Our Woman in Moscow: A Novel

By Beatriz Williams

"A captivating Cold War page-turner." — Real Simple

The New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives returns with a gripping and profoundly human story of Cold War espionage and family devotion.

In the autumn of 1948, Iris Digby vanishes from her London home with her American diplomat husband and their two children. The world is shocked by the family’s sensational disappearance. Were they eliminated by the Soviet intelligence service? Or have the Digbys defected to Moscow with a trove of the West’s most vital secrets?

Four years later, Ruth Macallister receives a postcard from the twin sister she hasn’t seen since their catastrophic parting in Rome in the summer of 1940, as war engulfed the continent and Iris fell desperately in love with an enigmatic United States Embassy official named Sasha Digby. Within days, Ruth is on her way to Moscow, posing as the wife of counterintelligence agent Sumner Fox in a precarious plot to extract the Digbys from behind the Iron Curtain.

But the complex truth behind Iris’s marriage defies Ruth’s understanding, and as the sisters race toward safety, a dogged Soviet KGB officer forces them to make a heartbreaking choice between two irreconcilable loyalties.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jun 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9780063020818

Beatriz Williams

Beatriz Williams is the bestselling author of over a dozen novels, including The Beach at Summerly, Our Woman in Moscow, and The Summer Wives, as well as four other novels cowritten with Lauren Willig and Karen White. A native of Seattle, she graduated from Stanford University and earned an MBA in finance from Columbia University. She lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry.

Book preview

Dedication

To Deo

(1902–1988)

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Ruth

One

Lyudmila

Ruth

Iris

Ruth

Iris

Ruth

Iris

Ruth

Iris

Ruth

Iris

Two

Lyudmila

Ruth

Iris

Ruth

Iris

Ruth

Iris

Lyudmila

Ruth

Iris

Ruth

Iris

Ruth

Lyudmila

Iris

Ruth

Iris

Three

Lyudmila

Ruth

Lyudmila

Ruth

Sasha

Lyudmila

Iris

Ruth

Four

Iris

Author’s Note

P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

About the Author

About the Book

Praise

Also by Beatriz Williams

Copyright

About the Publisher

Ruth

AUGUST 1952

In the Sky Above Northern Europe

When we were eight years old, my twin sister, Iris, saved my life. I’m serious. I had a fever and a terrible stomachache, and our parents were out at some party. The nanny was one of those no-nonsense types you get, and I was not then—nor am I now—someone who likes to air her private miseries for the delectation of others.

Iris was the one who noticed my gray, shining face, as I curled up in bed and tried to read a book. Twin sisters and all. She just knew something was awfully wrong. She made the nanny call up 21, or wherever it was, and have the maître d’ send for our parents. Of course, Mother told Nanny she wasn’t coming home for any silly stomachache, and really Ruth should know better than to seek attention that way. She’d thought better of me. Nanny relayed this message with an air of triumph. I said Fine and curled back up, shivering as you shiver when a fever’s come on.

So what did Iris do? My sweet, small, timid, delicate flower of a sister? She called up the ambulance service all by herself, that’s what she did, and a half hour later they burst into our apartment, swept past poor astonished Nanny, and swiftly diagnosed a probable case of acute appendicitis. Within the hour, they were wheeling me into the operating room at the Hospital for the Relief of the Ruptured and Crippled on East Forty-Second Street. Mother burst hysterical into the waiting room in her fur coat, I’m told, though by then I was under some combination of nitrous oxide and chloroform, so I can’t say for certain.

Anyway, my point is Iris saved my life that day, so it seems I owed her one.

WHERE WAS I? MY mind’s wandering a bit. It’s been a long day, and it’s not even noon yet, and I’m afraid I’ve already drunk the best part of a bottle of English gin in order to cope. I’m sitting inside the fuselage of some type of military aircraft—don’t ask me what kind, for God’s sake—in the company of a United States army doctor and a pair of army nurses. We’re on our way to evacuate an injured American citizen. It’s an important mission. He’s an important citizen, a genuine twenty-four-carat hero. I’m not allowed to tell you where we’re going—that’s top secret—and I’m probably not allowed to tell you his name, either.

Still, now that I think about it, they didn’t specifically say I couldn’t.

