The Falcon and the Snowman (26 page)

“The peectures were nod so goot,” the Russian general protested after they arrived again at the safe house.

Some of the pictures were decipherable, he added, but others were fogged and out of focus. The Russian seemed to be growing exasperated with his two young spies.

Then, with the patient condescension of a teacher to his pupil, he said they would have to start again: The Colonel took a Minox-B—exactly like the one back in Palos Verdes—out of his pocket and began a long day of lessons in how to photograph documents. The KGB officer presented Daulton with a metal chain that, he said, was precisely forty centimeters long; his friend must use it to measure the distance from the camera to the documents in order to get sharper pictures. Moreover, the Colonel said the film should be developed in the United States—that way, the Americans could see for themselves if the photographs were of high quality. He taught Daulton how to develop the exposed film and went over each detail of the process again and again; they photographed typewritten pages and pages from books, then processed the film. When the lesson was over, the Russian smiled as if to say, You see, it's really not that difficult, is it?

He gave Daulton advice on how to avoid being followed, including instructions to change taxis or buses often and to duck into stores or other crowded places and other techniques that the Russian said Daulton should use to ensure that he wasn't tailed to their meetings.

In the evening after the photography lesson, Daulton was introduced to two middle-aged Russians; from the respect servants paid to them, he gathered that they were important, but he learned little else about the pair of men in dark suits who seemed so hyperactive that they could have been on amphetamines and seemed to know all about Daulton and his friend. They interrogated him about TRW, and he told them everything he knew. He met a third Russian whose name was “Boris.”

Daulton decided that he was enjoying the experience. By now he had all but forgotten his fears of being spirited away to Czechoslovakia. The patience and deference of the Russians gave him self-confidence, and he knew he was important to them. Daulton slowly began to realize that he, not the Russians, had the upper hand in the game they were playing.

The Soviets obviously prized this mysterious source of information about the clandestine satellites. But they were also frustrated by this perplexing American drug pusher and their inability to get more information from him.

There were more questions to Daulton about the means used to transmit messages: shortwave radio, UHF, VHF, telephone circuits, Western Union? Again and again they pressed Daulton to provide more technical data about infrared sensors, and photographs of the Rhyolite and Argus payloads. Daulton assured his mentor that he shouldn't worry: they would get the information. But it would cost $50,000. The Russian emphasized that money would be no object.

After a while, Daulton began to recognize something familiar in the intensity of the Russian's appeal for information: a hungry look in the stony eyes of the man with the bristle-cut iron-gray hair that he had seen before. It reminded Daulton of someone begging him for dope. Daulton had known that hunger for years; he had used it to whittle the niche he had made for himself in life.

As he had done with girls at Palos Verdes High, Daulton played on this dependency; he tried to exploit it, giving a little and promising more.

“They wanted what I had; I was basically dealing with addicts. But I knew they'd kill to get it, too.”

Daulton left Vienna after agreeing to a suggestion from the KGB control officer to apply for a job at TRW or Lockheed. The Colonel handed Daulton three envelopes full of American money and, fulfilling a promise made in Mexico, gave him a handmade rug from the Caucasus that he said was worth more than $10,000. Daulton said good-bye to Muzankov, not knowing whether he would see him again or not, and decided that he would miss the sly old man.

En route to Los Angeles, Daulton had to change planes in Paris. For reasons he never discovered, the rug was seized by French Customs officials, and he never saw it again.

When he arrived at his home in Palos Verdes on March 19 in a taxi from the airport, there was a party going on hosted by his brother; their parents were gone, visiting one of their daughters in the South.

Daulton walked in the door with a smile on his face and told the dozen or so guests at the party that he had just come from Vienna. He went into his bedroom and opened his suitcase, and dozens of packages of new American currency spilled out.

Some of the people at the party would say later there was $40,000; Daulton would insist it was $10,000, but admitted, “It looked like all the money in the world.”

The arrival of Daulton and his money created more than a ripple of interest, but after a while the party went on as before, and Daulton called Chris and gave him a report on the trip.

