TIMOSHEV'S LEGACY LIKE A TON OF BRICKS

I've done missions dispassionately. I've done then by half asleep, by the numbers. I've been bored, hung-over, and disappointed when they were called off. I've been annoyed when something to do with Dupont Circle Travel had to suffer because I'd been delayed at a mission.

Until the Johnson/Weinberger mission, though, I had never swung between two poles - beet-red-in-the-face anger, which turned on a dime when the bottom had fallen out, into depression and utter shame. That was a first.

'Shame', in myself. Why 'shame', why this time?

"Dad, can I talk to you about mom?" Paige had come downstairs from her room, which was rare given the hour and that there was school in the morning. There she was, standing with a 13-year-old's confused face.

"What happened to your ears?" I asked, noticing some inflammation on her lobes, visible from where I was.

"Oh, those," she replied, bringing a hand up to one of them. "I guess that's part of what I want to talk about. Mom. You know how she can be. She told me I had to wait until I was 15 before I could get my ears done…."

I feigned concern, because frankly, I did not care. It was hard to care about domestic concerns after the last couple of days. I cared about my family's survival, not pierced ears!

"You didn't do them yourself, did you? Mom will freak!"

"No dad," she assured, "you know I wouldn't do that." She paused, seemed to be choosing her words. "Mom's gone all soft - she keeps coming into my room, telling me she loves me. She never comes into my room. Now she's waking me up to be my girl-friend. Is she okay?"

I tried to guess what the problem might be. "This isn't that 'bra thing' is it? Would it kill you to go shopping with your mother?"

"Dad!" Paige protested. "Could you please listen to me? Mom's changed…. she's not okay."

She turned to leave to go back up to bed, but stopped and turned back, her hands clasped in front of her.

"You and mom love each other don't you?" she said.

A bit dumbfounded I replied, "of course we do, Paige! What a question…"

She looked older than her 13 years when she continued, "I mean, that's recent, isn't it. You two are not like other kid's parents. You're just not. You argue, but you stick together."

"Where does this come from, Paige?"

She said, "it's just strange to hear mom now say she loves me and Henry. That's just as recent. I know that the two of you, you look out for each other." She then paused, and added, "just not for me or Henry." When I looked shocked at her words she concluded, "don't worry, dad, I'm okay with it. I always have been. You and mom, you look out for each other. That's what's important."

She finally turned to bound up the stairs to her room, "we'll be all right, dad, me and Henry. Don't worry about us, okay."

THE WOMAN I NEVER KNEW

This 1981 version of Elizabeth Jennings was someone I'd never met before. Oh, I had no worries about her as a partner in operations. She knew what had to be done, we could anticipate one another - but this new, post-Reagan war we'd been thrust into forced both of us to act quickly, way too fast. Not exactly panic, but just call it a new more immediate focus. We were now being called to do things by total instinct, with what usually took months of preparation.

This was the US Secretary of Defence's home! Month's of stake-outs and survelleince, all dispensed with. We'd been given an assignment, and it was to be complete in 72 hours. Weinberger's home, now compressed into three days.

Three days.

Add to that, that after 16 years Elizabeth had dropped her iron self-defences… not that she'd gone soft, I don't mean that.

Ever since Timoshev had been dealt with - there was something about her which was freer. I don't mean to say that she was 'over it', something that he'd done to her decades ago…. that, apparently, simply does not go away.

But she was now my wife. After 16 years of faux-marriage and two children. She now demonstrated passion - with me. And I do mean 'demonstrated'.

I just wish we would have had time to enjoy each other - something that The Centre's truncated timeline about Weinberger threatened. She was now telling me her fears. Elizabeth, with fears? She feared for our kids. As for me, each minute when running Viola Johnson, I expected to be face to face with an FBI service weapon.

I'd felt many things on missions. This time it was anger. Anger at finally seeing how these things impacted Elizabeth - I'd never known how much she stewed about her kids; until now that had been only inside, I suppose.

Another first. She carried a sidearm with her to work at the travel agency. She'd said she was not going to be taken alive. She couldn't bear to be tortured by Americans when they were holding her children over her.

"If something happened to us," she said, lying beside me in bed, "Henry, he'd adapt. He'd find his way"

Then she bit her lower lip and added, trialing off, "But Paige….. she's…"

Finally she added, "I worry about her."

Me, I needed to sleep, what with the FBI right across the street. The best thing about that, was that if they really had been on to us, Special Agent Beeman would be doing more than breaking into our garage.

I said, "they're both fine, both Henry as well as Paige."

I turned off my light, hoping it would signal my need for sleep.

She continued, "Henry, he's like you."

Wanting to conclude this, I played along, "…. and her?"

Elizabeth, still wide awake said, "she's delicate, somehow." Was Elizabeth 'delicate' too? Was that what she was saying? She then turned off the light on her side, and we prepared for what tomorrow would bring.

Me, angry that The Centre had put us in this pressure cooker. Angry that we may be woken in darkness still in the bed, midst an FBI raid. We'd never had to worry about that, not before. Not like this.

PAIGE, SHE WAS RIGHT

It was one thing to be called 'evil'. It was one thing to be called 'the devil'.

But when I decided that Viola Johnson had to either cooperate, or we needed to end both her son as well as her, I grabbed a pillow and jammed it on to her son's, Grayson's, sweating face. This time, I had not done it out of a clinical analysis of what would advance our objective - I was angry.

