How to Catch a Russian Spy

by Naveed Jamali

  I knew how the agents felt about keeping these interactions organic. Like me, they were reluctant to be nailed down by detailed scripts. But how about a little guidance here, guys? “I’m guessing that I can’t mention why I’m really there, right?”

  “That would be a correct assumption,” Terry replied.

  I looked at Ted. The way he was sitting on the edge of the bed, his left foot was on the floor, and his right leg was resting on the bed. I had a perfect dead-on view of his nine-millimeter Glock model 20 semiautomatic handgun poking out of the bottom of a leather holster—angled straight at me. I knew that was the gun he carried. I’d just never had such a clear, down-the-barrel view.

  I’m sure that was an accident—right?

  “Look, Naveed, this is totally voluntary,” Ted said. “You should only do what you feel comfortable doing. We don’t want you to feel this is something being forced on you.”

  I didn’t acknowledge the gun, though I could have sworn Ted had a twinkle in his eye. “Voluntary? So I could voluntarily get up and walk out of here?”

  Ted’s eyes stopped smiling.

  “What happens if somebody starts asking questions about why a random guy is walking in and walking out with a pile of company documents?” I asked. “What happens if they call security?”

  Terry said, “We’ll be waiting in the parking lot.”

  I thought about it for another second. So I was expected to walk into a place where the people were, at best, vaguely expecting someone but not me specifically. I would then sweet-talk my way into getting something—I had no idea what—we could use for the op. Once again, the FBI didn’t want their fingerprints on any of this. It was command-and-control from thirty thousand feet—or at least a hundred yards into the parking lot. On the flip side, I was pretty sure that if things went south, Ted and Terry wouldn’t let me rot in jail. They were the FBI. They must have friends in law enforcement, even on Long Island.

  So I agreed. Despite my misgivings, I trusted myself. And I trusted the agents. I wasn’t willing to give up on Oleg yet.

  I smiled and got up from the motel-room chair. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go shopping.”

  * * *

  Terry drove to the parking lot. As we stopped, he pointed out the building where the archives were. Ted turned around to look me straight in the face. “We trust you and your judgment,” he said. “Just be careful. These little guys can talk. If you’re not careful, you’ll be in there for hours.”

  “Yeah,” Terry added, “they’re mostly retirees in there. Volunteers. They have plenty of time on their hands.”

  Great. Now I had to look out for elderly rambling conversationalists. I got out of the car and went inside.

  I introduced myself using my real name, not knowing if that would help smooth the way or not. Then I gave them a story that, like most good ruses, was rounded partially in truth. I told them I worked for Books & Research, a government contractor and information firm. We were working on a digitizing project and needed some research material that we could test the system on.

  “Do you have any material we could scan?” I asked the helpful clerk.

  “I’m sure we do. What do you want?”

  I knew that Northrop Grumman had built some of the leading jet aircraft in the U.S. arsenal. Back in the 1960s, they’d even built the Apollo lunar-landing module. Despite the heated U.S.-Soviet space race that had come to symbolize the Cold War era, I didn’t think Oleg had much interest in space travel.

  But there were plenty of other items in the Northrop Grumman catalog to choose from. “Some of the military aircraft the company is so respected for?” I suggested with a small note of flattery.

  The clerk didn’t hesitate. He mentioned several jet fighters I had heard of, the F-14 being one of them. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s see those.”

  It went on like that, with the clerk proudly throwing out names of Northrop Grumman product lines and me saying, “Can I see those, too?”

  I didn’t sign for anything. I didn’t show any ID. I didn’t promise to return anything. I did give them my business card, which said “Books & Research,” but anyone could have printed that up at Kinkos. No one mentioned they’d been expecting me. No one said anything about the marine pilot I had met or whether he had somehow vouched for me. No one mentioned the FBI. I truly got no indication one way or the other whether the FBI had greased the way for me.

