Stateless by Alan Gold Page B

a test to see if I was ready.’
    The interior of the car was dark, but Judita knew that Anastasia nodded and was smiling.
    â€˜And did I pass?’
    â€˜Oh yes, my little dove; you passed with flying colours.’
    Judita remained quiet as the car drove back to the Lubyanka. As it crossed the Moskva River and then right into Borovitskaya to pass Red Square and the Kremlin, Judita said quietly, ‘Oh, you’d better drop me off here. I had a note earlier today to meet tonight with Comrade Stalin.’ Out of the corner of her eye, even in the dim light cast by the street lamps, Judita could see Anastasia turning towards her in shock.
    â€˜He wants me to teach him Hebrew,’ she said.
    Anastasia said nothing. Her mouth was open. She was incredulous.
    â€˜Just testing you,’ said Judita, trying not to laugh.
    And Anastasia suddenly burst out laughing, and threw her arms around the young woman. She kissed her on the cheek, and lightly on the lips.
    â€˜So you think I’m ready for my mission?’ Judita said softly.
    Anastasia was still laughing but managed to say, ‘Soon, my dove. Very soon. But not quite yet . . .’

Moscow, USSR
    December 1944
    J ust weeks after she’d passed her initiation test with the American diplomat, Judita rode through the streets of Moscow in the back seat of a car as it was driven along the river, parallel to the magnificent embankment. The street lamps bathed the white snow in sepia. Next to her was Anastasia.
    â€˜Where are we going?’ asked Judita, turning towards the imposing woman beside her. Beautiful, powerful, confident and cold, Anastasia was everything Judita had been shaped to admire.
    â€˜You will see . . .’ was her only answer, given without turning to face her protégée.
    Judita knew better than to ask further and turned her attention back to the snow outside.

    That day when NKVD agents had come for her at the school in the basement of the old synagogue seemed so very longago. A different time. A different life. A different Judita. When she thought of herself then it was like thinking of a stranger, someone distant and unfamiliar. Much more significant than the change she’d undergone from a girl to a woman, Judita now saw the world differently. The lessons she had been saturated in – communist theory, philosophy and history, spycraft and languages – all changed her sense of self and her place in the world. And yet as she watched the city of Moscow drift by the window, she felt its familiarity, a connection older than the self she now knew. She had been a Jewish child in these streets before she was a Soviet woman. She’d thought that the training had knocked that out of her, but it was a memory she couldn’t remove.
    She had passed her initial training as an NKVD agent and then been handed over to specialists. Anastasia remained her lead handler but her world had shifted and changed yet again since the meeting with Beria, since her test with the American diplomat. Of the initial fifteen young and middle-aged Russian Jews who had been selected from all over the Soviet Socialist Republic, only a handful from her group had been selected for further training.
    Now she and her colleagues were studying Jewish and Arab languages, history, imperialism, collectivism, government structure and its intersections, the inefficiencies of officialdom and the personal weaknesses of key members of the Jewish Assembly of Representatives, a new governing body in Palestine. Lectures were conducted every morning and afternoon, six days a week, and tests were given every evening.
    But it also meant that every Sunday, she and the others were free to wander the streets of Moscow, and marvel at the buildings, the wide boulevards. Suddenly light-hearted on a Sunday morning after a concentrated week, the young men and women would walk along the banks of the river, accompanied by anumber of guards to ensure that