So, what's different about life?

Elizabeth and I, we're in Moscow. Even though we've been given an automobile, we are walking distance from the old KGB offices which we periodically relate to. When we go to the Academy to deliver a lecture, we're picked up - chauffeured.

We'd been given a premium apartment in a better section of the capital. The way we are treated in the building, it is obvious that people regard us as 'heroes of the Soviet Union', or what's left of it.

Given that the new Russia - following last December's lowering of the Hammer and Sickle from The Kremlin, to be replaced by Russia's tricolour - our building is also housing western business interests, entrepreneurs who are linked with the ever growing reality of oligarchs.

Elizabeth and I, we're often mistaken for Americans, given that our time overseas messed with our conversational Russian, a tinge of an accent.

I should also confess that Elizabeth, she's in prison. Lefortovo. For her role in 'defending the Party' during the 1991 attempted coup d'état. That one was by the State Committee on the State of Emergency, an emergency that they, themselves, created.

Without getting into it, Elizabeth - as always - went to 'defend The Party'. Now she's in Lefortovo. Even though we still have Arkady Zotov as our benefactor, even he cannot navigate the world of Russian prisons, laws unto themselves. Our lawyer is a friend to Boris Yeltsin, who has penal reform on his agenda in Russia - I hope Elizabeth is not too damaged by being there in the meantime.

So, what's different between life here and back in Falls Church? I guess back in America, we'd both be in prison, probably for the rest of our lives. Now it's just Elizabeth.

What else is different? Well, I've written letters to Stan Beeman - I'm not sure why. More on that below.

Oh yes, it was Elizabeth convicted of treason.

KIDS

Another difference? Neither Paige nor Henry are with us here in Moscow. Both are back in America, just as Pastor Tim had tried to prepare us for. That they'd soon be old enough to make their own decisions.

Henry, not so much. He had never known - but I'm sure that he does now. I honestly don't know what to write about Henry.

For Paige, I'm not sure I can amass the strength to write about her. She had been with us - from our escape from Stan Beeman, to the McDonald's restaurant where we'd had our last American supper. To the Amtrak through the Adirondack's with a view to evading border security at Rouses Point in New York, and finally make it to Montréal.

As Pastor Tim had warned, at Rouses Point she made her choice - one that we'd not remotely anticipated.

Anger issues? I did not settle on anger when thinking of Paige. That was Elizabeth.

The night of her arrest during the 'August Coup', Elizabeth had joined with a cadre of comrades to defend The Party. At her arrest she had busted up 5 plotters as they took her to Lefortovo, but instead of being the clinical soldier, Elizabeth had gone…. how would you say it…. she had gone insane, yelling Paige's name.

Then turning to me as she was being restrained, "Mischa, I was given the green light. On you. Years ago."

I don't know why she said that. I knew what the operational definition of 'green light' was. Me I knew I was flirting with it - when I tried to tempt her in America ten years ago with taking cash from the FBI - in return for our cooperation.

That was before I knew what Timoshev had done.

ELIZABETH'S CHOICE

Between stimulus and response lies choice. General Zhukov used to say that.

It's no surprise that I have waited until our return to Moscow for me to write the following - that the operation with Timoshev in early 1981 had not been the first time I'd suggested defecting with Elizabeth.

The surprise is that I waited to write it for after Elizabeth was released from Lefortovo.

Turned out that with Timoshev, I'd gone mad when I discovered what he'd done to Elizabeth. As written about that 1981 period, I'd never seen her like that. If she'd ever shown that sort of vulnerability before, I had missed it. If she'd ever shown that level of undisciplined rage before, I had missed it.

Wild swings while she'd been beating him in our garage, rather than surgical blows. That was not Elizabeth.

By 1981, we'd had sixteen years in America - fourteen with children. I'd parked into an inner recess of my brain any talk of defection, because I was getting quite used to Elizabeth being my 'wife'. As work-mates, we had never faltered. Yes, some operations had gone sideways, badly…. but just like in training (when we were so, so young) we had each other's back.

We read each other well. We always managed to keep exfiltration at bay, until…..

By the time we'd been hauled in by Claudia - when I'd been beaten with a phone book by a CIA thug named Cal, the guy who had called me a 'commie prick'….. the guy who had threatened our children…. I just didn't know how much Elizabeth was giving up to express her own, real live marital feelings about me. Ones that surfaced after I'd terminated Timoshev.

Elizabeth. With feelings. Who knew?

What I didn't know, you could write a book…. either that or fanfiction. I did not know at the time that me being beaten, me being waterboarded by our own people…. when even Elizabeth had not got off light…

….. that all of that had been because of Elizabeth's own mandatory reporting to The Centre….. about me. Which we had both done about each other since we'd arrived in the 60s. Brutal honesty, reported like the soldiers we were….

Jesus, every Directorate S illegal had doubts. We were human. The Centre had even encouraged us to express our doubts about ourselves in reports…. we were, in essence, supposed to self-squeal on ourselves to give our bosses cause for the ultimate sanction. After all, we were all simple minded, The Party loyalists weren't we?

