How to Catch a Russian Spy

by Naveed Jamali

  “The man reading the menu,” Muir says. “Threat?”

  Bishop doesn’t think so. “Only to the hostess,” he says.

  Judging by the way Oleg’s eyes stayed glued on the hostess as she returned to the front of the restaurant, I should have gotten up from the table to warn her.

  “Have you ever been here?” Oleg asked me, studying my reaction like he might watch an interrogation through a two-way mirror.

  “Not to this location,” I said, leaving it at that.

  Before we continued our conversation, I needed to make sure my watch was recording like it was supposed to. Before I could come up with an excuse to get away from Oleg’s attention, the waitress arrived, introducing herself as Crystal. She was tall and blond and—does this go without saying?—massively large-breasted. She seemed nice. “What do you guys feel like today?”

  She asked that in a way that wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow coming out of the mouth of any diner waitress in America. But the way Crystal delivered the question seemed to carry extra layers of meaning. I ordered a Diet Coke, which, as far as I knew, carried no meaning at all beyond a Diet Coke. Oleg asked for a Sam Adams—how American can you get?—and began to study the menu.

  I was feeling jumpy. The Flavor Flav watch felt heavy on my arm. I tried not to stare at it. Glancing around the restaurant, I waited for a moment when I could excuse myself. I was sweating and wanted to splash some water on my face. I also had to pee. As Crystal went to get our beverages and Oleg preoccupied himself with watching her, I excused myself and found my way to the men’s room at the far end of the bar.

  The restaurant was mostly empty. It wasn’t even noon. The day’s preseason NFL games hadn’t started yet. As I crossed the room, I noticed the giant TVs were playing yesterday’s baseball games.

  There was no one in the men’s room. I used the urinal, checked my watch, and saw that the red light was blinking like it was supposed to. I walked to the sink to wash my face and hands. Just as I turned on the cold water, the men’s room door flew open and a middle-aged white man came rushing in. He was short and fat and wearing a brand-new Jets cap. I could tell the cap was new because it had a packing crease across the top.

  He looked at me. I didn’t look back, but I kept him in the corner of my eye. He quickly turned his head the other way and walked into one of the stalls. He didn’t close the door.

  Like the man I’d seen at Vincent’s Clam Bar, he didn’t speak, and I had no opportunity to detect an accent. But he kept glancing over his shoulder in a way that seemed odd and awkward. He looked like a man you’d see sitting on the boardwalk in Brooklyn as the sun went down on Brighton Beach. Did Oleg suspect me of slipping out to the men’s room to make a phone call? Had the fat man rushed in when he realized belatedly that I’d excused myself from the table? Had he gotten the fresh Jets hat from a Russian Mission wardrobe assistant who’d assured him confidently, “This is exactly how American men dress when they go to Hooters”? Or was I being overly suspicious? I had no time to contemplate it. I had to get back to Oleg.

  * * *

  After I returned to the table and we gave Crystal our food orders—a plate of sliders for Oleg, a green salad with grilled chicken for me—I noticed that Oleg was staring up toward the bar. The big guy in the Jets cap was at a table near us in the dining room, facing in a different direction. Something else had caught Oleg’s attention. It was one of the Hooters Girls, a petite African American.

  Oleg leaned in close as if to suggest some grand new spying proposal. But he didn’t mention espionage at all. “Look,” he said, smiling and nodding toward the waitress. “They have black ones, too.”

  How was I supposed to react to that? I stifled a laugh and tried not to spit out my Diet Coke. Then I replied straight on. “Yes,” I said with my best Ron Burgundy Anchorman sincerity. “We had the civil rights movement. People marched so pretty black women could work at Hooters.”

  I don’t think he got it. I glanced at my menu and allowed myself one last dig. “You know, Oleg,” I said, “I hear the Wayne, New Jersey, Hooters is the United Nations of Hooters. You’re used to diversity, right?”