A few days later, Daulton saw Peter Frank, the friend who had jumped out of the speeding MG during the chase.

“What's new?” Frank inquired.

“I've just come back from Europe,” Daulton said casually for shock value. “I just sold the Statue of Liberty to the Europeans.”

The same week he saw one of the P.V. girls to whom he supplied drugs and told her he'd just been in Europe.

“You must be moving up in the world,” she said.

“Uncle Sam paid for it,” he said.

“I didn't know short people like you were allowed in the Army,” she joked.

When Daulton made his first trip to Mexico City after the meeting in Vienna, there was a new control agent waiting for him to succeed The Colonel, whose diplomatic visa in Mexico had expired. Moscow had apparently decided that if it was to continue mining the potential of this young American, a new handler was needed. And, it had apparently decided, new tactics were also necessary in dealing with him.

Daulton was not surprised when, in response to the X marks he made on lampposts, Boris Alexei Grishin was waiting for him the following day near a downtown subway station. He was the “Boris” from Vienna.

Daulton expected to go immediately to dinner. But instead they proceeded down into the subway station and boarded a train, with Boris leading the way. They rode for at least twenty minutes to the outer reaches of the city as the rubber tires of the high-speed train hissed soothingly in the background. The new Russian said nothing and studied the faces in the passenger compartment. The train stopped and he motioned to Daulton to get off, with Daulton wondering where he was being led now. A few seconds later, they boarded another train and rode ten minutes in a different direction, before the Russian motioned him off again and they boarded still another train which they rode to a station in a suburban neighborhood. This guy likes to play subway tag, Daulton thought. He clearly didn't want to be followed, but he seemed to enjoy it as a sport. After the final subway ride, the Russian led him up a flight of stairs to a restaurant.

Like The Colonel, Boris was a KGB officer masquerading as a Soviet diplomat—in his case as science attaché at the embassy. He had been trained as an engineer and knew about satellites.

Whereas The Colonel's style was stiff and severe—a style that matched his drab, dark suits and his favorite meals, stew and cabbage soup—Boris liked stylish American clothes, especially the blue denim Levi jackets Daulton sometimes wore. He was neat and well groomed, and he fancied himself a gourmet. He chose restaurants that had a good reputation for European cuisine, and like Okana, he enjoyed dawdling over the wine list before selecting an expensive vintage.

There was something distantly Oriental about the thirty-eight-year-old Soviet agent, who told his American agent that night that he came from Smolensk and boasted of having a son in the Red Army and two children with him in Mexico—a daughter, Irena, who was twelve, and George Boris, who was five.

Later on, Daulton discovered the reason for the hint of Oriental features: Boris' father was part Chinese. Boris spoke both Spanish and English well, usually with a cigarette drooping diagonally from his mouth which Boris smoked down to a stubby butt. His hair was receding over his temples, and he made an effort to cover the expanding region of skin by combing the hair over it, not succeeding completely. He was a compact man, perhaps only four or five inches taller than Daulton. He was not nearly as imposing as most of the other KGB agents Daulton had met, and seemed more open and more curious than the others. But lurking somewhere beyond the tight Oriental features of his face, there was, it seemed to Daulton, an icy quality about him.

Over dinner, the KGB agent told Daulton about his family and spoke longingly of the Caucasus. Boris said he owned an American-made 40-horsepower Johnson outboard motor which he used to tow water skiers; but he said he couldn't use it now because the propeller was broken and he hadn't been able to buy a replacement. Could Daulton buy one for him in America?

Daulton assured him that he would gladly order the part when he returned to the States.

After this first dinner, Karpov was waiting outside the restaurant with a car, and he took them to the embassy, speeding as usual and taking such a circuitous route that it almost left Daulton dizzy.

