The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

by David E. Hoffman

  In his last review of the plan with Gerber, hours earlier in the Moscow station, Rolph went over the route, the contingencies—each turn, each cover stop. What Rolph remembered was how Gerber treated every operation as if it were his own. He thought of the smallest details: body language, gestures, appearances, and illusions. Rolph once thought he’d never find another chief of station like Gus Hathaway, the tireless operator. Then he worked for Gerber, an intense, precise choreographer of espionage.

  The van stopped at a flower shop. Rolph remained in his seat. Buying flowers was a routine, their first cover stop, a pause to see if the surveillance cars or foot patrol teams would get careless and stumble over themselves. Rolph kept his disguise on, in case they were questioned, but did not go into the flower shop, knowing that the harsh white light could expose the imperfections. Better to remain veiled behind the dirty window in the van.

  The first cover stop had an important function: the abort option. If there was surveillance, Rolph could always break off here and go home with minimal losses; the KGB would have no inkling that he was headed to a meeting with an agent. By experience, Rolph had learned it was always best to catch the KGB at the start of a run, when they were more easily detected. If you saw the same red car three times, that was a clue. But as time passed, detection became more difficult. If the KGB was suspicious, they could throw more cars and more teams into the hunt. This made Moscow different from other cities. Rolph had the advantage in knowing where he was going, but the KGB had limitless resources they could devote to the chase if they became suspicious. They could put a dozen cars on his tail, and he would not see the same one twice.

  The first part of a surveillance detection run was always in a moving vehicle, for more control. In the VW van, Rolph and the chief tech enjoyed nearly 360-degree vision and plenty of agility. They could accelerate, forcing the KGB watchers to keep up and perhaps reveal themselves. Or they could make abrupt U-turns, perhaps coming face-to-face with the surveillance car, if it existed. The KGB always sent out teams of three and four cars, so the goal was to trip them up, maneuver so they would have to show their presence early. Time and distance could be leveraged to Rolph’s advantage. It was a lesson that Haviland Smith and his peers had discovered in the 1960s.

  After an hour and a half of driving, darkness had settled over the city, and Rolph began a mental countdown. His next move required a decision based on what he had seen and his instincts. The rule of thumb was to advance to the next stage only if he was 95 percent certain he was black. The reason was simple: he had the upper hand in the car. On foot and alone, he would be much more vulnerable. Rolph had known case officers who could not cross this threshold. They would “feel” surveillance, even if they had not seen it, and turn back. They were never criticized for this; it might have been a good call. But the decision to go ahead, to take the risk of a meeting with an agent, was much harder. The agent’s life was at risk. Rolph weighed what he had seen on the darkening streets. He was 95 percent sure he was free from surveillance. He looked to the chief tech, who agreed. While the van was still moving, Rolph quickly slipped off the disguise and put it into a small sack on the floor. He grabbed the shopping bag that had been prepared for Tolkachev and slipped into a woolen coat. The van stopped very briefly. Rolph slid out and walked briskly away. The chief tech went to look for a quiet place to hide the van and take a walk in the park.

  Soon, Rolph reappeared on another broad avenue a few blocks away, and he walked directly into a crowd waiting for one of the electric trolley buses that prowled Moscow’s major arteries. He boarded the trolley at the rear door. To an outsider, Rolph resembled just another tired worker going home, standing wearily, squeezed in tightly. But in reality he was watching every move around him. No one on the bus could see it, but the small radio device in his ear was wirelessly connected to a receiver, about the size of a thin cigarette pack, held in the pocket of a white cotton harness that wrapped around his chest. A necklace of wire served as antenna and also handled the connection to the earpiece. In earlier years, case officers had to rather clumsily plug in crystals that might pick up a KGB transmission, and it was hit or miss. But Rolph was wearing a new model that scanned multiple KGB bands automatically. It gave him a leg up on the KGB; he could listen to them as they talked to each other. The downside was that it was so sensitive that it picked up squelches, jibs, and jabs of a dozen or more surveillance teams that could be three-quarters of a mile away and may not be following him, or even know about him. The radio was a wonder of concealment and smarts, but it was a secondary tool; it could provide warning of surveillance but not prove Rolph was free from it. Confirming that he was free from surveillance was the single most critical factor in what he was about to do.

