How to Catch a Russian Spy

by Naveed Jamali

  Despite my aggressive noontime driving, I was fifteen minutes late for Oleg. I found him sitting near the hostess stand, feigning interest in an Uno’s menu.

  I saw a glimpse of anger as I walked in, but he quickly gained control. Whatever he was really feeling, he assumed a look of relief as I stepped toward him. “My friend,” he said with a smile, vigorously shaking my hand. “It is good to see you!”

  I smiled back faintly. That brief flash of anger had made me nervous. I couldn’t help glancing for a bulge in his waistband. I didn’t see anything. “I am so sorry,” I said. “Something got tweaked at work, and it took a little longer to sort out.”

  He looked confused at that. “Tweaked?” he asked. I guess he hadn’t heard the word before. I noticed he hadn’t let go of my hand. Was that just a matter of social awkwardness? Was it a test of some sort? Was he feeling if my pulse was racing as I tried to explain why I was late? Nothing Oleg did seemed like an accident.

  “We had an unhappy customer,” I explained. “It took a little longer on the phone.”

  He looked at my face maybe a fraction of a second too long, smiled, and let my hand go. “Shall we sit down?” he asked.

  Once we did, Oleg continued the friendly banter from our last lunch at Uno’s, offering tidbits from his own life and seeking some from me. He said his daughter was studying French in school and recalled that my mother came from France. “Do you speak French?” he asked me. “Do you have a French passport? Do you travel there?”

  “I speak it,” I said, leaving my answer at that. I didn’t have a French passport, though I’d traveled to France many times with my parents. I got the feeling Oleg was asking the travel questions for some reason beyond curiosity.

  But he didn’t press the point. “French is a beautiful language,” he said. He didn’t point out that my father was Pakistani or ask if I spoke Urdu.

  I had prepared a tidbit of my own that I wanted to mention—the fact that my wife had a relative who was somehow related to Trotsky, the Marxist revolutionary theorist and first leader of the Red Army. I thought Oleg would like that, and he did.

  “Leon Trotsky?” he asked, lighting up at the name.

  “The one and only,” I said.

  I’d impressed him. But quickly, he was back in control. He asked me if I was an electrical engineer. “Was that your subject in college?”

  “No,” I explained. “Computers. My background is technology.”

  All these questions seemed harmless enough. He wasn’t asking for anything I wouldn’t divulge in small talk with a stranger sitting next to me on a plane. And that made it difficult to keep up any defensive wall. He asked innocent-sounding questions, and I couldn’t think of any good reason to lie. Part of me really welcomed the openness. I wanted to bond with Oleg, as he wanted to bond with me. But with each new query, the knot in my stomach grew tighter. It wasn’t that I was divulging secrets. It was more that I recognized how single-handedly he was driving the conversation. I was committing myself to a specific, detailed biography without knowing what the endgame was. At the very least, I would have to remember what I had told him so I wouldn’t contradict it later on. The tone remained cool and friendly. But the longer we talked, the more nerve-­wracking it became. I felt like he was leading me somewhere, and I knew that couldn’t be good. My whole life, I’d never been comfortable in the passenger seat, especially when I didn’t know where I was going, much less the route.

  I called for the check. Oleg paid it in cash. It was always in cash. As we stood to leave, his wallet slipped out of his hand. I caught the falling wallet in midair and handed it back to him. “Thank you, thank you,” he said.

  I was thinking again: Was that a simple accident? Was it a test? Was he checking to see if I’d casually try to look inside? Was there something he wanted me to see? Am I being paranoid? His benign-sounding questions had my mind racing. If it was a test, I guess I’d passed. But every time we were together, I came away with the feeling that Oleg was trying to climb inside my head. And if placing a hint of paranoia in there was one of his goals, he was succeeding.

  * * *

  I had to find a way to take some more control. These meandering quiz sessions weren’t only stomach-turning, they were too risky for me. With my vague but honest answers, the Russians wouldn’t be able to figure out what to do with me, and then I’d have wasted all this time. Or just as bad, before I could make a move, they’d come up with some request or plan that I wouldn’t like at all. I could only imagine: Okay, we’ve figured it out. We want you to rent a van and drive around Washington taking pictures of sensitive buildings. No, forget that. We want you to marry this redheaded woman named Anna so we can get her a green card. No, thank you very much! I had to be in the driver’s seat.

