Spy of Red and Blue

X

They had lunch in one of the back rooms of the building, a lonely place with an old wooden table surrounded by cream-colored chairs. A picture of Washington hung on the wall.

"You were a spy?" Hans laughed and shook his head. "You were very good. I never suspected you."

Sofia smiled and took a sip of her water. They still spoke in German. "I never expected you either. How could anyone have guessed?"

The agency had provided lunch for them. The CIA had connections everywhere, including the canteen that served a few universities on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.

"I would have never known..."

"Everything makes sense now. When you went missing in Prague, that was the exfiltration, wasn't it?"

She nodded contentedly. "It was a stupid idea. Exceedingly risky. I could have very well been killed. It is what the Americans planned. How did you get out?"

"Same as you. Into the car, then into the woods. Took a plane out."

He didn't mention Peter.

She shook her head. "It was too risky. A normal person would have never done it."

He shrugged. "Well, at least it worked."

Hans took a bite of his steak hungrily; he hadn't eaten properly for a few days now.

"When were you recruited, Sofia?"

She paused. "After the war. Joined the Party, grew disillusioned, picked up by some character I have forgotten. It probably will not matter if he is dead. It was the 50s. I was young then."

"Why did you get recruited?"

"I felt that the GDR had forgotten what we had been fighting for. Before then, I was always the perfect comrade. I believed in equality, you know, equality between men and women. But then, I began to realize that no matter what I did, the country would still treat me different from a man. It is like what Khrushchev said, and it is what people still believe. Women like me, people don't like. They don't say it, but I could feel that many would want a man instead. It is hard to explain."

"And you felt this as early as the 50s?"

"It is what every woman feels."

"It is even worse in America, isn't it? Haven't you seen the advertisements? They do not like the idea of women working."

She hesitated for a moment, then replied, "It doesn't matter. I cannot not work against a regime that spies on its own people. It is not right; it is evil."

Sofia said all of this very quickly, as if she had prepared the answer far in advance.

"Do you regret it?"

"Why so philosophical, Hans?" She was suddenly impatient. "Of course I do. It's never something anyone does willingly. You should know that as well as me. How did they recruit you?"

"After the war," he said. "Peter approached me one day."

"What were you doing then?"

He laughed humorlessly. "Handing out leaflets and writing articles for some newspaper."

"That sounds like hard work."

"It was a lot of linoleum carving and printing."

She took a few more bites of her food.

"What are you planning to do now, then?"

"I don't know. They say they'll give me a new identity, send me off. Probably find a German community and try to fit in, make a life for myself."