One Brother Shy

by Terry Fallis

  3/3   December 24, 1990

  “But the tattoo is not enough to explain it. You cannot even see it in the photo,” Alexei Bugayev said. “I still don’t understand how you found me, or how you found each other.”

  Matt looked at me.

  “If we tell you the story, will you then tell us your side, why you left, how you could do that, where you’ve been, and why you were so eager to avoid seeing us?” I asked.

  He winced and nodded.

  “Yes, of course, of course,” he replied. “You are both owed so much more than the story, but it is at least where I will start. It is not a simple story, but you deserve to hear it. Now that you have brought us together, now that you know the truth, this long and painful masquerade can finally end.”

  I spent about twenty minutes recounting my search for Matt. From my mother’s passing to finding the photo in the safety deposit box, from using the software I’d helped bring to market to flying to London and facing Matthew for the very first time. I spared no details. Then I turned to Matthew and he took over. He spent the next half hour describing in considerable detail how we’d enlarged the tattoo, figured out the hockey sticks and puck, and the Cyrillic spelling of Canada. He talked about our meeting with Pavel Dubov in London and with Dimitri Dubanovsky in Moscow. He relayed the story of our ill-fated trip to Yaroslavl to meet Yuri Golov. Matt spent some time on our final encounter with Dimitri when we first heard the name Alexei Bugayev. He skimmed over the last couple of days and our visits to the Russian Embassy and the Savoy. After all, our father was well aware of those events.

  “I’m so impressed with your ingenuity and dedication,” our father said. “I was convinced you’d never find me. And that when the time was right, I would find you.”

  “Okay, I can’t wait any longer,” I said. “Please, tell us what we need to know.”

  “I’ve waited a long time for this moment,” he said. “I’ve thought a lot about what I’d say if I ever got the opportunity. So let me start with three truths that I want you to keep in mind as I tell you this tale. These are very important.

  “First of all, I loved your mother very much and never stopped loving her, not when she was ill and not after she died. It sounds cliché, but she was my one and only true love. Until I met her, I’d always rejected that romantic notion. But I have never loved anyone more, and will never love anyone more. I cannot imagine being with someone else. Second, I know you think I completely deserted you, abandoned you. But I didn’t, at least not entirely. You couldn’t see me, but I was there. Finally, number three. Your mother loved you both so much, whatever decision was made twenty-five years ago. You have suffered for it, she suffered for it, and I have suffered for it, but I have always tried to do the right thing for both of you and your mother. Okay, will you try to remember these things when I am speaking?”

  Matt and I nodded, as if on cue.

  “Okay, now the story I never ever thought I’d be telling my two sons, my twin boys.”

  He made us sit down on the couch and he stood up in front of us, to present his case. My heart was pounding.

  “This story starts long before your mother and I met. I was first approached by the KGB when I was still a teenager, playing hockey. I had no brothers and sisters. That made it easier for them. Also, for some reason, I was good with languages. I did several radio interviews for my team at a big tournament in Finland. I knew a little of three different languages back then, I mean other than Russian, Czech, and Ukrainian, which I already knew. I learned by listening to a short-wave radio in my bedroom. I found a few books too that helped. Language skills are very important to the KGB. A man talked to me in Helsinki, and then again at other tournaments in Grenoble and Oslo. And that is how it all started. I wasn’t a member of the KGB then. I was just in the recruitment process that usually takes many years. At the time, I did not even know it was the KGB.

  “At eighteen, I joined the army and went to university in Moscow to study languages and economics. Most soldiers do not get to go to university, but my superior officers permitted it and I was readily accepted. I know now that my path was carefully planned by the KGB. I was encouraged to continue to play hockey, though my interest in it was fading. And to be honest, I was not that good. I was a goalie, but you already know that. But playing for the national team meant international travel. And playing for the national team is a good cover for a covert officer of the KGB.

  “I earned my degree in the spring of 1972. After we lost the famous Canada–USSR series that summer, my hockey career officially ended and I started working for the KGB in foreign capitals, always at our embassy.

  “Now you may think that I was involved in lots of undercover work, spying, assassinations, and espionage. But I was no James Bond. I was an economist who could speak six different languages. I was no spy in the Hollywood sense of the word. I spent my days gathering and analyzing important economic and industrial data about the country I was stationed in and neighbouring nations. My work was much more focused on making the Russian economy stronger. But I admit, others I knew were real spies. All major countries were doing it. I felt I was serving my country. I still serve my country.

  “In the summer of 1987, we had a bit of diplomatic trouble with the U.S. government that was never made public. Anyway, as part of a negotiated agreement, I, and several colleagues at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, were recalled to Moscow. I spent only a month back in Russia before I was posted to the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa. I loved Canada. The Ottawa climate is very much like Moscow, except it’s colder in the winter than it is at home. And that is very cold. But I could watch the second-best hockey in the world.”

  He looked at me when he said it. I just raised my eyebrows and tilted my head.