  “They are opportunists,” Ted warned me when I shared my concerns. “They probably don’t know yet what they can do with you. When they figure that out, believe me, they will try.”

  That rang true. When they did make a decision about what they wanted me to do, I needed to be sure it was something I could deliver—or, more precisely, make them think I could.

  CHAPTER 11

  * * *

  WHY SPY

  I never had the opportunity to change my name or my basic identity. The Russians had known my family for two decades. Using my real name left me more vulnerable. If the Russians wanted to come and get me, they knew exactly where I was. I wasn’t overly talkative with Oleg about personal details. I never talked about my neighborhood or about Ava, beyond the mere fact that I had a wife. But I had no illusions about protecting my privacy or the Russians’ ability to dig into my life. I assumed they’d already done that. It couldn’t have been very hard. I had a listed phone number. I drove cars registered in my name. A simple records check would tell them where I lived, who my neighbors were, who I was married to, where I went to college, where I used to work, and for all I knew, how many times I’d forgotten to pay my parking tickets until they double and tripled with interest and penalties.

  (Just a couple of times. I swear!)

  I said to Ted one day: “They must know a lot about me. How much danger am I in?”

  He answered in his usual measured way. “Not a tremendous amount, as far as we know.”

  “Not a tremendous amount? As far as we know? What does that mean?”

  “We have no reason to believe you are in danger. Why would they want to harm you? They’re hoping you’ll be useful to them.”

  I knew he was trying to be comforting. It wasn’t working. “Can they check up on me?” I asked.

  “They can do open-source searches,” Ted said. “Sure.”

  He didn’t specify what he thought that might entail, but I knew more about open-source research than he did. It included LexisNexis and Google and checking out my Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts. The Russian could dig up whatever Equifax or the other credit-reporting agencies had on me. Pretty much anyone could get his hands on that. They could talk to my neighbors, my former employers—could they also bug my apartment or tap my phone? Were they following me? What about Ava? “It’s illegal for them to perform surveillance,” Ted assured me, deftly avoiding the question.

  Was that really the best he had, that the Russians wouldn’t do anything illegal?

  “But Oleg is GRU,” I said. Again, Ted didn’t respond directly, but his lack of denial was enough for me. I went on, “You’re telling me that, against their number one enemy, Russian intelligence doesn’t have resources to burn? Diplomats in this city don’t even pay parking tickets. And they’re going to follow more serious rules? They’d like to follow the guy who’s helping them spy on the United States, but they won’t because that would violate some GRU Boy Scout oath?”

  Ted laughed at that.

  I was new to all this, but give me some credit. I had to assume that Oleg had people checking me out, even if he wasn’
t doing the checking himself. And those people would no doubt attempt to verify anything and everything I said. I’d better not out-and-out lie to him about provable factual details except when I really had to.

  I could narrow the frame of reference. I could stretch the truth. I could hide troublesome factoids and focus on stray details. But however I presented my own biography and motives, all of it would be painstakingly examined by the Russians abroad and at home. They would check enough to give themselves confidence in me. So everything I said had to be defensible, even if it wasn’t 100 percent true. There could be no idle chatter. Nothing could be uttered thoughtlessly. Whatever lies I wove had to be supported on a bedrock of truth. The Russians had to believe. It was as simple—and as complicated—as that.

  * * *

  Though I was stuck with my name and basic biography, my personality and motivations were all up for grabs. Oleg already knew who I was, but it was up to me to show him what I was all about. The double-agent business, I discovered, is not a come-as-you-are affair. In fact, I had to dream up a whole new persona that would serve me better than the real me would. Getting that right turned out to be immensely important and tons of fun.

