The Spy's Son

by Bryan Denson

  A dark-haired officer about Nathan’s height handed him a Customs declaration form to fill out. Nathan lied on the paper, saying he had carried $6,000 in cash into the country. When Nathan finished with the form, the officer looked it over and asked why he was carrying so much money.

  “I maxed out my credit cards,” he said.

  Nathan lied again, saying he left the U.S. with $6,500, and volunteered that he had been saving his Veterans Affairs checks since May to afford his trip. The officer dug through Nathan’s wallet and backpack, pulling out items he thought the FBI agents hiding behind the one-way mirror might like to see. He set aside a digital camera, a PSP video-game case choked with $4,000 in cash, more clumps of cash from his pack, and his blue pocket notebook.

  Nathan silently freaked out as he watched the notebook disappear into an office behind a one-way mirror. The book held 160 pages, many full of notes about his family, the address of the Russian Embassy in Peru, his secret Yahoo account with George, their code names, and questions posed by the Russian about his dad’s espionage. Nathan began to calculate how much money he’d really brought back with him, certain he was over the $10,000 limit, meaning Customs could seize all of it. But a portion of the cash remained hidden in tiny zippered pouches on the straps of his backpack, and no one had looked there yet. The Customs man returned without his wallet, PSP, camera, and notebook.

  Nathan felt his heart racing.

  Garth and Cooney, now working together behind the one-way glass, were disappointed to see that the Customs man hadn’t brought them a laptop. Nathan had left it at home. But their eyes lit up when they opened Nathan’s little blue notebook. Its pages held the mother lode of his adventures over the last year or so: cryptic notes, dates of meetings in foreign countries, and a Yahoo address with a Mexican suffix.

  The two agents had failed to bring a camera with them. Garth fired up the photocopy machine, printing pages of Nathan’s notebook. But some of the pages had been written in pen, others with pencil. The photocopier, even on the darkest setting, wasn’t picking up the lighter lines. So Garth grabbed the oldest tool in the book, his notepad. He scribbled Nathan’s notes line by line, working feverishly so as not to spook his target. Meanwhile, Cooney pulled out papers from Nathan’s wallet to take notes, including the name and phone number of his taxi driver in Lima: Eduardo Tapia.

  Nathan stood by the Customs table trying to look serene as the officer fired questions. He wanted to know why Nathan wrote $6,000 on his Customs declaration form, yet the search had turned up $7,013 in cash inside Nathan’s belongings. Nathan said it now occurred to him that he’d carried $9,000 to South America, not $6,000, and had spent a few grand in Peru. The Customs officer now asked what he’d been doing in Peru. Nathan regaled him with a dazzling pack of lies. He said he had flown to Lima on the spur of the moment to find a romantic place to propose marriage to his girlfriend. He had hoped to meet with an Army buddy in the coastal town, but that hadn’t panned out. As he rattled off lie after lie, he felt way over his skis, the consequences of the last couple of years now undeniable.

  Fifteen minutes passed. Thirty. How long was he going to be questioned? How long could he keep from melting down? Somehow he found a way to make friendly conversation with the Customs man. Then, suddenly, the officer stepped away.

  Nathan tried to imagine the next scene. Federal agents flashing badges, their words echoing through the airport: Is your name Nathaniel James Nicholson? His father had given him subtle warnings. So had the Russians. They had used words like “cover story” and “surveillance” and “FBI” and “paper trails” and “computer slow-downs,” words that now blazed in big capital letters in the temporal lobe of Nathan’s brain, reminding him that he had avoided looking at any clue that might have helped him understand the gravity of what he was doing—that might have helped him avert the mess he now found himself in. He had put his safety in the hands of his father and his Russian friends, with confidence none of them would put him in real danger.

  And here it came, the Customs man striding purposefully toward him, carrying his PSP and his camera and the notebook.

  “Everything is good to go,” he said.

  And suddenly, throwing the backpack over his shoulder, Nathan was thanking him and sprinting for his gate like a kid racing into summer with a stolen Popsicle.

  15

  Keep Looking Through Your New Eyes

  “A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.”

