CHAPTER 5. 5. A SPECIMEN OF NAIVETY

"I'm so glad you're showing sense," she rejoiced.

"You're very appealing to me overall, and I'll be delighted helping you in everything with the important, responsible assignment falling on our shoulders. We work as a team, and if you need support or something's unclear, I'll gladly talk with you, but we can't always speak frankly. Most of the time we'll have to play our roles, but if you roll your eyes upward, I'll try creating a situation like this where we can speak openly. Please roll your eyes upward," she gave final instructions and, seeing the expressive gesture, nodded.

"Remember this response," she said, nodding again. "If there's no nod to eye-rolling, I've been replaced, and you must continue the game without my support. Don't worry about my fate—you'll manage, absolutely will manage, must manage, because it's very important."

"Done, you're ready," she finished and stood straight.

In hat, glasses, payot, and beard, he made a passable Hasid, completely unlike the man who'd entered the Sohnut building. She walked confidently beside him, gently directing toward a distant car with driver. To sounds of a military ensemble singing about soldier's service necessarily occurring far from home, the car with the couple of presumed lovers in the back seat most likely headed to an airfield where a non-scheduled aircraft awaited, ready to carry them to that unknown distance where the reserve lance corporal awaited a mysterious important assignment from party, government, or intelligence.

He didn't know if he was now a patriot or a traitor. On one hand, he was saving his wife from torment or death, but on the other, everything was arranged so he was betraying his wife with another woman. Perhaps this other was executing a foreign intelligence assignment and had recruited him to become a foreign agent. A real foreign agent, not those announced on Fridays. Better they'd summoned him to the KGB and given him a red booklet so everything could be free and without queues! But what's better? Either way everything looks so filthy that it's better to truly escape, eject over the taiga and try living there alone, like the Old Believers once did!