  “Okay, maybe hockey is played the best in Canada. Anyway, I liked my job in the embassy. I was promoted to economic advisor and learned a lot from economists in the federal government and at Carleton University. But most importantly to us, I met Lee MacAskill. The embassy is just around the corner from a cooking school, the Cordon Bleu school. They have a restaurant there called Signatures. We would go to lunch there often. It was not expensive and it was very good quality. Also, the first time I went, this wonderful, kind, beautiful woman showed me to my table. I didn’t ask her name that first day, but I knew I would come back.

  “The next week I learned her name. The week after that I ate alone at Signatures every day. On Friday, I asked her out. She said no. The next week I again ate alone at Signatures every day and asked her out on Friday. This time, she said yes. And we fell in love. I was already in love before she said yes, but she fell, too, in time. We were inseparable. And just so you know, we had to be so very, very careful. I was still technically part of the KGB. Having a brief affair, not to mention a full relationship, with a Canadian woman represented the classic and powerful security risk. I was breaking every rule in the KGB handbook unless the relationship was cultivated as part of an assignment. And it was not. This was no ‘honey trap,’ as we used to call it. This was just love. Pure, simple, wonderful, love. So we had to be extremely cautious. I would have been sent back to Moscow on a leaky fishing boat and then on to Siberia if our relationship had ever been discovered. So it was a love that could never be acknowledged.”

  “That must have been very difficult and dangerous,” Matt said.

  “Both. But it was worth it. Then you were born on December 23, 1990, a day I’ll never forget. Such beautiful baby boys.”

  He stopped and looked at the ceiling for a moment. It seemed almost as if he were gathering himself, preparing himself, steeling himself. Then he lowered his eyes to ours again.

  “I blame myself for what happened though your mother carried almost overpowering guilt with her always,” he said slowly. “Two days after you were born, I had to leave the country suddenly on an unexpected assignment in…well, in another part of the world – I cannot say where. It was supposed to take only three days, but it didn’t go as plan
ned and it was twenty-eight terrible days until I could get back to Ottawa. When I was gone, your mother descended into what was recorded in her hospital chart as severe postpartum depression, what is called postnatal depression in the U.K. Feeding the two of you was very difficult and painful. She was not herself and went down deep into what she told me later felt like a dark emotional and psychological hole. She said she couldn’t think straight, and was so tired all the time she could barely move. And worst of all, she said she had grave, overwhelming doubts about being able to care for you.”

  He stopped talking and stared at the floor for a time before lifting his head to look back at us.

  “A social worker and a nun from the hospital chaplain’s office were involved. They spent a lot of time with Lee. As far as they knew she was a single mother on her own in a very difficult position, marked by clinical depression, severe postnatal depression. I don’t know how much they influenced her, but seven days after you were born, and five days after I had to leave Ottawa, she signed the papers to put you both up for adoption.”

  “Both of us?” Matt and I said in unison.

  “Yes. But your mother seemed to emerge from her depressed state about a week later. She said it was like a fog lifting. She fought to get you both back. But by that time, Matt, you had already been adopted. For some reason, your adoptive parents were never told you had a twin.”

  He paused to let it all sink in a little. Then he started again.

  “I knew none of this until I returned two weeks later. By that time, Alex, you were back with your mother, but Matt, you were already with your new family and beyond our reach. Lee cried almost all the time. I tried to fix matters, but there was nothing that could be done. I’m so sorry.”

  “Wouldn’t the authorities have needed your permission as well to put us up for adoption?” I asked.

  “Normally, yes. But no father was registered for your births. Your mother refused to expose me. In the eyes of the hospital and adoption officials, she was a single mother with full authority. So you can see why I blame myself. We both carried this secret – this shame – that you now both know.”

  I remember Mom crying a lot in my childhood. Whenever I would ask her why she was sad, she’d always say they were tears of joy that I was her son. The crying jags decreased over the years, but never fully stopped.

  I realized Alexei was still talking.

  “I was with her as often as I could in that first year, but there were strange things going on in Moscow and across the Soviet Union. Two days after you turned one, the Soviet Union collapsed. By that time, Matthew was already in London with his new parents, who were both wonderful people. But in early January, I was sent back to Moscow.”

  “I would have thought the collapse of the Soviet Union would have finally freed you up to stay in Canada without any fears,” I said.

  “That is an understandable view, but it was not true. It was far from true. It was a very dangerous time to be in the KGB. I cannot tell you much about it, but I was doing my best and doing what I thought was best for the two of you and your mother. In the nineties, when the KGB became the Russian SVR, or Foreign Intelligence Service, I was posted to the Russian embassies in Paris, Geneva, and then here in London. My days of espionage for the Soviet Union, not that I ever really had many, were over. My interest in economics gave me the ability to move past my KGB history and climb through the diplomatic service. I suspect I’ll never be an ambassador, but I’m happy as a senior economist.”

  Then it dawned on me. The Cayman Islands.

  “Just to go back a bit, you’ve been sending my mother $5,000 every month, right? You’ve been supporting her, supporting us, all this time,” I said.

  “From the very beginning and still now,” he replied. “It is nothing, and far less than I wish I could have done as your father.”

