At last he got a cable from Serov saying that they had left on a Latvian boat from Le Havre and would be about three weeks at sea. At the start of the third week he phoned the shipping office every day and on the Friday the boat was due to tie up the next day.
He was at the docks as the crew threw out the ropes to the longshoremen. And an hour later he saw them coming down the rickety gangway, staggering under bags and bundles despite him telling them to bring only personal essentials. They were smiling and waving as they caught sight of him as they walked across to the Immigration shack.
It was over an hour before they came through. Chantal rushing towards him, arms outstretched, her long black hair like a horse’s mane in the wind. And then, with their arms around each other and Anna and Ivan grinning as they watched, Andrei had the feeling that everything was going to work out all right.
CHAPTER 4
They had settled down slowly into the life of Brighton Beach whose inhabitants amiably christened it “Odessa by the Sea.” Except for Chantal it was just like being in Russia. Hearing people speaking Yiddish and Russian and Polish made them feel more at home than when they were in Paris.
In the first few weeks he had taken them to see the places they had seen in pictures in magazines or in the cinema. Central Park, Times Square, Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue.
He had taken them too to the Brooklyn Museum and Prospect Park. They all thought that Prospect Park was better than Central Park. At weekends they went to Coney Island and sat on the beach with thousands of others, working-class New Yorkers enjoying the sea, the fresh air and the amusement park. And like the others they queued at Nathan’s hot-dog stand.
They always walked there and back and sometimes they had a knish at Mrs. Stahl’s Knishes. But their favourite place for a meal was one of the small Russian restaurants on Brighton Beach Avenue underneath the El.
But the coded instructions he had got from Moscow in the letter post-marked Mexico City meant some changes in their lives. Not just his but the others too. The administrative rivalry in Moscow meant that rather than working for the Comintern or intelligence, he would now have to work for both. Only he could cope with the demanding Comintern work and he would have to organise the others there to handle the routine work that the intelligence people wanted. They would not be involved in intelligence work themselves but they had to be able to run a network that could act as couriers and cut-outs for the Soviet agents who operated in New York. At least those in Brooklyn and some in Manhattan. They wanted new “dead-letter boxes,” new routines and at least half a dozen safe-houses for agents on the run.
It suddenly seemed as if Moscow’s policies of strict neutrality in the United States had been changed violently, as if Moscow was anticipating that the USA might become hostile to the Soviet Union for some reason. He had probed to try and get some indication of how this could come about but his questions had been ignored. Hitler and Mussolini had just signed a political and economic pact committing them to supporting each other in time of war with all military forces. But in Aarons’ thinking such a pact was meaningless. Mussolini wasn’t going to risk his new African empire for the sake of Adolf Hitler and his Nazis. The two were rivals not allies. Each one vying for the leadership of Fascism.
Andrei heard the clatter of the shoes on the wooden stairs and then Chantal and Anna burst into the room laughing and giggling so much that they couldn’t speak. And then Chantal burst out, “We’ve just seen you in a film at the cinema.”
Seeing the shock and confusion on her brother’s face Anna said, “Not really. But the star was exactly like you. It was fantastic.”
With his relief obvious Andrei smiled and said, “I hope he speaks better English than I do. What was the film?”
“The man was called James Stewart and the film was called …” she turned to Chantal “… what was it called, Chantal?”
“It was called Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” She laughed. “And he didn’t speak better English than you. We could hardly understand what he was saying. But like you he was sticking up for ordinary people against the politicians.”
“Where’s Ivan? Anyone know?”
“What’s he done?”
“Who said he’d done something?”
“You always call him Ivan instead of ’van when he’s been up to something.”
Andrei smiled. “I want a family meeting after supper, that’s all.”
When they had eaten and the girls had cleared the table he looked at each one in turn before he spoke.
“We’ve got to make some changes. First of all I’ve made arrangements to rent the shop downstairs. We’re going to open a bookshop. Russian, Polish, Jewish books. I want you and Anna to look after the shop, ’van.”
Ivan frowned. “Why the hell do we want a bookshop?”
“I want us to have the whole building and I want a place where people come in and out and that certain people can use to leave things or pass on messages. And Ivan, I want you to do some special things. I’ll talk to you about them later.”
“Is something going to happen?” It was Ivan who asked the question.
“I don’t know, Ivan. Why did you ask?”
“Somebody told me that Moscow were going to make a pact with the British and the French.”
“Who told you that?”
“Your friend at Café Arbat
