美国国家公共电台 NPR 'The Secrets We Kept' Imagines What CIA Secretaries Knew（在线收听）

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

The Russian Revolution, a doomed love affair, Omar Sharif and snow - lots of snow. When Lara Prescott was born, "Doctor Zhivago" was her mother's favorite movie. She even named her daughter Lara after the main character. So it's not surprising that Lara Prescott had a lifelong interest in the movie and the Boris Pasternak book it's based on. But she never thought she'd write a novel about "Doctor Zhivago" until she learned what the CIA did with the Pasternak book. NPR's Lynn Neary reports.

LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: It was about five years ago when Lara Prescott's dad sent her an article in The Washington Post...

LARA PRESCOTT: ...About how the CIA had used "Doctor Zhivago" as a tool of propaganda during the Cold War. And I had to find out everything about the mission.

NEARY: The result is Prescott's debut novel, "The Secrets We Kept." It's the story of a young woman who became involved with the CIA's plan to get copies of "Doctor Zhivago" into the Soviet Union, where it had been banned because of its portrayal of life under communism. Throughout the book, Prescott weaves her spy saga with a story of Boris Pasternak and his real-life lover Olga, the model for Lara. But much of the novel is set in Washington, D.C.

PRESCOTT: We're standing in front of 2430 E Street or Navy Hill, which was the former headquarters of the CIA before they moved to Langley in 1961.

NEARY: Prescott's story begins here in the secretarial pool at the old CIA headquarters, a building still well hidden and protected by guards and gates. Prescott says, when she began researching the story, she became interested in the women who worked there in the 1950s.

PRESCOTT: I was always pulled towards these women because I was researching all of these memos and reports. And they were all heavily redacted about this Zhivago mission. And names and places were redacted. And I kept thinking about the women who typed these reports and these women who would know the secrets of the secret-keepers.

NEARY: Some of the women had worked as spies during World War II.

PRESCOTT: Some of them had led French Resistance fighters to the front lines. Some of them had planted bombs to sabotage trains and bridges. When the war was over and the CIA was forming, they were put in positions behind desks, often in record-keeping, clerical positions despite all that they had done during the war.

NEARY: One of the main characters in the book, Irina, was not a former spy. She needed a job and found one as a typist at the CIA. But the spy masters saw something in Irina that made them think she could take on a different role.

PRESCOTT: And one of those roles was someone who was a messenger, who carried messages and would pick up packages and deliver them to different places in D.C., never really knowing what was inside the packages. But she blended in. And no one would suspect that this young woman had an important message.

NEARY: The CIA begins training Irina to work on the Zhivago mission. One of her trainers is Sally, a beautiful, sophisticated woman who still works as a spy in the post-war world. She takes Irina to Dumbarton Oaks in D.C.'s Georgetown neighborhood.

PRESCOTT: Dumbarton Oaks, in particular, was known as a place where meetings would occur between KGB handlers and their recruits. So I thought that Sally - she would take Irina, who she was training, to the park to talk.

NEARY: We enter the park, which surrounds the Dumbarton Oaks mansion and gardens.

We just need to find a park bench...

PRESCOTT: Yeah.

NEARY: ...In a quiet spot.

PRESCOTT: Over there.

NEARY: It's in this park that Irina's story takes a turn. As she was writing, Prescott sensed a spark between her characters and knew they would fall in love. It became her way into writing a love story that parallels the one in "Doctor Zhivago."

PRESCOTT: You can't think of "Doctor Zhivago" and not think of the love story and how these two were brought together under extraordinary circumstances but could never be. And I knew when I was writing that I wanted to write another love story. And it fell upon Irina and Sally almost by accident. And it was that first scene when they're in Dumbarton Oaks. I was like, I think there might be something more here with these characters.

NEARY: Eventually, Irina is sent to pick up a microfilm of "Doctor Zhivago" in Russian, which will be made into a book that the CIA smuggles into the Soviet Union. Prescott set this scene in one of her favorite places in Washington.

PRESCOTT: This is The Bishop's Garden of the National Cathedral.

NEARY: Prescott had read that this was a place where CIA handoffs often occurred.

PRESCOTT: It's the kind of place where you're in the middle the city, but you also feel like you've entered into a whole different world. And thinking of Irina waiting for the handoff of "Dr. Zhivago" in film form - it just appeared in my mind that it was here.

NEARY: These days, it's almost hard to imagine that the CIA would expend so much energy smuggling a work of fiction that became more famous for its love story than its politics.

PRESCOTT: I think that was my first reaction, too - is, how could a book be the center of this CIA plot? But at the same time, of course, books could be used in this way because they can change the hearts and minds of people.

NEARY: We may live in the age of Twitter and fake news, says Lara Prescott. But books remain a powerful tool, threatening enough that governments still resort to censorship to stop the flow of words and ideas. Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.