Three Minutes to Doomsday

by Joe Navarro

  Jane and I worked together in New York (she was Jane Chenowith then), where we chased down the same targets, mostly UN attachés from the Warsaw Pact nations and their friends. Like me, Jane is at heart a spy-catcher. Now she’s at the Mothership, working CI matters, and I’ve just learned that she has been assigned to the Conrad case. Jane is on a short leash with limited authority, but better a hobbled friend than a fully empowered enemy.

  “How you been, Joe? Long time!” she says to greet me when I finally track her down through the HQ maze. “To what do I owe this high privilege and honor?”

  “Spies.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, the real deal. Listen, Jane, I need help with this case I’m working—I keep running into roadblocks.”

  “HQ roadblocks?” Jane knows where the trouble usually comes from.

  “HQ and Washington Field Office.”

  “Let me hear it,” she says, “and by the way, I’m fine. Nice of you to ask.”

  Okay, I haven’t observed the niceties, but Jane is used to how obsessed I get when I’m onto something big.

  “It’s the Conrad case—one of yours, I’m told,” I say. “My partner and I have been interviewing a guy who worked with Conrad in Germany, Rod—”

  “Whoa!” she says, cutting me short. “Who has authorized this?”

  “Koerner,” I say. I don’t have to identify Jay further. Jane and all of HQ know who he is.

  “But where did that come from? We already have a pending investigation on Conrad.”

  “I know, I know. Washington Field Office. The army. INSCOM. The Swedes. Everyone is in on this investigation, here and overseas, except us poor cousins down in Tampa, even though we probably have the only American who’ll ever see a trial here in the States. Conrad’s treachery ultimately benefitted our archenemy the Soviet Union, but never mind, he’s going to be tried by the Germans. The Germans, Jane. The Germans, not us—that’s just not right. Worse, there’s no guarantee that he’ll be convicted, and even if he is, he probably won’t get diddly-squat by way of a sentence.”

  “Let’s not assume.”

  “Come on, Jane, you know how it is over there. Günter Guillaume gave the East Germans and the Soviets access to the most sensitive NATO secrets and destroyed Chancellor Willy Brandt’s career, and still got only thirteen years.”

  “Joe . . . ”

  “Besides,” I go on, rolling right over her interruption, “this is no longer a CI matter. It’s a criminal matter that needs to be expedited. We want to aggressively go after Ramsay. And that, Jane, is why I’m calling.” I’m shouting a little, I admit, by then.

  “Calm down, Navarro.”

  “I know—I’m worked up. But listen—”

  “Joe.”

  “Okay. You’re right. Sorry. The last thing I want to do is piss off my friends. I’ve got plenty of enemies just itching to be mad at me.”

  “So, what can I help you with?”

  “We want to see if the Kercsik brothers ever saw Ramsay and can pick him out of a photo lineup. Look, I know HQ needs to sign off on something like this, and it takes time, and WFO is going to balk because they are in the let’s-wait-to-see-if-the-planets-all-line-up-by-the-turn-of-the-century mode. I also know how long it would take to go through State Department and the Justice Department to get the necessary letters rogatory, but, Jane, we don’t have months to wait—we need to know now.”

  “We?” asks Jane, knowing what’s behind this.

  “Okay, I want to know.”

  “Joe, I hear you, and I appreciate how you feel, but the Kercsik case is in the hands of the Swedish Security Service, not ours. It’s SÄPO’s investigation, and SÄPO represents a sovereign country.”

  “And Sweden is supposed to be neutral, I know that also, but they have in their hands two individuals who conspired against the United States, and I want access to them, now, not six months from now, and if WFO won’t move off its ass, we’re more than happy to do the sweat equity.”

  “I don’t know, Joe,” she says. “A photo lineup? That says ‘crime’ to me, and we shouldn’t be talking in criminal terms or even mentioning anything about a criminal case at this point.”

  “Jane, please, I’m looking at the clock. I’ve got ninety days to prove to Koerner that his ass isn’t on the line. Ninety days, Jane—tick, tick, tick, tick. Time is passing by and frankly HQ, WFO, INSCOM—nobody is doing a goddamn thing, and I shouldn’t have to beg to just get the job done, goddamn it.”

