Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring (30 page)

Chapter 45

John was startled when he spotted his KGB handler approaching him on February 13 outside the Bazala men’s clothing store in Vienna. There was another man with him. He was much bigger. He towered over John, standing well over six feet, with an immense head and bulky shoulders.

“Hello, dear friend,” John’s handler said. “Do you have something for me?”

John handed him a package that contained several rolls of film, including the photographs that Arthur had taken of the damage control book for the U.S.S.
Blue Ridge
. The KGB agent turned and disappeared around the corner, leaving his comrade and John alone for several minutes in front of the store.

Neither spoke.

John kept his right hand in his coat pocket the entire time, his finger wrapped around the trigger of a .32 caliber automatic. When the handler returned, the threesome began walking down Meidlinger Hauptstrasse.

“John”, the handler said, “I want to introduce you to a new friend. He will be meeting you from now on.”

John was amazed. Not because he was being turned over to a new handler, although he certainly hadn’t expected such a move, but because his first handler had called him by his first name. He had never called him anything other than “friend” during the years that they had been meeting, and John couldn’t decide whether he was trying to impress his replacement or whether he had intentionally wanted to show John some affection.

“Okay,” John replied. What did he care?

After the brief introduction, his handler fell back into the usual routine, first asking John about his trip and security precautions. Then he asked about Jerry. John decided to break the bad news. Jerry, he reported, had been transferred because of a security problem at Alameda. He had temporarily lost all access to cryptographic keylists. As soon as John finished his sentence, the new KGB agent said something in German. John could tell from his gruffness that he wasn’t pleased, but John didn’t have the foggiest idea what he had said.

Suddenly, John found himself being chastised by his new handler while his old KGB friend walked quietly along his side.

Why had Jerry been transferred? the second KGB agent demanded in English. Was it possible that Jerry had been moved because the FBI suspected he was doing something wrong? How long would Jerry be at his new job? Would he be able to return to his last job and continue delivering KW-7 keylists?

John’s first handler had always been thorough in his questioning, but he had always taken time to phrase them in such a way that John felt comfortable. They spoke as equals. This KGB agent was different. He spoke to John like a superior officer speaking to an underling or a boss directing an employee.

John snapped back one or two-syllable responses interspersed with profanity. This, in turn, irritated his new KGB master, who began quizzing John not only about Jerry’s latest transfer, but about Jerry’s aborted tour aboard the U.S.S.
Niagara Falls
. Within minutes, John found
himself
being reproached because he had missed his first face-to-face meeting in Casablanca in August 1977.

“I don’t need this shit!” John finally announced, his hand still in his pocket with the automatic pistol. “Listen, I don’t run the fucking Navy. If you want to find out why Jerry’s fucking ship was late and why the fucking
Niagara Falls
went into dry dock and why he was fucking transferred from Alameda, then why the fuck don’t you call up the fucking president of the fucking United States and ask him what the fuck is going on?

“You assholes tell me that security is what is important,” John continued. “ ‘Don’t do anything that is dangerous’ you tell me, but then you fucking complain that we aren’t aggressive enough and you claim Jerry isn’t doing enough. Why don’t you get your fucking act together?’ ”

On a soapbox now, John released a long series of complaints.

He was tired of always walking the streets of Vienna in the cold. He was tired of having to stay in the Hotel Regina instead of American hotels where he felt more comfortable and didn’t stick out. He was tired of the KGB never being satisfied with his deliveries.

John complained about real and imagined transgressions. He had learned more about security from reading spy novels by Robert Ludlum than from the real thing – KGB agents. Why hadn’t they taught him more tricks?

“You guys are supposed to be the best! Hah!”

The new KGB handler was obviously not used to such insubordination or such obscenities. John’s first handler quickly intervened. Such outbursts by both sides were counterproductive, he said.

“My friend, you have been very helpful in the past, and I am certain you will be doing your best,” he said. “Perhaps you should tell us what you have brought us.”

John outlined the materials that Jerry had taken before he left Alameda, which pleased the two agents, and then he mentioned the photographs that Arthur had taken. The documents, he explained, were only marked confidential, but they were pictures of a flagship and, more importantly, they signified that Arthur had stepped across the line and become a full member of John’s ring.

“Can we expect future deliveries?” the new KGB handler asked, in a voice that was considerably more respectful.

“Yes,” John replied, “Arthur is a good hand.”

John made Arthur’s position at VSE sound much more impressive than it was, and he explained that someone with Arthur’s experience would move quickly into a position of importance with even better access. John also told the Soviets about his second encounter with Laura and said that while she was still wavering, there was a chance that she might reenlist and begin supplying documents.

