Dial E for Espionage

February 1993

Well, it’s the start of a new school year at St. Mary and St. Martha’s Girls’ Grammar. I’m now in Year Nine and have decided to continue on with learning German, which was offered at my school in Years Seven and Eight. I’ve also enrolled in two other language electives including French and Latin.

February 1995

    I’ve decided that I want to be a diplomat when I leave school and have decided that I wanted to learn six subjects in Year Eleven including two Mathematics, English, History of Revolutions Units 3 and 4 as well as German and French. In Year Twelve I will drop Revolutions and study International Studies 3 and 4.

December 1996

    I decided not to do International Studies this year, as I didn’t need it for the course I want to get into. I received my TER (Tertiary Enter Requirement) VCE (Victorian Certificate of Education) score of 85.99, which will enable me to get into Arts at Melbourne University where I will major in German and French.

January 1998

    I switched from French to Russian after meeting my now boyfriend Mikhail Abelev. He is a Jewish Russian student with deep set, liquid brown eyes, short, black, cropped hair and a “three day growth.” He is an absolute dreamboat and is everything I have longed for in a man and more. He is charming, witty, intelligent and achingly handsome! His dark, smoldering looks captivated me right away and we haven’t been able to keep our eyes or hands off each other spending every moment we can with each other when we are not studying hard.

December 2000

    I have just completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) degree and Mikhail and I are off to Israel where I am going to study Hebrew.

June 2001

    I am currently at an army training camp in Haifa, Israel after converting to Judaism. Mikhail has just revealed that he has worked for Mossad, an Israeli spy agency for years. I was a little shocked and surprised to hear this but find it all very exciting. He served as an officer in the Israeli Army before his tertiary studies in Australia.

May 2002

    What excitement! What bliss! Mikhail and I were married recently in a traditional Jewish ceremony held at Halls Gap under a chuppah, a canopy traditionally used for a Jewish ceremony. I wore long, floor length, silk, white dress and a tulle veil and my husband looked dashing in a new suit borrowed for the occasion. His sister sung the entire Song of Solomon from the Torah. I have so much love for him that I sometimes feel like it’s overflowing – that it’ll burst if I don’t find a way to use it. I feel God’s love flowing through us. I can’t wait to start my new life with my husband!

August 2002

    I have been recruited by Mossad through my husband. My first mission is in Iran and I leave for Tehran next week. I am so excited! I will be like the “White Mouse” Nancy Wake who was a spy for the Allied forces during World War Two. I only hope that God will be with me and that I won’t be captured.

August 2002

    I am writing this entry in a copy of the Torah that was given to me by a prison guard. Yes, I’ve been captured by the ruthless Islamic Revolutionary Guard and am now in a tiny cell in unit 2a of Evin prison. I’ve been given only three blankets, one to use as a mattress, one to keep warm and one as a pillow.

July 2003

    I have been moved from Evin jail to the even worse Qurchak prison, a converted chicken slaughterhouse notorious for violence and overcrowding. I’ve been given an eight year sentence of espionage. The guards have tried to get me to lure my husband (an Australian permanent resident and soon to be citizen) to come to Iran so that they can imprison him, too. I’ve heard that prisoners are forced into mock executions. My cell is three by two metres with not enough blankets for the freezing temperatures.

January 2004

    I’ve been returned to Evin but I am in solitary confinement. When I am allowed in the exercise yard, I jog to try and keep fit. I think about my husband every day and wonder how he is going and what he is doing. It is my undying love for him that keeps me at least partially sane and motivated to endure this hellish existence. Sooner or later this has to come to an end and we will be reunited and can bask in the glow of the love that brought us together.

February 2004

    It’s over! I’ve finally been released! It was coordinated with the help of the Philippines, who released three failed terrorists on the same day as me. It was an ordeal being in an Iranian prison but it was nothing compared with the shock of my husband sending me a message telling me it was over and that he’s moved on with another relationship. I’ve heard that he began their affair about a year after my arrest, all the while playing the part of doting husband for the public. I also heard that what he did to me, he’s doing to her. She too has been recruited by Mossad and thrown under a bus in some desert hellhole.

    Seems like our marriage was a sham and his love a façade. In my anger and rage I am divorcing him and starting a new life. Who knows what the future will hold? As I write this I can see the moon through my open window with the warm breeze flowing in. It is a full moon tonight and the moon looks like a giant, yellow cookie in the sky. I have come a long way in the last few years, but still had far to go.

    How far? Only the moon could know.