“I had the most interesting lunch today,” Joe said, his voice sounding far away. It was, I reminded myself.
“Lunch? With whom?” I asked.
“With our president.” A beat of silence. “At the White House.”
I hadn’t known he was having lunch with the president.
“He called me just this morning, so the whole thing was rather last minute,” Joe said, perhaps sensing my confusion.
My stomach fluttered. “And?”
“He’s officially offered me the ambassadorship.”
“Ah.” I leaned back in my chair. “So you won’t make it to Topridge.” Now I understood why he had been bracing on the line—our summer plans were derailed. But I wasn’t going to get rattled by that; we had been waiting on news of this appointment for months. I was ready. “Well, we have a lot to do in that case. I guess I should arrange my trip back down to Washington. We’ll have to prepare for our crossing. When do we sail? Is it London? Or Paris?”
“Blue Eyes, my love…”
“Yes?”
An instant of silence—and then it stretched longer. Too long. My throat went dry. “What is it, Joe?”
“He wants us to go to Moscow.”
“What for?”
“To be stationed. Moscow, in Russia,” Joe repeated, louder this time, in case the telephone connection was faulty.
“No, I know. I heard you. It’s just…Russia?” I went silent. All I knew about Russia was the news of the revolutions there. How the Bolsheviks had grabbed power in a bloody fight and then shot their tsar and his beautiful young family. A distant and violent land, Russia, with bleak winters and far too much snow. “What happened to London? Or Paris?” I asked, my voice flat.
“He said Russia.”
“Well, it can’t be final, if he’s only just suggested it today. Surely we could try for France or Britain? Why, you and he are so friendly. I’m certain that—”
“It’s got to be the Russians,” Joe said, his tone without a wisp of waver.
“Why?” I asked after a moment, my thoughts spinning.
“Roosevelt needs us there.”
I still did not understand this sudden and unwelcome reversal in our fate. Joe went on: “The Reds have taken over. Lenin is dead, but Stalin has seized complete power. Nasty man. Shoemaker’s apprentice turned dictator.”
I nodded—that much I knew. But what I didn’t understand was: “Why us?”
“It’s good that it’ll be us. Who can better represent America, and all of our promise, than my Mumsie?”
I could think of a hundred other ways to serve our nation and exemplify American promise. But in Moscow? After a long pause, Joe spoke again: “What do you think? You’re awfully quiet.”
I sighed. How could I answer that question? I’d known Joe was hoping for an ambassadorial post when I met him. I’d encouraged him to pursue it. Of course, I’d believed it would be in some place other than Moscow, but then again, so had he. Hadn’t I vowed to support him, even if this was the furthest thing from what I’d expected, what I’d hoped for? At a loss as to what to say next, I offered: “It strikes me as a pretty bleak place.”
Joe exhaled, and I could hear his rueful laugh on the line. “It is. But bleak or not, they’ve got millions of people. And we will need them as our allies pretty soon.”
“The Russians?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Why would we want the Bolsheviks to be our allies?” I asked. They had murdered their tsar, along with his wife and children.
“Because Roosevelt fears there might be a second Great War. He says that Stalin is bad, but that the fellow over in Germany, Hitler, might turn out to be worse.”
Chapter 36
American Ambassadorial Residence,
Spazzo House, Moscow
January 1937
Moscow, bleak and white as a moonscape, could not help but make an impact. The bright-domed towers soared over Saint Basil’s Cathedral, crimson and cobalt and gold, brilliant bursts of color against the pale backdrop of falling and fallen snow. Red Square sprawled before us, unimaginably vast, filled with hordes of bundled pedestrians who tucked their chins against the snowy wind and trudged determinedly from the buildings toward trams and trolleys. The minaret spears of the Kremlin, that fortress-town of former tsarist palaces and churches, pierced the iron sky with their defiant redbrick crenellations.
But our ambassadorial residence, Spazzo House, was downright underwhelming, with its wan exterior of chipped yellow limestone, its drafty interior of peeling ceilings and weary, uncooperative pipes. Even though I had come to Moscow with a determined enthusiasm, I said as much to Joe shortly after our arrival: “This simply won’t do.”