by Joe Navarro
By itself, none of this Soviet stuff is particularly alarming: Even seventy-five thousand angry miners pose no serious threat to the world’s Other Superpower—the USSR has crushed the yearning of people to be free before and they’ll do it again. But put it all together, and something is happening. Courage is breaking out behind the Iron Curtain, or maybe just the multiple failures of the Soviet system at all levels—economic, political, moral—are finally becoming impossible to ignore and cover up.
Either way, it might be a little early to start celebrating the Soviets’ decline. The KGB has both the power to quash and suppress, and the incentive. I remember talking to a Soviet KGB defector once. “We can never afford to let go,” he told me. “We’ve all seen how the crowds hung Mussolini’s body when his government fell. That’s what will happen to us, especially in Eastern Europe—they hate us there.”
I’m thinking there’s nothing more dangerous than a wounded Russian bear when Jay Koerner, my supervisor, approaches my desk. The time is 7:57 a.m. The date: Tuesday, August 23, 1988, and while I have no way of knowing, the next decade of my life has just been spoken for.
“Yours,” he says, handing me a teletype from FBIHQ. “Now.”
“Mine?” I’ve got a full day ahead of me and am scheduled to help out with surveillance tonight.
“Lynn’s out of town. The army intel guy will be here in half an hour.”
Jay is halfway back to his office by the time I look down at the teletype. I like Jay. He never gets in the way, but he’s not a conversationalist. The message is from the National Security Division, and in typical Bureau style it reads:
Anytime after 0400 hrs Zulu 8/23/88, you are to locate and interview Roderick James RAMSAY, last known to be living in Tampa, Florida, regarding his knowledge of or association with Clyde Lee CONRAD while stationed at 8th ID, Bad Kreuznach, West Germany: service years 1983–85. INSCOM [Army Intelligence] will liaise and assist: locate, interview, report.
In criminal investigations, information is power, which means that the document I’m holding is the equivalent of a five-watt bulb, barely enough to light a glove compartment. Still, I’m intrigued. The very fact that INSCOM—the US Army Intelligence Security Command—is involved means there’s probably more at stake here than selling PX cigarette coupons on the black market. By the time my army CI counterpart walks in the door, I’m actually anxious to talk with him.
Al Eways, the INSCOM liaison, turns out to be a nice guy, but time is short, and his obligations are many. Roderick James Ramsay, our interviewee, is but one of multiple interviews on his overstuffed calendar.
“Let’s get going” are not quite his first words to me, but close enough. To emphasize the point, Al hands me an address and adds, “We think this is where he is.” A minute and a half later, I’m behind the wheel of my Bu-Steed—agent-speak for our drab government-issue sedans. Al, at the other end of the front seat, has his nose buried in notes, presumably a backgrounder on Ramsay, but I’m only guessing. I drive, he reads. It’s not my place to pry.
CI operates on a strict need-to-know basis. Al is free to fill me in on the details, but the protocol is very straightforward: Unless he tenders the information to me, I’m going to be in the dark until he starts interviewing the subject. Sounds a little counterintuitive, I know, but observing carefully and learning on the go is sometimes the best way.
The first challenge is to find the address I’ve been handed. I know the general area—a sprawling enclave of single-wide trailers northwest of the Tampa airport, in an area once known for its oranges. A month or two back I flew surveillance over this same patch of ground, following a low-level drug dealer. We’ll find the place, I know that, so I start thinking safety.
Where am I? Where’s the closest hospital? Who’s in the area? Young people or old? Mothers pushing strollers or out-of-work males standing on street corners? Are there teenagers roaming the streets?
As I look for the address, I’m also thinking of where to park. I want the driver’s side away from the residence so if I need to, I can use the engine block for cover and have the advantage of distance. We’re near now, but I circle a few more times to get the lay of the land in case I need to get away in a hurry or have to call for help.
