Deep Undercover

by Jack Barsky

  One evening in May 1986, I shared the good news with Penelope over dinner: I would marry her and file for her citizenship papers, after which we would divorce and go our separate ways. Perhaps she had told me her story in the hope that I would respond the way I did, but ultimately the decision to marry her was mine, a decision that was driven by what I call my “damsel-in-distress syndrome.”

  Even today, whenever I see a little girl or a young woman in trouble in some way, my instinctive reaction is to want to be the knight in shining armor. And that is how, at roughly the same time I was making preparations for my next reunion with Gerlinde and Matthias, I also promised to marry an illegal immigrant for the purpose of obtaining documentation on her behalf.

  My next trip to Moscow was scheduled for the summer of 1986. I had saved enough vacation days at MetLife for exactly one month of absence. After subtracting my travel time and the days I would be at the Center, I had two weeks left to spend with Gerlinde and Matthias.

  Fortunately, the connection through Helsinki, Finland, went like clockwork, and only three days after leaving New York, I was sitting with Alex and Eugen in Moscow for my usual debriefing session.

  “Tell me about the break-in,” Alex said. “Is there any chance the FBI is onto you?”

  The two men peppered me with detailed questions about everything in my life that might indicate I was under investigation. I had not expected that isolated incident to blow up into something like this. The powers that be within the KGB were even considering pulling the plug on my American assignment right then and there to avoid the risk of an arrest and an international incident.

  I thought their concerns were overblown, but as they weighed the alternatives, I saw a glimmer of a chance to complete my assignment and go home to permanently join my family in Berlin. Gerlinde and Matthias had been without husband and father long enough.

  And yet, as I reflected on my circumstances, I felt that I had some unfinished business—that I hadn’t yet delivered what the KGB had sent me to New York to accomplish. With no hard evidence that I had come to the attention of the FBI, or that my cover had been compromised, it seemed a shame to close down the operation when I was successfully embedded in the US. What was missing was the piece that would allow me to pursue the original plan to infiltrate the upper levels of American society: the illusive US passport. Circumstances were different now— I had a professional job and a job history, and getting a passport might not be that difficult after all. I was eager to finish my assignment with a success that would wipe out what had been arguably my biggest failure.

  After I dangled the bait in front of Alex, he took the idea to his superiors, and the decision was made to send me back to New York for another two-year stint.

  When I arrived in Berlin for the latest round of hello-and-good-bye with Gerlinde and Matthias, there was more tension in the air than there had ever been during our more than ten-year relationship.

  “So when are you finally keeping your promise to stay with me and Matthias?” Gerlinde screamed at me when I told her about the two-year extension. When I gave her the tennis bracelet, she tossed it onto the table and said, “Diamonds are wonderful, but I have enough of this stuff now. I want you!”

  I put my head down in silence as guilt welled up within me. At that moment, I was painfully aware that it was my ambition—not my revolutionary zeal—that was driving me, and now that ambition had gained the upper hand over Gerlinde’s desires. Nevertheless, I responded, “Two more years, darling, two more years. They will go by in no time, believe me.”

  We spent the remainder of my time in Berlin like an ordinary family with some time off from work. We took a boat ride on the Spree River, visited the zoo twice, and drove to the woods outside Berlin to pick mushrooms. My farewell meal was wild mushrooms fried in butter with mashed potatoes.

  Matthias was now five years old, and he was a bright young boy and very conversational. But I could never shake my feelings of awkwardness around him. Perhaps it was my guilt about being a derelict father. I felt like such a stranger in both of their lives now—and I was. By the end of the trip, I seriously wondered why Gerlinde wanted me full time at all.

  By the time I got back to Moscow, Alex and the others seemed reenergized by our joint decision to make another run for it. We had three days to prepare me for my return to New York, and those three days were as intense as I could imagine.

  The second encryption algorithm I had used during the past four years had outlived its usefulness and had to be replaced. There was no time to memorize a new algorithm, so instead I received a small notepad (called a one-time pad) with 100 sheets containing groups of five digits for use in the encryption process. Those digits were made visible by developing the sheet of paper with an iodine solution applied carefully with a cotton swab.

  I also received two unusual requests for specific tasks. For the first time, I was introduced to someone from a different section of the KGB: industrial espionage.

  This fellow shared with me quite openly that the Soviet economy was not in good shape. He cited the arms race triggered by Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program and the war in Afghanistan as the primary reasons for the economic slump.

  “We need an infusion of modern technology,” he said. “This is imperative to the future.” Because I worked in information technology, he pleaded with me to collect whatever I could get my hands on, software or hardware, that might be useful to the Soviets.

  The second request was unusual, in that it was the first and only time I was given the option to say no to a request, but it also seemed very important.

  “We want you to drive up to Keene, New Hampshire,” Alex said, “and identify a dead-drop location where a large container can safely be deposited. That’s all I can tell you.”

  The task itself sounded rather simple and innocent, but the reason for the request and the nature of what would be dropped were cloaked in utter secrecy. My assumption was that they wanted to use me as a middleman between the Center and an important asset who could not risk having direct interaction with a resident agent. This middleman option highlighted one more benefit of having an anonymous illegal embedded in the US.

