THE LAST MORNING
We would not know when the travel to do with our assignment would happen, until it happened. The real Americans among us, called that our Yogi Berra moment. It was not until I got there that I understood the reference! (So much to learn!) That had been the way it had been with Emmett and Leanne the previous year - they been training separately, and Leanne was simply taken from the disguises training and we hadn't seen her again.
Emmett, at least I had said goodbye and had wished him, 'duty and honour'. All he had done was spread his arms wide and quip, "as if anything else!"
Okay, Emmett, who was the 'American' here?
So it was when I awoke that morning at the cottage - after another dream about Irina, always welcome, always troubling - that when my eyes cleared…..
….. I noted Elizabeth's open door. On rising, I further noted that both she was gone as well as her paraphernalia for the day.
I fed myself, got dressed, read some preparatory notes, grabbed my kit, and headed out. At the weapons range, it was easy to spot…. Elizabeth had not been there.
Had Comrade General Zhukov sent her to America ahead of me? If so, that was bad, bad practise. We were a team. Despite the constant pressure of the faux-marriage, despite the contextless arguments we'd had - blessedly short, because we actually did not know each other, it was simply a mistake to split us up even if even for a short time.
Probably because of the fact that neither of us knew anything about the other, we needed more time, even to argue as 'husband and wife', not less.
At the range, I'd quietly inquired with some other trainees, particularly the female-comrade who'd taken the time to explain 'the strike' to me. Nothing.
Mid-morning, a trainer came up and said in English that the Comrade General wanted to see me immediately. Like everyone else, I never once questioned something like that. It took a lot to conjure up insubordination in me, and this was not it. I left my kit behind, unpacked at the range (thinking I was returning), and walked apace to the Comrade General's office.
It was the very place where three years' previous I had first laid eyes on Elizabeth Korman, the Nadezhda version, now Elizabeth Jennings.
BLACK POWER
"I'm afraid we have to move up the date for your placement in Washington, D.C.," Zhukov said on my arrival, without fanfare. "There's been another assassination. The insertion team will pick you up this evening and begin the process. Don't bother packing. Leave your kit at the range, it'll be seen to. Just dress warmly."
This was one of those things which you knew was coming, but now that it was suddenly there, I felt so, so unprepared.
Zhukov continued, "you'll still be based in the Capital. But after getting settled - at your own pace, but please make it quick - you're to take a day trip to Philadelphia and make contact with this man, an American Negro." Zhukov handed me a picture of a very young man, with the name 'Gregory Thomas' on it transliterated into Russian.
I asked Zhutov, "why the rush?"
He gave me that look of a Russian commander not used to being asked to explain. Yet as many of us had said during our training, it was us who were going into the jaws of the lion - with no contact with home or the Directorate S apparatus other than through a shortwave radio. (We were to acquire an inexpensive amateur radio transceiver once there, and neither myself nor Elizabeth had participated in that part of the training yet. Me I already knew Morse Code, but in Cyrillic, not in Latin based characters. So, there we were, set to go…. on a moments notice.)
"Can I ask, Comrade General, why now?"
He paused, then said, "the American Muslim leader Malcolm X, he has just been assassinated. In New York. America continues to kill its own. The Nation of Islam in America, it is now beginning to fracture. The whole Negro civil rights movement, it too will fracture, so we believe. The time is ripe and crucial to make inroads among radical Negros, it is a unique opportunity - handed to us on a platter, as the Americans say. The anger among the Black population will even fracture the otherwise non-violent protests of people like Martin Luther King."
Zhukov had such a detailed analysis of the fault lines in American society in 1965, I was worried I would not be able to keep up once there.
Zhukov concluded, "your settlement time in situ will be badly truncated. There'll be very little time once there to lie dormant and build your cover."
Me, my mind was racing - although the wisdom was that the length of time it would take to safely insert us into the American Capital, would provide the time needed to think things through. For instance - given what Emmett and Leanne had done - would Elizabeth and I have children over there - as part of the cover? The Comrade General, he'd been very silent about what Emmett and Leanne had done.
It must have been the calculated look on my face that prompted what The Comrade General said next.
"Elizabeth," he paused then blurted out, "she is not going with you."
He let his next 'pause' linger way, way too long. As it was, he broke into my dumbfounded silence by mercifully adding, "not initially at least…"
It was not hard to remain silent. He finally said, "there was an incident with her at Lefortovo Prison, where she was to handle an execution. You know full well, Philip, that that is part of the training here. You, yourself, you had your baptism there as well - I don't know anyone in Directorate S who is really prepared for that potential in your job - I mean, you, Philip, please remember how hard it was for you in the days' after…."
I blurted out interrupting him badly, "please, comrade, with all due respect, please stop talking." Knowing the delicacy of this issue with his agents, Zhukov ignored my insubordination.
Finally I asked, more as a statement, "she's not coming?"
"She'll be there Philip. Just not now. You'll have to rely on our broadcasts once there. It'll be you who initiates her into America. You need to get up to speed with amateur radio transmitting, we need to hear from you. The quicker the better. Despite the training here, everyone who has gone says no amount of training can prepare you. Leanne once wrote back to us, 'my training was useless, yet my training is the *only* thing to fall back on'."
