Best of Enemies

by Eric Dezenhall

  At 9 o’clock, on the morning of July 6th, I was taken to the office of the chief of the prison. When I entered the room I saw five people, two on one side of the table and three on the other. Three of the men looked like foreigners, and I thought they might be from some international human rights committee that received my complaints about unjustified conviction and humiliating treatment in prisons (beatings, provocations, blackmailing, etc.). One of the Russian representatives was Aleksandr “Sasha” Zhomov, from the FSB—the thug who had interrogated me on my first week in Krasnya Presnya prison in Moscow.

  One of the foreigners started speaking in Russian, introducing himself as the CIA Chief of Station, and the others were from Department of State and from the Justice Department. When I heard that one of the visitors, Dan [Payne, formerly of Sandy Grimes’s team], was the Chief of Station, I assumed that this is just another provocation, a ruse. I’d never read or heard of a CIA officer identifying himself, especially in front of an FSB representative. I was shocked, I even asked for their identifications. Then I realized that it was a stupid question: the FSB could make any kind of forged documents.

  My conviction that it was a provocation became stronger after “Dan” read some items from “an agreement between the Russian and American governments,” according to which I have to sign a document admitting that I was working for the US government. I turned to Dan and told him that if he really represents the CIA, he should know that I never worked for any government besides the Russian one. Dan was trying to convince me that everything he told me was true, and not a provocation. It’s just the conditions of an agreement. If I would sign the document, I would be freed and flown to the US the next day.

  My head was breaking apart. I didn’t know what to do. Dan told me that I had to make my decision immediately. My mind couldn’t comprehend the situation. I’m in prison and I am told I can spend the rest of my life there unless I confess and admit that I’m a CIA spy… and the next second, somebody else is trying to convince me to sign a paper admitting that I’m a spy, but promising me freedom and life in US. And the time for making the decision is just a few seconds. Was this an elaborate FSB trick to make me confess in advance of my execution?

  Dan told me one more time that everything was real—it’s not a dream, and not a provocation. I had just to sign the document admitting that I was working for the US government, which I hadn’t. I thought, I had nothing to lose, but if everything is really true, I will be free in a day. I decided I would sign the document and so told the officials. I don’t remember how I ended up back in the cell. It was such a hurricane in my head. I regained consciousness when the guard knocked at the door and gave me a document to sign. It was an appeal to the president for a pardon. It meant I had to lie to the whole world, to my family and friends, telling that I’m a spy. The FSB was covering their ass with my name. It took me 3–4 hours before I signed the document and gave it to the authorities. That night passed without sleep. I was “running” in the cell like a crazy man. My thoughts were about the situation, kids, mother, my future life…

  On the morning of July 7th the authorities informed me that I would be allowed to see some of my family, so I asked them to invite my son Ilya and Masha with the kids. The day passed in slow motion. I was too excited by the events—the possibility of freedom, transferring to US, seeing my kids that I hadn’t seen for four years. I was like a wounded animal in the cage.

  In the evening, about 7 o’clock, I saw Vanya [Ivan] and Masha. It’s hard to find the proper words to express my feelings. I was in heaven. Vanya had grown up and looked like a man, smart and wise. When I told them that I will be released tomorrow and will be taken to America, they thought that I’d lost my mind, that I’m crazy. I was trying to explain the situation, but they couldn’t believe it. I told them that they have to be ready to join me in the States and stay with me for good. For them it was a bomb, even harder to understand the situation than for me, and I realized it. Everything was like a fairytale. Later they told me that when discussing our meeting on the way home, they came to the conclusion that I had lost my mind and that’s the reason the authorities arranged the meeting.

  After the meeting with Masha and Vanya was over, I waited for the meeting with Ilya, but an authority told me that he would not come and he didn’t explain the reason. For me it was another blow I couldn’t understand. He was the only person with whom I wanted to discuss the situation and all the nuances for the future. I needed him badly. His disappearance tortured me until I had a chance to call him from the States a week later. Only then did I find out the reason he couldn’t come to see me because his mother-in-law had died the same day.