All right. I’ll whisper it, so pay attention.

Charles Sumner Fox.

Nice name, isn’t it? So distinguished. On his business card, it reads C. SUMNER FOX. That’s because of his mother. He told me the story once, when we were in Italy together. It goes like this. His father’s from Savannah, and his mother’s from Boston, and they met in western Massachusetts where Mr. Savannah attended Amherst College and Miss Boston attended Smith. Some mixer, I guess. They fell in love somehow. She agreed to marry him and start a new life in Georgia, but she insisted on naming their firstborn after a famous abolitionist, just to make a point. Look for Charles Sumner in your encyclopedia and you’ll see what I mean. Senator from Massachusetts during all those squabbles and treaties before the Civil War, the ones you learned about in school and forgot. Once, while he was on the Senate floor delivering a speech against slavery, some congressman took his cane and beat Charles Sumner until he almost died. I’m serious. Grievously injured, all because he stood there on the floor of the United States Senate, if you will, and called the congressman’s cousin a pimp for Southern interests.

Men. I tell you.

Anyway, as a result of these shenanigans, Charles Sumner became the hero of Massachusetts, where the good citizens reelected him even though he couldn’t actually attend the Senate, on account of being beaten so badly, so that his empty desk could stand as a noble reminder, et cetera. All the world loves a martyr. As time went on, mothers named their sons after him, just to make a point.

But listen to this. It’s sort of funny. After Charles Sumner Fox was born, his mother decided he didn’t look like a Charles after all, so she called him Sumner. And he’s been Sumner Fox ever since, to the world and to me. If the name rings a bell, it’s because he once played football for Yale, where he was considered one of the greatest fullbacks ever to carry a pigskin. So you probably heard of him.

I’M BUCKLED INTO A seat across from the doctor and nurses. They’re wondering who I am and what I’m doing here, and why I stink like a gin distillery. They won’t look me in the eye. That’s all right. I light a cigarette and offer the case to them. They accept gratefully. I light them up one by one with a fine gold Zippo loaned to me by my sister’s lover, who doesn’t actually smoke. Have you ever noticed how every single doctor and every single nurse smokes like a damn chimney? Not that I blame them. You see enough death and sickness and grievous injury, you need something to keep your nerves in order.

We sit smoking, not looking at each other. Smelling the human stink of the inside of a troop transport, the scorch of engine oil and aviation fuel. I wonder if they know who he is, this patient. Like I told you, it’s all top secret. And believe me, the US government is going to keep this one under lock and key for some time to come. It’s a daisy, all right.

I turn my head to stare out the window at the thick clouds below. My foot keeps tapping against the deck of the airplane—I think the doctor and nurses are annoyed. But I can’t seem to stop. I’m a bundle of raw nerves that no quantity of English gin and cigarettes can soothe. And it comes to me, as I sit there strapped into my metal seat, blowing smoke from my parched mouth, that maybe this is why my sister saved my life all those ages ago, when we were eight years old.

Iris saved me for this moment.

And what I have done this summer, I have done to repay my debt—the debt I owe her, the debt I owe people like Sumner Fox, the debt I owe to civilization itself—to all who came before me and saved me without my knowing it.

Outside the window, the great humming engine changes key. The airplane drops. I stub out my cigarette and close my eyes. Within the hour, I’ll know how our story ends.

One

Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.

—John le Carré

Lyudmila

MAY 1951

Moscow

When she was six years old, Lyudmila Ivanova watched as a trio of men in dark suits searched her family’s tiny apartment in the middle of the night and arrested her father for the crime of owning a set of English novels. He was a professor of literature, and the books were Russian translations. Still, English novels were decadent, and when his case went before the tribunal, her father refused to admit his crime and repent. Lyudmila still remembers his straight back and clear voice as he addressed the three judges on the dais before him. He was sentenced to ten years’ labor in some work camp in Siberia. The family never heard from him again.

When Lyudmila was sixteen, her older brother Piotr was recalled from Paris, where he had run a network of local intelligence agents supplying information to the international Communist Party, although everybody knew that Comintern was actually run by the Soviet espionage agency. Six months later, he was arrested because he had lived in the West and his ideological purity had therefore been corrupted. This time there was no trial. Lyudmila later learned that he had been executed by firing squad.

