A Secret Life (16 page)

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Authors: Benjamin Weiser

Tags: #History, #Europe, #Germany, #World, #True Crime, #Espionage

BOOK: A Secret Life
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Once, when he came home to photograph at night, he explained to his family that he had urgent work to do and asked Hanka to sleep in one of the boys’ rooms.
 
“She was nervous and urged me to get some rest,” he recalled. “She asked why I played music. But then she gave up.”
 
Kuklinski said he probably would not have even mentioned any relationship with the Americans, but had felt compelled to tell her something because of his moodiness after returning from the first European voyage. “I do not tell her any details, because she does not need it.” Their sons would also remain unwitting.
 
As they talked, Henry burst in, laden with bags and boxes that included two air filters for Kuklinski’s car and navigation maps of the North Sea and Helgoland Island, off the Danish peninsula. Henry gave receipts to Kuklinski and noted where each item had been bought. Kuklinski asked for reassurance that if he was arrested, the CIA would try to help his family. He did not believe that it would be possible for the family to leave Poland, but he asked that Daniel and his colleagues watch out for them. Kuklinski again said that in such a circumstance he hoped to be able to take a suicide pill, although the CIA had not yet acted on his earlier request for one.
 
Daniel asked whether Kuklinski had raised the issue because he felt more strain, and Kuklinski replied that although he had been afraid, he was reassured by the efficient and secure way the CIA had handled the exchanges and communications with him in Warsaw. “Of course, I’m careful not to let this more relaxed feeling lead me into mistakes,” he said.
 
At about 4:30 P.M., Daniel brought the session to a close, telling Kuklinski that the Americans admired him for his personal and professional qualities and his convictions.
 
Kuklinski expressed concern that the quality of his documents had been less than promised, but Daniel said that was far from the case. They agreed to a final meeting on July 1 in Kiel. Five minutes later, Kuklinski, carrying his packages, left for the department store, where he would meet his crew and exchange stories about their shopping excursions.
 
On Sunday, July 1, the normally bustling Kiel Rathausplatz was almost empty. At 10:15 A.M., Daniel, Henry, and a third CIA officer stationed themselves around the square, but Kuklinski did not appear. Nor did he show up at the backup times, every two hours throughout the day. At about nine that evening, Daniel and the third officer joined the crowds strolling along the waterfront, watching boats and fire-works. Daniel could see the
Legia
docked in the harbor, and as they approached it, they saw Kuklinski through a window talking with a crewmate. Daniel returned again at 10:15 P.M., but Kuklinski had not left the boat.
 
Late the next morning, Daniel and his colleagues returned to the Rathausplatz, but did not see Kuklinski. The officers returned to the square at just after noon. From a distance, Daniel noticed a man crossing the square, but did not pay him much notice and paused outside the deserted Rathauskeller to examine the menu. Then it dawned on him that he had just seen Kuklinski. “I’m abashed to say,” Daniel later cabled headquarters, “that I had seen Gull crossing the Rathausplatz at about 12:17 hours without actually recognizing him. He was just another nondescript figure moving along with a rather loping gait from my left to right front. He was wearing a khaki instead of a white shirt, and purposely did not come near me or even look at where I was sitting and scanning. While this doesn’t say much for my powers of observation, it does, I think, underscore his ability to ‘blend in’ and to exercise discretion and alertness. He did not approach me until I was off center-stage!”
 
Daniel entered the hotel, with Kuklinski well behind him. It was only after both men were in the elevator, and the doors had closed, that they spoke. They proceeded to the hotel room, which was not air-conditioned. Both men were sweltering in the summer heat. Henry again left to shop for Kuklinski.
 
The CIA had questions about a particular secret Soviet military base. Kuklinski, who had visited the base, said it was in Ashuluk, which was located about 120 miles north of the city of Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea. The town was not marked on Soviet military maps and was used as a rocket range for Soviet air defense troops. Kuklinski said there were several battalions at the base equipped with various air defense systems, which were dug into a vast expanse of arid ground where only sparse vegetation grew. Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops trained there, as did troops from Syria and other Arab countries. The rocket firings occurred on Tuesdays and Fridays. Remote-controlled missiles were used as targets, and Kuklinski gave their range and speed.
 
