Sapphire: A Tale of the Cold War

By Thomas Graham, Jr.

Sapphire, as the Preface explains, is a tale or saga of perhaps the most dangerous period of the Cold War. This was a time when the two superpower antagonists seeking the mastery of the world were challenging each other in important peripheral areas around the world, risking dangerous escalation to major war. At the same time they were creating enormous arsenals of total destruction on hair trigger alert in a situation where neither side had a good idea what the other was doing, therefore having to always worst case everything. It is extraordinary that the fatal mistake was not made somewhere along the lineand it nearly was during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 at the end of this periodprecipitating worldwide nuclear war. Into this maelstrom entered a young woman tasked by her employer, the Central Intelligence Agency, to try to find a way to provide more openness between the sides and reduce worst-case planning as well as to try to help prevent regional confrontations from damaging US interests and spinning into world crisis. Sapphire is the story of that young woman, primarily during the years 1954 to 1961.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496928481

Book preview

Chapter One

Linda Blaine leaned back in her first-class seat after taking off from Gander, Labrador, a refueling stop for her Constellation aircraft on the way to Europe. It would be a long flight to Geneva, and a first-class seat on Pan Am was almost as good as flying on a company plane. She had left Las Vegas abruptly less than a week before. Her orders had come through suddenly, and her departure had been most difficult, even if she did have a job to do. Had she done the right thing? Would she ever really know?

Linda wasn’t sure when she would ever be able to answer those questions; even the shape of an answer might not likely come easily or soon. From her childhood, Linda’s mother had said to her that it was important to put personal things first, to hold onto happiness wherever it was found. In this case, Linda had not taken her mother’s advice.

Nor had Linda’s father lived in the spirit of her mother’s advice. And at present, Linda was following his example. She departed Gander with this thought but with equal resolve to try to help deliver success in Geneva. She would not be fully briefed on specifics until arriving the following morning, and she resisted the urge to speculate on how events would unfold. Her thoughts instead returned to her father.

Harold Blaine had invented his own sense of family. Born just before the turn of the century in New York City, he was the only son of a wealthy absentee landowner. His mother’s family had emigrated from Ireland, and she had married his father at the age of nineteen, within a year of arriving in America. Harold’s father was devoted to his work, which consisted largely of managing his widely scattered real estate holdings; and his mother led a life secluded from her roots. Before her untimely death, along with that of the child that would have been Harold’s sister, her life revolved around her son. Thus, complications during childbirth had left Harold alone with a father he rarely saw.

The domestic staff was put in charge of the household, and Harold enjoyed freedoms few boys knew. His education had been provided by private tutors and visiting professionals until high school. But he was always lonely. He found many of his friends during these years in books. Early on he turned to classics. War and Peace by Tolstoy, Scaramouche by Sabatini, and Ben Hur by Wallace all fascinated him. But he found a special friend in Jean Valjean of Les Misérables. The loneliness of the character appealed to a lonely boy.

A number of Harold’s tutors were Germans who worked in the Blaine household before the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. At any given time, they numbered three or four—one each for literature, foreign languages, science, and math. Harold’s father, to some degree of German descent himself, his mother having come to America early in the nineteenth century from the Rhineland, highly prized German efficiency in land management and everything else. Thus Harold, at an early age, was encouraged to develop an interest in German literature and culture. Goethe and Thomas Mann emerged as favorites of the boy. But after the beginning of the war in 1914, many of these tutors were replaced. Although he wasn’t together with his son very much, Harold’s father was acutely protective of his own image and didn’t want it known that his son was being educated by Germans when they were the enemy. He himself, of course, carried his father’s name, which was not German. So gradually Harold saw his several German tutors, whom he liked very much, leaving to be replaced by rather unpleasant English tutors. This change deepened his sense of loneliness and isolation. As a result, Harold clung as a lifeline to the German culture he had been taught.

