VRANYO
I'll save you the obvious.
In a moment, Clark's sister Jennifer will be walking in through the front door. I'd put my arm on her three days ago in the trolley, before she could exit. I briefly thought I was going to get another punch.
Did she know I'd been riding that same trolley as her? If she was who I thought she was, it is hard to fathom that she couldn't know. Me, I'm a secretary and a translator. I'm no Stan Beeman. I'm no Clark, what with his corny wig.
I haven't slept. I've left my daughter with my single-parent friend across the hall, who has a daughter the same age. I'm not sure what my friend thought when I told her I might not be home until late, or maybe even the next morning. A bit of scandal in the building I suppose.
With Jennifer, this was no honey trap. They probably did those kinds of things in the KGB, though, so it was always better to be mindful. I picked up quite a lot about 'tradecraft' being central in Counter Intelligence for all those years, never as a practitioner. Mainly as someone who witnessed how often it went wrong.
I haven't slept the last two nights. My mind has been racing, I even forgot my daughter in the bath with the tap still going. She's a big girl now, so she told me, she managed to turn off the water herself. Too much ran through my mind. I wish I could turn it off.
Maybe once Jennifer gets here, I'll get some answers.
Except if she lies her ass off. (There was a translator's conundrum; in Russian, what was the equivalent of 'lying one's ass off'? Was it 'Vranyo'? Maybe not, that was Russian for lying when everyone knows you're lying. A translator's work is never done.)
JENNIFER
I can almost assure you that 'Jennifer Westerfeld' is not her name. For sake of at least some discretion, that's what I refer to her as. However, I knew it was more complicated with me. My friends here call me 'Marta'. I know someone here has a command of English if they put the 'H' in my name. I never use my daughter's name with strangers.
Jennifer Westerfeld: Hi, Martha, it is so good to see you. So good that they are taking care of you. You see, we promised you.
Martha Hanson: I wish I could say the same. I need answers, Jennifer. First and foremost, Clark. He's not your brother, is he.
JW: Ok, skip the pleasantries. Ok, that part is true, Martha, we're related. Clark and I are originally from Smolensk, halfway to Belarus. Mom died while we were in the States.
MH: This is a bad way to start off.
JW: How so?
MH: Never mind. I probably should just leave. But right now I am hungry for simple information. Even lies. -pause- You skillfully evaded my question…..
JW: Look, Martha. You've been treated well. We promised you that. -pause- Clark cares for you, more deeply than you know. -pause- Tell me about yourself. You said you were a translator for TASS….
MH: I have a daughter.
JW: Really!?
MH: Adopted. Her parents were killed by Chechnyans. That's all I know. Either they're not telling me the rest, or you people keep records worse than we did.
JW: I'm surprised you're a translator. With your background from the States, the SVR should be picking your brain.
MH: I've never been asked.
JW: Really? -pause- How old?
MH: My daughter? You know what, I don't want to talk about her. I want to raise her not knowing anything about you people.
JW: That's fair.
MH: -pause, staring- Look me straight in the eye and tell me you're just Clark's sister!
JW: It's been more than ten years, Martha. -pause- For mercy's sake, Martha. Move on. Clark and me, we live together. I told you.
MH: Were you related to Gabriel? Did you live with him at that house? Was Gabriel your father?
JW: No. Gabriel was a colleague of ours. -pause- Did he ever get in touch with you, over here?
MH: Once. I threw him out.
JW: But you are well treated here, Martha. We told you you would be. You are regarded with respect and admiration.
MH: Is that what you're doing here, Jennifer? Trying to assuage your conscience? -pause- What's your Russian name, Jennifer?
JW: Nadezhda.
MH: Common enough. -pause- Did either Clark or Gabriel ever get in touch with my parents?
JW: As far as I know, yes. Look, there were a lot of things that were simply impossible. Both Clark and Gabriel risked sanction for contacting your parents. One reason they got off, was because of the regard in which you're held. -pause- We take care of our own, Martha.
MH: Don't call me that, Jennifer. Not you. -pause- So, if you're not related to Gabriel, do you and Clark have family here?
JW: We were in the States for an awful long time.
MH: Oh. I see.
JW: What is it that you see, Martha?
MH: -pause- You. You have a daughter, too. Don't you? -silence- Ok, that's refreshing, that there are some things you won't lie about, when confronted. -silence- Let me guess, probably in her late twenties by now? How am I doing?
JW: We had a complicated life in the States.
MH: So. Not even a denial. -pause- Was there anything about Clark that was real? Aside from that silly wig, I mean.
JW: I cannot answer that, Martha. His affection for you was real. You, you're going to have to tell me what he was to you. -pause- What was he to you, Martha?
