“For us there are no thrills, no adventures, no fast women or fancy living; for us there is only punishment, almost as if we had to pay for the free ride the fictitious spies enjoy. For us there is only one half of a spy’s life: the wrong half, the one that starts at the prison gate.”

Yes, I nod and observe that the number of spies of his kind who share a similar fate varies greatly with the ebb and flow of political upheavals; Communism, a social experiment on an unparalleled scale in history, required the transformation of numberless ordinary citizens into enemy spies (under the aegis of “intensifying the class struggle”) by the simple expedient of arresting them.

“I was one of them,” he reaches for his wine with a decisive hand as if to claim his just compensation, “and so the lopsided spy story I offer to the world is not a unique one, except in its stark contrast to the legends created by popular entertainment. And I maintain that it is a true spy story! After all, what could be more real than eight years of imprisonment, filled with deprivation, humiliation, and torture?”

Translator Bio