With his network finally taken care of after nearly four years of travel across the country, Dick was able to spend time searching microfilm at the local library and visiting St. Cloud cemeteries looking for information about his American family, the Brandons. On the second day of his microfilm search, he found two Brandon obituaries from the early 1950s. A Mr. Paul Brandon and his wife Teresa Brandon were buried in the North Star Cemetery in St. Cloud. In the obituary, he read a son, John Brandon, was still listed as missing in action against the Communist Army in Siberia in 1919. Lt. Brandon had been a member of the Polar Bear Expeditionary Force sent to Russia.

Microfilm records only went back as far as 1965. Dick got up and found a librarian. “Excuse me, ma’am. Do you have copies of the newspapers extending back to World War I?”

“Yes, but they are in the basement and not very well stored. Almost no one ever uses them.”

“I’m doing some research for a book I plan to write, could you show me where they’re kept?”

“Sure. Hang around for ten more minutes. I’ll be on my lunch break and someone will be here to cover the library. Not many people come here during the day.”

Once downstairs, Dick went right to the stack marked 1918. Nearly every edition had an article about young men enlisting or being inducted into the armed forces. After an hour of scanning for articles about inductees from the St. Cloud area, he found an article and a picture of Lt. John Brandon. Using his pocket knife, he cut the picture and article out of the paper.

Sitting in the library parking lot and looking closely at the picture of Lt. Brandon in the clear light streaming through his windshield, he gasped at the similarity between the picture and his own image. Leaving the library, he drove directly to the North Star Cemetery. From the obituary information and the plot information from the cemetery, he found the Brandon family plot surrounded by mature pine trees. One granite marker was engraved “John M. Brandon, missing in action in Siberia 1919. A good son and fine soldier.”

He was nearly overwhelmed with feeling. His American ancestors lay before him. His grandfather’s body had never been found. Too bad he couldn’t be here to see me and his great-grandson. How strange that the grandson of John Brandon is standing here as a KGB officer, gathering information to reclaim his Brandon name as soon as he is free of the KGB.

Dick knelt beside the granite marker. “As soon as our next child is old enough to travel, I will tell my wife that we are going to run from the KGB and become Americans,” he said out loud to his grandfather. “We will never to return to the Soviet Union. We will restore the Brandon name to its American heritage. I promise.”

He stood up and dusted his pants off. He knew Sue’s family would suffer persecution for his defection, but it was a risk he was willing to take. He would not tell Sue the name of his American ancestors. If she ended up getting captured by the KGB, they would make her talk. He knew the principle was that people couldn’t tell what they did not know.