Two years after that, another brother simply disappeared while working for Soviet intelligence in Germany, and as a result, when Lyudmila joined the intelligence service herself—at the time, it was called the NKVD—she underwent a rigorous interrogation. Miraculously, she survived. The fact that she had been the one to denounce her brother to the NKVD worked in her favor, as did her extensive knowledge of Marxist theory, her avowed disgust of bourgeois capitalist society, and her exceptionally ascetic lifestyle.

That was in 1932. Since then Lyudmila has survived the purges of the late 1930s and the slaughter of the Great Patriotic War, from which nobody else in her entering class at the NKVD—by now reformed into the KGB—was left alive. Lyudmila survives not because she’s extraordinarily brilliant, or strategic, or well connected. She survives because she has two rules. The first is not to attract attention to herself. Comrade Stalin doesn’t know her name. Beria of the secret police doesn’t know her name. She serves them quietly, anonymously. Others who clamored for recognition are now dead, or starving to death in a Siberian gulag. Not Lyudmila. She does all the dirty work. She finds girls to supply Beria’s particular needs, for example, and she finds ways to silence the grieved family members who demand some explanation. When it comes to sniffing out heretical thoughts, nobody has a more sensitive nose than Lyudmila. She’s particularly good at extracting confessions. Never once has she claimed credit for any of these acts of patriotism. She lets others claim the credit and then watches as they, too, fall victim to some denouncement. Some discovery of impurity in thought or deed. They all fall eventually.

The second rule is even more important: trust nobody. Trust nothing! Every single person she meets, inside the KGB and outside of it, is suspect. Every piece of information that crosses her desk, gathered from networks within the Soviet Union and without, is suspect. Lyudmila has one faith—the Communist state. Everything else falls sacrifice to this one idea, even herself.

LYUDMILA DOESN’T TRUST THIS particular man one bit, even though he’s supplied the KGB and its predecessors with valuable information from the British Foreign Office for the past twenty years. His name is Guy Burgess, and he’s recently arrived from London with a fellow spy named Donald Maclean. They defected together, just ahead of the authorities who were about to unmask them at last.

Lyudmila knows who tipped them off. She knows where all the Soviet Union’s diligent moles have built their hills and tunnels in the great institutions of the West—political, academic, military, scientific, you name it. She knows the almost laughable fact that one of Britain’s top spy catchers is, in fact, a Soviet spy himself. She knows their code names, and what they’ve done and what they’ve produced, over the years and last week, and exactly how much alcohol they drink to dull the psychological pain of committing treason against a country and a culture that consider a gentleman’s honor so sacrosanct as to be taken for granted. (Quite a lot, even by Russian standards.)

She carries all this information in her head as she sits across the table from Burgess, who lounges in his chair and chain-smokes the British cigarettes they’ve provided for him.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, he’s telling her. If there were some clever high-level plot to infiltrate Moscow Centre—American or British—I’d have heard about it. Philby gets all that intelligence right from the source, and I happened to be living in Philby’s own bloody basement in Washington, not one month ago.

Perhaps this operation is taking place above STANLEY’s head, she says, in her nearly flawless English—taking pains to use Kim Philby’s code name, as good tradecraft requires.

Burgess shakes his head. Nothing takes place above Philby’s head. MI-6 trusts him like a priest. My God, they handed him the Volkov defection case, didn’t they? About as hush-hush as it gets. He speaks to the CIA head on a daily basis. He and Jim Angleton are like brothers.

Nevertheless. They will have been made suspicious by these telegram decryptions. They will have realized our network has penetrated their agencies and their government departments at the highest level. It is possible and even likely that they will have undertaken an operation outside of the intelligence service itself, to root out everyone who has been disloyal.

That’s your own paranoia talking, Burgess says. I assure you, the British don’t see it that way. They can’t conceive a Cambridge man passing along secrets to a foreign country. They’ll go on assuming it was some cipher room clerk from Reading who needs the money to pay off his bookie.

