The Spy's Son

by Bryan Denson

  This much is known: One FBI agent from the Portland Field Office and a surveillance team from Washington, D.C., flew to Nicosia to confirm that Nathan was serving as his dad’s agent. The bureau knew from their young subject’s handwritten notes that he planned to meet his Russian handler outside the T.G.I. Friday’s at 12 Diagorou Street for their 7 p.m. appointment on December 10. What they didn’t know was whom he planned to meet.

  It’s not clear what role the CIA played in tailing Nathan in Nicosia, if any. What is known is that the FBI shot video of Nathan, wearing his camel-colored cap, meeting a short man under streetlamps in front of the red-and-white-striped awnings of the T.G.I. Friday’s. The meeting was captured by at least two runs of video, one taken from across Diagorou Street near a sports-apparel shop, the other from inside a window of the T.G.I. Friday’s.

  The surveillance team lost Nathan after he ran his recognition dialogue with the Russian and they hiked down the sidewalk to a palm-flecked side street. They climbed into a waiting sedan, which shuffled into traffic and disappeared. Later that night, Nathan strode into the Hilton Cyprus, a five-star hotel since the day it opened in 1965. He glided past the reception desk, where wall-mounted Rolex clocks told guests the time of day in Sydney, Tokyo, Nicosia, London, and New York. He passed a row of expensive gift shops in a marble hall and caught a glass-fronted elevator. Nathan carried his Alpine backpack to his room, where he would spend much of the next few days guarding $12,000 in U.S. cash.

  A professional spy might have let his hair down a little bit. But Nathan stayed keyed up. He recalled the two Russians who stopped him during his surveillance detection route, asking where they might get a bite to eat. Were they part of George’s team? Maybe. Probably. But who could be certain? He remembered telling George about the secondary searches he’d endured at the airports in Houston and Portland. The old spy had shrugged it off like it was part of the game. Nathan had grown fond of George, but he never got the impression the Russian gave a damn about him.

  “I knew I was a nobody to them,” Nathan later told me. “I couldn’t shake the feeling that they didn’t care if I was caught or not.”

  This was Jim’s field, not his. Nathan was slow to recognize how deeply he had trespassed into this secret world, where truth sheds its skin like a snake and highly trained professionals play for keeps. He often wondered why his dad taught him to lie for a living, sending him into meets with contacts such as George. Nathan would never feel completely at ease in their world, would always feel like an intruder. Why had Jim pulled him into this? Perhaps it was all that remained of his former life that he could impart.

  Nathan knew precisely why he put himself in play outside that T.G.I. Friday’s. He’d gone because the old man picked him, no one else, to make contact with the Russians. He’d gone because his dad was counting on him, and because of the money. And he’d gone, God help him, for the thrill of meeting a Russian spy in a city built in the Bronze Age, wrung out by jet lag but wide awake and feeling a whole lot like a junior varsity James Bond.

  When Nathan’s flight touched down at JFK, he noticed a very tall man moving among the herd of travelers into Customs. The man looked familiar, and it occurred to him that he’d seen him once or twice before on this trip. But he couldn’t be certain. The specter of someone possibly following him raised the hairs on the back of his neck. And when the man moved through Customs so fast he barely broke stride, Nathan had to wonder if he was a federal agent. When Nathan presented his passport, he found himself yet again pulled aside for a secondary search, questioned about his travels before he was allowed to board. He slept fitfully on the connecting flight to Portland, too keyed up to lose himself in sleep.

  He figured there would be plenty of time for rest when he got home.

  16

  FBI Offers a Mulligan

  “The irony of breaking a spy case is simple. Finding a spy is terrible news. Not finding a spy is worse but not news.”

  —Louis J. Freeh, former FBI director

  Eugene, Oregon, December 15, 2008

  Nathan opened his apartment door, woken by the pounding.

