The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal (17 page)

Finally, Sheymov came up with a far more ambitious plan.

In October 1979, he was on a business trip to straighten out embassy communications in Warsaw. He had brought his father’s thick eyeglasses and stopped at an optician, asking if he could get them repaired. That was a nice little cover story. The eyeglasses had another purpose. One afternoon, he went to see a movie with some KGB colleagues. He excused himself just as the film was starting and caught a taxi to the American embassy. His plan was to walk up to the door of the embassy wearing the glasses as a disguise, but he had made one mistake. It turned out that his father’s eyeglasses were so thick he couldn’t see a thing. Nearly blind but undaunted, he stumbled toward the marine guard and said, “I need to speak to the representative of American intelligence.” The guard looked at him and replied, “I am the representative of American intelligence.” Sheymov responded with a backup line he had memorized: “Then I need to speak to duty diplomat.”

Soon, Sheymov was face-to-face with the Americans, took off the glasses, and told them he wanted political asylum in the United States. He wrote on a piece of paper, “KGB.” They escorted him to a windowless room. The conversation was stilted: the Americans spoke Polish but not Russian; Sheymov had just fragments of English. They photocopied his passport and asked him a few questions, such as who was the KGB chief in Warsaw. Sheymov’s answers satisfied them he was indeed a KGB officer.

“What’s your line of work?” one of the Americans asked.

“Cipher communications,” Sheymov said. The Americans looked at each other with surprise.

“Are you a cipher clerk?” one of them asked.

“No, I am responsible for the security of the KGB cipher communications abroad,” he replied.

The Americans were dumbstruck. A man with the keys to the kingdom, the ultrasecret codes to Soviet communications, was volunteering to defect. They asked if he wanted to be whisked out of Warsaw immediately. No, Sheymov replied—he wanted to bring his wife and daughter to the United States. He told the Americans he would soon be returning to Moscow. They told him he was crazy, but he insisted. On a sheet of paper, he wrote his proposal for a rendezvous, early in 1980, and he handed it to one of them.

The CIA then set up a plan to communicate with Sheymov in Moscow. He gave them an address that was not his own. He was told to expect a letter by regular mail. If anyone opened it, the letter would appear to be from an old friend, someone with an innocuous name, say Smirnov, recalling a training exercise years before. When he got the letter, they said, he should wet it down and invisible writing would appear on the other side with instructions for how to signal he was ready to meet the CIA.

As they walked out, one of the Americans asked Sheymov if he had ever heard of Halloween. No, he said, what’s that? The American explained it was a holiday, taking place that very evening.

“You’ve pulled one hell of a trick-or-treat,” he said.

“I’m sorry?” Sheymov replied.

“Oh, never mind. You’ll find out.” They put him in a car and dropped him at the movie house ten minutes before the film was to end.

When the Moscow station got word of the Sheymov case, Hathaway was finishing his tour. He had to make a decision: Who would handle the new agent? He could not give the case to Guilsher, who was busy running Tolkachev. His other senior case officer, James Olson, would be valuable but was deeply involved in the sensitive manhole operation. There were a few other possibilities, all skilled case officers but without polished Russian-language skills. Hathaway gave the case to David Rolph, the new arrival, who spoke Russian well and was eager to show what he could do.

A code word for Sheymov was sent from headquarters to the Moscow station:
ckutopia
.

The code name suggested sky-high expectations, yet much about Sheymov was entirely unknown. Did he really serve as a master of KGB overseas communications? How could they check? How could they get a peek at the kind of intelligence he would produce? What did he want? The Gerber rules, fashioned nine years earlier, still mattered.

Sheymov wanted exfiltration, with his family. There were files in the station with the code word
ckgo
, containing scenarios for getting an agent out of the country, but the Moscow station had no experience; it had never been done from the Soviet Union. A KGB man with such top secret clearances couldn’t just go to the airport and fly away. Travel abroad was tightly controlled for all Soviet citizens. Moreover, Sheymov might have been subject to KGB counterintelligence surveillance in Moscow. If there were any suspicions, he would be arrested.

