I glanced left, right, and behind me, as I had learned. Just making sure we were alone. I noticed a gold Buick LeSabre parked beside us. There was no one else around.
“Let me get the computer on,” I said to Oleg as I turned the Jeep engine off. “The wireless card should be fine up here. What I want to do is show you all the things that are available through DTIC.”
Just then, a mall cop came up the ramp toward us. Growing up in the American suburbs, I knew you never had to fear the mall cops. They might have official-looking uniforms. They might even drive cruiser-looking cars. But the square tin badges they wore carried zero legal authority. There wasn’t anything a mall cop could do to you.
I’m not sure whether they had mall cops in the Soviet Union’s Moscow suburbs when Oleg was a teenager, but he looked a little spooked when the Roosevelt Field officer pulled around in his white Chevy Cavalier with flashing amber lights. “Let’s just wait,” Oleg whispered to me.
I shut the lid of my laptop and didn’t move. The mall cop rode smoothly past us. “Goofballs,” I mumbled as I opened the laptop again.
“By the way,” Oleg said, reaching out his hand to me, “I brought this back for you.” It was the black plastic thumb drive I’d given him in April, the one with the Northrop Grumman cockpit manuals.
I wasn’t sure why he was returning a twenty-dollar thumb drive. But I took it and dropped it into the cup holder by the Jeep’s gearshift and said, “Thanks,” before turning back to my DTIC demonstration on the laptop.
“The nice thing,” I told Oleg, setting up the sales pitch, “is we can browse through this directly. I can set it up to run automatic searches. It can store articles in a bibliography for a period of time.”
I showed him the basic search function and then a list of articles. “You can do it by date range,” I told him. “By a string, if you like.” I showed him how each article was coded with a number and accompanied by a brief abstract. “I’m the one doing the requesting,” I explained. “Here’s the bibliography that it’s stored on. Here’s the actual article. Here’s how the information in the article matches the bibliography.”
I didn’t call up any individual files. I showed him how the application worked. Totally at random, I slid the cursor to an article from a long list of search results. I noticed it was from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and had something to do with linguistics. I didn’t read the full title at first. But I knew it had to do with teaching foreign languages. This wasn’t out of the ordinary for DTIC.
DARPA is the Pentagon office that funds research into new technologies for the U.S. military, and that can mean almost anything. DARPA was created in 1958 in response to the Soviet Union’s first Sputnik launch. President Eisenhower wanted to make sure that the U.S. military technology was more sophisticated than whatever our potential enemies had. But DARPA isn’t all missiles and programming code. Many DARPA-funded technologies are now commonplace in the civilian world, including computer networking, hypertext, early versions of GUI (graphical user interface), and the latest language-training techniques.
“Can I get a copy of this?” Oleg asked.
“You want a copy?” I said. “Sure, I can get you one later.”
“Can I get it now?”
“I don’t have a printer here,” I said. Uh-oh! I was stalling. I wasn’t sure he knew it, but this was starting to feel like a problem to me.
I read the title more carefully: “Final Technical Report, March 2008. Robust, Rapidly Configurable Speech-to-Speech Translation for Multiple Platforms.” I didn’t know what that referred to, but it clearly had to do with language translations. It didn’t sound like much of a beach read. Boring was the word that came to mind.
Oleg seemed to have chosen the article entirely at random. It was the one my cursor happened to land on. I suspected he just wanted another piece of paperwork to pitch to his superiors on the value of what he was doing for them, further evidence of his new American contact’s impressive access.
I didn’t dare look at him directly. From the corner of my eye, I could see that his facial expression hadn’t changed. But I still had the sense he was excited—just trying not to show it.
Ted and Terry and I had discussed many scenarios as we planned for this meeting with Oleg. But we hadn’t discussed my giving Oleg any actual files. Not before they’d vetted every document. The issue hadn’t come up in our conversations.
“Do you mind putting it on the thumb drive? You can copy it there,” Oleg said.
Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck!
What was I supposed to tell him? What was I supposed to do?
Panic was starting to rush through my veins.
The whole point of this exercise was giving Oleg access to DTIC—or making him think I was. But everything I gave him had to be approved by the FBI.
Stop. Think.
A file about linguistics—how sensitive could that be? The Defense Department equivalent of a junior high school Spanish lesson? He wasn’t asking for the U.S. nuclear missile codes! Those wouldn’t have been on DTIC anyway.
I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t let Oleg see any hesitation. Hesitation was weakness. I had to act like his request was no big deal. If I were a real spy, I wouldn’t give a shit about handing over a linguistics file. If I were a real spy, I’d be cocky, arrogant, eager to demonstrate what I could offer. I wouldn’t give him my log-in and password. I wouldn’t give him my PIN at the bank. But for a spy, this was a benign request. I was only establishing that I was real.
I hadn’t discussed it with the agents, who had layers of protocol. I was out on a limb. Roll with it. I had to. All along, the agents and I had agreed: “There is no written script, no list of boxes to check off every time. We always want to know where we’re heading, but an effective double agent has to think calmly on his feet.”
Wasn’t that what made me good at this?
