Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring (32 page)

Chapter 49

In September 1982, John flew to California to deliver $60,000 to Jerry from the Russians. He also needed to pick up whatever film Jerry had. Jerry’s performance at Stockton had been highly praised by his Navy superiors. He had not done as well, however, as a spy. He had photographed only a few keylists for John, and it was dear that his enthusiasm for copying documents had waned.

“All Jerry talked about during my visit was how he wasn’t being paid enough and how the risk just wasn’t worth the money,” John recalled. “My suspicions were confirmed. Jerry was going weak on me once again. He was getting scared, and I sensed that he was pulling back.”

John reminded Jerry of the danger, but this time Jerry didn’t seem afraid. So John switched tactics and talked about the $1 million payment.

“Jerry, imagine going back to Muldrow and telling your relatives you earned one hundred thousand a year just by playing the stock market,” John said. “Jesus, they’d be impressed. Not to mention the things you could buy for Brenda.”

“Jerry vacillated,” John told me. “One minute, he’d be complaining about the money and hinting that he wanted out. A minute later, he’d be figuring out some new way to photograph documents. It was crazy.”

When Jerry’s tour ended, he was assigned to the U.S.S.
Enterprise
, an aircraft carrier that had just left on an extended eight-month cruise. Jerry was scheduled to fly to Subic Bay in the Philippines on October 11 to join it as a technical control chief. As such, Jerry would have access to cipher systems for the KW-7, KG-14, KG-36, KWR-37, and KY-57, as well as hundreds of operational plans, orders, and other messages.

“This is really great news,” John exulted. “This can be a real gold mine. I’m sure we can get them to go along with the million-dollar deal! Just be certain to take along plenty of film.”

Jerry took John seriously. He drove to the Pacific Camera Shop in San Francisco and bought a new Minox and the store’s complete stock of film – twenty rolls.

When Jerry arrived aboard the U.S.S.
Enterprise
, he discovered the carrier was going to participate in several unusual war games, including an exercise four hundred miles off the Soviet coast with two other aircraft carriers. It was the first three-carrier exercise ever planned in the Pacific, and the Pentagon was anxious to see how the Russians would react to more than thirty warships appearing off their shore. The U.S.S.
Enterprise’s
presence had already been noted by the Soviet Union.

On September 23, while Jerry was buying his camera and film, the carrier was “the subject of extensive Soviet air, surface, and subsurface surveillance,” according to the carrier’s manifest. “Of note was the unprecedented Soviet use of backfire aircraft on 30 September and 2 October to reconnoiter the
Enterprise
battle group,” the book noted.

Obviously, the KGB was going to be interested in learning everything it could about the
Enterprise’s
mission and the upcoming three aircraft carrier war exercise. John had been correct. There was a lot of money to be made by Jerry – if he had the guts to go through with it.

Laura Walker was still having a difficult time during the winter of 1982. She had lost her job, and her car had been repossessed. She hadn’t heard from Mark Snyder about Christopher, and she had broken up with her boyfriend. She was broke, so as always she called John. All she needed was a few hundred bucks to get back on her feet, she explained.

John was surprised to hear her voice. They hadn’t spoken since he criticized her for breaking their “blood oath of silence” by telling Mark about the spying.

John didn’t make it easy for his daughter to ask for a loan. “What about our deal?” he asked.

“What deal?”

“C’mon, Laura,” John said. “Don’t be a cunt. You promised to help me by going back into the Army. Do you want to do it or not?”

Laura dodged the question, but this time, John knew better than to give Laura cash without some proof that she was going to help him. No money unless she reenlisted.

“I don’t know if I can reenlist,” she said.

John began castigating her: Why not? The Army was the only real job she had ever held! Now that she wasn’t stuck with her son, she didn’t have any more excuses.

Laura lashed back. If John really cared about her and her son, he’d help her get Christopher back.

“You’re a private eye. You’ve got an airplane. All you’d have to do is fly to Maryland and grab him for me,” she said. “You do it all the time for people who hire you.”

