A Shadow in Moscow, page 3
I should’ve lied to Scott right then and there and said no. It would have at least saved me this month of torment. But I couldn’t. I already lied once that day, and I didn’t think I had another in me.
The truth is, the day before our spring break adventure, I had in fact “been contacted by and been in conversation with an agent or representative of the US government.”
Scott doesn’t know. Sasha can never find out.
It all started with a summons to Professor Jamison’s office. While unexpected, as we meet to discuss my senior thesis on Thursdays and had just met the day before, I was delighted to drop by.
Jamison’s cramped and stuffy book-lined office is my favorite spot on campus. Something about its dusty, ink-and-paper smell takes me right back to my bedroom and my all-night read-a-thons—because at home you get the best books in secret and only for one night.
As usual Jamison was dressed in a rumpled, plaid button-down shirt with his readers perched upon his head. He looked as disheveled as his office, with the remains of a tuna sandwich near his elbow.
“Shut the door, why don’t you?” He absently patted his desk. I gestured to his head. He reached up and rolled his eyes. “Oh yes, there they are. Thank you.”
I turned to catch the door and froze. Another man stood in the room, not one meter—three feet, my mind converted—from me.
“I’m sorry.” I faced the professor. “I thought you wanted to discuss my paper. I can come back later.”
“It’s in fine shape.” Jamison waved long fingers to the man next to me, who calmly returned a book to the shelf before he stepped toward me, hand outstretched.
I estimated he topped me by at least six inches, making him just shy of my father’s height. But the similarities stopped there. I could tell this man was wired for action rather than stillness. I found that far less disconcerting. He was younger, too, maybe early to midforties. Light brown hair cut short. Grey-blue eyes. Cool and impassive.
Jamison continued. “I want you to meet someone. Please. Go ahead and shut the door.”
I slid the door shut with one hand and reached out to shake hands with the other.
His hand was as cool as his eyes. He still had not spoken. Perhaps because Professor Jamison, in his normal scattered way, was still talking.
“Anna, this is Trent Olivers. Trent, Anna. The best and brightest of the year. He was once that, Anna, longer ago than either of us will admit. Bright as you, but he never pushed his thinking deep enough. Now he’s something different altogether. Now . . .”
The man’s eyes had widened minutely at the mispronunciation of my name. I didn’t react. It’s never bothered me that, either on purpose or by accident, Jamison—after teaching me in two classes and mentoring my honors thesis—still hasn’t gotten it right. I take it as a testament to my ability to fit in.
Jamison, still chattering, lifted his head to capture us both within the lenses of his readers. “He’s the man behind that test you and the others took last month.”
The test.
In February Jamison called ten of us in to take a newly designed test, structured to assess the “evolving twentieth-century sociopolitical paradigm,” whatever that meant.
In form, the two-hour examination was a mix of multiple choice, short answer, and essay, covering an eclectic array of topics such as math, ethics, problem-solving, science, literature, history, philosophy, ideology, sociology, and religious attitudes. Our reward was unlimited pizza and beer at The Tombs afterward. He never said anything about follow-up meetings or results. In fact, as I cast my memory back to that day, we hadn’t signed our names to the forms.
“It wasn’t graded, was it? Did I fail?” I sank into Jamison’s only visitor’s chair. It was scratched, worn, and the leather slippery enough to make me slide deep. A grade hadn’t seemed likely and failure never occurred to me. I thought we were simply and anonymously putting a new test through its paces.
Coming from a school system in which you only advance depending on how well you master each step, I’ve always been terrified by failure. I’ve always been terrified of scrutiny. There are real consequences at home for poor marks and missteps.
I forced myself upright and addressed both Jamison and Mr. Olivers. “Do I need to retake it or something?”
My professor laughed and returned to grading papers.
Mr. Olivers did not laugh. Instead he perched in front of me on the edge of Jamison’s desk. “Nothing like that. In fact, you did remarkably well.”
He stared at me, then continued—in pitch-perfect Muscovite Russian. “Anya Kadinova, I read your entrance file when you arrived here. Very impressive. I had not expected to find your answers on the test, especially your long answers, so . . . original.” He let the last word float between us.
Jamison’s head popped up like a Whac-a-Mole and I knew his mispronunciations were a mistake. “Anna, do you speak—?” He cut himself off. “My TA told me you moved to Illinois from West Germany in middle school.”
“Yes, sir, I did tell him that.”
It was a lie I made up in my first days on campus. I’ve always been good—exceptionally good—at languages, accents, and imitations. So good I got written up in Class Six for mimicking my teacher’s German. I got written up—she disappeared from school. In my defense I hadn’t known she hadn’t reported she knew German. That whole incident still bothers me.
Anyway, my first roommate at Georgetown, a silly, spoiled girl named Sandy, refused to bunk with a “Pinko.” When Tracy took her place, I came up with my story about being from the German Federation Republic—what Americans call West Germany. Tracy didn’t question it. No one did—Americans are generally horrible about accents and languages, by the way.