  —J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin

  Sheridan, Oregon, Christmastime 2007

  Nathan drove to the prison on December 15, still freaked out by the Customs stop in Houston. He feared he’d blown everything. In the visiting room, he struggled to keep his voice low as he recounted to Jim the searing questions about his travels and the money, and the horror of watching his notebook vanish behind one-way glass. He could only hope that whoever thumbed through those pages figured his coded scribbles were the work of someone playing childish games. He told Jim he had kept his breathing even, talking jovially, making himself believe his lies.

  “Sometimes in the CIA,” Jim told him, “we did simulations like that.” He had trained CTs back at The Farm to stay cool when unexpectedly stopped for a hostile run of questioning; during these exercises, they learned to keep their covers at all costs, even under prosecutorial and sometimes brutal interrogations. “I think you actually did very well. You performed better than some of the people I trained.”

  Nathan appreciated his dad’s reassurances, but it was clear to him that he had slipped up somehow and possibly compromised them. He pointed out that on his pass through PDX, his Chevy hiccuped again when he keyed the remote, another sign things weren’t what they seemed. On the upside, Nathan noted, the Russian had paid them another ten grand and wanted to meet again next year, in Cyprus. He asked his dad whether, after everything that had happened, it was wise to make that meet. It seemed awfully risky. There was panic in Nathan’s voice.

  Jim pondered this and said that if they thought it wise they could abandon plans to meet the Russian in Cyprus. But it was a year off, giving them plenty of time to think it through.

  Nathan knew his covert meetings with the Russians—not to mention the sacks of money they paid—had rejuvenated his dad. Their venture made the old man’s life behind bars more bearable. Nathan sensed that he was desperate for their arrangement to continue, and that his dropping out might scotch his father’s plans to move to Russia after prison. He didn’t want to hurt his dad, but his anxieties were torturing his ulcerous gut. He sometimes caught himself feeling suspicious of strangers, wondering whether they might be federal agents. Only later would it dawn on him how deeply he’d been drawn into the spy world.

  “I was like a lobster in a pot,” Nathan would reflect years later, “heated slowly until it was too late.”

  As Nathan talked to Jim that day in the visiting room, a team of FBI agents crept into his apartment. In his bedroom, they found $3,500 in hundred-dollar bills tucked inside a leather-bound study Bible. They located Nathan’s blue notebook—the one Garth had pored through in the Houston airport—and discovered that several pages had been torn out. Agents captured digital images of the money and a trove of Nathan’s personal effects, including letters and handwritten notes. They slipped out quietly, leaving the apartment precisely as they found it.

  As Nathan hugged his dad goodbye at Sheridan, Jim reminded him to give a portion of the cash to his grandparents, who lived just a mile from his apartment. They would disburse the money to Star and Jeremi so that neither of his siblings knew its true origin. Nathan wasn’t clear what kind of story Jim told Nick and Betty about the cash.

  Moscow’s money carried less allure to Nathan now. He didn’t really need it. Uncle Sam was providing him more financial support than the Russians. The GI Bill’s vocational rehabilitation fund was paying for hi
s books and tuition at Lane Community College. Veterans Affairs sent him another $541 a month in disability pay. In early 2008, he would begin a paid internship at Burton Saw & Supply, which sold and repaired machinery used by wood-products companies.

  Nathan remained grateful to the Russians, burning through their money while supporting perpetually unemployed Molly. He took her out to dinner and chick flicks, bought her Guitar Hero for the Wii, and paid her phone and credit card bills. Much as Nathan tried to buoy her spirits, she stayed indoors playing World of Warcraft, her moods dodging into dark corners.

  Molly had previously made a halfhearted attempt to break free of Nathan, telling him their life together wasn’t exciting enough for her. Nathan viewed her unhappiness as flagging self-esteem and, with spring approaching, began plotting an escape of his own. Her preemptive breakup had shattered any faith he held in their relationship, and no one in Nathan’s circle understood why he tried to make things work with Molly. Even Camilla Beavers, who had introduced them, thought Molly was a train wreck. Dustin eventually sucked up his guts and drew his cousin aside.