“No way,” John said.

Like two snarling alley cats, father and daughter slashed at each other. Finally, Laura told John that she had never intended to spy. She was simply leading him on for the money.

“I don’t see why I should get into espionage just to make you rich!” she snapped.

“Fuck you, Laura!” John told his daughter. He slammed down the telephone receiver.

Just before Christmas, Laura received an envelope in the mail with John’s return address in the corner. She thought John might have changed his mind and mailed her a check. But there was no cash inside.

“He sent me a bill, itemized, and typed out,” Laura told me later. John listed every dollar of money that he had spent on Laura since her high school graduation: the costs of the clothes that he had bought her, the spy money he had paid her, the $500 that he had put down for the now repossessed Mazda.

The total was more than $3,000 and at the bottom of the typed statement, John had written a message: “This is what you OWE me and I expect to be paid!”

Laura tore the paper into pieces and responded with a letter of her own. “You have some nerve, you adulterous pig,” she wrote.

“I used foul language,” Laura said later, “and wrote about the things that he had done to my mother.”

At that instant, it was as if all the years that had passed didn’t matter. Once again, Laura felt like the teenage runaway John had beaten with his belt. She hated him.

John telephoned Laura a week later. “I got your letter,” he said. “I’m glad to see that you got things off your chest.”

He wasn’t angry. It was as if nothing had ever happened.

“I hope you’re still thinking about my offer,” he said. “We could really make some good money together.”

Michael did exceptionally well during his indoctrination at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, but the knowledge that he gained wasn’t quite what the Navy intended.

“The Navy is just like everything else in life,” Michael told me. “You have to play by their rules. But once you learn the rules, you can move around them. After the first week in boot camp, I was making money – lots of it.”

When a new class of recruits arrived each week, Michael was eager to make life easier for them – for a price. “I’d say, ‘Hey man, you want to learn how to iron your clothes the proper way so you can pass inspection? Okay, that’ll be five bucks.’ ”

New recruits were not allowed to shop at the military store or leave the training center. “If anyone needed cigarettes, Playboy, or even stamps, they knew who to come to: me,” Michael recalled proudly. “I was Mr. Fix-it.”

Each chance he got, Michael telephoned Rachel. He always called collect, but her father was happy to pay the tab. Her father also agreed to buy an airline ticket so Rachel could fly to Chicago for Michael’s graduation.

Barbara Walker wanted to attend too, but she didn’t have enough money. She could have called John for the cash, but instead she telephoned Rita and borrowed $200. Rita knew Barbara was good for it. “When they lived in Norfolk, she used to borrow money when her kids ran away from home. We’d let her use our American Express card and then she’d pay the bill.”

At that point in her life, Barbara was doing everything that she could to avoid John.

Barbara and Rachel were supposed to meet when they both arrived in Chicago at O’Hare Airport, but they couldn’t find each other, and when they finally got together, Rachel was in tears. “She had made arrangements in Norfolk to rent a car, but the company had screwed things up,” Barbara Walker recalled.

Barbara rented one and drove while Rachel gave directions. Within minutes, they were lost. When it became dear that neither Barbara nor Rachel knew where they were going, Barbara pulled into a gas station and told Rachel to ask the attendant for directions. As she stepped from the car, Rachel slipped in the snow and fell down. She had spent her entire week’s paycheck on a long-sleeved silk dress with matching shoes, and she had her long hair styled fashionably atop her head.

A few seconds later, Barbara and Rachel were following one of the attendants, who had offered to lead them in his car to their hotel.

“I don’t know what that guy saw when I fell,” Rachel told Barbara, “but he sure volunteered fast to take us where we are going.”

Barbara and Rachel giggled like best friends. While Rachel put on fresh makeup in her room at the Holiday Inn, Barbara opened her suitcase and removed a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red scotch. They hurried to Michael’s graduation after Barbara had several drinks. It seemed to take forever, and when it finally ended, Michael threw his arms around his mother first and then hugged and kissed Rachel. The three of them went to dinner with one of Michael’s boot camp buddies and his girlfriend.

