Mistress

He nods. He knew that was the question I was going to ask him, and his reaction tells me I’ve come to the right place. Ever since I heard the phrase, and then learned about Alexander Kutuzov, I’ve been thinking about the Russians. If anybody would know about the Russians, it’s Andrei.

“Very well,” he finally says. “Operation Delano.”

Chapter 72

“Let us walk,” Andrei says. “They tell me walks are good.”

I don’t understand the reference and want to ask, but not now. Andrei’s always been a man of few words, a reserve probably long instilled in someone who had planned since childhood to defect to the West but had to play along in the Soviet system until the moment presented itself. If he wants me to know about his ailment, he’ll tell me.

Andrei pushes his small, withered frame off the bench. He tucks his hands into his slacks-completing the professorial look that his tweed sport coat began-and nods to the wood carving of an eagle in the garden next to us. “I love that bird,” he says. “Do you know why, Benjamin?”

The eagle is made from the wood of a hundred-year-old tree that had to be removed from the Quad. One of the classes carved out this beautiful bird as a gift to the university.

“Because it’s our national bird?” I guess.

He manages a smile. Andrei was waiting for me here on this bench when I arrived, and seeing him now on his feet, struggling, I’m struck by how ill he appears.

“Because something beautiful came of something dying,” he says.

I let him lead, and we walk along the borders of the Quad, past the Mary Graydon Center. I remember meeting there once a week for the Young Democrats of America. Not that I was a Democrat, or, for that matter, a Republican. I joined for the same reason most college guys would join something: because there was a hot girl in the group. I chased after Cassandra Richley for over two years. It was worth the wait.

“Yalta was a time of great uncertainty,” says Andrei. He’s referring to the Yalta Conference, where Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill gathered to divvy up the spoils after the Nazis went down in flames. “Of course, you have studied this.”

“Of course.”

“Stalin was truly dealing from a position of strength. He was already occupying many of the countries he wanted to enclose in the Soviet bloc, and he had twice the troops of the Allies. Still, he didn’t know if he had Roosevelt’s trust. He was rather sure he didn’t have Churchill’s. He was looking for leverage in the negotiations.”

I stop in my tracks. Andrei doesn’t seem to notice at first, but then he stops as well and faces me.

“What are you telling me, Andrei?” I say. “Operation Delano was an attempt to gain leverage on FDR?”

Andrei’s heavy, tired eyes rise up to mine.

“None of this has been verified,” he says. “There is only talk.”

“Then tell me about the talk, Andrei.”

Andrei breaks eye contact with me and stares off in the distance, as I recall him often doing. Back then he conveyed quiet strength-shoulders back, a broad chest, a defiant chin. Now he is frail, his shoulders curled inward, a stoop to his posture, his skin heavy and ill-fitting on his weathered face, only wisps of white hair covering his head. But those eyes, that glassy stare, haven’t changed. Probably no one will ever know what is contained in that stare. Memories, I assume. Memories of things best forgotten.

“The talk,” he says, “is that Operation Delano was the Soviets’ attempt to blackmail the president of the United States.”

Chapter 73

“There were always rumors about Roosevelt,” says Andrei. “Some of them have since been printed as fact, but in my mind, they remain rumors. Roosevelt was a man of privilege, of course. Some such men…did not regard marital vows as solemnly as they might.”

I’d read about that. My father had written about Roosevelt, who was believed to have had an affair with his wife’s social secretary for years. Eleanor reportedly discovered the affair and offered FDR a divorce. The affair broke off but then rekindled in Roosevelt’s last term in office. And there was another woman, too, so the story goes-FDR’s own secretary. Andrei’s right-true or false, most of this information has been reported by now.

But it wasn’t back then, after World War II ended.

“Stalin wanted to blackmail FDR about his extramarital affairs?” I ask.

We’re walking again, past the Battelle-Tompkins Building, where I took many of my undergrad classes. We are moving slowly. It is clearly difficult for Andrei to walk.

Andrei waves a hand. “This Operation Delano may all be fiction, an old wives’ tale. All I can say with certainty is, if Stalin got so much out of the negotiations at Yalta because he blackmailed FDR, nobody has ever said so. And much has been said, and written, about Yalta.”

Spoken like a true professor, one who demands careful support for every statement before he makes it. He’s been full of disclaimers thus far-none of this has been established as fact-but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe it.