  He felt a blast of frigid afternoon air, a lull between snowstorms that would deliver the valley its deepest snow in forty years. The two men on his stoop wore jeans and dour gazes. Nathan hoped they were solicitors of some sort, Jehovah’s Witnesses maybe, passing out Watchtower tracts and saving souls. But deep in his heart, he knew they meant trouble. He had prepared himself for the possibility of this day and was determined to follow Jim’s script, a cover story for every occasion. But now, wobbly with jet lag, he wondered if he possessed the acting chops to carry it off.

  John Cooney and Jared Garth held out FBI credentials and introduced themselves.

  Nathan braced himself as he heard Cooney say they were looking for help with an investigation. He fought an instant of pure out-of-body terror. For the second time in his life, the FBI stood on his stoop. This time, there was no Uncle Rob to soften the blow. He was all alone.

  Cooney told Nathan the FBI had arranged with the management at Heron Meadows to use a vacant apartment in the complex to have a conversation. He said they could go there if it made him feel more comfortable. Cooney didn’t mention he’d also come armed with a search warrant. He’d break that bit of news when the time was right.

  Nathan held the door wide and invited them in out of the cold.

  The agents found themselves standing just inside the door. They looked around casually as Nathan rustled a pair of bar stools from the kitchen. The place was done up in twenty-something Spartan, with hanging prints of painted tigers on white walls. The agents had heard his voice on wiretaps, watched him in the Houston airport. But this was the first time they had met their young suspect close enough to smell his breath.

  Remembering his manners, Nathan asked the lawmen if they cared for something to drink. When they declined beverages, he took a seat on his beige faux-leather couch. This left him staring upward at the agents perched on his bar stools.

  Cooney told his suspect he was under no obligation to speak to them, his participation purely voluntary.

  Nathan said he was happy to help.

  Cooney possessed a gift for disarming people. He knew plenty about Nathan, certainly enough to get him talking. His best play was to get his subject comfortable, ask a few dunker questions, and just let him talk. Cooney told Nathan he was aware he had served in the Army, attended classes at Lane Community College, and had no criminal record.

  Nathan stopped him cold, saying he wanted to correct something. He told them he did have a blemish on his record.

  The agents perked up. This was news to them.

  Nathan explained that once, while camping out at the Oregon coast, a ranger had cited him for pulling dry bark off a tree to make a campfire. He was fined $500, but a judge had allowed him to pay half. Nathan’s guests had to stifle laughter. His “crime” was one of those only-in-God’s-Country infractions that wouldn’t exactly give him bragging rights with the Gambino family.

  Cooney asked Nathan if he considered himself a person of honor and integrity, and if he’d be willing to help his country.

  “Sure,” he said.

  For the next hour, Cooney got Nathan to tell his life story, from his birth in the Philippines to his parents’ divorce, his dad’s arrest, his years growing into manhood in the Willamette Valley, his enlistment in the Army, and his parachuting accident. Cooney chewed gum as Nathan talked, eyes planted on his subject. Eventually, he asked Nathan about his foreign travels.

  Nathan told the agents he had flown to Mexico a couple of times to study its architecture, and that he had just gotten back early that morning from Cyprus, where he had hoped to meet some Army buddies but failed to connect. He told them about his trip to Peru, saying he had gone to scout a romantic spot to propose marriage to his old girlfriend, who was no longer in his life.

  C
ooney explained to his young subject that it was easy to forget some details of his vacations, but that the FBI needed the complete story of his travels. He cautioned Nathan that lying to them was a crime.

  “Would you do anything for your family?” Cooney asked.

  “Yes,” Nathan said.

  He told the agents his family stood only behind God in importance to him.

  Cooney told Nathan he could see he was jittery and that it was perfectly natural to be nervous talking to the FBI. But candor, he explained, was in his best interest. He reminded Nathan again that it was a violation of federal law to mislead federal agents, and he steered his suspect back to tales of his foreign travels.

  Nathan regaled Cooney and Garth with a spectacular mix of truth and bald-faced lies. At one point, he got up to find a map of Nicosia to show the agents where he stayed at the Hilton, the castles he toured, and a restaurant that a woman who worked at his hotel had recommended: T.G.I. Friday’s. Nathan said he hadn’t had the chance to eat there. He also said he carried $10,000 to Cyprus, but had spent only about $300, on cab fares and pizza, carrying cash because he didn’t trust banks. He told of his U.S. Customs stop on the way home from Peru and how an officer had carried some of his belongings into a back room.

