Maybe it was his tone that got to me. What I knew for sure was that it was unlikely that an NHL team would go to the trouble of signing a defector to a five-year contract if they didn’t think he was a pretty good prospect. That afternoon, while watching the United States easily win its second match of the Fed Cup, I asked one of the Eastern Bloc reporters I had become friendly with if he knew much about Pivonka. Greg was from Poland, but he spoke enough Czech to get around easily and he covered hockey. We had met because a lot of Eastern Bloc reporters covered the major tennis tournaments.
“He was going to be a big star,” Greg said when I brought up Pi-vonka. “His defecting is very bad for their national team.”
That was what I had guessed. Pivonka was twenty and had already played for the national team. He would go on to play in the NHL for thirteen years as a very solid two-way center who retired having scored 599 career points.
“How far away are we from Kladno?” I asked, knowing that was Pivonka’s hometown.
“It’s not at all far from Prague. About twenty-five miles west. You can drive there in under thirty minutes.”
Of course I didn’t have a car. Nor did Greg. There weren’t all that many people in Czechoslovakia who had a car. Reading my mind, Greg said, “We could get there by bribing a cab driver to take us. If we give him twenty dollars U.S. he’ll do it.”
One thing I had learned in my brief period behind the Iron Curtain was that people craved American money. Regardless of the exchange rate, you could make a deal for almost anything very cheap if you paid in American money. In restaurants, if you tipped in American money you could get almost anything you wanted.
“Do you think you can ask around and find out where his family lives?” I said. “Or see if we can maybe find his coach?”
We agreed to meet early the next day at the media center. I was now officially intrigued by the story. I told two people—Lesley Visser, who was then with the Boston Globe, and Mark McDonald of the Dallas Morning News—what I was doing. “If I’m not back by lunchtime, call the embassy,” I joked.
The next morning Greg said he had not found out where the Pi-vonkas lived but he had learned the name of the factory where his mother worked. We walked several blocks from the media center, because we thought there was a good chance that area was being watched, and flagged down a cab. Greg leaned into the window with the twenty-dollar bill I’d given him, talked to the cabbie for a moment, and said, “Get in.”
We jumped in. It was searingly hot and the cab wasn’t air-conditioned. “Does he know where the factory is?” I asked.
“No, but we can ask when we get there.”
Which is exactly what we did. Kladno was a steel-factory town of about a hundred thousand people. I remember my first thought as we drove the streets was “What a depressing place this must be in winter.”
On the third try the cabbie found someone who had heard of the factory we were looking for. As it turned out we were no more than five minutes away. We pulled up to a building that looked exactly the way you would expect a factory in a small town behind the Iron Curtain to look: forbidding. We agreed that having someone who only spoke English showing up at the entrance wasn’t a great idea, so I waited outside while Greg went in to see if he could find Mrs. Pivonka.
I paced up and down in the heat while the cabbie, who I had given another twenty dollars so he would wait for us, sat nearby with the engine idling. Ten minutes went by, then fifteen. It felt like a couple of hours. Finally, I saw Greg come out accompanied by a short, attractive blonde woman who appeared to be in her early or mid-40s.
“John Feinstein, this is Magdalena Pivonka,” he said.
There was something about Magdalena Pivonka I liked right away. She had light-blue eyes and a shy smile. Her handshake was warm and she looked me right in the eye when she said in English, “You are from Washington—where my son has gone?”
“Yes, I am,” I said. “I would like to know more about him—and you.”
She nodded in assent and the three of us got in the cab. She gave the cabbie instructions and we pulled up a few minutes later to a drab, three-story building with peeling paint that stretched the length of the block. The Pivonkas lived on the second floor. The apartment consisted of three main rooms—a small living room and two bedrooms, as well as a bathroom. When we walked inside, Magdalena Pivonka picked up a pair of sunglasses sitting on the chest by the door. Her eyes clouded. “This is all I have left of my son,” she said.
She offered us coffee, which we accepted. I remembered the scene in All the President’s Men when Dustin Hoffman, in the role of Carl Bernstein, gratefully accepts a cup of coffee offered by the sister of a reluctant potential source. If someone offers coffee, as a reporter you accept—even if you don’t drink coffee. Of course, almost everyone who has been in journalism for more than fifteen minutes drinks coffee.
Greg and I sat on the couch, and Magdalena, who had asked me to call her by her first name, sat on one of the two chairs in the small living room. She told me that her husband was out of town for the weekend and that her daughter, Michal’s younger sister, was at school. She then began explaining that the plan for Michal to defect had started taking shape not long after the Capitals drafted him at the age of eighteen, more than two years earlier. She spoke in English at times, at other times she switched to Czech and Greg interpreted. About ten minutes in, I knew I had a front-page story. This was one time George had been right: poking around had been the thing to do.
About forty minutes went by and we were beginning to wind down. Suddenly, there was a sharp knock on the door. Magdalena Pivonka looked surprised. It was too early for her daughter to be home and she had keys anyway. She had made more coffee, so she put down her cup and walked to the door. I heard her talking to someone for a moment and then a hard-looking man in a dark suit stepped into the apartment. I saw Greg stiffen as he continued to talk to Magdalena.
