LENINGRAD, 10 MARCH 1985, 10:38A

The hidden pack for the drop bunched beneath my long johns. The Aeroflot flight had been freezing, the pack’s stainless steel hardware sucked body heat, and the threadbare cotton blankets emblazoned with Vladimir Lenin’s image given out by the polyester’ed flight crew were useless.

As we landed, I switched out a New Order mixtape in my Walkman FM-1 for one that Camilla had given me the night before in Helsinki. Putting the New Order tape back into my zippered vinyl 10-cassette carrying case, I pulled out Queen’s The Game to make room for the New Order tape.…

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LENINGRAD, USSR. 10 MARCH 1985

Part of me was still in Helsinki (or “CamillaLand” as I called it now), and even the rickety Aeroflot flight to Leningrad and my Russian Customs scare didn’t cloud my floating. We arrived at our foreigners-only hotel, The Pribaltiskaya, a fashion-forward troupe of Patagonia and North Face jackets, a bit before 4pm Russian Standard Time.

“All IDs are checked in the lobby, at the dining tables and on every floor,” Mrs.…

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ADAMSTON, 11 JANUARY 1985, 5:25P

In this scene, the teenage cold war secret agent travels across his hometown of Adamston, NJ, to Mrs X’s house and accepts his mission.

Mrs X returned with the tea setup and poured me out a cup. Turning to my mother, she said “You should leave now. He has to make this decision on his own.”