Lyudmila stares at him with distaste. He’s slovenly, this man. His shirt collar is stained, his teeth are indescribably yellow, his skin is slack and paunchy from incessant drinking, from overindulgence in rich food, from scorn for physical exercise. Possibly he’s the most undisciplined man she’s ever met, at least in this profession, and what’s worse, he’s an open homosexual who makes no effort at all to disguise or control his voracious carnal appetites. But while Lyudmila is suspicious and puritanical, she’s also fair. Burgess possesses a brilliant intellect and exerts enormous charm, when he chooses. He also knows everything about everybody.

She decides to lay a single card on the table.

We have recently intercepted a communication from here in Moscow to a contact named ASCOT in London. Do you know who this ASCOT might be?

He flicks some ash from his cigarette into the overflowing tray at his elbow. Not the slightest idea. I’ve never heard of an agent named ASCOT. Where was the communication directed?

To a private address. A flat in West London that seems to be owned by a shipping company called Lonicera. We have the flat under surveillance at the moment, but we have not been able to determine anything of significance. We suspect, however, that this communication may be the key to a number of recent security leaks, for which we have been unable to identify the source.

Lonicera, eh? Doesn’t ring a bell.

As an intelligence agent of nearly two decades’ standing, Burgess is a practiced liar. Still, Lyudmila can’t detect any sign of deception in his voice or his affect. He looks so at ease, he might be sprawled in his own living room, except Lyudmila suspects that Burgess’s living room—the one he left behind in London, anyway—is equally as squalid as Burgess himself.

Very well, she says. You will, of course, inform us immediately should your memory ring a bell, after all?

With pleasure. I’m eager to be of service.

If she were alone, Lyudmila’s mouth would curve with contempt. Defectors! Really, they’re such a nuisance. They know too much, they’re altogether too eager to be of service. Don’t they understand that defection means retirement? What use can a defector possibly be? He’s already given up all his information. He can’t go back to his home country for more. His only value is publicity—the triumph of Soviet intelligence. Otherwise, he’s just a drain on the state. You have to find him some job that will keep him out of trouble. You have to give him a nice apartment and access to luxury Western goods, so he doesn’t complain. You have to keep a close eye on him, to make sure he’s not getting restless and disillusioned.

In fact, Lyudmila can think of only one defector whose assimilation has gone smoothly, without any headaches for her—a happy, contented Soviet citizen with his happy, contented family.

Almost as if he can read her mind, Burgess stubs out his cigarette and says, By the by, how’s Digby coming along?

Lyudmila gives him a hard stare. "HAMPTON, she says, with emphasis, has been a model citizen. He and his family are now living in Moscow. He serves us as an academic and adviser on matters of international affairs."

Given up the booze, has he? That’s what I hear.

Where do you hear this?

He shrugs as he lights another cigarette. Here and there. Well, that’s fine news. He and I were chums for a moment or two, back in London. Good chap, for an American. Wife’s a trifle uptight for my taste, but the children were charming.

Yes. Lyudmila checks her watch. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Comrade Burgess, I’m afraid I have other demands on my time this afternoon. My colleagues will arrive shortly to continue the debriefing.

Burgess props the cigarette in the ashtray and stands to shake hands. He is, after all, an English gentleman.

LYUDMILA MAKES HER WAY to her afternoon appointment, which is of such long standing that she doesn’t have to think about her route as she navigates the Moscow streets. She thinks instead about Burgess—so pleased with himself, so delighted to have created such an international ruckus. The world’s press is in the middle of an apoplexy right now over the missing English diplomats, and Burgess is enjoying every moment.

Still, for all his faults, Burgess has always been loyal. More mercenary than the others, to be sure, but only because he has expensive tastes and a Foreign Office salary. He’s provided a wealth of priceless information over the years. Not once has any of that information proved false. Nor did he display so much as a hint of the classic signs of deception, throughout the course of the interview.

Lyudmila has to conclude—provisionally, at least—that he doesn’t know anything about the ASCOT operation, including its existence.

Which only goes to support her hypothesis. This operation, after all, seems to have as its objective the systematic exposure of Soviet moles burrowed within the most secret inner corridors of Western intelligence—all those Burgesses and Macleans and Philbys and Hisses, so carefully recruited and managed over years and even decades.

It stands to reason, therefore, that it’s being conducted from outside the formal intelligence service, by some renegade officer or officers who—like her—have finally learned to trust nobody.

A man code-named ASCOT.