  Of course I didn’t sleep the night. I was trying to find the answers to too many questions—first of all why I was put in the list for the swap??? What’s going to happened in the future with my mother, my kids, my wife, etc. Did I make the right decision to sign the papers? How I’m going to live in exile?

  It so happened that the 8th of July was a holiday, “The Day of the Family.” What a happy coincidence. I was going to be free today. It was too much, I still couldn’t realize what was going on, and everything was not real, like a dream, a miracle… Today I’m going to be free and go to bed in America as a free man…

  At about 10 o’clock I was escorted out of the cell to the reception room where already my bags were. I was allowed to put on my own clothes from what I had in my bag. It was my first step to the freedom and I was ready to make it, despite of heavy worries inside of me.

  I make a coffee, packed 2 bags, one with documents and another with some personal staff. With impatience, I was waiting for the trip to the freedom. There were the most exiting hours. The time was passing, but no movement. I was still in prison. At 2 o’clock I was offered the lunch, but I couldn’t eat, no appetite. I was shivering like in the cold. Each hour was like eternity… This situation continues till 6 o’clock. I started thinking that everything was a set up, it was a play, but I couldn’t guess the aim of it. Only after 6 o’clock, I was told by an authority that there will be no action today; the flight had been postponed till next day, 9th of July. I was ordered to change my clothes back to the prison uniform and escorted back to the cell. Again I started thinking that everything was a game to kill me psychologically. All my dreams began vanishing, I was in frustration and depressed. In spite that I get used to a lot of different provocations in prison, this one wounded me badly; I even had to ask the authority for some medicine. It was another sleepless night, the 3d one in a row. I tried to put myself together, accepted the reality and just wait…

  Unbeknownst to Gennady, a government-chartered Vision Airlines Boeing 767 jet had departed New York’s LaGuardia Airport en route to Vienna. On that plane, a team of State Department officials, CIA officers, and FBI agents were escorting the ten Illegals to Vienna for the swap. The keys to Gennady’s freedom, and likely his very life, were on their way without his knowledge. Alan Kohler, from the New York Field Office, led the Bureau’s escort team. As Kohler recently described, the FBI agents sat in first class while CIA officers spoke quietly with the Illegals and their Russian minders in coach, surrounded eerily by hundreds of empty seats.

  On the long flight, Kohler, who occasionally went back to the coach section, observed the curious dynamic. “It was like two opposing football teams,” Kohler says. “The Americans versus the Russians—and they respected each other after a brutal three-hour game. No recriminations. Just cordial conversations.” Kohler describes what appeared to be a strange sense of relief on the faces of the prisoners.

  It was the first time most of the Illegals actually had met one another, so they introduced themselves. With eight hours to kill on the flight, they also read the news reports of their arrests, and one startled Russian spy exclaimed to Kohler, “Wow, you really had microphones in my house?”

  Back in Russia, there was no sense of relief for Gennady, just apprehension. That morning, for good luck, he wore his YOU DON’T KNOW
ME/WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM T-shirt—a gift from Cowboy.

  Gennady’s prison diary describes the scene in Lefortovo:

  9th of July, 2010, Lefortovo prison

  At 4 o’clock in the morning I was escorted back to the reception room and was allowed to change the clothes and make a coffee. Than I was given some papers to sign, which I did automatically and begin to believe that something is going to happen soon, maybe what I was told 2 days ago is still real. At about 6 o’clock I noticed some activity and in a few minutes I was told to take my bags and follow the guards. Soon I found myself in the prison’s yard where I was ordered to sit in the standing van.

  Before Gennady took a seat on the van’s floor, he hadn’t bothered to make eye contact with the other prisoners, a lesson he learned early in his ordeal. Eye contact tended to provoke unwanted hostilities, so he kept his head down. He sensed just a few others. After he sat, Gennady felt a presence behind him. And the presence had a voice. Alex Zaporozhsky said, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this!”

