FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA

No more apartment basement lockers for storage. No more buses, much less walking to work. We were now living the American dream - congested commutes to work, backyard barbecues, it was as far from Tobolsk as one could get.

It was remarkable what Gabriel and The Centre had accomplished. With security and secrecy paramount, they had delivered a house to us in a new Falls Church subdivision - a large three-bedroom place with garage and large laundry room. The latter being larger than the sum total of our laundry facilities back at our D.C. apartment, and we'd had to share that one with the whole building!

American middle-class life, it had its benefits! Of course, Gabriel had brought in his own subcontractors. That house had some very special, just not obvious, amenities built into it.

As happened in those new developments, the houses were built based on a common floor-plan - they were pretty much cookie cutter. Yet I was almost positive that the others did not have the same amenities ours had….. that the main circuit-breaker box, for instance, actually came away from the wall on a hinge….

….. with a large and secure (and lighted) storage space behind it. Such space was camouflaged by a visual trick, where the wall behind it was not exactly parallel to the laundry room wall it was mated with on the other side.

That the washer and dryer came away from the wall - with a large space behind it for miscellaneous stuff…. a 'go bag' or two. Similarly masked by a trick of perspective in the way that the walls were built. We now had easy access to do mandatory, monthly updates of the go-bags - for instance, if those days if we'd needed to go on the run at 5 minutes notice, we had to keep it stocked with diapers! Also a selection of current licence plates which would pass if radio'ed in! No sense getting arrested for lapsed car insurance.

In there was also the equipment need for a clandestine 'dark-room' for developing photographs. There was no sense sending our spy photos out to Kodak to be developed!

HENRY and DUPONT CIRCLE TRAVEL

1971 was profound in other ways. Henry arrived on the scene. It was remarkable the way Paige reacted, it was almost as if she'd always been an older sister, even as an only child for those three and a half years. When Elizabeth was preparing Henry's bottles, Paige would try to push her out of the way, to do the bottles herself.

Of course that never worked out - Elizabeth never saw the preciousness of that - she would just get angry and push Paige away.

Before Henry's birth, Elizabeth finished her business degree, and joined me in the back office. She'd never admit it - but she was better at this capitalism business than I was. Once, when I accused her once of becoming petite bourgeoisie, and fast losing her proletariat roots - she barked at me, "I'm good at it, Philip, I just don't like it the way you do."

Now that Elizabeth was working in the back office with me, the 'parenting noises' increased. Me, I was sure that those distractions were interfering with our workers in the main office, yet Stavos would always say, "Mr. Philip, the customers love it when the kids are here. As for me, Steve and Lacey, we feel we're getting to know Mrs. Jennings - and the kids are an instant conversation starter with clients."

ONLY NIXON COULD GO TO CHINA

"The holiday is over, Philip," Gabriel had said, sitting in the kitchen of his new 'safe house' where, I assumed, he lived by day. The place was spartan, befitting a single man who spent most of his time running around 'handling' his agents on the eastern seaboard of the USA. The only 'frills' were his cooking implements, his specialized pots and pans.

As such, he had me and Elizabeth, plus the kids over for a good Russian dinner. That day, it was to be the last, because as he said, "Paige is now 4 years old, and as per procedure, she is not to know what you two do."

After dinner, Paige in the living room with the giant, stuffed giraffe Gabriel had bought for her, I cradled baby-Henry while the three of us adults remained at the table. Elizabeth had been the good, American housewife and had managed all the clean-up.

Finally, Gabriel got to operations. "Nixon is going to China in February. If that is successful, having the USA normalize relations with the PRC, it will be a disaster for us. Ever since de-Stalinization, it was Mao Zedong who accused us of revisionism. Us! We were the ones who Mao said was cozying up the The West. Well, look who's doing it now!"

He sipped some tea, then added, "Nixon is a fascist, but he's wily. We've never been up against that level of international expertise - he 'gets' this modern world, and why shouldn't he. He's been in Washington since after The War. Going to China, he's really sticking it to us."

