The Spy Who Was Left Behind

by Michael Pullara

  Elena had first met Gogoladze in 1986 when he worked as chief of the October District Police Station. The station occupied two floors of the house where Elena was living with her husband and daughter.

  “After the October District Police Station moved from our house, I rarely saw Eldar,” Elena told Djaparidze. “Sometimes we talked by phone—but very seldom.”

  It was another lie. According to the Georgian investigation file, it was well-known within the security services that Gogoladze had maintained a sexual relationship with Elena for seven years. In my experience, people lie in order to gain advantage or to avoid loss. And I wondered which of these was motivating Elena.

  “When did you first know about the trip?” asked Djaparidze.

  “Eldar called me at my mother’s house the night before,” she said. “He invited me to Kazbegi, where he was going with his foreign friend and the foreigner’s girlfriend.”

  Gogoladze arrived in the Niva a few minutes after 9 a.m. on Sunday morning. He and Elena exchanged stories about their children as they drove to the Sheraton. “When we arrived at the hotel, I saw a tall man coming toward us,” she said. “I asked Eldar whether I should sit in the back seat. He asked the foreigner in English then told me to remain in my place. The foreigner got in the car, gave me his hand and said, ‘Freddie.’ ”

  Woodruff gave directions as Gogoladze drove through the labyrinthian streets of Tbilisi to the home of Marina Kapanadze. They followed Nutsubidze Street up the hill and past the ropeway station. Like many things in Georgia, the aerial tram was dangerous and no longer worked. Three years before fifteen people had fallen to their deaths when the cable broke. It had not yet been repaired.

  When they arrived at Marina’s glum gray apartment block, Gogoladze asked whether Woodruff would go upstairs to fetch her. “Fred told us that Marina’s mother didn’t like him and he stayed in the car,” said Elena.

  In a few minutes a girl came out of the building. She was dressed in a short jean skirt and a red T-shirt. She was carrying a linen bag in her hands. “There was something in the bag,” said Elena. “I thought it was a jacket.”

  The girl, who introduced herself as Marina Kapanadze, sat in the back seat behind Gogoladze. She and Woodruff spoke together in English. “I studied English at school,” said Elena, “but I didn’t understand much of the conversation.”

  The quartet left Tbilisi at about 10 a.m. They traveled north via the Old Military Road. It was the only way to or from Kazbegi.

  The trip took about two hours. They stopped along the way to buy vegetables. “Around noon we arrived at a little village—I don’t remember the name—and Eldar called on his friend Archel,” said Elena. “Archel, who’d brought us some fish, got in the car and directed us to his sister’s house—but we didn’t stay. Eldar said he wanted to find a place where we could make a fire and have lunch.”

  They spent almost an hour driving bumpy mountain roads looking for an ideal picnic spot. Gogoladze made a stop near a shashlik shop, a homely little restaurant that served skewered meat grilled on a spit over an open fire. Woodruff, Gogoladze, and Marina went inside while Elena waited in the car.

  I tried to visualize the picture she was painting: A meandering journey over deserted roads to an isolated location. An American spy traveling to the Russian border without official permission or bodyguards. A lawless frontier rife with smugglers and thieves. It was an excellent place for a private meeting. And an important private meeting was excellent bait for a trap.

  “Was there anybody else in the shop?” asked Djaparidze.

  “I don’t know,” said Elena. “There were two empty cars parked near the building. The passengers could have been inside the shop.”

  After fifteen minutes the trio came out and the drive continued. Finally—after more than an hour and a half—Gogoladze stopped. Instead of a bucolic vista, Gogoladze chose to picnic by a shack that sometimes served as a snack bar. The destination seemed hardly worth the effort.

  The cookout was cut short by rain. The little group huddled by the snack bar until Archel invited them back to his house for dinner. “We stayed at Archel’s house for about two hours,” said Elena. “During dinner Fred told us that he had four children and that he liked Georgia very much. He said this was his third trip to Georgia and his second trip to the Darjal Valley.”

  “What did Woodruff tell you about the purpose of his visit?” asked Djaparidze.

