PART ONE  -  THE CONTRACT

CHAPTER 1 Summary:   Mossad agent Sharona meets Evgeny on a flight from Paris to Moscow. He is a Mossad mole and a double agent for the KGB. As his handler, she visits his dacha at the Black sea.

CHAPTER  1                  SHARONA   -   110420

                                          DECEMBER, 1987

The Aeroflot flight from Paris to Moscow left Charles De Gaulle Airport with only sixty percent occupancy. The great majority of travelers were Russian officials or businessmen returning home while the cold December weather kept foreigners away. Wearing a white furry hat and a blue scarf, the attractive and slim-figured twenty-eight-year-old divorcée was the exception to the rule. When she informed her family in Tel Aviv that she planned to add the Ural Mountains to her log book, they could not understand where she caught the Russian bug.

Sharona was a seasoned skier. While earning her degree at the University of Michigan, she was a frequent visitor on the slopes of Aspen, Colorado. Her skiing diary, with dates, sites and photographs, was her pride and joy. Colorado, Vermont and Idaho were her favorites, but she especially loved the pictures from the Mont Blanc slopes in the Haute Savoie region of France, near Geneva. During the previous summer, she visited Kieve in search of her grandfather’s gravesite.  She returned to Israel empty handed, but decided that one day she would honor her paternal ancestor by adding skiing photographs on the slopes of the Russian Urals.

Wearing a red jacket and sporting a white scarf, a tall and brutally handsome man in his thirties approached her row and sat in the adjacent seat.

“Pushkin?” He asked her with his piercing brown eyes.

“Parlez vous francais?” She responded with a question.

“Not very well,” he answered in English. “But enough to see that you’re reading Pushkin in French.”

“Your English is very good, but your accent tells me you are Russian.”

“I grew up in Leningrad where I learned English in college. I spent two years in London.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I was the cultural attaché in the Soviet embassy. Do you know Russian?”

“Not very well. I learned it from my grandmother in Israel who spoke it often at home. She grew up in Kiev before immigrating to Israel. Reading Pushkin in Russian is beyond my ability.”

“What brings you to Moscow in December?”

“Skiing.”

“Skiing? An interesting coincidence. I used to ski often, but l’ve been too busy lately.”

“Where did you ski?”

“Mostly on the southern Ural range.”

“Where do you live?”

“In Odessa. It’s a beautiful city on the shores of the Black Sea.”

“What do you do there?” 

“I am an education adviser to the Mayor. I also teach English in a local school.”

“I’ve never been to the Black Sea. I’ve read that its shores have beautiful landscapes.”

“They are unique. I’ll be delighted to show them to you. How would you like to be my guest in Odessa? Our opera productions are famous. Do you like opera?”

“I love opera, but I’ve never been to one in Russian.”

“If you’ll accept my invitation, I’ll get tickets to Eugene Oniegin. It’ll be in Russian, of course.” 

“Thanks for the invitation, but I can’t accept. I’m visiting a long lost relative and I have to return to Israel after the weekend.”

“Will you accept an invitation to dinner tonight at the Gagarin restaurant in Moscow?”

Sharona’s eyes popped with a smile on her face. She just heard the first of three code words given to her by Menachem, her Mossad director. This man is my contact, but is he also a KGB trap?

“Did I hear you right? Did you say Gagarin restaurant?”

“You know Gagarin, the first Russian cosmonaut.”

“They named a restaurant after a cosmonaut?”

“Not really. People call it Gagarin because he ate there often.”

Hearing the second phrase with the correct code words, Sharona followed with the third question.

“When did you reserve the seat on this flight?”

“Today, after the airline informed me that the previous seat they assigned yesterday was already taken.”

The third code words are correctly spoken.

“What’s your name?” She asked.

“I don’t give my name without knowing yours.”

“Gentlemen first.”

“OK. Mine is Evgeny.”

“So it’s the same as Eugene Oniegin from the opera.”

“It’s the same, and your name must be Sharona.”

“It sure is. In that case, I’ll be happy to accept your invitation to Odessa. I can be there on Friday, after my two skiing days. I’ll come by train.”

“I’ll meet you at the station and I’ll get two tickets for Eugene Oniegin.”

*                           *                           *

The Odessa headquarters complex of the NKVD, Narodnyy komissariat vnutrennikh del, the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, was in a large building on the outskirts of the city. It housed several departments with different missions including the regional police, the criminal investigation group, the director of regional Gulag affairs and a representative from the KGB office in Moscow.

It was a busy day at the complex. The December meeting brought internal security officials and field operatives to present final updates for the year-end regional report to Moscow.

Evgeny entered the main building and walked to its large conference hall. Someone called his name.

“Evgeny! The boss wants to see you.”

He turned around and walked to the office of Ivanov, his section director.

“I hear you have a new girl friend, Evgeny,” the director greeted him. “Where did you find her?”

“How do you know about her? Comrade Ivanov.”

“It’s a habit I have from my high school basketball tournaments. I always want to know all I can about my team members.”

