Cold Victory E-Book

Karl Marlantes

• Herausgeber: Grove Press UK
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 470

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Helsinki, 1947. Finland teeters between the Soviet Union and the West. Everyone is being watched. At an embassy party, Finnish-American Arnie Koski and Russian Mikhail Bobrov drunkenly challenge each other to a friendly - but clandestine - cross-country ski race. But the stakes becomes higher than either could imagine. While the two skiers are unreachable in the arctic wilderness, news of the race is leaked to the media, with Russia's brutal secret police awaiting the outcome... Another masterful novel from the author of the modern classic Matterhorn.

Leseprobe

Praise for

COLDVICTORY

“A brisk geopolitical thriller set in Finland at the beginning of the Cold War . . . The book both honors the struggle for democracy around the world and warns of the dangers of vaingloriousness and naiveté. More than a diplomatic thriller, Cold Victory is a keen and sensitive group portrait that sees Americans as no better or worse than Russians or Finns or anyone else. Human nature is a land without borders.”

—Porter Shreve, Washington Post

“Marlantes moves from the jungles of Vietnam to the spectral tundra of a very cold Cold War–era Finland . . . better than Tom Clancy when it comes to the human element, but he’s similarly fascinated by militaria and historical detail.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Karl Marlantes, author of the modern Vietnam war classic, Matterhorn, has written another masterful, fast-paced historical fiction winner. Cold Victory is a compelling novel set in Finland in the fraught aftermath of World War II, a time when the threat of Communism tainted every transaction. When two former soldiers—one American and one Soviet—agree to a secret arctic ski race, their wives are thrust into danger. As news of the race spreads, and the men race on in the arctic cold, the women must wage their own battle, fighting against the clock to save their lives, their marriages, and their friendship.”

—Kristin Hannah

“Marlantes’ well-plotted, briskly moving novel explores the psychological afterlife of war. The men may court death on the tundra, but their needs are uncomplicated. It’s the women who, in building cross-cultural bridges and making impossible sacrifices, truly demonstrate sisu (Finnish for ‘toughness in the face of hopelessness’).”

—Booklist

“[A] stirring story of innocents abroad in 1946 Finland as the Cold War is heating up . . . Marlantes sticks the landing in this satisfying drama.”

—Publishers Weekly

Praise for

KARL MARLANTES

“My favourite book of all time. I can’t recommend it highly enough.”

—Jeremy Clarkson on Matterhorn

“Incredible . . . I came close to reading it in one sitting.”

—Sunday Times on Matterhorn

“One of the most profound and devastating novels ever to come out of Vietnam – or any war.”

—Sebastian Junger on Matterhorn

“Astonishing . . . Marlantes steps alongside Stephen Crane, Joseph Heller and even Ernest Hemingway.”

—Observer on Matterhorn

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Matterhorn becomes for the Vietnam War what All Quiet on the Western Front was to World War I.”

—James Patterson on Matterhorn

“Mighty physical, social and economic forces operate the plot of this novel, buffeting its characters, raising them up, flinging them down, twisting their fates together. Deep River is a big American novel.”

—Wall Street Journal on Deep River

“An engrossing and commanding historical epic about one immigrant family’s shifting fortunes . . . An unforgettable novel.”

—Washington Post on Deep River

Also by Karl Marlantes

Matterhorn

What It Is Like to Go to War

Deep River

First published in the United Kingdom in 2025 by Grove Press UK, an imprint of Grove Atlantic

First published in the United States of America in 2024 by Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic

Copyright © Karl Marlantes, 2024

The moral right of Karl Marlantes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be used in any manner in the learning, training or development of generative artificial intelligence technologies (including but not limited to machine learning models and large language models (LLMs)), whether by data scraping, data mining or use in any way to create or form a part of data sets or in any other way.

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN 978 1 80471 106 4

E-book ISBN 978 1 80471 107 1

Printed in Great Britain

Grove Press UK

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.groveatlantic.com

Dedicated to all who fight to preserve rule by just law—particularly those in Ukraine.

Historical Timeline

September 17, 1809 Russia defeats Sweden, takes control of Finland

November 7, 1917 Communist revolution, Russia becomes Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union)

December 6, 1917 Finland becomes a democracy and declares independence from Soviet Union

January 22, 1918 Finnish civil war starts, communists defeated, but large numbers remain loyal to Soviet Union

September 1, 1939 Germany and Soviet Union join to invade Poland starting World War II

November 30, 1939 Soviet Union invades Finland (the Winter War)

March 12, 1940 Moscow Peace Treaty, Finland forced to give 9% of land to USSR, 422,000 Finns flee west to democratic Finland

June 22, 1941 Germany invades Soviet Union ending Soviet-German alliance

June 25, 1941 Finland joins forces with Germany eventually regaining all its lost territories (the Continuation War)

December 7, 1941 United Kingdom, an ally of the Soviet Union, declares war against Finland

December 11, 1941 US declares war on Germany, as an ally of the Soviet Union the US eventually will sever relations with Finland, but never declare war

June 9, 1944 With Germany facing defeat, the Soviet Union launches a massive attack against Finland, retaking the 9% of formerly ceded Finnish land and 2% more in bitter fighting, a now exhausted Finland asks for peace

September 19, 1944 Moscow Armistice, Finland forced to turn on Germany, give up 11% of its land, its largest naval base west of Helsinki, and pay crippling reparations

December 8, 1944 US reestablishes diplomatic relations with Finland

December 10, 1946 Louise and Arnie arrive in Finland

February 10, 1947 Paris Peace Treaty formally ends USSR and UK war against Finland and permanently gives the Soviet Union all Finnish land conquered in the Winter War

Part One

Tuesday, December 10, 1946Ferry Terminal, Turku, Finland

She’d followed Arnie Koski a long way from Edmond, Oklahoma. Louise Koski was now standing on the open passenger deck of the Stockholm-Turku ferry as it formed a channel through the thin, early December ice leaving floating shards reflecting the wan sunlight in its wake. The angle of the somber sun in a clear comfortless sky was only a held-out fist above the southern horizon.

