A Russian government plane that landed in Moscow from Ankara on Thursday was carrying spies, assassins and criminals, who made up half of the biggest prisoner exchange since the Cold War.
But among the first to walk down the steps onto the runway, where President Vladimir Putin was waiting to greet them, were two children, looking wide-eyed in confusion.
Sofija (11 years old) and Danijel (8 years old) were born in Argentina. Later, they moved with their parents, Marija Majer and Ludvig Giš, to Slovenia, where Majer ran an online art gallery, and Giš founded an IT company.
Mayer told friends that the family left their native Argentina to escape street crime. They spoke Spanish at home; the children attended an international school in Ljubljana, where they attended classes in English.
Now Sofija and Danijel found themselves on the red carpet at Moscow's Vnukovo airport, with a military guard of honor on both sides, and face to face with Putin. The Russian president presented Sofia with a bouquet of flowers. "Buenas noches," he said to the child, with a smile.
Later, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained that the parents told their children for the first time that they were not actually Argentines on the plane from Ankara to Moscow. Marija and Ludvig were pseudonyms; their real names were Ana Dulceva and Artem Dulcev, and they were deeply hidden "illegals" from the Russian intelligence service SVR, writes the Guardian.
The couple was arrested in December 2022, when their home in a quiet suburb of Ljubljana was searched by armed police following a tip from federal intelligence. After their parents' arrest, Sofia and Daniel were placed in foster care, and were not reunited with them until Thursday's exchange.
When the Guardian visited Slovenia last year to cover the case, none of the family's friends believed that a decent, ordinary couple with two children could actually be hiding such a dramatic secret.
One neighbor claimed that it was all made up by lying journalists; one friend said Majer, who was hugged by Putin as she got off the plane on Thursday, was a "grey arm" and clearly not a spy.
The revelations on the three-hour flight to Moscow must have been difficult to understand: Sofia and Danijel did not speak a word of Russian and knew nothing about the country. Now they were flying there to live, maybe forever.
After entering the airport building, they asked their parents who was the man who handed them flowers on the runway. "They didn't even know who Putin was," Peskov said.
Illegals are Russia's most prized spies, trained for years to imitate the language and mannerisms of foreigners and then sent abroad on missions that can last decades. All spying involves deception, but being an illegal involves a particularly intimate lie, with operatives having to lie to everyone around them for years, including their own children.
Lately, the illegals have become a key part of the Putin regime's propaganda, with hagiographic television documentaries, carefully edited books recounting their patriotic exploits, and even statues of some of the most famous appearing in various Russian cities. This myth-making glosses over the trauma inherent in this work, presenting it instead as a glorious sacrifice for the good of the homeland.
Peskov explained the shocking news that the Dulcevs told their children on the plane as an inevitable part of the life of illegal immigrants.
The Dulcs are just the latest in a long line of Soviet and Russian illegals in the program's hundred-year history who went through the messy and painful process of revealing to their children that their entire childhood was a lie.
In the case of Canadians Tim and Alex Foley, they first learned that their parents, Don and Ann, were actually Andrei and Elena from Siberia when the FBI knocked on their door at their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Tim's 20th birthday in 2010.
It wasn't until he arrived in Moscow and saw old photos of his parents in KGB uniforms that he finally understood, Alex told the Guardian in 2016. The brothers were stripped of their Canadian citizenship and given Russian passports and new surnames. "As far as family and keeping this whole thing together, it really doesn't go well when you choose this path," Tim said.
The main question for all illegals who had children was when, if ever, the truth should be revealed. To do so while abroad was a huge operational risk. What if the children accidentally reveal something to their friends or teachers? Many illegals, like the Dulces, revealed their identity to the children only when they were already returning home at the end of their missions.
A file in the archive of KGB documents smuggled out of Russia described the case of an illegal couple who confessed the truth already on the train from East Berlin to Moscow, at the end of a long assignment in the West. "The boy began to cry and lay down on the bed, repeating the same thing: that he wanted to go home and that he would not go anywhere else," the file states.
In a rare candid admission, Vladimir Kryuchkov, who was appointed head of the KGB's Foreign Intelligence Directorate in 1974, admitted that the life of an illegal often led to "sad family situations ... and sometimes irreconcilable hatred".
Sofija and Danijel may be young enough to adjust to their new life in Russia, but it won't be easy and it's unlikely they'll ever see any of their friends from Ljubljana again. Already, their twisted family situation is being presented in Moscow as something to be proud of - proof of how far Russian operatives can go in the name of patriotism.
"I am so grateful to our country and so grateful to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin," said Dulceva, as the entire family appeared on Russian television on Monday, walking around the grounds of the SVR headquarters in a suburb of Moscow.
It was Daniel's ninth birthday, and the reporter gave him a Cheburashka toy from the Soviet cartoon and asked if they had learned any Russian phrases. Their parents looked on, smiling, apparently unfazed by the sight of their children on television.
The reporter assured the viewers that the espionage the Dulces performed during their years of covert activities was well worth all the deception: "They are top professionals who have dedicated their entire lives to their country, sacrificing themselves in ways ordinary people could never understand. Raised are their children as Spanish-speaking Catholics. Now they will have to teach them what borscht is."
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