“What’s up?” I said quietly.
“He’s Czech KGB,” Greg whispered. He looked quite scared.
I was just as terrified. But my first thought was that I had to deal from strength: I was an American and, fortunately, two people back at the tennis center knew where I was and would note my absence if it was extended. The cold war—as Pravda had pointed out ten days earlier—was over.
The KGB agent was now in the apartment and had walked over to me. Greg stood up. I didn’t. This guy clearly wasn’t here as a friend. He ignored Greg and pointed a finger at me. “Vashington Post?” he said.
“Yes,” I said, hoping my voice was calm.
“Pity,” the man said. “Your papers please.”
“And who might you be?” I asked, still not moving.
He flashed some kind of ID and called himself something that didn’t include the letters KGB.
“You are not authorized to be here,” he said. “Papers, please.”
I stood up and reached into my pocket for my passport and the visa I’d been issued by the Czech embassy in Washington before my trip. As I handed them to him, I said, “I didn’t realize one needed authorization to talk to people here. I’ve been told ever since I arrived that Czechoslovakia is as free a country as mine.”
I wasn’t making that up. One difference between the Soviet Union back then and Czechoslovakia was that the Russians made no pretenses about who they were and how their country was run. The Czechs were different—they told us constantly how “free” their country had become.
My new friend took a lot of time looking at my passport and visa. Whether he was trying to find something wrong or just trying to ratchet up the tension, I’m not sure. I sat back down. Greg was still standing. Magdalena Pivonka was still standing at the open door. As the agent was still looking my papers over, a second man came to the door and walked into the apartment—uninvited. He spoke briefly to Magdalena and then to the agent who had my papers. It was clear to me he was in charge because, even in Czech, I could tell the first guy’s tone was deferential.
I’d been thinking of a story while I sat waiting. Now I launched it. “I spoke to [the Czech Hockey Federation official whose name I still remembered back then] to ask him about Mrs. Pivonka’s son, since he is now going to play in the city where I live. He told me that Mr. Pivonka was an unimportant player and his departure didn’t matter here. I didn’t think it would be a problem for me to come here and talk to his family.”
The only part of what I’d said that was a lie was the last sentence. Obviously I knew it was a problem for me to come here. I just hadn’t realized how big a problem.
The two agents went back to talking. They still hadn’t said a word to Greg. The boss agent pulled up the chair Magdalena had been sitting in so he could get close to me. “Your visa allows you only to be in Prague,” he said. “You have violated it by coming here. I can arrest you for this. You will tell me the truth in this or I will arrest you—and him.” He pointed at Greg.
“I’ve told you the truth,” I said. “There wasn’t anything sinister going on here. I just asked Mrs. Pivonka about her son and what his future in hockey might be.”
We fenced that way for a while. He kept repeating that he had the right to arrest me; I kept insisting I didn’t see what I’d done wrong. The other three people in the room were spectators.
By my watch, the “interrogation” went on for about two hours. After about the fortieth time I was threatened with arrest, I said, “Look, if I’m not under arrest, I’m leaving. I have work to do. If I am under arrest, I would like to contact the American embassy.”
The two agents walked into a corner to talk. I looked at Greg. “You okay?” I said.
He nodded. Magdalena actually came and asked if I wanted more coffee, which reminded me that I desperately needed to go to the bathroom. I thanked her, offered her my seat on the couch, and got up to go to the bathroom. The boss agent jumped at me.
“Where are you going?”
“The bathroom.”
He nodded and waved me in that direction. When I came out he told Greg and I that we were free to go but not only was I not to leave Prague during the rest of my stay, I was to go only to the tennis center, the media center, and my hotel.
“Is that what my visa says?” I asked.
“It is what I am telling you.”
I didn’t argue because it was pointless. He was trying to prove he was still in charge and somehow intimidate me. I had felt intimidated early but not now. Now I was angry—though still a bit scared. Mostly I was worried about what the agents might do to Magdalena. I was more worried when we walked to the door and they instructed her to go with them.
“Where are you taking her?” I asked.
“Back to her job,” the boss agent said.
The two of us were standing in the doorway. He wasn’t very big but he had about the hardest eyes I’ve ever seen. “If you do anything to her, I’ll find out,” I said. “I will let my government know what happened here.”
“Do you threaten me with this?” the agent said.
“No,” I said. “I tell you this as fact.”
We exchanged brief glares. We all walked down the hallway and back down the steps we’d come up three hours earlier. Remarkably, our cab driver hadn’t deserted us. He was waiting at the end of the block where he had dropped us off. As the agents and Magdalena got into the car, I asked Greg what he thought they were going to do to her.
“They will ask her many questions,” he said. “They will make her feel fear. But I don’t think they will arrest her. In spite of what the Hockey Federation claims, her son is a hero here.”
