The Falcon and the Snowman

by Robert Lindsey

  At 2 A.M. on the morning of September 4, Chris knocked at the door of Daulton’s room at the Holiday Inn in the Zona Rosa. Daulton, who had been asleep, was amazed to see his friend.

  Chris didn’t tell Daulton the genuine reason for his trip; he lied that he had decided on a whim to come to Mexico for the weekend just to meet the Russians he had heard so much about. Daulton said he would try to arrange a meeting the next day but it might not be possible. Then they both went to sleep.

  Daulton had already made his September contact with Boris three days earlier, on the first Wednesday of the month. When Chris insisted that he try to set up another meeting, Daulton agreed to see what he could do. At several times during his long business relationship with the KGB, he had been assigned to meet his Russian contact at a construction site for a new hotel on Dakota Street near the murals at the Polyforum. He knew that Karpov and others from the embassy passed by the site from time to time and told Chris he would wait at this location in the hope that the Russians might see him and agree to a meeting that night with Chris. But an hour after he left, Daulton returned to the Holiday Inn and told Chris the Russians hadn’t appeared.

  Chris said he would try again the next month. The two of them went to the airport and flew back to Los Angeles. En route to the airport, Chris said he was curious to see what the Soviet Embassy looked like, and they had the cab driver pass by the big building on Calzada Tacubaya. As they drove by, Chris noticed several armed Mexico City policemen standing guard outside the gates of the embassy. On the trip back, Chris said nothing about his plan to get Daulton out of the picture—but he was as determined as ever to do so.

  Monday, he was back to work in the Vault.

  The previous June, Judge Donahue, at Ken Kahn’s urging, had extended Daulton’s probation for three months so that it could be determined if psychotherapy and a job or schooling could salvage the chronic drug pusher. In early September, he received still another report on Daulton from the Los Angeles Probation Department. It pointed out that Daulton had recently been arrested for driving while intoxicated; that he had visited his psychiatrist only rarely; that he repeatedly missed appointments with his probation officer; that he was seldom home when probation officers went there to interview him; and it suggested that Daulton might still be dealing in drugs. For the third time in 1976, the department recommended that the probation of Andrew Daulton Lee be revoked and that he be sent to prison.

  Early in September, a legal summons arrived at Daulton’s home in Palos Verdes Estates. It ordered him to attend a hearing on September 10 before Judge Donahue, when the report was to be considered. But when the summons arrived, Daulton wasn’t home; he was in Mazatlán again, working on the drug buy that he hoped would propel him into his soft new life in Costa Rica.

  Because Daulton didn’t appear at the hearing, Judge Donahue revoked his probation and issued a warrant for his arrest.

  Once again, Daulton was a fugitive.

  Chris, meanwhile, was weighing a new option. In August, a TRW employee, Bob Thomas, had mentioned to him that a former TRW employee who had once worked in the Black Vault had written to him from Colorado, where he was now employed by another company involved in classified satellite developments, the Martin-Marietta Corporation. The former employee, a friend of Thomas’, had reported that his new employer paid considerably higher wages than TRW for doing the same kind of work and suggested Thomas apply for a job there. Thomas wasn’t interested in the job; he said he didn’t want to leave California. The Martin-Marietta plant was near Denver. Chris, however, saw the job as a possible way to get away from Daulton while returning to Colorado, which he had enjoyed during a short stay there following his year at Cal Poly. He wrote a letter to Thomas’ friend:

  Dear Gerald Smathers:

  In recent conversations with Mary Phillips and Bob Thomas, it was brought to my attention that you are now living in Colorado and working for Martin-Marietta. I was curious as to your identity, as your name kept coming up in my logs. I work for security with Bob Thomas in M-4. In later discussions Bob mentioned that you had written him concerning a job opportunity at Martin-Marietta. After studying the folder he still keeps, I realized that you are located near Littleton, a suburb of Denver, where I used to live. Bob suggested I contact you concerning job openings.

  I think at this point I should introduce myself. My name is Chris Boyce. I am 23 and I began working your job at TRW six months after you left. I know it’s a bit irregular to write a total stranger but I would definitely love to return to Denver. Without going out of your way, is it possible for you to reply as to the existence of security openings as you described to Bob Thomas. I know this is a shot in the dark but I would appreciate your consideration.

  Sincerely,

  Chris Boyce

  On a Saturday morning early in October, Chris flew to Mexico City again. Daulton was waiting for him at the Holiday Inn. At Chris’s urging, Daulton had arranged an unusual Saturday meeting with Boris. But he told Chris the meeting wasn’t scheduled until that evening. With time to kill, Daulton left their hotel room to have a manicure in the hotel barbershop. When he returned, they decided to go sightseeing.

  As he had with Barclay Granger, Daulton guided Chris along the Paseo de la Reforma and took him into some of the museums in Chapultepec Park that made the park a rich Latin American showplace of art. And like tourists, they photographed each other in front of paintings, statues, and other landmarks. Except for the moment when Daulton stumbled into a gaping, water-filled hole next to a sidewalk and soaked one leg of his pants up to the knee, it was an uneventful excursion. When they returned to the hotel, Chris decided to go for a swim in the hotel pool and fortified himself for the evening with cocktails called Harvey Wallbangers.