  I’m no prude. I’d been to places a lot seedier. If people choose to work in a restaurant like Hooters, why would I care? If the customers want to have their chicken wings served by ersatz strippers in incredibly tight T-shirts, it’s a free country, you know. But sitting there with Oleg on that Sunday afternoon, I felt physically uncomfortable—as if my boss were holding the office Christmas party in a whorehouse or my uncle were having his sixtieth birthday party at the Hustler Club.

  I’m trying to conduct some international espionage here. C’mon, Oleg, stop ogling. Ewwww!

  As if that weren’t disturbing enough, I was recording all of it for the FBI.

  The conversation didn’t turn back to business the whole time we sat there. His attention was far more focused on the greasy burgers and the attentive waitstaff, with a few random grunts in my direction. It wasn’t until we got back outside that Oleg was able to focus again.

  “So do we have an agreement or what?” I asked him. “You’re gonna pay me regardless of the documents. None of this pay-by-the-article bullshit.”

  Oleg sounded confident that he’d be able to make that happen. But he said he’d have to get the arrangement blessed by others. He said he’d have a firm answer for me the next time we met. Then he handed me a card for a Pizzeria Uno location across the parking lot from Hooters. Oleg’s America, it seemed, was one long strip mall of bad chain restaurants. I figured I was getting close in his stack of cards to the ones that said Olive Garden or Cracker Barrel. How could we have missed Applebee’s and Johnny Rockets?

  Before we parted, he laid out his next round of requests. “Here is what I would like you to do,” he said, handing me a sheet of paper. “I would like you to search the DTIC for several categories—general categories. Show me what you can find.”

  “Categories,” I said. If the FBI was still on board with my DTIC idea, I could work with categories. Any category that Oleg suggested, I could plug in to the search engine, then compile for him whatever it was that DTIC sent back.

  I looked at his list. I wouldn’t call it bashful. One item said “Future Combat Systems,” the U.S. Army’s principal modernization program of the early and middle 2000s. Another was “F-22 Raptor,” a fifth-generation supersonic fighter aircraft built for the U.S. Air Force by Lockheed Martin. One in particular caught my eye: “Cruise Missiles.” Oleg had taken my suggestion!

  “These are some very broad topics,” I told him. “What I can do is generate a bibliography. That way, you will have a list of documents that should be available.”

  “These we would be interested in,” Oleg said with some enthusiasm, though perhaps not as excitedly as he had surveyed the Hooters Girls.

  * * *

  After leaving Oleg, I drove straight to Manhattan. I had agreed to meet Ted and Terry for an immediate debrief at the Marrakech Hotel. This time I breezed past the desk to the elevators.

  Up in the room, I told Ted I’d followed his advice and threatened to storm away unless Oleg paid his past-due bill and agreed to my compensation plan.

  “He started backpedaling fast,” I said.

  “Good for you,” Ted said. “I told you he would.”

  At that moment, especially, Ted’s approval meant a lot to me. I trusted his experience and judgment. Ted always seemed to know what he was talking about.

  I told them what had happened in the Hooters parking lot. Ted and Terry shook their heads at Oleg’s half-assed we’ll-tell-you-what-it’s-worth proposal. They got a huge kick out of Oleg and the Hooters Girls and the awkwardness of it all for me. “He really said that about the black woman?” Ted asked. “Has he been living in a cave?”

  “He said it,” I assured them as they broke up laughing. Not since I’d told the agents about the
Russian’s book-grabbing habit had they laughed so hard at an Oleg report.

  It had been a rough two months, but the briefing that day did a lot to ease the tension I still felt. Ted and Terry did a wonderful job of making me feel like I was back at the edge of genuine acceptance into an exclusive club, though I understood that I wasn’t an FBI agent and therefore would never be a full-fledged insider, no matter how close I got to them.

  Over time, I came to understand what a mind-fuck that can be. The FBI, the Russians, these are massive organizations with their own agendas, their own cultures, and their own clout. They will work with you or not as it suits their interests and their resources. But when you’re in a position like I was, you have to look out for yourself. You’re never sure who has your back—or if anybody does. You can just as easily get swallowed up by either side.

