My StoryI was born in Novosibirsk, United Soviet Socialists Republic. My father was a high-ranking military officer with impeccable Party credentials. His connections allowed me to receive an excellent education as well as a coveted foreign posting with the Committee for State Security, or KGB as it's known here in the West. My assignment was to infiltrate British Nuclear Fuels Ltd.'s facilities at Windscale. It was our theory that since our cold war adversaries had gone to so much trouble to build our nuclear warheads for us the least we could do was to was to monitor them. Although I once carried three pounds of Semtex (a plastic explosive) in my lunch box for two nervous weeks at the height of the Prague crisis, the assignment was otherwise quite tedious. I spent the long boring years working on art projects. In my reports I said this was to provide a plausible explanation for my unsocial behavior, but I actually developed more passion for my delightfully decadent pastime than I ever had for my job. My work became increasing difficult when I fell in love with a British artist. When my secret became known, an old university friend at headquarters in Moscow risked her life to tell me that I would soon be recalled. That message was the catalyst for the unthinkable: defection. My new friends at MI6 were most grateful for the information I provided. In return, they gave me a new identity (with a sanitized background) and more money that I'd ever dreamt of having. I exchanged my honest worker's lunch box for a slothful artist's computer and camera. I never looked back. I now spend my days making frivolous art. I doubt any of my former colleagues in Russia and Sellafield (it seems everyone and every place now has a new name) read it; they're still regrettably employed. ©1996 David Glenn Rinehart |