THIS WORK, IT GETS TO YOU
Okay, this one is a requirement. A new policy from the Directorate S leadership, from General Zhukov himself.
The requirement? From now on - English. No Russian, English only. Not British English, but American English. I'm learning there is quite the difference. One of my Comrade colleagues - who spent his teenage years in London - is this very minute being sanctioned for using British-isms. I guess it is better to be beaten out of you now, than in a U.S. prison, where you'd be in front of an American firing squad.
My bare advantage, in Tobolsk one of our teachers spoke English. Not sure how much of a head start that gave me, it turns out her language skills were poor. At least I got a basic vocabulary as well as some idioms.
Speaking of requirements - I only now relish (I think I've used the word 'relish' correctly, I'm sure I'll hear of it otherwise) that our old Soviet identities are being masked, rarely now referred to. Not erased, but masked, just like the silly wigs we are using. For five years following our overseas posting we will not have a Soviet identity - once overseas, nearly all contact with the Motherland will be through shortwave radio. As of this date, the plan is that all contact with back home will be gone. Even though still in Moscow, we in Directorate S field work, we are essentially in America.
They've even brought in American cigarettes!
The big question - once were are immersed in America and doing our jobs, will we be able to last five years? It's a long time. To think that it will be almost 1970 before coming back home to a proper, Russian meal again. Like mom used to cobble together.
DEEP DIVE INTO AMERICA
My partner-comrade - Emmett, Emmett Connors. I was never to learn his Russian name nor even where he was from. Okay, okay, I should practise dropping the 'comrade' greeting.
They tell us that eventually Comrade 'handlers' will be assigned within our American locale - but the American threat is pushing up the schedule for our insertion. We could very well be on our own for our whole five year mission. With nothing but shortwave radio to both give us marching orders as well as slake our thirst for home.
Although not guaranteed, it would be nice once we get there if Emmett was within a reasonable distance. The isolation of the proposed 'work', I'm sure it will get to us.
Emmett? He's the authority on American baseball. Me? Hockey. Red Army. American excess had even hit the Olympics, where 'artificial ice' had been used for the first time. Imagine, a Russian hockey team having to play on ice generated by an electrical plant which could have heated 4,800 American homes - those homes already with all the excesses!
Even their hockey is so, so American!
Once in America, I am told that those sorts of ideological critiques needed to 'be stowed'. That was the idiom - 'stow it'. Still, at the Olympics America had won the gold medal, Canada the silver, and Red Army had been relegated to bronze. Still I felt good about that - with America winning gold at Squaw Valley, maybe there will be an interest in the game when I get there.
Emmett won't have to worry. He knows all about baseball. He knows who Bill Mazeroski is.
Emmett, he's been assigned someone named Leanne - of course, no one knows her Russian name. I ask if he's looking forward to spending five years overseas with her. He just shrugs. He said, "it means waiting until exfiltration 5 years after until I can become a father - another duty we can perform for the Motherland."
As of this date, even contact with my love, Irina, is gone. Me, I am hoping against hope that I'll be paired with her. She is so soft. Irina, my first real love - not at all like the girls in Tobolsk. But The Party, the Motherland, it now becomes our only mistress. Irina would insist upon it, she is very loyal to The Party. Being chosen by the Commissariat for the Leadership Group, it is both an honor as well as an imposition of a new and severe discipline on us both. Our love cannot be.
I hope my trainers appreciate my frankness - my commitment is solid. I will write it here (in American English!), my trainers will see it in how I apply myself.
DEVIANCY AND SIN - THE WORK GETS TO YOU
Okay, another reason for gladly accepting the discipline required for 'going underground'. My mother back in Tobolsk, her Orthodox priest would not have understood.
He would not have understood why exposure to 'deviancy' was necessary for the Motherland, for when posted in America. It was truly unpleasant, to lay with a man. Given that I had vomited after, my trainer said that the experience would be repeated until I could control my visceral reactions. It truly is a sin what the Commissariat demands. But a necessary one.
They say that it is amazing what one can get used to. But I was going to do it again and again, until I could see how such intimacy (both male and female) could be 'leveraged'. 'Leveraged', another Americanism. Mother must never know.
My other sin?
One of the few trips away from training was to a local prison. There had been a prison in the forest near Tobolsk, but mother told me that father had nothing to do with it.
But at the prison local to training?
There, I was taken to a sentencing hearing, for a man convicted of deviancy, as well as the murder of the man who he'd been caught lying with - which I, myself, had just done - with the permission of the State.
It was not until that day during training that I'd even remembered killing that boy back in Tobolsk, the one who'd stolen our family's milk. All of that came back, I had to control a panic. Killing, it is a sin, as mom's Orthodox priest often reminded us. The priest had even withheld the sacrament from a woman who'd killed during the Great Patriotic War - in that case, a killing not necessitated by war, but by hunger. That woman had killed to protect her family's food.