Wrapping herself against the cold in her stylish but inadequate coat, Louise watched the low snow-covered shoreline slowly pass behind on both sides as the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings of Turku grew into distinct shapes, interspersed with occasional gaps where a now-bombed-out building had stood before the war.

Arnie came up from behind and hugged her. She snuggled into his chest, shielding herself against the slight but icy wind. Arnie was wearing civilian clothes under a heavy wool army greatcoat. He kissed her hair, and she turned to look up at him. His eyes shone with the excitement that he wouldn’t allow himself to show on the rest of his face. “Is it like coming home, somehow?” she asked.

“In a way.”

Three words made an average sentence for Arnie.

They entered the open water of the harbor and the icebreaker that had been preceding them moved aside to let the ferry nose into the terminal.

The line going through customs wasn’t long. Travel between Finland and Sweden was only just beginning to revive so soon after the war. A Finnish customs official examined their passports and Arnie’s diplomatic papers. The customs official looked up at them. “Is this all of you?” he asked in accented English.

“Just two,” Arnie replied.

Louise felt a twinge. She was thirty and despite several army doctors declaring that she was perfectly healthy, she’d already suffered two miscarriages in five years of trying. She desperately wanted children, and the clock was ticking. The family remained, as Arnie said, just two.

When they emerged from the terminal, a young man in his early twenties with thick blond hair walked up to them, his breath showing a bright white cloud. He asked in English, “Lieutenant Colonel Koski?”

Arnie nodded and answered yes in Finnish.

“Pulkkinen,” the man said and grabbed both of their suitcases. Pulkkinen silently led them to a khaki 1942 Chevy Fleetmaster sedan with diplomatic plates. The white star of the US Army was still on the driver’s door.

Louise pulled herself closer to Arnie’s ear. “Loquacious,” she whispered.

“If you think Dad was taciturn . . .” he whispered back. He left the rest unsaid, which made her smile. Like father like son.

Pulkkinen stowed the luggage in the trunk and held a rear door open for her. Louise expected to be in the back seat; Arnie would want to pump the driver for as much information as he could. The leather of the rear seat was cold. She didn’t look forward to the three-hour drive to Helsinki.

Constantly clearing the window condensation with her coat sleeve, Louise watched the bleak landscape of farms interspersed with tracts of snow-dusted trees slide by. It was only three in the afternoon and already the sun was setting.

Arnie was talking in his fluent Finnish with Pulkkinen. She could feel Arnie’s excitement for his new posting, military attaché to the American legation in Helsinki, Finland. It wasn’t just his new posting; it was hers as well. Every woman knew that all high-level diplomatic jobs took two people—and this was their first one. His end was gathering military intelligence. Her end was providing the social lubricant and connections that made his job easier. That meant what her mother called socializing. Just months before, she’d been an ordinary army wife. Could she do the job?

She was immensely proud of Arnie. It was a real coup, a position like this as a light colonel. But she worried that she would let him down. Several of the wives at the State Department briefing had gone to East Coast colleges like Vassar and Sweet Briar. She’d gone to the University of Oklahoma. Many had been to Europe before the war. She’d never ventured east of the Mississippi River. They came to the briefings dressed exactly right, seemingly without much thought or effort. Her Emily Post was getting dog-eared. Then there was the actual job, essentially being a secondary and subtle channel for any information that Arnie might find useful—or want to communicate—picking up on slight changes in tone, nuances of conversation, and cultivating the contacts that would help Arnie do his job. Her problem, however, was knowing what useful information was. The State Department briefings had been long on protocol: who got seated where at parties, how to address the wife of an ambassador versus the wife of a career diplomat, when not to shake hands, what to wear when. But the single brief lecture on what was actually happening in Finland, what America wanted—what the Soviet Union and Finland wanted—had been cursory. To her disappointment, she found that State was no different than the army. There was an unspoken assumption that the wives wouldn’t be interested, so they were spared the details. Their husbands could fill them in if they really wanted to know.

That attitude on the part of State and the army, however, did not ease any of the pressure. If this assignment went well, Arnie could make full colonel, paving the way to general. If not, she remembered the wife of another military attaché, half-sloshed at a cocktail party in Washington before they left, offering “helpful” advice. “Screw this up and your husband’s career is over.”

Louise was all too aware that many a promising army career had been cut short by an awkward wife who lacked social skills. The French, whose literature she had studied in college, had a single word for it that she hoped would never be applied to her: gauche. But the French spent their entire childhoods learning how to be French. She only knew how to be polite in Oklahoma, and trying to learn diplomatic protocol in a couple of weeks of lectures was like trying to learn a foreign language without ever being able to practice speaking. She would never be fluent.

Right now, however, her free-floating anxiety about whether she was up to the job of making this assignment work was ambient background for a related and more specific worry. Would their household items, which they’d shipped over a month ago, especially her clothes, be waiting in Helsinki? If not, that would mean buying several dresses, and it would be with their own money. What would they think of her—and Arnie—if she had to go to a fancy embassy party in—she looked down at her sensible wool skirt—this? Were there even dress shops in Helsinki?

They passed a crossroads in the dark and Pulkkinen pointed to the road on the right. “Porkkala.” A single word. No emotion.

“Porkkala?” she asked.

Arnie turned to look back at her. “The Russian navy base.”

“A Russian navy base? Here? We’re no more than twenty miles from Helsinki. No one said anything about it in our briefings.”

“With another base in Estonia they control the sea approaches to Leningrad,” Arnie said. “Part of the deal.”

The “deal” referred to the Moscow Armistice, which was signed on September 19, 1944, ending the fighting between Finland and the Soviet Union. She had heard of the agreement in the briefings, but Arnie had had to explain its consequences in more detail on the ferry. The deal had been very bad for the Finns.

