It was a time of widespread doubt about America’s role in the world, but Rolph shared none of these doubts. He believed deeply in the battle against communism and the struggle to protect freedom, an outlook born not so much from ideology as from his own experience. He knew the Soviet Union in earlier decades maintained a vast system of penal colonies populated by tens of thousands of people who were incarcerated for their thoughts and nothing else. He knew well the ugly reality of the Berlin Wall, the dirty, plowed strip laden with watchtowers, mines, barbed wire, automatic weapons, electric-shock fences, feral dogs, and probing floodlights. The Cold War had to be fought, and Rolph wanted to be part of it.
During his initial training at the CIA, Rolph was asked if he had a preference for where to serve. The CIA was divided into geographic divisions. Many young trainees did not want to go to the Moscow station, because it was known as a difficult place to run spies. It was all “sticks and bricks,” some said disdainfully: laying down dead drops and impersonal communications, not handling agents eye to eye. But Rolph repeated to anyone who would listen: he wanted the Soviet division.
Sometimes, the CIA sent young case officers to the Moscow station who had never served abroad with the CIA; that way, the KGB would be less likely to spot them. But at the time, there was only one vacant slot in Moscow, working with a cover in the defense attaché’s office. The CIA hesitated. Two years earlier, the slot was held by a CIA case officer who was ambushed and expelled. If a new man walked in, the KGB might immediately assume he was an intelligence officer. Despite the misgivings, Rolph got the job. He took the basic CIA training course and then more training for espionage operations in “denied areas,” learning how to dodge the relentless surveillance of the KGB.
At the time, he learned the Moscow station was carrying out one of the most extraordinary technical operations yet attempted against the Soviet Union. High-resolution imagery from a spy satellite showed that workers were digging a trench and laying a communications line along a country road between the Krasnaya Pakhra Nuclear Weapons Research Institute, located at Troitsk, twenty-two miles southwest of Moscow, and the Defense Ministry in the capital. The CIA planned to put a silent wiretap on the line, an electronic collar that would scoop up the secrets and record them, without being detected. The wiretap would be placed in a manhole along a highway where the cable was buried. Rolph was assigned to the nascent project while still in training. An exact mock-up of the manhole had been built near Washington, D.C., by a CIA contractor for training. Step one was to pry off the heavy manhole lid. Rolph was instructed how to use a crowbar and hook to remove it. Once he was inside, a case officer’s patience and skill would be sorely tested. Trainees had exercised in blindfolds to see if they could enter the manhole and carry out the operation by feel alone.
Rolph was thrilled to be selected for the mission. In training one day, he hoisted the heavy manhole cover using the crowbar and hook. Then suddenly he dropped it. The manhole cover smashed down on his thumb. Rolph felt a jolt of pain. He turned to his supervisor and tried to seem unperturbed.
The supervisor took one glance at his thumb, which was limp, and sent him to the hospital. It was broken.
A few days later, wearing a cast, Rolph returned to headquarters. He volunteered to resume the training on the manhole as soon as the cast came off, in a few weeks. But his superiors waved him off, saying there wasn’t time; they didn’t want to delay his arrival in Moscow. Rolph felt angry at himself and sheepish about the accident, but he didn’t linger over it. He had been selected for Moscow duty and was proud to be going. He felt like an astronaut chosen for an Apollo mission. Soon, with his cast off and his training complete, he walked into the Moscow station.
