Mischa couldn't say he missed it. Looking across the airport boarding room, he knew that Nadezhda didn't miss it either, but that she was probably experiencing it again, too. It had been almost five years since their first American insertion had blown up on them. Those five years in Moscow had never once matched the 'on-edge' life they'd had in Falls Church, not once.
Until now.
The old instincts, they were returning. With avengeance. What his were telling him were that at least ten of the men lounging in this boarding room, were themselves armed. If Mischa had not known her, he would have bet Nadezhda which of the gathered were, in fact, those men. Then again, judging by the look on her face, she was well ahead of him. He hadn't seen that surveillance-face on her for years. This time, though, her face seemed strained - back then she'd done it so naturally.
There was nothing to compare being 'in the field', and that's where they were returning.
To the United States.
The only question: why were at least ten men being allowed to board this airplane, them obviously - to the trained eye - concealing firearms? Had that anything to do with Mischa and Nadezhda?
COMMERCIAL FLIGHT TO NEW YORK, THEN TO SEATTLE
Ever since they'd landed in Frankfort - to transfer to their flight to New York, then beyond to Settle - Nadezhda Borisovna Popova and Mikhail Andreiovich Petrov found that their counter-surveillance skills were not what they had been. For one thing, this level of needed awareness was exhausting - it hadn't always been like that. After 25 years undercover in America, it had once been automatic.
Five years in Moscow had dulled the senses.
Neither of them realized fully how much their two and a half decades in the USA, how much they'd been on an hour-by-hour adrenaline rush. All that, while raising a family! However, since 1988 in Moscow, they'd relished not having the need for a grab-and-go kit, always within arms' reach. Albeit that it took a good six months before Mischa himself stopped obsessing about it, in Moscow there was no need to grab or go. What would you grab? Where would you go?
Except, without one in their Moscow apartment, he couldn't sleep.
Even so, the smallest thing would set them off. Never once in America did Nadezhda have a panic attack…. okay, maybe once, not counting her depression over Betty Turner or Young-Hee. There had been that time with the American Agent Richard Patterson, where'd she'd had a full blown melt down. He had been the man who had ordered her mentor's, General Zhukov's assassination. She'd kidnapped him, taken him to an isolated garage in D.C., but had subsequently lost control of herself.
Worse, she'd lost her dispassion. Zhukov had been the father she'd never known. Philip had had to conclude that operation for her, letting him go…. but their handler, Claudia, had finished Nadezhda's job for her.
Then there was that time in Moscow when she'd really lost it. It had been during one of the most Russian of episodes, the elevator in their otherwise posh-by-Soviet-standards building had broken down, mid floor. That had been the day when just that morning, she had told Mischa that that had been the first time in decades where she'd woken, without being aware of where her pistol had been in their bedroom.
She'd had a laugh with him about the pistol, but the humour did not last long.
When the elevator got stuck, she lost it. Once freed, Mischa had to restrain her back in their apartment. That one, it had been bad.
As it was, landing in Frankfort for the connection to New York - both of them felt the anxiety of rusty counter-surveillance skills. Being this aware had never been this exhausting. Indeed, once on the connecting flight and an hour after take-off, Mischa came back from the washroom to his seat, plopped down beside Nadezhda and sighed.
"You know how we told each other that returning to America was a mistake?" The mere mention of that conversation caused Nadezhda's anxiety to go to a new level, not that she'd admit. He said, "you'll never guess who's also on this flight, up in First Class?"
She hated his guessing games. The side-eye glare she gave compelled him to continue. She used to be better at masking her side-eye!
"Ю́лий Миха́йлович Воронцо́в," he said, the first and last time he was to use Russian on this repatriation to America. When Nadezhda didn't flinch he repeated in English, "Yuli Mikhailovich Vorontsov, our representative to the United Nations. On a commercial flight. No wonder there are men with guns up and down the cabin. That's how bad it is for Russia…. the man who stood with Gorbachev during those START talks back in '87, the man who negotiated the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the man who for my money will be Yeltsin's ambassador to the US…."
