I did what I had to do and exposed a traitor
Note: This is a work of fiction
I was 23 when I started working at the CIA, 25 when this story took place in the 1980s. For context, this story took place in Europe in the middle of the Cold War, though we did not know it would end in a few years. And yes, I am a woman.
I was assigned under a diplomatic cover to a western European nation, still cannot say which but it was within NATO. Most of our days were spent monitoring diplomats from the Soviet Union and its allies, coordinating with our partner intelligence services, and the occasional meeting with sources and dealing with dead drops. Despite what the movies would have you believe, it is nowhere near action packed as most people think. Hell, we do not even carry firearms.
Then one day, I was called into a secure briefing with my friend Debra. Our bosses, Edward and Helen, both CIA veterans were also there. The briefer was a very senior official who had been in the CIA since the before the beginning when it was still the OSS. There were sealed folders in front of us.
"Please open your folders," the elder briefer said. We did and inside was a picture of a thirty-something man of average height and build standing outside on a street in the capital popular for shopping. "That man is Grigoriy Lazarev, officially a trade attaché at the Soviet Embassy, but is a KGB major. Most importantly, he knows the name of a mole in our Defense Department."
Then he turns to Debra and I. "We have tried everything to learn what he knows but we keep running into obstacles. Given the importance and critical nature of this potential mole, the Director has authorized we try for a clinical contact."
Clinical contact. Translation: he was asking one of us to fuck this Grigoriy for the mole's name.
Now, the KGB did (and the Russians still do) use what we call honey pots to seduce people into compromising situations and use as blackmail later. Israelis also do this.
Despite what James Bond would have you believe, CIA and most western intelligence officers are not sleeping with every source. In fact, that is probably one of the most dangerous and compromising things that any agent can do since the information can be questionable at best and it puts the agent at risk since they could now be considered subject to blackmail themselves.
Which means whatever this Grigoriy has must be pretty damn important.
"You two," the briefer said pointing at Debra and I, "have been working on operations adjacent to Grigoriy's associates, though not much field work so there is a high probably the KGB do not know who you are. And..."
Here's the kicker.
"you two are the most sexually desirable officers we have on station."
A cold way of saying he thought we were hot, but honestly appropriate in this case.
I looked at Debra and saw her face to be unreadable, but I suspected there was a lot going on in her head. She was married to Mark, an actual State Department employee whose actual position was the perfect cover for her. Most important, they had a one-year-old daughter, Jessica.
"I will do it," I said before anyone else could speak up.
All eyes turned towards me but said nothing until the briefer spoke. "Very well. A security expert and a psychologist have traveled with me and they will start evaluating you right away."
Why did I volunteer? Like I said, Debra has a husband and young daughter. I was not married at the time and outside a few flings, had no steady boyfriend. Or long-term partner as people say today. So if someone had to take one for the team, I figure better me than her.
The next week were a blur of very intense interviews with the security guy and the psychologist, a woman about the same age as Helen. Now as I mentioned earlier, a clinical contact is rare, very rare. I would later learn that out of the thousands of operations the CIA ran over the years, it had been authorized only three times before, and only one had required the agent, another woman (they were all women), to go all the way. The interviews were designed to make sure there were no additional security risks to an already risky operation, and that I was fully aware of what they wanted me to do, that I did this of my own accord and without hesitation, and that I knew this was not romance, this was a mission. A high-risk mission, but a mission.
Apparently, they were satisfied because two weeks later, I was sitting down next to Grigoriy at a bar in a luxury hotel wearing a little black dress that left just enough to the imagination.
And yes, little black dresses were just as popular in the 1980s as they are today. And also yes, I looked hot.
The whole thing went off better than we anticipated. I pretended to be an American tourist. He pretended to be what he was. He was not bad looking up close and at least did not reek of the cologne that Russian men started bathing in after the Wall came down. But he was Russian and he loved his drink and he loved his manliness. The hardest part was part was pretending to be charmed by him. While men were more openly sexist back then than today (or at least until you know who entered office), Russian men made American men look like committed feminists.
After some more drinks, mostly for him since I had one actual beverage and stuck to sparkling water with lemon, we went up to his room and I carried out my mission.
The details are not worth going over. I will just say he was average, probably less so, it was far from enjoyable though I convinced him otherwise, and I had to stay the whole night to keep him from suspecting anything. In the morning, I got dressed, gave him a quick kiss, and left. He did ask if he could see me again. In a flirty tone, I said maybe before I left.
I never saw him again.
Helen picked me up outside the hotel and drove me back to my apartment. We did not speak until we got outside of my apartment.
"Was it worth it?" Helen asked. "Did you learn anything?"
I nodded. During our so-called night of passion, Grigoriy let slip a name, an American one that I told Helen about.
She nodded as she gave me a heavy bag from the back of the car. "I figured you might need this." It was whiskey, three bottles of whiskey. "Take the next couple of days. We'll have an appointment with the doctors ready when you get back." I thanked her and went up to my apartment.
I proceeded to take a very long shower. I put that little black dress and the undergarments I had on that night in the garbage. Then I proceeded to drink the whiskey, along with some bottles of wine I had in the apartment. I took an additional day off from a hangover that even my 25-old-self needed extra recovery from. No one said anything.
The doctors cleared me of any STDs and, most relieving, HIV negative. If you remember the 1980s, you know. However, a few weeks later, I was feeling ill, went back to the doctors, and learned that my mission resulted in a pregnancy. Helen quietly arranged for an abortion in another country. While the country we operated out of had legalized abortion, we still needed to maintain operational security. And I did not want to deal with some Reagan-supporting pro-lifer.
Debra accompanied me as I got the procedure successfully done. We had a bottle, okay several bottles, of wine back in the hotel. Not sure if I was supposed to drink so close after an abortion but fuck it.
"I want to thank you," Debra said as we sat on our beds and drank.
"For what?" I asked.
"For volunteering. For doing this so I would not have to."
"It would have been all right," I said, though I doubted that.
"We're here for your abortion," she replied. "I know there is a lot I cannot tell Mark and he understands that part of my job. But at least I know I can go home to him and Jessica and tell myself that while I can't talk about my day as other wives can, I can take comfort knowing that I am a good wife and good mother. But this..." she paused. "I don't know if I can lie like that. I don't know if I can carry or compartmentalize something like that."
I went over and sat by her before grabbing her hand and refilling her cup, and mine. "That does not make you a bad wife or mother. That does not make you a bad officer. This was an extreme case. No one, and I mean no one, will ever think less of you."
We spent the rest of the night talking and drinking.
John Anthony Walker pled guilty in 1985 and would die in prison decades later. It was determined that the naval codes he sold the Russians could have led to disaster in any naval engagement the U.S. Navy would have had with the Soviet Navy. So, at least that mission yielded a truly world altering result.
My mission was highly compartmentalized. I was told that it was not up for declassification for a century. The standard timeframe is twenty-five years. I do not know if a clinical contact was ever authorized again and I really do not want to know.
Debra and I both left the agency by the early 1990s. The Cold War ended and we decided that we did our part. Debra and I remained friends. I am godmother to her son Kevin, who was born a couple of years after the events of my mission. She would be a bridesmaid when I married Will, another CIA man, five years after the mission. He also left when I did. We live out west with our three children, two girls and a boy, all of whom are grown and out of the house, and we are getting ready for the upcoming wedding for our youngest.
I never think Grigoriy and on the rare times, and I mean rare, he might pop into my head, I write him off as another fling I had in my freewheeling 20s.