  “I don’t know what he was doing in Georgia,” said Elena. “I didn’t even know he was an American diplomat until I saw it the next day on the television news. And as for the trip, as far as I could see there was no special purpose in our excursion.”

  Woodruff complained that he wasn’t feeling well so Archel’s wife, a pharmacist, gave him a dose of the Russian antibiotic Biseptol. After that, the foursome went to the car for the return trip to Tbilisi. “Woodruff slid into Marina’s place behind Eldar,” said Elena. “She told him to move—and he did—back to his place behind me.”

  They made two stops because of Woodruff’s stomachache. “The first time Fred went for a walk with Eldar,” she said. “The second time we stopped to drink some spring water at Narzan.”

  “And other than this?” asked Djaparidze. “Was anything unusual before the shooting?”

  “No, nothing,” she said. “Nobody stopped us, there were no cars on the road, and I didn’t see anybody following us. Woodruff didn’t talk much. He didn’t feel well. And he seemed sad.”

  “Tell me about the shooting,” said Djaparidze. “What did you see?”

  “I’m a little nearsighted, so I can’t be completely sure,” said Elena. “And it was already dark as we approached the old roadside police post. But I saw an athletic figure who stood apart from a group of men. He raised his hand as if he wanted to stop the car, but Eldar didn’t slow down. In two seconds we heard the sound of a shot. Eldar asked if anybody was hurt, there was a pause, and then Marina screamed. She said, ‘Fred is killed!’ ”

  Elena described the wound, the blood—and headlights shining through the hatchback window. “It was maybe thirty seconds after the shot,” she said. “I saw two round lights very close to us—but I didn’t see the car. And it never went by us.

  “By then we had passed the police post. Eldar stopped the car near a light-colored Jiguli that was broken down on the side of the road. There were some guys in dark civilian clothes standing there,” she said. “Eldar asked them if they’d heard a shot. They said they hadn’t heard anything.”

  “Did anyone have a gun?” asked Djaparidze.

  “None of the guys by the Jiguli had a gun,” she said. “I think Eldar had a gun, but nobody else did.”

  Marina abandoned the back seat and crowded in next to Elena. Her clothes were bloodstained, her fingers sticky, her hair matted. Gogoladze was so unnerved he flooded the car. The young men from the Jiguli push started the Niva and watched it race off toward the nearby city of Mtskheta. Woodruff fell over sideways on the back seat.

  “The first hospital we went to was closed. There was a guard at the front gate,” Elena said. “He got in the back seat next to Fred and guided us to another hospital.”

  However, there was no electricity at the second hospital—or anywhere else in Mtskheta. “The medical staff came out carrying candles,” she said. “They checked Fred’s pulse and said he was still alive—but he’d have to be taken to Tbilisi because they didn’t have a specialist who could treat him.”

  “What time was that—when they said Woodruff was still alive?” asked Djaparidze.

  “It was nine-thirty p.m.,” said Elena. “I remember the time distinctly because as we left the Mtskheta hospital Eldar asked Marina what time it was and she answered ‘Half past nine.’ ”

  On the way Gogoladze contacted the ministry offices by radio. It was his first attempt at such communication. He was trying to find out which hospital had electricity and if it could treat Woodruff’s wounds. With their help he made his way to Tbi
lisi Hospital No. 2 on Kamo Street.

  “The doctors from the Kamo Street Hospital came out and checked Fred’s pulse,” said Elena. “They couldn’t feel it.”

  Woodruff was dead. The doctors loaded his body onto a stretcher and hurried it inside the hospital.

  “While we were waiting, we all went out to examine the car,” Elena volunteered. “There was no bullet hole anywhere on the car.”

  Elena was clearly an amateur—a woman with no experience in the intelligence business. And amateurs tended to be both talkative and unpredictable. But as an independent witness, her revelation about having inspected the Niva was important: If there was no bullet hole, how did someone outside the car shoot someone inside the car?

  “One other thing,” said Elena. “At the hospital Eldar asked me whether I’d noticed anything. ‘Didn’t I hear a shot in the car? Didn’t I think Freddie might have shot himself?’ The questions were strange to me. There was nothing like that at all.”

