On the second page, in black ink, typewritten on a manual typewriter, is a transcript—an excerpt from a debriefing.
This isn’t uncommon. Since any computer can potentially be hacked, and since extremely sensitive information is still stored on paper, a typewriter is simply the fastest way to safely document sensitive information.
But that isn’t the interesting part. The interesting part is my mother’s name, printed near the top of the page.
Embassy of the United States
Stockholm, Sweden
T S 8 4 - C L E A R A N C E
Operation N E M C O V A
TO: B. Alden Andrews, Deputy Director
FR: Case Officer Mary Hepworth (ON-YX)
RE: Transcription of ORAL DEBRIEFING (partial)
Strategic Intent of Operation NEMCOVA-Exfiltration of Anton Katranov
Agent: Anton Katranov—Officer, Foreign Intelligence Directorate, SVR, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Use: Sub-director under command of Sergei Abramovich
Director-general, Department K, Foreign Affairs Directorate—SVR
“… Katranov was at a government summit in St. Petersburg when we learned he had been exposed. We had to exfiltrate immediately.
Kent collected Katranov from the summit. I collected Mrs. Katranov and the children from their apartment and we fled separately, reconvening at the Neva river marina.
However, our ‘A’ route, Tallinn, was blocked by Russian security checkpoints, so we proceeded to our ‘B’ route through Helsinki. Awaiting orders, we stopped at a safe house in Kotka …
The green light never came.
We improvised an alternate route, through Stockholm.
It was during this delay that we first learned … The former ballet dancer had somehow concealed it … at the safe house we learned … not only was Mrs. Katranov near full-term pregnant, but the stress of the escape had induced preterm labor.
We procured the services of a discreet Kotka-based midwife … the child was born …
Four days later, Kent went to gather supplies for our journey to Stockholm. I was surveilling the pier when I overheard a fisherman telling two Finnish border guards his boat had been hijacked by ‘Cheka.’ He said two Russians had held him at knifepoint and forced him to bring them to Kotka.
… I knew …
I sprinted back through the woods … {indecipherable} … But I was too late … I halted at the door …
Facedown on the floor, arms outstretched, was the body of Anton Katranov. Behind him were the lifeless bodies of his two boys. And behind them, blocking the entrance to the back bedrooms, lay the crumpled body of Mrs. Katranov.
She moaned. I ran to her. I applied my hands to her bleeding abdomen. I scanned the room for medical supplies.
But I knew what we had, and what we did not. Time.
Mrs. Katranov was bleeding out … {indecipherable} … gurgling blood … she clutched my wrist. “The baby,” she rasped.
Instantly, I leaped over her into the hall and raced to the back bedroom.
Inside a single dresser drawer, on the floor beside the bed, was the delicate body of the Katranovs’ four-day-old baby.
In the middle of this massacre … she was alive … asleep.
I brought the swaddled newborn to Mrs. Katranov. She was losing too much blood; her face was pale; her eyelids fluttered. She pressed her lips to the baby’s forehead. Her eyes clasped desperately onto mine—harmaakarhu silmät—‘mama grizzly eyes,’ they say in Finland …
She pleaded with me to take her … that he must never know … that was the only way … she would live …
As she spoke the door opened behind me. The Cheka had returned. I placed the baby on Mrs. Katranov’s chest.
… I killed both cheka at close range.
When I looked back at Mrs. Katranov she was dead and the newborn was suckling on her lifeless breast. I kissed Mrs. Katranov on the forehead, tucked the newborn inside my coat, and fled …”
Trembling, I snatch up the envelope and slide my fingers along the seal, ripping it open.
I pull out an old color photograph. It is the angled profile of a blond woman with a straight nose and wide-set eyes. Her neck is bent forward, her lips soft, meeting the downy fuzz atop an infant’s head.
I turn the picture over. Inscribed on the back of the photograph in my mother’s neat cursive is a name alongside my own:
Katarina.
CHAPTER 52
Katarina.
I push the tears off my face with my palms. I blink until I can see. I reread the dossier until the last few paragraphs when my vision blurs so badly I have to stop.
Conflicting emotions pummel me from all sides.
My family was murdered, and I lived. I lived. My brothers—I had brothers—died, and I lived.