Elizabeth and I looked at one another, then asked, "what does The Centre want us to do?"

"It's not sure. Kissinger has been secretly in China meeting with Zhou Enlai. Last July, when Nixon said on TV that he'd visit China in 1972, no one - much less us - believed him."

At that, Paige toddled into the kitchen and tried to climb onto Elizabeth's lap. Elizabeth put her back on to the floor, swatted her behind and told her to go back to the living-room. At home, that would have resulted in Paige crying, going up to her room and slamming her door. At Gabriel's there was only the living-room giraffe to soothe her. Me, I had the sleeping baby-Henry.

"The Centre, it says that it is too late to do anything. I'm not so sure," Gabriel said.

"Here's what I need you to do, both of you. Don't take any actions, but redouble your networks. There's got to be something that we can do to destabilize the Nixon administration. So, once again, no actions - just surveillance, get us something we can use. I'm convinced if given a push, Richard Nixon will destroy his own government."

ROBERT MCKENZIE

Did I ever say that I felt like shit most of the time, even in 1972? I suspected I was going to have a hard time with our tour of illegals-duty being extended beyond 1970, I just never knew how much.

By 1972, Elizabeth and I should have been back in Moscow (or Smolensk? Definitely not Tobolsk!) We should have been raising Paige in the Russian language and teaching her the superiority of collectivism.

There would be no Henry - hard to imagine, I know, because that little baby demanded so much of our time now. There would be no Dupont Circle Travel. There would be no clandestine dinners at a D.C. safehouse with an old cold warrior named Gabriel.

And - just to get it down on paper - by 1972, if we'd been in Moscow, maybe Nadezhda and I would have gone our separate ways, and I would be free to find Irina again. To be clear, it was not as if Elizabeth and I were actually married, but Paige was our flesh. (Henry wouldn't have even made an appearance!)

It was all so depressing, finding myself hard-baked in this American life for the long-term. It was so hard to do the terrible things we had to do. I felt like shit - mostly for what I'd done to ordinary Americans - there was a lot to like about them, about people I'd….

Okay, all that kind of thought needs to stop. Why? Because this was 1972, in America - with no horizon in sight. Instead of bringing us home, The Centre had actually listened to its agents in the field - we now had both a flesh and blood handler, as well as a local Call Centre, completely independent of the Rezidentura.

God Almighty - we were good at least until the 1980's. Shit. And in 1972, I was to have Irina thrown at me, again - big time. There was also something in what Robert McKenzie revealed that explained my faux-wife, Elizabeth.

PMJ: It's time for truth between us, Robert. I mean, if we're going to put each other's lives in our hands, I need to know who you are.

RMc: Me? There's no mystery. I'm Robert McKenzie, from Philadelphia… an Eagles, but mostly a Flyers fan.

PMJ: Кто ты?

RMc: I told you, I'm…

PMJ: - I gave Robert a stern look - Just as I thought. Since when does a Flyers fan speak Russian? There are no Red Army players in the NHL!

RMc: - he got up to leave, I told him to sit, he then sat in silence - You know, don't you, that Gabriel is going to be pissed.

- silence -

PMJ: So, what year did you graduate?

RMc: What gave it away? - silence - A couple of years after you and Elizabeth.

PMJ: Why the big secret? I mean, aside from the fact that keeping secrets is what we do.

RMc: General Zhukov, he said it was because of you, Philip. - pause - I'm going out on a huge limb here, my dear 'Comrade'. - pause - If I told you I was Directorate S, straight off the boat, you'd eventually put it together.

PMJ: Put 'what' together? That they'd assigned you to the eastern seaboard as a solo illegal?

RMc: I was not meant to be solo. - Robert looked down at his own clasped hands - I guess that makes two reasons why General Zhukov didn't want you to know.

PMJ: You're making no sense, Robert.