In addition to the field battalions, Kuklinski said, there was an installation that included two hotels, with a third being built, the firing range command quarters, the officers mess, garages, quartermaster’s warehouses, a boiler house, other buildings that housed serving crews, in all about forty buildings, about half of which were one-story wooden barracks. A dirt road, reinforced by a lane of cement slabs for vehicles up to fifteen tons, ran from the Ashuluk railway station to the range. Other heavy equipment used a parallel dirt road, about fifty meters south. There was a special airfield with a single runway, located six to seven kilometers from the range. “Only Soviet planes can land on this airfield,” Kuklinski said. His plane from Poland had to land in Astrakhan.
 
Daniel was astonished by Kuklinski’s command of detail. At about 1:25 P.M., there was a knock at the door. It was Carl Gebhardt, the Warsaw Station Chief who had first met Kuklinski in the cemetery the previous fall. “Both men greeted one another with the kind of enthusiasm that springs out of joint success at a delicate and dangerous game,” Daniel later told headquarters.
 
Kuklinski and Gebhardt spent nearly three-quarters of an hour discussing potential operational sites for the future and reviewing sketches and maps. With Daniel, they discussed surveillance patterns by the SB, the manipulation of gaps, and how Kuklinski could recognize the CIA car as it arrived for an exchange. Kuklinski asked whether there were other officers watching their exchanges on the street. He was told there were not. Other than a partner or spouse inside the car, the officer was alone.
 
As the session ended, Kuklinski said he wanted to discuss his motivation for collaborating with the United States. “I consider the small contribution I make to the strengthening of your country, my duty.
 
“Your country does not represent strength only, but also serves as an example,” he said, “and all the changes to the better in my country are generated by this example of yours, from your country and the entire West.
 
“I consider it the highest honor,” he went on, “and my duty, to extend assistance in order to make your strength a formidable deterrent, which will ensure that the world will go in the direction in which it is now going. I consider myself a servant not of your country alone, because I work for the freedom of all, but since this freedom emanates mainly from your country, I have decided to join with you, and I shall continue as long as my strength lasts.”
 
Daniel presented Kuklinski with a gold-plated German-made ballpoint pen. He said he hoped Kuklinski would think of him when using it to write to the Americans. Kuklinski promised to keep them informed of his plans for the following summer. Henry opened a bottle of Linie aquavit, the Norwegian liquor aged in oak casks and carried by boat twice across the equator (the change in temperature is said to provide its unique taste). He poured a glass for each of them, and they joined in a toast before Kuklinski left.
 
After the meeting, Gebhardt sent a brief cable to Langley saying that the meeting had been highly worthwhile:
 
 
It provided an opportunity to establish a rapport that would never be possible during our brief encounters in Warsaw, and it seemed to erase any doubts Gull may have had about our abilities to deal with him securely, considering his personal welfare above all.
 
It was an opportunity to explain subtleties that cannot come through in written exchanges, which normally cover the most important basics. And, though we didn’t need a reminder, the meeting did serve to remind that we have a warm human being at the other end of our communications who is worth all the effort we expect to put forth.
 
 
 
For his part, Daniel prepared an extensive “Memorandum for the Record,” reviewing the meetings and offering his impressions of the colonel. “He is a valiant, able, and dedicated man, who, in my view, does not consider himself a ‘traitor’ or the participant in some kind of ‘dirty game.’ He is ‘stabbing back’ at those who have made a shambles of his country, and he expresses deeply serious satisfaction in the fact that he can do this by cooperating with us.”
 
Kuklinski seemed determined “to make this not only a secure and productive assault on the enemy, but a personal and
human
undertaking with us,” Daniel wrote. For all of his military training and achievement, Kuklinski was “not a robot,” he added. “He said sadly that he would like to get to know us better, to associate with us as human beings.”
 