“If you know everything about me, then you probably know all about my new friend.”

“You win. Tell me all you know about her.”

“I met her on a flight from Paris. As an avid skier, she came to boast to her friends about having skied on the southern Urals. I invited her to spend a weekend in my dacha and she agreed.”

“Is that all you know about her?”

“It’s all I know now, but I’ll soon find out if she is just looking for a weekend fling or if she is a traveling Mossad agent.”

“That’s our concern as well.” The director was pleased with Evgeny’s answer. “I’ll pass the information to the KGB with a request to obtain a confidential report on her from their Tel-Aviv desk.”

*                           *                           *

The mild December on the northern shores of the Black Sea was a pleasant surprise to its inhabitants as the winter solstice approached. The effects of a heavy snow storm in Moscow were barely felt this far south. Sunny days in December are a rarity that only long time residents have seen.    

Back home in his living room, Evgeny sat on his sofa and relished the warmth emanating from the fireplace red and blue flames of the burning wood. The encounter with Sharona on the Aeroflot flight engaged his thoughts. He wandered what her real name was and why such an attractive blond has chosen to be a Mossad agent traveling to Russia as an impassioned skier. Suddenly, he got up, walked to his briefcase and retrieved the English translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Oniegin novel he purchased in Moscow. He returned to the sofa and started reading in an attempt to recollect the details of the novel’s characters. It has been ten years since he had read it in Russian. 

Two hours later, Evgeny was at the main station as the train from Moscow came in. He saw Sharona stepping down followed by a railroad attendant carrying two pieces of luggage. Wearing a heavy white fur coat with a matching fur hat and a blue scarf, she was as attractive as he remembered her from their previous meeting. He greeted her with a smile without saying a word. She smiled back. He took the two suitcases, tipped the attendant and escorted her quietly to his ten-year-old Skoda sedan. Remaining mute, he opened the passenger door in the manner he had rehearsed, just like the gentleman his father had taught him to be.

“Thank you for inviting me,” she finally greeted him.

He didn’t know how to respond to his beautiful weekend guest and drove quietly to his dacha. He was relieved when they arrived.

“Welcome to my humble retreat,” he said. “I hope you found the skiing on the slopes of the Urals as enjoyable as on the ones in the United States.  

“You must be tired and hungry,” he added while carrying her luggage to the guest room. “Cooking is my hobby. I prepared a traditional Ukrainian dinner with wine and vodka. I’ll set the table while you make yourself comfortable. Please make yourself at home.”

“Thank you,” she smiled, entered the guest room and closed the door. 

*                           *                           *

After dinner Sharona decided it was time to talk business, but she knew better than to carry a professional conversation in any building anywhere in the Soviet Union, especially in a dacha home given by NKVD to one of its agents.

“I like walking outdoors in the winter. I once walked four miles on Christmas Day in the Upper Michigan Peninsula.”

Evgeny was happy to oblige.   

“I know you didn’t expect to meet me on the flight from Paris,” she said as soon as they left the dacha. “However, I assume you figured out that our airline seat assignments were not coincidental.”

“I had no idea, but I did figure it out after you recognized my name. How did your guys do it?”

“We have our ways of doing the unexpected.”

“So I’ve heard.” Evgeny did not seem surprised.

“I’ll be your new contact, except in special cases. The Mossad frequently changes the assignments of its field officers.”

“That’s wise, Sharona.” He immediately regretted using her name in a business dialogue between a mole and his controller.

 “Occasionally, I’ll come to your dacha as your new girl friend. Between my visits, you’ll continue sending your weekly reports through the normal channel.”

“First, I brought you a souvenir from Israel,” she added. “It’s a silver pen which is also a transmitter. Always carry it with you. Use it only if your life is in danger, but never for any other reason.”

Sharona paused waiting to hear his reaction, but Evgeny remained silent.

“I also bring you news. As a reward for your report on the Siberian project, we deposited a special bonus in your bank in the Cayman Islands Bank.”

”Thank you,” Evgeny was pleased.   

“Now you can brief me on the latest information you have.”

“It would be wiser if you read it. It’s a seven page report placed in the Pushkin novel.”

They walked back to the dacha.  

“The novel is in my night table.”

They entered the bedroom and Evgeny opened a hidden night table drawer. He took out the Russian book and handed it to his controller. She opened it silently, pulled out the report and retrieved a mini-camera from her purse. She placed the report on the night table and photographed each of the seven pages. While Sharona looked at the novel, Evgeny took the pages, walked to the fireplace and threw them into the fire assuring that all evidence was destroyed. 

 “Now we can celebrate with a glass of Bordeaux I bought in Paris.” Evgeny said after returning to the bedroom.

“Why not,” Sharona replied. “I love Bordeaux, but in Odessa I prefer Vodka on the rocks.”

              He rushed to the living room and returned with two glasses and a bottle of Stolichnaya.

 “LeChayim” he said in Hebrew.

“LeChayim” she replied.

He placed his two hands on her shoulders. She pulled back realizing that his intentions were not platonic.

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