  Cooney asked if he had had any contact with foreign officials or people involved with terrorist organizations.

  “No,” Nathan told him.

  Garth took notes and texted on his phone. He was keeping fellow investigators updated on the doings at Heron Meadows. The FBI had set up a command post five miles east, in the bureau’s downtown Eugene office, where agents and federal prosecutors were keeping tabs on teams of FBI agents who had fanned out across the country to interview Nathan’s entire family, including Jeremi and Nastia in the Florida Panhandle.

  At precisely 2:55 p.m., more than ninety minutes after Cooney and Garth first knocked on Nathan’s door, their suspect’s phone rang in his bedroom. The last thing the agents wanted their young suspect to do was pick up the call, get an earful from some irate family member, and clam up. Cooney said he preferred that Nathan not answer.

  Nathan obliged him.

  Cooney said he was puzzled by some of his answers about his travels, and he reminded Nathan again that it was a mistake to lie to them.

  “Hypothetically speaking,” Nathan said, “what would happen if I quit talking?”

  Cooney explained that he was free to end their chat at any time, although he hoped he would help them.

  Nathan was already fed up with Cooney and Garth; he felt like a captive in his own home.

  Perhaps sensing Nathan’s growing testiness, Cooney dropped the hammer. He said the FBI knew more about his travels than he was telling them.

  “You show us all your cards,” he said, “and we’ll show you ours.”

  “I haven’t done anything illegal,” Nathan said.

  Cooney told Nathan that the FBI helps people who help them, and that he was going to give him a onetime chance to tell his story straight. He said to think of the opportunity as a do-over, like when you whiff a golf shot on the first tee.

  “A mulligan,” Cooney said.

  Nathan took a deep breath, mentally tallying all those moments over the last several months when things felt amiss. He knew the FBI agents weren’t sitting in his home without evidence. He was tired of dodging their questions, exhausted by the lying. He looked at the agents, and they at him. And then he began.

  “It all started about two years ago. . . .”

  He talked for hours, a purge of the last couple of years, guided only by gentle prodding by the agents. Nathan told them of his dad’s disgruntlement with the government, how Jim felt the CIA had let him down. He spoke of the old man’s scheme, back in 2006, to reach out to Russia for help. Nathan said his dad hoped to get out of prison and leave the U.S. And he told them he had smuggled his dad’s notes out of Sheridan’s visiting room, carrying them to Russian diplomatic stations in San Francisco, Mexico City, Lima, and Nicosia. When Nathan had wrung himself dry, the agents told him they’d appreciate it if he wrote it all down, and they moved him to the empty apartment downstairs.

  Nathan spent an hour or two writing a detailed confession as he continued telling his story. When he was through, the agents presented him with a search warrant. Nathan heard one of them reading it, and he posed a question of his own.

  “Am I going to be arrested?”

  “Not tonight,” Garth said.

  He frisked his suspect and a team of FBI agents tromped into Nathan’s bedroom. The agents asked Nathan to take them to the money and not force them to find it. So he led them to the Bible on his nightstand and handed over ninety-five hundred-dollar bills. He also pulled the blue notebook out of his backpack.

  Later, sitting in the living room and more relaxed, Nathan could hear the search team working through his closets and drawers, a reminder of that November day a dozen years back. After a time, he heard a few of the agents cackling in his bedroom. He tried to imagine what they had found, and it occurred to him they had probably stumbled across a bright orange T-shirt that read, “FUGITIVE (YOU NEVER SAW ME).” Nathan remembered the infamous photograph of his dad, distributed by the government after his 1996 arrest. It showed Jim, tanned and bearded and fit, wearing a big grin and a goofy red bandanna. Emblazoned in black on the chest of his dad’s white T-shirt were the words “KGB is for me.” Nathan knew his dad had picked up the shirt at a CIA function and that the back of it read, “CIA all the way.” But his old man would forever be remembered as the Russian mole with the KGB T-shirt. Nathan now wondered if he might be remembered as the spy’s son with the “fugitive” shirt.