And then there’s the real purpose of all this: the interview itself. What are we going to talk about? How will we get this Ramsay guy to relax? People tell you a lot more when they feel in their comfort zone than when you have them sweating on the rack. One more thing: At the end of the day, I’m responsible for more than our safety. I’m on the hook for this interview, too. Ramsay is a civilian, and INSCOM technically has no jurisdiction over a civilian. Still, I have to give Al leeway because he’s holding the cards; he knows more than I do. If anything goes wrong, though, it’s going to be my ass on the line.
Al and I are silent as we drive past a well-kept single-wide trailer with a dark-green latticework skirt. “That’s the place,” Al says a little quizzically as I glide past and circle the neighborhood one more time.
“Got it,” I reply. “Just making sure I know the territory.”
Al is paying attention now, too, and I appreciate that. A lot of counterintelligence involves running down blind alleys, but we’ve got a saying in the FBI: There’s no such thing as a routine interview or stop. Take it too casually, and it might be the last one you ever do.
One time, I was helping the local sheriff’s office in Yuma, Arizona, with an arrest when the guy we were looking for stuck a gun out his front door and blasted away. One round grazed the head of the deputy I was standing inches away from. A year later, still in Yuma, I was on the phone arranging a basketball game with a couple of FBI agents in the El Centro, California, office, sixty miles west, while they waited for an interviewee who’d promised to stop by to see them. He did, also with gun blazing, while I was still on the line. One of the agents was alive, writhing in his own blood, when I got there. He died moments later. The shooter was lying there, too, dead by his own hand. These things stay with you forever, like the smell of a dead body—something you never forget.
* * *
THIS TIME, AT LEAST, the drama is minimal. Turns out, no one is home when we knock on the trailer door. All this driving around has accomplished nothing except to alert local residents that strangers are on their turf. One of the locals steps forward and asks if we need help. We tell him we’re looking for Rod Ramsay.
“This is his mother’s place,” he says. “Rod’s house-sitting a little ways over.”
Al and I look so much like law enforcement that the guy doesn’t even bother asking why we’re here, but he does helpfully provide us with an address and points with his chin in the general direction we’re to follow, and the new neighborhood, in fact, is no more than two minutes away—small tract homes built back in the early sixties. Now it’s twenty-five years later, and their best days are long behind them. After I find the right house, park, and lock the Bu-Steed’s door, I see a shadow crossing in front of the front picture window. Unless I’m mistaken, it’s the shadow of a man not wearing a stitch of clothing.
“Was that person naked?” I ask, but Al is already at the door—directly in front of the door, in fact, pretty much exactly where you don’t want to be. In the Bureau, we call doors “lethal funnels.” Stand dead center in front of one, and you’re so well framed that even a piss-poor, myopic, astigmatism-ridden shooter would have trouble missing you.
We can hear movement inside the house through the open windows—maybe cabinets opening and closing, someone tramping around—but no one is coming to the door, and I hate standing there for so long.
“Wonder what’s going on,” Al says.
By this point, I wonder so much what’s going on that I slip back the right side of my suit coat just enough to easily get to the Sig Sauer P-226 I’m carrying in a holster right by my kidney. Ninety percent of gunfights take place from less than seven yards—narrower than most living rooms. The quicker you can get your handgun in pl
ay, the sooner it all ends—so my hand loiters just behind my hipbone.
Al is starting to look a little nervous himself when the chain slips off its bracket, the door opens, and there stands Rod Ramsay in all his gawkiness: six-foot-one and maybe 150 pounds. Thank goodness, he’s fully clothed, in jeans and a sleeveless checkered shirt.
“Can I help you?” Rod asks with a slight Boston accent.
Instead of answering, we show him our credentials—INSCOM and FBI. If he’s fazed, he does a good job of hiding it. Rod looks over both credentials carefully, but his eyes stay on my FBI creds just a tad longer. I suspect I’d do the same. In any event, I take it as an invitation to break the ice.
