by Bryan Denson
Jim Nicholson, who had recently turned fifty-eight, was serving the back end of a twenty-three-year stretch for espionage. He stood six feet and weighed 194 pounds, with sloping shoulders and strong arms. A mane of salt-and-pepper hair, more salt than pepper, fell over the collar of his khaki prison shirt, his inmate number—49535-083—ironed above the left breast pocket. He wore a tattoo on his right forearm, an Army Ranger emblem inked decades ago and now faded to a greenish glob. On the underside of the same arm was a fresh tat that read “O POS,” his blood type.
Jim was a bona fide celebrity among the more than one thousand prisoners at Sheridan, a medium-security prison known as soft time for its standard cohort of bank robbers, cocaine dealers, and identity thieves. The federal lockup ten minutes east of Spirit Mountain Casino has long drawn its share of celebrity prisoners. A parade of them have passed through the complex, including Stacey Koon, the ex–Los Angeles police sergeant convicted for his role in the Rodney King beating, and Marion “Suge” Knight, the founder of hip-hop’s iconic Death Row Records. Michael Swango, the serial-killer physician who poisoned at least four patients, turned up at the prison in 1999, the same year Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story of a Doctor Who Got Away With Murder hit bookstores. Later came Robert “Spam King” Soloway, whose botnets corrupted computers worldwide, and Duane R. Moore, the adult film star better known as “Tony Eveready, the Gangsta of Porn.”
As it happens, Jim wasn’t even the first spy locked up at Sheridan. He had served time with James D. “Jim” Harper Jr., doing life for selling missile secrets to Poland from 1975 to 1983, and Christopher Boyce, who sold satellite secrets to the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Boyce’s exploits—espionage, breaking out of a federal prison, and an audacious series of armed bank robberies—were documented in two books and a hit movie, The Falcon and the Snowman.
Jim stood out at Sheridan. He was bright, well traveled, and served as a father figure for younger inmates. He had worked as a quality control inspector in the prison furniture factory, and emceed Sunday worship services in the prison chapel. He cut a charismatic figure as a long-haired, moccasin-wearing, born-again Christian. But he suffered from the deadly sin of vanity. He spent a long time primping in his cell, especially before weekend visits with his family. One of his former cellmates, a Las Vegas bank robber named Phil Quackenbush, snickered when Jim combed dark shoe polish into his beard to look more youthful for his kids.
Nathan was a week shy of thirteen when he first came to see his dad in prison. Hundreds of times since then he had passed through the gates, topped with gleaming coils of razor wire, navigating sign-ins, a metal detector, and a hand-stamp station, to be ushered by corrections officers, room by room, into the bowels of the institution, heavy doors buzzing and slamming behind him, just to reach this scuffed-linoleum visiting room with bars on the windows to spend time with the old man. Nathan considered this his second home.
When Nathan saw Jim across the floor, he stood and hugged him fiercely, kissing his dad’s cheek. Seventy-four miles separated Nathan and Jim, save for their every-other-Saturday visits. Their phone conversations were routed through a special line at the CIA and Jim’s letters were copied and analyzed before being mailed forward. In spite of the encumbrances, perhaps because of them, father and son had grown extremely close.
Jim had missed much of Nathan’s first seven years of life. He was serving on the front lines of the Cold War, a covert operator working to derail and defeat the Soviet Union’s influence in the Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia. Jim’s adversaries in the KGB dubbed the U.S. their main enemy. The competing spy services played a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse as an atomic sword of Damocles—thousands of nuclear missiles—dangled over the planet.
Jim’s blind devotion to the CIA kept him working late at night, meeting assets and writing reports. His early exploits in Manila earned him the nickname “Batman,” and he was thrilled by his rising star in the agency. But the demands of his work meant that he saw little of his wife and three kids.
Nathan barely knew his father until his parents’ marriage shattered in the early 1990s. He and his older brother and sister moved in with their dad in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where they witnessed a monumental shift in his personality. Jim seemed to relish his new role as single dad, joyfully making up for lost time with them.
