The Falcon and the Snowman

by Robert Lindsey

  26

  “You’ve got a letter here,” his sister said over the telephone from Santa Cruz.

  The news excited Daulton. “Open it,” he said. Inside the envelope, Daulton’s sister found only a picture postcard. She noticed that the handwriting on the card was unusual—lots of Cyrillic flourishes, which made her wonder if it had been written by a woman or a foreigner. The message was brief:

  Dec. 22

  Am anxious to look at your book of antique rugs, Luis. Looking forward to seeing you on your next visit.

  Your friend

  John

  Daulton was delighted to receive the card. He needed cash to finance his escalating legal battle to avoid going back to jail. He flew to Mexico City on December 29, seven days after the date on the card, and following instructions received at his previous Mexico City meeting, met The Colonel that evening at the Bali Restaurant. The city was ablaze with the glow of neon lights depicting the Holy Family, the Christ Child and other tableaux that were a fixture in Mexico City during the holidays. Because the meeting had been called on short notice, Daulton told the Russian he had not had a chance to get much new information; he presented to him several KG-13 ciphers he had received several months previously from Chris and held for a future delivery. There was also another coded message from Chris. Later, when they decoded it, the KGB men discovered that they were accused of being “incompetent” by their secret source in California. Chris was piqued that the Soviets had taken so long to set up a phone link, and he told them so.

  It was a routine delivery. The only problem was a clash over Daulton’s living style. The Colonel complained that he was living too capitalistically and deplored Daulton’s affection for Mexico City’s fanciest hotels. Not only was such high life too conspicuous for a secret agent, he said, but—and this seemed to bother him even more—it was unbecoming for a servant of socialism. He gave Daulton the name of another hotel. Daulton had never heard of it, but reluctantly, he agreed to move; he checked out of his $50-a-day room in the Holiday Inn and rode in a taxi forty-five minutes to the outskirts of the city, each moment growing more unhappy. Spy or not, Daulton told himself, he wasn’t going to live in the slums. He checked into the hotel, a small, two-story workingman’s hotel in an industrial part of the city, and an hour later, without even opening his bag, he checked out and returned to the Holiday Inn. When he saw The Colonel the next morning, he ridiculed the Russians’ choice. “It was a fleabag,” he protested. The Russian laughed but didn’t try to change his mind; he was beginning to realize that Andrew Daulton Lee was not an easy agent to control.

  Even though he didn’t have much new data to offer the Russian, the trip proved to be one of Daulton’s finer hours as a con man. He was, by now, getting the hang of dealing with the Soviets. He had learned how to whet their appetites with persuasive promises. With sky’s-the-limit optimism, he confided to The Colonel that his friend believed that he had finally found a means to get information about the TRW infrared sensors. Moreover, he boasted, his friend was also optimistic about getting the frequencies used in the code-room transmissions. Both were lies, but they seemed to impress the agent. Finally, Daulton said that he was willing to go to Vienna for training and consultation—but only after he wrapped up some personal legal problems. They could discuss the timing of his trip after the first of the year, he added. Steely Teeth said he was delighted. In observance of the Christmas season, he presented Daulton with three bottles of French brandy and $5,000 in $100 bills. But the night did not produce a one-sided victory. Daulton got drunk, and under probing by the KGB man, he disclosed the full name of his friend in California.

  Daulton didn’t have to feign optimism when he returned to California.

  “Look at the beautiful Benjies,” he gloated, fanning the bills in front of Chris. “Benjies” was his personal nickname for $100 bills. “Benjamin Franklin,” he once said of the man whose face appears on $100 bills, “is my favorite person.” Two years later, Chris would say of Daulton, still with a trace of grudging admiration, “He was really a talented huckster. All he needed, he’d say, was one more month and he’d have President Ford’s own diary.”

  When Daulton returned from Mexico City, his most pressing need was some legal magic. His hearing before Judge Donahue was scheduled for January 7, 1976, and it was certain that the district attorney’s office would try to have him remanded immediately to prison. Furthermore, the narcotics agent who had been burned by Daulton in March—when he’d made the deal to act as an informant and then skipped to Mexico—had refiled charges of selling cocaine. Ken Kahn told Daulton that the policeman was furious and was out for blood.

