I FEEL LIKE SHIT ALL THE TIME
This job, it was wearing on me. We'd been here since 1965, it was now early 1967. I couldn't imagine surviving another three years until we were called back home. 1970 seemed like more than one lifetime away.
Me, I felt like shit most times. Between me and Elizabeth, we took turns bailing each other out. I don't know how it happened, but we took turns as well cleaning up after each other. Without so much as a word, we seemed to understand that 'the deed', it was bad enough if we'd had to do it alone. The clean-up afterwards, that was when we'd collapse if on our own.
Did I just use the word, 'collapse'? Jesus, The Centre must never get wind of that. I was hoping that Elizabeth never shared anything with Leanne, because Leanne would be obliged to pass it on to The Centre. Now that it was rare that we saw them, I certainly wouldn't share something like that with Emmett.
My big cluster-fuck?
I'd been 'dating' a woman from Grumman, the developers of the Apollo Lunar Lander. Their factory was in Bethpage, New York, but the administration for their lander was in the D.C. metro area, to be close to money, politicians and NASA. She was the executive assistant to the director of Grumman's NASA contract - from our 'dates', I was able to pass on to The Centre that by early 1967, America still did not have the capacity to safely land humans on the Moon - their lander, it was still too heavy.
Me, I'd surprised the woman at her own apartment door one Saturday morning - introducing myself as a NASA security agent, investigating leaks from the Grumman office. What I'd found was that those had been exactly her concerns as well. She had long since lectured her own boss about lax security, flaws in their 'people-systems', as she called it, that put billions of dollars at risk.
She'd said, "people in our office, they leave files out overnight - cleaning staff, they must see everything! I half expect a janitor now has the ability to build a lander in his own garage!"
Through this contact, I was able to tell The Centre that the Apollo Lunar Lander program, that it was at least a year away from fruition. The present mock-up in Bethpage, New York, it was grossly overweight. In the meantime, NASA was going to have to figure out other uses for their main Command Modules - like solo flights to the Moon, only into orbit and without landing capacity.
Okay, that was what I'd learned so far from the operation with the woman.
I could not point to the exact moment when it had happened, because there probably wasn't one. It was Elizabeth who pointed it out to me.
"Here," Elizabeth had said, "take this," she held out one of her favorite lockets, the one with the nice gold chain. "Take this to her, Romeo. If you want this contact to last, you're going to have to take the plunge."
What plunge? This time it was Elizabeth who had laughed.
Don't worry, I'm getting to the point of this little story. It's a story of Elizabeth having my back - in more than one way.
That locket, it had landed me in bed with the executive assistant from Grumman. That very night. I had thought Elizabeth had been the one 'dull' to that sort of thing, but as we talked about it, she turned out to be lightyears ahead of me.
THE CLUSTERFUCK
The woman, she had first surprised me when I'd arrived at 7 pm. The surprise was a set dinner table, with wine. Me, I tried to keep our conversation to the 'security concerns' that she had just shared, she thinking she was protecting her boss from himself. For my cover, that was why I was supposed to have been there - the candlelight dinner, it set a differing atmosphere! (How did Elizabeth see this coming?)
Me, finally getting with the program, I pulled out the locket and gold chain. Taking it and putting it on, the woman got up from the table, went into her bedroom, and came out with a book.
"This is by Alex Comfort, quite the name. It's not in circulation, but it will be…. I have a copy…. it's called The Joy of Sex." She just stood there, slightly embarrassed.
One thing led to another, as you probably guessed. So I will fast-forward to the point.
Hours later as we lay there in her bed, she said that she could not believe how her life had turned out. She'd said, "I came East, because I didn't want be every maiden aunt there was back home. I never thought I would meet someone like you, someone with similar values. The same outlook."
She smiled, "someone who listens, to me - who is a gentleman at dinner, but an animal in bed!"
She twiddled with the locket still around her neck as she propped her naked body up on an elbow.
"But that's it, isn't it?" she asked still twiddling the gift. "If we're going to continue, which I hope to God we do, there needs to be honesty." Despite the hour of the night she said calmly and clearly, "you're not NASA security, are you?"
That comment was a show stopper. I was not fooling anyone. "My boss, he keeps detailed files, I know, I put them together. I'm the one who handles them, probably more than he does. Since you arrived at my door, I've gone to school on NASA's oversight…. just to find out if you're too good to be true."
She just lay there propped up, pleased with herself that she'd left me silent. "Don't worry, I am, indeed, falling in love with you. But….. what's the game? CIA? FBI? Or are you some foreign guy, trained to bed people like me?"
HONESTY
Fifteen minutes later I was dressed, standing outside in the dark, drenched in the rain at the nearest phone-booth, begging that Elizabeth pick-up! My heart, it was racing - my memory of the last few minutes a blur.
When I eked out the words, 'it's Philip….', she went silent, then asked sleepily, "well, Romeo, is your date over?" It was probably the weakness and shakiness of my voice which then shocked her fully awake. We had long since been able to read each other like that.
All I could think of was that I had to get my heart rate down, be ready and presentable for work at Dupont Circle Travel in a couple of hours, and there I was getting rained on in the middle of the night a mile away from home.
Having a clearer view of things than me, Elizabeth simply asked, "does she have a suitcase? Is she a big woman? If not I'll bring one - don't worry, give me the address and I'll handle it. You, you come home."
I guess it was because of this that it was early 1967 when I became fully aware that it wasn't just Elizabeth. Me, it was me feeling like shit most of the time.
Hanging up and turning from the phone booth, into the full force of the rain - I put my hands in my pockets, only to feel the locket and chain that I'd hadn't remembered taking from the woman's body, but there it was. I was on autopilot, not good thing for someone who did what I did.