  Rolph scanned the trolley passengers, taking careful note of those who boarded with him. Then he abruptly stepped toward the door and jumped off at the next stop, watching to see who followed. So far, nothing seemed out of place.

  On foot, he began the final stage of the surveillance detection run. Rolph was physically fit, and his head was clear, but his year in Moscow had taught him that surveillance detection runs were grueling. The late autumn weather felt raw, moist, and heavy. After he spent hours walking in the open air, his lungs ached. His mouth grew dry, but there was nowhere he could safely stop. Every doorway or public space could be a trap, and Rolph knew that the KGB peered down at sidewalks and streets from telescopes mounted in windows above. They had thousands of people watching.

  The radio scanner was quiet but for the usual patter and static. At a small theater, Rolph pivoted on his heel and pushed open the doors. This was his second cover stop. He checked out the play board and notices on the wall, without saying anything. He almost never came to this theater. He listened intently to the radio but heard nothing. His goal was to force the KGB men to do something out of character, to slip, so that he could spot them before they could call in reinforcements and blanket the streets. Rolph left the theater with tickets for a show he had no intention to attend. The real show was coming up soon. The theater had triggered no sign of surveillance.

  The next cover stop would certainly send the KGB into fits, should they see him. Rolph avoided the Metro—there were monitoring cameras inside most stations—and walked toward an antiques store, far from his usual routines. He had been there once before, with his family, but he would never go to an antiques store alone at night during the week. The point was to ramp up his challenge to the KGB, forcing them to act.

  Still nothing.

  He walked into a nearby apartment building and started climbing the stairs. This would trigger a KGB ambush if they were following him. They could not allow him to disappear from sight in a multi-floor apartment building. In fact, Rolph had nowhere to go in the building and knew not a soul who lived there. He was just trying to provoke the KGB. At a landing on the stairs, he sat down and waited.

  No one came running up the stairs.

  Rolph turned around. For three and a half hours, the KGB had been nowhere in sight. Still, to make sure, he walked to a small park near the apartment building. The park was lined with benches. Tall apartment buildings loomed on all sides, leaving the benches in darkness. Rolph hoped that his presence in the park, so far from home or the embassy, would raise hackles, and if nearby, the KGB would leap out and grab him. Better to face them now than to take them to Tolkachev. He carried no passport, no identification, but he did not fear being caught. He could explain being in a park, and they would be no wiser. But he must not lead the KGB to Tolkachev. Rolph looked at his watch. He was twelve minutes from the meeting site.

  Time to go. He was 100 percent sure. He rose from the bench.

  Suddenly he was jolted by a squelch in his earpiece, then another, and a third. They were loud, clearly from the KGB’s surveillance teams. Rolph didn’t know why. Did they see him stand up? He stood frozen, rigid, tense. The squelch could sometimes be used as a signal, withou
t words, from one KGB man to another. But the noise could also have been related to something else, on a street a half mile away. It could have been a ham-fisted operator who hit his button by mistake.

  Rolph often repeated the words “when you’re black, you’re black.” In his mind, it meant that when you are black, you can do anything, because nobody is watching you.

  Nothing. No sign of anyone in the park. Rolph let his shoulders drop and took a deep breath.

  When you’re black, you’re black.

  Rolph circled the meeting site once on foot, still alert to any signs of surveillance. The site was designated olga, not far from the German embassy. He recalled the scare over those two men he’d seen in the playground sandbox on that first night with Sheymov, six months earlier. But he saw nothing. It was 9:00 p.m., and Rolph thought it was a good place for a meeting, with a few apartment buildings, some low-lying shabby garages, not many people on the street.