  “Lulled by the alcohol I drifted in the water feeling a rising tension as the night came on,” Chris wrote of that afternoon many months later. “I could occasionally see Lee look out the window of his room, and I no longer hated him as much as I had.”

  Like Daulton, Chris was exhilarated by the adventure, and was enjoying himself.

  The coolness between the friends had deepened, although neither acknowledged it to the other. Daulton didn’t want Chris in Mexico City; it meant he could lose his monopoly in dealings with the Russians. Chris didn’t know where the meeting would lead him. But he hoped, at the least, to recapture some control over his own destiny, and—beyond that—to wrest control of their espionage operation from Daulton. After that he would decide his next move.

  Shortly before 8 P.M., Daulton announced that it was time for them to go. They flagged a taxi near the hotel and Daulton ordered the driver to take them across town. “First, you’ve got to be sure you’re not being followed,” Daulton told Chris with the patronizing confidence of a tutor. The taxi dropped them in a neighborhood of brassy bars and cafés where barmaids who had emigrated from the poverty-stricken hinterlands of Mexico sold their bodies in upstairs rooms for $10. They looked around to check if they were being tailed, and then flagged down another taxi. Daulton directed it to a downtown park that Chris didn’t recognize.

  Mexico City had been pelted by an on-again, off-again drizzle most of the day. More substantial rain was starting to fall that evening. But the park was crowded nevertheless. After the taxi let them out, Daulton, a nervous grin on his face, told Chris to wait, and he disappeared into a dark backdrop of trees and brush. A television commercial was being filmed, and Chris watched the film crew at work from beside a high wall that afforded him a little shelter from the rain. After he had waited almost an hour, a man approached, paused and asked Chris in a heavily accented voice if he would like to share his umbrella.

  The man introduced himself as “John.” Chris, of course, recognized the code name.

  His first thought upon meeting Boris Grishin was to wonder at how much he resembled Daulton. Although he didn’t have Daulton’s moustache and was slightly taller, he had the same kind of low-to-the-ground rolling gait, large head a
nd broad shoulders. There was an unavoidable suggestion of an ape. Even Boris’ face, Chris thought, reminded him of Daulton.

  As they began to walk, Chris wondered: had the Russians selected him to control Daulton because there was something psychologically—as well as physically—similar between the agent and the snowman from Palos Verdes? With little conversation except comments about the weather, they continued to walk in the rain beneath the shelter of the umbrella. After a few minutes, Daulton’s bantam figure emerged from behind a tree, and the three of them turned into an alley and walked across a wide street, where a big, dark limousine suddenly pulled to a stop with a squeal of its brakes and the hiss of tires on the wet pavement.

  Just before they got into the embassy car, Daulton tried to lag behind Boris, and he whispered to Chris, “Tell ’em you can get anything they want.” He had just had a session with Boris in which the Russian had again complained about his failure to deliver the code-room transmission frequencies and other information Daulton had promised many months earlier. Daulton was trying to get Chris to give Boris a consistent story—the old one about needing only a few more weeks to deliver what the Soviets wanted.

  Chris noticed that Boris was watching them, and he wondered if the Russian had heard the whispered remark. He’s trying to figure out what the relationship is between us, Chris thought. Karpov gunned the engine, and the car sprinted into motion. It was familiar stuff to Daulton. But Chris wasn’t prepared for the race-car maneuvering, Karpov’s darting into and out of side streets and alleys on what seemed to be a journey to nowhere. Before they had left the hotel, the two friends had smoked a joint and Daulton had supplemented his high from pot by snorting a dab of heroin; the drugs had served to soften their apprehension. But as the car careered over the wet streets of Mexico City, Chris began to get scared.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Deener,” Boris answered with a smile.

  “Where?” Chris asked.

  “The embezze,” he replied.

  Chris recognized the shape of the Soviet Embassy when it loomed outside the car a few moments later. The car began to slow. “You’re not going in the front gate?” he asked in amazement.

  But before there was an answer, the gate swung open, and the limousine roared into the embassy compound. The two youths followed Boris and Karpov from the car into the building and were quickly escorted to the gloomy basement where Daulton had been before—the dark cavity that was an icy blend of sitting room and dungeon.

  There were a sofa, end tables, a television set, a large conference table and several chairs in the room. On the conference table, several bottles of liquor—French brandy, three bottles of Russian vodka, several bottles of French wine and sweet Russian wine from Georgia—were waiting for them.

  Boris asked for Chris’s wallet, and he handed it to Karpov, who took it upstairs, apparently for an examination and photographing of his driver’s license, TRW identification card and other papers in the wallet by other KGB agents.

  Warmly, Boris welcomed Chris to the embassy and congratulated him for helping the socialist cause. Chris felt like Lindbergh on his arrival in Paris. Boris poured drinks for the three of them and a servant brought in platters of cooked beef, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, cheese and, of course, the inevitable caviar.

