IN LATE 1991, the news of upcoming changes shook up the normally tranquil atmosphere in the offices of MetLife. One day, my manager, Mark, asked me to join him in a small conference room. As soon as he closed the door, he began talking in a hushed, almost conspiratorial voice.

“Listen, Jack, the company has made a decision to move our entire department to New Jersey.”

My jaw dropped. “Man, I just bought a house up north. There’s no way I can commute to New Jersey.”

Mark smiled and said, “We know that. We have identified you as one of a handful of key employees who will get full relocation assistance. We want you to come with us.”

So off we went on our second house-hunting adventure in eighteen months, this time in eastern Pennsylvania. After a disappointing first day driving all around the area with a real estate agent, we were on our way home when a house we passed caught Penelope’s attention.

“Look, it has a ‘For Sale’ sign, and it looks really nice,” Penelope said, grabbing my arm.

“Okay, we can come back next week to look at it.”

The following Saturday, we went to see the house. As soon as we walked inside, any thoughts I had of considering the pros and cons went out the window.

“I want this house,” Penelope announced without further ado.

“But the price seems high, and there’s not much landscaping.”

“I don’t care. This is the house I want.”

Penelope’s declaration became the first and last word on the matter, and exactly two years after moving into our first house, we moved out and made our way to rural Mount Bethel, Pennsylvania. When I say rural, I mean we had only one neighbor within earshot, and the nearest place to buy something was a gas station two miles away. But the house had all the features of Penelope’s dream home, and the setting was paradise for the kids. It also made my commute quite bearable, with a scenic drive over the hills, through the woods, and across the Delaware River before joining the bustling traffic around the commercial hub of Bridgewater, New Jersey.

Without the long commute to New York City, my work-life balance was restored. I had more time to play with the kids, who were five and two by then, and we could afford a second car—making Penelope mobile for the first time since moving out of New York City. It seemed as if we were settling into a long period of stability.

In the fall of 1992, Chelsea was supposed to start kindergarten. However, a routine placement test revealed that her verbal abilities were trailing those of her peers by almost two years. This was a shock and a revelation for me—and from that point on I stopped using “smarts” as the defining criterion in my relationships with other people. I told my colleagues at work, “I think my daughter is a little dummy, but I love her anyway.”

It turned out that my “little dummy” was actually hearing impaired and was otherwise sharp as a whip. She had developed the ability to read lips and was fooling everyone around her. Hearing aids and a special education program soon allowed my little princess to catch up with the rest of her class.

During the summer of 1994, Penelope and I loaded up the kids for our first family vacation, a visit to Penelope’s half-brother and his family in Toronto, by way of Niagara Falls.

As I drove across the Rainbow Bridge into Canada, I was briefly reminded of my previous life as a spy. Only four years earlier, this bridge was to have been my conduit to safety. But that memory was so far removed from my current reality that it seemed to have come from another universe.

But as we were taking in the awe-inspiring views at Niagara Falls, the shadows of the past were descending on our home in Mount Bethel. The name “Jack Barsky” had arrived at the FBI office in Allentown, and special agent Joe Reilly was appointed as lead agent in what was determined to be the most important counterintelligence case by the FBI at that time. While we were away on vacation, a team of FBI agents quietly broke into our house and conducted a thorough search.

The following year, when Penelope made a trip to visit her aging uncle in London, the FBI alerted MI5—the British version of the FBI—and they followed Penelope during the entire week of her stay. Neither she nor I had a clue.

Through a merger and subsequent acquisition at MetLife, my department became part of United Healthcare. I took advantage of the change to advance into the management ranks. My second assignment took me to Minneapolis, and I traveled back and forth on a weekly basis. What I didn’t know was that the FBI routinely searched my car while it was parked in the long-term lot at the airport. My transition from undercover spy to normal, everyday American was so complete that I suspected nothing.

Over the next few years, what appeared to be a stable and happy family was slowly crumbling on the inside. My relationship with Penelope was not on solid footing. No matter how well I took care of her material needs, she sensed that there was an important ingredient missing: genuine love.

She once told me, “You are a great provider and a great father, but a lousy husband.”

I didn’t know what she meant by that. She drove the better car, and I brought flowers home on a regular basis. Was it that I didn’t want to go with her to the clubs she liked to visit? Or was it my refusal to join her for a Julio Iglesias concert? This lack of understanding reflected the inadequate level of my awareness at the time, but somehow even this thick-skinned German noticed that something was going in the wrong direction.

In an attempt to bring more unity to our family, I agreed to attend Sunday mass with Penelope. For about three years, the four of us attended a Catholic church in nearby Stroudsburg. To an agnostic like me, the Catholic mass was emotionally neutral and intellectually meaningless. It was neither attractive nor off-putting. I enjoyed the organ music and some of the short sermons, but all the rituals that had meaning for the Catholic congregation didn’t mean much to me or the children. The kids sat through the hour-long mass in anticipation of the fast-food reward they expected to receive afterwards, and I was always glad when the service was over.

When going to church failed to heal our marriage, I made a proposal. One morning I sat down with Penelope in the kitchen and started the conversation.

“I know that to you there is something missing in our relationship. Can you tell me what I can do to fix it?”

“You can’t fix something you broke a long time ago.”

“I understand,” I said contritely. “But I’m willing to make a fresh start. How about if we renew our vows on our tenth anniversary? This time we can do it in a church with a priest and a real reception afterward. What do you say?”

“You think that all you have to do is put a big Band-Aid on old wounds and everything will be well. You treated me like a nuisance when we first met, and I got used to it. Now you want to fix it by waving a magic wand? I think it’s too late for that.”

“But can we just agree that the past was bad, but we still have a long future ahead of us? Why not try to make it better?”

“I don’t think it’s going to work,” she said. “We just need to find a way to coexist.”

For some time, I had wondered whether I should ever tell Penelope the truth about the years when we were first together and of all my years before that. Frustrated that she wasn’t willing to try to work on our relationship—even if, admittedly, it had been bad for a long time—I at least wanted her to understand me. I decided to use my secret weapon.

“I need to tell you something.”

Penelope waited, but signs of impatience were evident on her face.

“This should give you an idea of how much I love you, Chelsea, and Jessie. When I first met you, I worked for the Russians. I was actually a spy. My real name is Albrecht Dittrich, but I have lived in America as Jack Barsky for a long time. Not long after Chelsea was born, the Russians wanted me to return to Moscow, but I couldn’t leave you and Chelsea, so I severed my ties with the KGB. Do you know what I’ve risked for you? I could have been captured or even killed. Does that mean anything to you?”

Penelope’s response was totally unexpected. At first, I thought she didn’t believe me. I could see her mind working as she processed what I had just revealed. After a lengthy pause, she said, “So what you’re telling me is that you’re in this country illegally? That means I am not really legal either. What if they find out and throw us both out of the country and take Jessie and Chelsea away from me?”

With that, she ran out the back door crying. My secret weapon had completely backfired.

As it turned out, that backfire caused more damage than I could have possibly guessed. The FBI had bugged our house during their break-in, and they were listening to the entire conversation. They now knew that they had their man, and they even had a taped confession.