by Bryan Denson
“OK, uh-huh,” Jim said. “Excellent.”
The old man’s tone was flat. His voice betrayed no excitement.
Nathan said, “Even thinking about making a trip over to Mexico, come December.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, so business is picking up, huh?”
“Yeah, sure is.”
Jim said he was glad to hear that, and deftly switched subjects. He wanted to know how he and the Cavalier were holding up.
“Did you get any sleep at all?”
“Yeah,” Nathan said, “I actually just pulled over not too long ago to take a quick half-hour nap.”
Nathan neglected to mention that Jesse was now behind the wheel.
Jim asked Nathan if he would buy an MP3 player, load it with some tunes from Enya and other music, and ship it to Kanokwan for Christmas. Nathan said he’d do it, and they talked about eventually moving some money into Jim’s prison trust account and perhaps giving some of Nathan’s “insurance commission” to Nick and Betty for safekeeping.
“Well, I’m just so, so pleased that everything’s going well for you,” Jim said.
“Oh yeah,” Nathan said, casually slipping in a reference to the source of the money back at the Russian Consulate: “They were just real, real nice.”
“Wonderful,” Jim said. “Wonderful.”
They ended their call, and Nathan continued northward into Oregon.
Jim called back a few hours later, as Nathan’s little Cavalier climbed steep, winding passes. He told Nathan he was concerned he might have gotten caught in one of Oregon’s infamous inland fogs, which had left the valley socked in. But Nathan told him it was clear sailing. Then Jim got down to the real point of his call.
“How much money were you planning to give to Grandpa?”
Nathan said he expected to drop off $550.
Jim worried that might make his son a little tight, a wink to the cost of airfare and expenses on his forthcoming trip to Mexico City. But Nathan assured him he’d be fine, and told Jim to call after church the following day.
Nathan’s trips to Sheridan took on new urgency. With a little more than a month before his rendezvous in Mexico City, he found himself dashing to the prison early on his Saturday morning visits. On one trip, he rolled up his sleeve to reveal questions penned on his left forearm. He read the questions to his dad, who memorized them in his seat.
Jim whispered to his son to go to the bathroom and scrub the notes off his arm.
Inside the restroom, washing ink from his arm, Nathan considered the questions the Russians were asking his dad. They looked innocuous to him, a little bit of Monday-morning quarterbacking to learn how his father had screwed up all those years ago. He didn’t understand why Russia would be so concerned about the old man’s answers. It seemed to him that the answers were available in court records and news articles. But he was wrong.
The Russians were on a mole hunt to determine which of its spies or former spies had helped point the way toward Jim back in the 1990s. During a seven-year stretch, Moscow had lost several of its U.S. assets—including Jim, Ames, Pitts, and the hugely destructive Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent who was rolled up by his colleagues in 2001. This indicated that one or more of Russia’s own intelligence officers had betrayed the motherland on behalf of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. Finding the Russian turncoat who triggered Jim’s capture might tell them whether they still had a problem.
Jim would have known instinctively what the SVR sought, and why. But he kept Nathan in the dark.
“I think I know what they want,” Jim had told him.
Nathan never thought to ask what he meant.
Jim’s original plan was to craft his responses to the Russians on notebook paper. He could buy a legal pad for $1.20 or a composition book for $2.10 at the prison commissary. A two-pack of Bic Cristal pens was eighty-five cents. Jim’s idea was to fold his notes into crisp squares and hide them in his prison khakis. Then, when it appeared no one was looking, he would once again slip them under the trash that piled up on the snack tray, and his son would quietly palm them into his pocket, hoping the corrections officers wouldn’t take notice.
Nathan, getting into the spirit of the father-son spy collaboration, devised a better plan. A thick red line on the floor of the visiting room marked an out-of-bounds zone for prisoners. On the other side of the line sat two rows of vending machines. Nathan’s routine was to cross the line with a handful of crisp bills to buy chips, candy, soft drinks, and other food. He nearly always returned with the old man’s favorites—a jalapeño cheeseburger, a Coca-Cola, and a package of Twix, Kit Kat, or Snickers—and some snacks for himself. Nathan always carried a stack of tan napkins from a nearby dispenser, setting the food on a tray between them as they visited.