"I get it, I get it, Mischa," Nadezhda protested as quietly as she could. "I know who Vorontsov is!"
RUSSIA NEVER WAS GOING TO WORK OUT
In this narrative, Nadezhda Borisovna Popova and Mikhail Andreiovich Petrov find themselves returning to the United States in 1992, following the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
They now worked for The Russian Federation.
It's more of a plot device for this narrative, I'll admit. The way this narrative is structured, they re-emerged into the USA under their familiar, Anglicized names: Elizabeth and Philip Jennings. I hope your suspension of disbelief at that holds! The assumption I'm working with to make this possible, is that former President Reagan, before he left office in 1989, he'd signed an executive order expunging all record of what had transpired in Washington, D.C., in late 1987. All record of the intelligence/counterintelligence struggle in both America as well as the old USSR - including all record of Philip and Elizabeth Jennings. All record of their time in the USA, all record of their flight back to the USSR.
Why? Because they had saved Gorbachev from the building coup against him. By that pardon, Reagan had tied the hands of future US Presidents, at least until 2010. But no Presidential Pardon could dull people's memories, those who had lived through those times.
Reagan's former ideological hatred of the 'Empire of Evil' that he'd run for President on back in 1980, had by the end of his second term spun 180 degrees.
In Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan had found, as Reagan famously said, 'a communist who I could do business with'. So it was that 1987 had brought high level arms reduction talks between the then super powers. START. SALT. Both Reagan as well as Gorbachev had had to fight off their respective political flanks which tried to sabotage those talks… but both of them knew that the unbridled arms' race was going to bankrupt both countries.
By the end of 1991, it had bankrupted The old Soviet Union first.
But back in January 1989, on the last day before leaving office, Reagan used his executive power to pardon 2 of the Soviet Union's deep cover, Directorate S agents - Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, even as they had fled back to their home country. He spared them criminal prosecution in the United States for their efforts to keep Gorbachev safe from coups of all types.
That 'pardon' included the expunging of written records within America's intelligence agencies, most notably FBI Counterintelligence. A by product of this was that by the time the FBI became fully computerized, there was little print record to be ported over. There was not even a written record in the archives every US agency stored their pre-electronic information in.
That 'glitch' was first noted in the later, 2010 discovery of similar deep cover, Russian illegals who also had been raising families as part of a cover. The investigation into 'Operation Ghost Stories' Russian illegals program highlighted how the 1988-1995 period in American intelligence history had left blind spots which the Russians were happy to exploit.
THE RUSSIAN SIDE
A principle survivor of that most unusual, atypical of Russian coups - a bloodless one - was Аркадий Иванович Зотов, known in English as Arkady Ivanovich Zotov. Embedded in the KGB's Directorate S program, as well as a former Rezident of the old USSR Washington, D.C., Residentura, he had been 'well placed' in the post-Soviet period as far as Popova's and Petrov's own survival was concerned.
Zotov's survival placed him so well, he got to choose which of the two KGB's successors he'd be 'high level' in. As such, he eschewed the FSB (the Federal Service of the Russian Federation), for the SVR (the Foreign Intelligence Service). For obvious reasons.
Indeed, Zotov was quickly promoted to head 'The Centre', the chief communications centre for overseas illegals. It was also the command and control of what remained of those remaining Directorate S agents.
It had been chiefly Nadezhda Borisovna Popova who had complained to Arkady Ivanovich that there was no longer, 'The Party' giving corporate leadership to the masses. All that collectivist language had died at Christmas of 1991. There was no more, 'The Party' which expressed Russia's collective will.
Nadezhda never accepted that. She was convinced that with no more communist party, that Russia was now wide open to the excesses of The West.
As well, Mikhail Andreiovich Petrov had not reacclimatized to Moscow, not since they'd arrived (out of breath) in January 1988. As Nadezhda had observed, 'there was no American-style line-dancing, nor even country music in Moscow, not even as Burger King and eventually Kentucky Fried Chicken opened stores in the nation's capital!' So according to Nadezhda, of course Mikhail was going to be better off back in the USA.
