Best of Enemies

by Eric Dezenhall

  Sinking into his seat, Cowboy contemplated the cycles of life, trying to discern a pattern. He had just visited his sister and best friend, Polly, whom he knew he was losing. Next, he had learned that he was getting back his second best friend, Gennady. Was this how God worked, balancing things out, stealing one life and replacing it with another? No, Cowboy realized, that was just pathetic human logic trying to find a place for itself in a capricious world. Cowboy had always been more a man of values than of faith. He thought of President Kennedy’s words from his inaugural address, words that had echoed through his skull as he crouched off angry Cuban waters during the missile crisis: “With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking his blessing and his help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.” God’s work must truly be our own. Amen.

  No, Cowboy reasoned, if God had played a role in Gennady’s release, it wouldn’t have been because he was seeking to even things out for this old spook. God had fallen seriously short on much bigger balancing acts in the world.

  There were many poignant moments for Alan Kohler during the final few days, but the one that stood out occurred on that last Vision charter flight, about forty-five minutes from their Washington destination. “When we flew over New York and the Statue of Liberty came into view, we watched with Gennady as he looked at it through the window. He teared up.”

  18

  END GAMES

  You really get to know your friend when trouble comes.

  —Russian proverb

  The plane carrying the two old Russian friends, Gennady “MONOLITE” Vasilenko and Aleksandr “AVENGER” Zaporozhsky, landed in Washington, DC, at about 5:30 p.m., Friday, July 9, 2010. Cowboy raced to meet Gennady at Dulles that afternoon, having been tipped by another insider friend as to the exact time and place of their arrival. Finally, his crazy Musketeer cohort was free—or was he? In what he would later deem “another typical CIA screw-up,” Cowboy had been told by his intermediary to go to the international arrivals terminal to greet his Russian frenemy. Through Dulles’s floor-to-ceiling terminal windows, Cowboy excitedly watched the FBI’s Vision charter touch down—however, the plane just kept taxiing to the farthest end of the airport, perhaps a half a mile away, toward the Signature Fixed Base Operator Facilities, which often handled private government contracts.

  At the distant terminal, the maroon-and-white Boeing 767 rolled to a stop a few feet away from a waiting cavalcade of SUVs belonging to representatives of the FBI, the State Department, and the CIA. Cowboy began speed-walking in Signature’s direction as fast as his seventy-four-year-old legs would carry him, uncertain if Gennady was even on the charter as promised, and also unaware that Kohler had already handed Gennady and Aleksandr over to the CIA on the tarmac. By the time Cowboy arrived at Signature, thoroughly out of breath and nearing collapse, he saw that the motorcade was long gone. A typical IOC fast getaway, probably orchestrated by Zephyrs he had taught years earlier, Cowboy thought, cursing himself out for being such a good instructor. He turned to leave when he saw Kohler passing through the lobby.

  “I told him ‘Gennady’s here. He’s okay,’” Kohler says. “That’s the last time I saw Jack.”

  That night, Jack had a nightmare that the wily FSB had decided to keep Gennady, and they had sent an Illegal look-alike in his place. He awoke to a call from another Agency contact that gave him the address of the safe house where his old friend was indeed waiting. Within hours, Jack and Gennady had their long-intended reunion in a nondescript suburban Maryland colonial, both laughing at yesterday’s screw-up. Michelle Platt, who would also soon be reunited with the Russian, recalls, “Gennady looked like a skeleton.”

  “What took you so long?” said Gennady, echoing what he had said to Jack in that Guyana hotel a lifetime ago, as the two men bear-hugged.

  “I went to the wrong terminal,” Jack said.

  “Your Agency still playing games with you?” joked Gennady.

  “Fuck ’em.”

  “What now?” they asked each other. Jack said, “We go shooting and fishing. We’ll throw a party, with Dion, Mad Dog, Bobby De Niro, Moldea, the whole gang.”

  “Yes, but first—I earned a good bottle of vodka,” Gennady answered.

