THE KNOCK AT THE DOOR

Kennedy had escalated America's involvement in Vietnam, right up until his own intelligence agencies killed him. It certainly wasn't us who terminated his presidency. I mean, if it had been, it would probably have been either me or Elizabeth who would have drawn the short straw. (If we had been in the country back then, I mean that would have been our job!)

Under Johnson the Texan, he took Kennedy's war to another level. He did our work for us in destroying America.

(The only time Elizabeth and I had talked about the Kennedy assassination - and what we'd have done if drawing that as an assignment - I got into trouble with her. I told her I would have had to think about it, that maybe that would have been one-order-too-far. At my words, Elizabeth said nothing. Yet she later would quip, "I think you like it here too much.")

By 1966, Vietnam was really getting out of hand - we in the Soviet Union could see that. Americans' propaganda machine, the mainline media, could not. Or did not. They were bringing war into America's homes in an unprecedented manner. The people I met at DuPont Circle Travel, did not seem to care. In fact, ever since the insertion of 3,500 American ground forces into the country in early 1965, the vast majority of Americans did what they were told - they supported the war like sheep.

But it was spinning out of control.

As for us, The Centre cautioned us not to interfere - neither to create disinformation, nor try to blackmail key people in their much vaunted military industrial complex. The Johnson administration, it was doing our job for us. Still, Elizabeth and I, we had mapped out a flow-chart of key people within industry who could be used to sabotage - but The Centre believed American warmongers were hastening their own demise.

The connection with Philadelphia, and the radical Black movements, though, was key - on many fronts. For me, I had to overlook my own sham-marriage to Elizabeth - it may not have been such a 'sham' when considering her with Gregory Thomas. Whatever our marriage woes, we simply were too good at our jobs. We complemented each other amazingly.

I couldn't worry about our marriage, even though I did. Even through all that, Elizabeth and I were cutting quite a swath. We rarely argued about operations. Elizabeth had called into question my day-job, at DuPont Circle Travel as a clerk. Because of it, she'd had to go solo on a couple of assignments, which she'd had to make on-the-spot operational calls. Not all of which had turned out right.

The 'terminations', they took their toll on her, and hence on me. As few as they were at the time, a killing took her out of operations for days afterward.

Three days previous to 'the knock on our door', Elizabeth had stormed out of our apartment. I forget what it was we were arguing about…. but she'd said angrily about the country in which our work had taken us, 'I'm going to Philadelphia. They know whose side they're on….. unlike you, Philip, they don't want to be one of them.'

Then - the knock. It was one of the few at our apartment, because people usually buzzed-up from the door from the street. Even that happened almost never, not for us.

Although the first time tensing like that at home, it was one of those countless times I had to hide tensing all up, I had to suppress adopting a combat-ready position, so that it was not me escalating an otherwise innocent encounter…. god, this job wore on me.

Opening the door, there I was face-to-face with one of D.C.'s finest. The Metro Police. I tried to hide that I had to fake being at ease. The cop said, "you're Mr. Jennings?" I told him I was, he continued, "is Mrs. Jennings here right now?" I told him that she was not, that she was out of town. I asked how I could help him, calculating the distance back into the apartment to where I'd repositioned my pistol (from the locker in the basement).

I asked, "what's this about?"

He said, "Mr. Jennings, how long have you been here in the building?" I answered that it had been more than a year - since I'd moved from Pittsburgh.

I told him, "now that I have a job, I'm probably in the metro area for the duration. Why?"

He then paused, looked beyond me into our apartment. He finally asked, "when was the last time you saw Mrs. Jenkins, one of your neighbours here in the building?"

Mrs. Jenkins!?

The MPD officer went on to say that the superintendent of the building had noticed yesterday that he'd not seen the woman, 'for a while'. The super had then gone to her door and knocked, had got no answer. He then had waited for the rest of the day watching that Mrs. Jenkins might return from an errand or something. When by that evening she'd not been seen, he called the woman's daughter. He got permission to enter the apartment.

In her bedroom, he'd found her fully clothed on the bed, with an empty bottle of antidepressants on the night-table, accompanied by an empty bottle of gin, tipped over on its side. The lady, by all accounts inexplicably, had suicided by overdose.

All I could think of saying, was something against self-interest. I said, still with he and me at my door, "that couldn't be Mrs. Jenkins. I'd see her most days in the lobby getting her mail. It's impossible to think of her with alcohol like that… much less pills." I paused, then added, "are you quite sure? Mrs. Jenkins!?"

"It's why we're asking around," the officer said. "So far, everyone says the same thing. Thanks for your help, I need to move on."

It had been against self-interest, but my genuine reaction in front of the officer actually functioned to camouflage me amid the foliage of others in the building.

ELIZABETH

"What are you accusing me of, Philip?" She yelled in a very low voice, "at least one of us actually tries to secure our anonymity."

I looked at her across our little table. "She was an old lady, Elizabeth!"

"Philip, for mercy's sake, she'd gone to the local library," she continued accusingly, "she'd ripped a page from Aunt Helen's local telephone book. She was going to call Aunt Helen and offer to be helpful!"

"So you killed her!?" I said in as low, non-accusing voice as I could muster. "She was an old lady!"

"What do you want me to say, Philip?"