  Basically, I got to be a much bigger asshole with Oleg than I ever was in real life. Constantly impatient. Quick to anger. Cocky. Obnoxious. Self-absorbed. Focused on money above all else. I convinced myself this was the most effective way to be. Oleg was a very tough character. He’d endured the Russian navy and earned a coveted post in the United States and a prime posting in New York. Most impressive, he’d made the transition from Soviet Union to Russian Federation on his feet. Those are not the achievements of a weak or wobbly man. If I was going to hold my own against a guy like that, I thought I had to be one tough motherfucker, too.

  For the first time, I was freed from being the friendly, agreeable, decent guy I had always tried to be. With most people, I was self-deprecating to a fault. I liked to make people laugh with me. I wanted them to like me. My alter ego was an amoral, narcissistic psychopath. He got to do all kinds of things I never would have dreamed of. I probably shouldn’t admit how quickly I took to the major-jerk role. When I was in character with Oleg, I didn’t care if he hated me or wanted me to die. All I cared was that my behavior worked, that it kept me focused, sane, and effective under circumstances I was totally unfamiliar with. That can be quite liberating, I found out.

  I didn’t feel like I had much choice. The guy my friends, parents, and wife knew would be incapable of selling out his country for cash. I had a moral compass. I cared too much about the respect of the people I respected. I liked to sleep at night. If this grand deception was going to be believable, I had to create a character who would plausibly engage in espionage. That character needed to be strong-willed and fully formed. And ruthless. Personality, attitudes, mannerisms, all of it had to shout: “Sure, I’ll sell out my country. But I won’t do it for free.”

  The good news was that I had some built-in faults I could draw from. I swore too much. (I plead “native New Yorker” to that.) My sense of humor has often been compared to that of a fourteen-year-old boy, and it’s not usually meant as a compliment. I still laugh when someone says “sperm whale.” My idea of entertainment truly does intersect with that inner fourteen-year-old’s: I’d seen far too many cynical movies and played far too many twisted video games. So in some ways, I had a solid base for building the Naveed that Oleg was getting to know. Imagine how hard this transition would have been if I were a total candy ass!

  But my shortcomings weren’t sufficient inspiration. For top professional guidance in becoming a thoroughly amoral prick, I turned to the undisputed experts of the character-creation world: Hollywood. If anyone knew how to make up characters, the people writing for TV and the movies did.

  So as I got deeper with Oleg, I began staging my own personal Spooks, Spies, and Double Agents Film Festival on the flat-screen TV in my living room. I went looking for characters I could copy and learn from. There was no shortage of them. Miami Vice, Spy Game, Ronin, Heat, Collateral, Casino Royale, Manhunter, Bullitt—I watched until I grew bleary-eyed and had to go to bed. Movies I’d seen before, movies I’d barely heard of, random episodes of old TV shows. I practically memorized all of it. Then I’d stand in front of the bathroom mirror and practice some of the juicer lines like a Stella Adler wannabe cramming myself into an especially challenging role.

  “We didn’t come down here to audition for business. Business auditions for us.” Jamie Foxx, Miami Vice.

  “The wrong decision is better than indecision.” James Gandolfini, The Sopranos.

  “I’m funny how? I mean, funny like I’m a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh? I’m here to fuckin’ amuse you?” Joe Pesci, Goodfellas.

  This may sound goofy now, but I swear it taught me a lot about building a new, rougher legend for myself. It helped me slide into character like nothing else could. A few rounds in front of the mirror, and I was transforming into this other me. In the thirty seconds it took me to imitate Al Pacino in Scarface—“I always tell the truth, even when I lie”—I could pivot from Naveed Jamali, regular guy, toward Naveed Jamali, pissed-off double agent.

  Those were some of the baddest-ass dudes I was emulating. In many of those films and TV shows, the main character played a double of some sort, an undercover cop or clandestine spy. I was fixated on how those characters reacted when they were accused—as they inevitably were—of not being who they claimed to be. As far as I could tell, the best defense was a powerful offense.

  I loved the way Crockett and Tubbs (Colin Farrell in the old Don Johnson role and Foxx stepping in for Philip Michael Thomas) react in the Miami Vice movie when the cartel lieutenant Yero demands: “Other than Nicholas, who the fuck knows you?”

