by Jack Barsky
But before I could move to a different table, one of the women initiated a conversation with me. Unable to hear what she was saying over the rock music pounding from the speakers, I moved closer and leaned forward.
“Are you from around here?” she asked.
“Sort of. I moved to Berlin from Jena about a year ago,” I said.
“So what do you do, if I may ask?”
A nosy one, I thought, but I provided her my stock answer: “I work for the Department of the Exterior. And where are you two from?”
“Oh, we’re neighbors from the Prenzlauer Berg area, and we like to hang out with each other.”
“Oh, I see.” Internally, I breathed a sigh of relief. Prenzlauer Berg was firmly in the heart of East Berlin. I didn’t have to worry about getting mixed up with someone from the West.
I glanced at the woman’s friend and was instantly intrigued. She was exquisitely beautiful, with a face like a movie star. Her sparkling light-blue eyes highlighted delicate features framed by locks of golden-blonde hair.
“Would you like to dance?” I asked when she caught me looking at her.
“Sure, why not?”
As we walked toward the dance floor, I noticed that she was slightly taller than average—not a bad thing for someone of my height. She told me her name was Gerlinde and that she worked as an administrative assistant at Humboldt University. To be heard over the music, she leaned in close to my ear, and the breath of her words sent a powerful surge of electricity running down my neck. The band played song after song, and we kept dancing as if we were the only two people in the room.
When the band played a version of “The Tennessee Waltz,” I put my hands on her waist, and she reached up around my neck. As we danced close together, her head found my shoulder. Her sweet perfume was intoxicating, and I held her a bit tighter.
When the evening was over, I walked her home, completely forgetting that she’d come with a friend. At her doorstep, I gave her a shy good-night kiss, and she smiled warmly at me. As she turned to go inside, I said, “Are you available tomorrow night?”
Her smile widened as she nodded, and my heart took off like a racehorse.
The next evening, we enjoyed a light meal at a nice restaurant, and after further conversation at her apartment, we fell passionately into each other’s arms.
When I returned to my place the next morning, I felt as if I had arrived in a different universe. The air seemed fresh and full of promise, and even the birds seemed to have scored a clear victory over the noisy, smoke-belching vehicles that crowded the streets. Overnight, the world had become a better place, and I was lucky to be in it. In the span of twenty-four hours, Gerlinde had managed to penetrate the armor I had maintained for eight years since the loss of Rosi.
For the next several months, there was hardly a night when I was at home. After my “workday,” I joined Gerlinde at her apartment, and in the morning I accompanied her to Humboldt University before continuing on to my fictitious job at a nearby government building. Gerlinde didn’t know what I really did during the day, or why I took a trip to Moscow.
Before my first trip to the Soviet Union, I had never been on an airplane. So I faced this great adventure with a mixture of excitement and fear. In 1975, for a twenty-six-year-old spy-in-training, a plane trip was a special occasion. I dressed accordingly in a suit, white shirt, and tie.
When Nikolai came to pick me up at my apartment, he sat down at the kitchen table, and I joined him there. For the next several minutes, I waited for him to say something or do something, but he just sat with his head bent forward, not saying a word. After a while, he stood up, walked to the door, and off we went.
This “moment of silence” soon became a routine that Nikolai followed for the rest of the time I knew him. None of the other Soviets ever did anything like it, and I always wondered what was going on in his head during those moments.
We arrived at Schönefeld Airport, on the outskirts of Berlin, ninety minutes prior to departure. After checking my suitcase at the counter, I headed in the direction of a sign reading Passport Control. But Nikolai tapped me on the shoulder, smiled, and said, “This way. Follow me.”
He led me to a door with a sign that said Eingang Verboten (Entry Prohibited) in big red letters. Apparently, the warning did not apply to Nikolai and me. Behind the door was a uniformed East German border guard, who saluted Nikolai as soon as he saw his credentials and let us pass without further ado. In years to come, my East German passport would never have even a trace of evidence that I had ever been to the Soviet Union.
After we walked into a waiting room, Nikolai gave me a quick good-bye nod and disappeared through the same door we had entered. I joined the dozen or so other passengers who were waiting for a bus to take us out to the plane, which was parked on the tarmac.
With so few passengers on the flight, it took no more than five minutes to board the plane and find an empty seat. After the cabin doors were closed, the pilot made a request over the intercom.
“We have a very light load today, and for safety reasons I’m asking everyone to take a seat at the front of the plane during takeoff.”
The passengers all looked at one another, but we all moved forward. The pilot’s announcement did nothing to dispel my anxiety. I found a new seat in one of the first few rows and tightened my seat belt against my lap.
To fill the time until takeoff, I pulled out the safety instructions and emergency procedures from the seat pocket in front of me, but reading all that information only served to make me even more nervous. When the plane began to taxi out to the runway, every bump and unexplained noise raised my level of anxiety until a cold sweat ran down my forehead. To make matters worse, a rowdy group of young men in the row behind me began to banter back and forth about the flight.
“Did you hear that?”
“Yeah, I think a wheel just fell off.”
“Have you ever heard of gathering everyone to the front to distribute the weight properly?”