  “Navarro, settle down!” I’ve gone over the top again.

  “Oh God.”

  Jane waits until I have done two very audible deep exhales before continuing.

  “The thing is this, Joe—the Conrad case is WFO’s, and now the Germans are involved. It’s pretty much over, from what I’ve been told.”

  “Nothing’s ever over till the fat lady sings, Jane. We think there’s more, and we think Ramsay is more than a bit player.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I know it in my bones from working these cases for a decade, Jane, just like you. And I know it from the little I’ve talked with Ramsay, too.”

  “So you want me in the position of fighting my superiors—and in case you’ve forgotten, Mr. Navarro, I just got here.”

  “Understood, and yes.”

  “Plus, you want me going against WFO, the Justice Department, and the State Department.”

  “That also.”

  “You don’t ask for much.”

  “Jane, I wouldn’t ask at all if it wasn’t righteous.”

  Jane ponders this in silence. “Righteous” isn’t just a throwaway adjective. It’s the code word agents use to describe what’s both right and just. You can’t ignore the word, and besides, Jane’s heart is in the right place. She’s in the bureaucracy but not of it. If the roles were reversed, she would be asking for the same things, although a little more nicely than I have.

  “Let me see what I can do,” she finally says. “Put the lineup together. Send it to me directly and no one else.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But please, in your communication don’t say anything about a criminal case. Just put something in there about using the photo lineup to test the veracity of the Kercsik brothers vis-à-vis what they’ve said about Conrad.”

  “Oh, I like that, and this way we don’t prime the pump by suggesting anyone in particular is in the lineup.”

  “Get it to me quickly and don’t broadcast this, Joe. I’ll put it into the right hands.”

  “I won’t. Thanks, Jane, I knew you’d come through.”

  “And let’s see if we can both stay out of Leavenworth over this.”

  “What,” I say, “you don’t like prison food?” But she’s already hung up.

  Sitting there with the receiver still in my hand, I can’t help wondering if national politics has played a role in HQ’s distancing itself from the Conrad case. We’ve got a presidential election coming up in two months, and the powers that be don’t like to rock the boat one way or the other when the White House is on the line. This time around, too, there’s a natural bent within the intelligence and security community for the guy who’s way ahead in the polls, Vice President Bush. He headed up the CIA himself for a while and was a flyer in World War II. Given that he’s matched up against Governor Dukakis, Bush also figures to be the guy everyone will be reporting to soon. The last thing HQ wants to do is remind the new POTUS of lapses that occurred on his agency watch.

  Who knows? At least now I’ve got Jane on my side.

  * * *

  TEN MINUTES AND ONE bathroom break later, I’m walking around the office with Rod’s army ID photo—the one piece of help we’ve gotten from INSCOM—and gathering FBI ID photos from anyone who looks enough like Rod Ramsay (thin face, pointy nose, under age thirty) to be included in a photo lineup.

  I’m helping Lowell, the office photographer, lay the mug shots out in some kind of plausible random order when I hear one of
the office managers, Shirley (not her real name, for reasons that will soon become apparent), calling my name.

  “Joe-o!”

  The very fact that Shirley has risked doing this is significant, since the last time we chatted I gave her the same look I give to criminals who call me names when I arrest them. Shirley, though, is clueless to nonverbals and plies happily on with whatever her singular pursuit of the moment happens to be. On that occasion, about a week ago, Lynn and I were running maybe fifteen minutes late for one of our maintenance sessions with Rod—not a big deal, but I expect punctuality out of everyone I deal with, myself included. Shirley had other priorities.

  “Joe-o,” she said as Lynn and I were racing for the office door. “You can’t go right now. We’re having the raffle.”

  “Raffle?” For a moment I wasn’t sure she was speaking English, or any language I understood.

  “Yeah, you know,” Shirley said, “our annual raffle. You’ve got to stay here for that. What if you win?”