  Chris felt his hands trembling. Perspiration began to soak his shirt. To pacify his fears, he gulped a glass of wine, and then another. He sampled the food, but didn’t like the taste of the meat or the vegetables. He wondered if the Russians were trying to poison him. But even after he saw Boris eat from the same dishes, he decided not to eat any more; he didn’t like this strange-tasting Russian cuisine.

  With a raise of his hand, Boris signaled that it was time for business. He lifted his glass for a toast and said:

  “To peace!”

  To that, Daulton, glancing at Chris, responded:

  “To cash!”

  Boris looked disapprovingly at his agent and then thanked Chris for his services to the Soviet Union and the cause of socialism. Then, like the chief executive of a corporation reviewing the company’s latest sales offensive, the KGB officer launched into a review of the two spies’ performance during the past eighteen months. He praised their successes, recalled times when communications had broken down, apologized for missed meetings, reviewed the information the Russians had received and what information they’d requested and hadn’t received.

  Chris studied the man. He seemed to have a cigarette in his mouth constantly, even when he spoke, and it drooped down diagonally like a stubby, fixed appendage. He had a dour, almost sad expression. In fact, Chris thought, all the Russians he had seen in the embassy looked as if they were ready to cry.

  “We must have the Western Union frequencies,” Boris implored in his broken English; it was essential that Chris obtain a list of the daily frequencies on which the CIA was transmitting his messages.

  “I can’t get the frequencies; I don’t have access to them,” Chris said; they were not kept in the vault where he worked, he said.

  Boris seemed amazed.

  Looking sideways at the smaller of his two spies, he said Daulton had repeatedly told him that he could get the frequencies. In fact, Daulton had been well paid because of his promise to deliver them.

  Daulton avoided the agent’s eyes and let his own roam over the room, stopping at a curious-looking coat of arms on one wall.

  Boris shrugged and shifted to another subject: he asked Chris to give him an in-depth briefing of everything he did in the communications vault, including everything he knew about the satellites built by TRW. Chris answered the questions as best he could.

  Each time Chris finished answering a few questions, Boris interrupted the interview and left the room—apparently, Chris suspected, to confer with technical specialists or superiors elsewhere in the building. When he returned, he usually had a new list of questions.

  Chris noticed that every time Boris left, Karpov turned on the television set in the room. Although his English seemed less than completely functional, Karpov managed to convey to Chris and Daulton that he loved to watch television but was kept so busy that he didn’t have time to watch it very often. This seemed to make him very unhappy. There was an American-made television program—the name of which he seemed unable to translate for the American visitors—that he wanted to see that night.

  But unfortunately for Karpov, the TV set did not work well that evening and it defied his efforts to make it work. All he could get on the screen was a kaleidoscope of horizontal lines, and it infuriated him. He pounded first on one side of the TV set and then on the other, and twisted the dials to make it work. But the flickering black-and-white lines remained. When Boris returned to the room, Karpov stiffened and turned off the set, only to pound his fists again on the impotent television receiver as soon as Boris left the room again.

  Daulton felt ignored. “It was as if I wasn’t in the room,” he recalled later. A spectator to the discussions between Boris and Chris, he poured himself more vodka and wine as the others talked. The liquor, combined with the effects of heroin, began to turn him more aggressive. Daulton didn’t like being snubbed, and after a while he started to interrupt their conversation.

  He began with a protest over a promise by Boris to buy him a villa on the beach in Puerto Vallarta (the one he was going to give to his father). He was supposed to operate it as a safe house for KGB agents. He demanded to know why the Russians hadn’t bought it yet.

  It is not known whether in fact the KGB ever really intended to buy a beach house for Daulton. But after several of his interruptions, Boris turned to Daulton and told him not to worry about the villa: the purchase would be arranged soon, he reassured him.

  When Daulton persisted and demanded action, Boris lost his temper. The two of them rose to their feet like two cocks preening before a fight. “You can’t deliver,” Boris exclaimed, to which Daulton shouted, “You can’t deliver!”

  The shout
ing continued as each held his ground, standing erect. Then Boris reached over, grabbed a bottle and poured Daulton a glass of vodka as a peace offering. Daulton downed it in one gulp and poured a glass for Boris, who swallowed his vodka even faster, and then repeated the rite.

  Chris decided that Boris, as well as Daulton, was starting to get drunk.

  Daulton became quiet for a moment, and the Russian turned back to Chris. He produced a list of TRW and CIA employees whose names had appeared on some of the TWX messages between Pilot and Pedal and said he and his associates wanted to know everything that Chris knew about these people: what their specific jobs were, details of their families, drinking habits, sexual proclivities and anything else that Chris wanted to add. Chris wrote down a few remarks about the people on the list, but ignored the request for embarrassing personal details.

  Boris then asked for a list of other employees who worked on the satellite project, and as Chris started making a list, he excused himself to relay earlier answers upstairs. Karpov, who was disgusted with the performance of the television set, also left the room.

  As Chris worked on the list of names, Daulton, now thoroughly drunk and staggering, grabbed one of Chris’s arms and waved toward the coat of arms on the wall. He said, “Those bastards! Watch out—they’re watching us through the picture.”