  Either way, I left Northrop Grumman with a shopping list of enticing documents about America’s frontline military aircraft, enough to fill a large cardboard box and, I hoped, to catch a Russian spy. I walked back out to Ted and Terry, who were right where I had left them in the defense contractor’s parking lot. It would now be the agents’ job to fill my order.

  Driving back on the LIE, traffic was terrible. I reviewed the material I had received. It all looked pretty impressive, I had to say.

  Traffic was in a choke hold at the Queensboro Bridge. “Fuck this traffic,” I said to Ted and Terry. “Can’t you turn on a siren or something?”

  The car was at a standstill. They both turned around and looked at me.

  “We can’t,” Terry said.

  “What do you mean, you can’t? You’re the FBI. Why can’t you? Who’s gonna know?”

  “We’d know,” Ted said.

  I didn’t think he was joking. He didn’t crack a smile.

  * * *

  When we finally reached my street, Ted pulled up to the curb in front of a fire hydrant. The plan was to leave the box of manuals with the agents for now. Before I could get out of the car, Ted stopped me, saying we had some paperwork to take care of. “Why don’t you give it to him,” he said to Terry.

  It was a three-page typewritten document. “Code of Conduct,” the page on top said. The document was fairly detailed. It included a long list of items I was expected to agree to. Promising I wouldn’t represent myself as an agent of the FBI. Acknowledging I was subject to all federal, state, and local laws. Saying that anything that I received in the course of the investigation would be turned over promptly to the FBI.

  There was more, but Ted didn’t wait for me to finish. “Okay,” he said, “there’s a place to sign at the end.”

  I flipped the pages, looking for the signature block.

  “You’re not gonna use your real name,” Terry said.

  This was new. I’d used Naveed Jamali since we’d begun the operation. “Okay.”

  “You’re gonna sign it like this,” Ted said. “Green Kryptonite.”

  “Green Kryptonite?” I asked him. “What the fuck is that?” Had I just gotten a code name?

  “Yeah. It’s a pretty fuckin’ cool name,” Ted said proudly. “I checked. It wasn’t taken yet.”

  I guessed they had a no-doubling-up-on-code-names rule in the FBI. I knew Ted was a fan of superhero comics. I was sure he hadn’t stumbled onto this one by accident. I knew enough about kryptonite: In its presence, Superman turned weak and nauseated. His veins popped out and his skin grew dark. He lost his superpowers and even risked death. That kryptonite was one powerful substance!

  “So Wonder Woman and My Little Pony were already taken?” I teased. “I know you’re looking to evoke fear in the hearts of our enemies. But Superman? This sounds like a name that was chosen by some forty-year-old guy who lives in his mom’s basement and plays a lot of World of Warcraft. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  Ted groaned. But the truth was, I couldn’t stop smiling now that I’d been given my very own FBI identifier.

  Wow, I thought. A code name. That was pretty cool. I totally forgot about all the concerns I’d been feeling earlier. Who cared about danger and threateningly pointed Glocks and grabbing secret documents from a government contractor? I was a grown man, and I had a code name. If only my six-year-old self could see me now!

  And though
I would never admit it to Ted, he’d made a pretty awesome choice. Green Kryptonite sounded thoroughly badass to me.

  CHAPTER 18

  * * *

  SPEEDING UP

  Oleg and I had agreed to continue our Westchester County lunch tour at the Fountain Diner in Hartsdale. He was already in the booth when I walked in that late December morning. After we said hello, he immediately excused himself to use the men’s room.

  What was it with these espionage guys and their constant bathroom visits? The agents, Oleg—there wasn’t a normal-size bladder on either side of the post–Cold War. I’d hate to take a cross-country road trip with any of these people. We’d be pulling in to every second rest stop from the New Jersey Turnpike to the Santa Monica Freeway. It would be like traveling with a carload of six-year-olds. We’d die of old age before we ever saw the Pacific.