I dropped it into the nearest storm-drain, heaven help me if I ran across it in Elizabeth's things. I'd not been thinking. I was losing it.
As for Elizabeth, she never asked about the locket. Probably she should have, not finding it on the woman's body. Given that our training back in the USSR had included 'how to stuff a body in a suitcase', complete with practise on cadavers, I knew what Elizabeth was about to do - break bones, etc. She was going to do that horrible deed…..
…. on my behalf. She was cleaning up after my clusterfuck.
I turned to face the rain, and estimated that it would take 35 minutes to walk back to the apartment.
1970, it was still a lifetime away. It couldn't come soon enough.
GENERAL WESTMORELAND
General Westmoreland had told Lyndon Johnson back in 1965 that if the United States abandoned its, then, defensive posture in Vietnam, then a newfound aggressive war could be won by 1967.
Yet, there it was, 1967. No end in sight. By that year, almost 2 million South Vietnamese were refugees. In March of 1967, I had learned, and had passed on to The Centre, that Westmoreland was going to ask the American president for a further escalation of U.S. troops to Vietnam, so that the 'end of 1967' date to win the war could still be met.
Both myself as well as The Centre, recognized that as folly.
For Elizabeth and me - we had no way of gauging Emmett and Leanne's reaction to the news - it became clear that none of us would have our own tour-of-duty in America (as illegals) be complete by 1970. Because of Vietnam, our stay as illegals would have to be open-ended. Fuck.
The Centre simply could not risk a 'transition time', the time it would take for a new group of Directorate S illegals to cultivate their own contacts and get deeply and believably embedded. So - The Centre's solution was to work us into the ground.
Things had also changed from an operational point of view. It turned out that both the Connors as well as us, we'd threatened The Centre that if we did not get better 'command and control' facilities here on the ground in the U.S., that we would simply disappear and no one would ever find us.
That one, it rated a visit from one of General Zhukov's own assistants - personally. Under the cover of the D.C. Rezidentura, despite the risks of a known KGB spy searching us out on the ground here in America. That one alone, that had even angered Elizabeth - and to her, Zhukov could do no wrong.
But March 1967. Both of us, me and Elizabeth, there we were exhausted, lying in bed. With our 1970 'due-date' now history. All because of Westmoreland.
Me, I couldn't believe it. We'd been 'sleeping together' all this time, more like brother and sister, or like work-mates - more like that than husband and wife. What did most 20-something American couples do in bed? Not us.
I was exhausted, but when I turned and awoke, there was Elizabeth on her side, in the dark wide awake facing me. She smelled of whisky and cigarettes. She reached out and touched me. When I reached out to touch her, I discovered she did not have her nightie on. Jesus, did I say I was exhausted? I had never even seen the woman naked!
All she said was, "it's time. Leanne has two, and it's working out for them. It's more than a work-around, with kids they have legitimacy. It saves them explaining the other aspect of their lives, their work." Staring at me, she repeated, "it's time, Philip. This is going to be hard for me…. so please, give me a minute."
What did that mean? How much whisky had she had? I thought she was going to be sick. But we got on with it.
My first 'fling' with a real person, not a mark, since Irina. Irina, she'd been sober.
BEGINNING TO SHOW
It was mid-July when Elizabeth started to show. All a result of one drunken moment of intimacy last March. All because of Westmoreland.
July 1967 had been Elizabeth's version of a clusterfuck. Like me with the Grumman woman, we were both losing it, on the eve of becoming parents.
She'd claimed that her NASA-lady's, Anita's, disappearance mid-June of 1967 had had nothing to do with her belly or raging hormones. All I had known about that one was at 4 am, when Elizabeth had called in tears, given me an address, and then said weepily, "bring a suitcase, a woman 5 foot 5, 120 lbs. Her forearm is already broken, as is her neck." Then she hung up.
Elizabeth. Crying.
I got up, dressed, went to our locker in the basement of the building for the suitcase, and drove out to our warehouse to switch cars - one that I would have to abandon later that day, leaving us down a set of wheels for the remainder of the month.
I honestly don't remember the rest of the pregnancy, not really. Between the summer and December, all that I knew was that Elizabeth was starting to slow herself - she avoided risk like the plague.
As she slowed, my own exhaustion ramped up, because I was doing more solo operations as well as my shift at Dupont Travel. One bonus was that I had a cover for my exhaustion at work, the boss kidded me once about falling asleep at my desk. He waxed on about how he'd done the same when he'd been a clerk there, before he'd bought the business. (He said, 'now that you're having a family, I bet eventually it's you who buys me out!')
Elizabeth had disappeared twice. I was later to learn that one of them was to Newport News in the south, where she'd spent a weekend with Leanne and her two kids. Apparently, she'd begged Leanne to come north to Falls Church for the birth.
Then there was her trip to Philadelphia. I only found out about that one well into 1968.
Маленький ребенок
It took a while for Elizabeth to warm up to the baby in the cot beside her hospital bed. Elizabeth Mary Korman Jennings, cool as a cucumber when it came to stealth in what we did as illegals, befuddled as a new mother.
Befuddled, depressed and anxious, in what I'd assumed would be a happy time for her.
Breaking protocol, I saw her looking into the cot from her safe distance, and muttering to the surprisingly silent baby, in Russian, "small child."
Leanne had warned me about 'post-partem' something or other…. I gently warned Elizabeth that she should not be speaking our home language…..
…. Elizabeth looked at me and stated firmly, in Russian, "it's her name."
"Paige."