Rolph made a rather unconventional suggestion to Hathaway. He said they should give Sheymov a pair of new Tropel cameras in one of the first meetings. They could ask Sheymov to photograph the most sensitive documents on his desk and then return the cameras. When they developed the film, they would see whether he had the access that he claimed and whether it was worth it to take him and his family out. Immediately, headquarters objected to giving the cameras to a completely unknown and untested agent. What if he was a dangle? What if he delivered the precious technology right into the hands of the KGB? And what if he got caught with the cameras? But Hathaway liked the idea and backed up Rolph. At one point, he wrote a stern cable to headquarters saying that he, Rolph, and all the other case officers in the station thought it was a good idea to give Tropel cameras to the new agent.
Could they all be wrong?
Headquarters relented. The Tropels would be shipped out soon.

As Gerber arrived in January to take over as chief, the Moscow station mailed the letter to Sheymov with the invisible writing. The signal, the letter explained, was to be made on a Sunday at a location that the CIA had given the code name
bulochnaya
, or “bakery.” Every Sunday, Rolph drove to church services, a route that took him past the site. He kept an eye on a concrete pillar at one corner of an apartment complex. Then, on a Sunday in late February, he spotted the black
V
drawn by hand. Everyone on the street was walking by as if it meant nothing. But it was the signal from Sheymov. They would meet soon.

Before every operation, a case officer planned and carried out a surveillance detection run. Rolph wanted to be absolutely certain he was free from KGB surveillance. With help from the other case officers and the technical operations team in the station, he worked up a plan. It was far more ambitious than usual and based on something Guilsher had once attempted unsuccessfully. Rolph went over it, minute by minute, with Gerber, who pressed him about every possible fault.
What happens if … ? What happens if … ?
Finally, the chief was satisfied.

Rolph bought a round-trip ticket on the Soviet airline, Aeroflot, from Moscow to Frankfurt, with a Friday departure and a return the following Thursday. He properly notified the Soviet administrative office, which provided services to diplomats, that he was coming back on Thursday, confident they would report it to the KGB. Then he packed his bag and caught the flight out. From Frankfurt, Rolph took a train to Vienna on Saturday. He was so filled with anxiety he could hardly sleep. On Monday, he went to the airport and, for cash, bought a one-way air ticket back to Moscow on the next Austrian Airlines flight. The KGB was expecting him to return on Thursday, on Aeroflot. Once he landed on Monday afternoon, he went through passport control, but he knew it would take them a while to report his arrival to others in the KGB. This was the “gap” he was trying to exploit, a simple lapse in bureaucracy that would give him a few hours. He was “black”—free from surveillance.

At the time he landed in Moscow, the wife of another case officer was bringing a small duffel bag to Rolph’s wife, who was a teacher. As Rolph’s wife finished her classes, she took the duffel bag and began her own surveillance detection run through the city by car. The bag held a light disguise for Rolph, an ops note, and CIA questions to be given to Sheymov.

From the airport, Rolph took a taxi toward the city. He abruptly got out at a busy Metro stop, Dinamo, about halfway into town. The stop was on one side of the broad Leningradsky Prospekt. Rolph walked, casually, around the Metro stop and then toward a building marked “Aeroflot” on the other side of the highway, all the while looking for possible surveillance. When he reached the building, his wife picked him up in the car. They began another long surveillance detection run. Finally, satisfied that he was completely free from surveillance and having put on the disguise, Rolph got out of the car. His wife sped off for a few hours to a planned dinner party with friends.

By 8:00 p.m., Rolph was walking near a statue of Aleksandr Griboyedov, a Russian playwright and diplomat who was killed by an angry mob in Tehran while serving as ambassador to Persia in 1829. The statue stood high on a pedestal near the Kirovskaya Metro station at Chistye Prudy, a broad, tree-lined park with a boulevard on each side in an old section of Moscow filled with narrow lanes and a maze of passageways.

Rolph was near the statue when he saw the man he was looking for, carrying a magazine, approaching from the Metro.

Rolph spoke first. “Victor Ivanovich?”

“Yes.”

“Good evening. I am Misha.” Rolph extended his hand.

Sheymov shook it, but he told himself it was important to establish that this man was really an American intelligence officer. He might be walking into a trap.

