PHILIP AND ELIZABETH

I had not seen or communicated with Nadezhda since her imprisonment four years ago. The times I was able to make it to court, she'd not been there. Her lawyer represented her. The three or four times that she had made an appearance, I had not been there. Apparently they wouldn't let my letters in. Russian prisons change people. Out of the many things Russians could learn from Americans is to set the bar "inside" a wee bit higher.

The major difference? Russian prisons are overloaded with ideological cases, like Nadezhda's. America's prisons reflect the simmering, underlying racial tensions in that country - which I'll admit, some regard as equally ideological. But America has much to look positively at. I mean, I could have made a go of it in the United States as petit bourgeoisie. I could have climbed that ladder. I understood their values. In Russia in 1995, it is now not a crime to admit to that. In parts of Moscow, those with means are able to enter into that chaotic arena of capitalism, and I wonder if this country will ever make a transition.

Why I'm not optimistic? We love our strong man leaders too much.

I was sitting in our lawyer's office. He was a mover and shaker in Russian Criminal Code reform, particularly the proper regulation of sentences in our prisons. No less than President Yeltsin has given him his ear, and has promised reforms to update what still exists from old Soviet days. That connection, obviously, worked to our benefit. All of which is academic, I suppose, except it relates directly to what Nadezhda has been through since her second arrest in late 1991. Her first arrest had been in August of that year, suspected as variously a Gorbachev operative, or later as an operative of Boris Pugo's, the then Interior Minister. How one reconciles those two things, can only probably be done in Russia during upheaval. Pugo's suicide at the conclusion of that coup attempt should have settled things for her. Indeed, she had been briefly released.

But our lawyer said that the chaos had left Nadezhda without patronage within the legal system at the time which itself had descended into disarray. She awaited trial for all of 1992 and 1993 while in prison. The Centre hadn't even intervened. Our lawyer had only seen her on three occasions in that time. She was convicted in late 1993.

So there I was sitting. Waiting for the latest. The Russian system at its best - hurry up and wait.

Me? These last years I had not exactly been petit bourgeoisie. I have been with Aeroflot as a booking agent. Surprise, eh? I was climbing through their ranks. It's worth something these days to have someone embedded in the bureaucracy who knows his way around Western travel systems. Stavos would have done better here than me. But me being a hero of the old Soviet Union still helps. Some days, though, I really do miss the Dupont Circle Travel Agency. We were just getting computerized, back then - a double edged sword. We could make the most complicated, all-inclusive travel arrangements in a day, but the low-cost agents now had the ability to cut into us.

Coming to Aeroflot was like traveling back in time. It was easy to see how the over-bureaucratization of the travel business in Russia meant undue complication in a paper-run operation. Too many bureaucrats had to handle the same piece of paper. It's amazing that the planes stayed in the air. I swear that Aeroflot management resisted computerization because it cut into their ability to over-bureaucratize things. Besides, middle management jobs needed protection!

Not that either me or Nadezhda needed this. We'd been received back into the old Soviet Union as heroes. We landed on the right side of the, then, Directorate S purge. Put simply, in 1987 and 1988 we had backed Gorbachev, and Gorbachev had won. Sort of.

In 1991, all of that fell. Gorbachev himself signed the Soviet Union out of business. I stayed out of it. Nadezhda did not. I was worried that if Gorbachev had been pushed out - as they tried in August of 1991 - that we'd be high on the "settling of old scores" list. Arkady Zutov suspected that our old American field handler, Claudia, had been behind Nadezhda's targeting.

Selfishly, I wondered what the dissolution would do to our pensions. As Heroes of the Soviet Union, where would our livelihood come from if that country ceased to exist? Say what you want, it turns out that Russians do take care of our own - unless you're on the wrong side of a coup. As our history of brutal purges confirms, we can eradicate opposition swiftly and severely. But Nadezhda and I had accumulated 20 years overseas service doing the dirtiest of dirty work on behalf of our people. Strangely, the dissolution of the larger Soviet federation cemented that. We'd been hailed as soldiers for the motherland, not just for the USSR.

Albeit still secretly. Few outside of the reformed security apparatus knew the extent of our overseas service, except for the money we always seemed to have. Many at Aeroflot thought I'd done over there what I'd was doing here.

Except Nadezhda would not leave it alone. Her reputation among those who knew, opened doors for her. I love her for it, I hated the risk, but she wouldn't quit. So there I sat, looking at my watch for the umpteeth time for the lawyer to arrive.

Which this time worked. In he came, through the waiting room motioning me to come join him in at his desk in the cubicle of this large office.

He said, "Ok, we'll be able to pick her up at Lefortovo tonight." I'd not been prepared for him to blurt that out. He said that the transfer of administration of Lefortovo last year to the Ministry of the Interior has finally borne fruit. One such fruit was that Nadezhda would be free. Yeltsin himself, somehow, had been involved. The way he described it, she would be free and clear of everything that had transpired back in late 1991. "Nadezhda has more friends in the MIA than she did in People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Obviously. Lucky she didn't end up in a Gulag."

I knew Lefortovo. An old KGB prison, built last century in Czarist times. It's a hellhole. Site of mass executions. He asked me if I wanted to hear something funny. I told him that there could be nothing funny about any of this, but he continued.

"Nadezhda has for the last year been in the same unit which once housed Nadezhda Ulanovskaya, who with her husband Alexander had been part of the 1930s Soviet illegals program in the States. What are the odds? Ulanovskaya ended up as a dissident on her release, emigrated to Israel in the 80s."

The good old days.

I asked, "have you seen my Nadezhda?"

"I did. It was briefly in court. We did not have a chance to chat, I think they just want to end this part of whatever all this has been. Lefortovo had cleaned her up, which is always a good sign. Prosecutor put up no resistance to anything. It was their new guy, a junior who I've never seen before. When it's the junior, you know it's going to go well."

"How did she look?"

"Well, probably as expected. They cleaned her up for court, and they don't always do that. I mean, seeing that and seeing a junior for the prosecutor's office - both were good signs and it looks to be borne out. We're picking her up tonight."

"I mean, did she look well?"

He paused before answering: "Let's be clear, she's not coming back from the Crimea. Even under the MIA, Lefortovo has been in this business for a long time. It's a law unto itself, sometimes they just ignore court orders."

"So what happens now?"

He said that I should probably return to Aeroflot, finish the afternoon and then tell them I won't be in for a few days. My car was at the apartment anyways. He would pick me up from work and we'd head to the eastern part of the city to the prison. She'll be delivered to the same gate he has used on those rare occasions when he'd visited.