Her words felt like kicks to the stomach, again and again, and I could hardly breathe by the time she was finished. The word “friendship” stung the most. “Of course,” she concluded, “we’ll remain on professional terms at work.” It seemed she wanted to say more, but didn’t.
“Professional,” I repeated.
“Glad you agree.” Her indifference was cruel. I wanted to tell her I didn’t agree. No, I wanted to scream it. The thought of no longer spending time with her, of having to treat her professionally, of having to pretend there was never anything between us, made me sick. I wanted to tell her I’d rather walk barefoot across barbed wire than make polite chitchat with her in the elevator. And I wanted to ask her how she could—how it was so easy for her to turn off the switch.
But I didn’t say anything. And it wasn’t until after I stood up, after my knees hit the underside of the table, spilling the pink mai tai on the tablecloth, after I turned to leave, after I heard her tell the waiter I wasn’t feeling well, after I stormed out, after my walk broke out into a run—it wasn’t until after all that that I realized my silence was also an answer.
CHAPTER 17
THE TYPISTS
We’d speculated about Irina since she’d arrived at the Agency. And our suspicions were confirmed shortly after Sputnik took to the skies and Gail saw her name on a memo pertaining to the Zhivago mission. She never spoke of the work she did after hours, and we never asked. Like a good Carrier, Irina said nothing of the secrets she carried. But still, it wasn’t long before we found out the rest.
What made Irina stand out in the typing pool was precisely that Irina didn’t stand out in the typing pool. Despite the winning lottery of ingredients comprising her physical appearance, she had the ability to go unnoticed. Even a year after her joining the Agency, she still managed to fly under our radar. We’d be reapplying lipstick in the ladies’ room when she’d startle us from behind, saying that that shade of pink was a nice color for spring. Or we’d be toasting during happy hour at Martin’s and she’d clink our glasses a beat after we thought we’d clinked with everyone. At lunch in the cafeteria, she’d get up to say she had to return to work when no one remembered her having sat down with us in the first place.
Her talent for going unnoticed did not go unnoticed; and with her father having died at the hands of the Red Monster, she had the makings of a perfect asset. After some training, a memo went through the chain of command and Irina was put into the field. And she was good at her job. Irina’s first missions consisted of delivering internal messages around town, but as she proved herself, her assignments carried increased importance. That cold January night in the Bishop’s Garden was her first with the Zhivago mission.
After leaving HQ that evening, she took the number fifteen bus to the corner of Massachusetts and Wisconsin, walked around St. Albans School to the cathedral grounds’ back entrance, and slipped into the garden through the iron side gate.
Irina was likely wearing her new long camel-hair coat with the brown collar and the red leather gloves Teddy had given her. The day after she received the gloves, Irina had shown them to us. “Aren’t they pretty?” she asked, fanning her fingers as we stood in line to have our hats, coats, and pocketbooks inspected on our way into HQ. “A little small, but they’ll break in.” We all agreed that they were very chic and that Teddy had excellent taste. All except for Sally Forrester, who took one look and said they were knockoffs.
Under the red gloves would have been Irina’s new diamond ring, which Teddy had given her the day after her twenty-fifth birthday. It was a tasteful Art Deco number with a diamond whose size surprised us. We knew Teddy came from a wealthy family, but we had no idea they were that wealthy. The stunner was too large for her ring finger, and she’d yet to get it resized. During work hours, she put it inside her desk drawer so it didn’t fall off when she was typing, sometimes even forgetting to put it back on again at the end of the day. If it had been one of us, we would’ve had it resized the day we got it. But Irina wasn’t the flaunting type.
A wedding in the typing pool always warranted much discussion, but Irina hadn’t seemed interested in discussing hers.
“Will you come back to work?” Gail asked.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“What are your thoughts on taffeta?” Kathy asked.
“Pro, I guess?”
We learned that Irina’s mother was planning the big day, using it to purge the last vestiges of her Russianness by throwing the most American of weddings. “She wants to have red, white, and blue carnation centerpieces,” Irina told us. “She’s planning to spray-paint the blue ones herself.”
To celebrate the engagement, we each pitched in a dollar to purchase a black lace negligée from Hecht’s. We wrapped it in silver tissue paper and placed it on her desk before she arrived. When she sat down, she picked up the package and looked around the room as we pretended to work. She tore a small corner of the tissue paper and a silk strap spilled out. Irina tried to push it back inside but only tore the paper more. She started to cry. We froze, not knowing what to do. One of a typist’s golden rules is never to let them see you cry. Of course, we’d all done it—but from the relative privacy of the ladies’ room, or in the stairwell at least. At our desks? Never.
We wondered whether Irina was thinking of the black negligée as she waited for Chaucer to arrive that night in the Bishop’s Garden. Was that the start of her cold feet? Or had the second thoughts already begun—long before the negligée, before Teddy had proposed, before he’d told her he loved her during their walk around the Tidal Basin as the cherry trees clung to the season’s last pink petals?
It’s hard to say. We can’t know everything.
But we do know that Chaucer arrived right on time and that Irina collected the two rolls of Minox film containing Doctor Zhivago. And we do know she took the number twenty bus to Tenleytown, where she delivered the package to a safe house on Albemarle Street.
* * *
—
The first stage of the mission was complete, thanks in part to Irina. The men patted themselves on their backs for finding such an unexpected asset. But it wasn’t a man who’d developed Irina’s talent; it was Sally Forrester.
Sally was officially a part-time receptionist, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out she was much more. Soon after Anderson brought her around HQ, we discovered it was common knowledge among those in the know that Sally was a Swallow who’d been flitting around since her OSS days. When not sitting behind the reception desk, which was most of the time, Sally traveled the world, using her “gifts” to gain information. Unlike Irina, Sally could never be invisible. Everything about her screamed Look at me! Look at me! I am the one who should be looked at! Her hair was cut in the Italian style—soft red curls framing her heart-shaped face—and her figure always seemed to threaten the integrity of her tight woolen skirts and cardigans. And she always overdressed: fuchsia designer trapeze dresses, white satin swing capes, a rabbit fur coat rumored to have been a gift from Dulles himself.