Nathan’s new idea was to get Jim to keep a cache of the napkins in his cell. There he would write notes to the Russians on the napkins, then carry them into the visiting room folded in a pocket of his khakis. While they were chatting, Jim would slip a napkin out and drop it on the tray table between them, where it would be camouflaged by other trash. Nathan would pick up the napkin and pretend to blow his nose with it, then pocket the used paper. Or he would carry the wadded napkins to the garbage can and slide his dad’s note into his pocket. Then he would retreat to a bathroom stall, pull off a sneaker and sock, and hide the note under his arch. That way, if prison staffers forced him to remove his shoes on the way out, there would be no telltale bulge in his sock.
Jim was impressed with Nathan’s smuggling plan, which came with a bonus. If he thought corrections officers were going to flip his cell for contraband, or had somehow figured out that he was communicating with the Russians, he could flush his notes down the toilet. In a pinch, he could even swallow them, literally eating his own words.
He passed Nathan the first round of responses to the Russians on November 4, sliding a folded napkin under the trash. During another visit, December 9, while Jim and Star caught up, Nathan trundled off to the vending machines and brought back sandwiches for himself and his sister, a hot pastrami for Jim wrapped in white paper, and drinks for everyone. After they finished eating, Jim put his arm around Star and quietly palmed a note under the trash.
Nathan began to hide his dad’s messages beneath the green felt lining of a wooden box on his nightstand.
Jim phoned Nathan that night and caught his boy heading over to his cousin Dustin’s to hang out. Jim made small talk about Nathan’s long days without rest. But he’d called with an agenda.
“I just want to let you know,” Jim said. “That letter that I sent you? If you want to share that with your friends, that’s OK. You know what I’m saying? You know what I mean?”
“Oh yeah,” Nathan said. “OK.”
“All right, all right. That’s great. Well, listen, you just have a great evening tonight, OK?”
“OK, Pa.”
The following Monday, Nathan pulled into the parking lot of Springfield’s Continental Bank Building, which sat in one of those distinctly American vortexes of concrete, macadam, and glass where you can test the power of the dollar at Target, Sears, Ross Dress for Less, a couple of multiscreen movie houses, banks, insurers, dentists, doctors, and, should you find yourself in need, an STD test. Nathan strode across the institutional carpet of Premier Travel & Cruise, where he plunked down $803.84 in cash for a round-trip ticket to Mexico City. He drove home and packed a PlayStation Portable game console, an iPod, and his Bible into a black-and-gray Alpine backpack.
Before Nathan flew out the next morning, Jim phoned. He was calling to make sure his boy had gotten some sleep before the big trip and that he had wired some money to Kanokwan.
“Hey,” Jim said, “did you get that note off to Kanokwan for me?”
“Sure did. And she said that she received it, and that she feels reall
y bad and that you shouldn’t send any more.”
“Oh really?” Jim laughed.
“Yeah. But she said she appreciates it very much.”
Jim wound the conversation down by telling Nathan he loved him.
“Love you, too, Pa, and everything’s all set.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Everything’s all set.”
“Good. Did you read that psalm that I mentioned?”
Nathan had read the passage, five lines from the Psalm of David. They offered comfort for the journey in front of him: “Blessed is he who considers the poor; The Lord will deliver him in time of trouble. The Lord will preserve him and keep him alive, And he will be blessed on earth; You will not deliver him to the will of his enemies.”
Jim told his son to have a good week and that he was praying for him every day. He pointed out that his next big adventure at the prison would be performing as a singing elf at a children’s Christmas party. He and his boy busted a gut.
“Well,” Nathan said, trying to imagine the old man dressed as an elf, “have fun with that.”
