The Spy's Son

by Bryan Denson

  It was a little before Valentine’s Day when Jim called. Laurie had no idea how he got her number. She learned he was a twenty-two-year-old senior on a four-year ROTC scholarship. She was curious enough to say yes to a date. What she didn’t learn until later was that Jim had made a bet with a roommate that he could get her to go out with him.

  Laurie, who had never been outside the U.S., was smitten from the start. Jim stood a foot taller than she, dark-haired and handsome. He had traveled the world, growing up on Air Force bases as far away as Japan. Jim was as charming and gregarious as Laurie was shy and circumspect.

  He proposed less than a week later.

  That spring, Jim graduated third in his ROTC class at Oregon State, fulfilling a lifelong dream to earn his commission as a second lieutenant in the Army. He had shaped himself into a low-keyed leader, commanding a unit called the Raiders. His four-year ride in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps coincided with some of the bloodiest fighting of the Vietnam War.

  Combat troops had pulled out of South Vietnam three months earlier, returning to a largely ungrateful nation. Meanwhile, Washington and Moscow had closed out the first quarter-century of a nuclear and geopolitical standoff that posed grave consequences for the planet. Amid this chaos, Jim charted his future.

  He married Laurie on June 10, 1973, in Eugene. Laurie wore a white floor-length wedding dress with a cathedral veil made of tulle. Jim wore his Army dress uniform with a bow tie. The newlyweds walked under an arch of dress swords. But the wedding marked only the beginning of Jim’s dead run into adulthood. He had already taken Army Ranger training in the ROTC and, with no war left to fight, he would plunge himself into military intelligence to help defeat communism.

  Jim was a child of the Cold War. He was born in Woodburn, Oregon, on November 17, 1950, the day after President Harry S. Truman declared an emergency crisis caused by the threat of communism. Jim’s mother, Beatrice Marie “Betty” Adamson, had married Jim’s father, Harold James Mesick Jr., in 1949, while she worked as an Army cryptographer. But Betty’s marriage to Mesick, an Air Force sergeant, never took. Mesick showed little love for her and never bonded with Jim. He was sent to Okinawa, Japan, to serve as a gunner on combat missions in the Korean War. When later he walked away from his family, Betty didn’t object. She remained married to Mesick in name only until 1956, when they formally divorced. Betty got full custody of Jim, who hadn’t laid eyes on his namesake since he was an infant.

  Betty became a single working mom at a time when such circumstances surely fed the small town’s scandal-hungry gossips. She opened Elite Beauty Salon and remodeled her life. Her parents looked after Jim while she worked. They were Presbyterians who had fled North Dakota in the early 1930s, victims of drought, swarms of crop-killing grasshoppers, and black blizzards of dust that finished off what the Wall Street Crash of 1929 had commenced.

  After Betty had been juggling work and motherhood for a year, her sister introduced her to an airman living at an air base in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Marvin “Nick” Nicholson was nearly five years younger and a few inches shorter than Betty. They fell in love during a historic autumn in American history. John Wayne and Sophia Loren lit up movie screens in Legend of the Lost, Elvis Presley’s song “Jailhouse Rock” hit number one on radio charts, and Cold War tensions between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. literally soared when the Soviets launched the world’s first artificial satellite. The technology that powered a twenty-three-inch sphere called Sputnik 1 into outer space was also capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the continental U.S.

  Jim served as ring bearer at his mother’s wedding on March 22, 1958, in the Presbyterian Church in Woodburn. Betty sold her beauty shop and they moved to Klamath Falls, where she enrolled Jim in second grade. Jim balked when he learned the school roster listed him as Harold James Mesick. He thought he’d already become a Nicholson. “Mom,” she recalls him complaining, “we got married.” Nick put the matter to rest by formally adopting Jim. The couple would eventually give Jim siblings, sister Tammie and brother Robert.

  Air Force bases and other military installations would serve as Jim’s backyard playgrounds for the next dozen years. He made the awkward turn into his teens at Edwards Air Force Base on the western edge of California’s Mojave Desert. In January 1965, Jim met Len Beystrum in an eighth-grade history class, and the two would become lifelong friends. They were inseparable for about three years at Edwards, hiking into the desert to dig forts, riding bikes, swimming in the base pool, and playing board games. Jim later played football with the Desert High Scorpions. Like most of the Edwards kids, he was steeped in patriotism. He stood at attention when the base intercom played “Taps” each evening.