  “Win, Shirley? Win?! I’ve had four hours of sleep. I’ve got a full day ahead of me. I’m fifteen fucking minutes late for an interview, and you want me to stop doing whatever I’m doing because there’s a raffle?”

  “Well,” she said, “everybody has to be here for the annual raffle—that’s what the front office wants.”

  Just as I was thinking to myself, This is how you end up in a hospital, with a stroke or a heart attack or a nervous breakdown, Shirley pivoted on her little spiked heels and went looking for another victim.

  “Steve! Oh, Steve-o . . . ”

  This time it’s not a raffle. The annual raffle won’t be happening again for 358 days, thank God. This time it’s an official form, something that has to be filled out every month, or day, or hour—at the moment, I can’t quite remember which.

  “Joe-o,” Shirley is saying, “you haven’t turned in your PM form for your car.”

  “Preventive maintenance?”

  “It’s the fourth, Joe-o. PM forms are supposed to be submitted on the third. You’re a day late.”

  Technically, of course, she’s correct. Preventive maintenance forms are due on the third, and today is the fourth, but to fill out my PM, I’ll need the mileage from my car odometer—the exact mileage, to the tenth of a mile, not an estimate, not an annual average divided by twelve, oh, no, exact—and the Bu-Steed is parked two blocks away in the Bureau garage. Just listening to Shirley makes my stomach leak acid.

  “Tomorrow, Shirley?” I say. “Lowell and I, we’re right in the middle of getting this photo lineup together, and I’ve got to get it off to Washington in the overnight—”

  “But by tomorrow, Joe-o, you’ll be two days late.”

  “All right! All right!”

  Outside it’s steamy hot, and an afternoon thunderhead looks to be about twenty minutes from breaking open. I could run to the car, but if I do, I’ll be drenched in sweat by the time I get back to the office. If I don’t run, on the other hand, I’m likely to be drenched in rain. In the end, I opt for a trot. I’m within sight of our office building door—mileage safely memorized—when the skies open up, and I have to sprint for safety. My shirt is still clinging to my skin when I hand Shirley the PM.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” she says after a quick glance.

  “Forgetting?”

  “It’s the fourth, Joe-o. You were due for an oil change yesterday. Oil changes are a critical part of PM.”

  “Let me get this straight, Shirley,” I say, “because I’m a slow learner. Do I look un-busy to you? Do I look like I’m fanning my ass? I’m working on an espionage case, and I need to get something to headquarters by tonight, but you, Shirley, you want me to drop everything and go get my oil changed because . . . ”

  “Because PM is important, Joe-o . . . ”

  “And tomorrow . . . ”

  “Tomorrow, you’ll be two days late.”

  By now, though, I notice Shirley has put a desk between herself and me. A smart move, but only temporary. The Shirleys of the world never go away because bureaucracies always seem to attract and then reward them.

  7

  TAKING STOCK

  September 20, 1988

  Here’s the way the FBI works: Every agent has to complete a file review every ninety days—no ifs, ands, or buts about it. The reviews help supervisors and case agents evaluate the progress of ongoing investigations. But over the last decade-plus, I’ve learned that if you wait that long, the work overwhelms you. Instead, I do my own file review every month, just to put a fence around the cases, the flying, the training, the SWAT operations, and everything else that comes up.

  That’s what I’m doing right now—timelining the Ramsay case.

  * * *

  8/22/88: TELETYPE ARRIVES OVERNIGHT, instructing FBI Tampa to locate and interview one Roderick James Ramsay.

  8/23: Ramsay located and interviewed by Agent Joe Navarro (me) and Al Eways, INSCOM, first at third-party house where Ramsay is house-sitting, later at Pickett Hotel. Before exiting, Ramsay hands over note with number allegedly written by Conrad.

  8/24: Ramsay calls FBI Tampa office on his own, asks to speak with Agent Navarro regarding previous occupants of house where initial interview took place. Navarro and Agent Lynn Tremaine respond to Ramsay’s mother’s trailer, where he has been living.

  8/25: Ditto. Ramsay calls again, wants to clarify comments made to Eways regarding female associate at HQ Eighth Infantry Bad Kreuznach, Germany. Agents Navarro and Tremaine respond.