At the age of sixteen, Harold was sent to a boy’s school in Connecticut. He was a strong, strapping boy, becoming a young man by then. Slim but over six feet, with sandy hair, he had already begun to wear glasses most of the time; he was not particularly nearsighted, but he was comfortable reading with glasses, and reading was something he very much liked to do. His father wished him to return to New York after graduation, to skip college as he had, and to join him as a partner in his real estate management business. There was some temptation for such a life, as his father’s business had become more international over the years, with extensive foreign holdings, primarily in Latin America. Nevertheless, whether through resentment toward his father or a desire to determine his own destiny, Harold defied his father and applied for and received a scholarship to study German language and culture at Harvard. To qualify he had to take a one-year postgraduate course at his school. World War I was all but over when Harold finally enrolled at Harvard, but his interest in Germany and Eastern Europe was greeted warmly by the faculty—and a few years later, by certain officials in the US government interested in foreign intelligence, then very much a limited enterprise.

Harold’s father had a longtime friend named Henry Schurz who had pursued a diplomatic career in the State Department for many years. He had been the US minister to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire for a time and also spent a number of years in Berlin as the deputy chief of the US Mission before the war. Being German-American, Schurz found himself naturally drawn over the years to German culture. Harold spent several summers during his Harvard years in his father’s office in New York as sort of a concession. Henry Schurz, by then retired, was living in New York, and Harold’s father introduced them.

They met for dinner several times during the summer after Harold’s third year at Harvard, drawn to one another by their mutual interest in German culture. Henry urged Harold to follow this love of his after graduation, in the form of government service. He told Harold, Germany will be back; it is down now, but it will be back. What our government needs most is knowledge as to what is happening there and what could happen. Now that this war is over, the State Department has almost no intelligence capability in Germany. This is something that you might pursue, starting at the ground floor. There are still a few officers serving who care about this. If you wish, I could mention you to them.

I would like that—very much, Harold replied.

That fall in his last year at Harvard, Harold received a letter from an Ambassador Critchfield in Washington inviting him to come to Washington for a discussion. The following week, Harold took an early morning train from Boston, arriving in the evening. It was a cool, crisp autumn day. Harold located lodging in a small hotel off Pennsylvania Avenue, and early the next morning he found himself in the ambassador’s office next door to the White House. Ambassador Critchfield was an impressive figure, medium height, erect, with snow-flecked brown hair and piercing dark eyes, in late middle age. He had spent his career in central Europe and knew a great deal about Germany. He urged Harold to consider working for the State Department on the outside as one who would develop great knowledge about Germany, perhaps from an academic base, and privately share that information with the government. He echoed Henry Schurz’s view that Germany will be back in spite of the chaos there at the time. Sadly, he added, there was no real intelligence service in the State Department to help the US government understand what was going on in Germany, or anywhere else for that matter. This would be the best arrangement possible under the circumstances.

The ambassador told Harold he had come highly recommended by several of his professors and by Henry Schurz, whose opinion was highly valued. The department would pay Harold a small amount and, more importantly, help him with his academic career. Would Harold consider this?

It took Harold only a moment to respond in the affirmative. What followed was a long discussion with the ambassador about Germany, its welfare, the threat for the future, and the importance of the United States understanding this dynamic country. The conversation lasted all day, with a break for lunch. As Harold was leaving, Ambassador Critchfield told him that he would receive a contract in the mail in a week or two. Harold took the overnight train back to Boston, arriving the next morning tired but elated.

Thus, from early in his final year at Harvard, Harold migrated to intelligence work. In a sense, this was the first and only job of his life. The year was 1921. From that time on, Harold retreated from his paternal ties and began a life of his own. He came in on the ground floor of the very gradually developing US government intelligence community. Harold was a young man with a certain air about him, seeming a distinct and somewhat distant figure to all who knew him. This, of course, was a reflection of his upbringing; he hadn’t learned how to make friendships. He married Linda’s mother, Catherine, in 1925, and they had their first child, Robert, two years later. Jackson was born three years after Robert, and the couple completed their family with their daughter, Linda, in 1932.

Harold remained mindful of his own upbringing but struggled with the demands of his work and those of his new family. After graduation from Harvard, for several years Harold was an instructor at Columbia University—landing this job with the only job application he ever made. Someone in the State Department in Washington, without Harold’s knowledge, had placed a call to someone on the faculty. Harold remained in this position for several years and then was hired away by Princeton University (also arranged by the State Department) as a professor of German language and culture. He remained in this position for a number of years, all the while continuing as a consultant to the State Department and making frequent trips to Washington and occasional ones to Germany.

