GREECE: The Boy Spy

While the other youngsters in Plovodivtsi dutifully tended to their pigs and their parents’ admonitions, Khasen Topalov dreamed a 13-year-old’s dream of adventure. Sometimes his feet would follow his imagination, and off Khasen would wander, always to be brought back to the bottom-warming fate of all runaways. But word of Khasen’s nervy restlessness got around, and one day a group of overstuffed fairy godfathers appeared before him to grant his wish for real adventure. They were not true fairies, of course, only officers of Communist Bulgaria’s army. But for Khasen they seemed straight out of the storybooks. He had been chosen, they said, to serve his country.

How would he like to go to espionage school and become a master spy for Bulgaria? Khasen jumped up and down in his bare feet. But first he must go past the thicket and gorge he had explored so often, cross the frontier to Tsaimakhala in Greece, some three hours away, steal a pot or pan from some villager’s home and bring it back as proof of his nerve. He must also watch out for Greek soldiers en route, noting how many there were and what they were doing. If Khasen met the test, promised the officers, he would move on to bigger things.

On the appointed night, two soldiers came for Khasen, silently escorted the boy to the border. Khasen slipped across into Greece, his heart thumping. A Greek patrol came near. He was scared. He started to run, then saw a man silhouetted against the village kerosene lamps. “I’ve just come from Bulgaria,” Khasen blurted, “and I want to give myself up.”

Last week, clad in tattered shirt and pants. Khasen stood before 50 Greek and foreign reporters and cameramen in a room in Salonika to tell his story at the behest of the Athens government, long an involuntary host to hundreds of Bulgar spies. His bright eyes snapping, Khasen explained, in afterthought, that he had surrendered because he wanted to “escape Communism and preferred freedom.” “Do you know what Communism is?” a reporter asked. “I don’t,” said Khasen.

The captors did not know how to handle their captive. Khasen was, after all, an admitted spy, but he was also a 13-year-old boy. “If this were the U.S.,” said a Greek official, “we would send him to one of those schools Americans have for what they call juvenile delinquents.”