Gray Day

by Eric O'neill

  Kate flicked on a bank of computer screens. The black-and-white image on the first screen was unmistakable: the edge of my desk, empty except for the picture of Juliana. The neighboring screen showed Hanssen’s smaller office. The final screen showed the hallway from one of the standard FBI cameras that poke out of every corner.

  “How well can you hear?” I asked.

  “Barely,” said one analyst. “We can make out most of what you’re saying, but less than half of what GD says.”

  Kate dragged open a heavy drawer from a secure file safe. She sorted through the contents and selected a page of paper in a clear protective sleeve. I turned the page over in my hands. A carefully sliced-open envelope bore a one-word return address: “Chicago.” The postmark was faded but still legible: “WDC 200,” July 13, 1988. I flipped it over to read the letter, typed on a typewriter:

  I found the site empty. Possibly I had the time wrong. I work from memory. My recollection was for you to fill before 1:00 a.m. I believe Viktor Degtyar was in the church driveway off Rt. 123, but I did not know how he would react to an approach. My schedule was tight to make this at all. Because of my work, I had to synchronize explanations and flights while not leaving a pattern of absence or travel that could later be correlated with communication times. This is difficult and expensive.

  I will call the number you gave me on 2/24, 2/26 or 2/28 at 1:00 a.m., EDST. Please plan filled signals. Empty sites bother me. I like to know before I commit myself as I’m sure you do also. Let’s not use the original site so early at least until the seasons change. Some type of call-out signal to you when I have a package or when I can receive one would be useful. Also, please be specific about dates, e.g., 2/24. Scheduling is not simple for me because of frequent travel and wife. Any ambiguity multiplies the problems.

  My security concerns may seem excessive. I believe experience has shown them to be necessary. I am much safer if you know little about me. Neither of us are children about these things. Over time, I can cut your losses rather than become one.

  Ramon

  P.S. Your “thank you” was deeply appreciated.

  I handed the letter back to Kate, and she slipped the folder into the file cabinet, then closed the drawer but didn’t lock it.

  “These letters are from the late ’80s,” Kate said. “But we think he started his spying much earlier than that. He uses a number of pseudonyms, and never his own name, or anything that might refer to the FBI. He often calls himself ‘B.’ ” She handed me another letter. “It gets interesting.”

  I flipped the plastic-covered letter over and read the date: October 24, 1985. The letter described operational procedures for managing the complex system of signals and drops that are the bread and butter of spy craft.

  DROP LOCATION

  Please leave your package for me under the corner (nearest the street) of the wooden foot bridge located just west of the entrance to Nottoway Park. (ADC Northern Virginia Street Map, #14, D3)

  PACKAGE PREPARATION

  Use a green or brown plastic trash bag and trash to cover a waterproofed package.

  SIGNAL LOCATION

  Signal site will be the pictorial “pedestrian-crossing” signpost just west of the main Nottoway Park entrance on Old Courthouse Road. (The sign is the one nearest the bridge just mentioned.)

  SIGNALS

  My signal to you: One vertical mark of white adhesive tape meaning I am ready to receive your package.

  Your signal to me: One horizontal mark of white adhesive tape meaning drop filled.

  My signal to you: One vertical mark of white adhesive tape meaning I have received your package. (Remove old tape before leaving signal.)

  I scanned the mental map of Virginia the ghosts had drilled into my head. I used to drive with stacks of ADC map books in the back of my car. My Northern Virginia map was heavily marked up with red circles and sticky tabs for all the spies who make Vienna and Arlington their home. “Nottoway Park. That’s right near his house.”

  “A five-minute walk.” Kate took the letter from me. She handled it reverently, the way a curator in a museum moves an artifact. I half expected her to snap on a pair of white cotton gloves. “He made things very convenient for himself.”

  “It sounds like him,” I said. “The letters, I mean. The way he talks.”

