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Stricken Conscience. In 1957 Stashinsky received orders to go to Munich, track down a Ukrainian nationalist writer named Lev Rebet and kill him; an agent sent from Moscow gave him instructions in using the poison-spray gun. The prospect mildly disturbed Stashinsky, but his belief that the Ukrainian extremists were 'people of the lowest sort" stiffened his spirit. Still, when he tested the gun on a dog that was tied to a tree, Stashinsky recalled, "I felt sick. I kept telling myself this was all necessary to help other people. At moments like this you grab on to your political dogma to pull you through even when you feel it's hollow."
Stashinsky pulled through. While passing Rebet on the staircase of an office building, he pointed the six-inch aluminum barrel at Rebet's face and pulled the trigger. Rebet toppled without a sound, and Stashinsky did not look back as he walked to a canal and dropped the weapon into the water. Two years later, he killed another exiled Ukrainian leader, Stefan Bandera, almost as smoothly. But while watching a newsreel of Bandera's funeral in a movie theater, Stashinsky felt his conscience catching up with him. "It hit me like a hammer," he said. "From then on, I knew that I must never allow myself to be used like this again."
To his Soviet superiors, Stashinsky was a hero: he was flown back to Moscow, received the Order of the Red Banner signed personally by Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. At a lavish stag party, Secret Police Boss Aleksander Shelepin himself gave him the high award.
Tragic Opportunity. That night Stashinsky announced that he intended to marry Inge Pohl. Reluctantly, Shelepin & Co. agreed, though they would have preferred a Russian girl for their boy. Stashinsky was ordered to stay in Moscow and Inge, who by now knew her husband's real job, joined him there. Soon she persuaded Stashinsky to flee to the West, but it seemed impossible. Their Moscow apartment was bugged, and often they would communicate only by notes.
Tragedy finally gave them their chance to escape. When Inge became pregnant, she was allowed to go back to East Berlin to have her baby. The baby died, and the secret police, though suspicious that Inge had poisoned the child, permitted Stashinsky to return for the funeral. Before the burial, the couple shook off Soviet agents who were trailing them and took the elevated train into Berlin.
Said Stashinsky at last week's trial: "My confession is a sign of my remorse." His sentence: eight years in prison, a surprisingly light punishment, reflecting the court's opinion that Stashinsky was "an abused tool of highly placed wire-pullers" and the really guilty party was the Soviet government.