And the agent whom ASCOT has boldly sent into Moscow, into the heart of the Soviet state, to uncover the traitors, one by one.

Ruth

JUNE 1952

New York City

From the perspective of my desk, parked outside the deluxe private office of our president and chief executive officer, Mr. Herbert Henry Hudson, you can see just about everything that goes on within the premises of the world-famous Hudson Modeling Agency.

This is no coincidence, believe me. I like to keep an eye on everything, always have.

On the day Sumner Fox walks past the glass double doors—an ordinary hot afternoon in late June, a steady stream of fresh new-mint high school graduates eager to commence their modeling careers, God bless them—I’ve been running the agency for about four years, depending on your definition of the term, and I have no intention of going anywhere. I like my job. I like my way of life, more or less. I wear my usual uniform of white button-down shirt and black gabardine slacks, hair pulled back in a neat gold knot, red lipstick and nothing else. I prop my feet on my desk and drink my seventh cup of strong black coffee while I flip through the portfolio of some vampy fifteen-year-old from Elizabeth, New Jersey—claims eighteen, the pretty liar, but I’m a better judge of age than a horse trader—and God knows I have no time at all for the bull-shouldered fellow who stands at the reception desk like a heavyweight boxer who’s taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

My telephone rings. Reception.

I direct an eyebrow of disapproval toward Miss Simmons from above the frame of my reading glasses. She shrugs and tilts her head toward the beef standing in front of her desk.

I lift the receiver. Macallister.

Miss Macallister, Mr. Sumner Fox from the FBI is here to see you. She says FBI in a hushed, secret voice, enunciating each letter separately.

I open my mouth to tell Miss Simmons to tell the so-called FBI to get lost, but she tacks on another sentence before I get the words out.

He says it’s about your sister.

AS I SAID, I like to keep everything at the agency within view—with one exception, to which Mr. Fox and I repair now.

He’s impressed, I believe, as most people are when they step inside the boardroom of the Hudson Modeling Agency. The room itself is nothing—just a big old committee table, the usual chairs of dubious comfort—but the view, my word. There’s this particular corner of the twenty-sixth floor that opens out unobstructed across the East River and all the way down to the Brooklyn Bridge, if you don’t mind a kink in your neck, and that wall is made of nothing but glass, glass, glass, cleaned regularly by a well-trained team of daredevils. Now, Sumner Fox isn’t the kind of man who betrays anything so vulnerable as an emotion. (In this, we are equals.) But he does walk across the width of the room and smash his fists into the pockets of his trousers and sort of roll up and down on his big flipper feet as he stares upon that stupefying expanse of metropolis.

I take the opportunity to stare him up and down. As I said, he’s a large fellow, not exceptionally tall but built like an Angus steer, all shoulders, square rawboned head on which a bare half inch of extremely pale hair bristles up like a field of mowed hay. No residual tail, thank God, but the position of his fists in his pockets strains the back flap of his jacket upward just enough to reveal a fine muscular bottom, which pleases me. You don’t go into my line of business without some appreciation for the aesthetics of the human form. Now that I consider the matter, I wonder if he allows me to inspect him on purpose.

Whether he means to impress me or to warn me, I don’t pretend to guess.

I know enough about these sorts of encounters to allow the other person to introduce the conversation. After I’ve looked my fill, I fold my arms across my chest and wait for him to address me. Which he does, after a minute. Pivots in a military manner and says—gravelly midsouthern baritone—Miss Macallister. I do appreciate your taking the time to meet me like this, without a prior appointment.

I’m just a secretary, Mr. Fox. You don’t need an appointment to meet with me.

"Just a secretary? He actually smiles, displaying a set of neat white teeth. That’s not the word on the street."

Oh? Which street is that?

Why, the street that says you run the whole show. That poor old Mr. Hudson is what you might call a puppet, and you’re what might be called a puppeteer.

Now, that’s just slander, I reply. "But as it happens, I am a busy woman, and I like a man who gets right to the point. You were saying something about my sister? Has she perhaps made her whereabouts known to the world at last?"

That’s an excellent question, Miss Macallister. Maybe you could answer it for me.

Me? I don’t think you know the facts of the case. Do you smoke, Mr. Fox?

He blinks his pale eyes. No, thank you.