For the most part it was a good choice. It gave me the chance to become someone new and different in America and feel what freedom of choice, thought, expression, and intention meant in every aspect of my life. I wouldn’t have been allowed to do that if people truly understood I hail from Moscow rather than Bonn. Sure, there have been a few crass comments about Germans and Nazism, but nothing compared to what I’ve heard dished out regarding Soviets and Communism.
It’s been exhausting, though. It’s an odd form of schizophrenia, knowing myself to be one thing while actively pursuing another identity every waking moment. I’ve only “come clean” with Tracy and Scott. With everyone else, I’m perpetually playing a game, maneuvering my pieces—actions, reactions, inflections, opinions, and ideas—around a board. It’s shredding, and without that hard stop at graduation, I’m not sure I could keep it up.
I considered all this, and my options, as silence hung heavy in Jamison’s office. Both men watched me. Neither spoke. I vacillated between pretending I didn’t understand Mr. Olivers, as I hadn’t answered Jamison’s question yet, and diving in to see where Mr. Olivers was headed.
I shifted my focus to Mr. Olivers alone. “You seem to know a lot about me. Why did you have me take the test if you knew I wasn’t a real American? Or even a real German?” I replied in Russian. “Why did you not simply talk to me? Why trick me into this office like you did today?” I asked in German. “And what were you trying to learn anyway with that test? What were you after?” I finished in French.
Mr. Olivers’s mouth twisted into the smooth-lipped grin of the smug and knowing. Jamison’s eyes were so wide behind his readers he resembled a tarsier, that little squirrel-like animal from the rain forest I saw on a National Geographic special last summer.
Rather than answer my questions, Mr. Olivers—unaware Jamison was now riveted by our conversation—asked a couple of his own. “Why did you double major in engineering and literature? You’ve taken several philosophy courses too. What are you after?” He returned to English and his tone was no longer overtly challenging but curious with an edge.
Part of me wondered if Sasha sent him. Sasha doesn’t have Olivers’s cool confidence, but I’ve seen it in seasoned KGB officers. Either Olivers was one of them, or something terribly close. I had to be careful.
“Knowledge. Understanding . . . Because I could. I asked for permission and it was granted.” I caught the defensive uplift of my voice and corrected my tone. “Engineering was required. I’ll work in that sector once I return home. In fact, I was on my way to MIFI, the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute, before I was offered a spot in the Foreign Studies Initiative. But when I got here and discovered I could take classes outside my major, I did.”
“Engineering?” Mr. Olivers lifted one brow high. “You weren’t headed for the Moscow State Institute of International Relations?”
MGIMO.
I tried not to let my jaw drop. He was really asking very different and dangerous questions. Was I going to be groomed for the Committee for State Security, the KGB? Had I been groomed?
But those were questions that, if he was KGB, he’d know the answers to. Foreign Studies Initiative students are never groomed for the KGB. We’re too high profile. We’re the Soviet poster kids: diplomatic fodder. We are commanded to excel at all our classes, behave as model comrades, and uphold the ideals of the State. At all times we are to demonstrate the superiority of our homeland. And if US Intelligence Services tie themselves up keeping track of us every minute of every day, all the better. That just means the real KGB “assets” have an easier go on American soil.
Still unsure if it was a trap, I tried to form a bland but truthful answer. “Before I accepted the Foreign Studies assignment, MGIMO was offered alongside MIFI. I was lucky. My scores allowed me a choice. That is rare but appreciated.”
“I expect a member of the Party’s nomenklatura, specifically one in the Office of the Counsel to the Presidium and General Secretary Brezhnev, would be afforded some say in his daughter’s placement.”
That’s when my jaw did drop. This man seemed to know more about my father than I did. The best description I can give for my father’s job is “high-level Party bureaucrat,” and it’s accurate—it’s the job description most of my friends give for their parents as well.
With that statement I knew Mr. Olivers was definitely not KGB. It wasn’t in what he said but in how he said it. There is something unique about the way each country’s people express themselves, and it can be revealed in something as tiny as a gesture or an inflection—the way we walk, talk, carry ourselves, or even tilt our heads. Things only an outsider could notice.
But if he wasn’t KGB, who was he?
Mr. Olivers grimaced.
I got the sense he felt he’d misstepped and made us adversaries instead of comrades.
“Tell me more about your love of ideas.”
He was trying to put me at ease, but his approach missed by a mile. Four years here and I’m still shocked at how easily everyone shares their thoughts. Back home, that’s sacred ground. I wanted to run out of the room, but Jamison’s encouraging smile compelled me to stay.
“It’s what my friends and I did—do. We read and we argue at home—in private, of course. Most of our opinions are crap, but . . .” I took a deep breath, only then realizing I’d been holding it.
I glanced around the office again, allowing the books, the smells of paper, ink, and dust to settle within me.
“Every culture tells a story through its literature and philosophy. I’ve grown up on a Marxist-Leninist worldview and stories of Russia and the Slavic countries. The Soviet Union isn’t a hundred years old, but our history—our people’s history—goes back centuries. Books about our past aren’t too hard to get, at least some of them. You register on a list and get them after a few months or so, or you can collect recycling. That’s what we did. Paper and metal for books, and there were some really great ones.”
