In the Garden of Beasts

CHAPTER 37

Watchers

While all this was occurring, another nation’s spies became interested in the Dodds. By April, Martha’s relationship with Boris had caught the interest of his superiors in the NKVD. They sensed a rare opportunity. “Tell Boris Winogradov that we want to use him to carry out a project that interests us,” one wrote in a message to the agency’s Berlin chief.

Somehow—possibly through Boris—Moscow had come to understand that Martha’s infatuation with the Nazi revolution was beginning to wane.

The message continued: “It has to do with the fact that, according to our information, the sentiments of his acquaintance (Martha Dodd) have fully ripened for her to be recruited once and for all to work for us.”