  That’s why Ted’s departure came as such a blow to me. I got that jarring piece of news just after Labor Day. Ted was taking on a new assignment and moving with his wife to Washington. I loved Ted. He was a talented agent and a very good guy. He’d been a huge supporter of mine from the day he replaced Randi. He appreciated my drive and creativity, even when he wanted to strangle me. Despite what you might have heard about robotic, driven FBI agents, he was a human being. Ted, Terry, and I—we were a team in every sense of the word. Even when I felt totally frustrated with them, I knew we had a personal bond. And when things weren’t going like I wanted, I had the impression that higher-ups were to blame. I figured Ted and Terry would always do what they could.

  Ted was never one for ceremony, so we didn’t have any weepy embraces or send-off meals. He just said goodbye and good luck. “I’ll check on you,” he said. “It’s been a real pleasure, man. You’ll be in very capable hands.” I knew he was tired. So was I.

  Those “capable hands” belonged to an agent named Lisa. She had been involved in the operation on the periphery, I learned, conducting surveillance of Oleg’s wife and daughter on the days when he and I met. Soon after Ted left, Terry took me and Lisa for a get-to-know-you lunch at Harvest on Hudson, a fancy restaurant in Hastings. I tried to be open-minded.

  Lisa looked like a long-distance runner. She had a short, stylish haircut and a wholesome midwestern look. She was a West Point graduate serving in the army reserves. While on active duty, she had served with the 25th Infantry Division, based in Hawaii. She was friendly and obviously smart. I couldn’t think of any reason to object to her except for the fact that she wasn’t Ted. I was happy Terry wasn’t going anywhere.

  At lunch, I expressed lingering concerns that the thumb-drive incident seemed to have changed the operation more than I was being told. I didn’t like feeling out of the loop. Both Lisa and Terry tried to reassure me. Nothing would be done behind my back, they said. I’d have a chance to weigh in on everything. They emphasized how important it was for me to remain a “team player.”

  “Of course I will,” I said. But I also remembered the scene in Spy Game when Nathan Muir says how much he hates being told to be a team player: “Every time my coach told me that, I knew I was about to get benched.”

  “I don’t want be benched,” I told Terry and Lisa.

  “You’re not being benched,” Terry said.

  Maybe not benched. But hadn’t a new player been added to the roster? Some rules of the game had changed. Others were being reinforced as if I were a stone-cold rookie. This had to mean something, right?

  CHAPTER 24

  * * *

  CHANGE OF PLANS

  “A decision has been made—” Terry began after a couple of lame pleasantries.

  That sounded ominous.

  “ ‘A decision has been made’?” I shot back, half imitating him. “What kind of bullshit is that?”

  I think Terry was startled by the intensity of my reaction. I definitely wasn’t speaking with a smile.

  We were sitting in a parking lot squeezed between the West Side Highway and the Hudson River at Ninety-fifth Street. At Terry’s instruction, I had driven there after work one day in late September. I’d parked my black Corvette next to Terry’s government-issue black Ford Fusion, which had replaced his government-issue black Ford Taurus, then I’d climbed inside with the agents.

  Terry, who’d been thrown off by my interruption, got back to explaining what he meant. “A decision has been made to take Oleg down,” he said. “We have decided to do it by arresting you in front of him.”

  The first part made perfect sense. But: “Arresting me?”

  “Pretending to arrest you,” Lisa clarified.

  The sun was setting over the Hudson. Commuters were rushing home on the highway behind me. In front of me, people were jogging up the riverfront path. Two large sailboats were cruising back to the boat basin for the night. The sky was a rich mix of oranges and blues. But I stared glumly out the front window at the river and New Jersey beyond. Everything felt out of whack. I was getting used to working without Ted. Lisa kept taking a slightly condescending tone: “Naveed, you’re a very intelligent person—we get that.” Her flattery was always followed by a but, spoken or not. And now the plan was to “arrest” me? I seethed.

  The agents in the front seat were quiet, waiting for me to absorb what they were saying. Or maybe they just wanted me to calm down.

