ONE SATURDAY IN LATE NOVEMBER, I went to my favorite hangout, the TGI Friday’s at 75th and Broadway, a holdover from my days living on the West Side of Manhattan. I was sipping a drink and smoking a cigarette while gazing idly at the mirrored wall behind the bar when suddenly my eyes caught the reflection of a beautiful woman, who was seated immediately to my right and appeared to be looking straight at me. I turned and smiled, and soon we were engaged in a lively conversation.
Luz Maria was a great conversationalist, and I found her mild Spanish accent extraordinarily charming. She said she was in New York with her mother for some shopping and entertainment. She pointed to a well-dressed, dark-haired woman who was seated on the other side of her and talking very intensely to someone else.
“What country are you from?” I asked. I had to start with something.
“Well, originally we are from Chile. But when the country was caught in the struggle between Allende and Pinochet, we left. I wound up in Spain, and my mother lives with her husband in Washington, DC.”
She leaned over and whispered with innocent, girlish charm into my ear. “He’s Belgian and a little weird. I don’t like him much at all.”
The spy in me took note of Luz Maria’s leftward leanings and her mother’s apparent wealth. They were staying at a very expensive hotel on Central Park South.
At that point, her mother interrupted our conversation. Apparently, they were about to meet someone at the hotel. But before she left, Luz Maria paused for a moment and said, “Why don’t you join us tomorrow night for dinner? Say around seven?”
The next evening, I joined Luz Maria, her mother, and a young Filipino musical genius named Glenn Sales, whose training as a pianist in the US was being sponsored by Luz’s mother. The conversation around the table was delightful, and too soon it was time to say good-bye. At that moment I felt as if we were leaving a huge loose end floating in the air.
At the beginning of December, the Center informed me via shortwave transmission that Gerlinde had gotten her wish and was now pregnant. I was thrilled, but I had no one to share the news with. I was going to be a father, but like everything else in the life of Albrecht Dittrich, I had to keep it all locked inside.
The first six months of 1981 passed uneventfully until June 25, which was a Thursday, the night of my weekly radio transmission from the Center. At the end of a forty-five minute decryption process to decode the latest instructions from Moscow, my eyes widened as the final message emerged letter by letter: CONGRATULATIONS ON THE BIRTH OF YOUR SON, MATTHIAS, BORN 17 JUNE. MOTHER AND CHILD IN GOOD HEALTH.
I jumped up from my chair and turned two consecutive somersaults on the carpet in the hallway. What Gerlinde and I had only dared to dream about in September had actually happened. I was so excited that I almost forgot to destroy the paper with the message.
I needed to let Gerlinde know how happy I was, and I decided to take extraordinary measures. On certain occasions, I had so much information to transmit that there was not enough space in a letter or even two. In those cases, I would write out the message, photograph the sheets of paper, and pass along the exposed, but undeveloped, film cartridge via a dead-drop operation. I had recently prepared a lengthy update about the political climate in America and had also identified three new dead-drop sites, which I needed to describe. At the end of my report, I included a congratulatory note and a sweet love letter to Gerlinde.
With that done, I locked up the Albrecht drawer in my brain and slipped back fully into the persona of Jack Barsky.
Two months later, Luz Maria came to Washington, DC, for a visit. She called and invited me to a black-tie musical soiree at her mother’s house, given in honor of the Austrian cultural attaché and featuring Glenn Sales.
I had three days to acquire an appropriate outfit. Instead of renting a tuxedo, I went to Barneys, one of the finest outfitters in New York City. This time, I knew what to buy—no more checkered “American” pants. Instead, I chose a pin-striped, navy blue Armani suit. The suit with a double-breasted jacket, a white dress shirt, a light blue tie, and cuff links, set me back about $750. But for that one evening, it was worth it. I never looked better.
On Saturday morning, I took the Eastern Air Lines shuttle to Washington National Airport and checked into a hotel not far from the US Capitol.
When I arrived at Luz’s mother’s colonial-style house in the suburbs of Washington, DC, I caught a glimpse of the marvelous lifestyle of the American upper class. Each room was painted in a different rich, royal color. Chair rails, ornate crown moldings, strategically placed old-style paintings, and handcrafted antique furniture created an atmosphere I had previously experienced only in museums and century-old castles. As soon as I entered the living room, my eyes were drawn to a magnificent ebony grand piano.
As Glenn Sales took his place at the keyboard and played a number of pieces by various romantic composers, it all felt like pure magic.
With time, I became more comfortable and was even able to exchange some pleasantries—in English—with the Austrian guest of honor, and I realized that I could fit in with this crowd! When people asked me about my profession, I told them I was an independent accountant, a lie I could not have sustained for any length of time.
When the evening was done, I was forced to walk away from a great opportunity to connect with a group of people who might ultimately have yielded some interesting results for my comrades in Moscow. It wasn’t time yet, even though the thought of mingling with the diplomatic crowd in the nation’s capital made my mouth water. But as a bike messenger? Forget it!
I returned to New York on Sunday evening, and the next morning I put on my yellow rain suit and mounted my bike for another wet day on the streets of Manhattan—painfully aware of the chasm between my fairy-tale weekend and the grimy reality of the workweek.
When Luz Maria had told me of her plans to move to the United States within a year, my pulse rate accelerated. Although I wasn’t thinking of the long-term consequences of her being in America, I was content to think that I would at least see her again.
I decided I would try to surprise her the next time we met, so I spent the next several months studying Spanish, with the same dedication I had devoted to learning English. Within the year, my command of the language was good enough that I could read Spanish language novels, including the linguistically complex Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) by Gabriel García Márquez.
A few months after the Washington, DC, soirée, I found a letter in the mail from Luz Maria. I opened it quickly and paced the floor while reading her words. She had met someone in Spain and now planned to stay with him in anticipation of marriage. She thanked me for our time together and wished me well.
I sat at the table and read the letter again. Though somewhat abashed for all the months I had spent studying Spanish, I also felt relieved. Jack Barsky needed to remain focused, and a beautiful woman could be my downfall.