Malloy had flown up to New York for two meetings with Hancox. The financial arrangements were generous and the work itself suited him but Hancox had had to convince him that he was not being offered the job just because he was a war veteran. Hancox had told him that the terms offered him were only in line with the big increases in everybody’s earnings in the war years. When it came to finding accommodation in New York he realised that Hancox wasn’t kidding.
Kathy had gone with him on the second trip to New York and had spent two days looking for a new home for them. They discovered that there was a chronic shortage of apartments—there had been no building since 1943 and wartime rent controls encouraged tenants to hang on to what they had.
They eventually settled for an apartment in a converted brownstone on the East Side between 48th and 49th streets. A large living room, a double bedroom, a small study and a well-fitted kitchen and bathroom. And only fifteen minutes’ walk from Hancox, Yarrow and Partners’ new offices.
It was March 1945. He had been at the law firm for two months and seemed to have settled in without any problems. He had taken her out for dinner at a small French restaurant they used frequently.
Pierre, the owner, had become a friend and Kathy was sometimes just a little irritated that they talked in French so much. At the same time she was secretly quite impressed by the fact that her husband could speak French so fluently.
There was a red rose in the vase on the table to mark the fact that it was her birthday and she was wearing the pearls that he’d given her. Pierre came and sat with them at the table and as always chatted away in French and she realised that she resented that she was always left out of the conversation. And subconsciously she knew that part of her resentment came from the fact that when he had those nightmares he was always talking and shouting in French. There had been only a couple of recurrences of the bad dreams since they had come back to New York but Pierre and his chat was a reminder that there was a part of her husband’s life that she was excluded from. She resolved as she sat there that she’d do something about it. It was bad manners on Pierre’s part to say the least.
They went on to the Barclay for a night-cap on the way home and then walked back to the apartment. As she hung her coat in the hallway she decided that she would tackle him about the Pierre business right away.
As she walked back into the living room she saw him standing by the window looking out towards the river. He hadn’t realised that she was there and as she observed him she was startled by the sadness of his face. His mind was obviously far away, his eyes closed, the deep lines at the sides of his mouth exaggerated by the lights from outside. She had seen pictures of faces like that in magazines like Life. Pictures of refugees. Jews lining up for the gas-chambers. People with no hope in their faces. Expecting nothing, fearing the worst.
There was no way she was going to harass him about talking French.
CHAPTER 22
On New Year’s Day, 1946 a Red Army artillery unit in Berlin were hosts to a detachment of American infantrymen, some of whom had slogged their way up the spine of Italy with General Mark Clark. After toasts had been drunk to “Uncle” Joe, Harry Truman, Rokossowsky and Eisenhower, one of the Americans, a sergeant, raised his glass to “getting the hell out of Europe and going home.” One of the Russians noticed that every US soldier not only drank to the toast but was angry that he was not back home already. “Why the hell is there space on the boats for GI brides but not for us?” The Russian happened to be the artillery unit’s commissar and after some checking of other American units he sent a long report on American servicemen’s morale direct to his boss in Moscow.
Serov was employed at that time as an interpreter for a US Counter-Intelligence unit and had sent a similar report to Moscow about low morale in the American forces in France.
There had been similar reports from Tokyo, Hawaii, London and Vienna, and Moscow knew it was on to a winner. For three weeks of virtually non-stop planning meetings a combined operation was put together by the Comintern and the KGB. As the list of subversives, agitators and malcontents in the US armed forces built up it was Lensky who pointed out that their reports from the embassy in Washington and their man in New York indicated that it was not only the American forces who suffered from low morale but there was wide-spread civilian discontent about conditions, pay and prices. The two strands could be welded together and exploited. The United States was in a mess, uncertain of where it was going, divided and restless. An ideal target waiting to be struck. The cauldron of internal strife was already boiling. All it needed was a little spice and some stirring. With a small-town haberdasher in the White House Moscow could show the