  It was a scary time for Americans. Cities handed out nuclear evacuation pamphlets, homeowners built bomb shelters, and schoolkids were forced into duck-and-cover drills as alarms blared. But parents at Edwards had little truck in fear. Nick Nicholson and other airmen were already doing their part to ensure the U.S. stayed on top of the Soviet Union. Nick spent his days as an aircraft technician maintaining the Air Force’s SR-71 Blackbird spy planes, which hurtled at supersonic speeds to collect intelligence on communist adversaries.

  It was likely that Nick’s work and Betty’s talk of code breaking ignited Jim’s passion for spying. While other boys stuck their noses in Mad magazine, Jim pored through library books on intelligence operations. He idolized James Bond, played on the big screen by Sean Connery. The early 007 dressed sharp, piloted an Aston Martin with twin machine guns, and burned women down with charm and dry martinis. Spies were the new heroes of Cold War culture in America. Napoleon Solo in The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Kelly Robinson in I Spy, and Maxwell Smart in the spy-spoofing Get Smart thwarted countless communist villains.

  The notion of spying for one’s country as an act of patriotism took such deep root in Jim that by the time he and his young bride set off to chase his military intelligence career, he was already dreaming of missions in foreign ports of call. Laurie, who had just completed her first year at Oregon State, quit school to help Jim follow his ambitions. They spent the first few years of their marriage at Army bases in Georgia and Kentucky, humid hellholes where Jim took airborne training and Laurie got up every morning to make sure the seams of his shirt, belt buckle, and trousers were aligned. Jim’s big move came in 1975, when he was shipped off to Fort Devens, in Ayer, Massachusetts, where he studied cryptology, the art of code breaking. Jim’s superiors, clearly impressed with the young officer, later assigned him to the Army Security Agency field station in Okinawa, Japan.

  Jim knew Okinawa well. He and his mother had moved there temporarily in September 1959 to join Nick, who was stationed in Sobe, at the edge of the East China Sea. The Nicholsons took residence in an un-air-conditioned concrete-block house with grass rugs, bamboo furniture, and mosquito netting. Jim slept on an Army cot, his life a perpetual camping trip. He and his chums spent their days exploring the island, a wild, tropical place crawling with venom-packed snakes and spiders as big as your fist. Ghosts of World War II haunted the place, where U.S. Marines fought for eighty-two days to establish military bases. Jim and his buddies ran across live ordnance, and once, while exploring a cave, stumbled over a skeleton with a rifle and helmet.

  Jim’s adult years on Okinawa were a steady climb in his intelligence career. The Army Security Agency was responsible for securing military communications and running electronic countermeasures. Jim advanced to first lieutenant, then captain, and won commendations. He also attended school at night, earning a master’s degree in counseling from the University of Maryland’s University College program in Asia. He later volunteered as a counselor for military personnel and their families.

  Laurie resented Jim’s focus on his career, which turned her into an officer’s wife. She was tired of attending military parties, where she felt ignored. Tired of turning down job offers to chase Jim’s career. Tired of serving as Jim’s chef, hous
ekeeper, and doormat. It galled her that he had earned his master’s before she’d gotten a bachelor’s. She took classes in Japanese, sociology, and oceanography. But when she asked Jim if she could return to college full time, he told her that was just an excuse to divorce him.

  Jim and Laurie also began to suspect each other of cheating. Jim thought she was sleeping around on him, and she was convinced he had bedded an enlisted woman. Before things could spin out of control, Jim’s tour of duty on Okinawa came to a close. The Army relocated him to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, home to the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and Strategic Communications Command, a good post for an up-and-coming intelligence officer. It was there, in the middle of 1978, that Laurie gave birth to their first child, Jeremiah, whom they named after the biblical prophet. Laurie picked their son’s middle name, Dei, the Latin word for God. They called him Jeremi.

  The Army presented Jim an array of intelligence-gathering disciplines, from satellite surveillance to human-to-human spying, known as HUMINT. Laurie recalled years later that Jim had no interest in the field of human intelligence, which is where his talents lay.

