ONE BENEFIT OF MY MARRIAGE to Penelope was that she was covered by my health insurance from MetLife, which meant that most of the expenses associated with childbirth were covered. Like any expectant father, I often accompanied her to the prenatal exams. Because the hospital where she planned to deliver was only ten minutes from my apartment, I invited her to stay at my place when she was a few days from her due date.

Summer made an early entrance in 1987, and by the last weekend of May, the outside temperatures hovered around ninety degrees. Without air-conditioning or ceiling fans, my apartment was not a comfortable place for someone close to giving birth.

By the following Monday morning, my patience with Penelope’s moaning and complaining about false alarms had worn thin. So when she told me that her water might have broken—but she wasn’t sure—I decided to take charge. “Get up and get dressed. I’m driving you to the hospital right now.”

The ten-minute drive to Elmhurst felt like an eternity. No other high-pressure situation during my undercover existence could measure up to the tension I felt while driving Penelope to the hospital. When we arrived at St. John’s, I parked the car near the entrance, left the hazard lights on, and accompanied Penelope to admissions.

As we walked up the steps, I saw a trail of blood trickling down one of her legs. This caught the eye of an alert nurse, and Penelope was rushed to a birthing room—the admissions paperwork could wait.

I raced back outside to move the car to a legal parking spot in the neighborhood, and it took me about twenty minutes to get back to the hospital. I went upstairs to the maternity ward and joined a handful of nervous expectant fathers for what I thought would be a long wait. But I had barely settled into one of the vinyl-covered seats when a nurse popped into the waiting room and said joyfully, “Mr. Barsky, you have a girl!”

This now was my third child. I wasn’t man enough to be there for Edeltraud when she gave birth to Günter, and I wasn’t able to be with Gerlinde when Matthias came into the world, but this time I was able to see my newborn daughter soon after her birth.

A nurse guided me through seemingly endless hospital corridors to a room containing several clear bassinets, and I saw my daughter for the first time.

“Chelsea,” I said out loud as I leaned closer and saw her tiny fingers and toes.

The medical staff had decided to put the otherwise healthy nine-pound baby girl in an incubator as a precaution because of the early water break. I felt sorry for the lonely little pink creature who was deprived of her mother’s touch. Little did I know that the day would come when this seemingly helpless baby would radically change my life and teach me the power of true love.

After two days in the incubator, Chelsea was reunited with Penelope, and the next day both mother and daughter were released from the hospital. I picked them up, and as I carried the bassinet with the precious cargo through the hallways of the hospital, something strange stirred inside me. This was my daughter! One day she would grow up and perhaps look a little like me and be a little like me.

I chased away this unwelcome emotion. My primary responsibility was to the KGB, and my real life was back in Berlin waiting for me. I would care for this baby and her mother as much as possible, but the unchanged plan was to set up Penelope to fend for herself. After all, there were millions of single mothers in the world, and she would learn to manage just fine.

With my income from work, I was able to afford my own apartment as well as a furnished apartment in Queens for Penelope and Chelsea. I would make sure there was always food, baby formula, and other needed supplies, and I would go with them for doctor’s visits. What I didn’t know was how I would care for them once I was gone.

For the next nine months, Penelope lived alone with her baby, fully dependent on a fake husband for support and with little hope for a secure and happy future. During the week, her only companions were Chelsea and a color TV. On weekends when I wasn’t busy with work for the Center, I often drove over and took the two of them to a nearby park. But for the most part, I was so wrapped up in my work for MetLife and the KGB that it never occurred to me to wonder how it must have felt for Penelope to endure that kind of seclusion. That experience left another big gash in our marriage of convenience.

It didn’t take long for Chelsea to shed the look of a newborn. Every time I paid a visit, I noticed something new. Her large dark-brown eyes were her first distinguishable feature, before she began growing a full head of curly jet-black hair. Her toothless smile stirred something in my heart I had never felt before. But what sealed my affection for her was the day I entered her room and found her standing in her crib, holding on to the rail. As soon as she saw me, her entire face lit up with the most radiant smile I had ever seen. Without any words, the message was clear: “I love you, Dad.”

Love tiptoed up on me—at first almost imperceptibly, but in the end, undeniably. And this love was unconditional. It came from deep within me and wasn’t linked to or rooted in desire. It was pure and powerful. All I wanted to do was take care of this little one and protect her, expecting nothing in return.

Along with all this love grew an equally strong emotion: guilt.

Like a torturing demon that never left my side—when I awoke, when I was at work, when I was doing my KGB activities, and when I closed my eyes to sleep—this guilt hounded me with the one question I couldn’t answer: How are you going to take care of this helpless baby?

Guilt is a hard emotion for anybody, but the fact that I felt it at all showed that I was becoming a different person. The wall of protection I had built around my heart—the impenetrable armor that had allowed me to walk away from numerous human connections with only a tinge of remorse—was beginning to crumble, and I had no idea how to stop the process.

When Chelsea was nine months old, the landlord in Queens told Penelope that she had to vacate her apartment. After a two-week search for a reasonably priced alternative yielded no results, serendipity once again came to the rescue. Our real estate agent showed us a spacious two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a two-family home in Ozone Park.

There have been many occasions in my life when the word serendipity seems the most appropriate descriptor. I used to think it was accidental dumb luck, but I’ve come to believe that it was actually the hand of God working in the background of my life to open doors I didn’t even know existed and lead me onto a path that only He could know and foresee.

As I inspected the apartment, it occurred to me that the layout made it suitable for the three of us to live together. There was a small study at the far end of a long hallway that would allow me to continue my operational activities—primarily radio reception and secret writing—without being disrupted or discovered. After mulling it over for a day, I talked to Penelope about it and signed the lease for us to live together.

When we moved into that apartment in April 1988, I made it very clear that I was never to be disturbed when I was working in the study.

“I’m working on some intricate computer code that could one day be sold for a lot of money,” I told Penelope, and she never once knocked on the door while I was holed up in that room.

Out of our new togetherness, the seeds of a somewhat normal family life began to sprout. There were more walks in the park and more opportunities for Mom and Dad to spend time together with their always smiling baby. There was a first birthday party and Chelsea’s first tentative steps. And there was a visit to my office, where all the ladies shrieked with delight at the sight of my beautiful little girl, with her dark, curly hair and big, curious eyes.

One day, while Penelope was waiting for me in the lobby at One Madison Avenue, she put Chelsea on a table near one of the elevator banks. At one point, a woman approached slowly with a curious look on her face, and when she came close enough to see, she let out a startled cry.

“Oh my! I thought this was a doll!”

These times when people made a fuss over Chelsea made me swell with pride. After all, this was my child.

Summer came and went, and by autumn 1988, it was already a few weeks past the agreed-upon end date of my ten-year assignment in the United States. I wasn’t sure why there was a delay, but I didn’t broach the subject in my communications. My mind was like that of the haunted creature in the famous series of expressionist paintings by Edvard Munch called Der Schrei der Natur—more commonly known as The Scream. Like me, the tortured soul in those paintings is covering his ears as if to avoid the persistent question of an ever-present demon.

How are you going to take care of this helpless baby?

My demon also had an ally—time—which was moving relentlessly forward and would ultimately force an answer to the unanswerable question.

Confessing my sin to the KGB was out of the question. It would only trigger a punishment of unpredictable severity. All I could do was wait and hope that a solution would miraculously appear.