He wasn’t sure yet whether he’d 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. “The Lincoln Memorial,” 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 Franklin’s words to me this morning after his fall: “They’d pray I never got up.” 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 off . . . 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 woman—who has so far said not a single word—moves 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. “Is something wrong, my dear?” I ask.
She says something in Russian, looking composed enough as she folds her hands at her waist, but I sense discomfiture. “She says she prefers not to have uncovered windows at her back, Mrs. Roosevelt,” the interpreter translates helpfully.
Ah. They say she is a sniper—I didn’t know what to make of that. In truth, I still don’t. 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.
“I SEE YOU’VE managed to get PE sights for that rifle.” Lugubrious-looking Captain Sergienko nodded at the weapon now registered in my name. “Have you fired it yet?”
“Yes, Comrade Captain.” I kept my eyes forward, wondering why I’d 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.
Sergienko’s voice brought me back to myself. “Have you hit anyone you’ve lined up in those sights?”