Was it my dream to become a spy?
No, it wasn't my dream to become a spy.
I was very young.
I never thought about spying, or spies, or the spying world.
Yes, it was the job that chose me.
How did I find out that I was recruited?
The first day of school, eight o'clock in the morning,
and the big man at the head of the table
said, "Welcome to the Institute."
And I was shocked.
I couldn't believe it, I really almost fell off the chair.
The first day that I came and they told me where I was,
I said, "Why was I accepted to this school?"
It didn't seem logical.
What made me suitable for the job
was things that they saw in me
that I didn't even know about myself.
The strength, the ability to be by myself,
the ability to be open-minded,
to see things through, to understand them,
to see people and understand who they are
and what to expect of them.
Things like that.
When I recruited people, when I asked them,
"What do you think you need to become a spy?"
Many people say you have to be fearless.
So I say, "No, no, no.
You have to be afraid because it's one of your tools."
When you feel fear, you have to translate it.
Is it connected to you?
Is it connected to the surroundings?
Or if it comes from your instincts
about the mission, about the job,
then you have to take it seriously and understand it.
You must feel the fear,
but you must continue doing what you do with that fear.
If you're stopped by the fear,
that means you're not suited for the job.
I wasn't really finished with studying and school.
But I was needed, because at that time
there were hardly any women on the job.
They needed a woman and I went.
We got to the airport and first thing is passport control.
And I'm standing in the queue and I'm scared.
And I realized that I couldn't remember my name,
the name in the passport.
It took me awhile.
Took me a few seconds, a minute.
I don't even know how long it was.
But then I thought about it,
calmed down, remembered my name,
and went through passport control.
Second time was not really scared, but nervous.
And the third time, I really did it with no problem.
Normally you just go through it.
You do what you need to do.
Can you teach somebody not to be scared?
You can try.
You need to know how to manage your fear.
In order to manage your fear,
you need to be very focused and to understand
what you're doing there and why you're there.
You need to control the fear.
Some things you can't teach, you can teach technical things.
You can teach people how to speak a proper language,
proper accent, how to follow people,
how to find out if you are being followed,
how to take good photos.
You can learn lots of things, which I will not go into,
but these are the skills of being a spy.
And the rest is you.
In this job, everybody's different,
I mean, we're all different.
I don't think you'll find one person similar
or exactly the same like the other.
The Institute uses differences between people
because you have so many missions,
so many different people to do different jobs.
Everybody has their own way to play the game.
When you go on a mission,
you need to know that you might be caught.
You might find yourself interrogated, being tortured even.
Can you prepare yourself to be interrogated?
Yes, you can.
But when it's for real,
you never know how you will react at the real moment.
The Institute always knows that you might speak.
And you can look back at stories that happened,
people were caught, and people told their stories
and some didn't.
It's not a fantasy.
There is fear and the rest is you.