Afterward, Michael and Rachel left Barbara alone in her room and went into Rachel’s room. “I knew they were having sex,” Barbara told me later, “and I didn’t want to disturb them. The kids needed some time to themselves.”

The next morning, they visited Chicago’s aquarium and then drove to a bar in Milwaukee, where the minimum drinking age was lower than in Illinois. All three got drunk.

“We had an incredibly great time,” Michael recalled, “and my mother was really running the party, buying drinks and taking care of everything.”

Back at the Holiday Inn, Michael knocked on his mother’s door late that night sometime after he and Rachel had retired. He wanted to visit.

“We talked until three or four in the morning,” Barbara said. “Michael told me he had decided that God had a purpose for him. He wanted him to become a teacher, and I was so proud of Michael.”

The story, Michael said later, was “bullshit.” He had simply wanted to make her happy.

Rachel was not impressed when Michael returned to bed early that morning.

“Why don’t you go get in bed with your mother?” she complained.

“I’m sorry, bunny,” he replied. “We just needed to talk.”

He kissed her gently on the cheek.

“It’s okay bugger-bear,” she said, using her nickname for Michael. As a child, Rachel had had a teddy bear she carried everywhere. It was her bugger-bear. She pulled Michael close.

Because Michael still didn’t have a specific job, he remained at the Great Lakes center for several more weeks of what the Navy called A-School.

“I was alone but I got to move into this dorm, and now all the recruits had to salute me, and I really enjoyed that,” Michael recalled. “I’d go on walks and when someone forgot to salute me, I’d get into their face. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir. I forgot to salute you’ ‘That’s okay, but don’t let it happen again. Now get your ass moving.’ ”

Michael claimed he received special treatment at A-School.

“This chief comes in to class and he says, ‘Okay, which of you is the private eye?’ and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s me,’ so I raised my hand and he says, ‘I want you to be my yeoman. Come with me.’ Then he says, ‘You’ve just passed this school ‘cause it’s a school for idiots and you aren’t an idiot. Now, it’s up to you to help get the guys who are idiots through.’ ”

Michael’s job as the chief’s yeoman was similar to that of a teacher’s assistant. He bought himself dark glasses, a briefcase, and a pointer. When he came into class, he spoke with authority. “Okay, gentlemen, this is what we are going to do today.”

“This is where I really learned how to manipulate people,” Michael said later. “I really began to refine the skills that I was going to use as a spy and use the Navy rules and regulations to my own advantage. The class I was working with was really bad – they were all fuckups – and I didn’t think any of them were smart enough to pass one of the final exams. So I went into the chief’s office, and I found the answers to the test, and I made fifty copies. I went to the barracks that night before the test and said, ‘Attention on deck.’ Well, all these idiots stumbled out of bed and I told them: ‘You guys are a bunch of fuckups, and no one is going to pass the test, but I’ll tell you what I’m willing to do. If you can raise fifty dollars between all of you, I’ll show you a way to pass.’ Well, these dummies pooled their money and gave me the fifty bucks. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘here’s the answers to the test, but if any of you get into trouble, it’s your ass not mine. I’m the yeoman and the Navy is going to believe me.’ No one ever got caught, and I knew they wouldn’t. Like I said, I was learning how to manipulate the system and make money. I’m sorry, but that’s how it was. That’s how I was. I was nineteen and street wise. I knew how the game was played and I loved beating it.

“My old company commander came up to me after these guys had all passed the test, and he says, ‘Congratulations, Walker. I don’t know how you did it, getting these dummies to pass, but the Navy is glad you did.’ ”

Chapter 50

While Michael was undergoing his Navy training, John was frantically calling his congressman. His passport had expired and he was scheduled to meet his KGB handler on January 15, 1983, in Vienna. A helpful aide in the Norfolk office of Republican Representative G. William Whitehurst assured John that if he hand delivered his expired passport to the congressman’s office, someone there would make certain he got his new passport in time. He did, and the congressman’s office came through.