  “Kenny, get me out of this, whatever you have to do,” Daulton implored. Kahn said he would try, but it wouldn’t be easy.

  “We could send you to a shrink,” he suggested. And with that a plan took shape.

  Judge Donahue had a reputation as a compassionate man who would give defendants every chance to rehabilitate themselves if there was the smallest chance of success. A defense strategy emerged: an attempt would be made to prove that Daulton had become, first, a drug user and, second, a drug pusher because of treatable psychiatric problems.

  On January 7, Kahn urged Donahue to postpone the disposition of Daulton’s case until he could undergo a psychiatric examination to determine if there was a chance he could be rehabilitated without prison. This was a turning point in a human life, the lawyer argued; it was an opportunity to save a young man from an exemplary family, a young man who had become trapped in the quicksand of drugs and now needed the court’s hand to help pull him out. The judge agreed to an examination.

  Two days later, Daulton returned to court to answer the charges of illicit drug sales that had been refiled by the undercover narcotics detective. But after a hearing at which the betrayed detective testified, Kahn won a ruling that the police raid in March had been made with a search warrant issued without sufficient grounds. Daulton was off the hook. As he walked out of the courtroom, Daulton was approached by the angry lawman.

  “Lee, as long as it takes,” he said, “I’m going to get you. I’m going to burn you.”

  Daulton looked up into the eyes of the detective, who stood almost a foot taller than he did, and decided that he meant it. But Daulton was not one to give anyone the edge, and not long afterward, when two Federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents approached him with an offer that he work as an informant for them, he said he wouldn’t think of it; lying, he said that he’d agreed to work for a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department narc who had busted him once, and then the cop had leaked the knowledge that he was an informant to another pusher. The DEA men then complained to the Sheriff’s Department about the bungling officer who had blown a potentially valuable informant.

  Arrangements were made for Daulton to see a psychiatrist in Beverly Hills, and two weeks after the January 7 hearing, Judge Donahue read his report:

  Preliminary Psychiatric Report

  Re: Mr. Andrew Daulton Lee

  Age: 24

  The above was seen in one hour psychiatric interviews on 1/15/76 and 1/19/76. He presented as an extremely tense young man who says he suffers from a peptic ulcer, a nervous rash (he shows me on his back) and is depressed and pessimistic about the prospect of spending a protracted period of confinement in either a prison or a mental institution as a result of probation violation.

  For a similar reason he has spent a year in Mexico to avoid the consequences of an alleged violation, returning last November to visit his family but getting involved in trying to escape police investigation in a car chase which ended in his arrest. He denies drug involvement in that incident, or significant use of drugs other than occasional smoking of marijuana for a couple of years, although he has been involved since his teens in drug peddling and using it with much legal consequences.

  On examination he seemed intelligent and articulate and began to attempt to justify his difficulties by various rationalizations. Before
long, however, he was able to communicate more freely and came across as a seriously depressed young man who is unsure whether he can rehabilitate himself into anything like a normal life. He is extremely tense although becomes less so as he settled into the interview.

  He is intelligent and showed no evidence of organicity. Altho somewhat suspicious and paranoid this was not to any psychotic degree, nor were there any indications of any other thought disorder.

  Impression: Anxiety state severe with depression and psychophysiologic concomitants, drug use in the past, not however apparently under any drug influence now despite severe insomnia.

  Recommendations: Would seem to have reached a crisis of identity and is in conflict whether or not he can rejoin society and at the moment would seem a suitable candidate for intensive psychotherapy to begin within a supervised hospital setting. (I have reserved a bed at the Westwood Psychiatric Hospital for him). Rapport with myself seemed good.

  It is my clinical opinion that this course of action under probation supervision offers what may be the last chance this troubled young man has to rehabilitate himself.