Linda and her brothers knew little of their father’s work outside of his teaching. He was often away or at his office working late. He took no time for golf or other sports and attended few social activities, with a few regular exceptions. Each night when he came home, Harold and Catherine would retire to the study to enjoy a glass of wine together in solitude. They made a point of spending this hour together without fail, even if Harold had arrived from the office late in the evening.

The children never knew what Harold and Catherine discussed during their evening wine ritual. Of course much of the time conversation in the household was spent in small talk, and Linda’s brothers assumed that was all there ever was. But Linda was not so sure. Once when she was six years old, she had something urgent to tell her mother, something awful one of her brothers had done, and she opened the closed door to the study and interrupted Harold and Catherine—an act forbidden to the children except in a real emergency. She remembered her father saying something about Hitler and war (her father had just returned from a trip to Germany), but at the time she really didn’t know what this meant.

Linda’s father normally worked on Saturdays if he was home, but Sundays were reserved for family outings and playful excursions. Among Linda’s fondest memories were their family trips to the countryside at harvest time for pumpkins, or for trout fishing in the calm streams running near their country home—a small cottage on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, on the Chesapeake Bay, a few hours away from Princeton. Linda’s mother would laugh at her whenever she went fishing with her father and brothers. Linda often caught as many or more trout than her brothers but refused to take them home. To Linda, the sport of catching them was enough. Her brothers would tease her, but she never yielded. If Linda caught five fish, she would return at the end of the day with only the memory, while her brothers would be anxious to clean the fish they caught and get them to the frying pan.

Linda’s favorite season was the autumn, when the countryside was awash with color and the weather too cold for the children to be wading in streams with rod and tackle. At these times the family would attend harvest festivals and collect fresh produce for their dinners. Linda enjoyed the smell of the nearby woods and the distinctive scent of leaves burning from some homestead or farm far from sight. Linda’s mother loved this season too, for her children smelled less of fish and wetted wool, and more of mulling spices and fallen leaves.

Linda had always been precocious. She began speaking at an early age. From the time she was a little girl, Linda had an ear for music and, as she later discovered, for language. She had the sense of music and of language, probably inherited from her mother, who had been a well-known nightclub singer in New York City before she gave up all that to marry Linda’s father. Linda discovered the guitar at the age of eight, along with the pleasure of singing while accompanying herself on the guitar. Her blonde hair came from her mother, whose brown hair was very light tending toward blonde; and her deep blue eyes, which those who knew her said could look right through you, came from her father, who liked to call her my little sapphire because of the color of her eyes. She always had a sweet tooth but learned eventually to control it. She grew to be tall and willowy and always kept herself fit through exercise, primarily jogging and calisthenics, but she was never involved in organized athletics. Linda’s brothers were different; they lived for athletics. Robert grew to six feet six inches and primarily was involved with basketball, while distance running and swimming were Jackson’s primary interests. Linda followed these sports closely but only because of her brothers’ involvement.

When the weather would not allow the family to spend time out of doors or they simply wished to spend the weekend at home, Harold would try to persuade his wife and three children to take up his favorite game, chess. But it only captured the interest of Linda, and the time she spent with her father over these games would bring a smile to her face even many years later. In the beginning, of course, Linda could not overcome her father’s skill and experience, and never once did he allow her to win intentionally. Her losing streak led her to begin reading books on chess. One in particular, which her father had translated from the Russian, struck her, knowing that it was among her father’s favorites. She tried to read it when she was twelve but had to return to it a few years later because of its difficulty. The more basic books that she read in the interim helped her to return to this book and master its insights. From that time she began to understand the concept of strategy. Linda slowly cultivated her skills as a player and opponent. She began to win some of the games with her father. By the time she was fourteen, she could hold her own, though her father started to play a more offensive game as she improved.