Then I hope I don’t offend you. I stalk around the other side of the table to the console, where the agency keeps a selection of cigarettes for the refreshment of the august members of the board of directors. I light one with a match, old-fashioned damsel that I am. By the time I turn back to face Mr. Fox, I feel I have the situation in hand.

I must confess, I’m mystified. Why come to me now, after all these years? I mean, I haven’t heard a word from the FBI, not since that first week after they disappeared.

And yet most families would be beating down our door, demanding an explanation, when a diplomat goes missing on a foreign posting with his wife and children.

Well, we aren’t most families. I blow out a stream of smoke. To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t seen or heard from my sister in years. Long before the State Department lost track of her.

How many years?

I stare at the ceiling and count my fingers. "Twelve. Why, it’s June, isn’t it? That makes twelve years exactly. I ought to bake a cake or something."

His frown is not a frown of disapproval or of sadness or anything subjective like that. I think he’s just pondering the meaning of it all—twin sisters estranged for a dozen years—what could possibly have caused such an unnatural divorce? He might also be disappointed. Clearly there’s not much you can learn about a woman from a sister who’s better acquainted with her dry cleaner.

So you see, I continue, hoping to shut down the entire conversation, you’re barking up the wrong tree, if you want the lowdown on whatshername.

Iris.

I snap my fingers. That’s it.

Do you mind if we sit down?

Yes, I do, rather. Stack of work sitting on my desk. Dictation to type up, telephone messages to deliver.

He cracks the smallest smile. "Now I know you’re just pulling my leg. Have a seat, Miss Macallister, and I’ll do the same. The sooner we finish this conversation, the sooner you can get back to your secretarial duties."

I suppose I realize I’ve met my match, when it comes to stubbornness of character. And really, I’m not offended. After all, we want our FBI men to be tough, stubborn, unrelenting sons of bitches, don’t we? At least when they’re not after us.

I take the chair he gallantly pulls out for me and wait for him to take the seat opposite. Drag an ashtray from the center of the table and make myself comfortable with it.

I hope you don’t mind if I study your face, I say. It’s an occupational habit.

Not much to study. I’ve been told I’m no picture portrait.

That’s true. You look as if somebody carved you from a tree with a blunt axe. But beauty isn’t everything when it comes to photographs. If you’ve been in this business long enough, why, beauty’s sort of boring. Like Tolstoy. Beautiful people are all alike, but the ugly . . .

Now, that’s an interesting observation, coming from a beautiful woman.

Pshaw. I tap a little ash into the tray. I thought you intended to move things along?

As you like. You don’t mind if I take notes, do you? He pulls a small leather notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket.

Be my guest. I do take shorthand, if you need a break or something.

That would be against protocol, I’m afraid. You say you last saw your sister in June of 1940?

That’s correct.

And since then you haven’t spoken at all? Letters, telegrams?

Not a word.

He set down his pen. You don’t have any idea of her whereabouts, from June of 1940 until November of 1948? What she was doing? Husband and children and any of that?

Of course I do. Our aunt kept me filled in, from time to time.

That would be Mrs. Charles Schuyler, wouldn’t it?

"My stars, you have done your homework, haven’t you? We know her as Aunt Vivian, of course."

I’m glad to hear it. So Mrs. Schuyler represents your only source of information on Mrs. Digby’s whereabouts—

And our brother, Harry. I believe he dropped in on them, from time to time, at whatever diplomatic post they’d been sent to.

He casts me a sharp look, as if there’s some hidden meaning in this. Until November of 1948, of course, when Mrs. Digby and her family vanished from their flat in London.

That’s right. I read all about it in the papers.

Just the papers?

Well, it was a sensational case, wasn’t it? Once the press got their hands on it. No signs of struggle or burglary or anything like that. They just packed their suitcases and left, and nobody’s heard from them since. Isn’t that right, Mr. Fox?

Not necessarily. Don’t you think Mrs. Digby might have tried to find some way to send word to those she loves?

I wouldn’t know. I don’t believe I fall inside that category, I’m afraid. All I’ve heard is what’s been reported in the press. One outlandish theory after another.

And do you have an opinion on any of them, Miss Macallister?