Years later, Nathan often reminisced about his childhood days with his dad. He remembered lying in bed as Jim settled onto the floor next to him, adjusting a pillow behind his back to read the woodsy sketches of humorist Patrick F. McManus. Jim would clear his throat with comic flair, animating McManus’ comic characters with a wide range of voices. The nighttime readings often left them laughing so hard that Nathan had to grab his gut as the old man fought to get the next sentence out.
The bedtime stories would end a few years later, when the rubric of their father-son narrative would divide into the time before Jim’s arrest in 1996 and everything that followed. But Nathan would never let go of the dad he remembered in his youth, as Jim turned from U.S. intelligence officer to convicted spy, and eventually a federal prisoner.
Nathan gestured toward a bank of vending machines, which sat on the other side of a red stripe on the floor. Inmates were forbidden from crossing the line.
“Hey, Pa, you want anything?”
Jim ordered his usual, and Nathan trooped off with a handful of bills. He returned from a microwave moments later with two jalapeño cheeseburgers in steaming plastic bags and a pair of ice-cold Coca-Colas. He set their meal on the tray between them. Jim tore open a packet of taco sauce and got right down to business. He wanted to review Nathan’s travel plans, and make sure he was completely prepared for his trip to Cyprus. He needed every detail. Departure times. Layovers. Arrivals.
Nathan walked his dad through every leg, sounding like a determined Army clerk briefing the base commander. On Monday he would fly out of Portland to New York’s JFK International Airport, connecting in Istanbul for a Turkish Airlines hop across the Mediterranean Sea to Ercan International Airport, on the island of Cyprus. As Jim had instructed, Nathan had reserved his airline tickets with a credit card, but paid for them with $1,584.41 in cash to avoid a paper trail. Jim had told him to find a high-class hotel, which would be safer, and Nathan had used his Visa Citi Platinum card to book a room at the Cyprus Hilton, the best hotel in the capital city of Nicosia. He would pay that tab in cash, too, and ask the desk clerk to delete records of his credit card. Nathan had tucked an extra $294 into his Delta ticket papers for spending money on the six-day trip.
Jim nodded approvingly. He explained to Nathan that the Ercan airport sits in northeastern Cyprus, the Turkish side, which meant he would pass through an armed checkpoint at the Green Line on the taxi ride to his hotel on the Greek side of the capital city. He gave his son a primer on the long conflict between the Greeks and Turks, how Nicosia remained the world’s last divided city. Jim leaned closer, asking Nathan in a near whisper to walk him through his cover story.
Nathan quietly explained that if he was stopped by the feds, by anyone, he would say he had flown to Cyprus to meet Army buddies and tour a few castles.
Jim told him that when he checked into the Hilton, he should ask a desk clerk if any of his buddies—phantoms though they were—had left a message for him. He told his son to stop by the desk daily to ask about his friends, solidifying his cover. Jim reminded Nathan that throughout his stay in Nicosia, he needed to remain keenly alert for tails. It was crucial that he not be followed into his meeting with the Russian. The Mediterranean city has long been a hot spot for spies and counterspies, and Jim knew the FBI kept watch on the Russian Embassy. Nicosia had served as a key locale for Cold War spying between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, partly because of its nexus to Europe, Asia, and the turbulent Middle East. Spies on both sides liked tours there. The sandy beaches at nearby Larnaca were heavenly.
The key thing to pack, he said, was th
e letter Jim had mailed him that summer; it was intended for the Russian. Jim also reminded him to carry the address for his fiancée, Kanokwan Lehliem, who had served as his interpreter—and a great deal more—during a bloody 1980s border war in which Cambodian refugees spilled in waves into her native Thailand. Kanokwan had pledged to wait for Jim until he got out of prison, and he wanted Nathan to wire her some money from Cyprus.
Nathan listened obediently as the old man laid out his to-do list, but he was way ahead of him. Stuck to the fridge in his apartment was a yellow Post-it with a long checklist of things to pack, including all the items Jim reminded him to bring. The first item on Nathan’s list, however, was the Holy Bible his dad bought him for his eighteenth birthday. He carried it for inspiration.