Like a door-to-door salesman, John put his comments about Arthur and Laura in enthusiastic terms, but his testimonials apparently had little impact.

“Jerry is important,” his first handler said. “He must get back to a job with better access. This is crucial. Is there something wrong?”

John didn’t attempt to cover up Jerry’s vacillation.

“I didn’t want them to think I was playing games,” John told me later. “I wanted them to know that Jerry was prone to flip-flops.”

John’s new KGB handler abruptly asked him about Barbara. John was unsure, he explained later, if the agent was truly interested in hearing about Barbara or was simply trying to demonstrate that he had done his homework and was smart enough to realize that Barbara posed a threat to John. John repeated his standard line about his ex-wife: Barbara was an alcoholic and alcoholics are unpredictable, but as long as he occasionally sent her money, he didn’t believe she would harm him.

“Basically, she is an extremely weak person and doesn’t have the guts to turn me in,” he said. “She doesn’t want to go to jail either, and Barbara is intelligent enough to know that she would go to jail if I go to jail.”

John himself didn’t understand why he said what he did next. Perhaps he was still smarting from the berating that his new handler had given him. Perhaps he said it because deep down he realized that Barbara was actually a very real threat to him and he wanted the KGB to do something about that. He wasn’t certain, but years later, he recalled that he had tossed the problem of Barbara “back in the Russians’ faces.”

If the KGB considered Barbara a threat, John asked, then why didn’t it do something about her?

“Why not simply eliminate Barbara?” he asked. “Why not kill her?”

Neither agent reacted.

“The KGB is supposed to be the biggest and most dangerous organization in the world, and I was clearly providing the Russians with information they considered vitally important,” John told me later. “They knew Barbara was a problem, so I wondered why they didn’t do it. I mean, all it would have taken was one little accident, and with Barbara’s drinking, how hard could that have been? Anyone in their right mind would have gotten rid of her, but I told them I couldn’t do it because she was the mother of my children. I just couldn’t do something like that. But that shouldn’t keep them from doing it. I told them I was surprised they hadn’t taken some action before, and I made it clear: If they thought Barbara was a threat, then it was up to them to handle her. It turned out, of course, that they were as weak as everyone else around me.”

Without commenting about Barbara, the KGB agents brought up the subject of money. It was becoming too dangerous for the KGB to pay John in Vienna. Now that his spy ring was expanding, the amount of cash he was due was simply too much to be safely carried in Europe and through U.S. Customs. It would be much safer for everyone if all cash payments were made during a dead drop from now on. The only problem was that John and the KGB had limited themselves to one dead drop per year. Obviously, John and his fellow spies would have to wait six months longer if the KGB stopped paying John in Vienna.

John knew that Jerry wasn’t going to like the idea, but John figured neither of them had a choice. Carrying stacks of money the size of two lunch boxes was just too risky. He reluctantly agreed with the Russians’ suggestion.

John didn’t feel comfortable bringing up his idea of a one-time, $1 million payment to Jerry even though he and the KGB agents were now discussing finances. The timing just didn’t seem right. But he did drop a hint.

Jerry, he told the KGB, had reacted well when he was paid the $10,000 bonus for providing three months of unbroken crypto. It might be necessary to increase such bonus payments in the future, John explained, to keep Jerry interested.

“He is not as aggressive as you were,” John’s first KGB handler said, smiling broadly.

The mood among the three men had improved, but John still was irritated over his dash with his new handler and, he recalled later, he was angry that the KGB was assigning him such an abrasive contact.

“I really liked my first contact,” John said, “and now I was being stuck with a guy with no sense of humor.”

John decided to bring up Christopher Boyce to see if the Russians would comment on his arrest, subsequent escape from prison, and capture. Neither KGB agent reacted when John mentioned Boyce’s name. They acted as if they had never heard of him. But John didn’t drop the subject.

Years later, in discussions with me, John made it dear that he considered himself a much better spy than Boyce, and he admitted that all of the attention that Boyce had received in the media had irritated him.

“I was selling the Russians tech manuals for the KW-7 when Boyce was still in diapers,” John bragged to me.

One of the things that had fascinated John in
The Falcon and the Snowman
was a description of Mikhail Vasilyevich Muzankov, identified in the book as a KGB senior official. John thought it odd because the KGB agent obviously had told his name to the two American spies. John had never asked his handler what his name was and the man hadn’t volunteered it.