  “My mommy and daddy know me,” Crockett seethes, his voice dripping with condescension. Then he plops a hand grenade on the table, removes the pin, and begins questioning Yero’s cred. “You want to ‘know’ shit? Who the fuck are you? You got a side deal with U.S. Customs to open up the coast in a few spots. In exchange, you flip them some gringo runners? Like us?”

  “You wearing a wire?” Tubbs demands, ripping open the kingpin’s shirt.

  “Or DEA?” Crockett jumps in. “The Feeb?”

  The agents are suddenly back in control.

  I could see myself pulling something like that on Oleg—minus the hand grenade, of course.

  There was so much to choose from here and so much work for me to do. Once I had my basic character down—little patience, explosive temper, money-obsessed—I had to learn to act like a criminal. I’d done my share of stupid things, but I had never committed a crime, much less something as serious as treason or espionage. All I had in my arsenal of experience was exceeding the speed limit or slipping into a bar below the drinking age. When I was growing up, that stuff would hardly get you a written warning from the jittery Hastings cops. Definitely not a mug shot and rap sheet.

  So what would a real criminal say and do? More important, what would Oleg and the Russians expect a criminal to be like? As a professional military officer and a diplomat, Oleg probably hadn’t had a tremendous amount of exposure to real criminals, either, let alone traitors who were willing to sell out their country for fat envelopes of cash. I assumed that he was building on his expectations from American TV and movies just like I was: I’d always heard that Hollywood is America’s greatest export.

  On film, even the soft-spoken criminals had explosive tempers. They were never afraid to storm away from a deal if it didn’t skew sufficiently their way. They had their own language and their own unique set of rules.

  In Spy Game, Brad Pitt’s Tom Bishop complains to Nathan Muir, the Robert Redford character, that he let an asset get killed:

  Muir: He was your asset, somebody you use for information.

  Bishop: Ah, Jesus Christ, you just . . . You don’t just trade these people like the
y’re baseball cards! It’s not a fucking game!

  Muir: Oh, yes, it is. It’s exactly what it is. And it’s no kids’ game, either. This is a whole other game. And it’s serious and it’s dangerous. And it’s not one you want to lose.

  Spying is a tough business, all the movies seemed to say. It isn’t for the faint of heart. There is no room for complainers or wimps. It’s like what the grizzled cop Vincent Hanna, played by Al Pacino, says to Neil McCauley, the De Niro bank-robber character in Heat: “My life’s a disaster zone. I got a stepdaughter so fucked up because her real father’s this large-type asshole. I got a wife, we’re passing each other on the downslope of a marriage—my third—because I spend all my time chasing guys like you around the block. That’s my life.”

  Says McCauley: “A guy told me one time, ‘Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.’ Now, if you’re on me and you gotta move when I move, how do you expect to keep a marriage?”

  God bless the movies and TV.

  * * *

  Then there was the question of my motivation. Why would someone like me commit espionage? I got busy reading up on what makes people spy. History and fiction, both ancient and modern, had lots to offer on the subject. Spy books, spy movies, spy TV shows—they all have theories about the hidden and not-so-hidden motivations. Early in my research, I came across the theory of MICE.

  According to MICE, people commit espionage for four basic reasons—money, ideology, coercion, or ego. Sometimes it’s a mixture of two or three, but people who’ve thought about this far more deeply than I have say that those are the four solid categories. Each is powerful in its own special way. And it’s easy to find examples of all four.

  Money may be the most common reason. To supplement income or in a fit of desperate financial need, people have often spilled their country’s secrets. That’s why anyone applying for government clearance is put through a credit and finance check. Many traitors have been revealed by sloppy, lavish spending. John Anthony Walker is a perfect example, though sadly, nowhere near the only one. The former U.S. Navy chief warrant officer convicted of spying for the Soviet Union from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s seems to have been motivated largely by the lure of cold, hard cash. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger acknowledged that Walker’s treason gave the Soviets access to a wide array of U.S. arms secrets—“weapons and sensor data and naval tactics, terrorist threats, and surface, submarine, and airborne training, readiness and tactics.”