Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

Anna kept silent.

You, perhaps, didn’t suspect him, he continued, but from the other side we got reports that the CIA had suspicions about you and wanted information on you. Can you guess why Paul Gupta suspected you?

Who said that Paul suspected me? Anna wondered, and unaffectedly raised her eyes towards her controllers.

So you think that just like that, for no reason, without Paul Gupta reporting on you or asking for you to be checked out, the Americans became interested in you?

Anna’s evident distress produced a slight smile of satisfaction on the faces of the others present.

The Americans suspected me? Anna’s shock was real, but didn’t divert Alexei from the line of questioning he’d embarked on.

Their queries about you leave no room for doubt, he said. We could have forgiven that too, and assumed that Paul was simply a better agent than you. That he succeeded in concealing his identity from you whereas you aroused his suspicion. This too has its precedents in the history of counter-espionage. A bit odd, bearing in mind that you are such an experienced agent. But it happens.

It was clear to Anna and to the rest of those present that Alexei Nikolayevich was merely warming up and that his little act would be taking off very soon. An air of suspenseful quietude pervaded the room.

For a month now we’ve been monitoring suspicious movements of foreigners and gaining the impression that they were descending on the area of your apartment and shop. To save time I violated security regulations, contacted you, and informed you of this. Is it really your intention to have us believe that, what regular desk staff saw by scrutinizing arrivals and departures at the airport, by observing people staying in hotels, and by following the movements of cars hired by tourists, you, with all your training, didn’t see even though it was all happening right under your nose?

In contrast to the rising volume of her controller’s voice, Anna answered in whispers. No, I didn’t see. I’m sorry. And she was indeed sorry but not for the reasons he could possibly have imagined. If only she’d noticed. If only she’d been able to warn her love and flee with him.

And do you think that the fact that you requested to part from us so as to build your life with your Mr Gupta counts in your favour? he continued. The very reverse is the case. I can only presume that this request of yours was a bit of a cover to conceal that, in effect, you’d already parted from us. Perhaps, who knows, you’d even planned your escape with your man but he and his friends scarpered and left you behind!

This possibility, that hadn’t crossed her mind, plunged yet another knife into Anna’s heart. Alexei’s voice rose even further.

And then, all of a sudden, Paul Gupta disappears. Suddenly. The love of your life. The man for whom you broke all the rules so you could be with him, whose every word you believed, the foreign spy you shared your bed with, suddenly disappears–and you want to tell us that you had no advance warning? You didn’t notice that he was planning to leave, there were no mysterious phone conversations, no secret meetings–nothing? Suddenly, just like that? And immediately after I had alerted you of those movements?

Regretfully, that’s right, Anna said, her eyes lowered. How could all this have happened around her without her noticing what was going on?

Alexei leant back in his chair, chewed at the pencil in his hand, and looked at Anna for a long minute. And then he again lowered his tone. I might have believed you Anna Petrovna. You are a very persuasive woman. Yesterday evening when you called me, and even during the night when you went out on to the balcony to see if your beloved had returned–she was astonished by the level of surveillance she was under–I nearly believed you. But how, in God’s name, how did you know that you had to buy a ticket to Tel Aviv?

Anna suddenly understood how foolish she’d been to call him and afterwards order a ticket by phone. Obviously he’d placed her under tight surveillance, eavesdropping as well as observation. Of course she’d had no chance of escaping.

Even if you’d simply wanted to follow him, her controller looked at her fixedly as if he was himself trying to decipher what was going on in her mind, this would be considered desertion, and you’d sit in jail for it. The law is the law, and desertion is desertion. If you’d absconded for love, they might have been a little more lenient with you. But as it happens, Paul Gupta, or Roger Smith–if you want to know the name in which he left the country–in actual fact flew to Copenhagen. We analyzed footage from the security cameras at the airport, and passengers’ names and passport details, and this was his name and destination. It was only from there that he travelled on to Tel Aviv, our sources in Denmark informed us. So how on earth did you know that that’s where you had to fly to? Especially given that Tel Aviv was presumably only a transit stop on Mr Smith’s voyage back to his homeland?

The slight trembling that had gripped Anna during the night now overwhelmed her. If you’re not saying it then I’ll say it for you, the controller concluded. You not only knew that he was a spy, you also knew that he was about to disappear. You knew exactly what his escape route was, what his planned stopovers were, and it was there that you planned to meet.

Anna cowered in her chair but her controller continued with his horror show.

And it doesn’t end there. We know that the people who took him from here were members of the team who worked here, and that they flew with him to Copenhagen and Tel Aviv. They didn’t kidnap him. The security cameras show clearly that he left with them of his own accord. They were here to extract him and shield him from us. And you know what that means? It means that you were Paul Gupta’s assignment! Alexei Nikolayevich shocked Anna by saying. Alarmed, she now finally grasped how deep a pit she’d been thrown into.

Through you he gathered intelligence on us, Alexei continued, his eyes narrowing, you collaborated with him, protected him and of course also protected yourself. You knew that if we arrested him then at the end of what could be a short or a long interrogation he would squeal on you. There is no other way of understanding this. You knew where he came from and where he travelled to, you knew what he was doing here, and helped him. The picture is clear, and there isn’t a judge who will look at it in any other way. I’ll be surprised if you see the light of day even twenty years from now.

STRAIGHT FROM THE plane, without having to pass through passport control, I was driven off in a car with blacked-out windows to the Shin Bet–the General Security Service in Ramat Aviv. Udi and Hagai were cordial in saying their goodbyes at the airport where they handed me over to the men from the Shin Bet. With them was Ariel, my controller. Though a little hostile towards me, his assignment was to ensure I was treated fairly. The Mossad had not given up on me quite yet. They questioned me over a period of a week, sometimes for fifteen hours a day. Food was brought in straight from the Shin Bet’s canteen and I slept in a room close to the living quarters of the facility’s security guards. If I was being watched I didn’t notice it. Ariel was present almost the whole time–protecting the Mossad’s interests.

The Shin Bet’s investigators were interested in every detail of my adjustment to life in St Petersburg; meetings, acquaintances, business dealings. From time to time, when the matter touched on the inner workings of my job–such as the commercial deals I’d struck, or my trips to the former Republics–Ariel would halt the questioning and say, that’s a matter for us.