  Garth and Cooney led Nathan downstairs, where he could see an agent poring through his Chevy. Other agents carried out bagfuls of his belongings, including his passport and laptop.

  The agents handed Nathan their business cards, thanked him for his help, and headed for their car. It was long after dark, about eight hours after they first banged on his door.

  Monty Waldron was having a helluva week. The young FBI agent, just a little more than a year out of Quantico, had spent the last few days knocking on doors with a swarm of more than two hundred pissed-off cops and federal agents. Three days earlier, a pair of antigovernment wing-nuts planted a bomb outside a bank in Woodburn, Oregon. The device blew up when an Oregon State Police explosives expert tried to take it apart, thinking it was a hoax. The explosion killed the state trooper and a police captain, and it maimed the local police chief. Authorities would eventually identify Bruce Turnidge and his son, Joshua, as the culprits, and a jury would send them to death row.

  Waldron had been pulled off the case to drive to Sheridan and toss Jim’s cell for evidence. Until that day, he’d never heard of Jim Nicholson. He met with Payne and presented her with the warrant to search Jim’s belongings, explaining that they needed to do it covertly. Payne arranged to clear every prisoner from Unit 4-B, Jim’s cellblock. It was lunchtime when Waldron, accompanied by Payne and an evidence technician, reached cell 205L. Jim shared the space with a younger prisoner, Kyle Minchey, who was serving time for stealing cash, guns, and a car from his father-in-law’s home. Waldron began to bag and tag some of Jim’s papers, an address book, and a Swintec 7000 typewriter cartridge.

  Detectives of yesteryear sometimes got lucky by laying out their suspects’ typewriter ribbons and reading the keystrokes backward. Federal agents in Oregon had once used the technique to take down legendary ecoterrorist Rod Coronado, who had eluded authorities while sinking whaling vessels in Iceland and launching a multistate firebombing campaign against the fur industry. The feds found Coronado’s typewriter ribbon in a storage locker in the little town of Talent and reconstructed a letter in which he sought funding for his arsons. FBI analysts at Quantico would similarly read Jim’s typewriter tape in reverse, sending Jensen a thick paper report on its contents. But it w
ould turn up nothing incriminating.

  Jensen drove to the prison that morning with Tony Buckmeier, a counterespionage supervisor from FBI headquarters who had played a material role in Jim’s previous espionage case. Buckmeier had spent the last two decades poking into spy cases involving Russians and Cubans, as well as ferreting out media leakers, from an office in the Hoover Building. He flew to Oregon to take part in the bureau’s new case against Jim, mostly because of his vast knowledge of the former CIA man and a lot of guys like him. Buckmeier was an excellent choice to put in an interview room with Jim, especially in the off chance he coughed up the oyster about his latest crimes and started naming Russian spies.

  Buckmeier and Jensen took seats together at a table in a private room next to the prison visitation center. Corrections officers brought Jim in, where the agents introduced themselves. Jensen played things folksy. He told Jim that, as he knew, the CIA analyzed all his mail. Well, he said, some of the agency personnel back East had seen some anomalies in his correspondence.

  “This stuff flows downhill,” Jensen explained, trying to sound like a weary bureaucrat trying to clear up a few things up before heading home to the wife. “I’m here to pester you about it.” Jensen told Jim it was the letter he’d written to Nathan that August that had caught the CIA’s eyes. He reminded Jim that the letter went six pages, outlining his health and a whole lot of information about his kids’ financial troubles. “I gotta tell you,” Jensen said, “it would have caught my attention, too.”

  He handed Jim a photocopy of the curious letter, and Jim put on his reading glasses. The former CIA man told the FBI agents they had it all wrong—this letter was little more than a journal entry intended to document his good health.

  Jensen gave him a puzzled look.