Laughter in the Shadows (23 page)

I got out of my car and walked across the field and came up behind Yuri. When I tapped him on the shoulder. The Russian jerked around in surprise and immediately tried zipping up his fly. His privates became caught in his zipper, and
Yuri cried out, and then, when he recognized who had tapped on his shoulder, he yelled even louder, frantically tugging at his zipper.

Yuri was finally able to zip up his pants, but he was still weaving unsteadily. I put my hand on his shoulder, trying to steady him, and offered him a ride. He shucked my hand off, growling that he didn’t need my help because he had his own car. Just then the radiator of the Mercedes let out a hissing noise and the front wheels sank into the wet ground.

Finally, realizing his car wasn’t going anywhere, Yuri grudgingly let me guide him across the field and up the bank to my car. Nick was standing, holding the back door open, and he helped me get the protesting Yuri inside. I quietly told Nick to drive us to my house. When we arrived at my house, Yuri was still grumbling. I helped him out of the car, led him inside, and sat him in a chair facing the Christmas tree we had just decorated the night before. I then went out to the kitchen, brought out two glasses of eggnog, and handed one to Yuri, which he immediately drank.

When he put his glass down, I told him it was customary during the Yuletide season for guests to hang an ornament on the Christmas tree. I held out a shiny red ball, helped him out of the chair, and guided him over to the tree. Yuri mumbled something about heathen customs, but finally hung the ornament on a branch of the tree, unaware that Joy had just taken a picture with my Polaroid.

Yuri again insisted on leaving, but I stalled him long enough so that I could find a copy of the
Reader’s Digest
, which featured an article on “The KGB in America.” I slipped the magazine into the pocket of his overcoat, helped him out to the car, and told Nick to drive Yuri to the Soviet embassy.

A half hour later, Nick returned and told me what had happened when Yuri arrived at his embassy. The security guard, obviously surprised to see a KGB officer arriving in an American embassy car, rushed down the steps to open the car door. Yuri almost fell out of the car before the guard caught him, the
Readers Digest
and the Polaroid photo dropping out of his pocket. The security guard quickly picked up the magazine and photo and then helped the KGB deputy up the steps into the embassy.

Leaving Yuri at the entrance to his embassy in a U.S. embassy car was like leaving a wreath for an intended Mafia victim. Three weeks later Yuri was sent back to Moscow, a blot on his KGB escutcheon.

Although chances were I would never know, it was possible that one day Yuri might conclude that a defector’s life might have more to offer than being a disgraced officer in his own service.

Do svedana
, Yuri, good-bye.

The Defector

Defectors. All of us. While we are fresh, we are handed round and used. When our tricks are known and we are past our prime, we are tossed onto the rubbish heap.

—JOHN LE CARRE,
Absolute Friends

One target literally fell into the Station’s hands. A drunk Soviet crashed his car through the gates of the American embassy. The Marine guard, who pulled him out of the car, heard him mumble something about “asylum.”

Most defectors resist being “turned around” and sent back to work in place. They resist because they wouldn’t have defected in the first place if they knew they would have to go back. In the case of the gate crasher, he had a good reason for not going back. He had absconded with his embassy’s petty cash fund and blown it all at the local casino.

We weren’t going to turn him away, but we had to do something with him right away. We spirited “Dimitri” out of the embassy and stashed him in a spare bedroom in my house. Meanwhile, the Soviet ambassador launched a protest with the Samudran Foreign Ministry about “foreign agents” kidnapping one of their diplomats. The Foreign Ministry “took note” of the Soviet ambassador’s protest and passed it along to the Security Service.

While we waited for a decision to be made about the defector, I stayed at home and took meals into his bedroom. Karl, a Russian-speaking case officer, came over to talk to Dimitri and make him feel more at ease. While all this activity was going on in the house, including visits from the station chief, I overheard a conversation between Gray and Megan talking about the “funny goings-on.” “Megan, you know why Bill and Karl keep coming by the house? Because that missing Russian that everyone is talking about is hiding out in our house!”

When it was decided that the defector should be sent to the United States, Karl and I accompanied him. After we landed and were saying good-bye, Dimitri, who had become attached to us, looked so worried that the officers who had met us suggested we take him out to dinner and they would pick him up later. We drove to a restaurant in nearby Falls Church that had a band and floorshow that might help to ease Dimitri’s transition. We had just been seated and ordered a round of drinks when all the lights went out. The worst cloudburst in fifty years dumped a foot of rain and flooded streets, knocking out power in Washington and Virginia. We sat in the dark for almost an hour before they were able to bring out candles. I noticed the wide-eyed expression on Dimitri’s face. The Russian was probably wondering if he had made the right choice in defecting to a “land of plenty” that had no electric power.

Dimitri was eventually given a new identity and resettled in the American Midwest. He brooded about his wife and son back in Moscow and started to drink heavily, calling his case officer to come to his rescue. This went on for almost a year until he made contact for the last time. He was phoning from the Soviet consulate in New York and said he had decided to turn himself in. He was calling to say good-bye.

The last I heard of Dimitri was a year later, when another defector reported that Dimitri had resurfaced in Moscow and was giving lectures at the KGB Academy on “CIA Brainwashing Techniques.”

Maria

Since Yuri had undoubtedly “burned” me with the Soviet embassy, I would have to recruit an access agent to get at my next Soviet target.

Maria was dark haired, tall, and, with her smooth, olive complexion, stunning. Her Russian father had immigrated to China in the 1920s as part of the White Russian diaspora. From her father, Maria inherited her height, sharp tongue, and volatile temper; from her Chinese mother, high cheekbones and a slight epicanthic slant to her eyes.