(I am reminded I am not to say Great Patriotic War, I am to say World War II. Americans it seems know nothing of the great sacrifice the Motherland had made to defeat fascism.)
Me, I had also killed to protect my family's milk. I still have sweats about that.
Yet at the prison, once the judge condemned the guilty man, the judge ordered in a stern voice, "in the name of The Party, sentence will be carried out shortly."
Everyone in the court froze, especially me. What? They were going to carry out the sentence right there?
At that a Red Army prison guard, he turned to face me. He unholstered his pistol, turned it grip-first offering it to me, then motioned with his head towards the condemned man.
Right there, right then, in the courtroom. Me.
On the way back to the training center, I asked that we stop. Just in time, too. I vomited by the side of the road. I was afraid that the driver would report me - here I am now writing about it in English for all my trainers, even the Commissariat to read. Me, I report it myself.
Once underway again, the driver asked, "your first?" I uttered a weak lie, "da," as I drank from the canteen of water he offered. He replied, "English, English!" He then told a story of the Great Patriotic War, where at first he'd only fired his rifle at distant targets - until his little town had captured Nazi soldiers. Back then a young man, he'd been assigned to 'dispatch' the German men, since food locally was scarce. Besides, the Germans had torched that year's crop.
"You never get over your first," the driver had said. "I killed 20 men that day, right up close. In cold blood. It's good you got your first over with."
Which it wasn't, my first was something I never got over. I confess to all readers of this - I did not tell the driver about the older kid in Tobolsk, and the milk.
CUBANS AND MISSILES
First Secretary of the Party, Khrushchev, had won a great victory over the Americans.
He had forced the Americans to remove first strike nuclear weapons from Turkey, by feigning the placement of Soviet rocket forces in Cuba.
Those of us in training, waiting for assignment, were exposed to inner, confidential communications within the leadership of our country. It was because overseas we would be assigned to expose and collect similar American secrets.
As such, that was how I inferred that my five-year assignment would be in and around Washington, D.C. When I told Emmett, he said, "too bad, we'll be a whole U.S. State away from one another."
I also remember distinctly being told that I would not be going alone. I was to be assigned someone, a woman, just like Emmett had been.
My hopes soared. Irina.
She and I had not seen each other since we were seventeen, when both of us made our commitments to the Commissariat and the Motherland. Our trainers had back then sent us on our own ways.
But as my assignment insertion date approached, I was told that I would not be working in America alone. That a woman would also be assigned - the intent was that we would remain inactive for a year or two - until we got 'settled' and more accustomed to ordinary American life.
The date of our insertion was now set - because of what the Americans called, 'The Cuban Missile Crisis'. We were to go two or three years following that - because of specialized skills needing honing.
THE JENNINGS
At a meeting with General Zhukov himself, I received my new name. Emmett had always had his full name - until that time I was just 'Philip', with one 'l'. Now I was 'Philip Martin Jennings', from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My mother would have laughed. I know my brother would have.
From that point onwards, I was to immerse myself in the history of that American city. I learned to be proud of Pittsburgh's steel industry, one that provided all the raw material for 'America winning World War Two.' I was to swallow the American arrogance that they'd won that war.
I was also to learn of Pittsburgh's efforts, post-war, to clean up the environment, as well as the rivers. I was to learn of their rivalry with Philadelphia - across the State. I learned to revere Bill Mazeroski, who Emmett had spoken of. Mazeroski did something called ' a walk-off home run' in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series of baseball. I had to learn what a real 'Yinzer' was.
ELIZABETH MARY KORMAN
My hopes had soared, that Irina would be my partner - whom I was now to refer to as 'Elizabeth Korman'. American naming customs made no reference to paternity. Of course, once in the United States, this 'Elizabeth Korman' would be subsequently known as 'Elizabeth Jennings'.
When we'd been 17, Irina and I had often mentioned marriage. Going with her to America, that would be too good to be true. Irina and I, living as a married couple. Our love making would be the best cover ever. We would be working for The Party, together.
November 1962, I was summoned again by General Zhukov, the second such audience in subsequent weeks. My…. er, our posting must have been imminent. Even if it was still two years out. I was looking forward to training with Irina for the most important assignment of our lives.
When I arrived, the only other person in General Zhutov's office was a short, slim (to the point of skinny), perfectly postured girl, who I initially thought must be the General's secretary. Quite frankly, she looked too much like a Russian village girl to be a sophisticated, Moscow secretary.
He introduced her by her new American name. "Philip Jennings, please meet Elizabeth Mary Korman. You two from now on are not to speak Russian with each other." This was not the Elizabeth Korman I had hoped for.
I had never seen her before. She was not Irina.