The Spy's Son

by Bryan Denson

  Nathan scribbled furiously.

  The Russian wanted to know if Jim thought anything suspicious had happened between the day he applied for the CIA station chief job in Addis Ababa to the time the agency canceled that assignment. Had Jim felt he was under investigation? And how could U.S. investigators have known about his relationship with his Russian friends at that time?

  George also posed questions about Jim’s debriefing by U.S. investigators: Who debriefed him, and what did they ask him about his relationship with the SVR? Who polygraphed him? The Russian wanted names of the FBI and CIA officials involved, if Jim remembered them.

  To Nathan, the tenor of the questions suggested that the Russians were trying to reconstruct how his dad screwed up. But the Russians were trying to figure out how they had failed Jim. They were looking for their own Judas.

  As their meeting drew to a close, Nathan’s new friend opened an envelope and pulled out a brown grocer’s sack folded into a rectangle. The old man unwrapped the package and shook out $10,000 in U.S. hundred-dollar bills. He didn’t touch a single one of them.

  “Please count the money,” he said.

  Before cutting Nathan loose, the Russian pulled out a calendar book to set up another meeting. He wanted Nathan to appear at the embassy between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. on July 10. If that wasn’t possible, he was to appear on one of the two following days. The Russian told Nathan that if he needed to make emergency contact sooner, he was to appear at the embassy gate, ask for the chief of security, and return in four days for a meeting.

  Nathan reversed his jacket and skull cap so that they were now gray. The Russian walked Nathan to the back entrance and they parted with a firm handshake. There would be no accompanied ride to his hotel. He sent his young asset away on foot.

  “Until next time,” he said.

  Nathan caught a cab to his hotel, keeping an eye out. He was less concerned about the FBI than about being mugged for the ten grand.

  That very day, Jim wrote Nathan a Christmas card, telling him to enjoy the blessings rolling in. He also phoned Star, who was down in the mouth because her little hatchback wouldn’t start. Laurie was fronting her money for the repairs, which would total nearly $600, and Star worried she wouldn’t be able to pay her mom back. Jim told her not to fret; he was working on some things and would send Laurie the money on Sunday. Jeremi, meanwhile, had sent $500 to his mother to cover Star’s auto repairs. When Jim found out, he phoned his oldest to say that his generosity was unnecessary, and that he had personally made arrangements with Nick and Betty to pay Star’s debt.

  Nathan was suddenly confronted with a fat stack of cash and three days in Mexico City. But if Russian intelligence officers were following him—and to be certain of his loyalties, they should have been—young Mr. Nicholson would have bored them silly. He rarely left his fleabag hotel, and never thought about upgrading to a better accommodation. He went nowhere near the all-night mariachis in Plaza Garibaldi, never got stumbling drunk or prowled for prostitutes. Ignacio Garibay, the up-and-coming matador, was fighting that Sunday at Plaza Mexico, the biggest bullring in the world, and there were posters all over town. A lesser man would have paid to change his airline ticket so he could attend the bullfights. But Nathan dodged any such extravagance. In his mind, this was a business trip, and his bankroll belonged to Batman.

  He woke the next morning with a backache and hailed a cab to see if he could find a professional masseuse. The driver, laughing, mashed the accelerator. They soon pulled up to a brothel. “Masaje!” the driver exclaimed. Nathan, laughing at the miscommunication, lacked the Spanish skills to say he wasn’t looking for un final feliz. But refusing to climb out of the cab spoke volumes.

  Nathan thought he might look suspicious returning from Mexico at Christmastime with no presents, so he took a minor detour from his self-imposed austerity. He conscripted his driver for a day of souvenir shopping. Nathan picked up a ceramic dolphin for Star, perfume for his cousin Danielle, and an enormous black sombrero with gleaming gold conchos to plunk on the head of his scrawny cousin Dustin. The cabbie helped Nathan find a good bottle of tequila for his landlord, and Nathan bought his driver an identical bottle for his troubles. He paid twenty bucks to buy himself a Liekens & Braun DVD player, along with a few movies. They swung by a Pizza Hut, where Nathan picked up dinner and took it to his hotel. He paid his driver a hundred bucks, plus a handsome tip, and holed up for the night in his room. America’s greenest spy spent the evening watching a Disney movie, The Incredibles.

