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Meanwhile, the Russians were struggling just as hard to get her back. Consul General Lomakin had scarcely been heard from since his press conference at which he bared the Russian side of the Kosenkina story. But no one expected that he had given up. (When he was stationed in San Francisco, he had helped to shanghai an escaped Russian seaman who had dodged his ex-countrymen for a year.) Now he ordered his assistant to get Mrs. Kosenkina back.
Vice Consul Zot Chepurnykh rushed to the hospital with pretty, blonde Secretary Zina Ivanora and angrily demanded the right to see Mrs. Kosenkina. "She is a Soviet citizen," he rasped. "We want to take care of her and we are responsible for her." Hospital officials politely refused.
"Dear Oksana . . ." Twice more that evening Vice Consul Chepurnykh returned. The first time he claimed that he had permission from the police to see the patient. He demanded that Secretary Zina be allowed to keep Mrs. Kosenkina company during the night. A hospital doctor brushed him off quickly: "This is a hospital, not a hotel."
Just before the second visit Mrs. Kosenkina made it clear that she was not willing to meet her compatriots under any circumstances. "I do not want to see anyone from the Russian consulate. I'm afraid to see them. I fear them and will not see them." Still muttering, Chepurnykh departed.
But this time he left an ominous little note. "Dear Oksana: I would like to know how you feel. Do you need anything? We hope you are all right. We took all the necessary steps to have you cured. We wish to see you—Zina and Zot."
Enter the Ambassador. Next day the Russians got at least part of their wish.
With a Russian-speaking police detective standing by, Vice Consul Chepurnykh managed a brief interview.
"Would you like to go to another hospital?" he asked.
"No."
"How do you feel?"
"All right. I don't want to talk to you."
"Did you make a statement that you didn't want to see anyone from the Russian consulate?"
"I don't want to see anyone. You kept me a prisoner. You would not let me go."
There was one more bombshell. The day Oksana Kosenkina had been captured, Russian Ambassador Alexander Panyushkin himself had slipped up to New York to see her. The story leaked out that he had vainly ordered her to sign an affidavit swearing that she was not a prisoner in the consulate. If she did, "everything would be forgotten"; her attempt to get out of returning to Russia would be forgiven.
Legal Asylum. By this time Ambassador Panyushkin was not the only Russian diplomat whose ears were burning. The day before Mrs. Kosenkina's plunge, Foreign Minister Molotov had summoned U.S. Ambassador Bedell Smith. In a formal note of protest he accused the U.S. Government of "connivance" with "a White Guard gangster organization" which had tried to kidnap her in the first place. But now the whole Russian propaganda machine was reduced to complaining about "the scandalous behavior of American Intelligence agents" disguised as police, who were putting words into Oksana Kosenkina's mouth. There was no concealing their unhappy confusion.