The Falcon and the Snowman (31 page)

“We must have the Western Union frequencies,” Boris implored in his broken English; it was
essential
that Chris obtain a list of the daily frequencies on which the CIA was transmitting his messages.

“I can't get the frequencies; I don't have access to them,” Chris said; they were not kept in the vault where he worked, he said.

Boris seemed amazed.

Looking sideways at the smaller of his two spies, he said Daulton had repeatedly told him that he
could
get the frequencies. In fact, Daulton had been well paid because of his promise to deliver them.

Daulton avoided the agent's eyes and let his own roam over the room, stopping at a curious-looking coat of arms on one wall.

Boris shrugged and shifted to another subject: he asked Chris to give him an in-depth briefing of everything he did in the communications vault, including everything he knew about the satellites built by TRW. Chris answered the questions as best he could.

Each time Chris finished answering a few questions, Boris interrupted the interview and left the room—apparently, Chris suspected, to confer with technical specialists or superiors elsewhere in the building. When he returned, he usually had a new list of questions.

Chris noticed that every time Boris left, Karpov turned on the television set in the room. Although his English seemed less than completely functional, Karpov managed to convey to Chris and Daulton that he loved to watch television but was kept so busy that he didn't have time to watch it very often. This seemed to make him very unhappy. There was an American-made television program—the name of which he seemed unable to translate for the American visitors—that he wanted to see that night.

But unfortunately for Karpov, the TV set did not work well that evening and it defied his efforts to make it work. All he could get on the screen was a kaleidoscope of horizontal lines, and it infuriated him. He pounded first on one side of the TV set and then on the other, and twisted the dials to make it work. But the flickering black-and-white lines remained. When Boris returned to the room, Karpov stiffened and turned off the set, only to pound his fists again on the impotent television receiver as soon as Boris left the room again.

Daulton felt ignored. “It was as if I wasn't in the room,” he recalled later. A spectator to the discussions between Boris and Chris, he poured himself more vodka and wine as the others talked. The liquor, combined with the effects of heroin, began to turn him more aggressive. Daulton didn't like being snubbed, and after a while he started to interrupt their conversation.

He began with a protest over a promise by Boris to buy him a villa on the beach in Puerto Vallarta (the one he was going to give to his father). He was supposed to operate it as a safe house for KGB agents. He demanded to know why the Russians hadn't bought it yet.

It is not known whether in fact the KGB ever really intended to buy a beach house for Daulton. But after several of his interruptions, Boris turned to Daulton and told him not to worry about the villa: the purchase would be arranged soon, he reassured him.

When Daulton persisted and demanded action, Boris lost his temper. The two of them rose to their feet like two cocks preening before a fight. “You can't deliver,” Boris exclaimed, to which Daulton shouted, “
You
can't deliver!”

The shouting continued as each held his ground, standing erect. Then Boris reached over, grabbed a bottle and poured Daulton a glass of vodka as a peace offering. Daulton downed it in one gulp and poured a glass for Boris, who swallowed his vodka even faster, and then repeated the rite.

Chris decided that Boris, as well as Daulton, was starting to get drunk.

Daulton became quiet for a moment, and the Russian turned back to Chris. He produced a list of TRW and CIA employees whose names had appeared on some of the TWX messages between Pilot and Pedal and said he and his associates wanted to know everything that Chris knew about these people: what their specific jobs were, details of their families, drinking habits, sexual proclivities and anything else that Chris wanted to add. Chris wrote down a few remarks about the people on the list, but ignored the request for embarrassing personal details.

Boris then asked for a list of other employees who worked on the satellite project, and as Chris started making a list, he excused himself to relay earlier answers upstairs. Karpov, who was disgusted with the performance of the television set, also left the room.

As Chris worked on the list of names, Daulton, now thoroughly drunk and staggering, grabbed one of Chris's arms and waved toward the coat of arms on the wall. He said, “Those bastards! Watch out—they're watching us through the picture.”