“I thought it was neat that a congressman helped me get to my KGB meeting on time,” John told me later, breaking into a grin.

On January 10, John boarded Eastern flight 508 from Norfolk to New York City flying under the alias of John Williams, then used his actual name on a Swiss air flight to Zurich. The next day, John took the train to Vienna, checking into the luxury Vienna Intercontinental on the eleventh. The hotel was filled with Americans, even in the middle of winter.

The morning of his meeting, John walked to the white marble U-Bahn station less than one block away from his hotel. As usual, he wanted to walk through the area on the day of his face-to-face meeting to make certain that nothing had altered his KGB-approved route. The U-Bahn runs above ground at this location, and as John stood on the concrete landing, he felt strange, as if someone were watching him.John surveyed the dozen or so persons waiting for a southbound U-4 train. Only one looked suspicious. Dressed in a heavy pea green overcoat and black hat, he turned his head as soon as John looked at him. The man was in his mid-thirties, was larger than John, and had a gaunt look.

John was worried that he was being followed, so he decided to perform a small test. He boarded the next southbound train, but stepped back onto the platform just before the doors closed, and then hurried up the stairs leading to the subway entrance. He heard the sound of someone else climbing the steps behind him. Resisting the urge to look, he crossed to the other side of the tracks and went down the stairs leading to the northbound platform. When he reached it, John turned around to see. No one was following him. He began to relax.

“I figured I was just nervous,” John recalled later. “I always had butterflies before a dead drop or face-to-face.”

When the next silver-colored train arrived, John stepped through its double doors and found a seat in the rear of the car. As the doors closed, John noticed a man dash past the window ... wearing a pea green coat and black hat.

Now John was alarmed. Was he being followed? Had Mark Snyder tipped off the FBI or CIA? John didn’t think that either had authority to arrest him in Vienna, but he wasn’t sure. Perhaps his imagination was getting the best of him.

There was another possibility. Less than four blocks from the Intercontinental Hotel was the Soviet embassy, a large, square, muddy brown building with radio antennae on the roof and police with machine guns standing guard near the heavy iron gate that surrounded the complex. Could the man in the pea green coat be a KGB agent?

John decided to remain on the northbound train as it circled the old city. When it reached its second stop, he got off and looked up and down the ramp for the man in the pea green coat. He didn’t see him. Just to be certain that he wasn’t being followed, John boarded another northbound train, this time on the U-1 line, whose tracks went northeast. A gaggle of small girls and boys dressed in colorful blue-and-green uniforms entered John’s car. Several women were apparently taking the noisy group ice skating. Just as the train’s doors were about to close, the man in the pea green coat burst into the car. When he saw John, he quickly turned away.

“At that point, I knew I was being followed,” John recalled. He had seen the man too often for it to be a coincidence.

Because John had flown to Zurich, he had not been able to buy a small handgun, as was his routine in Italy, but he did have a hardwood cane with a firm brass handle. He also was carrying Jerry’s film from Alameda because he had been afraid to leave it at the hotel. It was sealed in a plastic bag and was tucked into his coat pocket.

If he was arrested, the film would be difficult to explain.

At the first stop after the U-Bahn crossed the Danube River, the children exited. John jumped up and dashed out the door. He walked down the stairs and followed the schoolchildren.

John had exited at the Vienna International Centre, nicknamed UNO-City because it houses the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and other U.N. agencies. He followed the children about a hundred yards to an ice rink and entered it behind them.

“I looked out the door and, sure enough, I spot this guy. This damn dude is still following me,” John recalled.

He left the rink, again turning to his right. He continued walking, crossed a concrete pedestrian bridge, and entered a large park.

“The park had a lot of turns in it and I didn’t know what to do,” John said. “I started down this path and then realized that it was a loop and that I was heading back in the same direction where I had been.”

John looked around. The only figure he could see in the snow-covered park was the man in the pea green coat.