  I wondered what kind of pressure they were getting from above. In all our time together, Ted and Terry had never handed me a script. We’d sit around and piece together whatever made sense, with the agents providing guidance and oversight. But at the end of the day, I would handle Oleg in my way.

  My mind went straight to the Miami Vice movie. Crockett and Tubbs are on to an international narcotics network with connections in Haiti, Puerto Rico, Dubai, and Geneva. But the FBI is insisting that the cops focus on some small-time local dealers. “End of story,” says the risk-averse Agent Fujima. “Everything else I’m hearing is speculation masquerading as intel.”

  Crockett flips him a set of keys.

  “What’s this?” Fujima asks.

  “Keys to the boat,” Crockett tells him. “Go do this motherfucker yourself.”

  Tubbs cuts in, translating his partner’s fiery words: “What he means to say is he is reluctant to abandon the penetration of a major narcotics trafficking organization.”

  “We’re the ones doing the death-defying shit?” Crockett fumes. “And he wants us to give that up? For what? A chump-change bust so he can get his picture in the Miami Herald to impress the slug farm in D.C.?”

  Sitting in that parking lot, gazing out over the Hudson, I was feeling like Crockett and Tubbs. Actually, more like Crockett.

  I hadn’t heard from the navy. I was very tense about that. After three demanding years in the double-agent business, I was ready to do something else with my life. I’d known that at some point I had to focus on my own career. But I thought we’d been aiming big and thinking long-term, longer-term than this. Out of the blue, Terry was sounding like someone’s ventriloquist, giving me this decision-has-been-made crap.

  I calmed myself down. Lisa must have sensed I was ready to listen and continued. “This has nothing to do with the laptop,” she explained, although I hadn’t asked if it did. “Oleg is leaving the country. We know he is leaving the UN, and someone new is coming in to replace him.”

  That was news. Oleg hadn’t mentioned it to me.

  “It’s just part of their normal rotation at the mission,” Lisa said. “But it gives us an opportunity. We don’t want him to leave without taking action. Now may be our best chance.”

  “This is how we want to do it,” Terry said.

  Terry and Lisa kept saying we and us. I kept wondering: Did they really mean they and them?

  “Based on the fact that Oleg is set to leave the country,” he continued, “we feel this provides an opportunity to make a statement to the Russians.”

  I got that Oleg was leaving. I got th
at the Russian Mission rotation schedule was out of our control. I got that the FBI didn’t want to let him leave the country without holding him responsible for repeated attempts to get sensitive information from me. But I hated the idea of moving against Oleg in a way that would put an end to my double-agent role. If I was grabbed in front of Oleg, the Russians would never trust me again as a source of information, whether they believed the arrest scam or not.

  From that day forward, they’d always be worried I was working for the U.S. government, that I’d flipped in exchange for some kind of leniency deal. Wouldn’t they notice that, despite my dramatic arrest for treason, my name never appeared on the docket at Manhattan Federal Court? Wouldn’t they notice I wasn’t on my way to a couple of decades in super-max? The Russians could read a New York tabloid as well as anyone or check the files in the clerk’s office at U.S. District Court. Once we played the little theater game with Oleg, my double-agent days were done.

  And what rotten timing! Just as I might be heading into the navy as a commissioned intelligence officer. Just as I could convince the Russians I was so much more valuable to them. Just as Oleg would almost certainly pass me off to his successors with a hearty handshake and a firm recommendation.

  On the flip side, it was probably time to move on. A voice in my head—or was that Ava?—kept asking how long I wanted to live this double life. I’d been at it for three years. A lot can happen in three years, and a lot gets put on hold. Ava and I were eager to start a family. It was a time of change for all of us, the agents, too. Terry and his wife had just had their second baby. Ted was off on his new gig.

  In all our time together, the FBI had never told me what the end-game was. Now someone above us had made that crucial decision. I wasn’t sure Terry, Lisa, or Ted had been consulted. I was feeling like a passenger along for a very bumpy ride. I didn’t like it. I needed to drive. The more I thought about it, the less I felt the FBI’s decision was the right one.