Sometimes during these conversations, he felt a lot like the old Nathan, the little-boy version nestled in a Virginia bed, his dad seated on his bedroom floor, a Patrick F. McManus book open, fighting through tears of laughter to get out the next line.
12
A Spy Named “George”
“But one thing was for certain: Something would happen next. Something always did. Especially when you live the life of a spy.”
—Maya Bode, Tess Embers
Mexico City, December 2006
The Russians picked the perfect time to bring the young man from Oregon to the city of seventeen million people. Inviting the son of a notorious American spy to an embassy closely watched by U.S. agents was risky; bringing him in for the holidays, with the city’s hotels packed, its broad boulevards teeming with taxis, was genius.
Millions of people were pouring into Mexico City from around the world on December 12 for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the four-week run of festivities to follow: the Posadas, Christmas, the Day of the Innocents (Mexico’s version of April Fools’), and Three Kings Day. Roman Catholic priests would gather at the Basilica de Guadalupe, on a hillside in the northern end of the city, to bless children in honor of the Virgin Mary. The city was alive with tourists.
Catholics had made the pilgrimage there since 1531, when according to legend an apparition of Mary appeared before an Aztec peasant named Juan Diego. The blessed virgin told him to build a church in her honor. Diego carried news of his encounter to the local bishop, who sent him back to the hill for proof. There Diego found Mary, who told him to pick roses from a frigid hillside normally covered in cacti. Diego found a pristine bloom of roses and bundled them into his cloak. When he opened it to show the bishop the flowers, they had vanished. All that was left was the image of Mary pressed into its cactus fibers. The bishop had seen his miracle, and he ordered the basilica built at the site of Juan Diego’s encounter.
Nathan’s flight touched down at Benito Juárez International Airport on the evening of the Guadalupe feast. He climbed into a taxi and asked the driver to take him to an inexpensive hotel near the Russian Embassy. The ride was an adrenaline-packed excursion as cabs and cars honked and careened within inches of one another, brave pedestrians—even little old ladies—willing themselves unhurried through the blur of traffic. They motored along the Circuito, the wide freeway that circles the city’s inner neighborhoods, and pulled up to a small hotel on a busy street near the Bosque de Chapultepec, an urban park twice the size of New York’s Central Park. Nathan’s room was shabby, with a tiny box of a TV and a big latch on the door. It was the best he could do. He had given much of the $5,000 from Gorbunov to Star and Jeremi, telling them that it came from their grandparents’ suddenly-booming craft sales, a ruse devised by his dad.
He woke on the morning of December 13, scarfed down the free breakfast buffet, and caught a taxi to the gates of the Russian Embassy compound. Nathan paid his fare near the corner of Maestro José Vasconcelos and Chicontepec and stepped out in tourist attire: jeans, sneakers, and a blue skull cap and dark blue nylon jacket, both reversible. He stood for a moment peering at the massive white embassy that rose from behind a tall wrought-iron fence. The building had once been a rancho out in the boonies. But Mexico City grew up around the property, now flanked by one of the many freeways that helped turn it into one of the smoggiest cities on Earth.
Nathan felt a nagging sense of foreboding. He knew the Russians were his friends, as Jim kept telling him. But the embassy grounds on the other side of the fence were Russian soil, his new contact inside a mystery. Jim had not mentioned to his son that the FBI and CIA kept eyes on the embassy, which had served as a diplomatic Dodge City for generations of walk-in American spies. Nathan found uniformed guards standing near a brass plaque at the main gate. They held a practiced gaze of nonchalance.
“I’m here to see the chief of security,” he said.
The guards pointed him down a side street to a rear entrance of the embassy compound. Nathan thought perhaps they’d been advised to keep an eye out for him. He hiked through a gate and up to an entrance that reminded him of the consulate in San Francisco. At the receptionist’s desk, he explained that he was looking for the security chief.
A short Russian man with gray hair popped out from behind her and opened a door to invite him inside.