  After few minutes the column of 5–6 cars started to move out of prison’s yard. We had been under reinforced security not free. I understand that the swap exchange is a very serious operation. I’d been looking through the window hoping to see my home on the way to the Sheremetyevo airport, from where I thought the plane would fly to US. But soon, I realize that we were going to Domodedovo airport. When we reach the airport another group of special security forces join the column. All the cars came to the airfield. Then we had been given some papers about our release to sign, but nobody gave them to us. After that one by one under heavy guards we had been moved to the plane. I thought that we had been free… but I was wrong. We still had been surrounded by strong security. General Zhomov, who started my interrogation on my first week after arrest, was on the plane too.

  When the plane carrying the prisoners took flight late that morning from Domodedovo, one of the US reps, possibly Dan Payne, passed the information up the chain of command, and within seconds, Panetta and the others at Langley were aware of the operational status. Someone quickly decided that a certain CIA retiree also needed to be updated.

  A gaunt Gennady on the day of his release.

  In her Virginia home, Jack’s daughter Michelle was awoken at 4 a.m. by “a friend on the inside,” who called to tell her that “someone named Vasilenko” was on the swap list. “Think it’s your Gennady?” the friend asked. Michelle immediately called her father, also asleep, in Brooklyn, where he was visiting his beloved ailing younger sister, Polly (she would die a year later, at age seventy-two, of ALS). Michelle told him that she thought Gennady might be on the swap list. Jack was excited but also skeptical. He said he’d call back if he was able to confirm the news.

  Gennady’s diary continues:

  The flight to Vienna (as we understand the swap was going to happen there) was quiet and seemed short, since I was sitting with [fifty-nine-year-old] Alex Zaporozhsky and we talked all the way and didn’t notice the time. But we still were not free; the guards accompany us even to the toilet. At about 1 pm [Moscow time, noon in Vienna] the plane landed in Vienna airport.

  On their flight to freedom, Gennady and Zaporozhsky were caught in that soupy netherworld between existential bliss and practical reality.

  “Can you believe it’s real?” Gennady would say.

  Zaporozhsky didn’t need to be told what “it” was: freedom. “I think it may be real.”

  “Do you think it’s a trick?”

  Zaporozhsky gestured to the plane around them. “All this would be a mighty big trick.”

  The men would loll off for a time and then Zaporozhsky would say, “Genya, you think we’ll make it to America, right?”

  It was Gennady’s turn to be optimistic. “Of course we will.” Then he would turn to the workaday. “Where do you think we’ll live?”

  Zaporozhsky answered Northern Virginia. “I’ve lived there before. I like it there.”

  “Me too. I have friends there—very good friends,” he said, thinking of Jack. “I’d like a house with land, where I can shoot. Schools in Virginia are very good, so near Washington.”

  “Besides, it’s close to the CIA, so we can keep an eye on the enemy.”

  The Russian Yakovlev Yak-42 and the US Vision 767 arrived in Vienna within minutes of each other and parked nose to tail. Simultaneously, inside the cabins of both planes, the bartered spies rose and prepared to head out to a new and uncertain life. “In Vienna, the Illegals all thanked us for our professionalism, and for taking care of their kids, who arrived the next day,” recalls the FBI’s Kohler. “Interestingly, they never actually set foot in Vienna. At the bottom of the stairs they got onto a people mover, which carried them directly to the Russian plane.”

  Gennady stated in his diary:

  The walk from one plane to another went smoothly and quiet. We were going out of the plane and saw the group on the opposite side of the swap going out of another plane, which parked nearby. So, the two groups changed planes.

  As he walked the tarmac to the US plane, Gennady came eye-to-eye with his nemesis, Sasha Zhomov, for whom he had only three parting words: “Nice try, motherfucker.”