Kuklinski had exhibited a quiet sense of humor as well as consideration for Daniel and Henry, expressing concern that they had to wait for him to appear on the street. He had shown modest pride in describing how he had gained access to a particular classified report that was outside his normal assignments, and he appreciated Daniel’s concern that the trail might lead to him, by pointing out that the document had come to him and that he had not asked for it. Kuklinski showed “a deep respect for his wife and for her unquestioned loyalty to him; a recognition that one can seldom read the thoughts of others―his crew might be talking about him―but establishing a solid reason for his absences is more intelligent than fretting over their possible suspicions and so on.
 
“Throughout all of this, he was articulate, enthusiastic, even excited―in a controlled way―at times,” Daniel wrote.
 
Daniel described Kuklinski as compact, perhaps five feet, six inches and 145 pounds, with piercing eyes and a good complexion. He looked healthy and strong, his face clean-shaven, his fingernails clean, and his dress simple. “He has no phony or artificial mannerisms that I could detect. In short, he impressed me as an able and likable human being. I think we should do all in our power to help him realize that we see him in this light, not just as an efficient and daring provider of highly prized intelligence.”
 
Daniel also recommended that future meetings with Kuklinski include Colonel Henry. “Briefly, he impressed me―and more important―I think he has impressed Gull with his calm, unruffled, modest, strong character.... It would be an error to count him out of this case.”
 
After returning to Washington, Daniel drafted a three-page letter to Kuklinski, which would be translated and delivered in a forthcoming exchange. Daniel said he was profoundly moved by their meetings and hoped Kuklinski would feel free to express himself openly in personal correspondence between them.
 
 
For now, I hope you understand what a deeply rewarding personal experience it was for me to meet and begin to know you. I, too, can only regret that the circumstances of our relationship prevent us from spending relaxed hours and days together, talking of many things, our families, our hopes, our future. I wanted to tell you about this at our last meeting, but the clock was running fast, and so were we―with the sweat dripping off our brows. You are such a responsible, considerate, and articulate person that I knew it would be difficult for us to stop once we began talking about the things that have shaped us as human beings, and that make our lives worth living.
 
I received a letter from my wife―in a secure way―while you and I were in the same city. She wrote of many things that she and our children were doing, all of which have a special meaning to a father who values the present in its own right and as a path to the future for himself and the ones he loves. She wrote of our youngest daughter, five years old, who was conceived in your country and born in mine. We think she represents―or is―the best of both places. She is a happy and an intelligent child with many activities which, of course, are very important to her. She has been particularly busy in the past few weeks, but, my wife wrote, the little girl would stop every now and then, look up into the air where my airplane had disappeared many days ago, and say, “Oh, Papa, I miss you. Oh, Papa, I love you; I hope you will come home soon!”
 
A man “cannot be made of wood,” or he ceases to be human. Even as we work with the plans or the programs or the schedules or the machines that are a part of our everyday life and profession, there must be a strong and vibrant current of humanity in each one of us, and there must be time to feel and savor, to express this current. You did this for me in many ways during our time together, in talking about the significance of a birthday, about the deep respect and loyalty which you share with your wife, about the friends who mean something to you, yet who cannot share what is probably the most significant decision of your life.
 
I would like to share all this with you in any way possible. Our time together was all too brief, but the experience we’ve shared so far causes me to say again, as you have said, that I hope we can come to know one another better, as human beings. It was with this thought already in mind that I gave you the gold pen at the end of our last meeting. I would be very happy if you would use it from time to time, at the quiet end of a long day, to write me about yourself, your youth, your parents―anything you wish to share with me.
 
Other parts of this message bring you again the evidence of our highest respect for you and the work that you are doing so superbly. Here, I simply want to repeat my deep personal satisfaction for knowing you, and for sharing with you the human thoughts and goals that give meaning to our lives. These thoughts, with you as their central focus, are constantly on my mind.
 

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