  There were other items in the file of Andrew Daulton Lee on January 21, 1976, when Judge Donahue was to decide whether he should be sent back to jail, including letters from friends and his family, including one that read:

  I am willing to do everything within my ability to rehabilitate my son, Andrew Lee.

  Sincerely,

  Daulton B. Lee

  Pathologist

  Kahn, emphasizing that there was now medical evidence of hope for Daulton, asked Judge Donahue to give him a chance and allow him to undertake psychotherapy before making a final decision that might deprive him of his last chance at rehabilitation. Consenting to the proposal, Donahue placed Daulton on probation once again, conditioned that he stay out of trouble, that he neither take drugs nor associate with people who did, that he take periodic tests to determine if he was using narcotics, that he enroll in school or seek employment and “enter forthwith the Westwood Psychiatric Hospital.”

  Five days later, Daulton was admitted to the clinic in Westwood, the community best known as the site of the University of California at Los Angeles. After six days, he was discharged with an agreement to continue twice-weekly sessions as an outpatient.

  Daulton told Chris about his experiences with the psychiatrist after he got out.

  “You wouldn’t believe me in action,” he boasted. “I conned the shit out of him, and he believed me. You know what he told me? He said he’d give me the same kind of advice he gave to a prostitute—‘if you really like what you’re doing, do it.’” Daulton said the psychiatrist continually interrogated him about his feelings about being adopted and wouldn’t believe him when he said he didn’t have any hang-ups about it. When the psychiatrist asked Daulton why he made so many trips to Mexico, Daulton told Chris, “I told him I couldn’t take the city here and all the people and had to go by myself all alone in Mexico and think, and he bought it.”

  27

  A postcard requesting another meeting in Mexico City had arrived at his sister’s home while he was in the hospital, and two days after his release, Daulton boarded an early-morning Western Airlines flight at Los Angeles International Airport bound for Mexico City. This time he had a traveling companion, his old friend Barclay Granger.

  Like Daulton, Barclay was waging a court battle to stay out of prison. He had been arrested by Federal agents in October for cocaine trafficking and was free on bail pending his trial. Two things had happened to Barclay the preceding December: he had had a run-in with the Mafia, and he had finally broken up with Carole Benedict. Carole had flown to Hawaii to live with Barclay’s mother, who had taken her side in the couple’s fight. But the handsome surfer wasn’t lacking for female company. Darlene Cooper had now moved into the Redondo Beach apartment that he’d previously shared with Carole.

  The encounter with the Mafia had had less pleasant aftereffects. Many South Bay drug traders knew that the owners of an Italian restaurant in Redondo Beach claimed to have ties to a New York Mafia organization. Theirs was a minor-league operation, in terms of organized crime, but the family did wholesale drug peddling.

  One member of the family, a young man in his early twenties with limited ambitions, had entered the South Bay retail drug trade. At a point sometime in September, 1975, one of his customers had gotten into debt with him for more than $3,000 worth of heroin, and the Italian had decided to cut off the addict until he paid his bill. He had sent word to other local pushers to cut him off too.

  Barclay, like Daulton, had received the message not to sell to the youth, who was a teen-ager living in Redondo Beach. But he ignored it.

  One night, about 3 A.M., Granger drowsily opened the front door of his apartment. Before he could see who his callers were, two men attacked him and broke his jaw.

  At the time Daulton and Barclay boarded the jetliner bound for Mexico City early in February, Granger’s jaw had been wired for two months; his doctor had just removed the wire, and the trip was partly to celebrate this milestone. Barclay had seen Daulton regularly during the past few months, usually when Daulton had sought a place to hide during his quick trips to the States. Granger thought he had noticed some changes in his friend. “He wasn’t the same guy anymore—he was scared all the time—afraid of strangers, anybody.” Granger figured that he had become paranoid because he was afraid of being busted again by undercover narcs. “You couldn’t even discuss the weather with him without him looking around to see if someone was listening,” he would recall. Once, when he watched Daulton try to roll a marijuana joint, Barclay said, “Look at your hands: they’re shaking all over the place.”