  Back in Moscow that day, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the exchange of the four prisoners for ten Russian citizens, citing “humanitarian considerations and constructive partnership development.” The Western news reports of the swap all noted the espionage connections of Sutyagin, Skripal, and Zaporozhsky but were confounded by the inclusion of one Gennady Vasilenko. NBC News coverage of Gennady was typical: “Reasons for his involvement weren’t immediately clear.”*

  The great 2010 spy swap ultimately succeeded because it fell within a temporary “reset” period (2009–2014), which, as Sulick and others predicted, foundered when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Had the Illegals been captured before or after the reset, the US-Russian “constructive partnership” would have been nonexistent, rendering the swap not even worthy of consideration, sending Anna Chapman and the others to a supermax concrete vault and leaving Gennady to die in a Russian hellhole like Bor. “I was lucky three times,” Gennady observes now. “I survived that bear that almost drowned me. I decided not to jump overboard after my Havana arrest because I decided to believe Jack, that he would never record me, and I got out of prison in 2010.”

  After a few days, the Agency took Gennady to Rosslyn, Virginia, and set him up with a first-class apartment. Although his living conditions had improved exponentially, Gennady’s emotional health was not such an easy fix. “His cockiness and bravado were gone, and he seemed confused,” recalls Michelle, who helped him set up his apartment. Although he had his freedom and Cowboy and the Platt family, Gennady had lost everything else: his wife, his girlfriend, his six children, his mother, his homeland that he loved, and his reputation as a loyal intelligence officer for the KGB; being forced to sign that deceitful confession in Lefortovo was a decision that will always haunt him. His mood greatly brightened when Michelle introduced him to Skype. “He cried because he never thought he’d see his family again,” Michelle says. “We raced out immediately to buy him a laptop.”

  In the weeks ahead, at the Agency’s request, Michelle helped Gennady write a report about Russian prison corruption, and in future years he would visit FBI field offices to offer expertise on Russian organized crime. Over the next year, Masha and her three children with Gennady arrived in the US, and Gennady’s oldest children, Julia and Ilya, his estranged wife Irina, and his mother all did the same in the summer of 2011—one big, barely functional Russian clan living in very un-Russian Virginia. At Jack’s direction, HTG’s Roy Jacobsen (also a real estate broker) helped Gennady find a house, picking one that was secure and had multiple exits. He also made sure the property had room for a shooting range, and he helped Gennady improve his accuracy with various firearms in case things got rough. With a push from the FBI, Gennady speedily got a concealed carry permit. With funds from the Agency, he paid $900,000 for the house. Cash.

  It would be a happy ending if the story was a Hollywood movie, but it is not. The spy swap resolution was bittersweet, at best. Although this was a joyful outcome for Jack, Gennady, Dion, and Mad Dog, from the perspective of the Vasilenko children, the uprooting was traumatizing. Jack is adored by his wife and children, yet Gennady’s adult children, Julia and Ilya, were forced, by no fault of their own, to abandon their careers, friends, and homeland because of their father’s choices. Mike Rochford watched the transfer play out and recalls, “Gennady’s kids are victims. They didn’t want to come to the US—they had to.” It is the rarely seen side of a life in espionage, a side the families of Zaporozhsky, Stepanov, Poteyev, the Illegals, and the others also experienced. The cumulative effect of years of spy-family exfiltrations keeps the social workers and resettlement specialists at the CIA and the FBI working overtime.
In the spy universe, somebody somewhere is always paying a price.

  It seems that Ilya has been the most affected by all the unsought espionage—and marital—drama, not to mention the effect of having grown up with an absentee father. After a lifetime of coping with Gennady’s happy-go-lucky unfaithfulness to Ilya’s beloved mother, Irina, and the shock of meeting his father’s second family—with Ilya’s childhood friend, Masha!—Gennady and Ilya are now separated by a vast emotional chasm. They live near each other and attend family functions together, where they are cordial. But Ilya makes it clear to his adoring father that cordial is about all he can muster toward him and, especially, Masha, whom he blames for the fiasco as much as his father. And who could argue with him? It’s obvious to all that Gennady worships his children, especially Ilya, but he also understands that the lack of reciprocation is a form of punishment for the life choices he made. In his own Gennady way, he loves all his family, Irina included.