Harold and Linda’s games continued even as she grew up, though sometimes Linda made other engagements with her friends on Sundays instead. But she was a serious girl, even in high school, and so Linda never strayed for too long from her regular matches with her father. Her father’s influence carried over to her own interests, and as she entered high school in Washington, DC, where the family moved shortly before World War II, Linda became more seriously interested in languages. She was able to study elementary Russian language and literature at a time when such offerings were unusual, even for a private school.

Watching this course of Linda’s development, Catherine could almost foretell her daughter’s future, though she never spoke of it, or her fears of it, to Harold. She could see the happiness that his daughter’s choices gave him, and though he never mentioned his early intentions to bring Linda into his work, Catherine could see through his silence clearly.

Linda was eight in the spring of 1940 when her father left his position at Princeton to work for the US government full-time. Eventually he would end up with the Office of Strategic Services—the forerunner, during World War II, of the Central Intelligence Agency. By 1940, war had already begun in Europe, and France had been overwhelmed by the Nazi army, with Britain bunkering down on her island. Of course at the time, most of this was outside of Linda’s sphere of interest. She did know that bad things were happening in Europe. Harold called his family together in their rambling home in Princeton and told them that they were leaving their home and moving to Washington. The children were very upset, Linda most of all. They were leaving their friends and their home. Only Robert had ever been to Washington, on a school trip. The traumatic move proceeded nevertheless, and the family settled in the Wesley Heights section of Washington, a leafy suburb, into a nice spacious house with a screened-in porch on the side. After a while they all adjusted; and Harold was home even less.

The Blaine family had been in Washington only a year and a half when the attack on Pearl Harbor took place and the United States became directly involved in World War II. Soviet Russia became a wartime US ally. Linda had been raised in a household where a foreign language, German, was of central importance. This environment had sparked her interest in languages, and this was fed by her hero worship of her father. Because of the World War II alliance with the new friend, Russia, studying Russian became a focus for Linda.

In the fall of 1940, Linda had been enrolled in the Beauvoir School, situated on the grounds of the National Cathedral in Washington, and in the fall of 1945 she entered the National Cathedral School, a highly competitive high school for girls, for which Beauvoir was a feeder school. The war years were exciting years in Washington, and American interest in its Russian ally peaked around the time Linda entered National Cathedral School. Thus, she had a sense of being special, studying Russian language and culture at such a young age.

Linda’s Russian classes were small, with most semesters finding no more than six or eight students enrolled. Many of her friends in high school were taking French or Spanish if they were pursuing foreign languages at all. Linda was interested in boys and had an active social life, but she formed no attachments, even as many of her friends had serious romances in their final years of high school. She was determined to continue her education, and her intuition told her that to engage in love affairs at this time could disrupt this future.

Linda continued her Russian studies to the point of becoming reasonably conversant in the language, and many Sundays she still spent playing chess with her father; she soon found herself winning more often than not. Even though she enjoyed attending many social activities, her schoolwork, at which she excelled, always came first, and this fact her father both encouraged and admired. Linda’s social life was always a pastime, whereas her scholastic life, particularly her Russian studies, more and more became her focus.

Among her siblings, Linda was singular in these pursuits. Her brothers spent their school days dreaming of the outdoors or of passing the afternoons with their friends and playing ball games. Linda’s older brother Robert attended a summer camp each year in upstate New York, where he learned to climb mountains. But he also spent part of every summer at basketball camp. In the winter Robert would go on ski excursions with his friends’ families when he could take time away from basketball. School was to him a social occasion, and it was often necessary for his mother and father to remind him that learning too had its place. Linda was an example to him, and he looked to her often for help with his studies.

The younger Blaine son had been born on New Year’s Day. He was a free spirit, as they all were, but his passions developed early, and they were tied to fame and recognition. Jack Blaine was a District of Columbia metropolitan distance running champion in the tenth grade, and his craving for championships carried him through his school years. He was best at distances of greater than a mile, although his metropolitan championships were won in the mile run. His instructors gave him space to cultivate his sports skills and pressured him little to find an academic pursuit. He also was outstanding at competitive swimming, particularly the backstroke. He enjoyed modern American writing from a young age, and this interest kept him and his sister reasonably close, though this was precious little to keep him from his athletics.