With Christmas approaching, Jim urged Nathan to use some of the money the Russian would pay him to buy gifts. He wanted Nathan to wrap two presents with his name on them for his oldest children—a Wii game system for Jeremi, who was serving in the Air Force in Florida, and a bottle of Armani Code perfume for Star, who lived forty miles east of the prison, in Beaverton, Oregon.
Just then, Star walked into the visiting room.
Nathan and his dad shot to their feet, breaking off all talk of Nathan’s trip. They had agreed not to tell anyone about their contact with the Russians, deciding early on that Nathan—and Nathan alone—would serve as Jim’s courier. Jim told his youngest son that the Russians were paying him out of fealty for his past service, and that Nathan’s primary role was to deliver financial succor to his brother and sister, both buried under mountains of debt, and to make payments on his own car and credit card. Nathan had plunged into Jim’s scheme with no misgivings. He trusted his father, who rewarded his loyalty with praise. In a letter that summer, Jim applauded Nathan’s brave step into what he called the “unseen world,” one that he described as sometimes dangerous, always fascinating.
“God leads us on our greatest adventures,” Jim wrote. “Keep looking through your new eyes.”
On the morning of December 8, 2008, a Monday, Nathan stood in baggage screening at Portland International Airport, arms straight out, wearing the timeless look of the defeated traveler. A beefy Transportation Security Administration officer with a shaved head patted him down, having seen an “SSSS” notation on the young man’s boarding pass. The acronym stood for Secondary Security Screening Selection. When the TSA officer was finished, he began pawing through Nathan’s backpack and passed him over to the manager.
This wasn’t Nathan’s first trip through secondary, and he was beginning to think he’d been flagged because he was Jim’s son, and that maybe his luck was running out.
Officer Donald Headrick, who managed the TSA’s behavioral detection team, was middle-aged with a broad face, thinning hair, and glasses. Headrick sat Nathan down to quiz him about his travels. Where are you heading today? What’s the purpose of your visit? Are you meeting anyone?
Jim had coached Nathan on how to handle situations like these. He labored to keep his breathing even and reminded himself that the guy in the royal blue TSA uniform with the gold badge was human, too. He looked Headrick in the eyes and regaled him with a spectacular run of lies about heading to Cyprus to meet battle buddies and tour castles he’d read about. Nathan was lying for a living now, just like the old man. He used all the charm he possessed to sell his story to the TSA manager, trying to sound excited about his trip. But much as he tried, Nathan couldn’t get a good read from his inquisitor’s face.
His head swam with doubt. Was someone onto him? On the way back from his last meeting with the Russian in Peru, Customs officials in Houston put him through a half-hour search and disappeared into an office with his blue notebook and other gear. Recently, his Chevy Cavalier had begun to make unusual beep tones when he keyed the remote, an indication someone had bumped into or entered the car. A few times recently, he had returned to his one-bedroom apartment to find it marinating in the smell of human body odor, and not just any B.O., but the B.O. of someone having a really bad day. Then, just the previous Saturday, a clean-cut guy, midforties with a little paunch, had glommed onto him at the prison as they made the long trek through the metal detectors and heavy doors to the visiting room. The guy had planted himself in a row of seats in front of them, his back to Nathan and Jim, and seemed to be listening in on their their conversation.
Headrick thumbed through Nathan’s wallet, asking how much money he was carrying. Then he rummaged through his bag.
Nathan figured maybe it all ended here. But suddenly, Headrick was handing him his wallet.
“Enjoy your trip,” he said. “Have a nice flight.”
For sheer whimsy, you had to give it to the Russian. He summoned Nathan ten time zones from home, to Nicosia, a city known for its old-world cuisine, just to rendezvous in front of a T.G.I. Friday’s. Nathan stood on a wide sidewalk at 12 Diagorou Street as darkness fell over a palm-flecked shopping district choked with Greek nightclubs and restaurants. Towering streetlamps bathed him in light as he fidgeted in front of the Texas-based chain restaurant’s familiar red-and-white awnings. He looked for all the world like any other hayseed American tourist, another cultureless Yank who had stumbled into the exotic crossroads of Europe and the Middle East only to forgo the local fare and feast on Jack Daniel’s pork chops, New York Cheesecake, and six-dollar Budweisers.