In November 1939, the Soviet Union, then an ally of Hitler’s Germany, had invaded Finland. The Finns fought bravely and alone against enormous odds in what became known as the Winter War, inflicting massive casualties on the Soviet juggernaut, stopping it cold, and earning the accolades of the entire free world. Accolades, however, were all they got. With no help from the West, exhausted and out of hope, they signed the first armistice with the Soviet Union in the spring of 1940, giving up over 10 percent of their land.

Fearing the Soviets wanted even more, they again sought help from neutral Sweden and the Western Allies to shore up their defenses. Again, they got none. So, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941, the Finns joined with Germany to take back the territory they’d lost. They regained all of it. They however continued, some would say foolishly, to help their German ally lay siege to Leningrad. Leningrad never fell, and Stalin never forgot.

In June 1944, when the Germans were falling back on Berlin and facing the Allied landings in Normandy, Stalin took his revenge.

With overwhelming superiority in men and equipment, fueled with massive matériel support from the United States, the Red Army drove the Finns back toward Helsinki. But by September 1944, the campaign had cost the Soviet Union close to a million casualties. For every dead Finn and German, there were four dead Russians. Stalin decided it would be better for the Soviet Union to make peace than to continue to pay the enormous price of conquering Finland by force. The Finns, spent and starving, their German allies facing sure defeat, signed a terribly punitive second armistice. This one cost Finland even more land than the previous one in 1940 and, in addition, the entire Porkkala peninsula just west of Helsinki, along with its large naval base. It further imposed brutal “reparation” payments that amounted to 60 percent of Finland’s prewar GDP. Bad as this deal looked, however, because of Finland’s fierce resistance, it was still independent, the only Eastern European country that hadn’t succumbed to the Red Army. Yet.

Stalin was still set on establishing a Communist government friendly to the Soviet Union but for the moment sought to do so from within. His weapon was the Communist Party of Finland, which until the 1944 treaty had been outlawed. But with Soviet support, it now held about a third of the seats in the parliament. It was Stalin’s velvet glove. The iron fist in that glove was the threat of invasion from a massive army in Finland’s lost territory in the east and the First Mozyr Red Banner Naval Infantry Division based on the Russian-occupied Porkkala peninsula just twenty miles west of Helsinki.

If any political or foreign policy decision offended Joseph Stalin, he could cut the thread holding the Damocles sword of war that hung over Finland’s head. Driving in the cold twilight, Louise knew that she and Arnie were heading right under that sword.

They reached Helsinki around five, well after dark. Too few inadequate streetlights, composed of single electric bulbs, struggled to cast light on the nearly empty streets. Louise unconsciously expected the city to be lit up for Christmas like American cities. Helsinki emanated cheerless austerity.

Pulkkinen helped check them into a hotel near the American legation office. Louise guessed the hotel had probably been built in the last century. The small lobby smelled of decades-old carpet.

There were no bellhops, and Pulkkinen helped Arnie haul their bags into the lobby.

A bit flustered, Louise whispered, “Do we tip him?”

Arnie smiled. “I assure you he’s well paid. Way better than most.”

She gave Pulkkinen a big smile and said, “Kiitos paljon!” Thank you very much, one of her few Finnish phrases.

Pulkkinen merely looked at her. Then he nodded slightly, coming back to what Louise could only graciously describe as a reserved stare. Then, Pulkkinen said, in what sounded to her like an upper-crust British accent, “It has been a pleasure, Mrs. Koski.”

Louise looked at Arnie, who was suppressing a grin. Arnie reached out a hand to Pulkkinen, saying thank you and a few other words. Watching Pulkkinen return to the car, Louise said quietly, “How wonderful he speaks English! At least when he speaks. Do you think we’ll be able to use him to help us get settled?”

“We can ask. He works for Max Hamilton, the charge d’affaires of the legation.” He paused. “We pay him, but we may not be the only ones. Just be careful what you say around him.”

“Oh, Arnie. I’m sure he’s on our side. He seems really friendly.”

“I hope you’re right. But the Finns fought a civil war in 1918 as bloody as our own. The Communists lost, but I’d guess at least a third of this country still wants the Communists to take over. The Soviet Union is here to make that happen. And we, my dear, are here to help make it not happen.”

Standing with Arnie on the cold sidewalk, watching the big Fleetmaster pull away, Louise suddenly felt alone and exposed. It was the first time in years that she hadn’t been surrounded in safety by the US Army. She pulled herself in closer to Arnie. “Don’t you think we might be a little late to the party?” she said softly. She looked up at him. “I mean, Russia is fifty times the size of Finland with a huge army on Finland’s border. I now find out they also have a navy base practically in their capital. What do we have here to fight that?”

Arnie paused, then said quite seriously, “A 1942 Chevy Fleetmaster sedan. It means far more than you might think.”

When Louise leaned over their room’s double bed to unpack her suitcase, her rear end touched the wall. A single window sat over a noisy steam radiator on the other side of the bed, its paper roller shade pulled all the way down, making the room seem even smaller. She resolved to move out of the hotel as soon as possible, but there was no embassy staff to help find housing. That would be entirely up to her.

In fact, there was no embassy and no ambassador. Because the Finns had joined with Germany to fight the Soviet Union, the United States came under intense pressure from its Soviet ally to declare war on Finland as Great Britain had done. Not wanting to go that far, the United States simply broke off diplomatic relations with Finland on June 30, 1944. Until peace between the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and Finland was official, with a signed peace treaty, diplomatic relations couldn’t be reestablished. The United States could not send an ambassador, nor could it set up an embassy. Instead, it had the legation with its tiny staff preparing for the day when full diplomatic relations would be restored.