  “I gotta be honest with you,” he said. “None of us like Molly.”

  Dustin’s candor left Nathan dumbstruck, but he told his cousin that he appreciated hearing the truth about how everyone felt. Of course, Dustin hadn’t been completely candid. He didn’t tell Nathan that he thought Molly was lazy, overly emotional, incapable of admitting when she was wrong, a sore loser at board games, and a leech sucking the life out of him. Dustin also didn’t tell his cousin he took active measures to provoke Molly. Whenever they were all looking for something to do, he would suggest something requiring physical exertion. Dustin knew this would drive Molly crazy.

  He recalled one such excursion not long after Nathan and Molly began to date, when they all drove out to Mount Pisgah, about eight miles southeast of Eugene. They parked at the foot of the mountain and started hiking uphill. “We can still see the car,” Dustin said, “and she’s complaining about her feet hurting.” This left Molly with two options. She could trudge up the mountain, or she could sit in the car and wait for them to get back. “Those were the options as most guys would see it,” Dustin recalled. “But Nathan discovered a third option.”

  Dustin watched his cousin put his unhappy girlfriend on his bad back. He piggybacked her halfway up the two-and-a-half-mile climb before she declared herself too tired to continue. Nathan let her take a seat and pushed for the summit with the others.

  One Saturday in March 2008, Nathan met Star at the Malay Satay Hut, a Malaysian restaurant in a shopping center on the southeast end of Portland. Nathan ordered an avocado milk shake and unburdened himself about the state of his relationship. Molly had finally gotten a job—she was cashiering at Target—but getting out of the house during daylight hours hadn’t improved her moods. Meanwhile, he was thriving at Burton Saw, where his bosses would soon award him with a dollar-an-hour raise. He was reverse-engineering machinery that broke in the normal course of work in lumber mills, drawing designs for replacements on a computer.

  Nathan told Star he didn’t know how much more he could take on the Molly front. He was planning to take her off the full scholarship under his roof, although in truth it had turned into more of an athletic scholarship than an academic one. He agonized aloud about the impending breakup before asking Star if she thought he was doing the right thing.

  “It’s the right thing,” she told him. “You’re both miserable.”

  Nathan drove home to Eugene, reaching Heron Meadows sometime before midnight. Molly could see he had something on his mind. They took seats on the living room carpet, where Nathan began the windup. They had had done their best, he said, yet they remained unhappy. Now it was time to part ways. Molly protested, saying she was happy. But Nathan said it was clear they weren’t, and it was over. He was awful at this breakup business, unable to comprehend why he suddenly felt sweaty and cold at the same time, unable to get a good read on Molly’s emotions. But he was about to get an object lesson in breakup histrionics. Molly went white. Her palms shot to either side like that dying soldier in Platoon. She looked at the heavens and shouted, “Why, God?!”

  She began phoning people—her dad, her grandmother, her uncle. Soon people poured into the apartment to question Nathan and console Molly. It was hours before Nathan helped them haul the last of her stuff out of his place. She refused to assist in the move, and Nathan could hear her on the parking lot three floors below, shrieking hysterically: “Don’t leave me!”

  Neighbors glared at Nathan for days after that.

  An FBI agent was forced to listen to the entire excruciating conversation, which was captured by the bug planted in Nathan’s living room.

  At the end of March, Jim mailed Nathan an article from a travel magazine about the architecture of museums around the world. One of the museums pictured was in Beirut, which Jim described in his note as “audaciously risky. . . . But if that city could ever be peaceful, it would be a good place. The weather there (Mediterranean) is very pleasant. Cyprus would perhaps be a safer place to build such.” The letter and magazine piece were intended to help Nathan solidify his cover as a young architecture student touring Cyprus for research.

  On May 21, 2008, Nathan walked out of his apartment and crossed the driveway to the Heron Meadows clubhouse, where he parked himself in the Internet café. He sat back in one of three high-backed chairs and logged into the Mexican Yahoo account, just as the Russian had instructed, and tapped two words into the subject line: “Hola Nancy!”