  “There are more.” Kate pointed out a whiteboard. Someone had scribbled a history of espionage from 1979 until 2001 in blue marker. Pitts and Ames had prominent spots amid a pantheon of spies and double agents. Lines spiked from each to sources they might have revealed or operations they might have compromised. Numerous question marks riddled the timeline. I noted that the name Ramon Garcia showed up in 1985. It was circled in red.

  “Why Ramon Garcia?”

  Kate shrugged. “Our best guess is that he chose Garcia because the letters ‘CIA’ are in there. He doesn’t seem the sort to rely on coincidence.”

  “No,” I agreed. “He’s too much of a control freak. If this is his alter ego, he’d want it to mean something.”

  Kate tapped the whiteboard with a knuckle. The sound made a few analysts look up from their workstations. “Believe me, kiddo, we’ve agonized over it. At the end of the day we’ll just have to ask him.” She winked. “But first we need to catch him. We need something to tie Hanssen to Ramon.”

  In 1985, when the CIA and FBI lost nearly every significant human asset operating against the Soviet Union, it was a mole named Ramon Garcia who was partially to blame. It took until the fall of 2000 for the Gray Suit team to recruit a source who might shed light on those events. He had stolen the file on the Soviets’ most valuable spy before leaving the KGB sometime after the collapse of the Soviet Union. After allowing it to gather dust in his attic for years, the former KGB officer turned businessman was ready to sell. The FBI expected the file to point directly to Brian Kelley, the CIA case officer they had hounded for years and code-named “Gray Deceiver.”

  The unnamed KGB retiree agreed to sell the file of information for millions of dollars and the promise of a better life for his family. Despite the risk of spending millions on possibly worthless information, the FBI jumped at the opportunity. The Brian Kelley case had been going nowhere. Maybe this was the spark they needed.

  As the Russian defector settled into his secret new life here in the States, the agents opened the file on Gray Suit. They found letters that he’d left in clandestine drops to the Soviets over the years, and noted that each had been signed only as “B” or “Ramon Garcia”—pseudonyms meant to keep everyone guessing at his identity. Next to the letters was a cassette tape and a trash bag retrieved from one of the drop sites. Gray Suit made only two mistakes in twenty-two years of spying. The FBI had now bought both from a KGB defector.

  The trash bag was the first. FBI forensics lifted two partial fingerprints off it that matched Hanssen’s biometrics. While not enough to definitively prove that Hanssen was Gray Suit—he could have claimed the KGB had set him up—it pointed us in the right direction. The cassette tape held a recording of an August 1986 telephone call between a Russian intelligence officer named Aleksander Fefelov and “B” in which the two discussed a missed payment for a drop. When the FBI played the cassette tape, a senior agent who’d worked for Hanssen on a task force recognized Hanssen’s whispery voice. The recording sent the Gray Suit team reeling. They’d been looking for the mole in the wrong place—and at the wrong agency—for years.

  The FBI required an ironclad case against Hanssen. His combative disrespect for authority and his clever manipulation of the FBI’s procedures, practices, and computer systems during his espionage career would make a successful conviction difficult. Much like in the Pitts case, a defector had traded dated information identifying Hanssen as a spy in return for money and a better life. But the source was reluctant to take the stand to testify to the accuracy and origin of the information. The former KGB lieutenant colonel Vladimir
Putin had just been elected president of Russia, and he did not look kindly on his former colleagues sharing secrets with the United States. We had to bury the former Russian intelligence officer and his family deep into Witness Protection with a new name and identity.

  At trial, Hanssen could have argued that the source information was circumstantial and that the defector was using an old Soviet entrapment scheme in which the KGB sought to discredit senior agents tasked with hunting Russians. Likely to succeed? Probably not. But it was risky enough that the Justice Department might be inclined to seek a lesser sentence under the more forgiving conspiracy statute. The FBI didn’t want Hanssen to quietly ride out a twenty-seven-year sentence. They needed the sort of pressure that makes people reveal each and every skeleton in every closet until all the closets are cleaned out. The sort of pressure one feels when facing the death penalty.