  Gennady wrote:

  When I put my step on the ladder of American plane I’d felt the real freedom, no guards, no motherfucker Zhomov. It’s hard to explain the real feelings of freedom after almost 6 years of imprisonment under a 3 years sentence… I was in heaven, feeling as if I was intoxicated… It was hard to believe that 3 days ago I was in a strong security prison where I was told I would spend the rest of my life and now I’m in the plane which is taking me to freedom. Miracle…

  “In Vienna it was a weird dynamic,” Kohler recalls. “The Illegals were happy to leave the plane, while the four Russians were happy to be getting on it. Within minutes, the four Russians [had] arrived. Like clockwork. Not sure if they saw each other passing by, but they might have. Gennady wore this ‘You Don’t Know Me’ T-shirt and stuck out. On the plane, doctors checked them out. They looked bad and smelled like they hadn’t had showered in a month. They spoke to CIA people who were assigned to talk to them.”

  The entire swap operation, an homage to the reset’s improved cooperation, went off seamlessly; the Russian plane took off at 12:38 p.m., while the Vision Airlines charter, heading first to London, was right behind them, wheels up at 12:45.

  Again from Gennady’s diary:

  The flight from Vienna was joyful, we talk and laugh a lot, and it was fun. We even drink some champagne. The plane made another short stop in London where two guys from our group were taken by Great Britain authorities.

  The plane landed at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, England, to drop off two of the exchanged Russian nationals, Igor Sutyagin and Sergei Skripal, then proceeded across the Atlantic to Washington’s Dulles International Airport, while the Russian jet returned to Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, where, after landing, the ten Illegals were kept away from local and international press. Gennady says his KGB contacts told him the reason for the isolation: “Putin wanted to arrest the Illegals when they got back—for ten years they did nothing but party.” After consideration, Putin thought better of it.

  Back in New York, at approximately the same time that Gennady’s plane took off from Oxfordshire, Cowboy Jack’s Trailways Express was pulling away from Penn Station, bound for Great Falls, Virginia. For three decades, Jack had been chasing his Russian friend. Now it was Gennady’s turn to chase Jack, from thirty-seven thousand feet above. When Jack’s bus exited the Holland Tunnel, he glimpsed Lady Liberty and hoped it was a sign that his friend had finally achieved his own freedom.

  In the air over Oxfordshire, in the plane that could seat more than three hundred, Gennady and Aleksandr could finally exhale. “Someone broke open a bottle of scotch,” Alan Kohler remembers. “It was very emotional.” The FBI man chatted casually with both of his charges, but one exchange has stayed with him. “The most meaningful discussion I had on the flight
was with Gennady. After we gassed up in England, it was clear that he was beat. We folded back two armrests between the seats so he could lie down. He put his head up on his elbow and looked up at me and said, ‘This is the first time I’ve slept on something other than concrete in five years.’”

  Somewhere on the New Jersey Turnpike, Jack was dozing also—but not for long. By midmorning, Jack had finally received the call from Panetta’s Deputy Director of Clandestine Services—and Jack’s old IOC trainee—Mike Sulick. “It was the first time in my twenty-six years that a Deputy Director of Operations ever called me,” Jack said in 2016.

  “Hi, Jack. I’m here to tell you that your buddy is on the swap list,” Sulick said.

  “Don’t kid me now. This is very serious.”

  “I wouldn’t kid about this,” Sulick assured him. “I know how much he means to you.”

  Thinking that Gennady was still being processed in Russia, Jack knew his friend well enough to know that he’d worry that it was a ruse, another form of Sasha-style torture. “I told Sulick to assure Genya that this wasn’t a trick,” Jack said. “ ‘Have your guy tell him “Chris Llorenz” passes you his greetings.’”

  Now, finally, Jack could almost confirm Michelle’s hopeful message. But he still repressed the urge to rejoice out loud on the Trailways Express; he worried that Sasha, Fradkov, and the totalitarian Putin apparatus were indeed playing another cruel trick on the West, and on Gennady. He couldn’t know that Kohler and others had personally escorted Gennady onto the plane. On the bus, Jack’s mobile phone kept ringing with congratulations from his former CIA colleagues, confirmations that finally put Jack’s concerns to rest. In Virginia, Michelle Platt was hanging by the phone, also waiting for the final validation: “Dad calls me back later that morning to say he’s on the bus home, and, yes, it is indeed time to celebrate.”