RMc: - he looked up at the ceiling - I'm going to fry for this. Check that, I'll be recalled, then get a bullet to the head at Lefortovo. - I remained silent, staring icily at my newfound fellow illegal - Okay, here's the deal…. a week before we were to be infiltrated, my partner - my 'faux-wife' as you're fond of calling Elizabeth….. - pause - She suicided.

PMJ: Suicided? A Directorate S KGB agent? Suicide? - I paused, then added forcefully - You're lying.

RMc: - wiping a tear - I wish I were.

PMJ: Why is that some 'big secret', one that is 'because of me'? What did Zhukov fear….?

RMc: Okay, Philip, I need to back up. I don't want you to think it had been Irina I had been paired with - it wasn't Irina who'd suicided. She'd graduated with me, but she got her own assignment.

- at the mention of her name, I felt a kick in the stomach, I stumbled for words -

PMJ: - pause - How do you know about Irina?

RMc: Jesus, Philip…. *everyone* knows about you and Irina. It's all she would talk about, until she got shut down by our instructors.

The revelations about Robert, they had angered me. Turned out that Gabriel, The Centre, as well as Robert himself, all of them had been lying to us, lying to me and Elizabeth.

Robert - he was a Directorate S illegal, from back home, had gone through the same training we'd gone through. How we had not seen that was one thing, but maybe there had not been any substantive changes in the way The Centre viewed me and Elizabeth. It was OUR boots on the ground in hostile territory, and we were being lied to.

RMc: There's more, Philip. I may as well fry for it all.

- so far, I had not acknowledged that Robert was talking about the one pain that I wanted no one to know, something that would reduce me to tears -

RMc: My partner, my 'faux-wife' if you will… she and Irina were tight. After the suicide I told General Zhukov that I still wanted to go through with my assignment in Philadelphia. - Robert chuckled - Hell, Zhukov even lauded me as a committed revolutionary, in the sacrificial spirit of The Great Patriotic War.

- I remained silent -

RMc: She'd been raped, Philip. That's what Irina told me, Irina told me the morning I left for the West. Raped, Philip, violated by one of our instructors. - pause - Irina never told me who.

PMJ: - I tried to seem dispassionate - We all go through honeypot and honeytrap training, Robert. You know that. No one likes it. Me, it makes me feel like shit most of the time….

RMc: This was not operational, do you understand what I'm saying? This was a rape, Philip. Don't be stupid about it. Me, I could see it in her face, the last days. I thought it was nerves as our assignment date approached. - wiping a tear from his cheek - I missed it, Philip. Irina, she said that the offending instructor, he made sport of pushing himself on female trainees. We have secrets, Philip - 'secrets' are what we do. - Robert then paused - Have you ever asked Elizabeth about it?

PMJ: No, why would I?

RMc: Your operational lives together, it may depend on you knowing. - he paused - I'll tell you one thing, ever since I got here, I realized that you could not fully trust Directorate S. They protect the wrong people. - he paused again - Just like you not knowing about me being one of you! I'm sure not going to tell either you, or Gabriel, The Centre or anyone, I'm not going to tell you everything about me. Fuck all of you. I'll do my job, but at the end of the day it's my life. - he looked at me with suspicion - Tell Gabriel, don't tell Gabriel, that's your call.

Me, I was still stuck on his mention of Irina. Me, though, I was busy trying to formulate questions - things that Robert might know about her. True to his word, he never spoke of her again.

It was another 9 years past 1972 when I was to think of Elizabeth in relation to Robert's revelation about abuses in training. He was right, I was stupid about it.

PAYMENT

Elizabeth, she was none-too-happy, me off with Robert for assignments. There she was, flying solo at the travel agency, now with both kids in the back office with her. With Paige cranky because of an ear-infection and Henry being the fussy baby he was. Me, I was going to pay for my time away on that alone.

DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS

It took until June 1972 to finally get something on the Nixon Administration. It had to do with the Watergate complex in Foggy Bottom, more specifically the Watergate Office Building on Virginia Avenue NW.

Gabriel had been right - we did not need to do anything to put the spanner in the Nixon Administration. His fascist ways, he brought himself down.