Soviet Airspace above Moscow

13 December

Peering out of the window of the passenger plane chartered by the Soviet government to bring him home, Leo was disappointed that Moscow was hidden below angry clouds, as if shunning the gaze of the returning traitor, refusing to show him the city that he’d once sworn to protect against all enemies, domestic and foreign. No matter what rationale he applied, he could not deny that he felt ashamed. He was a man who’d fought proudly as a Soviet soldier and he would gladly have died for his country. Yet he had ended up betraying it. While his sense of personal shame was intense, he felt far greater shame that his nation had squandered its opportunity for social progress, instead industrializing darkness, making its citizens complicit in a murderous command economy, building death-factories in every corner of the country, from Kolyma’s gulags to the secret police headquarters, the Lubyanka, a building that lurked somewhere underneath those winter clouds. To the ideals that underpinned the Revolution, they were all traitors to one degree or another.

The journey from New York had been eerie, Leo surrounded by unoccupied seats, the flight empty except for the KGB operatives guarding him and the diplomatic officials sent from Moscow to oversee his return. Upon boarding he’d felt no sense of apprehension, instead pondering the money wasted on his repatriation. As a traitor of international status, he had been granted an entire plane to himself. Recalling the perks he’d once desired as a young agent, he marvelled at the irony that not even the most powerful KGB officer, with the largest dacha and longest limousine, would ever have been granted the use of an entire airliner. It was a simple matter of appearances. Leo’s deportation was taking place upon a global stage before a worldwide media circus and no economies would be tolerated. Just as Raisa had been sent to New York in the nation’s most modern airliner to impress the main adversary, so the defector Leo would be brought home in the most modern Soviet aircraft available, flying direct to Moscow from New York. The Soviet government was keen to show the world that it was not experiencing financial worries. Carefree spending was an attempt to mask the strain caused by the ever-spiralling cost of the Afghan war, a fact Leo had described in detail to the Americans.

In negotiating his return to the Soviet Union, it was clear that the Americans were pleased to be rid of him. He was a troublemaker, a loose cannon, and they’d extracted the information they needed, understanding from his briefings that Soviet failure in Afghanistan would leave their enemies humiliated. Providing aid to the Afghan insurgency would drain Soviet resources, pulling in more troops and making their ultimate and inevitable defeat even more expensive politically.

As for Leo’s incident with former Agent Jim Yates – the attack had been covered up. Yates survived. His revelations would never see the light of day. The history books had been written and they would not be re-written: lies had been chiselled into the encyclopaedias and textbooks. The shooting of Yates in his pleasant suburban house in Teaneck had been blamed on an armed intruder, an opportunistic robbery gone wrong. Leo had assured the American authorities that he would not cause any further problems, or give any statements regarding the death of Jesse Austin, as long as Nara and Zabi were left alone. A pact of silence had been agreed. Leo took some satisfaction from the symmetry of Yates’s shooting being concealed as a matter of convenience, just as Austin’s murder had been. Though Yates had agreed to go along with the story, he’d pointedly told local reporters that all he remembered about the intruder was that he was black.

With regards to the Soviet government, Leo had been unable to obtain any guarantees except for one – if he returned, the punitive measures against his daughters would stop. He had requested that within twenty-four hours of his plane touching down he would be permitted to see them, but he was in no position to insist upon anything. His guilt was not in question. He’d shared sensitive information with the main adversary and was to be tried for treason, a trial whose verdict had already been decided.

As the plane descended, Leo tried to imagine the events of the past eight years, the things that had happened since he was last in Moscow – eight years in which he’d been missing from the lives of his daughters and their husbands. As he thought upon the letters he’d received, it suddenly struck him that he wasn’t anxious about returning to a city filled with memories of Raisa. Something had changed. He was excited. This was the place where he’d fallen in love. He would be closer to his wife here than at any point during his investigation into her death. As the wheels touched down, he closed his eyes. He was home.