Zhukov shook my hand, and wished me luck, told me that the whole of the Soviet Union already regarded me as a hero of the motherland. His last words were literally, "radio, then Gregory Thomas. Get involved with the Negro radicals."
Back at the cottage, as ordered I did not bother to pack, except to dress warmly and wear the boots procured from America - waiting for the insertion team to arrive. Hoping against hope that Elizabeth would walk in before I was whisked away.
Waiting there in the silence of the cottage - I experienced a first.
For the first time, when I thought of 'Elizabeth', I thought only of Nadezhda. Nadezhda needed to be with me, and she would not.
It was a moment later when I noted, Irina - she was no longer 'Elizabeth'.
NERVES
A transportation hub badly in need of renovation, I arrived three weeks later at Washington Union Station by Greyhound bus. En route from where I'd debarked the insertion - and was finally on my own - I tested myself in casual conversation with Greyhound passengers, seat mates, ordinary Americans.
One young woman asked me where I was from. An acid test, to be sure. Steeling myself, I asked her to guess… she said, "well, you're obviously not from the South, there's no hint of 'twang'. Not the West Coast…. so, I'm going to guess, eastern Pennsylvania?"
That was the first time I was to really get into 'Philip'. I said, "Pittsburgh, actually. I'm still on a high from Bill Mazerowski's blast in the '60s Series." She said she was not a baseball fan, but her dad had always talked about that home run.
It was a good start for me - right from that Greyhound trip, I was seeing why America was America. Of course, its crimes on the international stage were legion - its original sin of racism, still left scars on people.
Yet me, I was just another immigrant, albeit a shadowy one… one could smell the opportunity here. Collectivism offered us Soviets a safety net, yet there was something about Americans building a culture working without one.
By the time the Greyhound arrived at Union Station in D.C., I was tired and disoriented, but found my way to the bank, mercifully close-by. At the bank, it was the first time I formally introduced myself by the full moniker, 'Philip Martin Jennings'.
I showed them my Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, identification - completely fake - and when all that checked out, asked to be let into my safety deposit box - and have some privacy. This first real test worked 'like a charm', as they would say. The lone key I had in my pocket at the time, it was the customer's copy for the box - when used with the bank's master, it unlocked the next 5 years of my life in the American Capital region.
I left all the stuff meant for Elizabeth, not quite knowing what to do with it in her absence. I only peripherally wondered who had placed all this. After leaving, I went across to a restaurant to observe from its window the bank, to see if there was anything suspicious…
After 90 minutes? Nothing.
If my nerves had shown, they were calmed by the box's contents. Just scanning the I.D. there, as well as the cash, this assignment was taking on a tone of reality that, as they said, your training never prepared you for.
Yet the sense of uneasiness, it never really abated. We'd been told that we'd never know how or by who that safety deposit box would be replenished. Also, that operational orders would *never* come via that route. If that happened, get out of the country on the next flight. 'Operations' was to be by number stations on shortwave, as well as the Latin alphabet Morse Code I now was in a hurry to learn. (As such, I set myself the goal of ten-words a minute by the end of the month. In the Latin alphabet!)
Within the hour, from the keys inside the deposit box, they opened the apartment door in the building another 15 minutes walk from Union Station. I had found another restaurant with a window across the street from it, this time I spent 2 hours observing the building and the street, which I was to repeat a week later, for safety's sake.
But by the placement of key places in my cover, I could already see the method which had been applied to all this madness.
At a radio store, I purchased a higher end shortwave radio. With a makeshift antenna inside the apartment, I heard my first actual, real live numbers station - right according to schedule. A woman's voice, who recited single digits in 5-digit blocks.
After trying to decode the message, when it would not decode I decided that it was a message not meant for me.
Unless I'd done something wrong. No way to know, not until the first successful one.
THE TRAVEL AGENCY
I may have actually been clueless about deciphering those numbers stations. After three weeks, there was not a single one I could read - I had no way of knowing if I was doing it wrong or if they were for someone else.
Still with no operating instructions, and not wanting to venture to Philadelphia yet (to see if I could find this 'Gregory Thomas' character), I decided to investigate exfiltration plans…..
….. not that I needed exfiltration - I'd been there less than a month. But as we'd been taught, a key part of being able to stay for 5 years, was keeping current on what to do if the FBI had spotted you *that day*. Your 'tour' in America was on that kind of moment's notice. At every hour of every day for the next 5 years, one had to know which way to run, which exit was safe.
So it was I went down to DuPont Circle, where I'd seen a travel agency. I wanted to inquire within about 'international flights', and come up to speed with the actual mechanics of how aviation really worked in America.
Turning the corner to the travel agency office, I noted something better.
On its window was a sign, 'We're hiring, Help Wanted, inquire within'. On the spur of the moment, I went in, and asked to be considered as a clerk. It had to be spur of the moment, because as of then I'd not even yet bought a ham transmitter, much less deciphered a numbers station.
The rest of the Jennings eventual ownership of DuPont Circle Travel, was, as they say, history.