  “How did you get the money?” I asked.

  “I saved it. I’ve always earned reasonable money at my embassy posts. It was and is my responsibility. And I have only modest and simple needs.”

  I just nodded.

  “I have watched you both grow up and have tried to look out for you,” he said.

  “How have you looked out for us?” Matt asked. “We’ve only just met.”

  “Again, that is a reasonable and understandable view. But it is not the complete story.”

  “And how did you even find me and my new parents?”

  “Matthew, I was a KGB officer. Let’s just say there was not much information, confidential or not, I could not obtain,” he explained. “I was so deeply sorry when that drunk killed your parents. That was such a tragedy. I have watched vodka do terrible things to Russia. Drinking and driving is a plague in my country. When that murderous driver escaped justice, I, and some former KGB operatives who owed me favours, managed to persuade a particular police officer to ‘rediscover’ the evidence that he had unlawfully suppressed. When the charges were reinstated and the trial called, it was because of that new evidence.”

  “That was you?” Matt asked, sitting up. “You made that happen?”

  “I wish I could have done more. You were alone. I felt helpless,” Alexei said. “And when you bought this wonderful apartment, did you ever wonder why that higher competing offer was mysteriously withdrawn at the last moment so you could get this place?”

  “My agent just said something about another unit in a different building coming available so he pulled out of this one,” Matt said.

  “That is true to a point. Let’s leave it that I ‘encouraged’ the other bidder to see the wisdom of buying the unit he ended up buying.” Matt cast his eyes around his beautiful condo.

  “Thank, you, um, Father, if I can call you that. I had no idea.”

  “How could you know? It was not for you to know.”

  Our father then came over to my end of the couch and perched on the arm. He put his hand on my arm.

  “Alex, my namesake, I am so sorry about Gabriel. I did all I could. We managed to get many sites to pull it down in the beginning, but it became too big. We couldn’t keep up. And now it is impossible. I’m also deeply sorry things did not work out with Cyndy, all because of Gabriel. The whole affair was monstrous and horrific. But it was a long time ago now. It is over, long over.” I looked over at Matt. He was leaning forward, focused on Alexei and me. I looked back at our father, who still had his hand resting on my arm. I was still processing what he’d just said. Eventually, I regained my faculties and turned my eyes to the floor.

  “It’s not over for me,” I said, almost in a whisper. “The stats grow every day. New people know about Gabriel every day. Yes, it was ten years ago, but it’s not over for me.”

  “Okay, okay. Yes, you are correct. But when was the last time someone recognized you from Gabriel?”

  I thought for a moment.

  “It was 2009,” I replied.

  “Yes. Six years,” Father said.

  “Right, so what I’m doing seems to be working,” I insisted.

  “Or it’s over and the world has forgotten,” he said. “Even if you are right, at what cost? At the cost of…” Our father paused. “At the cost of…you?”

  “So we’re back to Gabriel. When can I get in on the family secret?” Matt asked.

  “You have not told him?” our father asked.

  “Not yet,” I admitted. “Soon.”

  “Your brother should know about Gabriel. He can help.”

  I nodded.

  “I still cannot believe I am here,” our father said, standing up from the arm of the couch. “But it is late and I should really go. I will not keep you longer, but here is something of great importance that you must accept. Even now, all these years later, it still cannot yet be publicly known that you are my sons. Even though I have not really been in the field for many years, the perceived security threat of this secret remains and could be used against me and even against you. This is why I had to avoid you at the embassy and at the Savoy. It is also why I took suc
h strong measures to ensure my visit here tonight was undetected. I am no longer a spy, but until I’m no longer at the embassy, until I retire next year, we must keep this among us alone. I’m sorry it must be this way, but it is important. Do you understand?”

  Matt and I nodded.

  “If it were known, I would be recalled to Moscow immediately.”

  “When can we see each other again?” Matt asked. “There’s still so much to talk about.”

  “It will depend on several factors, but now that we are together, there is no chance of us not meeting often. It will just take some planning. I will contact you. Perhaps I will bring food and we can cook a late dinner together some night…a family dinner.” He choked up a bit on that final phrase and raised his hand to his mouth.

  As he was about to open the door to leave, an image flashed into my mind.

  “Wait, you were at the cemetery that day in Ottawa, weren’t you?” I asked, though it was no longer really a question.

  He looked at me. His face softened.

  “Not until after the burial. I had to wait until everyone had left, to pay my respects.”

  “I saw you, standing by the grave, afterwards, as we drove by. If only I’d known who you were.”

  He teared up again.

  “I visited your mother shortly before she died while you were at work and the wonderful Malaya was shopping. There’s never been anyone else for me, and there never will be,” he said before turning to Matthew. “I’m so sorry you never knew her. You would have liked her. You would have loved her.”

  He hugged us both and slipped out the door.

  “Do you believe the man who just left is our father?” Matt asked.

  “There’s no doubt left in my mind.”

  “Nor in mine,” Matt concurred. “Alex?”

  “I know, Matt. I promise. Tomorrow morning. First thing. I promise.”