Rolph arrived as the days of timidity in Moscow—the days when there hadn’t been an agent worth the name—were over. The station, once frozen by Turner’s stand-down order, was now buzzing with activity. Tolkachev was producing huge volumes of secret documents, and the manhole wiretap was about to be emplaced and connected. Then, just as Rolph found his desk in the station, yet another audacious operation got under way, and he would be part of it.1
That summer, Victor Sheymov took advantage of the warm evenings to stroll with his wife, Olga, on the broad avenues of Moscow. Sheymov was thirty-three years old, one of the youngest majors in the KGB. He held an extremely sensitive job in the directorate responsible for the agency’s encrypted communications with its stations—each known as a rezidentura—around the world. Sheymov worked in “the Tower,” a building at KGB headquarters that housed the Eighth Chief Directorate, located behind the Lubyanka, a foreboding prerevolutionary stone structure that had come to symbolize the power of the KGB and its Soviet predecessors. Before coming to the KGB, Sheymov worked on missile guidance systems. His father was a military engineer and his mother a doctor. His reputation was that of a young electronics whiz: he had recently been dispatched to China to solve an eavesdropping case that no one else could crack, and he did. But privately, Sheymov was seething.2
It was hard to say when the disenchantment set in. He had been promoted so rapidly that he had never acquired the blithe passivity of the older generation. He was young enough to be offended when things weren’t right. Early in his days at the KGB, he had been assigned to a secret unit that prepared briefings and analysis for the Politburo. The briefings were altered to meet specific orders and were full of deceptions and fabrications. Sheymov was appalled. He saw a chasm between the reports to the bosses and the reality on the streets. One day, he went to the KGB library and asked the woman at the desk if he could read a history of the Communist Party. He saw himself as a scientist, an engineer, someone who respected facts. Maybe he could find answers to his questions in such a book. Everyone who had a college education had to take a course on the history of the party; what could be more loyal than a curiosity about the history of the party? The librarian asked him for his identification card, perhaps intending to report him to superiors. He could see it on her face: Why would anybody be reading such a thing? Sheymov played it cool, pretended to be interested in another book, and walked out as soon as he could.
Then a friend in the KGB named Valentin died suddenly and mysteriously. Valentin had been youthful and healthy, a cross-country skier. His father was a member of the Central Committee. But Valentin was a nonconformist type, telling Sheymov that he despised his father and the party hierarchy. He had called them a “disgusting gang” in the presence of his father. After the death, Sheymov discovered that his friend was probably murdered by thugs from the KGB. At Valentin’s funeral, he stood over the casket and silently vowed to exact revenge.
In the months that followed, Sheymov pondered what to do. He was more and more disillusioned. It was fashionable among younger people at the time to be cynical about the system, to affect Western dress and culture, and to make wicked jokes about Brezhnev and the aging, dysfunctional party leadership. But most people just talked in private; they did not act on their thoughts. In 1979, Sheymov decided to act. He started to plan for an escape. He was determined to strike a blow at the system, a damaging blow. Olga was frightened—their daughter, Yelena, had just turned four years old—but she vowed to stick by him.
At first, Sheymov hatched a plan to contact an American intelligence officer. Sheymov had never been to the United States and harbored no illusions. He knew from reading secret cables that the United States was the enemy, and his logic was simple: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. He wanted to take his revenge by going to America.
He knew it would be risky. He possessed a top secret security clearance. If discovered, he would be immediately arrested and probably executed. Yet Sheymov was streetwise about Moscow, an intelligence officer trained to move about without being detected. He devoted hours to searching for a car with the license plates of an American diplomat. But Sheymov could not find a car with D-04 plates. He then decided to write a note, in case he encountered an American intelligenc
e officer. “Hello,” it began, “I am a KGB officer with access to highly sensitive information.” He hinted that his dissatisfaction with the system demanded “action” and proposed a meeting at a tobacco kiosk near a Moscow Metro station. But Sheymov could not find anyone to give the note to. One night, he confessed to Olga that four of his ideas for contacting the Americans had all come to nothing. He had even concocted a reason to visit the Foreign Ministry for a meeting, thinking he might find the car of an American diplomat there. He planned to bump into the American car with his own, creating a small fender-bender incident at which he could leap out and give the driver his note. At one point, Sheymov spotted an American car, but when he tried to scrape it, the driver pulled away just in time. The note was in Sheymov’s palm that day but never delivered.
Finally, Sheymov came up with a far more ambitious plan.