  Although neither the CIA nor the Vasilenkos can discuss it, the extended family’s financial needs and permanent green cards have been taken care of by the US government, perhaps as much as a favor to Cowboy Jack for his key role in the Hanssen unmasking as to Gennady for his inadvertent contribution of signing off on Stepanov’s passport application. The CIA is the only government agency that can negotiate to compensate assets for information. Another codicil to Public Law 110, part of the 1949 Central Intelligence Agency Act, states that the CIA can also handle defectors outside normal immigration procedures, hence the instant green cards. Families like the Vasilenkos typically receive housing, green cards, a monthly stipend, and free education for the entire family, even one as large as Gennady’s. Sundry details fall under the jurisdiction of the CIA’s National Resettlement Operations Center, or NROC. When his stipend hit, Gennady purchased his country home, spacious but not elegant.

  One by one, and sometimes two by two, Gennady’s Musketeer pals, Cowboy, Dion, and Mad Dog, trekked to his rural Virginia house—likely the only one with a dacha-style sauna and shooting range in the adjacent woods. Likewise, the HTG partners—Cowboy, Ben Wickham, Bob Olds, and Roy Jacobsen—often held court at the Old Brogue in Great Falls, welcoming Gennady to the US. The Shoffler Brunch gang also joined the rolling reunion fest. “On October 17, 2010,” recalls Dan Moldea, “I saw Gennady at the Shoffler Brunch for the first time since his release from the Russian prison and the prisoner swap three months earlier. Vasilenko was Platt’s guest at the brunch. He physically embraced me and expressed his gratitude for the roles that Fino and I had played on his behalf.” For Gennady, at least, America was starting to feel like home.

  Of course, “Bobby D” was never far away, and Jack and Gennady soon reunited with the actor at his New York apartment. In the fall of 2011, De Niro called Gennady with an offer. Since his Russian friend had missed out on his chance at the big time with The Good Shepherd, De Niro thought he might join him on an actual movie set in Philadelphia. “Bob asked if I wanted to see how a movie got made,” Gennady says. On the set, the actor was once again taken with Gennady’s photogenic charisma and immediately sent him to the wardrobe department in order to prep him for a walk-on role in Silver Linings Playbook. (Gennady is the tuxedoed man who retrieves the judges’ scorecards after the climactic dance scene.)

  Two years later, in August 2013, Jack and Gennady attended Bobby D’s seventieth birthday bash, held at his eighty-five-acre Gardiner, New York, estate. There, the Musketeers dined on food catered by Nobu Restaurant—which De Niro co-owns—and partied with the likes of Christopher Walken, Harvey Keitel, Samuel L. Jackson, Keith Richards, Bradley Cooper, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Lee Daniels, Martin Scorsese, and Lenny Kravitz, who performed live.

  Jack once brought HTG cofounder Roy Jacobsen and his daughter, Jen, to New York for her to sing her rendition of Carly Simon’s “The Spy Who Loved Me” (lyrics altered to reflect the saga of Jack and Genya) to De Niro. At Penn Station, preparing their trip back to Washington, Jack realized he had forgotten his wallet and was worried that he might need it on the train. Roy asked Jack if he knew anybody in security at Penn Station.

  “Fuck, I trained most of them,” Jack said.

  Jack walked up to the first security guard, who spoke up before Jack could open his mouth: “Jack, Jack Platt!” He escorted the party down to the train before the other passengers.

  Shortly thereafter, Cowboy began working with the authors on this book, and it wasn’t unusual for him to call for an impromptu lunch over chili (his favorite) at the Hunter’s Inn in Potomac, Maryland, to impart another war story he felt should be included. In addition to the ever-present cowboy hat, he often wore some article of clothing bearing the eagle, globe, and anchor insignia of his beloved Marine corps. He particularly liked the way the Marines credo, SEMPER FIDELIS, sprung from the eagle’s beak, and he never tired of pointing to it or reminding a listener that the eagle was saying “Always faithful.” His voice would grow soft and vulnerable whenever he spoke about his father or the fate of the US, “this fragile experiment.” Despite his enthusiasm for recounting details of his life story, Cowboy was becoming noticeably thinner.