It had all started that time when Elizabeth had broken into the trunk of an FBI vehicle, and had discovered the key to the FBI's new, mobile encryption system.

Within a day of her discovery, the FBI had mysteriously swapped out their encryption codes, as if they knew.

What did that mean? It meant that we had a mole in our operation. Either within the Rezidentura itself, or among us working bare-assed to the wind out in the street.

Because of what Elizabeth had told The Centre in her reports - 'Philip likes it here, too much' - apparently my sessions with Cal, the phone book and the water torture… they were easy to pull together, because they then seriously thought of ME as the mole…..

….. the commie prick. Thank you, Elizabeth.

ЗЕЛЕНЫЙ СВЕТ

Ok, my conversational Russian was then weak. By 1981, I'd barely strung together two Russian sentences since the early 1960s, when I went into training for the West.

So me, I had no idea if I was translating a Russian idiom wrong or not. I mean, what does, 'Зеленый свет' mean to you? Gabriel, then Claudia would tell us that when we returned (which we did in 1987), that we'd have some catching up to do.

Our conversational Russian would be from the late 1950s. And it was true - in 1988 and beyond it was more than our odd accent, we would get strange looks from Russians when we awkwardly translated what were essentially Americanisms.

Okay, now that that somewhat obtuse explanation is out of the way….. it was only when back home, well into the 1990s, that I'd discovered that Elizabeth herself….

Had been given Зеленый свет by The Centre - a Зеленый свет about me. One that she had never (obviously) operationalized.

One that she to this day refuses to talk about.

ELIZABETH LOSES IT

Despite the following, The Centre thought it had been me losing it.

Elizabeth? Out of nowhere with the Weinberger/clock thing, she started obsessing about being caught - but not just caught, but what that would do to the kids.

Elizabeth caring about the kids? I don't wish to badmouth my dearly beloved, but that was new - her voicing - to me at least - a worry of what might happen to the kids.

"What they'd do to us, tortured, locked away, told to betray everything we believe in if we ever want to see our kids again. I'm not gonna make that choice, Philip." She told me she thinks if something happening to us, then observed, "Henry would adjust and find his way." She said, "Henry is like you, Philip," but she worried about Paige.

I was to see what was happening to Elizabeth Mary Korman Jennings, one of the finest Directorate S illegals there would ever be.

Then she was to really lose it over General Zhukov's assassination. She lost it big time when she had Richard Patterson in her clutches. She wouldn't even let me finish him - a first. We were losing track of each other - not as spouses, but as partners.

Then…. we failed to stop that German assassin, before we could get to him, he'd planted a bomb on an FBI agent, one who took out a house filled with scientists - which took the Cold War to a more heated temperature.

Elizabeth? She said that that had been our worse failure in 15 years - the sum total of our tour to that point. She said that her mind had been occupied - which she said was her contribution to the failure.

I could see her writing-up herself to The Centre, as if The Centre could be trusted with our inner thoughts.

Her mind? It had been on me. It had been on her marriage, even if a faux-one. It had been on the kids. Which is why, she said, she'd taken her eye off of the ball.

Okay, I am getting to it, I am getting to the Зеленый свет about me.

NOW, I GET IT

But I now get it. I get why she never took action on the Зеленый свет, even as we slept most nights beside each other. I get why I woke quite alive each morning.

Elizabeth in her 20s, she would have turned me off like a light. Then in her 40s, with her kids worrying her, she needed me. She needed a husband.

Me, I was it. So, no Зеленый свет. Okay, okay, the the Зеленый свет was never formally withdrawn - that's what I found out back here in Moscow during her last year in Lefortovo.

I found out from Arkady Ivanovich Zotov, no less. Zotov had survived the 1991 coup, was seamlessly grandfathered into the SVR, the Russian version of the KGB. I still don't know why he told me.

Maybe because he must have known….. of course Zotov would have known. Two months before Elizabeth was let out of Lefortovo…..

…... Stan Beeman came to Moscow.

HONESTLY, PHILIP….

Stan Beeman: I had to see you as you are. In your Moscow 'habitat' as the kids say. You rat-bastard, son of a bitch.

Mischa Petrov: I'm full value for your venom, Stan.

SB: Don't give that 'limited hangout' tradecraft, you bastard. Your admissions mean nothing, not to me, not any more. - pause - Six years ago, at Paige's place, you played me like a fucking fiddle. - pause - That was you, wasn't it, it was you who killed Gennadi Bystrov and Sofia Bystrova, wasn't it! - pause - I ran into Ilia Bystrov a few months ago, you know he's eight? He has no memory of his mom….

MP: I told you Stan, I don't know who they are.

SB: I bet Elizabeth does. - pause - Say, Philip, is that bitch still in a Russian prison!? - pause - How's that for a reward, after your 'service in the USA? You Russians, fucking pathological.

MP: Is this why you came, Stan, to ride me? - pause - I know that you got some of my letters.

SB: Fucking pathological. - pause - Let me tell you why I came…..

(to be continued, one final chapter)