It was clear to Linda’s brothers that she was different from them. She was the youngest of the three, the two boys’ younger sister, but also her interests and personality were very different from theirs. They protected her and respected her intellect although they never could understand how anyone could devote the time she did to her studies. Linda herself thought that most students put in at least as much if not more time than she did. She was consistent in this belief, and it drove her.

Chapter Two

It came as no surprise to Linda that her departure from Las Vegas came easier than it should have. The possibility for happiness that was opened to her in Nevada quickly was filed into the back of her mind, and she began to think ahead to Geneva. The flight across the Atlantic was long and uneventful, and Linda slept fitfully during the night. After a brief layover in London, the approach to Geneva came upon her fast, as did her anticipation to meet her colleagues in Geneva and be given the details of her assignment. She had been given extensive information and detailed briefings in Washington on reconnaissance technologies in use and under development by the US and Russian militaries, but she was unaware of how this preparation would be relevant to her own work.

It was an early summer day, bright and welcoming as the airplane approached Geneva. Snow still gleamed from the Jura summits. Out the other side of the plane, Linda was amazed by the radiance of the sun that reflected from the massif of Mont Blanc, and Lake Geneva sparkled. Before the approach into Geneva airport, Linda made a quick trip to the bathroom and tried to make herself look as presentable as possible. She was wearing one of her more formal outfits, a dark blue, somewhat severely cut dress. After all, this was her first real assignment; everything that had gone before was preliminary.

The plane pulled to a halt at the gate, and Linda proceeded to the baggage claim to collect her luggage, a single suitcase. As she waited for her bag, a man in a dark suit with a blond crew cut came up next to her and addressed her: Miss Blaine, is it best to castle your king as soon as you are able?

Linda responded without looking at him as she saw her luggage moving toward her on the belt. That depends on what defense you are planning. She then picked up her bag, but the young man took it from her, and she followed him out a side door and into a small parking lot. They proceeded to a nondescript-looking sedan.

As they left the airport, her escort driving the car introduced himself. Miss Blaine, I’m Jim Dawson, special assistant to the station chief here, Robert Symington, and it is to me that you should direct any questions or requests that arise. I will courier information between you and the chief. But for now, I will take you to your apartment so that you can get settled. It is an apartment we use for visitors, and I’m sure that you will find it quite comfortable.

Linda was eager for details. When does the president arrive? she asked.

Tomorrow afternoon, Jim replied.

And the others?

The Russians arrived yesterday, and the British are coming tomorrow morning, as are the French, he told her.

Am I free to talk in this car? she asked him as they passed into the city.

It has been thoroughly debugged, yes. First by the Swiss, then by us, though the Swiss rarely miss a thing; but of course we wanted to be sure there wasn’t a bug placed there by them.

Linda wanted still more information. Can you tell me something about what’s happening here? I’ve been given few details save for some stacks of documentation on the overhead reconnaissance capabilities that we have. I have no idea what is to happen when.

The president will be officially proposing to the Soviets what he will call ‘Open Skies,’ the goal being to remove the international illegality attached to overflights of each other’s territory and to make reconnaissance a common occurrence, a transparent operation even. The objective is to try to stop each country from worst-casing the other, which keeps us both on hair-trigger alert. That’s highly dangerous with both sides possessing nuclear weapons—and more recently, thermonuclear weapons. In fact, it’s going to be a bit of a surprise to the Russians, though it’s known that somehow they’ve tapped into our channels well enough to gather something about the proposal. Thing is, it’s unclear whether the president has interagency backing within our government. We may not know that until after his arrival tomorrow, Jim offered.

Linda was about to start in with further questions, but Jim continued before she had a chance. We like it, of course, but Defense and State think of it more as a stunt.

When will the president announce this idea? Linda asked.

On the second day of the meeting, unless plans change, he replied. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let me tell you about what will happen today.

I assume that I will be having dinner with Anton? Linda could feel her stomach tighten.

Seven o’clock, at the Hotel D’Angleterre, Jim replied.

