by Joe Navarro
“Kit Kats,” Rod answers, suddenly studying his shoes.
“Kit Kats?” Moody has a finger under Rod’s chin and is raising his face so they can talk eye to eye.
“Two of them,” he says, “and a Pepsi.”
“That’s all?” Moody asks.
Rod nods sheepishly as Moody does a spin and, this time, stares straight at me.
“Well, Agent Navarro,” she says, “that does it!”
“Does what?”
“We’re feeding this young man dinner before we sit down to talk about anything. And Rod . . . ”
That shit-eating grin is back again.
“Yes, Terry?”
“You are going to eat all your vegetables, even if I have to feed them to you in little bitty pieces.”
If I had to use one word to describe Rod Ramsay at that moment, it would be: bliss—and over vegetables, for God’s sake!
* * *
I SHOULD BE READY to jump down Moody’s throat by the time we get up to the room—somehow the words “I will take the lead” have flown completely over her head. If she’d screwed up the room-entry sequence, I definitely would have demanded that Koerner take her off the case. But she lines up just as we’d rehearsed and pauses once we’re inside as if looking around for her purse (it’s over her shoulder), until Rod is in place, before taking her own seat. Her eyes, I note, are a good two inches above Ramsay’s—just right—and she’s sitting up straight, while Rod is kicking his shoes off and settling into his corner of the couch. (If I hadn’t insisted the coffee table be where it is, his feet would be on it right now.)
Also, I have to concede that dinner first might not have been an awful idea. I was planning on ordering burgers and fries up to the room if Rod was being at all forthcoming, but dinner downstairs gave him some unpressured face time with Moody, and she made the most of it, including cajoling him into ordering a salad, even one with a healthy dressing—“No, Rod, oil and vinegar; it’s better for you than all that gooey French stuff”—and then, amazingly, getting him to choke it all down. By the time we get up to Room 316 and Rod lights his first cigarette of the evening, he looks genuinely content. Moody, I notice, is about to take issue with his smoking, but I jump in before she can get started. We don’t want to be altering too many bad habits at one time.
“Rod,” I say, “I know you and I have been over this Germany stuff before.”
“You and I and Lynn,” he corrects me, with a what-are-we-going-to-do-about-him look at Moody.
“Yes, of course, Lynn, too. But Agent Moody—”
“Terry?”
“Right, Terry, is new to the case—”
“Obviously.”
“Yes, obviously,” I concede with as much grace as I can muster, because I suddenly have an urge to toss Rod off a third-floor balcony. “And since you’re in a humoring mood, perhaps you would humor me by giving Agent Moody—”
“Uh—”
“Terry, that is. Perhaps you would be kind enough to give Terry a quick rundown on your relationship with Clyde, how things worked in Germany, all that, just so she’s up to speed.”
“Why, of course!” Rod answers, beaming Moody’s way. “I would be glad to.” And with that he lights another cigarette, stretches his stocking feet and legs out on the couch, and launches into a monologue notable for its detail, depth, breadth, and preening narcissism—which in some ways is Rod Ramsay to a tee.
Rod begins by telling Moody how Conrad had been a mentor to him, a father figure. With an offhand gesture, he dismisses his own father as “someone I never really knew . . . a man I couldn’t talk with.” Clyde, he says, was different. The two worked “elbow to elbow all day long,” sharing responsibilities. They even spent their time off together. In fact, Rod says, he’d often go to Conrad’s house to have dinner or snacks with the family.
I heard some of this last year, of course, when Lynn and I were getting to know Rod, but now I’m wearing my prosecutor’s hat along with my investigator’s one, and Rod basically is doing our job for us. Frequency and duration of contact often define relationships. Rod is handing us that. Prosecutions also are a form of narrative: Eventually, if this goes where I think it’s headed, we’ll need to tell the jury a convincing story of how Ramsay came to commit espionage. As Rod expounds, he’s unconsciously, or maybe consciously—you never know with him—filling in plot, character, and context. The little Bic pen in my brain is scribbling notes like mad.
