ON A SUNNY MONDAY in the middle of June 1980, I was on my way to Manhattan via subway. I had taken the day off to take care of “a personal matter.” That personal matter was the quest for the crown jewel of my American documentation: a genuine US passport.

This application was critically important to my future, and I followed the instructions from Moscow to a tee. We had practiced filling out the application to make sure I wouldn’t make an inadvertent mistake.

As instructed, I went to the New York passport agency in Rockefeller Center armed with a completed application, two passport pictures, my driver’s license, and the Jack Barsky birth certificate. There were others ahead of me in line, so I took my place at the end and waited.

I felt relaxed, thinking that this process would be a mere formality, a piece of cake. After all, I had two other foundational documents that established my identity as Jack Barsky.

After waiting for fifteen minutes, I was waved over by one of the agents, a balding, bespectacled, middle-aged bureaucrat.

“Good morning,” he said in a perfunctory tone.

“Good morning,” I replied casually. By now I was familiar with how to respond in such situations.

I handed over my documents and the pictures and took a half step to the side, waiting patiently while the agent perused my application. It seemed he was taking a long time going over the paperwork. Finally, he reached into a drawer and pulled out a piece of paper. As he handed it to me, he said matter-of-factly, “There are some questions concerning your identity. Please fill out this supplementary questionnaire and come back to me.”

I was stunned, but I managed to react with a natural-sounding response. “Do I have to go back to the end of the line?”

“No,” he answered politely. “You may come straight to my window.”

I withdrew to the back of the large room and started filling out the questionnaire: name, address, birth date and place . . . and then I read, “What is the name of the high school you attended?”

I immediately knew that it made no sense to read any further. Any answers I might concoct could not be verified, and handing in the questionnaire with bogus answers to a government official could easily trigger a more thorough investigation.

I had to act quickly and decisively. Without giving it much thought, I strode briskly back to the agent’s window, planted myself next to the woman to whom the agent was now speaking, and blurted out with feigned indignity, “I don’t need to deal with this BS.”

Reaching across the counter, I grabbed my documents and pictures, which the agent had set off to the side, and walked out of the office as quickly as I could. As I hurriedly descended the stairs to the ground floor, I was half expecting a security guard to try to stop me. Once I reached the street, I blended in with the tourist crowd in Rockefeller Plaza and made my way back to the subway.

As I walked south on Fifth Avenue, I realized I had escaped a dangerous situation by the skin of my teeth. But this was clearly not a moment of pride and triumph. This was the most important assignment I’d been given to make me fully American and launch me into the life of a rich capitalist who could do some real damage to the enemy, and I had just failed the final exam.

I went back to my apartment and drowned my sorrows in a bottle of wine.

The following Saturday, I reported the event in a secret letter to the Center and asked to make arrangements for the planned trip back to the Center and to East Germany.

The passport debacle had a lasting effect on me. For the first time in almost two years, I felt deeply lonely. The shock of my failure unlocked a back door into my heart, and the cold, unfeeling Jack gave way to the German Albrecht, who desperately wanted to be home among friends and reunited with the woman he loved.

The two months I had to wait before the trip could be arranged felt like another two years.

Finally, in the middle of August, I received travel money and a passport via a dead drop. I told my boss at the messenger office that I wanted to take a rather lengthy vacation. I had no idea if I would ever see him again.

About a week prior to my planned departure, I went on a shopping trip in Manhattan and spent some of my hard-earned messenger money on expensive gifts for Gerlinde—a pearl necklace, a pair of wedding bands, and several articles of clothing acquired at Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue. With respect to consumer goods, I had developed the same contradictory attitude as most of my KGB colleagues who had exposure to the West. We all loved and desired the products of the system we were working hard to destroy.

Just before leaving my apartment en route to LaGuardia Airport, I retrieved the fake passport from its hiding place and left my American documents hidden in my apartment. Thus began my circuitous trip to Berlin, via Chicago, Vienna, and Moscow. As soon as I fastened my seat belt on the plane to Chicago, my stress level diminished greatly. Albrecht Dittrich was going home.

When I reached Vienna, it felt like I was already home again. It was such a relief to speak in my native language for the first time in more than two years.

I set the signal indicating my arrival and went to the meeting place the next afternoon.

This time, the recognition protocol proved to be unnecessary. To my surprise, my contact was a young agent named Arkadi, whom I had met a couple of times in Moscow. I didn’t know quite how to respond when I saw this old comrade, so I waited for his cue.

“Hello, Dieter. It’s good to see you again,” he said warmly. “Let’s go have a cup of coffee.”

Apparently, he was not worried about being followed by Western intelligence agents, because we sat down at a nearby café for coffee and a piece of Black Forest cake. It was delicious.

Between bites, Arkadi said, “The comrades at the Center are eagerly awaiting your return, and Gerlinde is waiting in Berlin.”

For those few words, I would have gladly given up all the cake and coffee in the world!

Arkadi then told me that Sergej had been transferred to Berlin, but that another agent would pick me up at the airport. After giving me detailed instructions for the flight to Moscow, he stood up to leave. As he stepped away from the table, he swept up the newspaper I had been carrying, which contained the passport I had traveled on. After he was gone, I pocketed the manila envelope he had left on the tabletop, which held my passport and new identity for the trip to Russia.

As the Aeroflot plane made its final approach into Moscow and I recognized the strip of forest I had flown over several times before, my sense of anticipation grew. I was one step closer to home. My new handler, Mikhail, was waiting for me at the gate.

