The Foreign Service Journal, February 2012

S he was one of four Dalmatian puppies staring out from the trunk of a dilapidated Romanian car when my husband, Don, two friends and I went out one afternoon for a “lookey loo” in Bucharest. (That’s an L.A. term for strolling around.) It was the winter of 1988. We bought her for two packs of Kent ciga- rettes, and took her home to Dorbantz, where she pranced around in the feath- ery snow of our small backyard. In remembrance of our stroll we named her Looky, which morphed into Lucky. That was occasionally awkward, as when a Romanian stopped to pet her as we walked in Herestrau Park, and asked her name. “Yes, lucky,” he mur- mured. “She’ll be going to USA.” Lucky came to our parties, a big red bow at her neck. She begged for pea- nuts, which she always received. (I know, I know; very bad for dogs.) When the Romanian Revolution broke out in December 1989, Don was evacuated to the United States along with the other dependents. I brought Lucky into my office, where she drank water out of a brass vase I had for flow- ers. But she absolutely refused even to taste either dry or canned dog food from the commissary, then the sole source of food and drink for all of us under siege in the embassy. (This may well have been due to the fact that every week, our maid, Emilia, cooked a special batch of chicken and rice for Lucky.) After Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were put to death and a new gov- ernment took over, my office staff members were eager to tell me what their duties had been under the Com- munist Party government. We Ameri- cans knew, of course, that our govern- ment-supplied local employees were required to spy on us. But we didn’t know what, specifically, they had been obliged to do. Radu, a tall, good-looking young man, had been a reliable embassy re- ceptionist during the bad old days when Romanians had surged into the consular section, begging for consider- ation as potential refugees. We always believed that he was a captain, at least, in Romania’s Department of State Se- curity, universally known as Securitate. And now Radu confirmed that. “Do you remember,” he asked, “when you and Don were going away for the weekend, and I suggested that I could take care of Lucky for you?” “Yes, of course,” I responded. “That was very generous of you.” “Well,” Radu said, “not really. My handler in Securitate ordered me to make that offer.” “Why, for God’s sake?” “They wanted me to plant a listen- ing device on your dog.” I was stunned, dismayed at the idea of our dear little Lucky with some un- comfortable device under her silky, polka-dotted skin. Then I thought of the poor handler having to listen to tape after tape of “down, Lucky.” “Sit, Lucky.” “Stupid dog, come.” Since nothing had really happened to her, I was actually sort of pleased at Radu’s news. All of my colleagues had described being followed by Securitate when they traveled, so Don and I used to lament that they apparently didn’t think we were important enough to spy on. Now it turned out that we were. After leaving Bucharest the next year, we took Lucky with us to Peru. There she again had a maid to feed her and walk her in the park. We then brought her home to Washington, D.C. (No maids here, so we did the honors.) Did Lucky know that she’d come a long way from the trunk of that dented old car in the square of Bucharest, three years before? I doubt it. She took red bows and peanuts for granted, and began to nip at the grandchildren. Ginny Young accompanied her late husband, Jim Carson, on several For- eign Service tours before his death in 1973. She then joined the Foreign Service herself, serving in Hong Kong, Mexico and Romania. New Academia Publishers will release her memoir, Peregrina: Adventures of an American Consul , later this year. R EFLECTIONS Our Dog, the Spy B Y G INNY Y OUNG 64 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 2 We used to lament that they apparently didn’t think we were important enough to spy on.