  8/26: Ramsay interviewed a fourth time, at mother’s trailer, by Agents Navarro and Tremaine. FBIHQ lab reports that paper Ramsay handed Agent Navarro 8/23 is consistent with water-soluble type known to be used by Soviet Bloc intelligence operatives. FBIHQ further reports that six-digit number on paper is hello number for Hungarian intelligence service. (Kercsik brothers confirm.)

  9/1: Agents Navarro and Tremain directed to have no further direct communication with “Subject Ramsay.”

  9/8: Jane Hein contacted at FBIHQ. Agrees (eventually) to Agent Navarro’s request to do photo lineup in regard to Subject Ramsay if State Department, Justice, Swedish Intelligence (SÄPO), Kercsiks, etc., agree.

  9/9 (early): Photo lineup and formal request transmitted to FBIHQ (transmittal delayed by oil change). Apparently I wasn’t the only one who forgot because a long queue was waiting when I got in line.

  9/9 (later): Agent Navarro is informed (by usually reliable source) that Washington Field Office has learned FBI Tampa has opened full investigation into Subject Ramsay and is upset.

  9/12: First real evidence of FBI-WFO interfering in case. Information from Austria, regarding Suspect Szabo, sent to WFO, which sat on it instead of forwarding to FBI Tampa as requested.

  9/14: Second evidence of FBI-WFO interference. Request for Agent Tremaine to go to Sweden to interview Kercsik brothers turned down by FBIHQ at request of WFO. In similar circumstances, such requests routinely granted. Interference is unprecedented.

  9/19: John Martin, head of DOJ/ISS (Department of Justice / Internal Security Section), meets with Agents Navarro and Tremaine and Supervisor Koerner in Tampa. Very complimentary of our efforts but in essence tells us to back off. The Germans and WFO have this now, Martin tells us. (Really? They didn’t even know about Ramsay.) Koerner tells me not to get “too upset with Martin,” but since when does the head of ISS travel to a small office to derail an investigation by patting us on the head and then telling us to let others handle the case?

  9/19 also: We find out from the army that Rod’s IQ score is shockingly high—in fact, it’s the second highest ever recorded on the basic Army Intelligence Test. This is information you think might have been available to us sooner, but I know how these things work. First, Rod was one of thousands of people interviewed in the grand sweep after Conrad was arrested, and Al Eways was sent out with the same information all the other investigators started with: name, date of birth, years of service, and nothing more. Second, retrievi
ng military information is a lot like retrieving treasure in Raiders of the Lost Ark, without the finer Spielberg touches. First the right building (of many) has to be found. Then miles of dank, cobweb-ridden hallways have to be negotiated by pasty clerks who rarely see the sun. These fetchers must find their way to the right section of the corridor, the right shelf of boxes, the right box, and the right part of the right box.

  Fact is, I feel very fortunate to now have this information, or rather this confirmation of what had been pretty obvious to me from day one: Rod Ramsay is one smart son of a bitch. And I guess the truth is that knowing I’m not dealing with some run-of-the-mill stumblebum makes me even more determined not to buckle to HQ, WFO, DOJ, and every other chickenshit acronym trying to pull us off this case.

  * * *

  9/20/88. THAT’S TODAY, AND LYNN and I are in my Bu-Steed, sitting in a strip-mall parking lot along US 41, reviewing the statutory requirements of Title 18 United States Code Section 794, especially subsection (a), before our 10 a.m. meeting with Rod Ramsay. Actually, it’s more of a tutorial on my part. You can waste an awful lot of interview time in criminal espionage cases if you don’t keep your eye on the prize.

  “You understand, don’t you?” I’m saying. “We’re not going after a confession.”

  “What else is there?” Lynn asks, somewhat surprised.

  “Have you ever worked an espionage case before?”

  “No, but I helped on one.”

  “Don’t feel bad. Out of fifty-nine field offices in the FBI, only six have ever prosecuted an espionage case. Tampa is one of them.”

  “So what are we going for?”

  “We could aim for a confession, but that may never happen. We need admissions.”