Wednesday, December 11, 1946Helsinki Hotel

The next morning, Arnie completed his nearly inviolable morning exercise routine in the hotel basement, a fierce combination of intense moves like burpees and push-ups, all done to exhaustion. After eating the simple breakfast served by the hotel in another part of the basement, Louise and Arnie reported to Max Hamilton, the US chargé d’affaires, at his office, which was located in a converted mansion that sat among large, now-bare deciduous trees near a park crisscrossed with walking lanes and intersected with narrow paved roads.

Hamilton appeared to be in his early fifties, and Louise found him to be charming, East Coast, well educated, intelligent, and probably wealthy. Arnie had told her, just before they went into Hamilton’s office, that it was a blessing that Finland didn’t want an embassy; it avoided his having to report to an ignorant political appointee instead of an experienced career diplomat like Hamilton.

Louise wasn’t so sure, because she quickly saw that Max Hamilton evinced one of the downsides of the career diplomat. Anytime she’d ask a question of substance, he’d smile and deflect pleasantly and politely, saying nothing of importance.

She’d asked if the United States would offer financial help or loans to Finland, even though they’d fought with the Germans. He’d answered, “We’re really not into the banking business. Do you need any help finding a personal bank here in Helsinki?” She’d tried again, asking him how strong the Communist Party of Finland was and how dependent it was on the Soviets. He’d answered, “It is, of course, an active political party. One of many. It’s probably best if we keep our opinions about the internal policies of a host country’s political parties to ourselves.” She wasn’t sure if she’d been rebuked.

She kept her frustration hidden behind what she called her polite-face smile. Beneath it was good old Oklahoma irritation. How in hell could she do her job if Hamilton wouldn’t answer her questions and none of her good clothes were here?

She listened while Hamilton and Arnie discussed the details of his job. Finland was directly under the likely path of American B-29 bombers flying out of England and Greenland to bomb Russia should war erupt. Soviet air and naval bases needed to be located and their capabilities determined. Emergency landing sites needed to be established. Possible invasion routes and key roads, rail lines, bridges, and their load capacities needed to be identified. Probable strategies needed to be understood. Any threat to Finnish independence that would move Finland into the Soviet camp, whether posed by the Red Army, Soviet intelligence organizations, or the pro-Soviet Finnish Communist Party needed to be uncovered.

When she’d sensed that Arnie had exhausted all of his detailed questions, she plunged in to help Arnie with the part of his job that he was neither good at nor inclined to do: managing up. She turned on the charm. If Hamilton wanted just to make congenial small talk with her, then she’d, by gum, make use of that. So, she joined the game he was playing and began lobbing conversational tennis balls across the net that were easy to hit back. She quickly learned that Hamilton was an enthusiastic member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity from Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania. She made sure he knew she was still an enthusiastic member of Delta Gamma sorority. Within ten minutes he was telling funny stories about Foggy Bottom in the old days and had even unbuttoned his suit coat. It ended with Hamilton calling his wife, asking her to have coffee with Louise at the legation that afternoon to help Louise get settled.

Back on the street, Arnie said, “Thank you. You know how I hate buttering up.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Did you have to make him fall in love with you?”

“Just fall at my feet, my dear.” She tucked her arm in close to the crook of his own. He in turn pulled her in closer to his side, making her want to hurry back to the hotel.

When they got there, however, Arnie immediately disappeared to his new assignment, leaving Louise a bit frustrated. Temporarily thwarted from what she considered her most important task, she turned to her own assignment, finding an apartment. The first order of business on that front was the impending meeting with Hamilton’s wife. That meant ironing the dress she was wearing. The other two dresses she’d packed were a conservative cocktail dress and a housedress, neither suitable for meeting Mrs. Hamilton for coffee at the legation offices.

She did some of her best planning ironing clothes and the to-do list was already long. Arnie would need clothes, too, if their crates didn’t arrive. They needed stationery for thank-you notes. Telephone service. Groceries. There must be a fish market. Helsinki was on a harbor after all. Did Finland have department stores?

Army wives were used to getting things done alone, especially when a war was on. They raised their children alone. They made all the difficult decisions—where to go to school, what to do about the teacher their child hated, getting the children to church, making sure they remembered their absent fathers and knew who their father’s parents were—all tasks she wished she could have been doing herself. About the only difference between being an army wife and a widowed or divorced single mother was the steady paycheck and the hope that someday the loneliness would end without having to go down to the local bar—and dealing with their husbands when they came back from war forever changed.

Having found housing off base several times during the war and again in the suburbs of DC when Arnie spent seventeen weeks at Strategic Intelligence School, Louise thought she would only be mildly challenged by it being her first time outside of the United States.

In the past, finding housing had been easy compared to the things she’d done working in her father’s lumberyard as a teenager. By the time she was in high school, she had been helping contractors with purchases and dealing with their complaints, helping with the books and preparing the taxes, and, on occasion, when her father was short of help in the yard, even doing jobs like pulling out higher grades of lumber from recently arrived mixed pallets to sell for premium prices. This involved moving hundreds of pieces of lumber, some of the larger two-by-twelves weighing over sixty pounds. She smiled, remembering using nearly a jar of her mother’s Pond’s Cold Cream on her hands and having to roll sideways out of her bed in the morning for about a week because she was so stiff.

In college, she’d been elected president of her sorority. Managing meals, house maintenance, recruitment, complicated social events, and the quarrels, jealousies, and emotions of eighty-seven girls, followed by six and a half years of military life, most of it spent in wartime, she assumed would have prepared her for her current assignment.

It hadn’t. None of her previous experience had been in a country reeling from a recent war. Finding housing in the States had been hard, but there hadn’t been thousands of homeless refugees pouring into the city. And the language was totally alien. Although she’d majored in education, she’d minored in French in college and the language had been easy for her. Trying for several months to learn even rudimentary Finnish had left her feeling tired and inadequate. Yes, she could find the bathroom, count to one hundred, and figure out how to buy a bus ticket, but engaging in an intelligent conversation would have to wait. That would be another item on the list she thought, finding a Finnish language tutor. On top of it all, there were less than six hours of daylight, and daylight was gloomy at best.