  Then he spotted Tolkachev. Rolph had read the entire file and was briefed by Guilsher. He felt that he would recognize Tolkachev upon seeing him the first time and imagined a warm hello, face-to-face. But now Rolph was walking behind a man who was shuffling along. He looked as if he might be Tolkachev. Rolph had almost overtaken him. The man was stooped a bit. The plan was to exchange greetings, and if the response was correct, Rolph would know he was Tolkachev. Rolph was uncertain what to do. He might be looking at the wrong man, but there was no harm in using the greeting. If it was the wrong man, the Russian would probably just look quizzically at him and ask what the hell he was talking about.

  From behind, Rolph said out loud, “Privet ot Kati!” Or, “Hello from Katya!”

  The man turned around and said clearly, “Peredaite privet ot Borisa.” Or, “Send regards from Boris.”

  That was the coded answer. Rolph smiled slightly, looked at Tolkachev, and extended his hand. Tolkachev shook it. He was wearing a black jacket and a brimmed cap and seemed even smaller than Rolph had anticipated, no more than five feet six inches tall. His face was chiseled, the nose aquiline, but Rolph noticed it was dented at the top. Rolph’s watch said 9:00 p.m. It was Tolkachev’s eighth meeting with the CIA.

  Rolph knew that his most important goal at this moment was simply to build the kind of trust that Tolkachev had in Guilsher. He kept his first remarks light and reassuring, and he gave Tolkachev an ops note that he had painstakingly drafted in the Moscow station.3 He noticed right away that Tolkachev did not respond emotionally. His face was impassive.

  Then Rolph delivered some good news: Tolkachev’s “special request” for the suicide pill had been approved by the CIA in response to his written appeal in June. Gerber had pushed headquarters. “What we must not do,” Gerber insisted, “is allow this question to dominate the operation and we are frankly concerned that the longer the giving of the special request is delayed that is what we are going to face.”4 At the news, Tolkachev finally seemed to relax. Rolph said he would deliver the pill at their next meeting. The CIA could put it into a pen or something else that Tolkachev normally carried in his pocket. The Moscow station had been fretting over the choice of concealment. It had to be good enough so it could never be discovered but easy enough to carry in case of dire emergency. When Rolph asked about it, Tolkachev replied indifferently, saying he didn’t have a preference. In the ops note, Rolph said of the suicide pill, “I can only hope that it will give you the peace of mind you desire.”5 In the note, Rolph also gave Tolkachev a list of questions to answer that would help in planning for exfiltration, such as clothing and shoe sizes, what medicines he and his family used, what cities or places they were permitted to visit, and when they would go on vacation.

  Tolkachev was apologetic: in the summer months, it was harder for him to sneak documents out of the institute because he didn’t wear an overcoat. He had photographed only twenty-five rolls of film since the last meeting with Guilsher in June. He passed them to Rolph, along with a nine-page note.

  Tolkachev was still very worried about the library permission sheet, which carried his signature for so many top secret documents. He knew it would incriminate him, and he offered a new idea. Earlier, he suggested that the CIA fabricate his building pass in order to defeat the security procedures. Now he wondered, could the CIA also fabricate a copy of his library permission sheet, with just a few signatures? He could find a way to substitute the fake sheet for the real one. Tolkachev handed to Rolph some written diagrams and notes and a photograph to help the CIA make a copy of it.

  The minutes were ticking away, but Tolkachev had more to say. He told Rolph he had purchased a car, a small, ocher-colored Zhiguli, the Soviet Everyman car modeled on the boxy Italian Fiat. Tolkachev wanted to use the car for future meetings. They might be able to talk for a longer stretch without being detected. Who would suspect two friends sitting in a car? Tolkachev told Rolph, briefly, that he was still unhappy with the money the CIA was giving him and promised to write about it later. He reminded the CIA of his patience, however, in the letter he handed to Rolph. “I only want to note, one more time,” he wrote, that the “gradual and dragged out approach from your side to the questions of finances does not affect the general process of my cooperation with you.”