It was nearly noon before Linda was settled. She took a long nap and opted for a stroll along the quay. The sun was warm but the breeze arctic. She reminisced to herself that the weather was similar to that of Copenhagen, where her family had vacationed in the spring three years before. She remembered the crisp air, the broad waterfront, and the feel of Europe. It was there that her father had taken her aside and told her he would like her to come work for the Agency. She had been surprised when he told her of his own work, but reacted with her natural curiosity. She of course knew little about intelligence but had understood since primary school that her father’s principal work was trying to find out what other countries, enemies of the United States, were doing.

It was a sharply cool spring day in Copenhagen when that conversation took place. Linda had been first up for breakfast and was sitting alone drinking her coffee in the hotel restaurant when her father walked in. They were staying in a small hotel, which undoubtedly was someone’s family home before the war, only seven years past. The restaurant, located in the former family dining room, contained just four small tables. Linda was the only person there when her father arrived. He said, Linda, it’s a nice morning; let’s go for a walk. I will have breakfast later. A little surprised, Linda gulped her coffee and stood, slipping her sweater on as she followed her father toward the front door.

The hotel was near the waterfront, and they made a brisk march in silence in that direction. Once there they slowly walked along the harbor in silence, looking at some of the small sailboats and motor craft already putting out. Finally her father spoke. Linda, I want to explain to you the kind of work that I do, both because you have a right to know, and also because some years from now, you might find it of interest for yourself.

She listened attentively as he went on.

A long time ago, long before you were born, I was recruited by our government, the Department of State in particular, to do intelligence work. In those days there were only a handful of people in Washington working on this. I should say that in my case it wasn’t so much spy work, although I did make a number of trips to Germany in the 1930s to look around and meet a few contacts, as a kind of an adjunct to my teaching responsibilities at Princeton. My work has had more to do with analysis of the information we gather, and in recent years I’ve been involved with management of the process. The department recruited me initially because they were impressed with my interest and ability in German language and culture. Some in the department in the 1920s did not believe the First World War was in fact the war to end all wars," and they wanted to have a small office with the mission of trying to understand events in Germany. It was a wise decision.

When that next war did arrive, I began to work full-time for the government in Washington, with Nazi Germany as the target; and now I am working at a new government agency, which was designed to keep together the team we built up during the war and to employ it against the Soviet Union, our new and probably long-term enemy. This new organization is called the Central Intelligence Agency. We knew Russia during the war as our ally against the unspeakable tyranny of Nazi Germany. But now Russia is our enemy, in what looks to me like a long gray struggle of move and countermove, but nevertheless a fight to the death. We are both struggling for mastery of the world. History has placed the two of us in these roles, and one of us likely in the end will not survive. Our job as part of the national security apparatus of the government, as I see it, is to accomplish two things during this long-term conflict: first, to ensure that both countries are not physically destroyed; and second, to ensure that it is the United States that in the end survives, not the Soviet Union. Now that we both are building nuclear arsenals, there likely will be many brushes with complete disaster, and good intelligence can somewhat reduce this risk.

After her father finished his explanation, he and Linda were an hour into their walk. Linda hadn’t said a word. She was holding her arms tight against her sweater, feeling even chillier after listening to her father’s thoughts. They walked on in silence for a while and were nearing the hotel when Linda said simply, Thanks, Dad. I thought it was something like that. Her father smiled and said nothing. Linda and her father never discussed this subject again. But somehow Linda sensed then and understood years later that this moment had been the defining point of her life.

Linda’s safe house apartment in Geneva, provided by the Agency, overlooked the tip of Lake Geneva as it began to flow into the Rhone River on its way to the Mediterranean. It was a harbor of sorts, referred to as La Rade. Geneva had long been a free city, a city of sanctuary, and for the last hundred years a place for negotiations and peace conferences. As she strolled along La Rade, toward the opposite side of the lake, Linda wondered to herself whether the meetings of which she was to be a part would contribute to peace or only serve as a pause in the unrelenting hostility of the Cold War. She recalled again her father’s words of several years ago. We have to find a way out, she thought; it is just too dangerous.

The summer evening came upon her as she walked, the sun still touching the tops of the mountains in the distance. Surely in such a place of beauty, an unparalleled setting, in the most lovely of seasons, there will be steps toward peace, she mused, even though my role here has a lot more to do with warfare than with peace.

