Rosalie Knecht - Who Is Vera Kelly?

Who Is Vera Kelly? is the twisty, literary, woman-driven spy novel youve always wanted to read. Vera Kelly hopscotches from Brooklyn to Buenos Aires, fueled by gin and cigarettes, on the run from her past and equipped with a case of listening devices. But this is no ordinary adventure novel: Rosalie Knecht is a sensitive and gifted writer with a lyrical voice that imbues this dazzling novel with unexpected emotional depth.

AMY STEWART, New York Times bestselling author of Girl Waits with Gun

Rosalie Knecht has created a truly fresh and original take on the spy novel, full of suspense and surprise and beautifully observed details of its Cold War setting. Best of all is Vera herself, a memorable heroine who seems destined to become an icon of the genre. This is a remarkable and wonderful book!

DAN CHAON, New York Times bestselling author of Ill Will

Sardonic, intelligent, and thrillingly original, Rosalie Knecht has not only revitalized the female spy novel with her feisty, indeterminable heroine, shes also joyfully queered it. I loved this book and I loved Vera. Read this book right now!

COURTNEY MAUM, author of I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You

Copyright 2018 Rosalie Knecht

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Tin House Books, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.

Published by Tin House Books, Portland, Oregon, and Brooklyn, New York

Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Knecht, Rosalie, author.

Title: Who is Vera Kelly? / by Rosalie Knecht.

Description: First U.S. edition. | Portland, Oregon : Tin House Books, 2018.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018002612| ISBN 9781947793019 (paperback) | ISBN 9781947793026 (ebook)

Subjects: | GSAFD: Adventure fiction. | Spy stories.

Classification: LCC PS3611.N43 W48 2018 | DDC 813/.6dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018002612

First US Edition 2018

Interior design by Jakob Vala

www.tinhouse.com

For Mark Joseph Leonida and in memory of his father, Deacon Clod M. Leonida

On a Tuesday I came home from school to an empty house, watched the evening news, and then took two Equanil caplets lifted from my mother. Nothing happened, so after an hour I took three more, and then maybe more after that, I cant remember. My mother came home from work after a late evening laying out a special issue of the magazine and found the decorative fish tank in the front hall smashed on its stand and the fish on the carpet. I had apparently stumbled and fallen against it in my stupor, and then climbed the stairs to my room and sat down to write a letter to my friend Joanne. My mother found me passed out on my desk, drooling on my stationery set. She told me all this when I woke up at 4:00 AM in the hospital. You know you cant talk to her, Vera, she said. She had a journalists eye for detail.

The doctor kept me in the hospital for two days, and when I came home I was down like I had never been before. They had pumped my stomach, and it felt like everything inside of me had been thoroughly blended with a milkshake machine and then poured out. I was discharged on an overcast Friday morning when my mother was at work, so the housekeeper, Mrs. Cooper, picked me up in the car. She brought me chicken broth in a thermos. I was wearing the clothes Id been admitted in, a blue sweater that I had to throw away when I got home because there was dry vomit all down the sleeve.

I lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland, in a brick house on a corner lot with a beech tree in front. My window was the one all the way to the left, hidden behind the leaves in the summer. There were flagstones going up to the front door. It was a very nice house, which I didnt realize at the time because it looked like all the other houses in the neighborhood, and Id never lived anywhere else.

I met with Nico Fermetti in his kitchen on a Thursday evening after dinner, the two of us sitting in chairs pulled up to a Formica table with a chrome band around the edge. The surface was bubbled and bleached in places from cigarette burns, the pocks in the plastic left over after the ash had been scrubbed out. Nicos wife hovered at the stove, which he didnt seem to mind. I didnt like it. I saw no reason to trust her, and she was clearly suspicious of me. I couldnt guess who Nico had told her I was.

I had brought my things in a small, gray hard case, which I kept beside my chair. Seora Fermetti silently offered me a cup of instant coffee with hot milk. I thanked her, although shed already turned her back, and then burned my lips on the drink and set it down. Argentines never seemed to have this problem. Id spent the two weeks Id been in-country with the roof of my mouth perpetually scalded.

Lets see the toys, Anne, Nico said.

She has to go, I said, in English.

Puf, he said, waving his hand dismissively.

Its a rule, I said.

Nico was very tall, well over six feet with a long torso that sloped down to a heavy gut. He had a large bald head and a dark mustache, and bad posture that might put people at ease. He was the contact Gerry had told me about. Officially, he was a foreman for a massive construction firm called Aliadas S.A. Unofficially, he was the man that the president of Aliadas S.A. called if he had a problem. Nico knew everyone and could fix anything. He had spent his life in this working-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires, which meant that he knew every union from the ground up, and he had built houses for the rich for twenty years, which meant he knew the old-money families who summered in Punta del Este and Mar del Plata, the core of the Buenos Aires elite. The president of Aliadas was friendly with the CIA because Communists haunted his dreams. He lived in fear of the nationalization of his company, and some said that as rumors of a coup began to circulate he had started to import rifles from Brazil to his ranch in Corrientes. In defense of his interests, he offered the time and expertise of Nico Fermetti to the CIA.

Nico sighed and murmured a few words to his wife. She looked at me hatefully and went out to the living room. I heard the TV snap on, and then the sound of a mournful full-throated male warble. The singer was popular, but I couldnt remember his name.

Youre very casual, I said to Nico, still in English. I could just see the edge of his wifes gray permanent through the doorway. The angel Gabriel watched me balefully from a framed print above her wingback chair.

This is my home, he said.

I lifted the hard case onto the table and snapped it open. I let it sit there open for a moment. I was proud of the bugs. I packed them carefully and lingered over them, and I enjoyed the effect they had on the few people I could show them to. There were nearly three dozen of them, wrapped in cotton batting, beside my other equipmentmy transceiver and soldering kit and the extra rolls of wire.

No bigger than buttons, Nico said.

I lifted out the six on top. Each membrane was the size of a quarter, with a half-wavelength antenna of four and a quarter inches.