  “I’m just getting old,” Daulton said.

  Granger didn’t like to fly, so he swallowed two large barbiturates just before they took off. Daulton was lost in an espionage novel as the Boeing 727 droned south toward Mexico City when he noticed that a stewardess was shaking Barclay.

  “He’s on fire!” she said.

  Daulton then smelled smoke and discovered that the smoke was coming from Granger. Quickly, he helped the stewardess arouse his friend, and they discovered he had gone to sleep with a lighted cigarette in his hand, and it had burned a large dark hole in the inside left elbow of his jacket. Granger woke up and they laughed about it and he lit another cigarette. Daulton went back to his novel. A few minutes later, the stewardess was standing over him again. This time, the cigarette had burned a hole in his right coat sleeve. “You wake him up this time,” she said.

  Daulton had bragged to Barclay that he knew Mexico “like the back of my hand” and promised to show him a good time, tantalizing him with descriptions of Mexican prostitutes he had done business with on previous trips. The jetliner landed in Mexico City shortly before 11 A.M., and they rode in a cab to the Holiday Inn. Daulton hurried Barclay to their room, which they immediately left after dropping their suitcases.

  “I’ve got to tell my people I’m in town,” Daulton said as their taxi pulled away from the hotel.

  Granger noticed that they were headed outward from the center of the city toward what appeared to be a residential area. He was unfamiliar with the geography of Mexico City and asked Daulton where they were headed. Daulton ignored the question, but with a touch of mystery that seemed to give him pleasure, Daulton said, “I’ve got to set up a meeting with my uncle.”

  At Daulton’s instruction, the cab driver stopped in what Barclay took to be a neighborhood of expensive homes, a quiet street with not much traffic.

  Daulton took out a roll of adhesive tape and told him to watch. He ripped off two short strips of tape and attached them in an X to a utility pole, then walked on to another pole and repeated the process. Then he gave a second roll of tape to Granger and told him to mark the next four poles in succession while he did the same thing on the other side of the street.

  “What the hell are we doin’?” Granger asked.

  “It ain’t nothing,” Daul
ton said; and then he added, “It’s just my spy thing.” Granger took the remark as a joke, and decided the taping of the poles had something to do with his friend’s traffic in stolen securities. They flagged a cab and returned to their hotel, where Daulton changed his clothes from a business suit to slacks and sport shirt and left with two cameras hanging around his neck. “Do I look like a tourist?” he asked smugly. “When I get back, we’ll get laid.”

  After two hours, Granger’s lust got the better of him, and he decided to stop waiting for his traveling companion. He took a cab to a whorehouse that had been pointed out to him by Daulton, and when he returned to the hotel, Daulton was waiting for him. Daulton had hoped to expedite a meeting with the Russians by waiting near a spot not far from the construction site of a new hotel, a route that he knew Okana frequently passed on his jogging runs. But Okana did not appear, and Daulton returned to the hotel. Granger gave him a detailed report of his experience at the bordello, and then they went to bed.

  About one o’clock the next day, Daulton woke up to the glow of fuzzy sunlight pushing through the window of the hotel room and shouted, “Jesus Christ, I’m late.”

  Hurriedly dressing in a business suit, Daulton left Granger in bed and slammed the door of the hotel room. Daulton’s schedule for meetings was changed regularly, and according to the current schedule, he was supposed to rendezvous with the Russians at 1300 hours—1:00 P.M. At 1:15, his cab pulled up to a spot in Chapultepec Park that had been previously assigned for this month. According to plan, he knew the Russians were supposed to leave after waiting fifteen minutes.

  Music from a merry-go-round calliope filled the park. Daulton scanned the faces all around him. But the only people he saw were children—hundreds of them; brought, he guessed, as part of a school tour to Chapultepec Castle, which sat atop the mountain in the center of the park and where Emperor Maximilian had lived with his tormented bride, Carlota. Then he spotted the face of Karpov in the crowd, walking with another man who was wearing the same kind of dark chauffeur’s suit. Daulton recognized him from the embassy.