Operation Solo (12 page)

Still, he did not give up on Boyle. Two agents assisted Freyman in working with Morris, and when one was transferred, Freyman had an idea. Morris most respected people of high intellect; Boyle had that. SOLO required mastery of complex and arcane subjects; in cryptanalysis, Boyle demonstrated such mastery. The operation presented constant challenges; Boyle had responded more than well to challenges.

The senior agent-in-charge of the Chicago office at the time was James Gale, an old-time Bureau man who believed in delegating authority to subordinates, and he approved Freyman's proposal that Boyle be assigned to SOLO. Headquarters fairly raged and
vetoed the assignment. “I'm running this office, and I'll use the men you send me as I think best. You sent me Boyle,” Gale retorted, and he prevailed.

When they first met, Morris was almost sixty, Boyle only thirty-three. Initially, he treated Boyle formally, even brusquely, but his attitude changed as he discerned those qualities that Freyman had seen.

Boyle surprised him by his extensive knowledge of the operation and of him personally, knowledge acquired from intense study of all 134 volumes of the SASH/SOLO file. Morris was delighted that Boyle on his own started studying Russian at night school so that he could read Soviet publications and documents. And Boyle's willingness to take calls at all hours and listen to his analyses of new developments in the Soviet Union pleased him. As their relationship came to resemble that of a patient professor and an apt pupil, Morris began to teach Boyle about the Soviets and their mentality. “You must think like they do. Thoughts govern actions.”

Just before Christmas 1961 Morris attended a dinner party in a Chicago suburb, and the hostess introduced him to a beguiling widow, Eva Lieb. To her, he seemed a dapper, cultured, and courtly man, and his stories of foreign travel interested her. There also seemed to be about him an air of mystery that further fascinated, and she found herself hoping he would invite her to a New Year's Eve dinner. Instead, he called in early January, and she suggested he visit her home in Evanston. They sat by a fire and talked happily for hours. Morris once got up, led her to a window, and pointed to a small red-breasted robin perched in the snow that obviously delighted him. Eva thought,
Anyone who would pay so much attention to a little bird must be a very nice person, kind and sympathetic.

Morris and Eva started seeing each other often, and he decided he better let the FBI know. “I cannot live without a wife,” he said to Freyman. “I need to find a noncommunist communist.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I think I've found one. She's a social worker who used to be on the fringes of the party. But she was just anti-Nazi, not really procommunist.”

Verbal rockets rained down from headquarters. How could the
Chicago dunderheads allow the FBI's most prized asset to fool around personally with a damn commie, much less think of marrying her?

“We can't repeal the laws of human nature,” Freyman replied. He did agree that Eva should be thoroughly investigated.

As Boyle put it, “Our orders were to find out everything about her down to the color of her toothpaste.” They found that Eva came from a patrician family, had earned a degree in sociology from Northwestern University, and married a distinguished chemist who died in a laboratory explosion.
¹¹
She received substantial compensation from his employer, apparently invested it wisely following advice from a banker brother, and developed financial acumen of her own that enabled her to help others through social work. She had moved in communist circles, but there was no record of her having been a party member; and the results of the investigation of her political views tended to match those Morris gave. Friends characterized her variously as “loving,” “witty,” “gutsy,” “learned,” and “every bit the lady.”

“I don't see how he or we could do better,” Freyman remarked. “Of course, she will have to become an asset. We'll let 58 handle that.”

While the FBI investigated, so did Morris, the party and, for all we know, the KGB. He took her on leisurely Sunday afternoon drives in the early spring into the countryside of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. “Look at how beautiful and healthy our country is and how much it is doing for most people,” he said. “Do you love America and all it stands for?”

The question struck her as silly and she might have laughed had not his eyes so directly and seriously stared into hers. “Well, of course. Doesn't everybody?”

On another drive, she spoke up, “I'm about to marry you, but except for the fact that you are a wonderful man and I love you, I know almost nothing about you. What do you do?”

“I'm in business. Don't worry. I have a good income from investments.”

“What kind of business is it that takes you to China and Russia?”