  I picked up the lengthy menu and watched him make his way quickly to the men’s room. If Oleg was wearing a hidden recorder like I was, why run to the men’s room? Couldn’t he press record in the parking lot?

  When he got back to the booth, I got right down to business: “I looked for your articles. I have a good idea where to get them. But that’s just two articles. That’s nothing. As I mentioned last time, I think I have a better solution for you.”

  Oleg looked at me, but he didn’t look happy. Did he think I was stalling?

  “The federal government has a lot of databases. Some are far more interesting than others. They focus on all kinds of different things. One of them, the one I mentioned last time, is called DTIC. It covers some areas I think you are very interested in.” With that, I handed over the coup de grâce: a neatly formatted twenty-page bibliography of articles about the Tomahawk cruise missile.

  I gave him a minute to turn through the pages and fully appreciate what he was looking at. “I can get access, but it won’t be cheap,” I warned him. “I don’t know how much, exactly. But for that fee, you will get everything.”

  “Everything?” he asked.

  “A lot,” I said. “You might find that would be a highly favorable return on your investment.” I might as well talk in business terms.

  “Okay,” Oleg said, nodding slowly. “I like that.”

  “Say, for instance, you are interested in Tomahawk missiles,” I said. “You tell me, ‘Tomahawk missiles.’ And I can give you a long list like this one. You look at the list and tell me which titles you are interested in. I will get you those. It’s like ordering off the menu at the Russian Samovar. You want the blini or the caviar?”

  “Like what?”

  “Never mind,” I said.

  He was grasping the idea slowly. “You will show me the list,” he said, “and I will tell you what I am interested in?”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “I would be interested in that. Yes. I would be interested. Let’s do this.”

  I told him I thought the registration cost would be around ten thousand dollars, and then there would be a fee every few months. He didn’t have that much with him, but he said he would give me what he had, twenty-five hundred, with a promise to pay the balance the next time we met.

  That was an important milestone. Not the money. I’d gotten money from him before. But he took a step forward without getting prior approval from his bosses in Moscow. He showed his own ego and decisiveness. I gave him credit for his willingness to say yes.

  Some of this could take a while, I warned him. First I had to register for the database and get accepted. He had to get me the money for the registration fee. “In the meantime,” I said, hinting at my haul from the trip to Long Island, “I might have something interesting for you from the Northrop Grumman project.”

  “Yes?”

  “It has to do with fighter jets,” I told him.

  Damn, I was getting good at this! I knew just what buttons to push.

  When the waitress dropped off our food and had moved far enough away for me to continue, I told Oleg, “We have to be ready to act quickly.”

  I wasn’t in any big hurry. I was still waiting for the FBI to get me the Northrop Grumman material. But while I was cooling my heels, I wanted more control over the pace. I didn’t want Oleg constantly snapping his fingers every time he was ready for me to jump. “When I get the material from Northrop Grumman, I can’t wait another month or two for you to call. The window is too short for that. I’ll have to reach out to you.”

  This was something that had pissed me off for a long time, this whole idea of one-way communication. With the power of phony urgency on my side, maybe I had a chance to build a genuine two-way street. “I need a way to contact you,” I told him. “And I don’t mean email. I am not using email. Too many traces. I have another idea.”

  I told him that when I needed to reach him, I would be sending a signal that I wanted him to call me. “We’ll use the Denver Craigslist, the lost-and-found section. I’ll put up an ad saying I’ve lost a black North Face jacket. That will be the signal for you to contact me. Keep checking Craigslist. When you see that, you’ll know I’m ready to meet.”

  To make sure Oleg understood, I gave him a Craigslist cheat sheet, a step-by-step explanation of where to look and what to look for. He seemed to think he could follow that.

  Before we said goodbye, Oleg told me he was going home to Russia for the holidays. “But,” he added cheerfully, “I look forward to seeing you in the New Year.”

  He left the diner with a bounce in his step.

