the honor. He even supplied the consul’s phone number so that I could set up an appointment.

I dialed the number, hoping the embassy people spoke Russian, for I didn’t know a word of English. They did.

At the appointed time, my wife Alia and I rode the B trolley bus along the Garden ring of Moscow to Insurrection Square, then walked one block down Tchaikovsky Street to the massive building that housed the American Embassy. Alia went to wait for me across the street. Carrying the book in an old briefcase, I approached the main gate, which was guarded by three uniformed sentries. “What is your business here?” one of them asked. “I have an appointment with the consul,” I answered. Even before I had finished, a massive figure appeared clad in a police major’s uniform, his collar bearing the blue chevrons of the KGB. “Follow me,” he barked, striding toward the side of the building and around the corner to a small shed, the size of a typical office cubicle, hidden in a stand of trees and invisible to passersby. The major opened the door with a key and walked in. I followed. There was a small table against the wall and two chairs, nothing else. The major sat in a chair, motioning me to the one opposite him. At this point I had to decide where to put the briefcase. Without thinking, I did something that seemed stupid, but that may have saved my life: I put the briefcase on top of the table, right in front of him. All he needed to do was to snap the latch open, and the book would jump out at him. He never did.

Instead, the major asked to see my exit visa, and staring at it intently, told me that he could tear it to pieces right there. He asked me what business I had at the American Embassy, since we were going to Israel. (This was the game everybody had to play: only Jews were allowed to emigrate, and only to Israel; the rare request for emigration to the United States was routinely denied.) I was unprepared for the question, and had to think fast. Luckily, the ability to do so had bailed me out many times before during college exams, and did so once again. I said that since I was going to another country without language, money, or occupation, but with two little children, I would need help from my American relatives; I hoped the consul would help me locate them. The major looked at me for a minute, then said, “Okay, you can go. Just don’t do anything stupid.”

“I won’t,” I said, and picking up the briefcase nonchalantly, I walked out, my heart beating faster than Carl Lewis’s after his Olympic sprint, my knees

shaking violently. I was very lucky, and I knew it.

What happened next was that the consul flatly refused to take the book. Patiently I explained my circumstances; after forty-five minutes he finally relented. When I came out, Alia stood waiting across the street, her beautiful face not pale but chalk white; she was practically resigned to the thought of never seeing me again.

While I was in Rome, waiting for permission to enter the United States, I was interviewed by someone in the American Embassy. The reason? My affiliation with the most influential Soviet newspaper this side of Pravda , and the reward was handsome, to my mind: stacks of Russian books censured in the Soviet Union, including the best works of Solzhenitsyn.

A year later we were living in Charlotte, North Carolina. I made a few calls to Washington, D.C., and the book I had given to the consul arrived in the mail. It lay peacefully on my desk for several months until a man came to visit and interview me; his business card listed Bethesda as his address. How far is it from Langley? I wondered. I gave him the book. He gave me $200.00.

I landed a job, not as a Soviet analyst, but sweeping floors in a Pic N Pay warehouse; Alia started her new life folding drapes at a textile plant for $2.10 an hour. But we were happy day in and day out because we were free and our future was in our own hands. Within a few years, I was a manager, and before long, Alia had her own advertising agency. Our sons are college graduates now, building their own lives. We still feel lucky.