Their second child, a healthy little girl Sue named Christina, was now four months old. Old enough to travel. Dick felt the time was right and got the teenager next door to baby sit so he could take Sue out for dinner at a popular roadside café. The winter snow made the landscape look like Leningrad.

The Southern Italian food was excellent and, after the last course as they were finishing the bottle of Chianti, Dick cleared his throat. “I want to tell you something, and I want you to let me finish before you respond.”

His wife nodded, poured the last of the Chianti into her glass and said, “I’ll try. You know patience is not one of my best points.”

He took her hand and began. “I have been planning for years, my whole life really, to get out of Russia and come to America. I never told anyone this story. My grandmother was married to an American Army officer who was wounded in the fighting around Irkutsk in 1919. He was never able to get back to his country. He changed his name, learned Russian, and lived in Siberia with my grandmother and their two kids. Katrina, my grandmother, made the decision to move to Irkutsk from their isolated village. She believed they could blend in more safely in a large city. Their daughter was about three. My father would be born some months later in Irkutsk after grandmother had found a very good job with the city government. My grandfather, who was an excellent trapper, hunter, and all-around woodsman, was supposed to meet her in the Irkutsk train station. For months, my grandmother showed up at the meeting place, waiting for him. She knew, if he was alive and free, he would come. After several months, she gave him up for dead or imprisoned. Years later, she saved enough money to move her daughter and son, who her husband never got to meet, to St. Petersburg.

“She told me my grandfather always was looking for a way to escape with his family to America. He wanted his wife and children to live free in a free country. After hearing her stories, I grew up with the desire to move to America. Now I, we, have that chance because the KGB doesn’t know anything about my true heritage due to my grandmother’s excellent planning and ability to meld with the rest of Russian society. I have a very good plan. Will you join me?”

“I like it here. Everyone lives better here than people in Poland. I’m truly terrified of the KGB. The Polish secret police may not care too much but you know the KGB will never give up. My parents will suffer, but freedom for our family is worth fighting for. I always thought someday we would have to go back or be jailed by the Americans. Do you really believe we can get away?”

“Honestly, I’m not 100 percent sure, but I believe we have a better than 75 percent chance. We have money and I have new documents the KGB doesn’t know about. We will need some good luck and more importantly, no bad luck. But yes! If I didn’t think so, I could not expose you and the children to such a risk. The only two good things the KGB has done for me is selecting you to be my wife and giving us the opportunity to live free by sending us to America.”

“As they say here, count me in!”