Every day, Arnie left their hotel early and returned late, always in darkness. The Finns called their country Suomi, which Arnie had told her was derived from some pre–Finnish language word for “bog,” adding in his careful way that it was only one theory of several. Others were that Suomi meant “land of the lakes” or just “the land.” After several days of trudging around the war-torn, bleak city, she thought darkly that the bog theory was the more likely.

Not that Louise hadn’t expected housing to be difficult to find. Housing all over Europe was scarce because of the bombing. Helsinki, too, had been bombed—by the Russians—using American bombers. Much of Helsinki had been saved from severe damage because the Finns had lured the bombers away from the city by lighting fires and placing searchlights on the islands just off the coast. The actual cause of the housing shortage was the four hundred thousand Finns who had fled their homes in Eastern Finland rather than live under Soviet domination and another one hundred thousand discharged soldiers.

Then, there were the orphans, thousands of them.

Saturday, December 21, 1946Kaarina Vanhatalo Varila’s Apartment

Finland’s recent history became personal to Louise the Saturday before Christmas. She and Arnie were invited to the home of Kaarina Varila. Arnie’s aunt Aino had urged Arnie to locate the daughter of her mother’s cousin, a Vanhatalo, who she thought might still live in Helsinki. It had been this cousin who first took care of Aino when she was released from a Russian jail in 1905, just before she emigrated to America. Arnie had told Louise that Aunt Aino had been arrested by the secret police for being a Communist linked to a terrorist organization that tried to bomb a Russian army barracks. Louise had found this hard to believe. Aunt Aino made bread and told earthy jokes. Her brother, Arnie’s father Matti, was a member of the Astoria Golf and Country Club and as staunch a Republican businessman as Louise’s own father.

To find this Vanhatalo cousin, Arnie had gone to the Finnish police. The police, staunchly anti-Communist and therefore pro-American, had been happy to help, despite their government’s precarious and careful positioning regarding the Soviets. They soon determined that Aino’s cousin had died during the war, but they’d located the woman’s daughter, Kaarina, under her married name, Varila. Arnie made contact and they’d been invited to dinner.

* * *

Kaarina lived with her adult son, Pietari, who opened the door to their knock. In his early twenties, he looked like his mother, who was standing behind him in a dark-blue wool dress that brought out her blue eyes. She was wearing old-fashioned cotton stockings and lace-up shoes with two-inch heels. She was a big-boned woman, not at all fat, with a wide face, thick dark blonde hair, and what to Louise was amazingly clear soft skin for a woman probably in her early fifties. She and Pietari very formally shook hands with Arnie and Louise and ushered them in.

The house was spotlessly clean—and simple. Louise was becoming used to there being no electric Christmas lights but was taken aback by the lack of what she considered to be essential household items. Standing in the living room, Louise could see into the kitchen. The floors were made of wood, so often scrubbed they had the appearance of a ship’s deck. There was no hot water faucet at the kitchen sink. A single-bulb light fixture hung from the middle of the kitchen ceiling. In the living room, a floor lamp stood by a stuffed armchair, where an open book rested on a small end table. The feeble light barely reached the walls of the room, giving it the feel to her of a cloudy afternoon.

Louise smiled brightly, remarking on the beautiful handmade rag rugs scattered on the living room’s wood floor, trying to hide her reaction to the seeming poverty of the place so as not to embarrass Kaarina. Somehow, she’d expected Kaarina’s house to be like that of her in-laws and Arnie’s aunt and uncle, in Astoria, Oregon, full of soft furniture, flooded with electric light—and warm.

The house was heated by a single cylindrical metal wood stove in a corner of the living room. The room itself couldn’t be much warmer than the midfifties Fahrenheit. She imagined that the bedrooms had no heat at all. There was a fireplace with a mantel, but it was clear that it hadn’t had a fire for some time. She imagined any wood would be burned in the corner stove; the heat was too precious to waste going up a fireplace chimney. On the fireplace mantel were two photos of young couples in late-nineteenth-century wedding clothes. There was also one of Kaarina as a bride in an ankle-length narrow wedding dress standing next to a handsome well-built man in a heavy wool suit, presumably her husband. There was a fourth photograph of three grinning towheaded boys.

Kaarina touched one of the old wedding pictures. “My parents. Father died twenty years ago. Mother,” she hesitated, “in 1940.” She pointed to another photo. “Me and my husband, Niko.” She paused just enough to keep the sadness in. “And there,” she said quietly, “Pietari when he was six, and his brothers, Oskar and Risto.” Louise suspected what would—and did—come next: lost in the war.

Kaarina turned to look at Pietari who was talking to Arnie. Pietari was a lean, robust young man in his early twenties. No longer a towhead, his hair was a thick caramel blond. “Well, not all were lost,” she said, smiling at him. “Pietari fought the Russians when he was eighteen. After the Russians forced us to fight the Germans who were trying to make it to Norway, he fought Germans.” She paused. “Now, he fights himself.” She looked on her son for a moment. “And he hates Russians and Germans.” She gave Louise a quick smile. “Complicated.”

“I know you didn’t want to be on Germany’s side,” Louise said.

“Not all of us,” Kaarina replied. “That’s not so complicated. The Russians demanded we give up several of our eastern provinces. We refused. The Russians invaded. We fought hard, but in the end, they were too big and they took our land.” She paused. “No one helped us. But you sent millions of dollars of military aid to the Russians.”

Louise was wondering if Kaarina was somehow blaming her for US foreign policy.

“So,” Kaarina went on, “when Germany attacked the Soviet Union, we accepted German help and took back our land. When the Germans started losing to the Russians, the Russians invaded us again in 1944. They took back the land they’d taken from us in 1940. We signed an armistice so they wouldn’t take the whole country. Part of the armistice agreement was that we turn on our German allies. Which we did. The Germans headed for Norway burning everything in their path. That’s why Pietari fought both Russians and Germans.”