Without any prodding from me, Rod moves next to exactly where I hoped he’d go: what it was like to work with Conrad in the G-3 Plans Section and what their responsibilities entailed. The officers, he says, were all “short-timers.” Clyde was the steady (if thieving) rock in Documents, well respected by the brass who relied on his knowledge of war plans to assist them in their own work. I’ve heard this before, too, but repetition is a form of confirmation, and as Rod talks, he begins to reveal both his own intimate familiarity with the war plans that passed through his Documents section and what seems to be an encyclopedic capacity to retain that information.
Moody seems to have processed my earlier messages better than I thought. She’s looking devotedly on, eye-locked with Rod, which leaves me free to study Ramsay’s body language for signs of emphasis, something liars never get right. The arching of the eyebrows, the way thumbs pop up from interlaced fingers, a subtle knee raise—these are all gravity-defying behaviors that we tend to use only when we’re confident about what we’re saying, and even sociopaths are most confident when they’re telling the truth.
At this point, with everything happening so fast, I’m not sure even Moody is fully aware of where we’re headed. She’s looking so raptly at Rod as he lectures that I find myself worried that this isn’t artifice, that in a matter of hours she’s become a Ramsay acolyte, just what I don’t need. Maybe Moody senses what I’m thinking as well because out of the blue she stirs herself, smiles warmly at Rod, and interjects herself gently into his torrent of words.
“But, Rod,” she says, “you seem to know so much about these—what are they?—G-3 Plans. I thought you and Clyde were just the custodians, the ones who kept them safe and secure.”
“Well,” he says, “we did, of course. But we also copied them on request.”
“Copied? But how does that explain it? I mean, didn’t you just see the text for an instant?”
“I read fast,” Rod says with unapologetic pride.
“But how much can you retain?”
“I retain everything.”
“Well, for heaven’s sake,” Moody says, and I have to agree with her. It’s one thing to copy or photograph a document and pass it on to a hostile intelligence service, but it’s another to have what Rod seems to be claiming: a photographic memory. Copies get passed along, however obtained. But with a photographic memory, you’re the copy, an infinitely more dangerous and threatening situation. Now you can travel overseas and say, “Hi, folks, here I am. Turn on your tape recorders, fill up my Swiss bank account, and I’ll do a data dump that will blow your fucking mind.”
Do I necessarily believe everything Rod is saying? No, of course not—but the only way to validate it in the short term is to balance it with his body language, and that measure is working right now in truth’s favor. In the end, though, everything must be corroborated.
Frankly, I’m not even certain there is such thing as a “photographic memory.” Maybe it’s one of those myths we keep telling ourselves because we want it to be true—like “the Sasquatch.” But I do know that for a guy with so little formal education, Rod clearly knows one hell of a lot and has the vocabulary to go along with it. And as I’ve now witnessed twice before, with two different partners, he loves to hold court, and the more beautiful the audience, the heavier he pours it on. Witness: now.
Rod has segued, fairly gracefully I have to admit, from G-3 Plans to the larger history—the very larger history—of military planning generally. Thucydides and Sun Tzu have already rolled off his tongue. Han
nibal snuck in there, too—“Elephants!” Moody piped up. “Only part of the story,” Rod answered, “and de minimis, at that.” Clausewitz, Rod hardly paused at. “So conventional warfare!” Instead, he has moved on to Caesar’s Gallic Commentaries.
“All Gaul,” he says majestically, “is divided into three parts.”
“Really?” Moody replies, but there’s something a little off about her tone of voice. Rod hasn’t noticed; he’s too busy being professorial. But I have—she wants me back in the game.
“See what I mean?” I interrupt. “Rod should be teaching at the university level.” Rod smiles indulgently at me, as if I’ve laid a tribute at his feet. Moody seems grateful as well—probably from my having saved her from having to write up everything he might have said about Gallic history. I have another motive for jumping in, though. We’ve been at this for two hours, and Rod frankly looks a little squirmy in his seat.