  There are two flavors of espionage in Title 18 of the Code of Laws of the United States of America. Section 794 (a) sets out the criminal violation of espionage: gathering or delivering defense information to aid a foreign government. Conspiracy to commit espionage, codified in Section 794 (c), occurs when two or more persons conspire to gather or deliver defense information to aid a foreign government. Both charges can theoretically carry the death penalty, but as the Earl Pitts case showed, a conspiracy case is not a sure bet in that regard.

  In order for the FBI to deliver an airtight case of espionage to the US attorney, the FBI needed to catch Hanssen knowingly and unlawfully communicating, delivering, and transmitting documents and information relating to the national defense of the United States to representatives of a foreign government. In other words, we needed Hanssen to spy again.

  We also needed to be able to tie Hanssen to Ramon and “B.” Careers had slammed against brick walls looking for the mole undermining the intelligence community under these code names. If Hanssen was the spy we sought, the FBI needed every scrap of leverage available to crack his silence. It needed to connect all the dots before making the arrest. If they didn’t get it right, Hanssen might walk.

  The FBI’s ultimate goal in seeking the death penalty wasn’t to punish Hanssen—not entirely. We wanted to be able to trade the death penalty for a lifetime of debriefings. Only then could we begin to repair the damage he’d done to US counterintelligence.

  To catch Hanssen in the act, the FBI needed him to make another drop to the Russians, which is why the FBI put Hanssen in charge of the Information Assurance Section. Tasking Hanssen to a section responsible for cybersecurity gave him access to classified information. We hoped he’d try to pass it to his old friends.

  But Hanssen was as smart as a fox. He anticipated that the FBI might investigate him, which is why he put his own precautions in place. Over the years, Hanssen made it his job to know all the top agents—anyone who might be investigating a high-priority Russian target. Which is why he didn’t know me. Though I’d investigated major cases, some of which involved Russian agents, I hadn’t been on the front lines for about a year, ever since I proposed to Juliana. I also wasn’t a special agent. And to Hanssen, even a ghost was little more than a do-nothing worthless clerk. Everything suddenly clicked into place. This was one reason I was tapped over a more seasoned agent: I was the most out-of-sight, unexpected person the FBI could find. When Gene parked in front of my apartment that frigid December morning, he’d asked me if I’d ever heard of Robert Hanssen. But that wasn’t what he was really asking. His real question was underneath that question: Had Hanssen ever heard of me? If Hanssen wasn’t on my radar, I likely wasn’t on his—or anyone else’s, for that matter. Which is why no one, not even Hanssen, would suspect me.

  An analyst pulled me out of my epiphany: “He’s on his way back.”

  Kate led me past the desks of agents that reminded me of the small team assembled to catch Earl Pitts. I glanced back before she shut the unmarked door and cut off the squad room’s camaraderie. I missed those moments of gentle ribbing and jokes amid the nose-to-the-grindstone effort FBI personnel give to every investigation. I knew that all those people were working as hard as I was to catch Hanssen. But I was the only other person locked into Room 9930.

  “He keeps a journal on his desk,” I said to Kate. “Maybe we can find something in there.”

  “We copied it during the last office search. He left it out the other night, remember?”

  I did. This case had taught me to mentally photograph rooms and scenes. I’d also learned to memorize everything Hanssen said, sometimes to the word, in order to log it for later.

  Kate grimaced. “We’re going to search his car tomorrow if you can find a chance to get him away. Also, plan for a late night tomorrow. We’re going to search his office and you need to be there. In the meantime—”

  “I’ll keep looking.”

  * * *

  Hanssen was Gray Suit. Gray Suit was “B” or Ramon Garcia. Ramon Garcia was the most damaging spy in American history. He was also weeks away from a drop that might end in his arrest or, if we missed it, a last payout before he took his retirement and we lost our chance. So much hinged on what I learned in 9930. But while the agents in the secret squad room had piles of evidence, I had nothing. No information, no leads, no case.