He wore jeans, sneakers, and a camel-colored baseball cap. The Russian had presented him with the hat at their last meeting, instructing Nathan to wear it outside the restaurant while grasping his backpack in his right hand. He completed the tourist getup with a map of Nicosia, which he snatched from the Hilton’s front desk on his way out. When Nathan left the hotel for his appointment, he had launched himself down Archbishop Makarios III Avenue, named after the first president of the Republic of Cyprus, toward the T.G.I. Friday’s. He hiked down side streets to avoid being tailed, and he doubled back a few times, pausing at shop windows to check their reflections, making sure he wasn’t being followed.
Nathan’s walk took such a circuitous route that he blundered off course and got lost. But being the earnest sort, he had left the Hilton so early on the evening of December 10, 2008, that he still arrived an hour early for his meeting with the Russian. He stood on that wide sidewalk trying to look casual as the sun went down on a cool evening two weeks before Christmas. The moon, almost full, shone brightly in the clear island sky.
Jim had told his son that his meetings with the Russian were potentially dangerous. “Risky,” he had said, “but not illegal.” But Nathan now suspected that couldn’t possibly be true. The evidence, he knew, would show he had smuggled his dad’s notes out of the prison, then carried them to first-name-only Russians in diplomatic stations in San Francisco, Mexico City, and Lima. They had paid for the information with bagfuls of hundred-dollar bills. Both his dad and the Russian had repeatedly cautioned him to keep an eye out for surveillance, and the old man had taught him basic spy skills to avoid detection. It was abundantly clear to Nathan that he and his dad were no longer just father and son, but co-conspirators tempting fate each time he met the Russian.
At precisely 7 p.m., Nathan caught a glimpse of a short, gray-haired man walking toward the restaurant. He forced himself to look away until he heard the Russian’s unmistakably precise English, words that came almost in a whisper.
“Do you know the way to the federal post office?”
Nathan turned and looked at him as if they had never met. His handler stood at five-foot-six, a couple of inches shorter than he, with white hair, dark gray eyes, and a thick neck. Nathan was supposed to speak his end of the recognition dialogue, an exchange Russian spies call a parol. But it felt pointless to him. They had now met on three continents, spent hours talking in soundproof rooms. They were, by anyone’s measure, acquainted. But Nathan wouldn’t disappoint him.
“It should be around here somewhere,” he said, lifting the prop in his
hand: the map of Nicosia. “Let me show you the way.”
Before Nathan could finish the line, the Russian was tugging at his sleeve to move them along. They strode in silence past the Epi Topou Café, toward the sprawling Megaland computer game store, and turned left down a poorly lit side street, where a dark European sedan hugged the curb.
The Russian leaned close.
“Don’t say anything in the car,” he said.
The Russian opened one of the sedan’s rear doors and instructed Nathan to curl himself into the well behind the front seat. Nathan felt the car lurch into gear and pull away. The Russian and his driver chatted in their mother tongue over the drone of the engine. It sounded like a serious conversation.
Nathan’s dad and his Army instructors had drilled him on situational awareness, the art of evaluating landscapes and keeping track of time to protect himself and complete his objective. Nathan’s immediate objective was to know where in the hell they were taking him. But he was clueless, scrooching in the back with no way of identifying streets or landmarks. They drove along lighted thoroughfares and dark ones, making turn after turn, sometimes rumbling across stone streets. They seemed to be traveling in a wide arc, but the car eventually paused at a tall gate before passing through and into a garage.
Nathan climbed out of the sedan and stood. He knew not to talk until they were alone. They climbed a narrow staircase to a circular landing lit by a sparkling chandelier. The Russian guided Nathan into a tiny office with sofas flanking a coffee table. Nathan took a seat, his back to the heavy door, as the Russian rustled up refreshments. After a moment, the older man presented him with a plastic bottle of Coca-Cola. In all their meetings, the Russian had offered him coffee first and had always seemed humored when Nathan asked for Coke. Ordinarily, he began their meetings by asking how Nathan’s father and the rest of his family were doing. But tonight he had something else on his mind.