Oswald's Tale (30 page)

After a few more visits, however, Alik’s suspicions began fading away. Before long, Inessa was eating with them in their kitchen. Indeed, she even liked it that he hadn’t become open right away but had waited and observed. She thinks she probably wouldn’t have believed him if, immediately, he had been too friendly. In fact, she liked him as a husband for Marina. He did all the man’s work around their apartment without needing reminders. Which is not too often true of Russian men.

What she wasn’t so comfortable with was that all of a sudden he would announce what he liked about the Soviet Union and what he didn’t like, and he would do it in the open—never whispering. And there were other little things. She really couldn’t say that she approved of him entirely, even if they were only small things. He would carry on if dinner wasn’t cooked on time, and in her opinion, Marina didn’t fit into his American standards of what a wife should be. When they had fights, Inessa saw them as children, one more stubborn than the other. She liked them both and was comfortable with both, and—maybe she was just lucky—in her presence they never had any really big arguments. She does remember that Marina would get irritated when Alik would read his American comic books and begin to laugh loudly. On the other hand, Marina thought he was too pedantic and told Inessa that she was dissatisfied with his mind.

He also had bad habits. Like a worker or a crude soldier. He was always spoiling the air with gases. That was shocking, and he did it as naturally as drinking water.

All the same, Inessa always felt that Alik was more calm than Marina. Outside of those gases, he was very organized. He liked perfection in everything, and Marina used to complain about this trait. Taken all together, Inessa never really thought that Marina was deeply in love with him. She thinks Alik loved her more.

F
ROM
KGB T
RANSCRIPTS
F
OR
O
BJECT:
OLH-2658
F
OR
P
ERIOD:
24 J
ULY
1961
21:20

WIFE:
Alik! Look, I forgot to iron the bedsheets—there’s one lying over there. Alik! Look how warm my ears are.

(
they joke around; they laugh
)

LHO:
Not bad songs they’re singing.

WIFE:
There’s some festival going on. Everyone’s going to Moscow and people can say what they want. Before, you couldn’t say anything: not on the street, not on the streetcar, not on the trolley. When Stalin was alive there was a microphone in every house and you couldn’t say anything. Nowadays it’s a different matter.

LHO:
Yes, yes, my sister.

F
ROM
KGB T
RANSCRIPTS
F
OR
O
BJECT:
OLH-2658
F
OR
P
ERIOD:
26 J
ULY
1961

LHO:
So, there was a meeting?

WIFE:
Yes, there was a meeting.

LHO:
Where?

WIFE:
In our clinic.

(
pause
)

You see, they would have been satisfied if I had said, no, I’m not going, I won’t leave [my] Motherland. Never tell them any truth. Really, I shouldn’t have said anything at all. I should have said that my position was such that I don’t know what to do.

LHO:
And what did they say?

WIFE:
They said that I was rude . . . So, I said, I don’t need a good reference, I don’t care . . .
I’ll go with a bad reference if necessary.
I told them that I wasn’t such a criminal. I told them that I love pharmacy girls a lot as girlfriends and that I’m not a bad friend and that I would give everything for the girls because they’re simple, good girls. (
pause
) I came right out with it. If you don’t like me, I don’t like you—no skin off my back.

LHO:
And you . . . (
doesn’t finish his sentence
)

WIFE:
. . . They’re going to kick me out . . . They said people like you don’t belong in Komsomol, that you should be expelled. I said that was fine, I’m very happy . . . Why don’t you want to [be a member of Komsomol?] They asked me a million times. Well, because I don’t like it, because it’s boring. And why didn’t you say so earlier? Because I didn’t want people to think I was different . . . I said a lot of things I probably shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t hold back. [They asked] what do you think of Komsomol? I answer Komsomol is Komsomol. (
pause
) Actually, I’m an anti-Soviet element. Let’s make it easier for them.

(
pause
)

And then, you know, he asks me what’s your relationship to this man you went to Moscow with? And someone else says that it’s her husband.

LHO:
(
laughs
)

WIFE:
And who is your husband, what sort of person is he? I say you better ask MVD. And why MVD if we can ask you? And I say, because I might not tell you . . .

LHO:
They know the most important thing is that I want to leave.

WIFE:
He longs for his homeland, I told them, everyone longs for their homeland. But didn’t you try to convince him to stay here? No, I say. Then . . . I say, I don’t think it’ll be better there, not because I’m looking for something better. I’m just going with my husband. It’s possible it’ll be worse there . . . I say, you know, I haven’t been there and you haven’t been there, so how can we express an opinion? . . .