“Would you like a bathroom break?” I ask. “It’s just over there before the bedroom on your left.” I’m pointing with my palm in the vertical position like a traffic cop, making sure he follows my directions.
“Well,” Rod says, “since you mention it . . . ” But his feet have already started following my hand signal toward the bathroom. Subconsciously, Rod is taking my lead.
* * *
MOODY WAITS UNTIL WE hear the click of the bathroom lock before mouthing me a word: “Interesting.” In return, I quickly pantomime climbing a ladder, and she nods in agreement. This is something else we’d talked about on the way to Orlando. Rod, I said, was going to be most comfortable talking about topics that really didn’t threaten him. That’s only natural, and everything to date falls into that category. We can use all this stuff about Conrad and reading the documents the two of them had copied as telling background in preparing a court case. Even his boasting will help demonstrate (a) that he has accurate recall and (b) that he presents a clear and present danger to the security of the United States. But at some point, I told Moody, we’re going to have to vector closer to the real issue at hand—i.e., Title 18 United States Code Section 794, aka the espionage statute. And that time, I now silently indicate by pointing to my wristwatch, is now.
Moody is nodding in agreement as Rod clicks open the bathroom door and theatrically reassumes his place on the couch and his devoted attention to Agent Moody. I’ve been standing by the window as he does this, seemingly studying some commotion in the parking lot below but in reality waiting for him to sit before I resume my own seat. I’ve just settled back in my chair and swiveled toward Ramsay when Moody picks up the cue.
“Rod,” she says gently, “I think Agent Navarro has something to say.”
“Yes?” Rod says, turning to me and wary for the first time this evening that I’ve noticed.
“The last thing I want to do, Rod, is embarrass you, but in preparing for this interview, Agent Moody—”
He starts to correct me, but doesn’t.
“Agent Moody noticed on your military record that you had been discharged for cause. Could you explain that to her? I’m sure you can do a better job of it than I could.”
I can see the relief flooding over Rod as I finish.
“Oh,” he says, filled once again with bonhomie and the milk of human kindness, “the piss test! Well . . . ”
And we’re off again on a rollicking, Rod-centric tour of drugs, sex, rock ’n’ roll, and petty black-market swindling Eighth Army Infantry Division–style à la HQ Bad Kreuznach, Republic of West Germany, etc. By now, I’ve heard this often enough to put my mind on cruise control.
Listening with maybe half an ear, I’m still astonished to hear Rod speak of drug abuse as if he’s talking about having a glass of milk. Here, I keep telling myself, was a guy with top-secret clearance—the same access to classified information that most of the NATO military commanders had. What in the hell is going on? I keep thinking. This whole saga is a case study in the damage a really smart person can do to critical organizational structures, but the problem is we aren’t sitting in some business-school classroom, chatting about possibilities. We’re in an Embassy Suites suite and Exhibit A is sitting across from me, with his fucking stocking feet once again spread out on the couch.
Moody, meanwhile, is playing my perfect foil . . . or maybe “playing” isn’t the right word. Maybe she’s just doing what mothers do with wayward offspring. “Weren’t you concerned about getting caught?” she keeps asking. Or “Rod, you didn’t actually do that, did you?” To the average person, this might sound like maternal banalities, but in fact, Moody (I realize reluctantly) is helping to establish that Rod didn’t give a damn about rules or laws. For him, these indiscretions were points of pride, not an embarrassment. Like any good predator, he was happy to be working a target-rich environment.
So am I, frankly, but time is short, so after another minute or two of Rod’s blather, I decide to cut to the chase.
“Rod,” I say, “Agent Moody and I, INSCOM, the FBI, Al Eways, you name it—we all thank you for your cooperation, but you and I and Agent . . . Terry . . . simply can’t ignore that ABC broadcast of four days ago. Your mother saw it. I’m sure you saw it. [Rod nods yes as I’m speaking.] Agent Moody saw it. [She nods yes, too.] Hell, most of Washington, DC, saw it.”