They all seem a little farfetched to me. I tap some ash into the brass ashtray. "I’m sure you’d know much more about that kind of thing than I do. What do you think? I’m dying to know. Was Digby really a spy for the Soviets? Were they killed, or did they defect?"

If he’s shocked, he doesn’t show it. He doesn’t even blink. I don’t deal in speculation, Miss Macallister. I deal only in facts.

I lean a little closer. "Come on, now. I promise I won’t spill the beans to the papers or anything. She is my sister, after all."

You must understand that my heart’s beating like a dynamo. I hope he’s not the kind of fellow who looks at your neck to determine your pulse. I think I manage to keep the cigarette from shaking between my fingers, but it’s a question of mind over matter, believe me—of a self-control honed over years spent sitting across from men at desks and restaurant tables and boardrooms like this one. I raise the cigarette to my lips and stare inquisitively at the dent between Mr. Fox’s thick, straight eyebrows while I wait for him to speak. That’s harder than it sounds, by the way. Most human beings would rather swallow a live goldfish than a lump of silence.

Mr. Fox leans back in his chair. He wears a dark suit and a dark, plain tie, just in case you can’t guess what he does for a living. His shirt collar is white and crisp around his thick pink neck. Let’s return to the known facts, he says. Mr. and Mrs. Digby lived overseas almost without pause since their marriage in June of 1940. Mr. Digby’s work took them to various US embassies and consulates around the world. Their last leave stateside occurred in 1947, just before Mr. Digby took up the post in London.

Is that so? I must have missed her. Shame.

But you did say that Mrs. Schuyler gave you regular reports on Mrs. Digby’s whereabouts and style of life, didn’t you?

I shrug. I didn’t always listen.

I doubt that.

It’s true. Anyway, they were always moving from country to country, those two, mingling with princes and popping out babies. How many was it? Three?

He glances at his notebook. She was expecting her third when she disappeared.

How lovely. Say. I lean forward and frown. If they’re in some kind of trouble, you’re not going to make me adopt the offspring, are you? I don’t get along well with children.

I’m happy to say that’s not a matter within the scope of our powers at the FBI, Miss Macallister. Returning to the matter at hand. You say you haven’t had any communication with her at all? Nothing recent, for example? Letters? Postcards?

Why should I? After all these years?

You tell me.

I lean back again and cross one leg over the other. The chair squeaks agreeably. You should talk to Aunt Vivian. She’s the one who used to get all the letters.

I already have.

Harry? Our brother? He’s out in Alaska somewhere, last I heard.

I’ve spoken to Mr. Macallister, yes.

What about her husband’s family? He’s got a mother or something, I seem to remember. And the father’s a real piece of work, from what I hear. Mr. Digby Senior, some kind of bigwig in oil.

Miss Macallister, you might be surprised to know that the FBI actually knows how to conduct a thorough investigation without recourse to any of your useful suggestions.

Touched a nerve, did I? Everything coming up dry? You’ve come to the end of the line? I stub out the cigarette. The end of the line being me, of course. Deadest of dead ends. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be of more use to you.

Yes, I can see the regret in your eyes, Miss Macallister. He closes the notebook and replaces it in the inside pocket of his jacket. As he does so, I catch a glimpse of a mammoth chest.

I snap my fingers.

Sumner Fox! Of course. Football. You were all the rage for a few years. Some college or another, wasn’t it?

Yes, he says. Some college or another. Here’s my card, Miss Macallister. I urge you to contact me at the earliest possible instant, should you receive any word at all from your sister.

I take the card from his meaty fingers and slip it into the pocket of my slacks. Life or death, is it?

He squints at me carefully, as if my head’s turned into a sun. Just call that number, please, as a matter of urgency. And Miss Macallister? You’ll understand this conversation should be kept strictly confidential.

I zip my lips. You can trust me, Mr. Fox.

Thank you, he says. I’ll show myself out.

AFTER HE LEAVES, I light another cigarette and take my time settling my vital humors. I stand right before that great wall of glass and stare between the monoliths toward my narrow section of the East River—all the miniature boats inching along the glittering summer water, all the acres of close-packed buildings stretching out beyond them. I think about how many people live inside those buildings. I think about the buildings beyond those buildings, the buildings beyond those, the parks and yards and nice suburban houses of Long Island, old Roosevelt Field where Lindbergh took off for Paris early one morning. It took him thirty-six hours to get there, which is perseverance, if you ask me. I admire perseverance. You find yourself some purpose and you stick to it, like a dog with a bone, no matter how many times the world tries to yank that bone away.

