by Jack Barsky
“The goal is to draw one or two members of the surveillance brigade close enough to get a good look at their faces,” Eugen said. “If the same face shows up at another location, you have proof that you’re being followed.”
Eugen taught me how to devise a roughly three-hour crisscross trip through town, on foot and with public transportation.
“Plan your route in advance, and there must always be a plausible reason to go from point A to point B.”
Every other month, I did a practice run to check my progress. I never knew when Sergej would drop by and announce, “Tomorrow morning, 9:00 a.m. sharp, you will check for surveillance.”
On those mornings, I’d test one of my preplanned routes through the city. Sometimes I had a tail and other times not. On days when I was followed, they sent a team of eight to ten of the best trackers in the business. They used walkie-talkies to coordinate their efforts and would frequently switch the closest follower to allow that individual to change clothing, add a hat, put on a scarf, or change a jacket.
I learned very quickly that I had an excellent memory and could not be fooled easily. If I recognized a face I’d already seen, I knew without a doubt I was being followed. If that person was now wearing a different hat, a scarf, or a wig, it was a dead giveaway.
These test runs became a serious competition. Both the leader of the surveillance team and I had to file a report after each training exercise, and no one wanted to have to admit to failure. Although these exercises were all in friendly territory, they were incredibly stressful. From the moment I left my apartment, all my senses were on high alert.
It was harder to determine that I was not being followed. Caution is a spy’s best friend; paranoia is his enemy.
One morning, I could feel it in my bones that I was being followed. Everywhere I went, I scanned the faces of the people around me.
Have I seen this person before?
What is she doing here at this deserted bus stop?
Hah! I remember that face, but she’s is wearing a different hat and coat. You lost, young lady!
Is someone hiding behind that tree? Well, I can find out because there’s a public restroom right next to it.
And so it went for three hours.
At one point, a man came up and asked me for a cigarette. I used the opportunity to scan my surroundings for any suspicious activities or familiar faces. Then I moved on. Later, at the debriefing session, I found out that the guy who bummed the cigarette was an agent. That bold fellow was the only one who ever tricked me.
“You’ve passed the test again,” Eugen said after yet another practice run. “Final score: Dieter ten, surveillance team zero.” I had beaten the best of the best, and Eugen promptly declared me one of his ace students.
He soon extended my training to include dead drops, which are a way for two agents to make an exchange (of a passport, money, or classified documents) by placing or retrieving an ordinary object—something that would not attract the attention of animals or humans (such as a rusty oil can, a piece of hollowed wood, or rock made from plaster of Paris)—at a predetermined location and time.
Eugen subscribed to the principle laid out by Edgar Allan Poe in his short story “The Purloined Letter” that the best place to hide something is in plain sight. I adopted this principle to some degree, but acknowledging Eugen’s superior skills, I never went to his extremes.
“Today, follow closely and watch me very carefully,” Eugen said at the outset of one of our training sessions.
He walked ahead and I followed, never taking my eyes off of him. After fifteen minutes, he stopped and turned around.
“Well, did you notice anything?”
“No, nothing,” I said with confidence.
Eugen broke into a triumphant belly laugh.
“Come with me,” he said.
We walked together back to a raised flower bed close to the sidewalk. I marveled as he pointed out a metal cartridge embedded in the soil, just deep enough for only a half-inch to be exposed.
“I used the art of distraction to catch your attention when we were walking,” he said.
“But I watched you the entire time.”
Eugen laughed again, thoroughly pleased that his sleight-of-hand trick had succeeded so well.
“As I passed the flower bed, I looked to my right—which made you look to the right for just a second as I made the drop.”
I could not remember looking away from him at all, and I realized I needed more work before I could imitate such mastery.
Operating under the generally accepted rules of conspiracy, agents almost never know the details of the decision-making process. I never knowingly met anyone who laid the groundwork for my undercover life. The agents and experts who came to my apartment gave me training or information, but they never let on if they had a larger role in planning my future.
Occasionally, a few agents who were stationed in New York City or Washington, DC, under diplomatic cover would return to the Soviet Union for a visit and stop by my apartment to say hello, drop off a book or magazine, and chat with me about life in America.
The most frequent of these guests was a bright, gregarious redhead named Alex, who came fully armed with a well-developed ego and a gift for self-promotion. When he first arrived at my door, he was proudly wearing a full-length orangish leather coat, which must have cost him a fortune in Western currency. He came in like a whirlwind and quickly let me know that he was an expert in all things American. I listened with rapt attention as he explained the differences and similarities between Russians and Americans.
“Americans are very similar to Russians in that they are very easy to get along with. Of course, they are also very selfish. All they think about is getting ahead in life. They lack what we have—a cause to fight for and sacrifice for. But they’re great to be around.”
When Alex finished his two-year stint at the United Nations, he moved back to Moscow and became a frequent guest at my apartment, second only to Sergej. One day, he briefed me on a central point of my mission: political intelligence.