I thought back to how, sometimes tucked within those books, we found gems. That’s where I met all the best Russian storytellers and my favorite science fiction authors from around the world. Asimov, Bradbury, Orwell, Huxley, Clarke, and Le Guin—their stories prepared me for Georgetown by introducing me to worlds so bizarre and experiences so alien I simply had to hold on until I figured out the rules and the culture.
“But the best,” I continued, “were the secret books. The one-nighters that got you reported and kicked out of the Komsomol if you got caught reading them. Those books took you to whole new galaxies.”
“Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy?”
“Those you could get. Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Zamyatin, Pilnyak were tougher. Those were the stories tucked in the recycling pamphlets. But Tolkien. Steinbeck. Salinger. Faulkner. Lee. Those were the one-nighters.”
I surveyed Professor Jamison’s bookshelves. “Here they’re lined up, free for anyone to grab and read. Most of the books I’ve read while in America will never come my way again.”
“What’s your favorite?”
“That was a secret book, actually. To Kill a Mockingbird. I got a copy for a night when I was sixteen. Scout was the first character I met that I could relate to. She was young, but she had humanity, goodness, and spirit, despite the evil around her. I wanted to be Scout.”
“And who is your favorite philosopher?”
I stared blankly.
“I pose no danger to you.”
I decided to answer, because that’s part of what I learned from my favorite philosopher—that I’d never have big courage if I didn’t practice small acts along the way.
“Thomas More. He’s not one of the biggest guns in the Western canon, but he was relatable and he taught me something I needed to know. My end point.”
“What’s that?”
“He showed me there’s a line my conscience won’t allow me to cross. It’s out there, even if I’m not sure what it is yet.” I swallowed, noting small acts of courage aren’t easy.
“He wasn’t what I thought,” I continued. “More seems super closed and rigid, but he was a very urbane and brilliant politician. Until he reached his end point. The line in the sand that would separate him from his very soul if he crossed it. I’d never thought about that line before.”
“I doubt many have.”
“At home, it’s a collective line rather than an individual one. It’s determined by the State for all society. The idea of such individuality was brand new for me.”
I surprised Mr. Olivers. I silenced him. I could tell because his face softened. He was curious. He pulled over a footstool and sat next to me. His knees hit his chest.
“What are your plans after graduation, Anya?”
“I’ll fly home the night of graduation and work in a laboratory, serving as a liaison between scientists and the government.”
“Reporting to Minister of Defense Nikolai Ivanovich Petrov? That’s a very high-profile job.”
I licked my lips. I could not answer that question, yet unbidden I gave a single small nod.
Mr. Olivers did not react; he merely asked his next question. “Are you pleased with that path?”
I took a steadying breath. This past year, I’ve listened as my Georgetown friends pondered what jobs to accept and what might make them happy. Their ability to choose sifts through my hands like sand, lingering only long enough to tease me with the hope it can be mine.
It can’t.
At home I, as an individual, exist to serve the State. Anything and everything else is subservient to that primary relationship. And I have been assigned my job.
“A lot is expected from the Foreign Studies Initiative students. I’m pleased to be given such an opportunity.”
Mr. Olivers shifted closer. “Would you like a different opportunity?”
“I don’t understand.”
He turned his head to catch Jamison’s eye before answering me. “I work in a business that strives to change reality. We protect American national security and interests abroad, and we also work to promote democracy and freedom. You’re right, I could have approached you directly, but that test gave me insights you might hide. Your answers and reading interests reveal you believe in voice, in certain amounts of individual autonomy, and you crave internal freedom. You can’t like Thomas More otherwise.”
Without studying Jane Austen last year, I’m not sure I could have parsed through his speech. But “it is a truth universally acknowledged” that people often try to make a point while saying nothing at all. It’s also a universal truth that we instinctively understand each other. Meaning conveys when words cannot—I knew exactly what he was talking about and what he was about to propose.
“The exam you took was created for the US Intelligence Services, and if working for us, with us, is of interest to you, I am here to discuss that possibility. But I must warn you, it’s a double life, a division of soul perhaps, and after More, that will either resonate with you or not appeal at all. It depends on what drives your soul.”
I thought about the energy required to play that game and the energy I’d already expended simply pretending to be a West German. “No one can live like that. Not indefinitely.”
“You’d be surprised.” Mr. Olivers tilted his head as if savoring a delicious secret only he knew. “The best can and do. You could be that.”
I sat for a moment chewing and digesting his offer. I was flattered and it was tantalizing. How could it not be? Yes, I’ve fallen in love with Western literature and philosophy, but I’ve gotten pretty hooked on Hollywood too. The movies here are amazing. The Day of the Jackal, The Eagle Has Landed—I’ve seen every James Bond movie put out on Betamax. That last one in the theaters, Moonraker, had me on the edge of my seat. To be a spy. Wasn’t that what every kid dreamed about?
My best friend, Dmitri, and I sure did. We played KGB all the time, with our wooden swords and tin can walkie-talkies. Of course, he was always the KGB agent and I was any other service he assigned to me—and I always lost. After all, if you’re going to be the best, you work within the most powerful and elite squad in history. The KGB.