“I’m telling you, something is wrong with this plane. Hey, stewardess, can I have another drink?”
I wanted to reach back and shut those guys up, but instead I sat as calmly as I could with my hands gripping the armrests. To settle my nerves, I consumed a few drinks of my own and smoked almost an entire pack of cigarettes during the two-and-a-half-hour flight. I arrived in Moscow safe and sound, but with a throbbing headache.
As I entered the airport terminal, I was immediately intercepted by a handsome young man about my age, with very dark eyes and a full head of jet-black hair. He introduced himself as Sergej.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Albrecht,” he said in excellent German with only a hint of an accent. He had grown up in Moldova. “I will be the host for your stay here. We have heard a lot of good things about you.”
“Thank you, and it’s nice to meet you, too. But can I trouble you for an aspirin? The flight gave me quite a headache.”
“Certainly, but first we’ll get your luggage.”
Sergej smuggled me past customs and passport control via a side door into the main hall of the airport and motioned me over to a corner to await my bags. In the meantime, I took a look around. By comparison with Berlin’s Schönefeld Airport, Sheremetyevo was huge. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of passengers milling around in the main hall. Not only was I in the most powerful country in the world, but I was there by invitation of the government. My chest swelled with pride and I almost forgot my headache.
When a uniformed soldier delivered my suitcase, Sergej immediately took it and led me outside to the curb, where a black Volga limousine was waiting for us. As the limo raced down the left lane of Leningrad Avenue toward the city center, I was thoroughly impressed by the expansive layout of the boulevard and the row of gargantuan buildings that lined both sides. Berlin’s Karl Marx Allee was a junior-varsity version of this magnificent avenue.
“So, Sergej, we are allowed to go one hundred kilometers an hour in the lef
tmost lane while all that traffic to the right seems to be crawling?”
“Special people deserve special treatment,” he said.
He further explained that our car had special license plates that allowed the driver to use the restricted lane. Anyone else who ventured over would be hunted down and fined. With that affirmation of my special status, my headache disappeared completely.
I leaned toward the window as we moved past the fascinating inner city. I recognized the famous structures I had seen in books and magazines. We passed the fortified complex of the Kremlin, with its huge spired tops, the vast Red Square, and the impressive gingerbread-and-frosting St. Basil’s Cathedral, built by Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century.
Ten minutes later, the limo pulled up in front of a typical Khrushchyovka apartment building. I followed Sergej inside to the elevator, which took us up to the fourth floor.
“You’ll stay here for the next two nights,” Sergej explained as we entered the tidy and well-appointed apartment. He motioned for me to sit down, and a short, elderly woman brought in a light meal of dark bread, smoked fish, and tea. Sergej said she’d take care of all the meals during my stay. After she left, Sergej and I discussed the upcoming agenda as we ate.
“Since this trip is to assess your ability in English,” Sergej explained, “you’ll be interviewed by two experts who will then issue a report to our leadership.”
After the meal, Sergej bade me good-bye and left me to settle in to my new surroundings. I helped myself to some of the Georgian brandy I discovered in a credenza and watched a hockey game in distorted, blurry colors on the television. Finally able to relax, I fell asleep during the third period and woke up to a dark screen.
The next day, I had back-to-back meetings with two English experts. The first to arrive at the apartment was an American-born woman who had somehow ended up in Moscow. She looked to be in her early fifties, with a slim figure and a sallow complexion. Her hair was a mixture of gray and faded blonde. She was pleasant, but her low energy, overall appearance, body language, and soft-spoken demeanor gave the impression that she had become weary of life. We conversed for about an hour in English.
After a break, a second examiner—a female professor of English from the famed Lomonsov University—arrived at the apartment. She was the exact opposite of the American examiner in every respect. In her midthirties, elegantly dressed and attractive, she spoke nearly flawless Queen’s English and projected high energy and self-confidence. This was clearly not an ordinary college professor, and she knew why I was there.
“Dear comrade,” she addressed me rather formally, “you have certainly made excellent progress in learning the English language. However, your German accent is still very strong. I don’t believe you will ever master the British dialect, and I doubt you will get close to a passable American accent either.”
Her blunt assessment hit me like an ice-cold shower. I sat like a schoolboy being lectured by a stern teacher.
“Anyway,” she continued, ignoring my discomfort, “learning the language is only one part of it. You must also learn how to think and feel like an American. Imagine living in their big houses and driving one of those huge cars. In order to be successful in the United States, you must think big. You must undergo a complete metamorphosis.”
I was dazzled by the boldness of this statement, though it was hard to imagine myself bridging the wide canyon between my current humble circumstances and the future this woman painted. A rich undercover revolutionary in the United States? I felt like a little boy in a toy store with an unlimited expense account.
At the same time, I was determined to prove that this overbearing and condescending professor was dead wrong. I would learn American English, and I would learn to speak it perfectly.
That evening, several visitors arrived at the apartment—five men and the Russian professor from my interview. I sensed that these people were all high up in the KGB, especially when one of the men was introduced by his full three-part name, a sign of great respect in Russia.