“We need to get inside the heads of the decision makers,” he said. “We need to understand what they are thinking and to what extremes they might go. Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? If we’d had better intelligence, we could have managed that situation better.”
“So what exactly do you want me to do?” I asked. “How can I come to understand these American decision makers?”
“First of all, you need to sharpen your analytical skills. I will provide you with a number of American publications, and I want you to write an analysis on a topic of my choice.”
“No problem,” I said. “But that is all secondhand information, filtered by the reporters who wrote the articles.”
“That’s true. And that’s why we will need you to establish contacts with people who are connected to influential think tanks such as the Hudson Institute, the Columbia University Institute of Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission. We are especially interested in Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor to President Carter.”
“And how do I get close to these people?” I asked in disbelief.
“We are working on that one. Don’t worry, you will be set up nicely.”
His answer lifted my spirits tremendously. It was yet another sign that I would have the full weight of the mighty Soviet Union behind me.
Alex was an important figure in my life, but I had no idea what his official role was. Was he Sergej’s boss? Was he ultimately responsible for my deployment and my mission? I had no way of knowing. There are no published organizational charts in the undercover world.
ALTHOUGH THERE WAS NO VISIBLE HIERARCHY among the KGB operatives I worked with, there was a sense that some agents had achieved the status of undercover “royalty.” Near the end of the summer of 1976, Sergej showed up one day with some “very good news” to share with me. Our leaders had approved a proposal to introduce me to a couple who went by the names of
Peter and Helen. The reverence with which Sergej spoke about Peter and Helen reminded me of the time he had handed me a tape recording of one of the most famous KGB spies, Colonel Rudolf Abel. It was as if he were entrusting me with a precious religious relic.
“Who are Peter and Helen?” I asked innocently.
Sergej leaned in as if to impart a deep secret. “Well, I can tell you that they are real Americans, and they have served our cause extremely well. Beyond that, please do not ask any more questions.”
I looked forward to meeting this illustrious couple and to have another opportunity to talk with some real Americans. Sergej took me to the couple’s apartment in the chic Arbat district. After he rang the bell and identified himself, he quickly turned to depart. “Aren’t you staying?” I asked as the door opened.
“No, you go on in,” he said with the same excited grin he had displayed when first telling me about Peter and Helen.
I turned back and saw a man who appeared to be in his seventies, with thinning gray hair and a dull, yellowish cast to his wrinkled face. But as soon as he opened his mouth, his voice projected the vitality of someone much younger, and in his handshake I felt the steely determination of a man who was not to be trifled with.
“Come on in, Comrade Bruno!” Peter said as he added a friendly slap on the back to his greeting. “Bruno” was the code name I had been given for the purposes of working with Peter and Helen.
When I stepped inside, I was amazed by the attractiveness of their place, which by Soviet standards was a luxury apartment. The interior, including the furniture, was much more refined than anything I had seen in Moscow.
When Helen came into the room and greeted me, she seemed just as strongly determined as her husband—if not more so. Her voice was very deep and raspy, likely the result of years of heavy smoking.
After the exchange of initial pleasantries, during which both Peter and Helen behaved like children in a toy store in their eagerness to converse with me, Helen said, “Would you like some tea? I would offer you some coffee, but they don’t know what good coffee is around here.”
This kicked off a short discussion about their longing for good coffee. Watching them banter, I enjoyed their lively personalities and the sound of American English. While Helen served tea and cookies, Peter engaged me in conversation.
“Bruno, we are very happy to be able to talk to somebody freely in English. This is also a time for us to pass the torch to the next generation—of which you are a part. We will help you as much as we can.”
As I listened with great interest, Peter began sharing bits and pieces of seemingly unconnected information about his past.
“You know, Bruno, I played football for Mississippi State.” This soon led to, “I tell you, the Spanish Civil War was hell—but at least I made a lot of friends there.”
The more we talked, the more I began to ask questions—the guards of secrecy having been lowered very quickly.
“Did you meet Germans and Russians in the war?” I asked.
“I sure did. I was a member of the Fifteenth International Brigade. We fought a good fight, but in the end we had no chance against Franco, who was supported by Hitler and Mussolini.”
“So how did you wind up here?” I asked the one question that would have made Sergej wince.
Peter let out a hearty laugh, “One day you may read about it, for now I can only tell you that Helen and I spent eight years in a British prison.”
“Eight years?” Earlier, Peter had mentioned that he was sixty-six. The fact that he looked a decade older now made sense. No doubt the rigors of prison had added some years to his appearance. Moreover, his eyesight was failing, requiring him to use very strong reading glasses, and his arthritic, bony hands were the sign of a man who had aged before his time.
“Our friends got us out, you know. They will always get you out, you can bet on that.” He gave me a knowing look, as if to assure me not to be afraid of going to prison. Over time, Peter would disclose more details about his past, but he and Helen never told the entire story.