  Elena reported that after Eldar had delivered Woodruff’s body to the hospital he ordered one of his employees to take her home. It was a puzzling professional decision. It created the risk that someone might intimidate or coach her before the authorities could memorialize her story.

  I couldn’t help wondering whether that was the point. Nevertheless, Elena had been informative and revealing. The same could not be said of Marina Kapanadze.

  In 1993 the only Georgians who spoke fluent English were intellectuals, diplomats, or spies. Marina was fluent in English. But she was neither an intellectual nor a diplomat. She worked as a waitress in the Piano Bar at the Sheraton Metechi Palace.

  The Sheraton was the hub of American presence in Georgia. The US embassy had set up its temporary offices on the fifth floor. The hotel restaurant was the only place in the country you could get a hamburger. And each evening the expatriate community—diplomats, journalists, soldiers, spies—would congregate on the tenth floor to drink away their loneliness and boredom. The Piano Bar was an excellent place to meet Americans.

  In an authoritarian country, jobs in a Western hotel are typically awarded by the security services. Maids, bellmen, waitresses, drivers—they are rich sources of information about the activities and interests of foreign guests. Georgia was no exception. “The Ministry of State Security was responsible for selecting the employees at the Sheraton,” Avtandil Ioseliani told me. “We did not select Marina Kapanadze. Nevertheless, she became a barmaid at the foreign currency hotel.”

  “We knew she was a spy,” he said, “but she wasn’t our spy.”

  Djaparidze’s interrogation of Marina Kapanadze began on August 9 immediately after Elena’s. I imagined the impression she must have made on the investigator: almond-shaped face, large intelligent eyes, plump lips, buxom breasts, and feminine hips. She was a voluptuous woman with obvious sexual charms. And she was perfectly comfortable in the silence. This was not a witness that the deputy chief was going to be able to bully or manipulate.

  “How well did you know Woodruff?” he asked.

  “I’ve known Fred a long time,” said Marina. “This was his third visit to Georgia. And when he was here I saw him almost every day. He lived in the hotel and used to spend his evenings in the bar.”

  “Where did you meet?” asked Djaparidze.

  “In the Piano Bar,” she said. “I started working there in January, and I met him in February on his second visit to Georgia.”

  The rhythm of the interrogation was already apparent. It would be a cross-examination, not a conversation. Marina would answer each question concisely and then stop talking.

  When dealing with such a witness, an interrogator must pay special attention to anything the witness volunteers. Unsolicited revelations are intentional and purposeful. They are an attempt to guide, mislead, manipulate, or confuse. Such informational nuggets are weapons in the hands of a professional.

  Djaparidze continued. “What was the nature of your relationship with Woodruff?” he asked.

  “He was very friendly with all the employees in the Piano Bar,” she said. “We liked him very much. He was restrained, courteous, charming—and he had a good sense of humor.”

  “And you personally?” asked Djaparidze. “What did you and Woodruff talk about?”

  “Sometimes he told me interesting stories about his travels. Sometimes he taught me new American expressions or told me about American customs. And sometimes I told him about Georgian culture. He liked our people and was interested in our everyday life. I remember him saying that he had never been so sad to leave a place and never so eager to return.”

  “And what about his work?” he asked. “What did you know about Woodruff’s work?”

  “I knew that he worked at the American embassy, that he was a diplomat,” she answered.

  Djaparidze waited in silence for Marina to elaborate—but she said nothing.

  “When did Woodruff first invite you to Kazbegi?” asked Djaparidze.

  “July fourth,” she replied.

  “A month ago?” said Djaparidze. “How is it that you remember the exact date?”

  “It was at a party,” she answered. “All the hotel employees were invited to the American embassy to celebrate their Independence Day. Fred was there and he asked me to accompany him to Gudauri and Kazbegi. He used to say that he liked those places very much and that when he retired he would buy a house there.”

  My mind spun with the implications. Woodruff had been planning his trip to Kazbegi for more than a month. It was a significantly different picture from the spontaneous unapproved and inadequately staffed outing described by Gogoladze. A month meant that Gogoladze had had more than enough time to obtain ministry permission and bodyguards. A month meant that Woodruff had had more than enough time to arrange a surreptitious meeting in the mountains. A month meant that someone else had had more than enough time to plan an assassination.

