“Did you meet only in Israel, you and my father?”
“Almost every time. Except for once. Brian had arranged to meet with Cobra in Geneva. I traveled to Switzerland via Germany, and I was due to return to Moscow via Germany, too. I wrote to Igor to tell him we could meet in Germany, if it suited him. And he came, of course. After the meetings with Cobra, my task was to further establish my cover as a simultaneous translator, and to do so I attended a conference at the University of Heidelberg. Brian went on his way, and I returned to Frankfurt and took a train from there to Heidelberg, where Igor was waiting for me in the small lobby of the hotel by the time I arrived. My heart melted when I saw him there.”
“Did someone find out about you in the end?” Ya’ara asked. “Is that why you ended the relationship with my father? I mean, did the KGB learn somehow that you were involved romantically contrary to regulations?”
“They’re very strict when it comes to such things, relationships like that. It’s not viewed merely as a bureaucratic transgression. I can even understand it from their perspective. But I didn’t want to see the world only through the eyes of the organization. I had eyes of my own, and I wanted my view to prevail just once.”
“What happened? How did it happen?”
“I went ahead and opened a private post-office box in Moscow, so I could receive letters from your father without having him send them directly to my residential address. I told Igor it was because of my husband. So that a letter from him, from Igor, didn’t mistakenly end up in his hands.
“The thing I forgot, even though I shouldn’t have as a KGB operative myself, was that they carried out random checks on the post-office boxes. The KGB, not my directorate, but the one that dealt with internal security, systematically checked the post-office boxes throughout the empire. Checked who opened a post-office box, how frequently letters arrived to the box, whether they came from inside Russia or from abroad, and so on. The post-office branch managers were working in the service of the KGB, of course, and it was routine work, in fact. Systematic, gray, and carried out by all security services, I’m sure. And they stumbled upon my post-office box one day. I don’t know if they simply ran my name through the computer and revealed that Katrina Geifman was one of their own, a member of the KGB, or if the branch manager told them that the box served only mail from abroad. And I don’t know if they opened Igor’s letters, or if they contacted me immediately on learning I had a private post-office box at the branch. I was told, of course, after being summoned to the Internal Affairs Division, that they were approaching me as colleagues, and that they wanted to hear the explanation from me directly. But I believe they waited things out for a while for operational purposes, and read several of my letters from Igor before they called me in for questioning. Why wouldn’t they have? Why forgo such obvious leverage over a subject under investigation? I would have done the same. But that invasion of my privacy still causes me to blush with shame. Can you imagine it? Foreign hands opened the letters that were meant only for me, foreign eyes read the private words written on the pages. And I can just imagine the comments they must have made to one another, their coarse remarks. Getting hard simply from reading other people’s letters. Miserable bastards.”
Katrina paused for a moment. The light in the small kitchen suddenly faded. The two women sat there facing each other, in silence.
“And how did it all end?” Ya’ara asked.
“When they asked me about the post-office box, I told them everything right away. There wasn’t much to hide, and there was certainly no point in trying. Either they knew already, or they’d get it out of me without much effort. I told them I had met a man and had fallen in love. I swore to them that I hadn’t told him anything, nothing about the organization and nothing about the real reason I was in Israel. I told them everything I knew, yet they continued to badger me for days on end. I wasn’t arrested, however, and I was released to spend the night at home every evening, but I underwent questioning all day long for days. Initially by one pair of interrogators, and then by others. They brought a woman in, too, at some stage of the questioning, someone of my age, more or less. They must have thought I’d tell her things I wasn’t willing to tell the others. She certainly did take a different approach with me, one woman conversing with another. The sessions with her didn’t even take place at the offices of the Internal Affairs Division. I could breathe with her. We walked through parks, sat at cafés, strolled along the riverbank. And we chatted. Some girls’ talk, some moaning about life, a lot about men, all men, their nonsense, their childishness. I was questioned later by a more senior officer. We went through the same things all over again. They didn’t have much to question me about, so they went through the same things time and again. Primarily to verify that my and Igor’s story was the entire story, and that Igor wasn’t a Shin Bet agent who was on to me, and that I hadn’t revealed KGB secrets and definitely hadn’t breathed a word about Cobra to him or anyone else. I was summoned a few weeks later to a disciplinary hearing. To this very day I can still close my eyes and feel myself standing there, in that large and magnificent room in the old section of the Lubyanka, which served as a palace in the days of the czar. I walked in and was told to sit down. I sat on the lone chair that had been placed in the very center of the room. Sitting some five or six meters from me were the three members of the disciplinary committee. And hanging on the wall behind them was a large Soviet Union flag alongside the insignia of the KGB. The shield and the sword. The chairman of the committee, a senior officer from the Manpower and Resources Administration, addressed me and said: First of all, Katrina Geifman, you have to promise to sever all ties with Igor Abramovich immediately. And what if I decide—I asked on the verge of breaking down emotionally—what if I decide to leave the organization and continue my relationship with him, with the man I love? Look, said the committee chairman, the heart does what the heart wants to do. But if that’s the case, we will throw the book at you, Katrina Geifman. As you know, you’ve not only violated the regulations of the organization, but you’ve also broken the laws of the state. Moreover, you’ve committed a series of explicit criminal offenses, namely maintaining unlawful contact with a foreign national, conspiring to undermine state security, breach of trust, and the illegal use of state property. We won’t be the ones to try you for your offenses, the courts will do that. But we, Katrina, we want to make it easier on you, we want to avoid handing your case over for criminal prosecution. You never know how that could turn out for you. And there’s another thing.” He paused for a moment and cleared his throat. “The matter of Natalya, your daughter. If you are convicted and sent to prison, a very real possibility, who will take care of her? My mother’s already looking after her today, I argued. Come now, your mother isn’t a young woman anymore, and if you’re convicted, the blemish on your record will undermine Natalya’s chances of graduating from school honorably and going on to academic studies that suit her talents. Guardianship of Natalya will have to be passed on to the state. With you in prison and Natalya being raised by a foster family or in an institution for young girls, there’ll be no justification for leaving your mother in her apartment. Three rooms for a woman on her own? That doesn’t sit well with our concept of social justice. But all of that, dear comrade, will be out of our hands and in those of the other authorities, the criminal prosecution, the courts, the social services, and the municipal housing committee. You’ll be able, of course, to argue your case. Every citizen, even a criminal, even someone in breach of his duties, has the right to have his say and to be afforded a fair chance to argue the charges against him. You can always try your luck. But due to your long years of service, and because you are fundamentally patriotic and loyal, and because we, the members of the disciplinary committee, are also people, after all, with hearts and feelings, who understand the loneliness you’ve been forced to live with due to your fieldwork, due to all of that, we want to offer you the easy and considerate way out. Without prison, and without having your daughter, Natalya, taken from you. So what we’re expecting is for you to sit down now, under our supervision, and write your farewell letter to Igor Abramovich. Tell him that you will never be in touch again. Of course, you won’t be able to remain in your post at the First Directorate. We believe you’ve gone beyond the point of no return and have nothing more to offer there. You’ll be assigned to Border Police Headquarters, here in Moscow. Naturally you can forget about any promotions, and you’ll be stripped of your operational bonuses, but you’ll have a job, and you’ll keep Natalya, and you won’t be evicted from the apartment, and you can go on. And perhaps, when the dust settles, you’ll find yourself a life partner.