Above all, she wanted me to be real and true. That much I knew from my first meeting with her in this same room. I could not disappoint her. I chose my words carefully.
“Perhaps it brought you joy to immerse yourself in something.”
“Maybe. Or perhaps I’d lost control of my senses. Is that what you really think, Nadia?”
“No.” The word escaped my lips so quickly it left no doubt that’s exactly what I thought.
“You would be justified for thinking so,” Mrs. Chimchak said. “You’ve heard, no doubt. By now someone’s told you that I’m losing control of my mind.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t know how. In a similar situation, a woman in my place might have stood up, walked over to her, and held her. Or at least touched her. If I had done something like that, however, it would have felt disrespectful. It would have felt like an insult. Mrs. Chimchak was, above all else, a warrior. She deserved to maintain her self-respect. Any display of sentimentality on my part might have diminished her pride.
“How is your health?” I said.
“I’m losing my memory, I find myself wandering around, at night and during the daytime. Yesterday I found myself barefoot in the park staring at the ducks, wondering how I’d gotten there. I was feeding them poker chips. And I’m forgetting how to do basic things. Yesterday I woke up and had no idea what I was supposed to do next.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
She waved her hand. “They’ll put me in an institution. If there’s one thing I’m certain, it’s that I’m going to die in this house. Not in some asylum with a bunch of strangers. I will die here, with my memories.” She cleared her throat. “Do me a favor, my love. Go over to my desk and bring me my tin of mints. It’s in the top drawer. When a person doesn’t feel well, a mint will always improve her spirits.”
I walked over to her desk and opened the drawer. A box of Altoids rested atop a journal. It was black with a fleur-de-lis pattern around the edges. When I lifted the Altoids off the top of the notebook, a white square revealed itself. It was a place for the journal owner to print the title of his work, or, if it were a diary, his name. Two initials had been written in cursive in the white space: PC.
Mrs. Chimchak’s first name was Roma. The “P” was the Ukrainian “R”. This was probably her diary. It wasn’t this observation that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was the way the “P” was written. The writer had made an extra loop after closing the semicircle around the “I” in the letter.
It was identical to the “P” I’d found in my godfather’s calendar.
My mind reeled. I glanced at Mrs. Chimchak. She gave me nothing. I stared at the journal again. I raced through a series of deductions. They led to a preposterous conclusion, an utterly impossible one, which in my heart I knew was true. I planted my eyes on Mrs. Chimchak.
“DP,” I said. “You wrote the letters in my godfather’s calendar.”
She confirmed my conclusion by remaining mute.
“You did so for my benefit. You knew I was coming over to search his home with Roxy, and you wanted me to see those letters. You wanted me to see them because you wanted me to investigate. And you wanted me to investigate because you wanted to be revealed. You wanted to be revealed as my godfather’s killer.”
A look of contentment spread on her face. “May I have my mints please?”
That was as good a confirmation as any. As I walked toward her, tin of Altoids in hand, I stared into her eyes and searched for a motive. Why had she killed him? Was it a function of her illness? Had she pushed him down the stairs accidentally? No, I thought. She wouldn’t have looked so contented when I’d accused her of being the killer. Mrs. Chimchak had sent him flying down those stairs to his death on purpose. It may have been an act of passion, or a premeditated act. More like the latter, I thought. The woman I knew wasn’t prone to acts of passion. But what could a ninety-year-old woman have cared so much about to have killed a lifelong friend?
I handed her the tin of mints, and then I saw it. The picture of her with her childhood love on the shelf beside her chair.
I sat back down and faced her. “Tell me about Stefan,” I said.
She put the tin on her lap and folded her hands atop it. “He was dedicated to a free Ukraine at a time when that was only a dream. He was a leader of men at an impossibly young age. He was fierce and fearless. He was a commander in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.”
“Did you ever see him again once you returned to Europe for the second time? To a different DP camp?”
“No. I never saw him again.”
“What happened to him?”
“He vanished. He was living in the camps under an assumed name. For his own protection. The NKVD’s primary goal was to repatriate and kill all known leaders of Soviet resistance. They were constantly on the lookout for partisans. Once his true identity was revealed, the NKVD took him away. He was seen being hauled into a truck by four Russians. No one ever saw him again.”
“Was Takarov among the men who took him?”
She shook her head. “I doubt it. He was an officer. He would have been the one who gave the order.”
“And how did he know to give the order? Who revealed Stefan’s true identity?”
Mrs. Chimchak’s eyes turned to steel. “Please don’t disappoint me. Not now. Not at this stage of my life. You know the answer already, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice trembling a bit. I didn’t want to hear myself saying it. “My godfather gave up Stefan to the NKVD. To Takarov.”
Mrs. Chimchak looked away from me. Her hands kneaded the box of Altoids.
“Why did he do it? For money? Or was he himself blackmailed?” My mind raced to answer my own question. “If he had been blackmailed, I doubt you would have killed him. There would have been extenuating circumstances.”
“The answer is he did it for money, but not the way you think.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your godfather didn’t accept a bribe in exchange for revealing Stefan’s identity. He accepted a paycheck.”
Her words stunned me. I tried to think of an alternative conclusion but there was only one. “My godfather worked for the NKVD?”
“Your godfather was the NKVD. He was SMERSH. He was the NKVD’s ultimate weapon. An infiltrator. A Soviet agent assigned to assimilate in society. Was he Ukrainian? Of course he was. What, you thought there were no Ukrainians working against their own people? We didn’t all know each other when we arrived at the DP camps. We were among strangers from day one. Your godfather, he became one of us. He was one of us.”
“When did you find this out?”
“After the Crimean business started, I became suspicious. I pressed him on it over the course of several visits not knowing where it would lead. He became very talkative after a full bottle of wine. And I played him. Told him bygones were bygones, and that I just wanted to know the truth before I died. He knew my health was deteriorating, and bit by bit he told me everything.”
“Did he stay in contact with Takarov all these years?”
“Lord no. Your godfather became an American. He found heaven in Connecticut. In his mind, he became a member of our community. He thought he was safe from his past. Until Takarov found him.”
“And blackmailed him into being one of his distributors for stolen antiques. Which is why my godfather was so depressed initially. He was afraid he was going to be revealed as a former agent of the NKVD. Plus he was old and didn’t want the aggravation. But then when the money started rolling in, he felt better about it. There was a reward for the risk he was taking.”
“Yes, but the devil always takes back his gifts.”