  Shortly after my return to New York, I drove the 400-mile round trip to Keene and located a suitable spot behind a large rock on Route 12A about two miles from the intersection with Route 9. I described the location to the Center via secret writing, but the drop operation never took place.

  Based on the timing, and the unusual sensitivity with which the Center handled this request, I believe this operation was intended to transfer materials from either Robert Hanssen or Aldrich Ames—two high-value assets to the KGB who had to be protected as much as possible from even indirect contact with Soviet resident agents.

  Both of these agents caused tremendous damage to the interests of the United States and were responsible for the deaths of a number of American spies in the Soviet Union. Hanssen worked for the FBI, and Ames was an employee of the CIA. Both were eventually caught and are now serving life sentences without possibility of parole.

  I left Moscow in excellent standing with the higher-ups in the KGB. During the farewell meeting, a senior official asked if I had a special wish for my future in Germany. I cautiously hinted that I would love to live in a single-family house, similar to the one I had grown up in. His response was quite encouraging.

  “I think that can be arranged,” he said with a wry smile. Using a Russian idiom that implied some sort of trickery, he added, “We’ll do some creative accounting.”

  He also gave me a glimpse of the Center’s plans for my future.

  “First you will have fun relaxing with your family, but soon you will get bored. Your son will bring home bad grades, and you will get antsy and hungry for action. But trust me, we will find something exciting for you.”

  As it happened, Matthias never brought home a bad grade. He inherited my propensity for math and science, and today he has a doctorate in physical chemistry. (
But I suppose we can cut the KGB officer some slack for not fully grasping the power of the Dittrich gene pool!) At the time, everything he said to me was encouraging, and as I left the meeting I was thinking, Perhaps I could make the GDR my real home once again.

  Back at my job at MetLife, I soon earned my third promotion. It was good to be back with my buddies in IT, and it struck me how much I genuinely liked these guys.

  To cover for my monthlong trip to Moscow and Berlin, I had told Penelope I was going on an extensive, cross-country bike trip. Nevertheless, she had been afraid she would never see me again, and she cried when I returned. She reminded me that she was betting her entire future on our relationship.

  A few weeks later, I found out just how big of a bet that was.

  One day, late in October, as Penelope and I were lounging around my apartment, she blurted out a confession.

  “Jack, I am pregnant.”

  “What! Are you sure?”

  “Very sure,” she said. “I had a pregnancy test done by a doctor. And I don’t care about your opinion in this matter; I’m going to keep this baby.”

  Not only was I an undercover spy, but now I was going to become an undercover father, as well.

  At that moment, my clever plan for a clean breakup after Penelope received her green card went up in smoke. For several moments, I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, and couldn’t respond. I wanted to help her and I enjoyed being with her, but I knew I didn’t love her.

  As the magnitude of her announcement began to ripple through my brain, I knew I had to prepare her for the inevitable separation that would come when I returned to Germany in two years.

  “Okay, this is hard for me to take,” I said with intentional harshness, “but I respect your decision, and I always keep my promises. So I will go through with the marriage, and I will support you and the baby to the extent possible. But I don’t see us as a real family, and I cannot see myself as an active father to the child.”

  My hurtful words had the desired effect, and Penelope cried long and hard. To my shame, I created a poisonous environment that would ultimately lead to the destruction of a marriage that never should have been.

  A wedding is usually a joyous event in a young couple’s life. But given our circumstances, my wedding to Penelope—with no friends, no celebration, no dreams—felt like just another task to complete before the end of the day.

  The ceremony was conducted at the Queens County Courthouse on December 10, 1986. Penelope’s housemate, Margaret, served as our witness. After a modest meal together at a nearby diner, the three of us went our separate ways.

  Two weeks later, we were ready to start the green card application process. To file for permanent residency of a spouse, couples had to appear in person at an office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. On the last Monday of December—one of those dark, cold, and damp mornings when fall, winter, and spring fought to a miserable three-way tie—I met Penelope at 6:00 a.m. in front of the INS building, and we joined a line that had already grown to considerable length. We stood beside each other, barely speaking, as we waited for the doors to open.

  By nine o’clock, the line had wrapped around the entire block. We squeezed into the large waiting hall inside the building as it filled to capacity. When the room was full, the doors were closed and anyone who had joined the line too late was told to come back another day.

  After another three-hour wait inside the building, we were finally called to a counter where the clerk collected and reviewed our application and the accompanying documents.

  A month later, we received an invitation for the dreaded interview, which was designed to ferret out fake marriages like ours. These interviews often played out like an episode of The Newlywed Game, where couples were separated and asked the same questions. The difference was that here, at the INS, it wasn’t funny or entertaining when the answers didn’t match.

  But while questions such as “What does your living room look like?” or “What is your spouse’s favorite food?” could easily trip up the inexperienced, I believed that with proper preparation we could easily pass the test. So Penelope and I had met several times to practice for the ordeal.

