In Tetris, Henk meets Sasha, a seemingly harmless translator in Moscow, but he soon realizes that Sasha is not as harmless as he had assumed. Sofya Lebedeva plays the role of Sasha.
When Henk Rogers loses the arcade rights to Tetris, he offers to pay Robert Stein to get him the handheld rights. However, he then finds out that Stein is selling the rights to Atari and decides to go to Moscow himself.
He is warned that he should not go to the Soviet Union for work without a business visa and a full background check, which might take months. Despite that, he decides to go to Moscow on a tourist visa, knowing that no one will be able to protect him if things go south.
Who is Sasha?
In Moscow, Henk is approached by several translators in the hotel, but he refuses their services. Henk needs to find a way to get to ELORG, the company that licensed the rights to Stein in the first place, but the hotel staff does not assist him.
A frustrated Henk is then approached by a translator, who asks him if he needs help in a unique yet charming way; she manages to stand out from the crowd. The translator introduces herself as Sasha, and Henk decides to hire her.
When she talks to him about all the tourist places he could visit, he tells her that he needs to go to ELORG, which makes Sasha question him about the purpose of his visit.
Henk deduces that Sasha has heard of ELORG and is finally able to get there with her help. Sasha tries to stop him from entering the building, as entering a government building without being invited is illegal and ELORG is a government-owned company.
Henk goes inside anyway, and eventually, pulls Sasha inside also when he struggles to communicate with Mr. Belikov. Sasha not only translates for him, but she also tells him how he can contact his wife, as there are no international payphones in the Soviet Union.
The next day, Sasha tries to change his mind once again about going to ELORG and meeting Mr. Belikov again, but Henk does not listen.
She then continues translating for Henk in his meeting with Mr. Belikov, only for Henk to realize that Mr. Belikov can speak English and had been lying all this time; there was no need to have Sasha here in the first place.
Sasha’s real identity
After the meeting, Henk pesters Alexey into giving him a lift. He insists that Alexey meet him because he wants to get to know him better.
As Sasha is also in the car, Alexey gives Henk a piece of paper and asks him to call him because it is illegal to have a foreigner in one’s home.
Later, in his hotel room, Henk realizes that the paper does not contain a phone number as he had expected. It has Alexey’s address scribbled on it. Henk goes to Alexey’s house and befriends him.
When Henk returns to his hotel room, he is attacked by the KGB. It is clear that they searched his hotel room as well. Sasha rushes to his hotel room and tells him that her apartment was also searched. Sasha then kisses him, but he pushes her away and asks her to leave.
The next day, Henk does not take Sasha with him to meet Mr. Belikov. Alexey comes to pick him up and tells him that Valentin, one of the most powerful men in the country, has been watching him with the help of his agent, Sasha.
Henk finds out that Sasha is a KGB agent. Furthermore, she kissed him because someone else was taking their pictures at that time. The KGB can now use the picture of Sasha kissing him to blackmail him and get him to back off.
Sasha’s decision
Henk returns to Moscow with Nintendo’s team and offers Mr. Belikov a fair deal for the rights. Mr. Belikov wants to sign it, but Sasha, who is now present there as a KGB agent, does not let him.
She believes that she is protecting the government’s property and its decision-making. However, she starts having doubts when she realizes that Valentin wants the Maxwells to get the rights, even though they are not paying as much as Henk.
When Sasha questions Valentin about it, she is asked to do her job and not interfere. She then discovers that Robert Maxwell is bribing Valentin, and that is why he wants them to get the rights.
She tries to remind him that they work for their country, but he insults her to shut her up. Sasha then decides to take action against him. She manages to report Valentin’s crimes to Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union.
She also goes to the airport to stop Valentin, who had been chasing Henk and his companions. On Gorbachev’s orders, Sasha arrests Valentin for abuse of authority and corruption, even though it is not easy for her.
She is visibly upset while arresting Valentin, but she does it anyway because she was never loyal to him or Henk; she was only loyal to her country, and she proves it in the end.
Also Read: Tetris ending explained: Does Henk get the rights to Tetris?