Now, was Lindbergh right to do it? Well, of course he was. But only because he made it to Paris.

BY THE TIME THE cigarette burns out, my heart’s resumed its ordinary cadence. I no longer feel the twinge of every nerve. I return

Reviews for Our Woman in Moscow

[jetangen4571 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

cold-war, communism, Russia, FBI, historical-fiction, historical-places-events, historical-research, history-and-culture, espionage, twins, intrigue, family-dynamics, KGB****Take a real historical espionage issue, turn it sideways and fictionalize those involved, make it character driven and packed with twists and family history, and make sure it is written by a real craftsperson, and you have this book. The story revolves around the personal relationships between sisters Ruth and Iris, Ruth and FBI agent, Iris and KGB while also delving into attitudes of the day. And double agents and their conflicts. A solid, if long, read.I requested and received a free temporary ebook copy from William Morrow and Custom House via NetGalley.

[sleahey_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This espionage adventure revolves around twins Iris and Ruth. The action takes place in a present of 1952, with returns to the events of the 1940's and the lead-up to World War II. Because of their relationships with the men in their lives, both women are caught up in various aspects of spying and counter-intelligence, taking them from New York to Rome to London to Moscow. The sisters are very different from each other on the surface; Ruth is an ambitious single successful career woman, while Iris is a housewife with several young children. Their differences result in a 12 year estrangement, but when their paths cross in 1942 we realize just how close and similar they are. The intrigue is fast-paced, the suspense is nail-biting, and the alternating voices, settings, and times turned this into a quick read for me.

[nancyjcbs · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Our Woman In Moscow introduces two more members of the Schuyler family. Charlie and Vivian's twin nieces are Ruth and Iris Macallister. The sisters are visiting and living with their brother Harry in pre-war Rome. As World War II begins extroverted, model Ruth is ready to head home while the artistic, quiet Iris has fallen in love and wants to stay behind. Their close relationship is broken.The story focuses on espionage and includes reference to and events inspired by the Cambridge Five who were traitors to the United Kingdom divulging important secrets to the Soviet Union. Iris is entangled in this activity and finally reaches out to Ruth for help.I enjoyed this spy thriller/romance/family drama and would recommend it as one of my favorite novels by Beatriz Williams.

[kimkimkim-7 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I used to read every Beatriz Williams’ book as soon as it came out and then I fell away for no particular reason. Having just finished “Our Woman in Moscow” I am wondering why? She captures the essence of her plot and characters. Her dialog is of the moment, smart, fast, near to perfect (I’m channeling Betty Hutton among others). Writing about the Cambridge Five and their time, she absolutely nails the decade, the clandestine cloak and dagger of the spy thriller, dead drops, defection and all.Just a sliver shy of five starts but rounding up for the excellence in plot, characters and my total involvement.

[wagner5sarah35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have to admit, I wasn't quite certain where this novel was going until about halfway through when the divergent stories began to intermingle. This is a Cold War tale of sisters and spies. Ruth and Iris are twins, but after Iris's romance and marriage to a young, idealistic man in the American foreign service, the sisters fall out of touch, living mostly separate lives. But Iris's world is increasingly dangerous, as her husband becomes more deeply involved in passing information to Soviet contacts, and eventually even Ruth becomes swept up in international schemes to outwit the Soviet intelligence forces. Overall, this was a fun, highly satisfying read and I look forward to more from this author.

[virginia51-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book will take you back to the Cold War era. If you like reading about spies you will enjoy this story. This talks more about what the spy is feeling rather than what they are spying on. I was not sure I was going to care for Ruth in the beginning but she really grows on one. Her sister Iris is also one that grows on you and I a to decide if she was good or bad. This definitely kept me thinking. I received a copy of this book from the William Morrow team fir a fair and honest opinion that I gave of my own free will.

[bookwyrmm_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This took a while to really get into the meat of the story, but then it became predictable yet convoluted when chapters started focusing on other character.

[jtsolakos · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A great read about an intriguing time in history.