I first heard and then saw Maria playing tennis. She was leaping like a gazelle around the court, chasing lobs, smashing returns, and cursing in a mix of Russian, Samudran, and English. Her partner was a Soviet embassy diplomat, which surprised me, because Soviet officials normally shunned White Russians, whom they considered “closet czarists.” Maria must have been an exception, because she was often seen at Soviet embassy functions.

The next time I saw Maria she was sitting beside the Hotel Samudra swimming pool, conversing with a Russian, who I recognized from a rogues’ gallery photo as a GRU colonel, Boris Ossofsky, head of the Soviet Military Mission in Samudra.

Boris

In contrast to most of the burly Soviets in Jakarta, Boris Ossofsky was delicate, fine-featured, and frail looking. His blotched complexion indicated he was sensitive to the tropical sun, which he tried to keep at bay with dark glasses and a wide-brim straw hat. Boris had a gentle face and, according to what Maria told me later, spoke soft classical Russian unlike the guttural patois spoken by the new apparatchik generation.

When I observed her at the pool laughing and whispering with Boris, it was obvious Maria had excellent rapport with a potential new target. I hadn’t
considered the possibility of a White Russian as an access agent. Maria, however, was apparently well liked by the Soviets, who often invited her to receptions at their embassy and vied for her as a doubles partner.

Maria would make an ideal access agent, although she would bristle at the term and prefer “soul mate” or “friendly intermediary.” Maria and Boris. My adrenalin was pumping.

At the tennis courts, I noticed that between sets Maria had gone over to talk to an American who happened to be a friend of mine at the embassy. She played tennis with Maria and agreed to introduce me. Maria gripped my hand hard as if she was grasping a tennis racket. Her English was excellent but rapid fire, and I had a hard time breaking in. At one point in the conversation, she said she heard Americans were great dog lovers, and she was looking for a dog as a pet for her children.

I told Maria a friend of mine had recently had a litter of Labrador puppies shipped in from Australia. I would ask him to give me one for Maria. The friend in question was the local Pan American Airlines representative, who was a good source of gossip on the comings and goings of foreign visitors. I was sure he would spring a puppy for me if I asked him.

A few weeks later I presented Maria with a Labrador puppy, which paved the way for a lasting friendship. Maria liked to gossip and was a fount of information on the international community, especially the extramarital affairs of members of the diplomatic community, including several prominent ambassadors.

Maria was not as forthcoming with me about her Soviet friends. She usually cut me off when I brought up the subject of the Russians, telling me Americans don’t know the difference between Russians and Soviets. She asked how “you Americans, with your Elvis Presley, Coca-Cola, and Hollywood could possibly be interested in the land of Tchaikovsky, Dostoevsky, and the Bolshoi.”

When I brought up the Cold War, she said it was nothing more than a “stupid squabble between overgrown bullies bragging about who had the most nukes.”

Later on I decided I would try a different approach. I told Maria I had a friend in the United States who was working toward a doctorate in Russian studies. His doctoral thesis focused on profiles of Soviet citizens. He had completed profiles on Russian émigré defectors, exiled writers, and dissidents living in the United States. But they were anomalies. He wanted profiles of Soviets such as those living abroad and asked me if I could help him in his research. I was about to go on, but Maria, seeing through my charade, interrupted. “You say you have a friend in America who wants to know about the kinds of Russians living in Samudra for some paper he’s writing? You can do better than that!”

My drooping fig leaf left me vulnerable, and I braced for another tirade on my “lack of sensitivity” about the Russian soul. It didn’t come. Instead, Maria asked if I had a particular Russian in mind whose id I wanted her to dissect. “Like Boris, maybe?”

Maria probably didn’t believe there was a professor, but it didn’t matter. She told me, “OK. I’ll do your Freud thing and look into the soul of my friend, Boris. I always wanted to be a couch doctor!”

Couch Doctor

The character profile was a recent Headquarters requirement. New times required new methods. Psychologists had extended their Rorshach tentacles into field operations, and a psychological profile was required on any prospective Soviet recruitment candidate. Twenty pages of questions from breast-feeding and thumb sucking, to fingernail chewing and masturbation. There were two pages of questions about dreams.

Maria liked the idea of probing Boris id, telling me, “You want to know what Boris thinks about his mommy’s boobies? I’ll get him talking about ‘Mother Russia’ and go from there. Masturbation? I’ll ask him how he copes in Samudra with his wife back in Moscow!”

I passed Maria the questions piecemeal to avoid overloading her and making Boris suspicious. She was intrigued by the questions, but I cautioned her that probing too deeply might set off alarm bells, leading Boris to clam up or even become hostile. Maria told me to relax. Her Slavic instincts would tell her how to play Boris without making him suspicious. I should have given Maria more credit. She was almost professional in eliciting answers from Boris to even the most sensitive questions. Boris liked talking to Maria about himself, and in a matter of weeks I had enough material for the psychologists to chew on.

The feedback from Headquarters was excellent, highlighting a number of Boris’s vulnerabilities I had overlooked, particularly his chronic hypochondria. Foreigners stationed in the tropics, with lots of time on their hands, have a tendency to develop symptoms of a variety of tropical diseases. In his conversations with Maria, Boris had alluded to a variety of ailments he had experienced, including boils, rashes, stomach pains, and mysterious blotches on his skin. He had obsessions about coming down with a fatal disease such as dengue fever or cerebral malaria. He had dreams about succumbing to the dreaded yellow monkey disease.