“Are you Rod Ramsay?” Seems an obvious question to ask, but I’ve known agents who’ve spent a half hour interviewing someone before figuring out they’re talking to the wrong person.
Rod nods.
“Would it be okay if we come inside to talk?”
Now I see the first little bit of concern. His hand comes up and just grazes his neck. This is the legacy of sixty million years or more of human evolution. In the old days, when big cats were the greatest threat to our hominid ancestors, they learned to protect their throat first when threatened.
“What’s this about?” Rod asks. Another sign of nervousness: His Adam’s apple rises.
“Well,” I say, with a smile, “you can relax, we’re not here to talk about you—we just need to pick your brain about the Eighth ID.” This is crucial because if he says, “Take a hike,” we have nothing. You can prepare for days, and screw everything up in minutes if you put the subject immediately on the defensive.
Happily, Rod is buying what I have to sell. Relieved, he says, “Sure, come on in.” As we enter, my eyes have a hard time adjusting to the darkness.
Just to make certain Rod understands I am not a Bureau suit like you see on TV, I stare at him with a grin on my face as Al gathers his paperwork. “Was that you walking across the room when we arrived?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he answers with a little giggle. “I’d just gotten up. I was still naked.”
“I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t seeing things or someone else,” I said, probing to see if there’s another person here we need to worry about.
“No, that was me. Sorry, I forgot the windows were open.”
* * *
ARMY INTELLIGENCE GUYS ALL go to the same interview school and use the same interview manual. Their techniques are spelled out for them—by the book, detailed, rigid—and that just isn’t my style. These guys are true pros, no question about it, but their interviews are like forced marches, from A to Z. They rarely look up from their legal pads and notebooks long enough to study the nonverbal reactions of the people they’re talking with—or more often, talking to.
Al is no different, but for now, I’m perfectly happy to let him plow on ahead with his agenda because it gives me time to assess Rod Ramsay, not for guilt or innocence—he’s committed no crime so far as I know—but for how I’m going to accumulate face time with him, today and maybe in the future if needed. When I talk to people, I want to know how they communicate, and everyone is different. I want to get a sense for how they think about questions, how quickly they answer, their speech cadence, what words they use, how they hide their sins, minor and major. Interviews are always about people. The more I know about their idiosyncrasies, the easier it is to assess what they’re really saying.
Example: Al is asking Ramsay a string of rote questions about his service record—“Ever confined to barracks or busted a rank?” . . . “Ever get written up?” . . . that sort of thing—when all of a sudden Ramsay jumps in with almost reptilian coldness.
“Are you interested in my peccadilloes, Mr. Eways? Is that it? Digging for a little dirt, are we?” Ramsay says.
“Not at all,” Al answers affably, slowing down his note-taking just long enough to look up with a smile and hold up his pen in mock surrender. “Just filling in the blanks. You know how it is in the army.”
But Rod isn’t ready to let it drop.
“A chimpanzee can fill in blanks. Probably a rat could if you arranged the Skinner Box to sufficiently reward it for trying.” There’s an edge to his voice now, a kind of intentional pummeling.
“What I would suggest, Al, is that you try for some higher-order questions—you know, shoot for the stars. We’ll have a much more enlightening conversation that way.”
Ramsay favors both of us with a knowing smile at this point and nods at Al to continue with his dull recitation. Meanwhile, I’m left to wonder why a guy who lives in a single-wide trailer with his mother would be so ready to lord it over a decent, solid person like Al Eways.
Is Ramsay a narcissist? Quite possibly. He clearly has a higher opinion of himself than circumstances would justify. And maybe a predator, too. Al has given him almost no opening, but Ramsay has leapt all the same. One more thing: Despite his seemingly snotty attitude, Ramsay is damn smart. We’ve already learned his education stopped with high school, but dropouts don’t toss around “peccadilloes” and Skinner Boxes. Maybe Rod is a big reader, maybe he’s self-taught—all I know is that he’s playing mind games with Al Eways even as he answers his questions.