We went to the apartment where I would be staying, and after a light meal he handed me the mail that had been sent by Gerlinde and my mother during my absence.

I could not wait to read Gerlinde’s letters. As soon as Mikhail closed the door behind him, I devoured them one by one. When I was through, I read the letters from my mother, but with some reluctance. Every line she’d written was a poignant reminder that I was guilty of lying to her.

For the next two days, I met with agents at the Center to fill them in on the details of the past two years. In spite of my failure to obtain a passport, my infiltration was declared a success because I had established a foothold in the United States and could still become an important asset to the KGB. We would discuss a new strategy for how to make use of my position after my vacation in East Germany.

When I entered the arrival hall at Schönefeld Airport in Berlin, I immediately saw Sergej walking toward me with a giant grin on his face.

“What’s this I hear about you working in Berlin now?” I said as he gave me a hard slap on the back.

“Ja, my years of learning German finally paid off,” he said. “The work here is also more interesting, but you know we can’t talk about that.”

“I understand you have maintained contact with Gerlinde. How is she?” I asked.

“She’s a beautiful and brave woman. You are lucky to have somebody like that waiting for you at home.”

Sergej smuggled me through customs, and we drove to my old apartment on Eitelstraße. Gerlinde was still at work, but I went over to her place on the chance that she might have left work early that day.

After a full hour on the sidewalk in front of her house—pacing, sitting, waiting anxiously—I finally spotted her in the distance, elegant as ever in a black skirt and green leather jacket.

When she saw me, she ran toward me as fast as her high heels would allow, and we fell into each other’s arms.

“Albrecht, is it really you?”

Inside her apartment, she talked happily about the details of her life in Berlin. She didn’t ask about my work, and I volunteered little. She knew this visit was only temporary and that it would still be a long time before we could truly start a life together.

“I brought gifts,” I said with a great deal of pride and satisfaction. I unpacked the presents and laid them out in front of her. She gasped, and her face flushed with excitement when she saw the wedding bands.

The next day, Sergej provided me with a “company car” and directions to a secluded Party retreat in southern Germany, about forty kilometers from the border of Czechoslovakia. There wasn’t much to do in the little town of Plauen, but for a young couple in love who had not seen each other for two years, sightseeing was not at the top of our to-do list. For the next two weeks, we enjoyed the wonderful home-cooked German food prepared by the resident caretakers and spent time in the garden or in our room reading and talking and getting reacquainted. Knowing that I would soon be back in New York, I wanted to soak up as much of my homeland and my beloved Gerlinde as I could.

One afternoon, as we were sitting on a bench in the garden, Gerlinde brought up the future.

“So, Albrecht, be honest, how long will you be gone?”

This was the kind of question that made me very uncomfortable. Deep inside, the mission came first, but I didn’t want to be too blunt about this.

“I should be back for another visit in two years, and I have been told that the entire assignment is likely to end after ten years. And then I will be all yours.”

I hesitated for a moment before adding the necessary disclaimer.

“Of course, you know how serious this is. I could also wind up in jail, in which case the future becomes very uncertain.”

“I understand,” Gerlinde said, “and I support you one hundred percent. For me, it is either you or nobody. But I would love to have a child with you.”

I was surprised but also happy that she felt this way. “But would you be okay with raising a child without the father present?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” she said with determination, as if she had already thought it all through. “My parents would play an important role, and my brother is in Berlin now. I want something of you with me while you’re gone.”

We agreed that having a child together would be wonderful, and I think she hoped it might actually happen during this short time we had together.

A week or so later, we returned to Berlin, and on September 27, 1980, we were married in a civil ceremony in Prenzlauer Berg. Gerlinde’s younger brother was the only witness. The next day, I threw a few belongings into my suitcase, removed the wedding band from my finger, and said good-bye to Gerlinde for another two years.

“You know I’m doing this for a very important cause,” I said. “We just need to be patient.”

Gerlinde had tears in her eyes, but they betrayed sadness, not despair. We both believed that one day we would no longer have to say good-bye.

By the time I returned to Moscow, the key decision for my future had been made. As a well-trained and somewhat battle-tested agent, fluent in American English, I could have been given any number of short- or medium-term assignments. But, as I expected, the foundation I had established in New York City was deemed too valuable to discard, even though the timeline before any useful intelligence could be gathered would be much longer than originally planned.

The Center had decided that I should get an American college degree, in order to establish myself in a profession where I might be more likely to make valuable contacts.

“Columbia University would be a good place to study,” Alex said.

“Sure,” I said. “But how do we establish my credentials? A high school dropout bike messenger doesn’t just walk into an Ivy League education.”

“Yes, you are right, of course,” Alex said with a moan. “I just allowed myself to dream for a moment. Let’s shoot for a degree in economics from the City University then. While you are there, you should get to know and report on as many students as you can. They may become the decision makers of the future. The earlier they are recruited the better.”

With that decision fleshed out in more detail, my last two days in Moscow were filled with the drudgery of prewriting letters to my mother and brother, and the customary send-off banquet.

I returned to New York through Vienna and Chicago. As soon as I arrived at my apartment in Queens, I destroyed my travel passport and retrieved my American documents from their hiding place. With memories of Germany and Gerlinde locked tightly away in the most remote section of my brain, Jack Barsky reported for duty as a bike messenger the following morning.