Angry at The Centre for what it was making me. Desperate.

It was quite another to hear the panicked screams of an hysterical mother watching the life drain from her son. She begged me to stop, she pleaded, she bargained, she agreed.

When Elizabeth and I got to the car, ready to return to our own neglected kids, I got into the passenger's side. I was not sure I could manage the road behind the wheel.

Once again, Paige was proven right. When Elizabeth got into the driver's seat, instead of efficiently and in silence driving home, she didn't even start the car.

Instead, she put her hand softly and gently upon mine. Yes, Elizabeth did that.

This new war, the one Reagan had just started - I was not sure I would survive it. I was not sure I could survive the moment by moment possibility that the FBI would bust in. The Centre, it was making impossible demands. We couldn't prepare. We couldn't close our eyes for sleep.

I'd gone from anger at what Viola Johnson had called me, to abject depression. The road ahead, it was going to be like this. With no end in sight.

When I settled my face from its downward cast, I turned and looked at Elizabeth. She ever so softly squeezed my hand again, then mouthed, "I know."

What the hell? Had this woman always been there?

I said, "Elizabeth, they promised us, they promised we would be home…. 13 years ago. Now, every assignment, you'll be carrying a gun. It wasn't like that."

This time she said audibly, "I know."

MARCH 30, 1981

Once again, into the breach.

Robert McKenzie, our colleague killed during the Timoshev debacle, he had a wife. Afucking wife! A marriage unknown to both us as well as The Centre. After his own partner's suicide back at the Directorate S academy, Rob had, apparently, made good on his vow that The Centre did not need to know everything about him.

No rest, not for me, not for us.

Like I fool, I told Elizabeth to put Gregory's people on to it. Why'd it have to be Gregory? It was because Gregory's people controlled the streets in Philadelphia.

What they reported back, was that the FBI were already on the other side of that breach. Gregory had told Elizabeth that Joyce Ramirez had had FBI all over her - not an FBI support team, but an FBI surveillance team. Thomas would know the difference.

And she had a newborn baby with her. A baby. Rob had never said a word. Fuck, how did that happen?

There was no rest for me and Elizabeth, either. Me, I had to deal with Gregory, directly. Gregory, he demanded to know if I loved her. He knew all about the sham marriage - the cover. Yet when Elizabeth had been 8 months pregnant with Paige, she'd sought him out in a panic. When she had panicked in 1967, she'd gone to him. Not me. He'd seen the vulnerable-Elizabeth long, long before me.

I still knew little about that. He told me that she had cried - that she didn't know how long she could hold out with the fiction of our marriage. That was 1967.

Ultimately, she left Gregory to come back to me - and I was none the wiser.

With Ramirez, Thomas nosed into business which was not his. He said, if I now didn't love Elizabeth, "you should let her be." And if I did love Elizabeth, "you should let her be." What had she and Gregory been talking about where he'd feel the right to say shit like that!?

It was not a good thing to hear. Far from it. Elizabeth, she had never been that open with me, not even close. Not even since February of this year. Indeed, it wasn't until the night I killed Timoshev, that Elizabeth had said anything about her and me. Then with what I'd done to Viola Johnson, it was she who had comforted me! She was going around the house, telling Paige how much she loved her.

Where had that come from? From Thomas, I learned that Elizabeth had not just gone through the motions of a sham marriage - she had lied. How could I trust her now?

Well, on my way to pick up plans for Reagan's missile defence shield, I had it out with her. Stay home, make lunches for the kids, go to PTA, show up for work at Dupont Circle Travel…

…. but whenever she needed to see Gregory Thomas, I would not stand in her way.

Have at it, bitch.

Then.

Her new found openness saved us.

Back home, an hour before the kids would get up, she finally recited her life for me. I'd never known who Nadezhda Borisovna Popova was. Until now. She'd joined the KGB at 17, had never had a boyfriend. She'd been 22 when she arrived in America - to join me. As she recited, she did not even know me.

She then met Gregory. He had been so passionate, about the cause as well as about her. He didn't even want anything, he had been so passionate. They had marched together with Dr. King - Thomas had willingly and enthusiatically joined the ranks of America's bitterest enemy, the KGB.

But then at home, after Ramirez and Rob, just before the kids would come down for breakfast - she finished her recitation.

"I'm feeling that for you, Philip. Now, I am. After all these years, it's you. It's just you."

AFTERNOON DELIGHT

By March 30, 1981, both Elizabeth and I had cleared a backlog of work at the travel agency. For once, our new handler, Granny, had been quiet, and there were no calls from "George" directing us to take on some new risky, impossible operation.

So after dropping Paige and Henry at their respective schools, we headed downtown - to a nice hotel, just a stone's throw from, and a little more pricey than the Washington Hilton. I'd asked at the Hilton, but President Reagan was to deliver a luncheon address there to AFL–CIO representatives. All afternoon rooms were taken.

We got to our room at 10:15 am, and hung the 'do not disturb' sign out on the hallway side of the door. It had been almost two months since we'd first consummated our marriage - one now considerably less than 'faux'. We were now making up for lost time, with no operational cares on the horizon.

Besides, we'd have little to do for the next week or so anyway.