(
pause
)

I said that I wouldn’t leave my husband. He’s a good person and I’m satisfied with him . . . he’s more dear to me than their opinion . . . I behaved rudely, very rudely. I said, what are you going to do, confront people who gave me good references and yell at them? . . . I ask that you not persecute them . . . Better to reprimand me . . .

“We respect you, we love you,” they said. “You won’t have friends like us there,” they say. And I say, “I don’t want to have friends like that. I see how much you love me.”

LHO:
Don’t worry, everything will be fine . . .

(
pause
)

WIFE:
The most important thing now is leaving.

LHO:
I know that—we’re leaving, no need for scandals . . .

(
pause
)

WIFE:
Don’t look for truth, you’ll never find it anyway. I was told that by my mother . . .

LHO:
Everything will be fine.

WIFE:
You think so?

(
pause
)

WIFE:
Why do I feel sad? My husband isn’t throwing me out of the house.

LHO:
I love you.

WIFE:
That’s what you say now, but afterward you’ll say that you don’t love me.

LHO:
Your husband loves you . . .

Marina’s friend Sonya was, of course, a member of Komsomol. That was practically automatic. They have a saying: You are born, go to school, become a Pioneer, become Komsomol. Like everyone else.

According to Sonya, it was not so big a matter, however, to be excluded from Komsomol. You can ignore it. If Marina had changed her mind and decided to stay in the Soviet Union, it wouldn’t have been a bad mark in her life. It was not like being excluded from the Communist Party—that’s serious. But Komsomol—you’re a young person. Everybody thinks maybe you made a mistake, you slipped a little bit. Marina’s main worry, Sonya thinks, was whether she was making a right decision or a wrong one about going to America. Komsomol was not so important. After all, Komsomol had a rule that whenever you go to a foreign country, you are not a member anymore. You give it up. This organization did not want members in another country. Could cause international trouble.

F
ROM
KGB T
RANSCRIPTS
F
OR
O
BJECT:
OLH-2658
F
OR
P
ERIOD:
29 J
ULY
1961

(
LHO kisses her
)

LHO:
Come here, lie down.

(
quiet
)

19:40

WIFE:
My God, your pants are so wrinkled.

LHO:
It’s been a while since you ironed them.

WIFE:
Four days ago.

LHO:
A week.

WIFE:
So? You could wear them for a week [but] you lie around in them.

LHO:
Take it easy . . .

WIFE:
You’re so wicked! (
squeals
) It’s true what they say about men not having any brains until they’re thirty. (
laughs
) Ay! . . . (
laughter
) What did you do?

(
they go to bed
)

LHO:
Don’t touch me, damn you.

WIFE:
No, damn you. In a minute I’m going to cut off a particular place. Oy, mama.

(
they laugh
)

(
they talk about pregnancy; Wife tells about conversation with her doctor
)

WIFE:
When the baby first starts moving, it’ll be exactly half of my term. Give or take one or two days. Why does it seem to me that everything smells—my clothes, pillow, blanket? I look so horrible. We all look horrible in last months [of pregnancy]. And if I’m dying, who will save me? I have narrow hipbones.

LHO:
Me.

WIFE:
The medical profession won’t help, but you will.

LHO:
Be a composed lady. You’re a lady. The very first day you became a lady. Good night. That’s all.

(
they are silent
)

23:00

Tamara Alexandrovna, who was den mother to their pharmacy and knew everything about every girl’s personal life, was approached: Marina asked, “Tamara, would you go to America with your husband or not?” She and Yanina and others discussed it. Many of them were newly married—so Marina would hear advice of this sort: “Listen, I know my husband,” one girl would say, “and with my husband I’ll go to America. Do you know your husband well enough to go there? That’s your question.” They told her: You should analyze your situation. You work in a socialist country; you’re going to a capitalist country. They have their culture, their habits. Can you cope with it? If you think you are able, okay, but it’s your decision. Yanina knew she didn’t want to take responsibility for giving more advice than that, but maybe Marina had already made her own decision.

When Komsomol excluded her, nobody thought about that for too long. What else could Komsomol do? And who cared? It was no big deal to be kicked out. The only reason people belonged was because you couldn’t
not
belong to it.

Valya was the only relative, said Inessa, who would visit Marina once she admitted that she was trying to go to America with Lee. None of Ilya’s sisters ever did, nor did Ilya. Valya was the only person who visited.