In October 1979, he was on a business trip to straighten out embassy communications in Warsaw. He had brought his father’s thick eyeglasses and stopped at an optician, asking if he could get them repaired. That was a nice little cover story. The eyeglasses had another purpose. One afternoon, he went to see a movie with some KGB colleagues. He excused himself just as the film was starting and caught a taxi to the American embassy. His plan was to walk up to the door of the embassy wearing the glasses as a disguise, but he had made one mistake. It turned out that his father’s eyeglasses were so thick he couldn’t see a thing. Nearly blind but undaunted, he stumbled toward the marine guard and said, “I need to speak to the representative of American intelligence.” The guard looked at him and replied, “I am the representative of American intelligence.” Sheymov responded with a backup line he had memorized: “Then I need to speak to duty diplomat.”
Soon, Sheymov was face-to-face with the Americans, took off the glasses, and told them he wanted political asylum in the United States. He wrote on a piece of paper, “KGB.” They escorted him to a windowless room. The conversation was stilted: the Americans spoke Polish but not Russian; Sheymov had just fragments of English. They photocopied his passport and asked him a few questions, such as who was the KGB chief in Warsaw. Sheymov’s answers satisfied them he was indeed a KGB officer.
“What’s your line of work?” one of the Americans asked.
“Cipher communications,” Sheymov said. The Americans looked at each other with surprise.
“Are you a cipher clerk?” one of them asked.
“No, I am responsible for the security of the KGB cipher communications abroad,” he replied.
The Americans were dumbstruck. A man with the keys to the kingdom, the ultrasecret codes to Soviet communications, was volunteering to defect. They asked if he wanted to be whisked out of Warsaw immediately. No, Sheymov replied—he wanted to bring his wife and daughter to the United States. He told the Americans he would soon be returning to Moscow. They told him he was crazy, but he insisted. On a sheet of paper, he wrote his proposal for a rendezvous, early in 1980, and he handed it to one of them.
The CIA then set up a plan to communicate with Sheymov in Moscow. He gave them an address that was not his own. He was told to expect a letter by regular mail. If anyone opened it, the letter would appear to be from an old friend, someone with an innocuous name, say Smirnov, recalling a training exercise years before. When he got the letter, they said, he should wet it down and invisible writing would appear on the other side with instructions for how to signal he was ready to meet the CIA.
As they walked out, one of the Americans asked Sheymov if he had ever heard of Halloween. No, he said, what’s that? The American explained it was a holiday, taking place that very evening.
“You’ve pulled one hell of a trick-or-treat,” he said.
“I’m sorry?” Sheymov replied.
“Oh, never mind. You’ll find out.” They put him in a car and dropped him at the movie house ten minutes before the film was to end.
When the Moscow station got word of the Sheymov case, Hathaway was finishing his tour. He had to make a decision: Who would handle the new agent? He could not give the case to Guilsher, who was busy running Tolkachev. His other senior case officer, James Olson, would be valuable but was deeply involved in the sensitive manhole operation. There were a few other possibilities, all skilled case officers but without polished Russian-language skills. Hathaway gave the case to David Rolph, the new arrival, who spoke Russian well and was eager to show what he could do.
A code word for Sheymov was sent from headquarters to the Moscow station: ckutopia.
The code name suggested sky-high expectations, yet much about Sheymov was entirely unknown. Did he really serve as a master of KGB overseas communications? How could they check? How could they get a peek at the kind of intelligence he would produce? What did he want? The Gerber rules, fashioned nine years earlier, still mattered.
Sheymov wanted exfiltration, with his family. There were files in the station with the code word ckgo, containing scenarios for getting an agent out of the country, but the Moscow station had no experience; it had never been done from the Soviet Union. A KGB man with such top secret clearances couldn’t just go to the airport and fly away. Travel abroad was tightly controlled for all Soviet citizens. Moreover, Sheymov might have been subject to KGB counterintelligence surveillance in Moscow. If there were any suspicions, he would be arrested.
