IN JUNE, I LEFT FOR MOSCOW to do some final preparatory work for the launch. The focus was to create the cover story for Jack Barsky, whose identity I was about to assume.

So, how does one reconstruct the life story of a person who died when he was ten? Alex came to the apartment and we went to work. My “legend” was created piece by piece and with a lot of imagination.

“This is what we have so far from our friends who have been busy in Washington, DC, and New York City,” Alex said as he pulled a thick binder from a briefcase he had brought with him.

Resident agents in the US had collected all kinds of information, like pieces of a puzzle that I would eventually put together. They located and took pictures of “way stations” for the fictional Jack Barsky—places he could have been during his life, such as an apartment building on the Upper West Side of New York City, and an elementary, middle, and high school. They suggested a factory where I could have worked—made all the more useful by the fact that it had since been torn down and no longer existed. As the final piece to the puzzle, they suggested the name of a farm in upstate New York where I could have worked for several years before reappearing in New York City.

It was now up to my imagination to weave a story around those basics.

“Let’s simplify things and kill off my father,” I suggested.

“What age?”

“When I was an infant. That way, I won’t have to make up any memories.”

“Good,” Alex said, jotting down notes.

I leaned back against the wooden chair and continued with the story of my life as Jack Barsky. After my father’s death, I was raised by my mother, with whom I had a very close relationship. She had been born and raised in Germany—conveniently, the real Mrs. Barsky’s maiden name was Schwartz—so we spoke a lot of German around the house as I grew up.

“Excellent,” Alex said, writing furiously to keep up with the tale I was spinning. “That will serve well as an explanation for any residual accent.”

For childhood and school memories, I used many of my real experiences, as long as they seemed generic enough to translate across the Atlantic. I focused on a number of key friends and gave them Americanized names—Ronald for Reiner, Gary for Günter, and so on. I even took Rosi with me.

Since I did not have a valid high school diploma, and the unbreakable rule of my legalization was that we would use only authentic documents, it was necessary for me to have dropped out of high school. The immediate trigger for my dropping out was the death of my mother in a car accident during my senior year—a huge loss that sent me into a depressive tailspin from which it took years for me to recover. Her “death” also eliminated the need for any more memories or details about her. Eventually, I found a job at George Lueders and Company, a chemical firm that produced artificial flavorings. But when that company closed its doors, I decided to drop out of society altogether and went to work at the Miller dairy farm in New Berlin in upstate New York.

Four years later, with my mental and physical health restored, I was giving life another try and was about to resurface in Manhattan to start over.

I knew there would never be a situation in which I would have to reel off this much detail about my fake past, but the legend fulfilled its main purpose, which was to provide me with a psychological safety net. With time I would create a real history for myself in the US, reducing the importance of the legend as I would be able to divert attention from my early years by replacing old fiction with new facts.

“We got it,” Alex said after hours of working on what we thought was a masterpiece of deception.

“Now I just have to cement this into my mind,” I said.

“That’s correct.” Alex rose from the table, packed up his briefcase, and put his orange leather coat over his shoulder before departing into the night.

With the reconstructed Jack Barsky in place, it was time to say good-bye to Gerlinde. This time, however, it would be in grand style.

The KGB flew Gerlinde to the city of Leningrad (now called St. Petersburg), and Sergej and I traveled by train from Moscow to meet her.

The hotel where we would stay was of prerevolutionary architecture and was one of the gems of the historic town center. Our room and other accommodations were outright luxurious. Sergej and I noticed many Western tourists around the hotel, and he warned me to keep a low profile and not to meet any of them.

Sergej served as our personal tour guide and interpreter, and he had a way of opening doors that would remain shut to foreign tourists and most Russians. We toured the awe-inspiring Winter Palace, the equally impressive Hermitage, and various other historic buildings in the downtown area. We also paid a visit to the Monument of the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad on Victory Square, a massive memorial to the more than one million victims of the two-and-a-half-year siege of the city by Hitler’s army during World War II. Being at this site reminded me of the importance of my work and the vow I’d made long ago in Buchenwald. Hitler’s fascism was gone, but the world would not find peace without Communism.