  “Hello sweetie,” he wrote. “How are you? I’m good. Sorry for taking so long to write to you. . . . You know how work is and all. Anyways, things are good. It looks like I will still be able to go on that vacation! I will keep you updated on that though. I am very much looking forward to it, and to seeing you again! Well, hon, I thought I’d just say ‘hi’ since I had the time!”

  The Russian had told him to check the draft folder of the Yahoo account from time to time after writing the note. One day several weeks later, Nathan logged in to find that the e-mail had been deleted, a clear signal his message had been received.

  Nathan used one of Heron Meadows’ PCs rather than his Fujitsu laptop to avoid leaving a trail that could connect him to the Russian. But the FBI, electronically monitoring every keystroke Nathan made on the Jopemurr2 account, covertly obtained records from Qwest Communications Corp., which showed he’d logged on to a desktop computer literally a stone’s throw from his apartment.

  On July 28, 2008, Nathan punched up Orbitz on his laptop to research flights to Ercan International Airport on the Turkish side of Cyprus. He discovered that the cheapest way to fly onto the island was through Istanbul, and that he’d have to catch a taxi across the Green Line—the United Nations Buffer Zone—onto the Greek side of the world’s last divided city. The Turks held the northern end of the island since a coup d’état and war in the mid-1970s. Greek Cypriots had their own capital on the south side of Nicosia.

  Three days later, Nathan turned twenty-four. His dad had mailed him a card a few weeks early to make sure it cleared the CIA’s censors in time to reach him on his birthday. Jim’s note read, “You have been brave enough to step into this new unseen world that is sometimes dangerous but always fascinating. God leads us on our greatest adventures. Keep looking through your new eyes. I understand you—and me.”

  Nathan ate it up, the old man reaffirmed how much they were alike. Jim made him feel that he was destined for great things, based in large part on his performance with the Russians. And God himself had blessed their pursuits.

  Star called him one day, inquiring about his future. She wondered if it was true that he was considering a degree in architecture. Nathan offered a cryptic response.

  “I’m just sort of waiting for more excitement to happen,” he told her, “waiting for more big changes in our lives.”

  Star replied that she ha
ted big changes, and Nathan certainly understood. They had shared the cataclysms of their childhood—the marital breakup that left them all shattered, and the arrest of their father, which left them broke. Nathan explained that he liked changes when they were for the better.

  “Like winning the lottery or something.”

  A month would pass before Nathan sat down at a computer in the Lane Community College library to drop the final “Hola Nancy” note. He left it in the draft box of the Yahoo account, confirming he would indeed make it to Nicosia for the December meet.

  The FBI had him covered the whole time.

  A team of FBI agents watched Nathan on the morning of November 17, 2008, when he walked into a shabby cinder-block office on the west end of downtown Eugene, about four miles from his apartment. A sign hanging from a pole outside read “Bonaventure Travel.” Nathan walked out about an hour later with papers in his hand. The FBI learned from Airlines Reporting Corporation, an outfit that keeps records of billions of dollars in annual airline-ticket sales, that someone had paid $1,584.41 in cash that day for round-trip tickets from Portland to Cyprus, with layovers in New York and Istanbul.

  Nineteen days later, Nathan finished his internship at Burton Saw and packed his bags for Cyprus. He was scheduled to land on the isle in the early morning of December 10. The FBI had to be certain that Nathan wasn’t onto them. Government lawyers fretted over his upcoming flight much the way they did in 1996, when Jim was readying for his fateful trip to Singapore. If Nathan had detected he was under surveillance, he could exploit his trip in Nicosia by popping into the Russian Embassy. There he could seek asylum. Prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Portland knew they needed more evidence to prove Nathan was involved in an espionage-related offense. They needed the money shot: Nathan meeting a Russian spy.

  The FBI’s formal position is that its agents never ran surveillance operations on Nathan in Cyprus, and that the host country was unaware of its presence. While there’s nothing illegal or immoral about keeping an espionage investigation under close wraps, not giving the local spy service a heads-up can cause political troubles if things go south.