They started walking. Both were in their early thirties. Rolph saw that Sheymov’s face was smooth, clean, boyish. He wore a military-style cap. Sheymov thought Rolph spoke Russian with an accent, although it didn’t necessarily seem to be an American one. Sheymov noticed that Rolph didn’t wear gloves—a Russian would.

Physically, Rolph was coiled, thinking that any second the klieg lights would come on, the KGB officers would spring from the bushes, and he and Sheymov would be ambushed.

Sheymov had taken a roundabout subway route to avoid surveillance, but he was also worried and tense. He knew more than Rolph did about how the KGB worked, that they used “floating” surveillance teams, which roamed the city and could appear randomly. He noted a nearby phone booth was empty; at least that was a good sign.

Both men had been trained to carry out operations with a basic principle: once it begins, don’t think about it. Both knew that their business was to spend hours and hours planning, but in execution an operation would be brief and had to be flawless. The metaphor in Rolph’s mind was of an actor stepping on the stage: once the curtain came up, you just did your best to perform. Sheymov believed the worst thing an intelligence professional could do would be to give in to fear. That meant losing control.

“You might be KGB,” Sheymov said to Rolph.

“I can’t be KGB, I speak Russian with an accent,” Rolph protested.

“Okay, but they can speak Russian with an accent, too,” Sheymov said.

The two men walked through the park, away from the Metro and the statue. Darkness enveloped them. They kept quizzing each other, both looking for any sign of trouble.

Sheymov repeated that he wanted to be exfiltrated with his family. Rolph responded that it was a tall order and might take twelve to eighteen months to prepare. He told Sheymov that he would have to provide some information first. Rolph thought they might meet again in a month or two, but Sheymov said, why wait? He would be ready in a week. Sheymov insisted that they meet in person. He did not want to communicate with the Americans by dead drop. He told Rolph that KGB counterintelligence had made a long list of people arrested for working with spies—caught in a dead drop, caught using a radio.
No one
had been caught in a personal meeting. Sheymov wanted to see his CIA case officer face-to-face. Rolph agreed.

They parted, and Rolph took a Metro a few stops toward the center of Moscow. His wife picked him up in the car, and they headed home. The next morning, everyone crowded around Gerber’s conference table to hear what had happened.

Rolph thought he might have a month to prepare for the next meeting, but now he had only a week. He surmised that the KGB had figured out his trick of going abroad and returning home early, so he could not repeat it. The Moscow station created an elaborate plan for the next meeting. Rolph would be the primary case officer, but if he came under KGB surveillance, there would be a second and a third officer nearby on the streets, having completed their own surveillance detection runs, ready to slip into his place, just in case. They did a month’s work in just a few days.

As it turned out, Rolph was clear. The meeting began without trouble. Rolph asked Sheymov some questions from headquarters about complex mathematics and cryptology, and Sheymov answered into Rolph’s small tape recorder. They again discussed exfiltration. Sheymov wanted $1 million upon his arrival in the United States, immediate citizenship, and lifetime health benefits for his family. Rolph didn’t make any promises. He asked Sheymov for mundane but essential details about his family: clothing sizes, medical histories, weights, and shoe sizes. And he needed recent photographs of everyone for the new identity documents they would get after exfiltration, on the other side.

At one of the first meetings, Rolph gave Sheymov the CIA’s miniature Tropel cameras. Rolph said to him, “Photograph the most highly classified papers you have. Don’t take chances with other people around. But you have to prove to us that you are who you say you are.” Sheymov agreed. He returned the cameras with exposed film and was given a fresh supply.

Sheymov suggested the CIA fake the drowning of his family in a river so the KGB would not suspect they had defected. Rolph responded that the CIA and Sheymov had more important things to do—to ensure the actual exfiltration was a success. In fact, Rolph had given plenty of thought to what would happen once Sheymov and his family vanished. Inside the Moscow station, Rolph discussed how to make Sheymov “disappear without a trace.” They would leave the apartment exactly as it was—a cup of tea unfinished on the table, the bed unmade, a newspaper open, their clothes still in the closets. They talked about whether the disappearance could be explained as a drowning, but Rolph and the other case officers didn’t dwell on it. That was not something they could plan; it would just have to play out. The KGB would probably be much more inclined to blame an accident or crime, and it might be quite a while before they realized Sheymov had defected.