“Just as I was about to exit the loop, I saw him entering it. We were both on the same path,” John said. “Everyone always says to watch someone’s eyes and you can tell if they are going to hit you. Bullshit. You watch his hands because that is where things are going to happen. He had gloves on and his hands were outside his pockets. I could feel him staring at my face. If he would have had his hands in his pockets, I would have been afraid because he might have had a weapon.

“The second that I passed by him, I turned and I whacked that mother fucker with my cane on the back of his head. He was wearing a hat that must have softened the blow, but he fell to his knees and I whacked him one more time on the head. Then I got the fuck out of there. I didn’t run, I just walked toward the rink at faster than normal pace. I was worried because I didn’t have any idea who the hell this guy was. Whether he was a mugger, a CIA agent, a KGB agent, or some poor son of a bitch out for a stroll. People do a lot of walking around over there. I was really worried though.”

After the assault, John returned to the hotel and stayed in his room until the time of his meeting. As usual, he began his walk at the Komet Kuchen store, but a few minutes after John left the display window and began his route down Ruckergasse, his KGB handler appeared.

“Hello, dear friend,” he said. “Do you have something for me?”

John was surprised that his second KGB handler had approached him so quickly. “He seemed to scoff at the elaborateness of the Vienna Procedure. I had barely begun my walk and after the first couple turns, he showed up.”

Impatience, John noticed, was not the only personality trait that made his new handler different from his first. The KGB agent was humorless, abrupt, and unfriendly. But he followed exactly the same script as the first agent. He began with questions about security, followed by specific questions that he had memorized about various cipher machines and keylists that the KGB wanted.

John explained that Jerry had been transferred to the U.S.S.
Enterprise
, but before John could explain what a good post it was, the agent interrupted.

What had Jerry done wrong? he asked. Why was he being moved around so much? Perhaps he had been caught and the Navy was moving him somewhere it could watch him. Was John certain that the FBI hadn’t caught Jerry? Could Jerry be trusted?

The Soviets had always been suspicious and anytime there was an anomaly, they stopped all payments until they could verify John’s delivery and make sure it had not been doctored.

“I honestly believe that whenever Jerry changed jobs, the KGB considered the next delivery an FBI plant and had to revalidate it,” John told me.

As the two men walked through the snow, John tired of the questions. He exploded with a chain of profanity. The problem with Jerry wasn’t his past, John explained, it was his future.

“Jerry’s talking about retiring once again,” John explained. “You need to give him more money.”

John told the KGB agent that Jerry needed $1 million. In return, he would spy for ten more years.

“Imagine how this dummy feels,” John recalled, referring to his second KGB handler. “He is assigned to be the handler of one of the most important American espionage operations in the KGB’s history, and during his very first meeting alone with me, I tell him that Whitworth might retire. And then I told this shithead that the only way to make certain that Jerry didn’t get out was by giving him one million dollars. He couldn’t believe it. I’m certain he saw his entire KGB career going down the toilet.”

The KGB agent didn’t give John an answer about the $1 million. Instead, he asked about Jerry’s access. He also asked about Arthur and Laura.

John played up Arthur’s importance, but not Laura’s. He also decided, he said later, not to tell his KGB handler about his encounter with the man in the pea green coat.

Two days after their meeting, John went to Munich, before returning to New York City. During the trip he again sensed he was being followed, but he couldn’t prove it.

Back in Norfolk, John felt safe again. He decided that the man in the pea green coat wasn’t from the FBI. If anything, he was a KGB agent sent to watch him. His new handler had put a tail on him. But why? Maybe the KGB’s decision to change his handlers wasn’t a fluke, as he had believed earlier. Maybe his first handler hadn’t been promoted. Maybe the KGB had chosen a gruff handler to deal with him because it wanted someone who hadn’t befriended him in charge of the case.

Thoughts like these hounded John, he said later. Like the Russians, he was becoming suspicious whenever there was a change. His natural paranoia preyed on him too. As far as he was concerned, there was only one explanation for the man in the pea green coat and his new, gruff KGB handler.

“If necessary,” he recalled later, “the Soviets were setting the stage to eliminate me.”