I Must Betray You(67)

It took me many visits to get through them. The files, they were poisonous, disrupting my life and my conscience. Photos from hidden cameras, transcripts from the listening devices in our apartment. Countless reports on Bunu. Over fifty different people had informed on our family. The extent of the surveillance was shocking.

And haunting.

As was my unknown role in it.

When we don’t know the full story, sometimes we create one of our own. That’s what I had done.

And that can be dangerous.

But I didn’t realize my error—until I saw the reports from a source called MARIA.





|| OFFICIAL REPORT ||


TOP SECRET

[3 November, 1988]

Ministry of the Interior

Department of State Security

Directorate III, Service 330


Meeting with source “MARIA” revealed the following:

? MARIA confirms that her father-in-law is a dissident and her husband harbors anti-communist sentiments. She will continue to provide information and advises that she has found ways to cause the radio to malfunction.

? MARIA also agrees to provide information about the U.S. Embassy in exchange for merchandise and the safeguarding of her children—whom she fears are being negatively impacted by their grandfather ? today MARIA requested a carton of Kents





I thought I knew my family.

It turns out, I didn’t.

Mama was an informer. She very willingly informed on Bunu, and she informed on her own husband. And my father knew. That’s why he retreated into silence. Did Bunu know? Was Mama the rat in our apartment that he referred to? Her reports contained many statements that informing about dissent was not only her patriotic duty, but her maternal duty.

The stress took its toll. The Secu took the upper hand.

To me, Bunu was a hero. To Mama, he was a threat.

And Cici, she understood both perspectives.

In early 1989, Cici was recruited as an informer.

She was my sister. She was my friend. She was also a double agent for the Americans, trying to secure a better life for our family.

The files indicated that Cici repeatedly rejected the idea of enlisting my help to inform on the Van Dorns. She had tried to protect me. What finally changed her mind? The promise of two passports. She planned that we’d emigrate to Canada or the U.S.

Just the two of us.

The Secu used her, blackmailed her, and repeatedly criticized her in the files. Her code name was FRITZI and the reports from Paddle Hands about her were denigrating and demeaning. The reports suggested ways to exploit Cici’s body to gain information on a multitude of targets. The files said she helped the woman from Boston get to the U.S. Embassy so she could leave the country just prior to the uprising. And that’s when the regime discovered she had been working with the Americans.

Cici had tried to help others but couldn’t save herself.

She had begged to stay at the hospital that night. She told me it was “safer.”

I didn’t realize Cici was in danger. I left her, believing she was working against me when in reality, she was trying to help me. But what exactly had happened when she left the hospital?

Those details weren’t in the files.

Nor was the fact that I had misunderstood and failed my sister.

In addition to his reports on Cici, Paddle Hands’s reports on me were sobering and, at times, chilling: OSCAR is no longer of use. Take necessary measures.

“Take necessary measures” was also the phrase they applied to Bunu before his death.

There were so many disturbing details of the surveillance. Things I felt sure were private were not private. Not my first kiss at fourteen, not my trades with Starfish, not even the Twinkies. Reading the files was indescribably violating and needled trust issues I had hoped were long buried. Seeing the reports opened a door I couldn’t close. I constantly wondered: Was it better to know, or better not to?

Me personally, I needed to know. But I still had unanswered questions about my sister.



* * *



? ? ?

A year later, at my high school reunion, I lingered near the bar with a classmate.

“So, what are you doing these days?” he asked.

“Teaching English. You?”

“Accounting. We were in the same class,” he said. “Do you remember? I’m the guy who had the breakdown and screamed about being an informer. That’s how most people remember me.”

“You know what I remember?” I said. “That none of us did anything to comfort you. I’m sorry. I was in the same position. I should have helped you.”

“Same agent?” he asked.

“Big hands and BT cigarettes?”

“Yeah, that’s him. I thought he was so evil, but now I sometimes wonder—maybe he was a pawn of the regime, just like the rest of us. But you know what’s weird?” he whispered. “His daughter goes to the school right next to my apartment building.”

A cold clench gripped my abdomen. “Wait, you see Paddle Hands?”

“Yeah, he lives right near me, in building F2.”

Paddle Hands, the guards at Station 14, most of the torturers were never charged. They lived among us. Maybe the events of 1989 are a distant memory to them. But they’re not a distant memory to me. Like I said, too many unanswered questions.