Kaarina’s tone revealed none of her feelings, leaving Louise wondering where Kaarina stood politically. She could have been pro-German, even a Fascist. Or maybe she was a Communist like Arnie’s aunt. Louise didn’t dare ask. She already felt she was treading on eggshells.

Dinner was potatoes, cabbage, parsnips, and one roasted chicken, about half the size of a chicken they would have had back in Edmond. Dessert was just enough rice pudding topped with preserved lingonberries.

Louise’s Finnish wasn’t sufficient for her to keep up with the conversation, but Kaarina had worked for Thomas Cook and Sons as a young woman, so her English was quite good, although accented. She spoke to Louise in English, but despite that, the conversation still lagged as Pietari’s English was only rudimentary. The conversation flowed, however, when Kaarina, Pietari, and Arnie would lapse into Finn, leaving Louise feeling left out.

Kaarina brought coffee to Arnie and Pietari, who were on facing armchairs by the empty fireplace. It was clear they were talking about the war, Arnie quietly asking questions, ever the professional, and Pietari quietly and succinctly answering them.

“Come sit in the kitchen,” Kaarina said, handing Louise her cup. “It’s warmer.”

Kaarina led her to two simple wood rocking chairs next to the brick cookstove. Iron doors indicated there was an iron firebox inside the bricks. The bricks were warm. It reminded Louise of Arnie’s comment before she first met his parents. “Be patient. Finns aren’t cold, they just warm up slow.”

Louise settled back in the chair, feeling for the first time that evening that maybe there was some hope of Kaarina liking her. Then she took a sip of her coffee and nearly gagged. She stopped just short of spitting it back into the cup, but managed to swallow, trying to hide her reaction.

“How do you like the coffee?” Kaarina asked, her face deadpan.

Louise had been around Arnie’s relatives enough to know that Finnish humor and deadpan went together often. She was being gently teased.

“OK. I’ll bite. What is it?”

Kaarina chuckled. “It’s made from mushrooms. Chaga. They grow on birch trees. I haven’t had a good cup of coffee since 1939. I’m told there was a shipment arrived in Turku last February, but you need ration cards to get any. They’re rare.”

“Uh . . .” Louise didn’t know whether to put the cup down or keep sipping at it. “It was rationed at home, at least for the first part of the war.”

“It wasn’t rationed here during the war.”

“Really?” Louise responded.

Looking at her like she was from another planet, Kaarina said, “There wasn’t any.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know if she’d just missed some rather dry and ironic humor behind “it wasn’t rationed here” or if Kaarina was being serious and resentful that Americans had coffee during the war. “Gosh. I wish I’d known.” Should she offer to see if she could get some from the legation? Or would that offend Kaarina? She scrambled. “Uh, how do you make it?”

“I’ll show you.”

Kaarina went to a large pot sitting on the floor next to the stove and removed the lid. Soaking in water were ugly organic lumps that looked to Louise like black stove clinkers.

“You give them a good squeeze after a couple of days.” Kaarina smiled. “Then you drink it and wish for coffee.”

They returned to the rocking chairs. Louise took another sip and gently sat the cup on the brick edge that lined the iron cooktop.

“No need to drink any more,” Kaarina said. “It will go back in the pot for later and not wasted.”

Louise nodded. There was silence.

“I’m so sorry you lost your husband and sons.”

There was now awkward silence, just as with Arnie’s family when she’d gotten too personal too soon. She glanced into the living room, wishing Arnie were there to bail her out, but Arnie was still fully engaged with Pietari.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . I just wanted . . . I mean it must have been so hard.”

Kaarina looked at her for what seemed a very long time but that must have been no more than a few seconds. Then, something softened. “It was hard,” Kaarina said.

“Yes.”

“Still, losing a husband and sons is not so bad as a child losing parents.”

“I hope I never have to find out,” Louise said quietly.

Kaarina smiled. “You live in a safe golden land.”

“Yes, we do. We’re very fortunate.”

There was more silence, but not as awkward.

“No children?” Kaarina asked. “Or are they with a babysitter?”

“No, just the two of us.”

“Do you want children?”

“Yes, we do. Very much.” Then she added, “I’ve”—she hesitated—“miscarried twice.” She was briefly flooded with the memory of holding the cold body of her stillborn daughter close to her sobbing chest and breaking heart.

Kaarina seemed a little taken aback at the word “miscarried.” Louise looked down at her Chaga, realizing she may again have shared too openly for a first-time meeting with a Finn.

Kaarina, however, seemed to recover. “You’re still young,” she said without emotion.

“Thirty. Not so young.”

“Well, from my perspective . . .” Kaarina chuckled, trying to make Louise feel better.

“I suppose you’re right,” Louise said with a slight smile.

“Did you ever think of adopting?”

Now Louise was a bit taken aback. “No. Not really.”

“We have thousands of orphans.”

“I know.”

“I work with them, you know.”

“I didn’t know.”

“At an orphanage. Down near the harbor.” She looked through the kitchen door to the mantel and its photographs. “It gives me comfort but also heartbreak. There are so many, and there is so little to give. We’re a bit overwhelmed.” Kaarina smiled.

Louise smiled politely, wondering if Kaarina was simply telling her a fact or was wanting her to donate money, help at the orphanage, or adopt someone.

She chose help. “Gosh. I could help. I mean once we get settled. I’m pretty good with kids,” she added hurriedly. “I could maybe help them with their reading.”

Kaarina simply nodded, then said, “They can learn to read in school.” She smiled. “If you want to help, we have more pressing needs.”

“Sure. I’d love to come by. I like to pitch in. Do things. I mean, being the wife of a military attaché . . . diplomat’s wife . . . I could use a project. Maybe two.” She felt a flicker of excitement. “What do you need?” she asked.