* * *
WE’VE BEEN AT THIS for almost thirty minutes now, and one thing has held absolutely constant. Rod’s movements are still as jittery now as when we first walked in. Is that always the way with him? Jacked up on speed, maybe? Or has the sudden appearance at his front door of two federal agents thrown him off kilter—and if so, why? Maybe he’s naturally hyperkinetic. Some people are, but he remains jittery and that’s something I just can’t ignore.
Neither can I ignore his smoking. He’s already on his third cigarette. Nerves? Nicotine addiction? There’s not much to do at this point but note it.
Rod has led us into the kitchen, where there’s no choice but to stand as his cigarette smoke swirls around us—the eight-foot ceiling and lack of ventilation don’t help. Maybe he simply lacks social skills and that’s why he hasn’t invited us to sit down in the living room, or maybe by keeping us standing in the kitchen, he’s assuring that this interview will be brief.
I take advantage of a pause in Al’s questioning to ask a question of my own.
“Did you hear that?” I ask. “Was that someone . . . ?”
“No, no,” Rod says. “I’m the only one here. The owner won’t be back for another day.”
I haven’t stopped wondering if we’re alone in the house. We don’t have any legal standing to search to find out, but I’m satisfied with Rod’s reply. No hand to the neck this time, or to the mouth as he talks. I listen distractedly for another couple minutes as Al and Rod talk about the average soldier’s life in Germany, then I jump in with another question:
“Are there any guns in this house?”
Rod (speaking slower, chin pulled down): “Yeah, there’s a gun in this room.”
Crap, Navarro, I tell myself, this is how you end up with a hole in your chest. Now Al is looking at me to deal with the situation.
I stare at Rod, keeping my eyes on his hands because only his hands can hurt us. Fortunately, at least one of them is occupied with his cigarette, so I say, “Look, do me a favor, just stand where you are and tell me who owns the weapon and where exactly it is.”
“Sure,” he says, “it belongs to the guy who owns the house. He keeps it in the cabinet.”
“Which cabinet?” And Rod points with his chin to the one just above the refrigerator, about a half-second lunge away from where he’s standing. Far too close for comfort. Now I’m really uneasy. We’ve still got a lot of questions to ask. There’s no air-conditioning, I can feel my weapon resting against a wet shirt, and we’re standing near what might be a loaded gun—not exactly a conducive interview setting.
“Look, Rod,” I say, “I know this isn’t your doing, but that gun makes me nervous. What’s more, it’s blazing hot in here—this is going to ruin my sperm count. How about if the thr
ee of us just continue this interview outside? What do you say?”
“Sure,” Rod says again. “Why not?” And in fact, he seems to relax almost immediately once we relocate to the great outdoors. Who knows, maybe he’s thinking there’ll be more witnesses if we decide to rough him up.
Al, for his part, barely misses a beat. He marks the last question with his thumb and starts up right where he left off as soon as we’re settled in the shade of a small, raggedy grove of palms out the back door. Just to check Rod’s veracity, I ask to use the bathroom. Once inside, I head straight for the cabinet above the refrigerator. Sure enough there it is: a dusty .38 revolver, from a manufacturer I’ve never heard of, but it can still put a lethal hole in you.
When I get back outside, Al is ever closer to the issue at hand. I know about criminal work and I know CI, but I never served in the military. Ranks, acronyms, army shorthand—they’re all whizzing far over my head. I decide to join in only where I can.
Al: “So, you worked where?”
Rod: “In G-3 Plans [whatever that was].”
Al: “And you got out in 1985?”
Rod: “Yeah, I failed the piss test.”
Me: “What the hell’s the piss test?”
Rod, displaying a Cheshire cat grin: “Well, they did an impromptu test on us, and I guess they found cannabis in my urine.”
Me: “Gee, I wonder how it got there.”