Our loaded agenda included other highlights, such as a performance of the world-class Leningrad Ballet. I looked at Gerlinde’s face as she watched the performance in wonder, and for the briefest of moments I wondered how we would do apart from each other for such long periods of time.

When it was time for our last good-bye, Sergej and I took Gerlinde to the airport, and he discreetly left us alone for a few minutes before she departed. This time our good-byes were bittersweet—not just bitter as they had been three years before. I promised that we would meet again in two years’ time.

Back in Moscow, the preparations became more intense. I memorized the six-page legend down to the last detail and committed to memory the critically important, and very detailed, communication plan. This complex plan included radio frequencies and times of transmission, two addresses for sending secret letters, an initial dead-drop site in New York City, meeting spots in various cities en route to the US, signal spots, and instructions about the shape and meaning of the graphic signals to be placed in those locations.

The signals were simple shapes, such as a circle, a line, and a plus sign, among others. Each symbol had a different meaning: come to meeting, container deposited, container retrieved, or radio transmission received. The most ominous signal was a red dot, which meant danger—run!

I was also given a special route in Brooklyn designed for surveillance detection. This route was laid out in such a way that a resident agent could observe me and any individuals who might be tailing me.

During one of Sergej’s visits to check my progress, he said, “You know, if I had your talent for language, I’d go undercover too.”

“You would?” It had never occurred to me to wonder what Sergej wished or wanted to do. He was just my easygoing handler, who was always generous and nice to be around.

“You’re going to become the kind of person that all the girls dream about.” He sighed, but there was a mischievous gleam in his eye.

“What are you talking about?”

“I was at a movie the other day, a spy movie, and I overheard two girls who were seated behind me. One of them said, ‘I wish I could meet a guy like that.’”

This made me laugh. It was true that I was about to be launched as an actual spy—and the aura of that could not be denied. However, undercover meant I couldn’t reveal my status to anyone.

“Well, if I follow the rules, which of course I will, I don’t see how going undercover will benefit me in the same way it benefits James Bond.”

We both laughed at this reality.

Finally, the pieces were in order and I was ready to go. I had no one else to say good-bye to. Gerlinde was the only person in East Germany who knew where I was going and what I would be doing. The cover story for my family and a few friends was that I had made yet another career change—this time back to science. I was joining the agency Interkosmos 77, an organization of the Warsaw Pact countries dedicated to the exploration of space under the leadership of the Soviet Union. To give this cover credibility, the KGB provided me with an official-looking document stating that I was drafted for a five-year stint at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, a closed facility accessible only with permission from the Soviet government. This location was chosen to prevent relatives, particularly my mother, from attempting to visit me at my new place of employment, like she’d done in Moscow. I mailed this document to my mother, explaining the new direction I was taking.

Next, I had to memorize the intricate details of a zigzag travel plan that started in Moscow and ended in New York City. These included specific airlines and flight numbers; meeting points and signal spots in Rome, Vienna, and Mexico City; and the names and biographical information of the fictitious individuals named in the three forged passports I would use en route.

“You have one last task,” Sergej told me, arriving with a large stack of postcards and stationery.

“The letters,” I said with a long sigh.

“The letters. You better get started.” Sergej gave me a sympathetic look as I groaned. “You just gotta do it.”

This was the most onerous task of them all. Because I could not just disappear for long periods of time without some sign of life, I had to write a series of postcards and letters to be sent to my mother and my brother at random intervals to keep them abreast of “current events.” The letters were difficult to compose because all the content was pure fiction. I also had to give the impression that I had read—and was responding to—their correspondence with me, even though I had no way of knowing what they might actually write.

Of the many lies I told during my undercover career, these letters were the most difficult. After all, I was blatantly lying to my own mother.

In later years, to make the letters more believable, I switched to a typewriter, signed the typed letters in my own hand, and left space between the last typed sentence and the signature for someone at the Center to add a few sentences if they deemed it necessary. I also left a few blank signed pages, in case a lengthier response was necessary.

Completion of the letters brought to a close the almost five years of preparation for my undercover life in America. After one more painful and frustrating delay—a bad wisdom tooth that could have really caused problems if it had happened after I was deployed into foreign territory—I was psyched up and 100 percent focused on the mission and the future.