Muzankov also stuck out in John’s memory because the book said his front teeth were made of stainless steel, earning him the nickname “Steely Teeth.” Without reason, John turned to his new handler and rather mockingly asked, “You aren’t Steely Teeth, are you?”

The KGB agent didn’t respond, but John’s first handler did.

“He knew exactly what I was talking about,” John said later. “He said the KGB hadn’t realized until after that book came out that only Russia and a few countries like Mexico still used steel and gold for replacing teeth. He told me the KGB wouldn’t allow any agent to have steel teeth anymore, and if they had ‘em, they had ‘em pulled. Once again I was amazed! These guys were reading books about themselves to find out what they had done wrong.”

As usual, John’s original KGB handler gave him a short lecture about the superiority of communism during the face-to-face meeting. After that lecture, the three men stopped and John’s first handler unbuttoned his heavy coat and removed a red Paper Mate pen.

“I had worked with this guy a long time,” John recalled, “and we had developed a genuine interest in each other, I believe. When it was time to say good-bye, I, honest to God, thought I saw tears in his eyes, and he gave me this red Paper Mate pen that he said he had bought at a canteen in Moscow, so he figured it was safe for me to have it because he knew they were made in the United States. Actually, I’d never seen one like it because it had a ring calendar around it, a continuous calendar, and it was really nifty. I didn’t say anything about not seeing it though. I just took it.”

John began digging through his pockets.

“What are you doing?” the handler asked.

“Shit, I’ve got to find something for you,” John replied.

“No,” he said. “No matter what you give me, it would be bad because it would be from an American.”

“I tried to get him to tell me if he was being promoted or what,” John recalled, “ ‘cause I was really curious, and he wouldn’t say too much but I think he was getting a promotion and that made me feel good.”

Before the KGB agents left, John’s original handler paid him a final compliment.

“He told me that spying wasn’t easy,” John said, “but he said his bosses were extremely pleased with my work. They were so pleased they wanted to make me an admiral in the goddamn Russian Navy or something, which I considered utter bullshit and laughable.”

But something his handler said pleased John.

“Of all the spies in America,” he said, “you, John, are the best!”

Chapter 46

John’s detective business gave Arthur a great cover. Whenever Arthur wanted to get away from Rita, he announced that he was going out to work with John on a case. Generally, he drove to his favorite country-western bar for a few nightcaps. Sometimes, Arthur really did volunteer to help John on investigations. After a while, Rita quit asking Arthur where he went at night.

After twenty-six years of marriage and three children, Arthur still cared for Rita. He didn’t wish to hurt her, but he also didn’t want to spend his life feeling as if she were holding him back. Why, he asked John one afternoon, should he have to sit home watching television at night just because Rita didn’t like to go out?

John, of course, pushed Arthur to party and included him in as many outings as he could. Even though they both wore toupees and there was a similarity in their looks, speech, and mannerisms, John and Arthur were two different personalities and were treated much differently by John’s crowd.

It wasn’t uncommon for John to get drunk and write obscene suggestions on cocktail napkins that he would ask a waitress to deliver to some young woman sitting alone at the bar, The raciest Arthur ever got was to demand that an attractive cocktail hostess give him a hug before he paid his bar bill.

P.K. Carroll noticed the dissimilarity. One night she told Arthur that from then on she was going to call him “Uncle Art” because he seemed to be everyone’s favorite uncle. The tag stuck. Pretty soon, everyone called him Uncle Art. John, on the other hand, was either called Johnny or JAWS – his initials. No one ever thought of him as someone’s uncle.

John recognized the differences. “My God Arthur, no one feels comfortable smoking dope around you,” John complained one afternoon. “Everyone waits for you to go home before they light up.”

In early April 1982, John telephoned Arthur and told him that he desperately needed more classified documents.

“I’m really in a bind this time, Arthur. My back is against the wall. Isn’t there anything you can get for me? It would really be a good time if you can find something else.”

Arthur assured John that he’d try.

On April 28, Arthur called John with some good news. VSE had been hired to study the LHA class of amphibious assault ships. These Navy ships were used to carry as many as two thousand Marines and 150 officers to shore during an assault. Arthur knew that the Russian Navy was far behind in building attack craft such as the LHA class ships, and he thought John might be interested in some of the research material that VSE had been given.

In particular, VSE had access to a large volume of magnetic tapes that contained millions of tidbits of information about the assault ships. One item had caught Arthur’s interest. It was a computer printout of all the malfunctions and breakdowns aboard the assault ships during a five-year period.