  “Are you saying that on July fourth Woodruff invited you for an August eighth outing to Kazbegi?” asked Djaparidze.

  “No, no—not for that specific date,” said Marina. “I didn’t know the date we were going until August sixth. He came in the Piano Bar on Friday night just as we opened. He said he wanted to go ‘somewhere in the direction of Gudauri’—that he’d been there before, liked it, and wanted to go again.”

  “Did you go with Woodruff on his first trip to Kazbegi?” said Djaparidze.

  “No,” she answered. “I’d never been there before—and I was very curious to see how he was going to organize it.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Djaparidze.

  “You know—the gas shortage, the bandits, the wars. Fred told me that Eldar Gogoladze was helping him. I’d known Eldar for about a year—knew that he was chief of Shevardnadze’s security team—and figured that if we were with Eldar we’d be safe. I told Fred that I’d go if he promised to get me home on time.”

  I balked at her claim of only having known Eldar for a year. Obviously, she was trying to suggest theirs was a casual relationship, a passing acquaintance, a vague familiarity. But the security service documents had confirmed the existence of a long-term sexual liaison between the two.

  Her characterization was clearly a misstatement—but was it diffidence or deceit?

  “Who knew that you were going to Kazbegi?” asked Djaparidze.

  “My manager in the Piano Bar—Marina Ivanova—she knew Fred had invited me out of town. I told her about the trip when I asked for the day off. Other than that, I didn’t tell anybody.”

  “When did you leave for Kazbegi?” asked Djaparidze.

  “Around nine-forty a.m.,” said Marina. “They all came to my house—Fred, Eldar, and a woman I didn’t know. I later learned that her name was Elena. They were in Eldar’s white Niva.”

  “How did Woodruff know where you lived?” asked Djaparidze.

  “Last Sunday—the first of August—Fred had invited me to a birthday party for one of his colleagues,” said Marina. “After the party he took
me home in one of the embassy’s cars. I remember one time he told me ‘I was in your neighborhood and wanted to visit you.’ We laughed about it. I guess he just remembered my address.”

  The trip to the mountains was uneventful. Gogoladze drove; Elena sat in the front passenger’s seat next to him; Marina sat behind Gogoladze on the left; and Woodruff sat beside Marina on the right.

  “We stopped several times on the way,” Marina said. “Once at a farmers’ market to buy some vegetables, several times to look at the scenery, and once at the Narzan Spring to drink fresh water. Fred had a Canon camera and took lots of photographs. We wanted to picnic in the open air—but it started raining so we went to the home of Eldar’s friend, Archel. We got there about four p.m. and Archel’s wife made dinner for us. We didn’t stay a long time because we wanted to get home on time.”

  “Did anyone drink alcohol at dinner?” asked Djaparidze.

  “Oh, yes,” she answered. “Archel acted as toastmaster and made sure that everyone drank wine. I had maybe a glass and a half. Fred drank three or four glasses. Everybody else drank about the same.”

  “Did Archel’s wife give anything to Woodruff?” Djaparidze asked.

  “Yes,” said Marina. “Two things. Fred had a stomachache so she gave him some Biseptol tablets. And as we were leaving she gave him some country-style knitted socks.”

  “When did you leave?” asked Djaparidze.

  “About six-thirty p.m.,” answered Marina. “I remember looking at the clock because I wanted to know when we’d be getting into Tbilisi.”

  The return trip was punctuated by a few stops. “Fred was sightseeing, taking pictures,” she said. “By the time we got out of the mountains it was dark. After we’d passed Natakhtari—but before we’d reached the old police post—I saw a group of four or five men in the headlights. Some of those men—maybe two or three—were standing together on the side of the road. I could see the silhouette of a car behind them, but I couldn’t see well enough to make out the model. Another man—standing a little bit apart from the group—raised his hand as if he was signaling us to stop. Just then I saw that one of the other men had an automatic rifle and was aiming it at us. We drove past them so I couldn’t see in the darkness—but I heard the sound of a shot.”