We’re ashamed to admit it, but some of us still hadn’t actually read the book at that point. The few of us who knew Italian had read it back when it was first published. Others had read it in the years following the mission, some waiting until after seeing the film to sit down with the Russian tome. But not all of us had gotten around to it. And when we finally did get around to reading Doctor Zhivago—to reading the words the Agency had viewed as a weapon—we were struck by both how much the world had changed, and how much it hadn’t.
Around the same time, Norma wrote a spy thriller, dedicating it to Teddy. It was her first published novel, and while it received only lukewarm reviews, we still lined up to have her sign our copies at Politics and Prose. The Agency put out a statement distancing itself from the novel’s content—the story of a female agent provocateur who took down a double—but we thought it rang pretty true.
* * *
—
Those of us who remain use computers now: desktops and laptops and smartphones purchased by our children for our birthdays and Christmas, their uses taught to us by our grandchildren.
“You have to move your finger like this, Grandma.”
“Just hold down the Shift button.”
“That’s because you’re on Caps Lock.”
“Don’t worry about that button.”
“A selfie is when you take a picture of yourself.”
The keys click now, not clack. There is no ding. Our words-per-minute count isn’t what it used to be, but we can do extraordinary things with these machines. Best of all, we can keep in touch. Now, instead of memos and reports, we forward each other jokes and prayers and photos of our grandchildren, and some great-grandchildren too.
We’re not sure who saw it first—we all seemed to see it at the same time. It was an article in the Post about an American woman held in London on charges of espionage, awaiting extradition to the United States. What caused such a stir was that the woman was eighty-nine, her crimes of leaking information to the Soviets decades old. The talking heads debated what should be done in such a case.
But our interest in the article was its photo.
Although the woman’s face was covered by her cuffed hands, we needed only a glimpse to know who it was.
“As I live and breathe.”
“It’s her.”
“Not a doubt in my mind.”
“Never lost her figure.”
“Is that the same fur Dulles gave her?”
The article said the woman had been living in the U.K. for the last fifty years—above a rare books’ shop she’d owned for three decades, along with a nameless woman who’d passed away in the early 2000s.
We look for the other woman’s name in other articles but can’t find it.
Although the success of the Zhivago mission became Agency legend in the years to follow, our record of Irina’s career became spotty after Expo 58, her file ending with a brief memo noting her retirement in the ’80s and nothing more.
Our fingers fly across the keys.
“Was it her?”
“Was it them?”
“Could it have been?”
Secretly, we hope so.
AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many books made this one possible. First and foremost, Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, a novel as relevant and vital today as it was when it was first published by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. I’m forever in debt for the brave gift he gave the world.
For my research, Peter Finn and Petra Couvée’s The Zhivago Affair proved an indispensable asset. In 2014, thanks to Finn and Couvée’s petitioning, the CIA released ninety-nine memos and reports pertaining to its secret Zhivago mission. And it was seeing the declassified documents—with their blacked-out and redacted names and details—that first inspired me to want to fill in the blanks with fiction.
Throughout the novel are many direct descriptions and quotes, including excerpts of conversations, as documented in first-hand accounts. Olga Ivinskaya’s autobiography, A Captive of Time, and Sergio D’Angelo’s memoir, The Pasternak Affair, shed light on what it was like to have lived through many of the events described in my novel.
I’m also grateful for Elizabeth “Betty” Peet McIntosh’s book Sisterhood of Spies, which exposed me to a world of real-life heroines, including the author herself. Monuments should be built in these women’s honor.
The Lavender Scare by David K. Johnson tells the lesser known history of the United States’ Cold War persecution of LGBTQ people. Countless people were forced out of their jobs, reputations were publicly destroyed, and many lives were lost. Their stories must not be forgotten.
Some of the other books I consulted were Inside the Zhivago Storm and Zhivago’s Secret Journey by Paolo Mancosu; Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner; The Agency by John Ranelagh; The Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders; The Georgetown Set by Gregg Herken; The Very Best Men by Evan Thomas; Hot Books in the Cold War by Alfred A. Reisch; The Spy and His CIA Brat by Carol Cini; Finks by Joel Whitney; Washington Confidential by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer; Expo 58 by Jonathan Coe; Feltrinelli by Carlo Feltrinelli and Alastair McEwen; Lara by Anna Pasternak; Safe Conduct by Boris Pasternak; Poems of Boris Pasternak translated by Lydia Pasternak Slater; Boris Pasternak: The Tragic Years, 1930–60 by Evgeny Pasternak; Boris Pasternak: The Poet and His Politics by Lazar Fleishman; Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography by Christopher Barnes; Boris Pasternak: Family Correspondence translated by Nicolas Pasternak Slater and Maya Slater; Fear and the Muse Kept Watch by Andy McSmith; The Nobel Prize by Yuri Krotkov; and Inside the Soviet Writers’ Union by Carol and John Garrard.
In addition to books, I could not have written my novel without the help of many people and institutions. Thanks to the Keene Prize for Literature, the Fania Kruger Fellowship, and the Crazyhorse Prize for the support. Thanks to the Michener Center for Writers, for giving me the time and resources to start my novel and the mentorship to finish it. Specifically, thank you Michener directors Jim Magnuson and Bret Anthony Johnston, for giving us weirdos a place to forever call home. And thanks to Marla Akin, Debbie Dewees, Billy Fatzinger, and Holly Doyel for keeping the whole thing afloat. I owe a debt of gratitude to my teachers, careful readers, and mentors, including Deb Olin Unferth, Ben Fountain, H. W. Brands, Edward Carey, Oscar Casares, and Lisa Olstein. Special thanks to Elizabeth McCracken, whose guidance, pen, and advice were invaluable. And of course, to my friends and fellow classmates, especially: Veronica Martin, Maria Reva, Olga Vilkotskaya, Jessica Topacio Long, and Nouri Zarrugh, for reading my work, pushing me to do better, and for making me laugh.