  That Sunday, Nathan paid his hotel bill and stuffed stacks of hundreds into his jacket pockets, his backpack, and under the insoles of his sneakers. He was under the $10,000 threshold that would have forced him to sign a U.S. Customs declaration. But he didn’t want to lose all his money if he was robbed. Now literally walking on money, he was flush enough to push funds to Star, Jeremi, and Kanokwan, with thousands left over. All in time for Christmas. He felt like an undercover Santa Claus.

  Sheridan, Oregon, December 2006

  Nathan sat in the prison visiting room trying to contain his excitement. Jim had not called him since he’d returned from Mexico City—he often ran low on phone minutes at the end of the month. Now Nathan spotted his dad cutting across the linoleum floor beaming that thousand-watt smile of his. He climbed to his feet, greeted his dad, and trooped off to the vending machines as Jim waited in the din of the visiting room. The place sounded a little like a high school cafeteria, with peals of laughter and the hum of microwave ovens. Nathan sat down next to him with Cokes and snacks. Jim was dying to know about the trip.

  “It went great,” Nathan said.

  “You’re OK? You’re not hurt in any way.”

  Not in the least, Nathan whispered. “We got ten thousand dollars.”

  Jim smothered his boy in praise, telling him he had handled himself better than many of the CTs he’d taught at The Farm.

  Nathan radiated in the accolades. After years of depression and ruined dreams, he was making his dad proud, bringing money home to the family, and succeeding in a new clandestine career that made him feel a bit like Robin to Jim’s Batman.

  Jim asked his boy to describe the Russian he knew as George. But Nathan’s description rang no bells with him.

  “Did they have any questions for me?”

  Nathan casually unbuttoned a sleeve and rolled up his cuff. He leaned into the old man and began to whisper George’s queries right off his arm. Nathan had penned them on his skin with a ballpoint that morning. As he recited the Russian’s questions, and listened to his dad’s reactions, he could tell the old man and his friends had much unfinished business. Nathan let Jim know he was happy to keep the conversation flowing wherever it took him.

  Jim told his son how to safely store the money he brought home, cautioning him not to deposit more than $500 at a time in his bank account. Plunking down large deposits on top of the paltry ones from his earnings at Pizza Hut and Bankers Life and Casualty might raise suspicions, he said. So over the next several months, Nathan stashed money in his Washington Mutual Bank account, twenty-nine deposits of $100 each. Nathan kept most of the cash at his home, but delivered a grand each to Star and Jeremi on Christmas, telling them it was from their grandparents at Jim’s behest. It lit him up to see his brother and sister so happy.

  To cover all the angles on the home front, Jim masterminded a mosaic of lies to explain the sudden influx of family money. He told his parents that Nathan had finally broken through as an insurance salesman, a whopper if there ever was one, and he told his oldest children that Nick and Betty’s craft sales had gone through the roof.

  From their tidy manufactured home in suburban Eugene, Nick and Betty were legitimate dealers of arts and crafts, selling their wares at flea markets and other bazaars. Nick was an expert woodworker who built cuckoo clocks that resembled cathedrals. Betty was skilled at crochet and seldom took a seat without a pile
of yarn in her lap. She also had mastered Bunka, a Japanese punch-style embroidery, to create tapestries of old barns, mountains, and other landscapes. But these crafts weren’t exactly flying off their tables at local shows.

  Jim was nearing the halfway mark of his prison term, a milestone in any prisoner’s sentence, and was optimistic about a pair of bills in Congress he hoped would put him on the fast track to get out early. In a letter to Kanokwan, he wrote, “I just know this is going to be a great year for us—not only for what I hope them to do [in Congress], but for other reasons dealing with our future.” In another letter to his fiancée, Jim wrote that Nathan had become his “right hand man,” and that Nick had described him as a chip off the old block: “Nathan is exactly as I am—enjoys the same things, enjoys adventure with a little bit of danger like me (maybe too much danger sometimes), loves travel, is disciplined, neat, and full of life.”