Rolph made a rather unconventional suggestion to Hathaway. He said they should give Sheymov a pair of new Tropel cameras in one of the first meetings. They could ask Sheymov to photograph the most sensitive documents on his desk and then return the cameras. When they developed the film, they would see whether he had the access that he claimed and whether it was worth it to take him and his family out. Immediately, headquarters objected to giving the cameras to a completely unknown and untested agent. What if he was a dangle? What if he delivered the precious technology right into the hands of the KGB? And what if he got caught with the cameras? But Hathaway liked the idea and backed up Rolph. At one point, he wrote a stern cable to headquarters saying that he, Rolph, and all the other case officers in the station thought it was a good idea to give Tropel cameras to the new agent. Could they all be wrong? Headquarters relented. The Tropels would be shipped out soon.
As Gerber arrived in January to take over as chief, the Moscow station mailed the letter to Sheymov with the invisible writing. The signal, the letter explained, was to be made on a Sunday at a location that the CIA had given the code name bulochnaya, or “bakery.” Every Sunday, Rolph drove to church services, a route that took him past the site. He kept an eye on a concrete pillar at one corner of an apartment complex. Then, on a Sunday in late February, he spotted the black V drawn by hand. Everyone on the street was walking by as if it meant nothing. But it was the signal from Sheymov. They would meet soon.
Before every operation, a case officer planned and carried out a surveillance detection run. Rolph wanted to be absolutely certain he was free from KGB surveillance. With help from the other case officers and the technical operations team in the station, he worked up a plan. It was far more ambitious than usual and based on something Guilsher had once attempted unsuccessfully. Rolph went over it, minute by minute, with Gerber, who pressed him about every possible fault. What happens if … ? What happens if … ? Finally, the chief was satisfied.
Rolph bought a round-trip ticket on the Soviet airline, Aeroflot, from Moscow to Frankfurt, with a Friday departure and a return the following Thursday. He properly notified the Soviet administrative office, which provided services to diplomats, that he was coming back on Thursday, confident they would report it to the KGB. Then he packed his bag and caught the flight out. From Frankfurt, Rolph took a train to Vienna on Saturday. He was so filled with anxiety he could hardly sleep. On Monday, he went to the airport and, for cash, bought a one-way air ticket back to Moscow on the next Austrian Airlines flight. The KGB was expecting him to return on Thursday, on Aeroflot. Once he landed on Monday afternoon,
he went through passport control, but he knew it would take them a while to report his arrival to others in the KGB. This was the “gap” he was trying to exploit, a simple lapse in bureaucracy that would give him a few hours. He was “black”—free from surveillance.
At the time he landed in Moscow, the wife of another case officer was bringing a small duffel bag to Rolph’s wife, who was a teacher. As Rolph’s wife finished her classes, she took the duffel bag and began her own surveillance detection run through the city by car. The bag held a light disguise for Rolph, an ops note, and CIA questions to be given to Sheymov.
From the airport, Rolph took a taxi toward the city. He abruptly got out at a busy Metro stop, Dinamo, about halfway into town. The stop was on one side of the broad Leningradsky Prospekt. Rolph walked, casually, around the Metro stop and then toward a building marked “Aeroflot” on the other side of the highway, all the while looking for possible surveillance. When he reached the building, his wife picked him up in the car. They began another long surveillance detection run. Finally, satisfied that he was completely free from surveillance and having put on the disguise, Rolph got out of the car. His wife sped off for a few hours to a planned dinner party with friends.
By 8:00 p.m., Rolph was walking near a statue of Aleksandr Griboyedov, a Russian playwright and diplomat who was killed by an angry mob in Tehran while serving as ambassador to Persia in 1829. The statue stood high on a pedestal near the Kirovskaya Metro station at Chistye Prudy, a broad, tree-lined park with a boulevard on each side in an old section of Moscow filled with narrow lanes and a maze of passageways.
The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal Page 16