It was mid-afternoon by the time I got back to the media center. Visser and McDonald had told the rest of the American media where I’d gone, and they had started to worry about me. I told them what had happened and someone said, “You need to write what happened and get it sent to the Post as soon as possible. Who knows, they may try to confiscate your computer.”
They were right. I sat down and wrote every single detail I had, including all the quotes from Magdalena Pivonka. It wasn’t a story per se, I was just trying to get it all on paper and in the hands of my editors at home. It might have been the first blog, now that I think about it. Sending was complicated. An operator in the media center had to hook you up to a special phone connection and dial the call for you. In the story, I said at the top: “George, I’m going to call you soon. Assume when we talk we’re being listened to.” We had all figured from day one in both the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia that the phones were tapped in the media centers and the hotels. It hadn’t really mattered to me until now.
A short while later, when I knew George would probably be in the office—the time difference was six hours—I called.
“Did you read what I sent you?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “People back here [that would probably mean Ben Bradlee and Len Downie] want you to contact the embassy. If they recommend you should come home, come home right away.”
“Okay,” I said. “If they do that though, maybe I should go to Paris. The Tour de France ends there on Sunday. I could cover that.”
“Don’t do that, John.”
“Why not? I mean, if I have to leave here…”
“John, don’t do that. We still have diplomatic relations with France.”
It might have been George’s best line. It helped break the tension I was feeling. As soon as I hung up, I called the American embassy. I explained to whoever answered the phone that I was an American journalist in Czechoslovakia covering the Federation Cup and that I’d run into a problem with my visa. I was put through immediately to a man named Sam Westgate, who said he was the embassy’s second secretary.
I started to tell Westgate what had happened, but he cut me off. “We should have this conversation in person,” he said. “We’re not far from where you are. Why don’t you come over here tonight and we’ll talk.”
He was saying the phones were tapped. I finished my routine tennis story for the day, attaching a note saying I was going to the embassy that night. I took a cab and was greeted at the gate by a young marine who told me I was expected. I walked inside, and Westgate took me into a packed room where loud music was being played.
“We have a party every Friday night for our people and people from the other Western embassies,” he said.
We sat at the bar, and he offered me a beer and introduced me to an attaché from the Canadian embassy.
“Tell me what happened,” he said.
When I finished the story he sipped the beer for a moment, thinking.
“Okay, first of all, the next couple of days you don’t go anywhere by yourself,” he said. “Make sure the other Americans know the story, and don’t go for any walks or even to breakfast alone.”
“Do I need to get out of the country before Monday?” I said.
He shook his head. “No, you don’t want to do that,” he said. “That will tell them that they got to you. They know you’re here to cover the tennis and it ends Sunday. In fact, they know what flight you’re booked on Monday morning. You stay and I’ll meet you at the airport. There will be trouble there, I guarantee it.”
“Trouble?”
“What they’ll probably do is try to make you miss your flight. They’ll stamp your exit visa, you’ll miss the flight, and you’ll be stuck in the airport until Tuesday morning because your flight [on Lufthansa] is the only one out of here to Frankfurt every day. That’ll be your punishment—spending twenty-four hours stuck in the airport.”
Remembering the dinginess of the airport when we’d landed, I certainly wasn’t looking forward to that. My face must have registered something because Westgate said, “Don’t worry. I’ll get you on your flight.”
I asked him if he thought I had been followed to Kladno.
“Absolutely,” he said.
“But why?” I asked. “Why would they
even think to follow me?”
The Canadian answered the question. “After what happened to you in Moscow [I had told them that part of the story], I guarantee you were followed the minute you landed here. In fact, someone’s probably in trouble because you got to Mrs. Pivonka and spent time with her. They screwed up.”
“Which is all the more reason why they’ll mess with you Monday,” Westgate said. “They can’t arrest you; there’s nothing to charge you with. But they can make you pretty miserable.”
The next morning at the tennis center, I told everyone in the American group what was going on. The next two days were without incident. The United States easily won the championship, and all of us got on a bus at seven o’clock Monday morning to go to the airport. Sure enough, almost as soon as we arrived, there was trouble. I was pulled out of line at passport control. There was a problem, I was told, with my visa. I was taken to a supervisor who told me to wait and then got on a phone while I stood and waited.
As if by magic, Westgate appeared. He had been looking for me on the passport control line and had been told that I had been taken out of the line. He walked into the booth where the guy was on the phone. Apparently the two men knew each other, because they began speaking quite animatedly. After a few minutes it appeared a standoff was developing. Westgate stopped talking and folded his arms. The Czech official said nothing for a moment, then picked up a stamp and stamped both my passport and visa. Westgate literally grabbed both of them off his desk and came out of the booth.
“Come on,” he said. “If we run you can still make it.”
The flight was due to leave at 9:10. It was exactly 9:00.
The only thing I was carrying on board was my computer and some Czech crystal I had bought for my mother and my girlfriend. Westgate grabbed one of the bags with the crystal and I grabbed the other.
“What happened in there?” I said as we ran down the hallway toward passport control.
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