  As it turned out, none of that was necessary. As we were ushered into the office, I saw the female interviewer take a knowing sideways glance at Penelope, whose well-rounded belly clearly showed she was pregnant. After that, it only took a minute for the woman to shuffle some papers, check a few boxes on the forms, and wish us luck. Penelope was elated, and I was happy that I had beaten the system again.

  Soon after my return to MetLife, I began to look for technology that I could obtain for the KGB. After many evenings of “overtime,” in which I sorted through numerous unprotected electronic libraries, I found the perfect candidate, a highly popular industrial software package. The next night I stayed late again and printed out sixty pages of code. Back at my apartment, I photographed the individual pages and then sent them on to Moscow via a dead-drop operation on Staten Island. Whether Soviet engineers were ever able to make use of the code is unclear. It was a raw hexadecimal version without documentation. It would have to be reverse engineered, a tedious but doable task, in order to make it useful.

  By 1987, the regular Thursday night shortwave transmission had become more of a nuisance than anything else—especially when I went to the trouble of decrypting a message only to find a birthday greeting or some proclamation about a Soviet holiday.

  So when I saw the word Congratulations at the beginning of a message one night, I felt anger welling up inside me. I did not need to waste my time on yet another bit of rah-rah.

  But as I decoded the rest of the message, my eyes grew bigger and bigger:

  CONGRATULATIONS, COMRADE, IN RECOGNITION FOR YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS AND YOUR DEDICATION TO THE REVOLUTIONARY CAUSE, THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION HAS AWARDED YOU THE ORDER OF THE RED BANNER AND A BONUS OF $10,000.

  I stared at the words in disbelief. After never receiving as much as a letter of commendation, I was now being awarded the second highest decoration of the Soviet Union? This was an enormous honor, and it boded well for my future.

  I knew that Sergej would have delivered the medal to Gerlinde, and I wondered how she had responded.

  One day, I will be able to tell my mother, I thought. When she finally understands what I’ve been doing, perhaps she will forgive me for all the secrets and lies over so many years.

  ONE BENEFIT OF MY MARRIAGE to Penelope was that she was covered by my health insurance from MetLife, which meant that most of the expenses associated with childbirth were covered. Like any expectant father, I often accompanied her to the prenatal exams. Because the hospital where she planned to deliver was only ten minutes from my apartment, I invited her to stay at my place when she was a few days from her due date.

  Summer made an early entrance in 1987, and by the last weekend of May, the outside temperatures hovered around ninety degrees. Without air-conditioning or ceiling fans, my apartment was not a comfortable place for someone close to giving birth.

  By the following Monday morning, my patience with Penelope’s moaning and complaining about false alarms had worn thin. So when she told me that her water might have broken—but she wasn’t sure—I decided to take charge. “Get up and get dressed. I’m driving you to the hospital right now.”

  The ten-minute drive to Elmhurst felt like an eternity. No other high-pressure situation during my undercover existence could measure up to the tension I felt while driving Penelope to the hospital. When we arrived at St. John’s, I parked the car near the entrance, left the hazard lights on, and accompanied Penelope to admissions.

  As we walked up the steps, I saw a trail of blood trickling down one of her legs. This caught the eye of an alert nurse, and Penelope was rushed to a birthing room—the admissions paperwork could wait.

  I raced back outside to move the car to a legal parking spot in the neighborhood, and it took me about twenty minut
es to get back to the hospital. I went upstairs to the maternity ward and joined a handful of nervous expectant fathers for what I thought would be a long wait. But I had barely settled into one of the vinyl-covered seats when a nurse popped into the waiting room and said joyfully, “Mr. Barsky, you have a girl!”

  This now was my third child. I wasn’t man enough to be there for Edeltraud when she gave birth to Günter, and I wasn’t able to be with Gerlinde when Matthias came into the world, but this time I was able to see my newborn daughter soon after her birth.

  A nurse guided me through seemingly endless hospital corridors to a room containing several clear bassinets, and I saw my daughter for the first time.

  “Chelsea,” I said out loud as I leaned closer and saw her tiny fingers and toes.

  The medical staff had decided to put the otherwise healthy nine-pound baby girl in an incubator as a precaution because of the early water break. I felt sorry for the lonely little pink creature who was deprived of her mother’s touch. Little did I know that the day would come when this seemingly helpless baby would radically change my life and teach me the power of true love.

  After two days in the incubator, Chelsea was reunited with Penelope, and the next day both mother and daughter were released from the hospital. I picked them up, and as I carried the bassinet with the precious cargo through the hallways of the hospital, something strange stirred inside me. This was my daughter! One day she would grow up and perhaps look a little like me and be a little like me.

  I chased away this unwelcome emotion. My primary responsibility was to the KGB, and my real life was back in Berlin waiting for me. I would care for this baby and her mother as much as possible, but the unchanged plan was to set up Penelope to fend for herself. After all, there were millions of single mothers in the world, and she would learn to manage just fine.

  With my income from work, I was able to afford my own apartment as well as a furnished apartment in Queens for Penelope and Chelsea. I would make sure there was always food, baby formula, and other needed supplies, and I would go with them for doctor’s visits. What I didn’t know was how I would care for them once I was gone.