Chris stared hard at the three-dimensional plaque on the wall and decided he couldn't see anything suspicious. But Daulton insisted there were eyes in the walls monitoring them, and to prove his point, he stood up on a chair and removed an outer shell from the coat of arms. Behind it there was some kind of electronic apparatus that Chris didn't recognize.

“This place has got to be bugged,” Daulton said shakily. Quickly, he started feeling the walls and examining the furniture. With a yelp of triumph, he said he had discovered a microphone beneath an end table. With a firm tug, he ripped it out and proudly held it up for Chris to see, its wires dangling limply in the air.

“I've had it with this fucking hocus-pocus,” he said.

Boris returned, and Daulton, surprising Chris, pulled an envelope from his shirt, thrust it at Boris and demanded money. Chris picked up the envelope and saw two strips of microfilm with photographs of documents that he thought he had given Daulton months before; Chris realized Daulton had kept back some of the data to squeeze extra money out of the Russians.

Boris looked at the microfilm and called it “garbage”—useless without the frequencies. Once again, Daulton jumped to his feet and started yelling at Boris, screaming that he'd been cheated. Boris rose to his feet. He shouted back at Daulton, reiterating his earlier theme that Daulton had not delivered what he had promised. Both periodically interrupted their debate by swilling down another glass of vodka.

Chris stared at the two men, who were now oblivious to him. They were standing perhaps two feet apart. Daulton was sticking the index finger of his right hand into Boris' chest like a hard-sell merchant in a Moroccan bazaar, and Boris was waving his finger right back at Daulton.

My God, Chris thought, it's like a Charlie Chaplin movie. They seem to enjoy it.

After a while, the debate subsided, and Daulton sat down and resumed his solitary drinking. Boris had brought with him blowups of pictures taken of the interior of the KG-13 machine showing the cipher circuit boards, which Daulton had brought on a previous trip, and Boris showed them to Chris to illustrate a point he had tried to make earlier: that some of the photographs had been faulty. The circuit boards of the machine were discernible in the pictures, he acknowledged, but the image was too fuzzy. Chris looked at the pictures and tried to act surprised. A few minutes later, Boris turned his attention to other matters, while Daulton sat in his chair and studied the pictures lying on the table. When he thought Boris was distracted in conversation with Chris, he grabbed them and shoved them beneath his shirt. It was a speculative urge: perhaps he could sell the pictures to another embassy, he thought.

When Chris saw the newest list of questions, he decided that whoever had compiled the list probably knew a good deal about satellites—a good deal more than he knew. There were more questions about the Pilot-Pedal communications link and the cipher equipment, plus a lengthy list of queries about Rhyolite, Argus and other TRW reconnaissance satellites, about infrared sensors and on a variety of other technical subjects. When he gave him the new list of questions, Boris also returned Chris's wallet to him. Writing in longhand, Chris answered some of the questions. But others either were too technical or applied to projects that he did not know about, and some he simply ignored.

On one of the sheets of blank paper Boris gave him to answer the questions, Chris wrote a note to the KGB agent: He said that Daulton was so addicted to heroin that he was jeopardizing their whole operation. Furthermore, he said, Daulton had spent much of the money sent to both of them to support his heroin habit and was too unpredictable to trust. “He's threatened to blackmail my father,” Chris wrote, “and if he does my father will go straight to the FBI.”

Boris scanned the note, and Chris wondered what the KGB agent would make of it. He looked over at Daulton and decided that the vodka, wine, cocaine and pot had finally conquered him: he was slumped back in his chair in the shadow-filled cell. But then he seemed to regain consciousness; he nibbled at a piece of cheese, chugalugged another glass of vodka and sat back again. Daulton's stomach had been giving him trouble again in the past few days, and the rich food and drink that night had turned it into a painful caldron of sour bile. He announced that he had to go to the bathroom. While he was gone, Chris said again that his friend was a heroin addict; he said Daulton had to be removed from their operation or he would blow it. Boris was nodding agreement when Daulton returned.

Once again, Boris asked if there was any possibility of Chris's obtaining the frequencies.