The evidence exploded in my mind. The odd questions at Vincent’s had been a clue. The seemingly innocent return of a disposable thumb drive had been another. Oleg was testing me. I didn’t want to blow all the trust I’d built with him, not over a single innocuous article from DTIC. I needed an answer—now. I had Ted’s voice ringing loudly in my head: “There can be no hesitation. You almost have to believe what it is you are saying. You cannot show him any doubt.”
Oleg plucked the thumb drive from the cup holder. He handed it to me. I suspect he was just as nervous as I was, but he didn’t show it, and I don’t think I did, either. He was watching me closely. I could hear my breathing and his. He was paying careful attention to every single twitch.
I was moving on survival instinct. I was thinking, Just make it real. Don’t let on to anything. Don’t blow your cover. Do what you have to. Keep the pace steady and slow.
I took off the plastic cover and slipped the thumb drive into the USB port on the side of the laptop. I saw a tiny red light flicker on. Then a little window popped up on the laptop screen, asking what I wanted to do next:
Import Pictures and Videos?
Open Folder to View Files?
Use This Drive for Backup or Speed Up My System?
I didn’t want to do any of that. So I clicked the window out.
Think three or four—not twenty—steps ahead. Stay in the moment. Be believable.
I had Windows Explorer already open. I copied the linguistics-file PDF from the DTIC directory. I dragged and dropped the file onto the thumb drive. And I clicked out of Explorer.
Just stay in control.
Casually, I reached down and slid the thumb drive out of the port. I slipped the cover back on and handed the thumb drive to Oleg.
The whole maneuver lasted maybe six seconds. Those six seconds almost ended my double-agent career.
CHAPTER 22
* * *
BLOWING IT
Neither Oleg
nor I said much more that day. I was feeling even sicker than before, though now the fever was layered with a rising sense of dread. I told Oleg I would talk to him later. He said yes. He handed me a business card for our next meeting location, a Hooters in Wayne, New Jersey. Obviously, Oleg wasn’t making a habit of cooked-from-scratch joints. We were heading back to the generic American chains, albeit an outlet more famous for its bold displays of female cleavage than for its burgers, beers, and chicken wings.
“You have been to this restaurant?” Oleg asked me before he climbed out of the Jeep. “People say it has a good atmosphere.”
Whatever.
Oleg opened the door, got out, and climbed into the LeSabre parked next to us. I hadn’t realized he’d chosen the space right next to his own car. It was the kind of car someone’s dad might drive, a full-size upscale sedan. Oleg’s was a 2005, the LeSabre’s final year of production. Now, that was an American car!
He backed out of his space. Then I backed out of mine. I didn’t like where this was heading at all.
Shit, I thought as soon I was safely out of the garage. What happened? Did I just do something I am going to seriously regret? I’d handed Oleg a document that had not been preapproved by anyone, done it completely on my own. Whatever my reasons, I’d broken one of the protocols I had followed from the start. Dammit!
I got back on the LIE and headed west. There was only one way I knew to deal with the unease I was feeling, not to mention my now-raging head cold: I drove like a crazy person. I wove through the heavy Sunday-afternoon Hamptons-to-Manhattan traffic, finding breaks between the jammed-up vehicles and squeezing in aggressively. After two or three exits of that, I pulled off somewhere in eastern Queens. I waited to be sure no one was following me, although it was hard to imagine how anyone could have. Then I called Terry.
“That’s good,” he said when I told him I’d pulled off at an exit. “Let a little time pass. Make sure no one’s waiting for you. Then come on in.”
I didn’t say anything about the thumb drive or the details of my encounter with Oleg. But my discomfort was definitely intensifying. What was I thinking, handing Oleg that thumb drive? I didn’t need to ask. I knew the FBI never would have approved of that. How the hell was I going to explain it to Ted and Terry? But what choice did I have? All those thoughts were rushing around in my brain.
I’d agreed to meet the agents at the Marrakech Hotel, a Moroccan-themed budget option on Broadway and 103rd Street. I’d walked by the place a thousand times. All I can say is I hope they got a federal discount.
“Something happened” was as much as I let on to Terry over the phone before I pulled back onto the highway. “I’ll tell you all about it when I get there. I could really use a beer.”
“Okay, sure,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Something shitty,” I said. “And cold.”
“Got it.”
I parked the Jeep in my garage at 110th Street, grabbed my laptop bag off the seat, and walked the seven short blocks to the hotel. My head was pounding with the cold, the anxiety, and the Sudafed.
The Marrakech lobby had low lighting and dark walls. The elevators were just past the desk to the right. As I breezed toward the elevators, I heard a woman’s voice: “Excuse me, sir. Can I help you?”
Damn! I didn’t realize the Marrakech was such a high-security location. I wasn’t looking for a whole bunch of questions from a nosy desk clerk.
“Are you a guest here?” she asked.
“I’m going up to see someone,” I said.
“Name of the guest, please.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to answer that. “Just a friend,” I said. “In 305.”
“Okay, can I have your name?” She wasn’t backing down. “Would you sign the register?”
I was just about to bolt for the elevator and make her come after me when the weekend day manager stepped out from an office behind the desk. “It’s okay,” he said to the clerk. “He’s going to see someone.”