MH: -sternly- He was my husband! We were talking about kids, Jennifer. -pause- Is that the reason he balked at kids, with me? Because of you?
JW: Me, I was never certain that he wouldn't choose you.
MH: The one, tiny concession to the truth that Clark made, Jennifer, was on that last day. Jesus, he was my husband. -crying- I'd asked him how long it would be before he'd join me. Here. -pause- He said, 'Never'. -pause- 'Never'. Not vindictively, not with a laugh at the mark he'd been playing. -pause- The man, he'd already chosen someone else. Me, I knew at that moment, I wasn't a mark, I was the 'other woman'. How stupid I'd actually been. -pause- I prayed that that airplane to Florida, that it would crash. That the boat to Cuba, it would sink.
JW: Don't underestimate yourself, Martha.
MH: I've run it over and over and over, endlessly these last ten years. I'm worn out crying about it. If it weren't for my daughter, I'd do something about it. -pause, then staring at Jennifer- Clark, he chose you, Jennifer. You.
JW: You don't know, Martha. Me, I saw it in him. Each day.
MH: You people! You do this so effortlessly, truth and lies are blurred. -pause- God, I hope that that is what torments you now.
JW: Look, Martha. I'm telling you as a friend, you don't know what you meant to him. -pause- I need to go. Let's agree that we never meet again. Let's stagger our times on the trolley.
MH: You're going home to him, aren't you?
JW: -got up, walked out the door-
SLUZHBA VNESHNEY RAZVEDKI - Служба внешней разведки
It's like riding a bicycle. The FBI, the CIA, the FSB and the SVR - at heart they are bureaucracies. Even these modern days in the 1990s, they still push paper. Like twenty years ago when I started to figure out sitting outside of the Counter Intelligence's Director's office, they pushed paper through the likes of me. I saw all of it. I decided what Agent Gaad saw. I never knew the power I had. (Apparently, Clark did.)
After a while, one developed a flow chart in one's head. Countless times I had bailed out Agent Gaad, not to mention his predecessor, simply knowing what was what. How the Bureau worked. How it worked in the other divisions. Not the way that Mr. Hoover had envisioned it - the things we learned about him after his death explained all sorts of things. Those things were often a surprise to outsiders and politicians. Occasionally a surprise to even Agent Gaad.
But never to me. It always flowed just as I thought it would.
One of the things I obsess about? It was the one thing that by definition I could not witness. I saw Agents Gaad, Beeman and Aderholt in the seconds following their discovery of the pen. Then the blinds were drawn.
What I never saw was their mouths falling open when they found out I was married to a KGB agent. That sort of thing. I have spent late nights - well into the wee hours - imagining the panic in the FBI once I was found out. I even rehearsed the conversation Frank Gaad must have had in the elevator, a conversation in the loneliness of his head when he'd been called upstairs to be fired. They'd never have come down to fire him. I can even guess how many days would have passed before the mucky-mucks acted.
You just know. At heart a bureaucracy, with a personality all its own. Male dominated, women as the minions who really run the place. The gossip in the office temp-pool was a daily road-map to what's really what at the FBI.
Sitting here in the lobby of the SVR, I knew what was behind those walls. I could see it, like an x-ray where you see the blood flowing through veins. The connective tissue.
What was I doing here? I was remedying what should have happened as soon as I had arrived from Czechoslovakia. Soon, I was meeting with Arkady Ivanovich Zotov. The fact that I managed to be accepted for such a meeting showed that my instincts had not dulled. I'd aimed high, and was successful. As I'd expected.
I had attracted a big fish. If you were to ask how, I'm not even sure I know. But ten years in Counter Intelligence at the Bureau makes you savvy to things. To how things work.
Maybe not how to wear a wig, or how to honey trap, or even how to lie. Or even punch someone in a manner solely designed to deprive them of breath.
Me, I was savvy to how paper moved throw a place like this. That, dear gentle reader, was worth more than the whole SVR pension I'd received up until this point.
ARKADY ZOTOV
As I sat opposite him at his desk, it was self-evident what each item in the office was. Three filing cabinets, one with a combination lock. I bet the woman in the outer office has the combination. A desk with a main drawer above his lap, and two deeper side drawers. Their phone system was out of the dark ages. That meant that Mr. Zotov relied on the woman in the outer office all the more.
For pity's sake, he even had a supply of fancy pens at arm's reach! Made me think what his secretary might have had in her purse!
Maybe I should be meeting with her to get the real skinny on this place. Then again, in places like this, you don't want to muss the men's hair.
We'd not yet spoken to each other, but I felt remarkably at home.