She silently noted that his response was not an answer. “I'm thinking of starting a new business with my brother Ben. We think there's money to be made and good to be done by selling uniforms and other things nurses need by mail order at prices lower than they can get them retail. I'll take care of the finances, advertising, and marketing, but we'll have time for each other and we can travel.”

“Will you take me to Rome? I've studied Italian. Ever since I was a little girl, I've wanted to throw coins into the fountain at Trevi, make a wish, and see if it comes true.”

“I'll take you. But not until October.”

Freyman, Morris, and Dick Hansen, to whom Boyle was a junior partner, held a council, and all agreed on the principles or strategy. It was absolutely essential that Gus Hall and the ID (as among themselves they now called the International Department of the Central Committee) approve the marriage as one made in communism and accept Eva just as they accepted Morris. As so often happened, Morris' concept of tactics ruled.

“I'll tell Gus I want to marry this lovely lady who is a woman of means and has a solid political background. I'll tell him that just to be sure, I'd like for him to take a look at her himself. Eva can charm snakes out of trees, and he'll like her, and more important he'll smell money. Then I'll tell him that I'd feel more comfortable if the party or maybe even the ID checked her out. Gus can't investigate his own fingernails, and the ID won't care whom I marry. It thinks women only exist to cook, clean, and serve men. Once Gus approves, he and they will be stuck with their decision, and no matter what happens everyone will always defend the decision.”

Morris brought Hall to Eva's home, whose oriental carpets, tapestries, art works, leather-bound books, antique furniture, fine crystal, and china proclaimed to him that Eva was just what Morris had said—a cultured lady of means. Nothing so interested Hall as the “For Sale” sign Eva had planted in the front yard in anticipation of moving in with Morris after their marriage. He
mused aloud. An elegant house like this surely would command a high price. Maybe Eva would consider donating a small part of her imminent largesse to his “club” which, like her, did all sorts of good works for the needy.

Afterward, Hall sent her three or four small “wedding” presents and cards encouraging her marriage. They married May 31, 1962. The newlyweds wrote a gracious note to Hall and accompanied it with a $10,000 check for his “club.” Eva did not remember and available records do not disclose whether the FBI ever reimbursed them for the patriotic and, as it turned out, productive bribe.

Soon after the wedding Jack went to Moscow for operational consultations. During 1961 KGB officers had met him five times in Westchester County and given him a total of $370,000. In anticipation of larger transfers, the KGB wanted to plan with him more sophisticated means of scheduling and conducting meetings. Jack also gleaned prized intelligence from talks with members of the International Department: The Soviets intended to expand and fortify the Berlin Wall while avoiding actions that might provoke war, they regarded President Kennedy as inexperienced but “sagacious,” they believed they could now “direct” Cuba, and they were about to instigate a worldwide “peace” campaign to depict the United States as a menace to everybody. Sino–Soviet relations continued to worsen.

Morris and Eva boarded a plane for Rome October 16, 1962, and she was surprised to find that he had purchased first-class tickets. (Later, she learned that Hall, the proletarian, insisted that he and his “secretary of state” always fly first class at party expense.) She dropped a coin in the fountain of Trevi, and Morris asked what she wished. “That we have a long, happy, and successful life together.”

After a week or so Morris appeared nervous and restless, and she asked him what was wrong. “I have business in Moscow. I think we should go on.”

The lavish and deferent reception accorded them in Moscow surprised and perplexed her. A man named Nikolai (Mostovets) who seemed to be a friend of Morris and to whom people obsequiously favored, ushered them past customs into a limousine and
finally into a three-room hotel suite. Shortly, a pretty woman knocked, introduced herself as Victoria, and in flawless English announced that she would be Eva's interpreter and escort for the duration of her visit. While Morris tended to unexplained business during the day, Victoria and a chauffeur took Eva to museums, galleries, special stores, and dining rooms in what she thought were private clubs. When she returned to the suite, brandy and chocolates were by the bed. Almost every evening, they were guests of Nikolai or Aleskei or other Russians, all of whom acted as if they were close friends of Morris. “Why are we being treated so royally?” Eva asked him.

“Because you are a queen.”