In 1992, she agreed to return so as to serve her country. He agreed because the line-dancing was better over there.
Okay, all that was even before considering the elephant in both of their heads - they now had adult children in the USA. Real Americans the kids were.
So their Seattle-days were set.
THE AMERICAN SIDE
New President George H.W. Bush, in 1989 he inherited the post-Cold War world from the tectonic shift that Reagan had almost single handedly forced onto his country. It had been Reagan's, 'only Nixon could go to China' moment.
Because of Bush's deep history with both the CIA as well as an alumni of the powerful 'Skull and Bones' fraternity at Yale, it fell to him and his well placed counter-intelligence connections to transition to the new, post-Soviet world.
Part of that new world was to accept the consequences of Reagan's pardons. Those pardons necessitated the expunging of records - including the December 1987 sweep on American ports of entry/exit in search of fleeing Directorate S operatives. Collecting and discarding individual border agents reports had been a nightmare, but eventually successful.
It helped that the two they were looking for, that they had got away. That kept the record compartmentalized in border security agencies as well as the FBI Counterintelligence unit. As mentioned above, in the years following 1987-'88 it actually helped that American government and police were transitioning to computerized file keeping. It meant that the paper files, that they simply were not ported over to electronic form.
It meant that for the most part, the discovery of and search for fleeing Directorate S illegals, in practical effect, never happened.
Of course, that did not change people's memories. FBI Agents like then-Washington based Stan Beeman, or lesser so, the then-head of Counterintelligence Dennis Aderholt always had those names forged into memory.
It's just that when they periodically, and themselves illegally, checked the computer record on those names - as well as their real Russian ones - nothing came up.
1992 SEATTLE
Philip: - entering the apartment near the Pike's Place Farmer's Market - Hey, Elizabeth, you're here!
Elizabeth: Where else would I be, Philip? What? You were expecting Stan Beeman?
Philip: I actually wasn't expecting Stan that's why I said what I said.
Elizabeth: How'd it go at the bank?
Philip: Well, we're close to getting the loan. Best part? You're here! Meaning - nothing they've checked into these past two weeks triggered anything. Meaning - it's you here, and not Stan.
Elizabeth: Okay, that's at least something. - silence - I never thought I'd say it. I miss Claudia. I most certainly miss Gabriel.
Philip: Well, Seattle is not Washington or Falls Church, is it? I think here, we'll be our own Call Centre, our own handler. We're now talking directly to The Centre, more so in the past week, than we did in 25 years in Falls Church. And if it goes through at the bank, that means that all our covers are secure. Either that or we'll finally be in an American prison after all these years.
VORONTSOV
Two hours into the Frankfort-New York flight, a well dressed man came out from behind the first-class curtain. Stopping at Mischa and Nadezhda's row, he said in well-educated Russian, "hello comrades, how is the flight for you?"
Both Mischa as well as Nadezhda bristled at such a clumsy greeting - considering. Nadezhda answered, "that country does not exist anymore, comrade," with a well placed dollop of sarcasm at that last word. She said it knowing that the motherland now was wide open to the West.
Mischa surveyed as best he could if any of the nearby passengers had taken note of this exchange. No one had.
Nonplussed, the man continued in Russian, "the Ambassador wonders if you two would consider a later flight to Seattle. He has a room at JFK for confidential meetings, where he's diplomatically protected…"
Mischa interrupted in as low a voice as he could manage, "and where we're not. You don't think we'll be photographed going into a room where the Americans know the Ambassador is?"
The man said calmly, "that's not your worry."
Nadezhda said in a too-loud, low voice, "ha!"
"Besides," the man said just before returning to First Class, "if you survive that meeting with the Ambassador, you're good to go for your connecting flight. Call it a 'stress test', if you like."
Mischa turned to Nadezhda and quipped, "is it too late to change our minds about this whole thing?"