Anna stood on the steps of intelligence headquarters and looked at the wet pavement. People hurried by on their own business. Cars hissed through puddles. Around her, ordinary peacetime life went on.
Inside, though, she felt empty, like an old house after everything had been carried out. Slowly she took an old worn photograph from her coat pocket.
It was the same wedding photograph Dmitry had once shown her in his general’s office. She had kept it all those years without knowing whether she would ever see him again. Now she knew she would not.
Many years later, in the 1980s, Anna wrote down her memories. Not for publication. Just for herself. On yellowing pages she wrote about the war, about her work inside enemy headquarters, and about Dmitry.
She described the night in the ruined church when she first learned the truth about his supposed betrayal, which had really been an act of service. She wrote about the weeks when they worked together in secret. She wrote about crossing the front line at night.
At the end of the manuscript she added a few lines of her own. “Sometimes, on sleepless nights, I think about what would have happened if I had refused to leave and stayed with him.”
“Maybe we would both have died in a Gestapo basement. Maybe somehow I could have helped him.” “But then I remind myself that he never would have wanted that.”
“He gave up his life because he wanted me to live. And I have lived. Every day for forty years, I have tried to live well enough for both of us.”
Anna Severtseva died in 1992 at the age of seventy-three. Only a few people from the university came to her modest funeral.
There were also three older men in plain dark suits whom none of the relatives knew. They laid red carnations on her grave and stood there long after everyone else had gone. Then one of them said quietly to another,
“She was one of the best we ever had.” The second man nodded. “Yes. Both of them were.”
They stood in silence another minute, then turned and walked away without looking back. On the simple granite marker were only the words: “Anna Severtseva.” And the dates of her life.
Nothing else was carved there. But the few people who knew the truth never forgot what she and Dmitry had done.