  In the early months of 2007, Jim used the mail to embolden his boy, quoting the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah: “[B]efore you were born, I set you apart and anointed you as my spokesman to the world.” And on the first Friday in April, Jim wrote Nathan again: “I can’t tell you how much joy it brings me to be in your presence. Not to get maudlin but when I begin my nightly prayers with thanks for all God has done for me, I often can’t help crying with gratitude for you kids. I think of how God honored my prayers for you—how you have responded to His call—and I just burst with pride in you, Son!”

  Jim’s letter noted that he had just watched an inspiring movie about the biblical Abraham in the prison chapel.

  “I know we’ve got missions to accomplish for God,” he wrote. “It’s been prophesied over us. We’ve got God’s work to do. No man or power can come against us with success when we are on God’s business.”

  13

  Faith, Prosperity, and The Door

  “Delight thyself in the Lord; and He shall give thee thine desires of the heart.”

  —Psalms 37:4

  Eugene, Oregon, Spring 2007

  Nathan had joined The Door, a nondenominational Christian fellowship in Eugene that offered contemporary lessons in faith through the filter of fundamentalism. Congregants spoke in tongues, fasted, and held their palms to the rafters to welcome God. Pastors pushed tithing—­giving 10 percent of one’s income to the church—as a way of life. Nathan brought his cousins to the chapel, but they declared it a cult and didn’t return. The sermons left him so renewed that he shared these messages with Jim during their Sunday night phone calls.

  Christianity had always been part of Nathan’s life. But he got serious about his faith early in his Army training, where he felt the whisper of mortality every time he pulled a trigger, grenade pin, or parachute riser. During basic training at Bragg, a pastor dipped him in a baptismal pool in the base chapel. Nathan came up from that immersion with a deeper commitment to God and manhood.

  Nathan was now in his third year at Lane Community College, where he had met a spirited blonde named Camilla Beavers in speech class. She was an earthy woman with that trifecta personality men adore: She was sporty, wickedly funny, and effortlessly sexy. Beavers was a jeans-and-T-shirt girl who rarely woke early enough to put on makeup. She adored Nathan, but she didn’t see him as boyfriend material. Nathan was the nice guy who listened and laughed as she ranted about the dolts she actually dated.

  That spring she and Nathan took in a movie at the cinema complex where she worked in the Gateway Mall. Beavers introduced him to a coworker, Molly Harden, who later asked about him. When Beavers mentioned to Nathan he had an admirer, he remembered Molly as shy and a little plump; he hadn’t really been attracted to her. But Molly had seemed nice. Nathan had gone on a total of one date since breaking up with his previous girlfriend, and a part of him—perhaps the spiteful side—thought it might be telling to see how Beavers reacted to his sudden interest in her friend. Nathan called Molly to ask her out.

  On the first Sunday in May 2007, he left a meeting at The Door and drove straight to Springfield to meet Molly at the mall. They had talked on the phone about seeing a movie, but nothing on the marquee interested them. So Nathan sprung for a game of miniature golf. They laughed their way through the course, missing one spectacularly errant shot after another. Nathan miraculously ended the round with a hole in one, earning a ticket for a free game. He used the blank side of the ticket to secretly take notes about Molly—what she was wearing, things she liked—so he could impress her later with all he remembered about their first date.

  Nathan asked Molly if she would join him at The Door. It was a test to see whether she had the kind of character he was looking for in a mate. She joined him enthusiastically, anxious to get back to church, and Nathan was so impressed he began to fall for her on the spot. Soon they were praying together, professing their love for God, and for each other.

  One Saturday that spring, Star was sitting between Jim and Nathan at Sheridan. She was blathering on about something neither father nor son understood when suddenly they began to pick up key words—a veiled mention of secrets, and money. They had been careful to keep their exchanges with the Russians just between them. For an instant, it sounded as if Star had figured them out.

  Jim tilted his head forward to face Nathan, eyes wide and imploring, as if to say, What gives?