“Follow me,” he said in a hushed voice. “Don’t say a word.”
Nathan followed the old man through the guts of the building. The Russian led him into a room that he could see by the thickness of the door now closing behind him was a private vault. Nathan introduced himself and shook the Russian’s hand.
“You can call me George,” the old man said.
The Russian would never betray his true name to Nathan. But he was a master spy, a former KGB general who would turn seventy-one the following month. The Russian had once headed KR Line—kontrazvietka—during a Cold War posting in the Soviet Embassy’s rezidentura in Washington, D.C. There he ran counterintelligence operations and kept tight reins on the comings and goings of his own people to ensure that the FBI didn’t recruit them from under his nose. The SVR had called on the old spymaster to handle Jim Nicholson’s son.
The old man walked directly to a desk and flipped a switch, leaving Nathan to assume he had tripped a recording system. The room’s walls were appointed with paintings, and through a window he observed an eye-popping view, a grassy courtyard flanked by lush palm trees. If the Russian was trying to impress Nathan, it was working.
He motioned for the young American to take a seat on a couch, returning directly with a cup of coffee for himself.
“Can I get you some coffee?”
Nathan had seen enough spy movies to be leery of open beverages. He didn’t think the Russian would drug him, but he wasn’t betting his life on it. On his way in, he had spied bottles of Coca-Cola chilling on ice.
“Coke, if you have it,” he said.
The Russian’s bushy white eyebrows knit together in what appeared to be a wince.
“You’re just like your father,” he said with a smile.
The Russian retrieved a bottle of Coca-Cola and handed it to Nathan, who inspected the plastic cap as he unscrewed it. The older man took a seat on the opposite side of the table and sipped his coffee as he posed a series of questions. He wanted to know the name of the hotel where Nathan was staying, the room number, the length of his stay, the cost of his trip, the name of his airline, his flight numbers, and how much money he thought he could legally carry back into the U.S. He also asked Nathan whether he thought he had been tailed.
Nathan said he didn’t think so.
“How is your family?” the Russian asked, his voice calm and reassuring.
Nathan told him they were all doing fine, a
nd the Russian smiled. His friendly demeanor put Nathan at ease, but he kept things businesslike as he recounted the debts and financial troubles confronting Star, Jeremi, and himself. He explained that his mom was remarried, but living on a tight budget, and he said his dad appreciated Russia’s help and was happy to return the favor any way he could.
This was precisely why the old KGB man was there. Spies of his stature would never be called in to service a low-level agent such as Nathan. It was Jim Nicholson’s answers he needed, and, for now, Nathan served as little more than Jim’s courier and asset. The Russian handed Nathan a piece of blank paper and asked him to diagram the interior of the prison visiting room. Nathan took the paper and sketched a slightly more detailed diagram than the one he had prepared for Gorbunov in San Francisco. He handed it across the coffee table to the Russian.
The old man looked it over and posed questions about the prison’s security. He was concerned that Nathan or Jim would be caught smuggling notes. Then, out of the blue, the Russian said something that made no sense to Nathan.
“Let your father know his letters were received,” the Russian said.
Nathan reached into his backpack and retrieved a pocket-size composition notebook with a blue marbled cover. He jotted down George’s message.
“Do you have anything for me?” the Russian asked.
Nathan handed the Russian a pair of tan napkins. The old man unfolded them carefully and studied Jim’s words. One of Jim’s pleas was for the Russians to escort Nathan back to his hotel after their meeting. Jim clearly was concerned with Nathan’s safety, and he knew the Russians could easily sneak him out of the embassy so that he wasn’t spotted by the U.S. government snoops who watched the place.
When George finished reading, he began to pose questions to Nathan, all of which were intended for his dad. He wanted to know Jim’s thoughts on how he’d fallen under suspicion in Malaysia in the 1990s. He also wanted to know if Jim believed someone in that region had provided details that put him under investigation by the FBI.