  The peacetime Army and its lousy pay left Jim at a crossroads. During his next posting, at Fort Ord, near Monterey Bay, California, he made a bold move to leave the only career he knew. He plunked down $500 for some proper business plumage, choosing a three-piece pinstripe suit tailored with medium-weight wool. Laurie sent him off to a job fair looking deadly handsome. Jim mailed résumés to potential employers, including Alcoa, Frito-Lay, and the CIA, and left the Army on August 13, 1979.

  Jim thrilled at the notion the CIA might call him for an interview. But he leaped at his first job offer, uprooting Laurie and Jeremi and moving them to a rental home outside Kansas City, Missouri. Jim went to work making decorative candles and votives for Hallmark Cards. Laurie recalled that Hallmark, impressed with Jim’s work, wanted to send him to Hong Kong as a production manager for its injection-mold operation. But the Nicholsons stayed put as Jim prayed the CIA would call. They bought a house in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, where Jim joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and grew a beard. When Jim told his parents he’d become a Mormon, his mom, who raised him Presbyterian, wasn’t pleased.

  “It’s up to you,” said Betty. “But you’ll never convince me I’m a second-class citizen.”

  “We don’t believe that,” Jim told her.

  Betty didn’t buy it, but she let it rest.

  Jim’s CIA application stalled, although he was precisely what the agency wanted. He was smart, charming, and possessed a good mix of creative problem-solving skills and executive functioning; his military intelligence background was a bonus. He read up on world affairs, Laurie recalled, and practiced naming the world’s top political leaders. But Jim was the victim of poor timing.

  The CIA had spent the last few years curbing clandestine operations and drawing down its roster of on-the-ground spies. Stansfield Turner, the CIA’s director, believed that the future of global intelligence gathering was in electronic surveillance. “We only need spies,” Turner famously observed, “where satellites can’t go.” Turner slashed more than eight hundred jobs from the payroll, a two-year bloodletting commenced in the autumn of 1979 that came to be known as the Halloween Massacre. His Cold War strategy was to expand the machinery of intelligence gathering, especially signals intelligence, to identify nuclear missile silos and intercept radio transmissions behind the Iron Curtain. But the Soviets’ war in Afghanistan and their backing of communists in Nicaragua soon changed Turner’s thinking.

  In the waning months of Jimmy Carter’s presidency in 1980, the CIA commenced a hiring blitz to cover its Cold War action in the Middle East and Central America. The agency funded Afghanistan’s Islamic mujahideen in their war against the Soviet Union, and they provided support to Nic­araguan rebels in their efforts to overthrow the Soviet-backed Sandinista government in Managua. In early 1980, the CIA flew Jim and many other prospective operations officers eastward for interviews.

  Laurie picked Jim up at the Kansas City Airport when he returned from his interview. They made small talk on the way home in their Jeep CJ-7 Renegade. Inside the little orange car, Jim would not talk about how things went. Only at the house, behind closed doors, did Jim confide that he’d accepted a job with the CIA. Laurie recalled that he was practically bouncing off the walls, a life’s dream come true. Jim explained that she could be a stay-at-home mom or join him, under contract, to support his spy work as part of a husband-wife team. But with a baby in the house, Laurie didn’t feel comfortable taking a part-time job with the agency. She would consider it later.

  The Nicholsons packed Jeremi and the family’s Australian shepherd, Morning Dew, into the Jeep and drove to northern Virginia, eventually settling into a drafty frame rental house in Alexandria. Jim entered duty with the CIA on October 20, 1980. Fifteen days later, voters sent Ronald Reagan to the White House—good news for Jim’s new employer. The Reagan administration reinvigorated the CIA with enough funding to combat the Soviets at every front in the global spy war. The agency dispatched Jim and hundreds of other men and women to The Farm, 150 miles south of their home, for basic training as spies.

