![]()
The Soviet Delegation:
Day 1
August 27, 1942
Washington, D.C.
![]()
Chapter 5
If sheās ever held a rifle in her life, the marksman thought, watching the supposed girl sniper disappear into the White House after the First Lady, Iāll eat my damn hat.
The doors closed behind the Soviet delegation, and that was that. āWhen do we get a crack at the Russkies?ā the Washington Post journalist wanted to know, riffling his notes. āTheyāre not going to make us wait until the student conference kicks off, are they?ā
āThere will be a press assembly tonight at the Soviet embassy.ā The marksman dialed up his Virginia drawl, turning away from the White House in its rosy dawn glow. āSave your questions till then. Unless you scored an invitation to the White House welcome breakfast this morning.ā
āYou got one? Lucky son of a gunĀ .Ā .Ā .ā
The marksman smiled. Luck had nothing to do with it; the men whoād hired him for this job moved in high circles, and theyād made sure his name (the name on the immaculately falsified press badge, anyway) was on the list. āWhy do you need to see the girl up close?ā theyād grumbled. āYou need to frame her, not date her.ā
āIāll need to know how to pull her aside when the time comes,ā the marksman replied. āIf sheāll be easy to distract or difficult. If Iāll need to bribe someone in her delegation to give me access to her, and if so, who. And Iāll only have a week, from the day the Soviet delegation arrives to the last day of the conference, to figure all this out.ā
āSounds like a lot of workā the answer had been, and the marksman shrugged. In truth, heād always rather enjoyed the elbow grease involved in a new job: settling into a well-planned cover identity, backing that identity up with solid research, living the job if necessary. He remembered that time in 1932 when heād worked four solid months in an insurance office to get access to a markĀ .Ā .Ā . sold a lot of honest insurance, too. Putting those hours in was work, no questionāmeticulous, frequently boring work. But heād always figured there were two kinds of men in this business: good shooters who thought pulling a trigger was the job and only did enough work to research a skin-deep cover, sweating the whole timeĀ .Ā .Ā . and pros to whom the deep cover was the job, who put in enough hours and research that they didnāt have to sweat by the time it came to pulling a trigger.
He knew which type he was.
āStill a lot of trouble to take for a patsy,ā his higher-upsā flunky had complained.
Says the man who wonāt end up in handcuffs if this all goes south, thought the marksman. āJust keep making sure my press-pass name clears all the security and ends up on all the necessary guest lists and travel passes,ā heād said, and at least there hadnāt been any trouble there. He could usually find his own ways to gain whatever access a job neededāafter nineteen years, he had a stable of contacts and informants he could pay for just about any information or paperworkābut the men he was working for now could accomplish a great deal more with a little backroom hand-waving.
He had a meeting with his employers in thirty minutes, in factāor rather, his employersā flunky. It wasnāt necessary, but they wanted reassurances, and he had an hour or so to kill before heading back here for the welcome breakfast, where the bucktoothed First Lady would host the Soviets and a handful of press in the small dining room on the first floor of the White House. Idly, the marksman wondered what Mila Pavlichenko was doing now. Was she awed to be standing under that fabled roof or sneering at the capitalist Western decadence of it all? Was she reviewing her cover story about her supposed 309 Nazi kills, or feeling lost, floundering, far from home? He hoped the latter. Lonely women were easy to pick off. Heād targeted quite a few over the years.
He wasnāt sure yet whether heād need to kill her or not. Whatever option proved simplest: all professionals knew that the simpler any plan was, the better. Because as soon as bullets began singing, even the best-laid plans went awry. A certain amount of improvisation was inevitable. Whether he ended up leaving her body as a suicide-note confession on the last day of the conference, or merely fixed a frame around her and let her Soviet-inflated reputation put the noose around her neck, one thing was certain.
When you planned to assassinate a president, you timed it when a Russian sniper was in town to take the fall for you.
The marksman jingled his pocketful of uncut diamonds as he flagged down a passing cab. āThe Lincoln Memorial,ā he told the cabbie, rolling down the window to appreciate the warm morning breeze. The forecast for the week ahead predicted nothing but blue skies, hot days, and perfect late-summer weather. Miss Pavlichenko, enjoy your first visit to America while it lasts.
![]()
Notes by the First Lady
As I show the Soviet delegation up the White House stairs to their guest rooms, my mind is still lingering over Franklinās words to me this morning after his fall: āTheyād pray I never got up.ā An extra twist on the word they, beyond his usual amused irony. Bitterness? Worry? I ponder that as I usher Lyudmila Pavlichenko to the rosy chamber that will be hers during her visit.
My husband has detractors and rivals, of course. Every president is hated. The man who has won an unprecedented third term is hated by more than most. He usually laughs such hatred offĀ .Ā .Ā . but he was not laughing this morning.