The printout, known as a casualty report extract, also contained information about where the ship was located when the malfunction occurred, what the ship’s mission was, and how the mishap had affected the ship’s ability to perform in combat.

John didn’t quite understand why a computerized list of mechanical breakdowns was so important, but Arthur explained that a veteran engineer could use the data in a variety of ways. He could figure out how many U.S. assault ships at any given time were “combat ready.” He could determine how long the ships could be expected to operate before breaking down. He could determine the most common problem with assault ships and use that information to design a better vessel.

The new computer format intrigued Arthur.

“It’s in a wild, new format,” he explained. “It’s totally different than the casualty reports that you’ve seen in the past!”

“Sounds interesting,” said John.

“What’s it classified?”

“Either confidential or secret, not sure,” said Arthur. “Okay, I’ll come by for lunch tomorrow. Meet me in the parking lot for lunch and bring some pages.”

When Arthur got to work that morning, he walked to the VSE security office to check out the casualty reports file, but the security supervisor didn’t want to give it to him. Even though its classification was only confidential, the security officer felt squeamish about releasing it from the security office. He suggested that Arthur simply look through the book at a nearby table.

The normally genteel Arthur became incensed.

“I need this at my desk,” he insisted. “What’s the big problem, I’ve got a clearance!”

The security supervisor backed down.

Just before noon, Arthur rolled up a section of the file, tucked it under his arm with some other papers, and walked outside where John was waiting in his van. They rode to a nearby shopping center and parked outside a K-mart store.

Arthur was nervous. The confrontation with the security supervisor had upset him. “I’m going to get a soft drink,” he announced.

John was used to Arthur’s squeamishness. He looked over the computer printout while Arthur was gone, but he waited until Arthur returned to snap pictures.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Arthur.

“I’m showing you how easy this all is,” replied John. “You don’t need to do this in my office, you can do it anywhere. Believe me, I used to do it aboard ships.”

John was using his Kodak 110 camera to take pictures of the computer printout as it rested on a seat of the van. “No special lighting or nothing. See how simple this is? You could do this at work if you didn’t mind pushing your balls to the wall. My man on the West Coast has a van just for this purpose.”

John had mentioned his “man on the West Coast” before. He was always telling Arthur how much money his partner was earning. Arthur assumed that John was talking about Jerry Whitworth because he knew that John and Jerry were close friends.

After John had taken about seven photographs, he told Arthur, “I’ll let you know if these are worth anything.”

Later that afternoon, John telephoned Arthur and suggested that he remove the remaining portions of the casualty report and photograph them that night.

Arthur objected. “I thought you were going to see if those pictures were worth the trouble?”

“No sense in returning the book and then checking it out again and again. That would look suspicious.”

Once again, John had forced Arthur to participate more deeply than he intended. Obediently, Arthur removed several more pages before he turned the book back to the security officer. That night, Arthur drove to john’s detective office to photograph the pages he had stolen.

“I thought I was going to have a heart attack,” he recalled. “I was so paranoid and scared. I knew I was going to get caught this time. Any moment, a gang of G-men were going to come bursting through John’s office door. I couldn’t believe that I was photographing this stupid report for him, and I promised myself that this was going to be the last time. I just couldn’t take it anymore – the pressure and the fear of getting caught. It was crazy. I mean, this report wasn’t worth all that tension and danger. I literally thought I was going to die while I was taking pictures.”

As he had done with the photographs of the U.S.S.
Blue Ridge
, Arthur left the film in John’s desk with a note. The next morning, Arthur returned the missing pages to the casualty report. When Arthur talked with John a few days later, he said, “Hey, John, no more photographing for me. I can’t do it. I can’t do, Bubba. If we find anything, you are going to find a way to do the snapping.” But Arthur didn’t have the courage to say he was finished as a spy. John was just too important to him.

That July, Arthur met Sheila Woods while working on a private detective case for John. A friend of Sheila’s had hired Confidential Reports and Arthur interviewed her as part of his investigation. She was recently divorced, the mother of two grown children, and close to Arthur in age. They liked each other from the start.

“I think the reason that Arthur and I became good friends,” Sheila told me later, “was because I honestly felt that I had walked in his footsteps and he in mine. We were the oldest children in our families and both of our fathers were alcoholics....”

In Sheila, Arthur found a sympathetic friend and listener. Before long, they were lovers. Arthur was careful to keep his affair secret from Rita, but John soon figured out what was going on and encouraged Arthur.

John was happy, he told me later, that Arthur was finally having a “little fun in his boring life.”

“Old Uncle Art was finally loosening up!”