“The computer chips?” Rod asks as he swings his feet back on the floor and shakes another Camel Filter out of his pack.
“Yes, Rod,” I say, wheeling my swivel chair toward him and leaning in from his right, opposite Moody’s angle. “The computer chips. I keep going back over this in my mind. I might not have the wording exactly right, but it went something very close to ‘ABC News has learned that one of Conrad’s recruits continued to work for Conrad back in the United States, illegally exporting hundreds of thousands of advanced computer chips through a dummy company in Canada to the Eastern Bloc. According to the man himself, who asked not to be identified, Conrad paid him to make the purchases.’ ”
“Actually,” Rod says, “that would be exactly the right wording. I’m impressed.”
“Thank you, but what gets me is that the only person I can think of who could possibly have been ABC’s source for this would have to be . . . ” I pause to let him fill in the blank.
“Me?”
“You, Rod?” Moody chimes in, just when a little sympathy seems due. “But why would you . . . ?”
“That producer, Jim Bamford, he kept bothering my mother. She was getting very upset. I thought if I just gave him this one little story, some bullshit, he would go away.”
That much, at least, even I can sympathize with. Dorothy of course already gave me a fill on how upset she was, but neither she nor Rod had any idea that someone at HQ was clearly channeling sensitive information to Bamford, filling in the bigger background, of which the computer chips were just a small part.
“Besides,” Rod goes, “it was just a hypothetical.”
The last place I want to go right now is Hypothetical World, but Rod seems ready to open up, and if what-ifs help him get there, I’ll play the game.
“Hypothetical? What do you mean?”
“Well,” Rod says, “I mean it’s not a crime to just talk about doing something, is it? Terry?”
Moody, though, knows better than to get involved in this. She simply nods silently my way.
“Joe?”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to get a little more specific, Rod. We’re talking a lot of variables here.”
“For example,” he says, “what if, hypothetically, two guys in a foreign country were to discuss buying computer chips and selling them to another country. Could they be prosecuted?”
My turn: “Are the two hypothetical individuals in this foreign country American citizens?”
Rod: “Perhaps. Does it matter?”
Me: “It may, depending on a few other things.”
“Like what?”
“Well, are they just talking about it or do they intend to do something in furtherance of that?”
“Hypothetically [air quotes], it was just talk.”
“Hypothetically [my air quotes], would they have been violating the law to do so?”
“Hypothetically, yes, I suppose,” Rod says with that impish smile he can’t keep off his face when he talks about his own wrongdoing. “But remember, this was just a hypothetical conversation about hypothetical computer chips.”
Moody: “Hypothetically, I’m getting a little lost here.”
Rod and me: “Ha! Ha!”
And then it’s my turn again: “So hypothetically [more air quotes], nothing was ever bought in the United States with the intention of selling it to an embargoed country, correct?”
“Hypothetically, no,” Rod says with great satisfaction, but in fact we are tiptoeing through a very dangerous legal minefield.
The truth of the matter is that conspiracies can be prosecuted if any party takes a step in furtherance of a crime, whether the actual crime is committed or not. To meet the prosecutorial threshold, all the parties have to do is agree on the crime to be committed and how to carry it out. But if I tell Rod that, he’s going to crawl back into his shell just as he’s beginning to emerge from it. On the other hand, if I assure him that he can’t be prosecuted, which is what he clearly wants to hear, I’ll be issuing, in effect, a prosecutorial waiver, which I have neither the right nor the standing to do. In the end, I opt for what I hope is a middle ground more likely to satisfy the needs of the moment than Koerner’s review the next morning.
“Well, Rod,” I say, “I’m not an attorney, but I don’t see how anyone could be hypothetically prosecuted if nothing was purchased or transmitted to an embargoed country.”
Ramsay takes this in quietly, so I jump in again.
“Look,” I say, “hypothetically, one of the individuals involved would have to testify against the other or have a recording of their conversation, and someone would actually have to go out and at least buy the computer chips with the intention of selling them or transmitting them to an embargoed country. According to ABC News, they were only going to.”