Is there a particular cabal of enemies which has him worried?
I blink, startled out of my thoughts as the young Russian womanāwho has so far said not a single wordāmoves across the bedchamber to the window, where the morning light shines through the glass. For an instant I think she is going to exclaim over the view of the gardens flowering below, but instead she yanks the shades down with a snap. āIs something wrong, my dear?ā I ask.
She says something in Russian, looking composed enough as she folds her hands at her waist, but I sense discomfiture. āShe says she prefers not to have uncovered windows at her back, Mrs. Roosevelt,ā the interpreter translates helpfully.
Ah. They say she is a sniperāI didnāt know what to make of that. In truth, I still donāt. But she thanks me for my hospitality through the interpreter and I examine those opaque dark eyes, I wish I could ask her: How do you know when an enemy is lurking? How do you know if it is just nerves or genuine danger?
How do you know if there is a target on your back?
![]()
Fourteen
Months Ago
June 1941
The Odessa front, USSR
Mila
![]()
Chapter 6
My memoir, the official version: Every woman remembers her first.
My memoir, the unofficial version: Those words mean very different things for me than most women.
āI SEE YOUāVE managed to get PE sights for that rifle.ā Lugubrious-looking Captain Sergienko nodded at the weapon now registered in my name. āHave you fired it yet?ā
āYes, Comrade Captain.ā I kept my eyes forward, wondering why Iād been called to the command post in the long, slanting light just before dark.
He studied me. I shifted in my boots, realizing my lips were dry enough to crack, that my chopped hair was filthy. The Chapayev division had reached the Tiraspol fortified district and dug in. Not a bad place to turn and fight: earthworks, reinforced concrete, and stone firing points; dugouts; deep trenches; machine guns and artillery of our own. The line of Russian defense, strung like a necklace across the throat of Alexandrovka, Buyalyk, Brinovka, Karpova, Belyayevka . . . Had I really been at war less than six weeks? I blinked that thought away.
Sergienkoās voice brought me back to myself. āHave you hit anyone youāve lined up in those sights?ā
āI donāt know, Comrade Captain. It hasnāt been that kind of shooting.ā Iād fired like a good soldierāwhen I was told, blindly, over the lip of trenches and behind trees, as the Chapayev division continued its retreat. You couldnāt see what you were firing at in such moments; you fired because you were being fired on, not because you had anything in your sights. I didnāt know if Iād hit anyone; I knew only that I was less afraid when I had the comforting weight of a rifle in my hand. Nonsensical, reallyāhaving a weapon didnāt make me invulnerableābut I felt less helpless. I couldnāt push my fear away, but I could push it into my weapon.
āCome with me,ā Sergienko said, and I followed him out of the command post through the mess of crates and tents, makeshift desks and earth plowed into bulwarks, some ways distant to a bombed-out peasant hut where he could point toward the far end of Belyayevka. Among the distant overgrown trees was a large house with a ridge-roofed porch, gleaming in the setting sun. āYou see?ā
I nodded. Two officers in sandy-gray uniforms came out onto the porch; I could see the gleam of their insignia, their pudding-basin helmets. Not Hitlerites; RomaniansāGermanyās ally. So close. I had not yet seen an enemy so clearly; until now they had all been shadowy shapes on the other side of trenches, helmeted outlines in the cockpits of planes strafing overhead. These two men werenāt even half a kilometer away. Standing there on a porch in the sunshine, scratching themselves, having a laugh. Our invaders.
The fear banked constantly in my stomach began to curl again. I usually felt the fear cold and blue-violet as a shaving of tungsten twisting under a lathe, but this time the metal of it was forging from blue to red. Fear to rage.
āThatās likely their staff headquarters,ā the weary-looking Captain Sergienko was saying. āYou showed me your certificates; from our records youāre the only one yet whoās come in with an advanced marksmanship course already under her belt. Now that weāve a moment to breatheāābetween retreats, he didnāt say, but he might as well haveāālet me see what you can do.ā
I was already unslinging my rifle.
Sergienko stood back, watching. I felt the pulse beating under my jaw as I began setting up to shoot at the two men. Targets, I told myself, but couldnāt ignore the reality that these werenāt painted circles on a range or glass bottles in cleft sticks.
They are enemies, the anger inside me said, stoking higher as I moved through my preparations. Invaders. I hadnāt asked them to come here. I hadnāt asked them to ally with Germany, to make grandiose plans for renaming Odessa Antonescu once they captured it; to purge any territory they captured of Jews and Gypsies, Ukrainians and Russians, because we were racially undesirable. I hadnāt asked for any of this. I wanted to stay home, cuddle my son, finish my damned dissertation. I didnāt necessarily want the other side dead; I only wanted them gone. But they werenāt going, and so help me, I would settle for dead.
I never stopped movin...