The elderly Russian woman who fixed my meals had prepared a feast, and we all sat down at the table to enjoy it. After we settled in, the high-level KGB officer spoke directly to me in a voice of unquestioned authority.
“We have decided to send you to our main adversary, masquerading as a natural-born American.”
I managed to keep a straight face, but inside, my excitement was growing. The United States! I nodded respectfully as I began to imagine great accomplishments and making a real difference in the world.
“This is an incredibly challenging task,” the officer continued, “and will require much more preparation. For the next two years, you will live here in Moscow to receive your final training before the launch. This is in recognition of your talents and your excellent performance during training so far. Believe me, this is a very special assignment that can only be accomplished by a special individual. We don’t send agents over like bananas.” He nodded decisively and said, “Let’s drink to that.”
His “toast” was greeted with some cheers and laughter as everyone at the table emptied their chilled glasses of vodka in one gulp.
With the official part of the banquet out of the way, it was time to tackle the delicious array of food spread out before us. I was awestruck by the quantity and variety of items assembled—enough to give the sturdy wooden table a backache. And at the center of it all was a huge bottle of vodka in a bucket filled with dry ice.
For the next three hours, we ate and drank and smoked, and all the Russians at the table took their turn offering a toast. The soup and appetizers were followed by two main courses—a large whole fish and a beef stew. And there was plenty of fresh Russian bread available.
By the end of the banquet, everyone was in an excellent mood. Despite the massive amounts of alcohol consumed, nobody appeared drunk or slurred their speech. Perhaps it was the equally massive amounts of food we ate that slowed the absorption of the alcohol into our bloodstreams and kept us all relatively sober.
Moscow was an unexpected new stopover on my uncharted journey. I was advancing up the ladder, earning my stripes, and would eventually be sent to America. This was so far beyond the dreams I’d had of becoming a professor of chemistry and living a respected life at the university, perhaps marrying and having children. My new path would follow an unknown route—perhaps like one of the heroic spies I grew up reading about. At the age of twenty-six, I had become convinced that I was meant to do something both very important and dangerous.
But I had some loose ends to take care of—one of which was Gerlinde.
Eight years after being unceremoniously discarded by Rosi, I had dared to open my heart again, and I had fallen in love. Gerlinde was everything I could wish for. She was beautiful, sexy, smart, and full of positive energy. But there was simply no place for her in my future life as an undercover agent in the United States of America.
Given Nikolai’s reaction to the episode with Gabriele a year earlier, I had not told him anything about Gerlinde. This was one situation I would have to resolve on my own.
When I returned from Moscow to prepare for my move there, I realized I was at a point of no return. The switches had been set for the track of my life’s journey. The KGB was grooming me to become an undercover agent in the United States of America—the number one enemy of the Soviet Union—and Gerlinde simply could not be a part of that.
I had about a month to prepare for the inevitable breakup. Our initial conversation about the topic was as painful as it was uncomfortable. I was half telling the truth and half lying to the woman I loved.
“Gerlinde,” I began hesitantly, “I need to tell you about a great career opportunity I’ve been given.”
Her eyes lit up and she leaned toward me in anticipation of the good news.
“I’ve been offered the position of deputy science attaché at the GDR embassy in Moscow.”
“That’s great!” she responded instinctively, but as the cons
equences of this appointment began to dawn on her, she asked plaintively, “But . . . what about us?”
I had rehearsed the answer many times in my mind, and now I forced it out.
“I’ve thought about this long and hard,” I said, “and the timing is just really bad.”
Her beautiful blue eyes were like lasers cutting into my heart. I looked down at my hands in order to stay on script.
“Our relationship hasn’t really reached a point where I think we can talk about getting married . . .” I said.
She didn’t respond to this, so I kept talking.
“And, you know, East Germans cannot just move to the Soviet Union without official permission and a job there. This is a two-year appointment.”
“Okay,” she said, as if considering whether she could handle a long-distance relationship. But I couldn’t keep the charade going. I knew I wasn’t coming back to Berlin after two years. My next stop would be somewhere in the United States.
“I’m sorry, Gerlinde, but I’m not ready for a lengthy, long-distance relationship with an uncertain future.”
“So—so, this is it?”
“I can’t think of another solution. It seems best if we both just move on.”
Tears started streaming down Gerlinde’s face, and I had a hard time holding back tears of my own. As if looking for a plausible excuse, I said, “You know, I thought hard about declining the offer—but it’s just not an option. You say no to the Party only once,” remembering the line my father had uttered many years before.
There was nothing more to say that evening, so I gave Gerlinde a gentle kiss on the forehead and left her apartment.
We continued seeing each other for the next three weeks, desperately clinging to a magical past that had no future. But on the night before my departure, it was time for a final good-bye.
When I entered her apartment, I saw her lying on the sofa staring blankly into an undefined point in space. The atmosphere was thick with an oppressive melancholy that settled like an immense weight on my chest. No more lighthearted laughter, no more teasing, no more kisses and hugs. This was good-bye forever. Gerlinde was wearing a red sweater and black tights, which revealed her attractive curves, but my focus was purely on bringing this scene to a quick end.