I shifted gears, because this was getting out of hand. It was drawing in the MPD! This was not Elizabeth.

"Seriously, honey…."

"Don't 'honey' me, Philip. Fuck you…."

".…. Elizabeth, things are not all right with you."

"I'm fine, Philip. It's you, it's you who things get to. You never let me do my fucking job, you're always filled with lectures….."

"You're not fine, Elizabeth…"

As I was speaking, Elizabeth interrupted by getting up and going into our tiny bathroom. I waited for as long as I thought practicable, then opened the door that she'd slammed.

There she was, fully clothed, in the dry bathtub. Shaking. Muttering. From what I could make out, she was muttering in Russian. From what I could make out, she was muttering about an old trainer of ours, Nikolai Timoshev. She was muttering in Russian for General Zhukov to come get her. But I was not sure, it was garbled, and to be honest, I'd not spoken a word of the language since coming to America.

Then in English, she was asking for Leanne. At least she'd not used Gregory's name!

The Centre, it must not know about this.

In 1966 in Washington D.C., what with America's Vietnam folly, there was simply too much to do. We were it. And we were going to be back home anyway within 3 or 4 years. Then what?

SWITCHING PRIORITIES

It had been Elizabeth who'd said it, which was good. It was something that did not come from me, and I had never, not once, told The Centre. My mother, she did not raise any dumb children.

We were making inroads into all the peripheral NASA agencies within the Metro-D.C. area, as well as in Virginia and Maryland. Elizabeth had infiltrated a group of otherwise deviant women, who were now working at NASA agencies, after being denied entry into their astronaut corps - simply for being women.

Elizabeth had discovered the 'dyke bar' at which some of them socialized, and had struck up relationships with at least two of them. Being bitter about the 'old boys network', when loosened up by alcohol as well as late-night intimacy, they were more than willing to talk about what was what with NASA.

Say what you want, getting the 'skinny' with them, convinced both of us, that the USSR was hopelessly behind America in the space race. It was clear that they'd get to the Moon before us. Americans would have the ultimate 'high ground'.

"I need to apologize to you, Philip," she began early one morning after returning from a NASA assignment with her 'girls'. I'd learned through bitter experience to be slow in anticipating what this was all about for her.

"This is what I want to happen," she said slowly. "I'm not going back to Philadelphia so frequently, I really don't need to. Cars are in good supply… okay, you know the drill on that."

She then looked down at the table. She began again, "this is hard for me, Philip." She paused, then added, "you, you're my husband. I want to move into your room - but Philip, I'm not ready, not nearly ready….."

Despite my warning to myself, I interrupted, "Elizabeth, I owe you - a hundred times, I wouldn't be here without you. I'd be dead or in a prison somewhere. Or pulled by The Centre…."

She just sat there at our breakfast table, not touching the coffee I'd laid out for her.

American men - progressive ones, I mean - they were really making an effort in 1966 to understand their women. It made me wonder how Emmett could be so 'American', he was the one who'd lecture on how Russian women would not respect you if you 'mollycoddled' them, that you had to be a bit rough - perhaps even smell of vodka during love making. Love, Russian style.

Fuck Russia. I owed Elizabeth more than you can imagine.

MY AMERICAN RESPONSE

"Look, Elizabeth, why don't you get some sleep this morning. Me, I'm already late for Dupont Circle Travel. There are only so many times I can push it there." I reached over and did a very un-Russian thing, I put my hand on hers and for the first time since I'd laid eyes on Nadezhda back in General Zhukov's office - seemed like 100 years ago - she hadn't pulled her hand away.

I laughed a bit. Elizabeth looked at me, "you think this is funny?"

For the love of all there is, I couldn't tell her what had flashed through my mind. Out of the blue I had thought, 'if this was Irina in front of me, we'd have as many kids right now as as Emmett and Leanne.' Elizabeth, she was right, this was nothing to laugh about.

She left her hand under mine, then said, "I'm going to spend the morning getting my stuff into your room. Do you want the left or the right side of the bed?" I told her I didn't care. She told me that nothing was going to happen, that it was all so confusing. "Please keep to your side, Philip…."

Then a lone tear slipped down her cheek, had I ever seen Elizabeth on the verge before?

She finally said, again to no one in particular, "I can't do my job, Philip."

She withdrew her hand from mine and then sat back in the small kitchen chair. "Anita, she accused me of being 'straight'. She said she always suspected from the first time Leanne and I went into that bar." Elizabeth then laughed an ironic laugh, not one from amusement, "I mean, there I was servicing her, like we'd been taught. She told me that I was 'amazing', but then gently - caringly - said that I did not have to do those things….. because she said, 'you're a straight arrow'. 'You're not even babygay', whatever the hell that is."

Elizabeth looked up at me, then said, "Anita, she told me that I had been hurt, hurt badly. She said she'd seen that in a lot of lesbians, they were not with women by choice, but from fear of what had happened to them….."

I told her that I only had a few more minutes before I had to get out the door. So I quickly said, "it sounds to me that you were exactly doing your job."

"You don't understand, Philip," she said staring straight at me. "I should have broken her neck. I mean, she had made me. Anita, she could out me. Yet, I just kissed her, got up, got dressed and left. I can't go back."

As I got up to get my coat to head to the Agency, she said, "I can't do my job…"