The Spy Network!

Russian Spies in the Family! (Names changed to protect our relatives and friends)
    

    We recently had more overnight Israeli house guests. This time it was a first cousin, once removed to my husband, Amos, on his father's side of the family. Emma, the cousin, and her husband Dimitri grew up in Communist Bessarabia, which is now the independent country of Moldova. They lived in the capitol city, Kishinev, and immigrated to Israel in the 1980s. Dimitri was more or less a favorite "nephew" of my father-in-law Moshe. Moshe helped Dimitri and Emma get settled in Israel and helped Dimitri get a good managing job with the electric company in Israel. Emma is a pediatrician who practices in Israel. They now have two grown sons and grandchildren. We had become friendly with Dmitri and Emma and had hosted them before in our home in Milwaukee. They seemed a very nice couple and we thoroughly enjoyed their company. We had even traveled with them from Virginia where we were all at a family bat mitzvah to our home in Milwaukee, through Gettysburg and Niagara Falls and other stops along the way. On that trip we stopped in downtown Chicago on the way home, and we took them up on the Sears Tower to see the view. Then Emma asked us if we could leave them in downtown Chicago and they would catch a bus up to Milwaukee at the end of the day. They wanted to do some shopping, she said. We offered to wait for them and go entertain ourselves for a while and pick them up at a set time. "No," she said that wouldn't do. They insisted on staying by themselves in the big city ostensibly "to shop."