Much later, I pieced together the truth. Peter and Helen Kroger were actually Morris and Lona Cohen, who had met and married in the United States. Morris had recruited Lona to join him in spying for the KGB, and they were instrumental in the theft of atomic secrets—he by recruiting and handling a number of young physicists, and she as a courier.
The exact role the couple played in the theft of the biggest secret of all time, and any relationship they may have had with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—who were convicted and executed for sharing atomic secrets with the Soviets—is something that probably can be found only in the vaults of the KGB’s archives.
In 1950, when the FBI was closing in on the atomic spies, Peter and Helen fled to Moscow before taking up residence in Poland to prepare for yet another mission. In 1954, they moved to England, posing as a couple from New Zealand, and set up shop as antique book dealers to cover for their underground activities. For almost seven years, they acted as radio operators for the spy ring led by Gordon Lonsdale, until all three were arrested in 1961. Eight years later, Peter and Helen were exchanged for a British national after serving only a portion of their twenty- and twenty-five-year sentences.
Among the illegals who operated on behalf of the KGB during those years, Peter and Helen Kroger were true standouts. Their undying belief in the Communist cause was the perfect foundation for their activities. They had none of the flaws that compromised many other illegals. They didn’t drink, they didn’t party, they weren’t in it for the money; instead, they were true soldiers of the revolution. And as far as I know, they held fast to their ideals to the very end, even through the collapse of the Soviet Union.
After that first day, I felt a similar reverence for this couple to what Sergej had expressed, even though I didn’t yet know their full story. Also, I felt as if I had made two very good friends in what was essentially a friendless environment.
The systematic and elaborate preparation for my eventual deployment continued into February 1977, when I spent two weeks with Peter in a two-bedroom apartment—just him and me. An elderly lady who came to the apartment in the mornings prepared meals for the entire day.
I expected to have the same kind of enjoyable interactions I was accustomed to in my weekly visits with Peter and Helen; but when he got away from his lovely wife, Peter turned into a cranky and rigid old man.
He immediately imposed a routine that began with getting out of bed at 6:00 a.m., an hour earlier than what I was used to. At 7:00, we walked for an hour in the biting February cold. The ground was slippery, and I often had to steady Peter to keep him from falling.
During the day, we spent much of our time in conversation about the United States, the Soviet Union, spy work, and the future of the world. But Peter was a hard taskmaster, sort of like the early Nikolai, and was quick to anger whenever I did something to displease him.
One day, as I looked out the apartment window at the demolition of a nearby building, I ruminated out loud, “I wonder if they will ironball this thing down.”
This was an invented word and not in Peter’s vocabulary.
“Don’t you ever do that again!” he yelled.
I looked at him in shock at this unexpected outburst, but he was merely warming up to a full fury.
“If you are experimenting with a language you have not yet mastered,” he roared, “you will be dead meat!”
My mouth hung open as he stormed into the other room.
My face grew hot and my heart began to race. I had never felt more afraid of anyone in my life—including my father. Was this the end of our relationship? Would we ever talk again? Would he report my transgression to headquarters?
I worried for about an hour, until Peter regained his composure and came out of the room. When he returned, he restated his point, but this time with calm logic. I apologized, and our relationship was whole again.
In spite of the rough moments, the two weeks we spent to
gether were an overall success. The ability to hear and imitate a male speaker in the American vernacular improved my English pronunciation enormously. I felt ready for the next step.
If only I knew when and what that would be.
“HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO to Canada for a while?” Sergej asked me one day in late March 1977. By that time, I had been training in Moscow for almost two years.
“Has the plan changed? Will I be deployed to Canada instead of the US?” For a moment I felt disappointed.
“Not at all,” Sergej replied. “This is the final step in your preparation. We think that three months in Canada would be an excellent opportunity for you to practice your English and familiarize yourself with the culture and the way of life over there. After all, Canada is a lot like the US, only colder and with fewer people.”
My spirits rose at the thought that we were finally making some progress.
“Great stuff,” I said, jubilant at the prospect of my first extended trip to a Western country.
“Now I have to measure you. We need to get you a full set of West German clothes. You will be traveling on a West German passport.”
Two weeks later, Sergej appeared at the apartment with a suitcase loaded with clothes and other items I would need for a long trip overseas—socks, underwear, shirts, sneakers, a denim jacket, and jeans. And so it happened that, at the age of twenty-eight, I became the proud owner of that most basic article of Western clothing: a pair of Levi’s blue jeans.
Aside from the practice aspects of this trip, I had one important task assigned to me: the acquisition of a genuine American birth certificate.
Alex stopped by in his orange leather coat to give me instructions as we sat at the table in my apartment.
“Here we have this fellow, Henry van Randall, who was born in 1950 in California and died as a child. You will one day become Henry van Randall.”
I nodded, listening carefully and thinking about the name Henry van Randall. I had never liked the name Albrecht, and Henry didn’t sound too bad. Van Randall was even better. It had the air of nobility about it.