“I would hear the lady’s experiences first.” A courtly half bow from the chair. You’re a sniper with 309 kills, I scolded myself. Don’t blush just because the American president is a charmer! But for the love of Lenin, it was a close thing: I’d been told to expect a sharp mind and a strong will when it came to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but I hadn’t expected the warmth, the force, the unblinking attention as he aimed questions at me through Kostia. What fighting had I done; what actions lay behind my military decorations; how had my regiment fought? The press corps here found it hard to believe I did anything at the front but curl my hair for propaganda pictures; their president didn’t bat an eyelash when I described how to dig a trench and wait six, seven, eight hours for the perfect shot. How our shortage of firearms was so dire that my first rifle came to me with the blood of its previous owner still wet on the barrel.
“Years of war,” President Roosevelt said finally after grilling my fellow delegates in turn, “and our side hasn’t succeeded anywhere in resisting their enemies as long as you Russians have done. Is it your military spirit, your training? The skill of your officers and generals? The unity between army and populace?” He tilted his head, looking at each of us in turn. “What would you say?”
“It’s will,” I answered when I saw Krasavchenko hesitate. “Because we hold and fight or we die. But no amount of willpower in the world matters if we have no bullets to shoot or rifles to fire.”
“Tell me more,” the President said quietly.
He’d won us all over in a matter of minutes. The First Lady’s authoritative voice sounded in the background and chairs were pulled up; drinks poured; rough maps sketched with napkins and cocktail shakers as we talked and the President listened. “And how do you feel in our country?” he finished, looking from face to face again. “Are the Americans cordial toward you all?”
For an instant, I thought of the second hand-scrawled threat I’d received just yesterday morning: YOU’LL DIE SCREAMING YOU RED BITCH. Same scrawled Cyrillic, same handwriting as far as I could see, and they could apparently get to me just as easily in my Washington hotel as they could in the White House. I couldn’t stop glancing over my shoulder now whenever I ventured outside, even if the Soviet ambassador shrugged and said it was likely nothing . . .
“We’re greeted everywhere as welcome guests,” Krasavchenko was assuring the President through Kostia. “You Americans are a very hospitable people!”
I wasn’t going to bring up my death threats, but I couldn’t resist saying in English, “Sometimes we are subjected to sudden attacks.”
The President frowned. “Attacks?”
“From your reporters.” I kept my face serious but let my eyes dance. “They are very persistent. They want us to bare everything.”
President Roosevelt grinned. What a grin that man had. He liked women, we had been told in our reports in Moscow, and I could tell he liked me. He didn’t think the cut of my uniform was unflattering at all. So I took a breath and said, “May I ask—”
“More active assistance for the Soviet Union?” he said, reading me without effort. “The opening of a second front in Western Europe to draw German divisions away from the banks of the Volga?”
I nodded. I knew that second front wasn’t such an easy matter for him to put into motion as I’d first assumed when I arrived in this country, but neither would I pretend our need for it wasn’t dire.
He looked pensive. “Mr. Stalin is already aware that it is difficult at present for us to render more active assistance to your country. We Americans are not yet ready for decisive action—”
“You acted decisively after Pearl Harbor,” I couldn’t help saying.
Another of those rueful grins. “Yet when it comes to expanding into a European front, we’re held back by our need to aid our British allies. But in heart and soul”—another of those courtly bows from the chair—“we stand with our Russian friends.”