So far every trail had led to a dead end.
Take the newspaper he had saved for eighty years, covered in faded ink and antiquated headlines. Which was the critical clue—Browder Opens 8th Communist Party Convention, Detroit Auto Men Furious at Betrayal, Workers Urged to Pack Bronx Court This Noon? Or, just as likely, none of the above? Tiana felt ready to go for a hike, take a shower, and leave the problem for a future generation.
But wait, it got better. For instance, there were the only highlighted words in his entire Bible: “An evil man seeketh only rebellion: therefore a cruel messenger shall be sent against him.” The four digits tattooed on his arm: 58-12. Or the quote scribbled on his desk: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” It might be a tangled web somewhere in the middle, but just now all she had was loose ends.
And of course, she had to cope with his own solemn charge, ringing out to her from that bewildering will:
I bequeath and devote to my daughter, Tiana Emily Morton (Smith): justice for Katia Kuznet, or her heirs and relations yet living. To her I also bequeath all my personal effects. To Katia Kuznet, or her living heirs and relations, I bequeath my personal estate and property (including, but not limited to, all intangibles and all tangible personal property including land, stocks, securities, cash, savings, and other realty).
Tiana thought she was the most long-suffering daughter on the planet. It was bad enough to be randomly deprived of a fortune, but to be assigned as private detective to boot, and left with a batch of clues as cryptic as a 1934 Daily Worker, a quote from Marmion, and a name she’d never heard before, Katia Kuznet…
“Yeah, I loved you too, Dad,” she muttered, glancing at the picture on her desk. George with baby Emily in his arms, herself, dad on the right. Plain old dad, with those ordinary gray eyes and the unremarkable persona you’d expect of a John Smith. For crying out loud, if he were gonna leave a mystery like this behind, why hadn’t he at least had a name she could look up?
Perhaps worst of all, George was all in. Whenever George went all in on something, rash decisions would probably be made. So far, though, he’d only made the questionably helpful discovery that Kuznet was the Russian equivalent of Smith.
Tiana slapped a final post-it note on her evidence board.
58-12. Failure to denounce a counterrevolutionary crime,
reliably known to be in preparation or carried out, shall be punishable by—
deprivation of liberty for a term not less than six months.
[6 June 1927 (SU no 49, art. 330)]
Another tid-bit courtesy of George—and the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
She stepped back, pushing strands of rebellious hair off her forehead in a gesture of profound thought. The evidence board looked businesslike and professional, satisfactory as far as it went.
The door flew open and George’s messy iron-gray hair flopped excitedly into the room.
“Ready to go to Russia?”
“Russia?”
George glanced appreciatively at the evidence board. “I just booked our flights. So far, every trail has led to Russia.”
Tiana looked blankly at the family photo. George followed her glance, humming softly.
“The spider bid the mouse, sleep, sleep,
Spider in the house, sleep deep
Don’t wake up or you might find a spider in your mouth…”
Geneva D 