Instead of proceeding directly through Europe to the United States as she expected, they stopped for four days in Prague, where Morris again had unexplained business. (He represented the American party at the Twelfth Congress of the Czech Communist Party.) Then he insisted on spending a few days in Zurich where he wrote a great deal, took solitary walks, and made cryptic telephone calls to the United States. The plane tickets Eva had seen listed flights from Zurich to New York to Chicago. Morris produced new tickets that took them to Los Angeles. There, as in Moscow and Prague, they walked straight past customs and immigration inspectors without submitting to baggage checks or questions. Morris told a porter to leave their luggage by the curbside and hailed a taxi. As they got in, Eva exclaimed, “We forgot our bags!”

“Don't worry. They'll be taken care of.”

About an hour later in a spacious room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Morris said, “Eva, I want you to meet some special friends of mine. I know you'll be surprised. I want you to know that I love and trust you and I'm sure you'll always do what's right.”

Instead of going into the corridor, he led her through a door of their room that opened into an adjacent room. Two of the handsomest young men she had ever seen rose; one was blond with blue eyes, the other had an abundance of perfectly trimmed coal-black hair, bushy, black eyebrows, and equally dark eyes which, Eva in her reminiscences said, “all at once, danced, flirted, reassured, and warned.”

“Eva, this is Dick Hansen and this is Walt Boyle. They are with the FBI. And now I must tell you, so am I.”

Boyle, who had investigated her and knew everything about her “down to the color of her toothpaste,” addressed her as “Mrs. Childs.” “You've joined what we hope and believe is the most exclusive club in the world. From now on, you're one of us; you're a member of a new family and a special team.”

In that instant, Eva understood that her life had changed profoundly and irrevocably. Suddenly, the odd questions Morris had asked her, his unpredictable and inexplicable actions in Europe all made sense. Do you love America and all it stands for? From now on, she would share his secret life and all the stress and danger it entailed. She thought,
Well, if I'm going to be a spy, I will try to be a good one.

The next day, the FBI listed her in top secret files as CG-6653S*.

six

INTO THE KREMLIN

BOYLE DROVE FROM THE airport hotel to the Los Angeles field office of the FBI, commandeered a crypto machine, and, alone in a cubicle, transmitted to Washington the first summary report of the mission. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 had traumatized the Soviets. The resolve exhibited by President Kennedy and the United States astonished and dismayed them. Some were accusing Khrushchev of suicidal recklessness by emplacing missiles in Cuba in the first place.

Back in Chicago, during the next days, Morris briefed the FBI in detail about all he had learned, helped Boyle write reports, and, insofar as he could, answered questions posed to the FBI by the State Department, the CIA, the Defense Department, and other agencies. Then he went to New York to brief Gus Hall. When he returned, he had to answer more questions and start preparing for the next mission. Freyman and Boyle marveled at the stamina and energy displayed by a man in his sixties with a chronic heart condition. Clearly, Eva had brightened his life and given him still more reason to live.

The Soviets called the operation they were conducting through Morris and Jack “MORAT” (a Russian acronym for “Morris' apparatus”), and they wanted to safeguard it just as much as the FBI wanted to safeguard SOLO. Both sides took increasing security precautions.

At the Soviets' behest, Jack again detached himself from the party and dealt only with Hall and a few of his closest subordinates. Morris remained a secret member of the Central Committee of the American party and sometimes saw fellow members. But he engaged in no overt party activity in the United States and discussed real business only with Hall.

The operational necessity of constantly currying favor with Hall was for Jack irksome and for Morris odious. Jack did not mind carrying money and messages from the Soviets; that was his job. He did resent being suddenly summoned on weekends to bring cash or run personal errands or work around Hall's house. Hall believed that Jack and Morris were rich, and he asserted the right to partake of their presumed wealth, so they always had to pick up the check. Hall would propose a business dinner, and when Jack or Morris arrived at the restaurant, usually an expensive one, there he sat with his family. Walking along a New York avenue, he stopped, turned, and led Morris into a fancy haberdashery where he bought a suit. When the salesman asked how he wished to pay, he pointed to Morris and said, “He'll take care of it.” Several times he required Jack to buy shoes and clothing for his children and once made him pay for his family's groceries. Yet submission to these petty extortions was a price that had to be paid.