“They want to listen from their trawlers,” Daulton interjected. Boris glared at Daulton and ignored the remark. He reiterated that Daulton had assured him repeatedly that Chris could obtain the frequencies. Despite everything, Boris apparently still didn't believe what Chris had told him earlier.

Chris repeated that he didn't work with the frequencies and that the list was kept by Western Union and the CIA. He said he was willing to try, but there would be a high risk that he would be caught if he tried. Boris responded quickly: No, don't try. Chris should not expose himself to such a risk. He apologized for even asking, saying that he had brought up the question only because he had been assured by Daulton that he could get the frequencies.

Boris was still slurring his words, but Chris suspected that he still had his wits about him; there was something solicitous in the KGB agent's behavior toward him now, and he wondered why.

His motives soon began to be obvious.

Boris asked casually if Chris had ever thought about seeking a job elsewhere within the CIA or the American government. Chris answered that on two occasions he had been offered jobs by the CIA, but he had felt he wouldn't be able to pass the lie-detector test required of all agency employees.

There were ways to fool the operator of a polygraph machine, Boris said, and added that they could take up this matter later.

“How much would it cost for you to complete your education?” he asked.

Chris thought a moment. “About forty thousand dollars, including graduate school.”

Boris then outlined his proposal:

Chris should quit his job and return to college to prepare for a career in the State Department or the CIA. Chris should take university courses in Russian and Chinese history and political affairs, become a specialist in one or both of these countries and master the Chinese and Russian languages if he could.

At some time in the future, perhaps years away, Boris hinted, Chris might have another opportunity to serve the Soviet Union. Suddenly, Chris realized what Boris had in mind: he was attempting to plant a
mole
in the United States Government—a young man with promise and good credentials who would join a government agency at a modest level and then begin climbing the bureaucratic ladder, perhaps to a high level of government, where he would be a Soviet spy
in situ
, waiting for orders to come someday from Moscow.

Chris would claim later that he had had no choice but to accept the Soviet offer that night. The trap he had set for himself in an impulsive swipe at what he viewed as a corrupt, cancerous system had sprung again. This time he knew it might grip him for the rest of his life. Wherever he went, whatever he did—whether he became a lawyer, a priest, a government employee, a teacher, whatever—he realized he might always be called on to work for the KGB.… They could find him. By threatening to disclose the secret of his youth, the KGB could blackmail him into doing its bidding for the rest of his life.

He hated Boris and what he stood for as much as he hated the CIA spooks on Rhyolite. He despised them as one and the same—fools pursuing the senseless nationalism that would ultimately end in a cataclysmic nuclear holocaust. They were fools, all of them.

Why not let the Russians pay for his education? There would be opportunities later, he told himself, to decide his ultimate plan. How would they find me? he asked himself.

Chris accepted the proposal, and Boris was delighted.

Meanwhile, Boris said, Chris should keep up the friendships he had made at TRW and be alert to the possibility of recruiting other employees to help the cause, adding that he should pay special attention to weaknesses of these people that might be open to blackmail. Chris said he would not recruit any of his associates, but Boris overlooked this insubordination and urged Chris to return once more to Mexico City in January.

The meeting broke up shortly before 1
A.M.
All three of them were drunk. The anger between Boris and Daulton earlier in the evening had now shifted into the camaraderie of drunks the world over, or so it seemed to Chris.

Boris gave Daulton an envelope containing $1,000, and Chris an envelope with $5,000. When he gave the money to Chris, Boris waited until Daulton was looking elsewhere and whispered that there was an address written on the envelope where he should meet him the following day. But when Chris later tried to read the message, he discovered that the KGB agent had been so smashed that his writing was indecipherable.

The two friends were dropped off at the hotel by the embassy car. Daulton, still feeling snubbed, asked Chris to share their take from the Russians equally, but Chris refused. Daulton was even angrier the next morning when they checked out of the Holiday Inn. Chris made Daulton pay the entire bill because of his admission in front of Boris that he had indeed received more money than he had admitted to Chris before.