Marriages were sometimes arranged and manufactured by Directorate S (its officials could even officiate in order to maintain secrecy). Department 2 was the storytellers. Bezrukov traces his family tree back to the Russian conquest of Siberia under Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century, when his distant relatives had first come to the region. They might arrive in Canada and start with a birth certificate. In Washington, there was an American president calling the Soviet Union “the evil empire” and who, Moscow feared, might be gearing up for confrontation and perhaps even a first nuclear strike. An ideal candidate is in their early twenties. No info in our files about E.F., BT, DK, RR. If there was a claim that did not have documentation, then there would be a plausible story why. On one side would be the supposed detail of a person’s life—Donald Heathfield was Canadian and born in Montreal. They don’t want their childhood to define them as they grow older. Eventually, he was able to get a visa to study elsewhere in Europe; Tim travels mainly in Asia, where many countries can be visited visa-free on a Russian passport.The brothers’ battle to regain Canadian citizenship is not just about logistics. They study which inks, papers, glues, and even staples are used in target countries so they can be faked or—if blanks can be stolen—doctored with a new identity inserted. Donald Heathfield (real name: Andrey Bezrukov (Андрей Безруков)) and his wife Tracey Foley (real name: Elena Vavilova (Елена Вавилова)) were sleeper KGB agents. Department 2 was the storytellers. One paragraph recounts an intercepted communication from Moscow Centre (SVR headquarters), explaining how Vavilova should plan for a trip back to her motherland. “But if I get angry with them, it’s not going to lead to any beneficial outcomes.” He admits it is sad that, even though he can now spend time with his grandparents, the language barrier means he will never know them properly. “As a teenager, all the films about the war and the suffering the people had to go through and the high price we had to pay for victory, all of this fostered in me a wish to be part of whatever could be done to prevent it from happening again.” This was the driving force for many Russian spies from the Cold War generation—the sense of threat to their country and the story of their near defeat at the hands of the Nazis before a victory that came at an enormous cost (one which many feel is rarely acknowledged in the West). They never quite matched their predecessors, although there were some successes. “The gap between our weddings was short, a few years, but those years were very intense,” Vavilova later explained. By the end of every week, they would be exhausted. His first memories are of attending a French-language school in the city and visiting the warehouse of his dad’s company, Diapers Direct, a nappy delivery service. “Of course, there were some very difficult times,” Tim says. The couple started a successful diaper business and had two boys — Timothy in 1990 and Alexander in 1994.After a period of living in France, the family moved to the United States in 1999, and eventually lived in Cambridge, Mass., where Mr. Bezrukov undertook graduate work at Harvard.But the couple were being monitored by the F.B.I. Vladimir Putin was 21 when the series was first shown, and he became desperate to sign up for the KGB. After the champagne, he went upstairs to message his friends about the evening’s plans. One of his first jobs in East Germany in the 1980s, he would later boast, was to work with illegals.L'Oreal workers are worried they could lose their jobs if they don't return to the officeHow to Thaw Ground Beef So It Defrosts in Time for DinnerMeet the Russian Spies Who Inspired ‘The Americans‘Show full articles without "Continue Reading" button for {0} hours. Abajo, los actores Matthew Rhys y Keri Russell en The Americans This led to the heyday of the illegals in the 1930s and 1940s. Be well.”Their father, meanwhile, was using his work as a consultant to penetrate US political and business circles. “It was considered a big success for us when Department 2 managed to obtain children’s birth certificates after a whole family died in a traffic or other kind of accident,” explains one former member of Directorate S. A birth certificate meant a child could be born again as an illegal.Directorate S was broken up into departments. Inside, they learned martial arts, how to shoot a gun, and how to evade a polygraph lie-detector test.
I ask them how hard it has been to keep that relationship going. It’s a piecemeal operation. What does a French passport issued five years ago look like? This compares to CIA and MI6 training for new officers, which is measured in months, not years. Careful psychological assessments were undertaken.