  Target: Robert Hanssen

  Russian mole

  Gray Suit, potentially Ramon Garcia, B

  Shared nuclear secrets

  Compromised overseas assets

  Worst spy in American history

  CHAPTER 18

  MAKING A SPY

  In January 1976, Robert Hanssen joined the FBI. His credentials as a certified public accountant with a master’s degree in business administration complemented four years spent on the Chicago police force to make him a good fit for the agency’s Financial Crimes Division, and he was assigned to Gary, Indiana, right out of the FBI Academy. But even as Hanssen investigated white-collar criminals in the Midwest, he was dreaming of bigger things. Hanssen had grown up with a fondness for espionage. He devoured James Bond books and movies. He bought a Walther PPK pistol, a Leica spy camera, and a shortwave radio to flesh out the fantasy. He even opened a Swiss bank account. But 007 didn’t belong in Lake County, Indiana.

  After two years, the FBI signed off on Hanssen’s transfer request to New York City, one of the great spy capitals of the world. Hanssen found his calling within the Soviet Counterintelligence Analytical Squad. His early supervisors described him as smart, technically proficient, and analytical, and they marveled at his ability with computer systems. They also considered him lacking in field operations ability and assigned him to administrative work, crushing his James Bond fantasies. Instead of working undercover against Soviet spies on the streets of Gotham, Hanssen managed the New York Field Office’s counterintelligence database. He joined the FBI to hunt spies. The FBI made him a librarian.

  Hanssen had married a woman whose family was wealthier than his own. He converted to Bernadette “Bonnie” Hanssen’s Catholic faith and joined Opus Dei, an exclusive, doctrinally conservative order within the Church. The new couple committed to send each of their six children to private schools and to tithe a portion of their income to the charitable works of their parish. But Hanssen couldn’t afford the lifestyle that he thought he deserved. His growing family would need space, and Hanssen’s vision of himself required that he provide for them while Bonnie managed the home and raised their children. These financial pressures, together with the slight he perceived from the FBI and his inherent narcissism, triggered Hanssen’s first decision to spy.

  In November 1979, Hanssen dipped his toe into the world of espionage. While in Manhattan, he used his growing knowledge of Soviet operations to volunteer his services to Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency, the Glavnoye razvedyvatel’noye upravleniye (GRU). Clever from the start, Hanssen cloaked his identity from Russia’s largest intelligence service. From 1979 until
1981, he left information stolen from the Soviet Counterintelligence Unit in dead drops in exchange for around $21,000 (worth about $60,000 in today’s dollars).

  The GRU experiment tested Hanssen’s resolve and ability. He might have continued his work for them, but in the spring of 1980, Hanssen’s wife, Bonnie, found a strange letter from the GRU to Hanssen in their Scarsdale, New York, basement. Hanssen downplayed it, telling Bonnie that he had given the Soviets junk information to trick them into giving him money. The couple agreed that Hanssen would confess the crime to their priest.

  The priest granted Hanssen absolution but required that Hanssen repent his sins and suggested he donate the tainted money to the needy. Hanssen ended his GRU experiment and donated nearly $20,000 to Mother Teresa’s Little Sisters of the Poor in multiple $1,000 increments.

  Hanssen’s wife might have caught him, but the FBI still didn’t have a clue. Plus, he’d handled his mistake like a true master spy. In 1981, Hanssen made his way to Washington, DC, the spy capital of the world. From 1981 until 1985, he served in the Budget and Soviet Analytical Units at FBI headquarters. He remained a librarian, but one perched in the center of the web of information flowing to and from the intelligence division. His cyber tendrils took in information from the NSA and the CIA, catching the FBI’s most sensitive human assets and technical operations against the USSR. Hanssen realized that the best spies do not flash like Bond on a world stage; they manipulate information from the shadows, unnoticed and unknown.