She reached the Hotel D’Angleterre while the day was still waning. She gazed upon La Rade with pleasure as she turned to go inside, noticing the last rays of sun upon the mountains. From this angle she couldn’t see Mont Blanc but she could imagine it, and the image inspired her to look forward to any stolen moments of pleasure she might find during her time in the city.

Another American—a rather statuesque, brown-haired woman very elegantly dressed, a woman the French call of a certain age—was admiring the same view and spoke to Linda what she had been thinking to herself. What a beautiful, peaceful place. It seems as though this is a place where there has always been peace—far from the truth, of course—and where peace can be found.

Linda smiled at the stranger, taken slightly aback at how the woman had eloquently put words to her own thoughts. She walked past the woman and turned into the hotel.

Standing there in the lobby waiting for her, dressed in a dark summer suit, looking at once relaxed and on edge, stood Anton Karpov. Her eyes adjusted to the light inside, and she walked up to him as though they had seen each other just last week.

Linda, what a pleasure to see you after so long a time, he greeted her.

Likewise, Anton, she replied, as he motioned for them to proceed out of the lobby and into the lounge.

Chapter Three

Linda had known Anton since childhood. They had grown up together, meeting in the fifth grade at the Beauvoir School in Washington, DC. As a girl Linda had developed an instant fondness for the bright and funny young Russian boy. They had spent much time together at school when class was out—during recess, over lunch, visiting in the hallways. He did better in school than she did. It seemed that his English was almost better than her own at times, and it was through this friendship that she first really found joy in pursuing academic achievement, albeit as a form of competition with her Russian friend. Anton had been a boost to Linda’s decision to begin the study of Russian in the ninth grade at National Cathedral School several years later. By then Linda had already learned many Russian words from Anton.

Linda and Anton never played together after school. Linda was made to understand early on that Anton’s father had an important job at the Soviet Embassy, but she never quite understood exactly what his job was. She had asked her father directly once, and he told her that Anton’s father was not the ambassador but that his job was very important. In the World War II era, there was an easy relationship with the Russians at the embassy, but even so, Linda never saw Anton after school. She suspected that the lack of opportunity to have such leisure time was engineered by her parents, but the two took this arrangement in stride and never spoke of it.

Occasionally during the free time they shared at school, Anton would teach Linda a few words of Russian slang. They were simple contemporary phrases, but it was those encounters that helped Linda to further develop her love for languages. Gradually over time, Linda picked up more and more Russian.

Although Linda and Anton never saw each other socially away from school, they remained good friends through her stay at Beauvoir. Afterward, in the ninth grade, the two went their separate ways toward high school degrees. Linda attended the National Cathedral School for girls and Anton went to St. Albans, the counterpart school for boys just across the courtyard of the Washington National Cathedral. Even though they were not far from one another, they were in separate schools and of necessity saw much less of each other, but on occasion met at dances and other school functions. Linda, having found her opportunity to study Russian formally at National Cathedral, looked forward to these occasions. She found that after a short time in high school, she could carry on a real conversation with Anton in Russian. She learned rapidly and with motivation as she anticipated these reunions with Anton—still her friend and rival.

Anton and his family seemed to stay on and on in Washington. His father was never reassigned away from the embassy, but the relationship was altered by circumstances beyond the young friends’ control. The friendship drifted apart just as relations between their countries took a dramatic turn for the worse. The Cold War was on by Linda’s sophomore year at National Cathedral; and the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union turned bitter as the Iron Curtain came down in Eastern Europe, culminating in the takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948. Ties among the embassies in Washington were severed, and the Russian delegation was excluded by many and secluded. Linda noticed too that her father’s job changed during this period. His division had been reorganized. He worked less away from Washington but spent more hours working both at home and at the office. Some days he would call from the office late and tell her mother that he would be working through the night. At these times, when the couple’s regular time together was interrupted, Linda would sit beside her mother in the study as she drank her wine alone and contemplated what Linda knew not, in front of the fireplace or while gazing out the window onto the street.

As this new routine took on more familiarity and