As for her situation at work, there, too, were problems, Inessa recalls. After Komsomol tried to talk her out of it, they spoke of whether Lee might be an American spy. She told them to mind their own business. Maybe her hard days in Leningrad had left an imprint, but she could carry herself with a certain authority; she wouldn’t let anybody lower her self-esteem.

Still, Komsomol kept her from getting a raise. She was not promoted and her feelings were definitely hurt.

If she had been in Marina’s situation, Inessa believes she would not have wanted to stay in Russia any longer, either. The system hadn’t been fair with her.

7

On the Observation of Intimate Moments

Pavel always felt there was something in Marina’s face that was like Erich’s expression—calculating. But Pavel would rather say that he wasn’t prepared for Marina. He didn’t even meet her until the wedding, and then he didn’t take to her at first.

Maybe Pavel saw her twenty times altogether, and he looked at her as a friend’s wife, nothing more. Whatever she was as a woman did not interest him. He had no hate for her; he just looked at her as a sheet for his friend’s bed. That was an expression he had learned at Horizon. His factory, maybe because there were so many Jews in it, was considered to be the most humorous plant in Minsk. Certainly, tractor factories and military factories were nothing like that, but then, Jews who wanted to work in such places couldn’t get in.

Pavel never saw Lee become very angry with Marina, but Oswald didn’t like it at all when his new wife lit a cigarette. So, whenever Pavel and Marina were out on the balcony together, Pavel used to hold one in his hand for her. That was to make it look as if Pavel were smoking, not her. He could say she inhaled as lightly and delicately as a yogi.

Soon after Lee and Marina were married, Pavel was getting ready to visit his parents in Khabarovsk, and Stepan had a meeting with him. “Tell Oswald,” said Stepan, “that your father works on big deals as Air Force General. See if he will be interested.”

The next time, when Stepan asked for Oswald’s response, Pavel said, “He just didn’t react at all.”

Oswald had, in fact, ignored Pavel’s remark, but Marina said, “Oh! Why are you saying that to him?” And Pavel knew then that she understood a game was being played and that Pavel was a cog. He didn’t know if she was very quick or whether this news about his father had just been more interesting to her than to Lee.

All the same, Pavel would say that he was not an active informant for the Organs. He never gave a written report, he never signed anything, and he did his best to be minimal with his Organ bosses when he did have to report. Pavel even told Lee not to talk too much with
anyone.
Then he added, “I’m telling you this, but
other
people might not.” He couldn’t allow himself to get more specific than that.

During all of this year and more, Pavel had to have meetings with Stepan, usually on the street or in a park. Now, Pavel thinks it might have been better if he had told his father about his situation, because he knew that sooner or later KGB would approach his father. Pavel could hear some lowly officer from KGB, some Lieutenant or Captain, saying, “So, General, what do you think of your son?”

Pavel didn’t have any patriotism; he just felt like filth. That was why he warned Oswald about it. He knew there was someone else, another source of information, closer and more reliable, that KGB was using for Oswald, but this other source wouldn’t confess it to Lee.

The interviewers could not find out when Lee’s apartment had first been wired. The earliest transcripts they would receive from the KGB were dated mid-July, which was just after Oswald returned from his trip to the American Embassy. The question, however, remained open. Had Oswald’s apartment been bugged in early March of 1960, prior to his moving in, or at some other period before July 1961? It is also possible, since the daily labor consequent upon bugging was an expensive item in their budget, that the local KGB, having close human sources in place, did not install equipment until those four days in July when both Oswald and his wife were in Moscow.

In conversations with his interviewers, Igor did say that after Likhoi was married, it became crucial to learn all they could about Marina’s character. Was she a type of person to obtain secrets from her uncle and pass them on to Oswald?

When installing a bug, the Organs would often rent a room in an apartment above or next door to their target. That was usually not too difficult, since people always had rooms for rent in a larger apartment. In Oswald’s case, conversations were transcribed from a chamber above his apartment, and later, such equipment was moved to a room next door. If the Organs had been able to rent an entire apartment above Lee rather than a single room, they would have bugged the bathroom, kitchen, and balcony—all three. But they did not have that kind of access.

As for being able to observe people visually, that was no longer difficult by 1961. A hole less than a two hundred fiftieth of an inch, less, that is, than one tenth of a millimeter, was made and a special lens inserted, a most useful tool thirty years ago—an early use of fiber optics. At that time, it was their “greatest weapon,” because it provided a good deal of information.