  Nathan could tell that the old man thought he had blabbed.

  As Star kept talking, Nathan pulled his face completely out of her periphery and locked eyes with Jim. He mouthed three words.

  She . . . doesn’t . . . know.

  With Nathan’s next trip to meet the Russian set for that July, the last thing he or Jim needed were complications. Nathan began to drive to Sheridan especially early for their customary Saturday visits. They would talk business in whispers before Star arrived. Jim was still working on answers to the Russian’s questions, and he was pondering ways to put clandestinely obtained cash into the hands of Star and Jeremi without exposing its source.

  During a visit with Star and Nathan that spring, Jim covertly slipped one of his napkin notes under the trash piling up on the table between them. Nathan was waiting for the right moment to palm the message. Suddenly, Star was standing and gathering their trash to carry it to the garbage can. Jim blurted out that it wasn’t befitting for a lady to carry off their mess. Nathan shot to his feet, practically ripping the trash out of her hand.

  “This is men’s work,” he said.

  Nathan hustled to the garbage bin, pocketing his dad’s note and dumping the trash.

  On June 23, 2007, a couple of weeks before his next trip, Nathan told his dad in a phone call that he was running desperately low on money and might not be able to buy him snacks during his next prison visit. Jim told him to drop by his grandparents’ place and pick up a hundred bucks.

  Here Nathan made a sloppy mistake.

  “Hey, Pa, how many more times am I gonna be able to, uh . . . visit before that thing?”

  Jim must have winced at the words “that thing.” It was just the kind of phrase that might grab a CIA analyst’s attention. Jim chose his words carefully, saying they were set to visit only once between now and then. He heard Nathan saying he was thinking about working in a Friday visit. It was clear from his boy’s tone that there were things on his mind.

  “Anytime you come up is fine,” Jim told him. “You know that. . . . You know, things are just on the verge of picking up really good for us.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Things are really gonna, gonna break loose here. So it’s gonna be great.”

  “Oh yeah, I’m really excited for it.”

  “Me too,” Jim said. “Me too.”

  Nathan drove up to Sheridan three days before his flight to Mexico City. There they settled on a plan to distribute the next batch of money to Star and Jeremi. They walked methodically through each step of Nathan’s next operation, from his flights, to the room he booked near t
he Russian Embassy, to his cover story if he was stopped by the FBI.

  Nathan touched down in Mexico City on July 9, 2007, and checked into a Holiday Inn Express. The next morning, a Tuesday, he presented himself again at the Russian Embassy. This time he carried two notes from his father. Jim wanted their friend George to know that Nathan was trustworthy and Russia’s money wouldn’t be wasted. Once again, he outlined the dire financial straits faced by his two oldest children, and asked for continued assistance.

  Nathan had done his best not to look at the notes. But for the first time, he couldn’t resist the impulse to give them the once-over before passing them to George. His dad’s carefully penned messages shared details of the FBI and CIA personnel involved in his case. He gave the Russian the first name of a polygraph examiner who put him on the box, and a physical description of an FBI agent who interrogated him. He also sketched out a scheme for the SVR to move him to Russia after he got out of prison.

  Nathan handed George some brochures from Monaco RV, the recreational vehicle manufacturer in Coburg, Oregon, where his uncle Rob built cabinets for the interiors of the traveling homes. Some of the RVs fetched a half-million dollars or more. Nathan told George that his dad hoped to one day sell the high-end vehicles to Russia’s nouveau riche, set up RV campgrounds, and cash in. Jim hoped to rent or sell RVs as transportation for Russian intelligence officers.

  George burst out laughing at the notion of Jim running a spy shuttle for the SVR. Then he drew serious. He told Nathan that when his dad got out of prison, he should reapply for a passport and make his way to a nation near the Russian Federation. Jim had told Nathan that he didn’t think he’d ever get a passport after his release from prison. But Nathan had done some Internet research anyway, deciding the most logical choices for his dad’s passage to Russia were Finland, Ukraine, Georgia, or Turkey.

  As for Jim’s future in Russia?

  “There will be no problem for him,” George said.