  His stance toward the Russians had gradually become more nuanced. Rather than wanting to “crush” them, he began to say things like “They can’t help it. It was their system.” He took a harder line on the Islamic fundamentalists who captured global attention after his retirement from the Agency. Whereas he believed that the US and Russian people never truly wanted to kill one another (as opposed to their political systems, which did), he thought the Islamists were a death cult that would not rest until the West lay in ruins. His sentiments toward terrorists conjured up an aging Wild West sheriff flirting with rounding up one last posse before he rode into the sunset.

  Cowboy was a proponent of a vigorous US intelligence apparatus till the end. He believed that a flawed spy service was far preferable to having none at all. Unlike the news media that was forever bashing the CIA for its missteps, he recognized that failure was an inherent part of the game the same way trauma surgeons sometimes lose patients, and he resented the chin-scratching critics who had never been on the ground, in the fight, in the vortex of crosscurrents far greater than any individual. He pumped a fist in agreement with Jack Nicholson’s fictional Marine colonel Nathan Jessup in A Few Good Men when he barked “You want me on that wall!” to the meddling, smart-ass young prosecutor played by Tom Cruise. Unlike Jack Nicholson, Jack Platt really was perched off the Cuban coast during the missile crisis, ready to storm ashore when the nukes started flying. The United States wanted him on that metaphorical wall, and he spent well over a half century astride it.

  Nevertheless, having long ago replaced alcohol with philosophy, Cowboy believed in asking tough questions of the trade he loved—not to destroy it, but to make it better. He wondered if the intelligence bureaucracies hadn’t become a “self-licking ice cream cone,” emphasizing bureaucratic perpetuation over stopping enemies. Hell, they didn’t even like using the word “enemies” anymore, preferring diluted, new age gibberish like “stakeholders.” The problematic cohort were “cake eaters,” overeducated but under-muscled résumé sculptors whose internationalist pretensions rendered them blind to the reality that the US did have dangerous adversaries richly in need of being spied on. He pointed to US assets like Motorin and Martynov, who lost their lives because both the Americans and the Russians were too busy chasing each other’s spies rather than preventing nuclear war—a holocaust neither side ever truly wanted.

  Cowboy Jack was not alone in his sober assessment of the state of modern espionage. In his book American Spies, former Clandestine Service Chief Michael Sulick cited the tragedy of one particular spy: “[Aldrich] Ames proved that spies rarely change history… his espionage had no impact on the outcome of the Cold War… other overwhelming problems afflicting the Soviet empire ultimately caused its downfall.” Author David Wise labeled the entire CIA “a tired bureaucracy.”

  Cowboy and Gennady ag
reed (with more than a little exasperation) that all intelligence services suffer the same paradox: they send an operative abroad to infiltrate enemy ranks and then distrust the operative the closer he gets to the enemy, for fear he has grown too close. “What the fuck?” both men said more than once. Gennady was as agitated about the state of Russia’s affairs as Jack was about the United States’. Gennady said, “The old days were one hundred percent better. If someone had a gun, they’d tear up the whole country looking for it. Now there are millions of guns on the streets, and they’re using them… The future of Russia is hard to tell. But we are survivors with a long, long history.”

  About Jack, Gennady said, “At the beginning we looked at each other through a rifle scope like an enemy. After a while we looked at each other not through a scope, but man to man, eye to eye.” And this is how both men determined that while their countries’ ideologies were opposed, their citizens were not inherently enemies.

  After months of immersing themselves in Cold War spy history, especially Jack’s and Gennady’s, the authors were haunted by a central question involving failure. “All of this spying…” Eric began at one of the authors’ lunches with the Boys. “It seems like both sides fail an awful lot.” Indeed, the Boys failed to turn each other, the US failed to detect Ames, Hanssen, and others, the Russian Illegals failed to do much damage, and the FBI’s vaunted tunnel drilled beneath the Soviet Embassy in Washington was used against it.

  “So what’s the point?” Gus asked.