  * * *

  In late January, I put a message on Craigslist Denver, saying I’d lost a black North Face jacket and I was offering a reward. For a couple of days, I heard nothing. Then Oleg called.

  When my cell phone rang, Ava and I and several friends were having dinner at a popular restaurant underneath the West Side Highway called Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. Oleg was calling from a 718 number I didn’t recognize. I had a feeling it might be him, so I answered.

  “I saw the message on the Internet, but I can’t meet you,” he said.

  It was loud in the restaurant. I couldn’t hear everything he said. I asked him to hold a second and walked to a spot that was a little quieter, but it was still hard to hear.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “It is not possible. I will be calling you again when I can meet.”

  What could I do? I said “okay” and then “goodbye.” But I was not happy at all. I thought I’d made it clear that any attempt on my part to reach him meant I was operating within a small window of opportunity. I’d stressed the urgency several times. And Oleg was blowing me off? Not cool.

  Before I returned to the table, I went out to the sidewalk where I could hear, and I called the 718 number. Oleg didn’t answer. Instead, I found myself speaking to a different man with a strong Russian accent. Make that trying to speak. It was a short phone call.

  I asked for Oleg. The man knew enough English to respond, “He left.”

  When I thought about it later, I concluded that the whole idea of my being able to summon Oleg must have been deeply troubling for the Russians. It gave Oleg no time to alert his bosses in Moscow. It gave them no time to prepare Oleg to meet with me. No time for them to decide how far he could go. No time for whatever their pre-meeting protocols were. If I started calling audibles, I’d be taking away any advantage they thought they had.

  Much as I hated it, we were back to snap, jump, meet.

  * * *

  You do this kind of work long enough, you go a little crazy. That’s what I was finding, anyway. It’s a fact of the double-agent life.

  I couldn’t tell anyone what I was up to. I certainly couldn’t expect my friends to keep a secret as juicy as this. By the time I blabbed anything about my secret life to the second and third person, 33—and then 333 more—people would also know. And one of them would surely have a Russian friend.

  I told exactly one person about my coun
terespionage activities. Ava. Even my parents I kept mainly in the dark. They didn’t ask much, and I didn’t say much. From time to time, they asked in the vaguest terms: “Everything okay at the office?” or sometimes “Still hearing from the Russians?” I answered with similar vagueness: “All good.” “Same as usual.” “You know the Russians.” That seemed to satisfy everyone.

  But thank God for Ava. She was my outlet, my confidante, the one person I could discuss my fears and frustrations with. As close as I’d grown to Ted and Terry, we mostly talked about tactical and operational matters. We were always jockeying for position, struggling for operational control. Neither party would admit a weakness to the other, that’s for sure. Ava was the only one I could do that with. I always knew I could trust her. But as important as she was to me when it came to admitting doubts or fears, she was also the only one I could afford to be open with about how exciting it was, how proud I was. There were more than a few times when I just wanted to stand up and scream out loud, “Here I am! Look at me! I’m a total fuckin’ amazing espionage badass!” I wanted badly to make a public pronouncement of some sort, roll down the window of my ’vette, and shout it out for the world to hear.

  Instead, I got a tattoo.

  I felt like I had to do something to prove this whole double-agent thing existed—prove it to myself most of all. Something actual. Something physical. Something undeniably real. Something that connected me to this long, secret journey I was on. It wasn’t like I was going to keep a coffee-table scrapbook of my secret meetings with Oleg or the FBI. It would all be over one day, and what proof would I have?

  So on the morning of March 22, as I was starting to prep for my next meeting with Oleg, I pulled on a T-shirt that said “NY DOESN’T LOVE YOU.” Then Ava and I made a trip to Red Rocket Tattoos. I’d never gotten a tattoo. The brightly lit shop was in midtown, on the second floor of a Garment District building around the corner from Macy’s. I told the heavyset biker-looking dude that I wanted the words Green Kryptonite in Morse code on the inside of my right forearm.