  Laurie discovered the loneliness of the long-distance CIA relationship during Jim’s ten months at The Farm. As Jim learned how to make disguises, detect surveillance, and recruit foreign assets, Laurie learned how to keep house with a potty-training toddler. As Jim took the agency’s paramilitary course, parachuting out of planes, firing machine guns, and rigging handmade explosives, Laurie scrubbed toilets and paid the bills. When her husband came home for short weekends, he couldn’t talk about his training. Jim was obsessively secretive about his work, maintaining his cover as a Department of State diplomat even with his parents. Laurie wearied of the separations, and she sometimes felt like a single mom. The Nicholsons spent enough time together to conceive Star, born in October 1981. But in time, Jim’s constant travel and the secrecy of his work would grind them toward a showdown.

  When Jim’s training at The Farm concluded, the agency sent him home to Alexandria, where he commuted to a language class nearby. He spent his days with several other men in a high-rise in Rosslyn, Virginia, studying Tagalog, the primary language of the Philippines. Jim’s classmates were newly minted diplomats with the U.S. Foreign Service, and it was obvious the government planned to post them in Manila for their first tours abroad. The students drew close, eating together and sharing life stories. But they noticed that Jim grew uncharacteristically quiet when they’d discuss the State Department’s grueling A-100 class, which taught the building blocks of diplomacy. When someone finally asked Jim which class he’d taken, he told them he was in a special program that allowed him to bypass the course and go straight into the political end of the Foreign Service.

  Classmate Tom Reich had never heard of such a thing. Curious, he and another student later checked with someone in the State Department personnel office, who thumbed through a roster of junior officers, found no one by Jim’s name, and declared, “You’ve got a spook in your class.” Jim’s concealment didn’t sit well with Reich. Foreign Service employees were supposed to help CIA officers maintain their cover, and Reich found Jim’s lie off-putting. He knew there was no reason for Jim to keep up the unnecessary charade. It was as if he enjoyed the lie.

  On the last Tuesday in January 1982, Jim took the oath of office, promising to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. He also signed papers acknowledging that he held top-secret security clearance and that disclosing U.S. secrets was a crime that could gravely damage his nation.

  Early that March, as the six-month Tagalog course wound down, Jim invited his classmates and teachers to the two-story rental in Alexandria. Reich watched the dynamic between Laurie and Jim. Laurie was cute and meek as a mouse, and she appeared to live under Jim’s thumb. Jim held court with his guests throughout the evening. Whenever he ask
ed if anyone needed fresh beverages, it was Laurie who jumped up to fetch them. Jim never lifted a finger. Laurie might as well have been the maid.

  Jim did not explain to Laurie how he spent his days and many evenings in Manila. He typically got home after she had read the kids to sleep. Laurie, pregnant with their third, was mostly homebound. Sometimes Jim took Laurie to embassy parties, some of them mandatory. They often found themselves at swanky residential homes in one of Manila’s sixteen cities, Makati, where the men dressed in Barong Tagalogs and sipped tropical cocktails. From time to time, Laurie recalled, they ended up at suit-and-tie affairs where Jim—keeping to his cover as a political officer—made friends with Soviets he considered “developmentals.”

  From time to time, Jim brought potential assets home, phoning Laurie on short notice to say he had extended a dinner invitation. He had told her that recruitment of a KGB officer was rewarded with a full bump in pay grade. She worked hard to make their guests feel at home, rustling up food and cocktails, which were reimbursed by the CIA. One of the couples had children roughly the same age as Jeremi and Star, and Laurie figured the husband was KGB. Jim and the Soviet got along famously and became good friends.

  This cat-and-mouse action played out daily in cities across the globe, one spy working to recruit another spy—or a government official, a business maven, or someone inside the corridors of power and influence. They tried to learn their targets’ vulnerabilities—alcoholism, for instance, or marital infidelities, money problems, gambling addictions, hidden homosexuality, or drifting ideologies. They worked months, sometimes years, to craft a recruitment pitch. Sometimes they resorted to blackmail.

  Once at an outdoor party, Laurie recalled, a Soviet man drew her aside for a pitch of his own. Russian men were famous for their flirtations. But this man’s wife was nearby, visibly pregnant, and he’d clearly been drinking. Soon he made a graceless offer to take her for a ride in his car, just the two of them. Laurie berated him for his boorish move. While he might have been a KGB officer sidling up to Laurie to learn more about Jim, she took it as an unwanted romantic advance and told him, as nicely as she could, to go fuck himself. “I probably blew it for Jim,” she said.