A party of some sort was going on in the embassy, and Boris explained that several representatives from the United States Embassy were in the building. Down a long hallway, Daulton could hear the sounds of a cocktail party—indeed, some people were talking so loudly he could almost hear what they were saying. Boris led him to one room, an office, and told him to wait there. But a few minutes later he came in looking agitated; he said some of the party guests might be drifting this way; the wife of the American ambassador, he said, was right down the hall.

They looked out of the room, and when Boris was sure no one was there, he hurried Daulton down a flight of stairs to a room in the basement. Here, Boris said, they could talk without worrying about the party upstairs and without being eavesdropped on. Foreign-intelligence operatives, including the CIA, he said, were always trying to bug the embassy, but the walls of this room were too thick for listening devices to penetrate. He pounded on one wall to illustrate his point; the noise his hand made was dull and unyielding.

It was a gloomy place, and it made Daulton think of a dungeon. He didn't like what was going on. This new man made him uneasy, and he didn't like the dungeon. Later he would say of this meeting, “I thought they were going to snuff me right there.” But Daulton didn't let Boris see his fear; the high that was coming on from the cocaine he had snorted after they left the restaurant was keeping his senses sharp.

Karpov stayed in the room with Boris and Daulton, and they were joined by Igor Dagtyr, another KGB agent assigned to the embassy as a chauffeur. Daulton saw a bulge near the waist of his dark uniform and calculated that he had an automatic under the coat. Daulton didn't like what was going on at all.

Daulton handed Boris an envelope containing the negatives of several rolls of film he had developed at home. There were a month's supply of KW-7 ciphers and copies of scores of TWX messages between Pilot, Pedal and other stations involved in CIA clandestine operations. It was a particularly rich lode that Chris had provided: a message regarding the secret mission of an American submarine that, with CIA operatives aboard, had secretly monitored, via a periscope and special antennae, the tests of a new Soviet submarine-launched missile that was fired from the White Sea over the Arctic … data on a “Chicom” (People's Republic of China) radar defense system … a long communiqué with a list of several of the most important U.S. reconnaissance-satellite programs and the respective performance capabilities of each, including the specifications for what engineers call “ground resolution”—the size of the smallest object on the ground, listed in meters, that the eyes of the camera could resolve from space—a measurement, in other words, of the sharpness and effectiveness of the espionage equipment.

Daulton insisted that the delivery was worth $50,000. Boris smiled and said nothing and sent the negatives away to be printed. When Igor returned an hour later with the prints, Boris was visibly pleased. But he scoffed at Daulton's demands for $50,000. “Where are the frequencies?” he asked; once again, Daulton said, “I'm working on them.” But, reassuringly, he said he was optimistic he would get them soon—as well as photos of the actual Rhyolite and Argus satellites.

The cocaine and liquor were having, as usual, an effect on Daulton's courage, and the fear he'd had when he stepped into the dungeonlike room continued to slip away. And he decided to push his advantage: He looked angrily at Boris and complained that he wasn't being paid enough for the risks he was taking. “I'm risking my life to come here and you pay me peanuts!” he said.

“If you don't like the information and don't start paying more for it,” he threatened, “we'll sell it to the Chinese; they'll buy.”

Instantly, he knew he had made a mistake.

There was a silence in the room, and the blue eyes of the KGB officer pierced the tiny Californian. The two chauffeurs standing at the side of the room made a scraping noise as they shifted their weight, but no one spoke.

Boris then reached into his coat and produced a 9-millimeter Makarov automatic pistol and laid it in front of him with a metallic clunk. He slipped the clip out of the gun, making sure Daulton could see the eight cartridges it contained. As he set it down, there was another clunk on the table, which resonated with a hollow echo in the small room.

“You don't carry a gun?” Boris asked. It was more a statement than a question. Daulton shook his head that he didn't, keeping his eyes on the automatic. “You should,” Boris said. “You should be more careful.”

Even though his brain was saturated with alcohol and cocaine, Daulton retained enough of his wits to be persuaded by Boris' reaction: he would not mention China again. But after a few moments, the tension passed, and he renewed his demands for more money. He began to shout at the three Soviet agents, who studied him quietly.