“And do not fail?”
“I hate to put it that way, Lyudmila dear, but you are not here long. It’s a short window you have, to win over the American people.”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Roosevelt.” I looked at the cocktail party inside, drawing a steadying breath. “When I take aim at something, I do not miss.”
Notes by the First Lady
She did well. No easy thing to walk into a Washington dinner party （oh, how those elegant cocktail-sipping matrons used to make my knees knock, as the young Mrs. Roosevelt!） and hold one’s own under all those idle, curious eyes. In a foreign language, no less—her English is painstakingly grammatical, if accented.
It’s near midnight by the time I bring our Soviet guests back to the White House. They trail into their bedrooms looking utterly exhausted, but I still have hours of work ahead tonight—a draft of the speech I’m to give at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the text for the “My Day” column still to be finished. Franklin will already be asleep, or at least I hope so, because it will not do to have him brooding about cabals of enemies in the shadows and what they may or may not be planning. The best way to stop him brooding is to intrigue him, and I know just how to do it. Pausing in the darkened hall outside his bedroom, I nod to the Secret Service officer patrolling the corridor and scribble a note for the Eleanor basket, pushing it under the door for tomorrow morning’s perusal. My feet ache as I head off to my own study, already flipping the pages of my Navy Yard speech, and I can’t wait to take off my shoes.
You’ll like Lyudmila Pavlichenko, my note to Franklin reads. And she has given me one of my ideas.
Chapter 25
The headline: SNIPER LYUDMILA PAVLICHENKO ENJOYED HER FIRST NIGHT IN WASHINGTON UNDER THE PRESIDENTIAL ROOF.
The truth: Sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko learned that even under the presidential roof, she was not safe from people wanting her dead.
FOR A MOMENT I just stared at it: the folded sheet of plain paper that had been tucked into an unmarked envelope and slid under my bedroom door while I slept. No salutation, no signature, just blocky Cyrillic lettering blaring into my sleep-fuddled eyes.
GO HOME YOU COMMUNIST WHORE
OR YOU’LL DIE HERE
I realized, remotely, that my hand holding the paper was shaking. Not at the words—I’d been called a whore before; I’d certainly been threatened with death before. It was that someone had reached me here, in the White House. Had approached my bedroom at some point after I retired from last night’s press conference and pushed their hate under my door for me to find as soon as I woke.
Whoever they were, they wanted me to know they could get to me. Even here.
I looked around the palatial bedroom where Mrs. Roosevelt had ushered me just yesterday morning. “Mr. Churchill stays here when visiting, and so does Princess M?rtha of Norway.” I wasn’t impressed by royals, but I was certainly impressed to rest my head where Britain’s prime minister had. A big bed with a rosy canopy; striped couches and lace-draped occasional tables; a vanity and a dressing room. A private bathroom all for me, which didn’t have to be shared with eight Muscovite neighbors across the hall . . . I’d done some unabashed reveling last night in the big bathtub and then the bed’s unbelievably soft pillows, reflecting how different it was from the muddy dugouts of the front line. In a bed like this, even someone like me could drift off to sleep feeling safe.
I looked back at the scrawled threats in my hand. Not anymore.
“You look rather grim,” the First Lady greeted me when I came down to breakfast. Krasavchenko and Pchelintsev were already digging into their eggs and bacon. “Did you not sleep well, my dear?”
“Your friend Mr. Hopkins poured me many whiskeys last night as he asked about the Sevastopol front.” I put on a bright smile, unfolding the newspaper.