For example, knowledge started to come in to Igor and Stepan that Marina had a low opinion of Lee as a partner. Still, their relationship was interesting. They got married and now they were going to have a child. Was their reason love, or was it Oswald’s desire for better cover? This was one question Counterintelligence had to determine. If, in the course of going back to his native country, Oswald all of a sudden divorced his family and left without them, that would put the Organs on guard. Was it that he had completed his work and was now running away? But no—this man wanted his wife to go with him. That caused many suppositions to fall away. Studying the character of Oswald’s marriage reduced anxieties for Igor and Stepan.

F
ROM
KGB T
RANSCRIPT
F
OR
P
ERIOD:
26 J
ULY
1961

Stepan was asked if it was KGB policy to discontinue bugging at 11:00
P.M.,
since people usually went to bed then. He replied that this type of measure could be conducted around the clock or for only a few hours. A matter of operative expediency.

Nor was there a set policy about recording intimate moments. Usually, a KGB transcriber would state that such an action had occurred, but would not give details. It goes without saying that each developer had the major responsibility for such decisions. It depended on what he was looking to analyze. Stepan, for one, preferred to avoid this sort of thing. “But assume I am CIA or FBI and I am trying to recruit a Soviet engineer. I would have to look for compromising materials on him, first and foremost sexual things. Working as an analyst on such a case, I give this order: ‘Take down everything in the most detailed manner possible. All sexual processes. Take photographs. So on.’ Everything depends on which goal is being pursued.”

In Lee Harvey Oswald’s case, sexual details were not necessary. “If he and Marina said something of interest, let our transcriber take it down, but if Oswald and Marina are just making love, a person listening or looking through our device would write no more than ‘intimate, tender moments.’” In fact, Stepan did not relish these personal occasions. Why irritate higher-ups who have to read it? But if something said is significant, well, his transcribers wouldn’t miss that—it goes without saying. If, for example, subjects start, during lovemaking, to speak about important matters, that would be mentioned. Stepan recalls nothing significant, however, being noted during Oswald’s case.

All the same, they had to take some note of it. “The process of surveillance has to consider our target in all spheres. Afterward, we can decide that the sexual aspects of this person are not interesting. But first we have to receive a total volume of information so we can select what we need.” The FBI and KGB both do it that way, Stepan pointed out. In Oswald’s case, the sexual part could have been a factor. “It was important to know whether this person got married because he is in love or whether he is using it as a cover. His sexual relations could also indicate if he is an agent looking for information. Everything has to be considered.”

Alik and Marina were sure the Organs were bugging them. “Yeah,” says Marina now, thinking about it. “We’d become like two kids. Nothing or nobody is going to stop us. I was his ally all the way through. Just for the damn principle of it.” Once, when all lights were off in their apartment, they examined their electricity meter with a flashlight. The needle was still moving. That was when Lee said, “They bug our apartment.” Maybe he was just playing some game with her, making it dramatic. But if they wanted to talk, they did go out to their balcony or turned on their radio. Especially so they wouldn’t jeopardize any persons they were talking about—Pavel or the Zigers or whoever, Valya, Ilya, whoever. Still, it did not become part of her life. If she wanted to talk to Lee, she did not always go out on that balcony. Because, really, there was nothing to hide. The most horrible thing, you would expect, was that maybe somebody was recording them in bed. Yet, and it sounds stupid, they weren’t all that concerned about it—isn’t that funny? But if they wanted to discuss something about their upcoming trip to America, they would go out to the balcony. Maybe she was just blocking out everything about this “intimacy part,” but as she remembers, she didn’t mind all that much if someone was listening. Maybe it was because they didn’t make love as frequently in those months of pregnancy.

Pavel knew that Lee’s apartment was wired. He couldn’t say exactly how he knew; probably, it was intuition reinforced by experience. Stepan, after all, knew certain things about Lee he could have learned only by such methods, and hints of such knowledge came out when he met with Pavel to give instructions on what questions to ask next. So, Oswald’s apartment had to be bugged.

Not his balcony, however. Pavel calculated that it would be difficult to disguise a microphone out on a naked balcony. Moreover, cars would be passing, and there would be wind and interference from birds. From detective stories, you would have believed that the Organs had enough technology to put a miniature microphone in a button on a shirt, but that is very expensive.

All the same, they were always there. Or so it felt. Pavel, when talking to Lee, would not allow himself to get curious. He didn’t want to gain any information he would have to divulge or else not be serving his Motherland.