“Money.”

“Uh, Arnie and I aren’t—”

“I wasn’t asking you for money. I was just saying what we needed.”

Louise felt her cheeks reddening. “Of course. I didn’t think you were asking us personally.” But she knew that she had thought that and that Kaarina knew it, too.

Back at the hotel, Louise sat dumbly on the bed, waiting for Arnie to get out of the bathroom. She was looking at the wall just two feet from her face, brooding over the awkward moments in the conversation, simultaneously playing it out in her head with how the conversation would have gone if she’d been smoother. She should have jumped on Kaarina’s need for money, but she’d kept silent after her embarrassing misinterpretation of Kaarina’s statement about it, fearing she would seem too pushy. She was also a bit further troubled because the thought of adopting kept popping up.

When Arnie came out of the bathroom, half-undressed, he stopped.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

Arnie waited.

“Oh, Arnie,” she finally wailed. “Why am I always putting my foot in my mouth?”

“You’re from Oklahoma?” Arnie answered with a question.

She couldn’t help but smile.

He sat down beside her, put his arm around her, and gave her a couple of short affectionate tugs on her shoulder. Then he said, “Nice wall.”

She chuckled.

“Now, what’s wrong?”

She relayed the awkward conversation with Kaarina and ended it with, “I do so want her, all your relatives, to like me.”

They both sat there, silent, Arnie’s hand across her back and holding her shoulder, staring at the wall in front of them. Then in a flat, low voice, Louise said, still looking at the wall, “Are we going to have to spend Christmas in this stupid hotel room?”

They did, but she felt OK about it. Arnie found a tiny little Christmas tree and she’d decorated it with the jewelry she’d brought with her, Arnie’s civilian neckties, and little paper rings she’d fashioned from newspaper and paste. On Christmas morning, they sat next to it, both grateful to be quiet and alone together in the little hotel room.

Since the visit to Kaarina’s, Arnie had only been back in the room to sleep. She’d spent every day looking for housing. She got no help from an overwhelmed American legation staff, and lunch with Mrs. Hamilton had been pleasant but not very helpful. Mrs. Hamilton did invite them to a nice dinner, one they had to cram into a relentless round of Christmas-season embassy parties.

Before they left America, she’d imagined herself at sophisticated parties and dinners. Instead, she found herself in an antiquated and cramped hotel bathroom trying to get dolled up for parties where she felt like the most provincial and unsophisticated woman in the room. And still with only one nice dress. She had to check herself from explaining to the other wives that it wasn’t her fault. She really did have nice clothes—somewhere. She used to envy Arnie’s easy clothing choices. It was either a uniform or his suit—with an accessory choice of wristwatch or no wristwatch. Now she was in the same position. She hated it.

* * *

Even though the parties were often fun and interesting, she felt they were a bit dampened by her constant awareness that she had to guard her speech. She just never quite knew if she was being pumped for information or simply asked about herself out of polite curiosity. During the day, that guarded feeling was amplified by a nagging feeling that she was being watched. It wasn’t like there was some sinister man in a raincoat and fedora darting into alleys and turning his back at department store windows. First, there were no department store windows. Just weren’t. No, it was something—something so subtle that she couldn’t bring herself to mention it to Arnie for fear of looking paranoid. But there was the time she returned unexpectedly to the car and saw Pulkkinen quickly slip what looked like a small notebook into his coat pocket. Then there was the man reading the newspaper just across the street from the hotel. Twice. Waiting for a bus or taxi? It was cold outside.

The briefings in Washington hadn’t all been about how to set a table either. There had been the rather sobering discussion of what to do if your husband didn’t return when you expected him. You didn’t just go to the local police. At one of the after-session cocktail hours the wife of a former military attaché to Spain when Carlton Hayes was ambassador related how, responding to a knock on her door, she’d opened it to five local police, huge men in weird three-corner hats. They’d handed her an order to be out of the country in twenty-four hours. She and her husband had hurried to Ambassador Hayes’s house to be told, not without a great deal of sympathy, that Generalissimo Franco was exceedingly upset with the help the American embassy was giving to Jews coming across the Pyrenees. Her husband had been recognized. Hayes had to sacrifice someone.

When Arnie became a military attaché, Louise knew that she became more than an army wife. She became the wife of a spy—a known and legal spy but a spy, nevertheless. She also knew that if Arnie or she made some false move they could be deported—or worse. All of it both excited and scared her.

Because there had been no US presence in Finland for most of the war, there were no sophisticated radio or human intelligence networks. Lack of the latter meant that personal connections would be a major source of information, and Louise would play a large part in making those connections. In addition, she would need to be constantly alert for any small slip or behavioral nuance at a party or luncheon that she could report to Arnie.

Knowing all this, when Arnie told her about the invitation to a New Year’s Eve party at the Soviet envoy’s residence, Louise had frozen, temporarily unable to move, an equally frozen smile on her face. She knew that the party would be opening night for her. What she didn’t know was that party would engender a series of events that would test Louise to her very soul.

Tuesday, December 31, 1946The Soviet Envoy’s Residence, Helsinki

The night of New Year’s Eve, Louise had managed to steer Arnie to several parties before going to the one at the Soviet envoy’s residence. Now, despite being purposefully fortified by several drinks, walking through lightly falling snow, her arm linked with Arnie’s, she began to worry she’d had too much fortification. She was afraid she’d say the wrong thing. Just being around army officers and their wives, having drinks, she knew a great deal that most governments would want to classify. Suppose something that would hurt the United States slipped out. Maybe something she thought was harmless. But, if she wasn’t sociable, she’d be that awkward wife that hurt her husband’s chances for promotion.