  Fifteen minutes had already passed, and Tolkachev had one more request. He handed Rolph a piece of paper. When Rolph looked down, he saw it was printed in English in block letters:

  1.LED ZEPPELIN

  2.PINK FLOYD

  3.GENESIS

  4.ALAN PARSONS PROJECT

  5.EMERSON, LAKE AND PALMER

  6.URIAH HEEP

  7.THE WHO

  8.THE BEATLES

  9.THE YES

  10.RICH WAKEMAN

  11.NAZARETH

  12.ALICE COOPER

  Tolkachev wanted the CIA to obtain rock music albums for his son, Oleg. He had copied the names down by hand, although he apparently did not know them well. “My son, as many of his contemporaries in school, has a passion for Western music,” Tolkachev wrote. “Besides, I too, in spite of my age, like to listen to this music.” He said the records were only available on the black market, but “I do not want to use the black market, because you can always end up in an unpredictable situation.” He added that the list was to indicate the “tastes of my son,” but he wanted “the most popular musical groups in the West, including the USA.”6

  Rolph was nervous because of the squelch he had heard in the park before the meeting. He knew that he and Tolkachev had been together only briefly but decided to cut the meeting short. Tolkachev did not object. They shook hands and departed. Rolph walked away quickly. At this hour in the city, there were not many people on the streets. Rolph returned to the parked VW van, which was waiting for him at a rendezvous point. The chief tech had taken a small surveillance detection run of his own before arriving at the point, just to make sure the KGB was not waiting for them. Once in the van, Rolph gave a thumbs-up, wordlessly. The tech reached down to the floor and grabbed a bottle of beer for each of them, a small ritual at the end of every run. It was so cold the beers had nearly frozen. They snapped off the tops, and Rolph, his throat dry from hours on the street, savored the icy beer. Then he put on the beard and wig, and they drove back to the embassy. The last feint in the identity transfer deception was important: they had to close the loop, crossing back into the embassy, undetected. The guards didn’t give them a second glance. The gate opened, and Rolph’s run was over.

  A little while later, the Soviet militiamen in the shack took note that David Rolph and his wife left the embassy dinner party for home.

  12

  Devices and Desires

  At last, Tolkachev would get his suicide pill. It arrived at the Moscow station by the regular secure delivery a few weeks after the October meeting in a package about the size of a cigar box. Rolph opened it. Nestled inside was the fountain pen with the L-pill, held in place by foam inserts, cut
in the shape of a pistol.1

  He gingerly examined the pen, then put it back and locked the box in a file drawer. Soon after, headquarters sent a cable with instructions, in Russian, on how to extract the fragile capsule from inside the pen and bite down on it.2

  In the close-knit Moscow station, everyone shared everything. In Gerber’s small office, they talked over plans for a surveillance detection run and new meeting sites they had cased the previous weekend. Sometimes they sketched on a chalkboard or rehearsed how they would handle a phone call in Russian with an agent. In advance of a major operation, wives would join them in the cramped station, sitting on the desks and floor, double-checking disguises and packages, examining maps and routes.

  When Rolph told the others about Tolkachev’s request for Western rock music for his son, they nodded knowingly. They’d seen it all over Moscow—young people yearning for consumer goods from the West: cassettes for tape recorders, magazines, nail polish and remover, Polaroid cameras, Scotch tape, T-shirts with English lettering, turtleneck sweaters, running shoes, and countless other things they could not find at home.3 Tolkachev had also requested a catalog of Western stereo equipment. Why not give it to him? It seemed like such an inconsequential favor for an agent who was delivering massive volumes of intelligence. But Gerber was cold-eyed and not immediately swayed. What if Tolkachev, leading designer at a top secret Soviet military research institute, was seen by a neighbor carrying albums by Uriah Heep? Or what if the records were spotted in his apartment? Wouldn’t that look suspicious?