I don’t think the manager had any idea who I was or who I might be meeting or that FBI agents were using his hotel for a postoperation debriefing in a sensitive Russian-espionage case. Or maybe he did. Either way, I appreciated the just-in-time assist.
I pressed the third-floor button in the elevator and made the short ride up. As soon as the car stopped and the door was halfway open, I squinted into the dark hallway and found 305. I knocked. Terry let me in.
“Jesus!” I said to him and Ted. “What did you tell the desk clerk? She acted like I was coming up here for a three-way!”
“You’re not?” Ted deadpanned.
Tense as I was, even I had to smile at that.
* * *
I sat in a black vinyl desk chair in the cramped hotel room. Ted handed me a can of Miller Lite. I fumbled for a place to start.
“That guy is such a fuckin’ asshole,” I said. “He frustrates the shit out of me! We try to get a plan together. At the very last second, he always wants to change things.”
“So what happened?” Ted asked. “Tell us what happened, Naveed. Did he ask about Mexico?”
“No, no,” I said, not expecting that question. “Mexico was the one thing that didn’t come up.” If only the issue were Mexico! “At a certain point,” I continued, “he tried to get me to sign something. A receipt. I didn’t sign it.”
“A receipt?” Terry asked a little incredulously. “He wanted you to sign a receipt for committing treason? That takes balls.”
“He wanted me to sign a receipt for the three thousand he paid me last time,” I said. “Why didn’t he just give me a self-addressed stamped envelope to send to the FBI? That would’ve made the whole thing easier. You guys wouldn’t even need to investigate.”
“When it comes to money,” Ted said, “it’s never quite clear with these guys. Are they padding their own pockets, or are they being directed by some idiot bureaucrats back home? The money is always tricky with them.”
“Yeah,” I said, only half listening as Ted tried to calm my anxiety. Obviously, I was stalling. Russian Mission accounting issues weren’t what had my stomach churning. I knew the real delicate issue was waiting ahead, and I wasn’t rushing to get there.
“I made him show me his ID,” I told the agents. “I said, ‘How do I know you’re not a federal agent? How do I know you really work at the UN?’ ”
Both Ted and Terry laughed at that. “Good for you,” Ted said. He sounded genuinely impressed that I seemed to be holding my own against an experienced Russian military officer who was a professional spy.
The compliment was at least partly warranted, and I felt proud of that. But the good feeling wouldn’t last. I dropped the bomb slowly.
“Then we talked about DTIC,” I said.
Ted asked, “How did that work out?”
I took another swig of Miller Lite. “Not too well,” I said.
They looked up together. Neither one said anything.
“I gave him the papers in the restaurant and showed him everything we talked about,” I said. “Then we walked to the Jeep and went to a parking garage. I was showing him how the searches work, and he gave me back my thumb drive from last time, and there was a document on the directory I was randomly pointing to, and he asked if he could get a copy of the document. I didn’t have a printer or a CD burner in the Jeep, of course, so he said to put the document on the thumb drive, and I did and gave it back to him. Luckily, it was just a document about linguistics.”
It came out like a run-on sentence. I guess I was hoping the response might be gentler if I explained in a single breath. Or maybe I hoped the part where I handed over a DTIC doc would get lost in the rush of other details.
I saw some glancing, but Ted and Terry didn’t speak. They let me finish without interrupting. But their body language—they both sat up stiffly—suggested concern. Was it shock
? Was it panic? I couldn’t tell.
Ted broke the tension. “You know, Terry,” he said calmly, “at least now Oleg knows this is all for real. He’ll never doubt whether it’s real or not.”
Terry nodded, but he didn’t smile.
“Look, guys,” I said, trying to get in front of whatever was coming, “I had no choice. If this was real, I would have given it to him. I had to give it to him. What was I supposed to do?”
Terry didn’t sound convinced when he said, “You could have stalled. You could have asked for more money. You could have done anything but give it to him. We never discussed you putting his thumb drive into your computer and taking anything out. Did we?”
“Wait a second,” I said. “That’s bullshit. I had two heartbeats to make a decision. I went with what I thought was right. I thought it was ‘Everything has to be in the moment.’ That’s what we’ve always said.”
“Still,” Terry said.
“Are you telling me you don’t have my back with this?”
“We’re gonna have to see how it plays out. I don’t know what the reaction will be.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“The reaction above us,” Terry said.
“So after three years of doing this, all the hard work and respect I’ve earned is forgotten because of a split-second decision I had to make when I was placed in a no-win impossible situation? You’re fuckin’ holding me to an impossible standard. Really, dude, what was I supposed to do? If I said no, he’d walk away unconvinced—or even worse, believing he’d been set up. Luckily, the doc seemed innocent enough. Linguistics? That didn’t feel like anything that could compromise national security. It really could have been so much worse.”
I could tell that my explanation didn’t fully ease their concerns. It didn’t ease mine, either. But these agents had been with me through so much. They were as deep in this as I was—and believed in what we were doing just as strongly. At least that’s what I thought, what I hoped was true.
How to Catch a Russian Spy Page 21