They reached an open gate with two sturdy brick pillars about five feet high on either side. Up a stone path was the large front door to the Soviet envoy’s residence, an imposing brick building. Before the 1944 armistice agreement, it had been the German embassy. It was lost on no one that the Soviets made it the residence of their envoy extraordinary to send a clear signal of Soviet triumph. To the victor go the spoils.

Two guards stood at each side of the door. Arnie touched Louise’s mitten.

“What?” she asked.

“Just be careful. Remember, the walls have ears.”

“Mum’s the word,” she said brightly. She wished she felt as brave as she sounded.

Arnie presented his identification to one of the guards, who to Louise’s delight came to attention and saluted him. The other guard opened the door.

They walked into a large, brightly lit room filled with the babble of a party in full swing. Looking for familiar faces and finding none, Louise realized they must be the only Americans. There were numerous elegantly dressed women in formal gowns and men in black tuxedos and a large number of Russian army officers, already well-oiled and as loud as any Americans.

“Geez, Arnie,” she whispered. “It looks like the whole Red Army is here.”

“Most likely part of the Allied Control Commission,” he whispered back. “More accurately referred to as the Soviet Control Commission. When the Finns signed the treaty with the Soviet Union, England also made peace. They formed the Allied Control Commission, two hundred Russians and fifteen Brits, to make sure the Finns were complying with the terms.”

“Are they?”

“There’s a whole Red Army on the border, just waiting for an excuse to come across. They’re complying alright.”

Overhead was a high ceiling and carved plaster coving. The large room had classic clean lines, which she liked. However, it had been filled with Russian furniture that had the ostentatious bad taste of a sirdar’s throne room. Heavy velvet drapes, dark green and maroon, framed tall windows. Just outside the windows, light reflected off falling snowflakes into the room. There were several tables loaded with ornate silver and gold canapé trays. Bowls of caviar rested on ice in prerevolution silver containers decorated with scenes of wolf hunts. There were dozens of champagne and vodka bottles. The champagne labels were varied and in French. The vodka labels were in Russian, identical, all from the one official government vodka factory. The walls had been decorated with hammers and sickles, making it clear that everything was done for the benefit of the working class. The irony was not lost on Louise.

A small orchestra of two violins, two trumpets, two saxophones, a clarinet, trombone, tuba, and snare drum was playing sedate dance music, strictly on the beat. Behind them on a pedestal was a large electric clock with a second hand jerking toward midnight.

A soldier in a dress uniform took their coats and wraps. Then a beautiful young woman in a turquoise silk cocktail dress that tastefully highlighted every curve, presented them with a silver tray holding several crystal flutes of champagne.

She moved on, and Louise watched Arnie watching her leave. It amused her. Given the way this young woman looked and dressed, it would worry her if Arnie didn’t watch—within reason.

Louise noticed two men looking at them, one around forty, obviously informing the older about something. The older man smiled and started toward them, the younger man in tow. It had to be Aleksandr Abramov, the Soviet envoy. Louise tensed. This man personified the power of the Soviet state, power that not only menaced Finland, but with each news article she read about what was happening in Germany and Eastern Europe, menaced democracy, menaced her.

“Envoy Abramov,” the younger man said in accented English, “may I present Colonel and Mrs. Koski of the American legation.”

Louise smiled as brilliantly as she could and held out her hand, remembering to keep it soft, but not limp. She was relieved when Abramov took it gently and, looking directly into her eyes, said in accented English, “Mrs. Koski. Welcome to Finland.” He immediately turned to Arnie, who put his own hand out, which Abramov seemed to grasp like he was going to pull Arnie out of a hole or something, repeating the greeting. Abramov parted hands with Arnie who had been enduring the vigorous pumping of the man’s handshake with a near-frozen smile.

Indicating the younger man beside him, Abramov said, “Colonel and Mrs. Koski, may I present Colonel Oleg Sokolov. He is responsible for security here in Finland.”

Holding her hand out for Sokolov, Louise smiled, looking directly into his eyes as she’d been taught. He took her hand and smiled—with his mouth—observing her rather than looking at her with cold Uranianblue eyes. She had an awkward moment, not knowing when to withdraw her hand.

“Mrs. Koski. My great pleasure.” He spoke English, but with a Russian accent, reminding her of Arnie’s father, whom she liked very much.

Then Sokolov raised her hand and bowed just enough to kiss it. That had never happened to her before. It felt like being in a Tolstoy novel.

Sokolov, still holding her hand, looked directly into her eyes. She felt that he knew this was a first for her. His knowing this about her, reading her so easily without her saying a word, made her feel vulnerable and uneasy. At the same time, she felt a stirring of excitement. There was something about this man. He was like one of the bad boys her mother would never let her date—but, oh, had she wanted to.

Arnie came to her rescue, holding out his own hand. “Colonel Sokolov. I understand you were there when the Red Army took Berlin.”

Sokolov released Louise’s hand and smiled at Arnie, in the same way he had with Louise. “You have been doing your homework, Colonel Koski.” He shook Arnie’s hand.

“It’s a pleasure to meet one of our allies,” Arnie replied.

The brief Gone-With-the-Wind moment was gone.

It was the first time Louise heard Arnie talking like a diplomat. Maybe somewhere in those seventeen weeks of Strategic Intelligence School there’d been classes on charm like the ones they’d given the wives.

Abramov broke into the introductions, saying to Louise, “I apologize. My wife is somewhere or I’d introduce. I hope you understand. She is hostess.” He chuckled. “Many social emergency to solve.” He smiled and turned to Arnie. “Welcome. And best wishes for the new year.” He nodded and, gesturing to the party, said, “Please, enjoy yourselves.” He left, Sokolov following.

Arnie very quietly said to Louise, “Sokolov is MGB. Ministry of State Security. Secret police. Viktor Abakumov’s crowd. It used to be called the NKVD.” He gave Louise a meaningful look. “They make the gestapo look like amateurs.”

She felt herself tighten, trying to check the uneasiness that came from hearing the names spoken aloud.