that was now empty. “I’m sorry, deeply sorry for your bereavement.” She stood up and stepped toward the door.

As Mia stood up as well, Lorena turned and embraced her. Mia found it awkward being pressed against Lorena’s plump breasts but appreciated the sincerity.

Lorena let go and stepped through the doorway. “If you don’t mind, I’ll tell your story to Eleanor,” she said over her shoulder.

“Thank you, for the beer and the sentiment,” Mia said, gently closing the door behind her. Then she let go and had another good, long cry.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s reelection in November 1944 was probably the least celebrated presidential victory in American history. Though it was for an unprecedented fourth term, most appreciated that victory came primarily from the understanding that a nation at war could not change its commander in chief.

The Allies were winning the war, but after the euphoria of taking Paris and marching along the Champs-Élysées in August, they met with an iron-hard Wehrmacht and had to wring every town and village from them.

The president and his advisors, including Hopkins, spent a great deal of time in the Map Room tracing the slow advance of their troops, and when Mia asked Hopkins about the Eastern Front, she was disappointed by the paucity of new information.

It was mid-December. Where was the Red Army? Newspaper reports showed it was poised to cross the Vistula and enter Germany itself. In the south, it was sweeping across Bulgaria and Hungary, edging toward Budapest. Where was the 109th Rifle Division, or the 62nd Armored Division that had absorbed them? Were Kalya and Klavdia still alive? And Galina, the medic?