Harry's Rules

by Michael R. Davidson

  It was easy to imagine Morley saying this. Change was his motto.

  “Words to live by,” I said.

  Jake continued, “The cornerstone of this Administration's foreign policy is to support and encourage Russian democracy and economic transformation. Barney is a golden boy at Langley and at the White House, and he intends to keep it that way. He wants to be Director one day."

  “Well, that will certainly be a bright and shining day for American Intelligence,” I said.

  CHAPTER 8 - Responsibility

  "To make your long story short, for a whole variety of reasons, including 'legal‘ and personal ambition, nobody is going to rock the boat by accusing the Russians of murdering one of our guys. Is that what you’re saying?"

  "You got it." Jake looked tired. “Christ, if they knew I was talking to anybody, especially you, about this they'd feed me my balls one at a time. They weren’t happy when I questioned their decision, and now I've got to keep my nose clean and toe the company line. That's why I wanted to see you tonight, and I can’t afford to be seen with you out at Langley, or anywhere else for that matter. I’ve already stepped into enough deep shit.”

  "What the hell, Jake?" I recognized that this was not particularly perceptive commentary.

  "Listen, beyond the obvious, there is something weird about this, and I think I know what it is. Fact is I'm scared. When was the last time you heard about the KGB killing one of our guys?"

  In fact Soviet State Security had spilled the blood of many Americans: World War II POW's, the crewmembers of downed B-47 reconnaissance aircraft, Korean and Vietnam War POW's. And, of course, the KGB gleefully killed its own. But KGB officers did not kill CIA officers. I shook my head. “Not gentleman spies – it would have been too disruptive to business.”

  "Right. So what if I'm right and the SVR, the old KGB spy shop, actually did take out Thackery? The Cold War is over. Everything is sweetness and light, right? What's wrong with this picture?"

  Annoying as Liebowitz could be, I respected his judgment. But such a murder was incongruent against the backdrop of current Russian-American relations. What could a little State Bank official like Stankov know that would have justified such drastic action? Despite the messy pile of information Jake had just dumped into my lap, I suspected that my friend had not yet told me everything.

  "As much as I hate to take Morley's side, there is a lot at stake in Russia. And stop for a moment to think about the question you just asked me. 'When was the last time the KGB killed one of our guys?' Answer - probably never, at least not on purpose. That fact alone is enough to shred your theory unless Stankov somehow stumbled across something of incredible value that in some way was threatening to the Russians. He never did before, you know."

  Jake curled his lip. This time I couldn't tell if it was a sneer or a smile, and it was getting under my skin. Jake was reeling me in like a big fish whose resistance was growing weaker. He just stared in silence, waiting for my inevitable capitulation.

  I know it sounds self-righteous, but I subscribed to a code of honor peculiar to some intelligence officers but eschewed by many: When I convinced someone to entrust their welfare, their life, to me by accepting recruitment, I believed I became personally responsible for them. Jake knew me well, maybe too well, and even as we spoke, my thoughts strayed back over a decade.

  CHAPTER 9 - Berlin

  Berlin in the late 70’s was a spook's paradise, a perfect microcosm of the Cold War. The city was filled with spies, and they fed off of one another - Russian, Czechoslovak, Romanian, Polish, British, French, and American. They gave parties for one another and wined and dined one another in fashionable restaurants, and they got drunk together. The spooks chased one another because they might provide highly prized information about the espionage activities of the opposing side – counter intelligence. The Russians and especially the East Germans were by far the most adept at this. The control exerted by Communist security services over their societies was very nearly absolute, especially in East Germany, and they had no compunctions about reminding the char lady who cleaned the American General's office in West Berlin that she had a sister on the other side of the Wall.

  From its dingy quarters not far from ClayAllee the local CIA contingent occasionally discovered a chink in the enemy’s armor. Sergey Mikhailovich Stankov worked for SovTorg, the Soviet trading company, with an office in the American Sector.

  He had appeared on the screen a few times in the past in Moscow on the edges of trade negotiations as a minor official of Gosbank. A few years earlier he would not have made it onto the CIA’s targeting list, but now there was growing interest in Washington in the deteriorating Soviet economy. The Americans were having the first premonitions that Lenin’s edifice was crumbling.

  I assigned the Station’s local team to a routine surveillance of Stankov and learned that he had a penchant for drink and liked to race up and down the Kurfuerstendamm in the shiny new Lada his office provided. It was probably the first car he ever had, and he was a lousy driver. The combination of alcohol and speed already had gotten him into a few scrapes with the police. He was married and had one child, a boy four years old. They lived in a grubby apartment on the eastern edge of the American Sector, a working class district. Photographs showed him to be skinny and wan with thinning blond hair. He didn't spend a lot of time in his office.

  One day Stankov received an invitation to a commercial luncheon sponsored by the Berlin Chamber of Commerce. I had arranged to be seated next to him.

  The Russian was easy to spot as he entered the elegant surroundings of the Hilton salon in his wrinkled, stained suit on legs already slightly unsteady in the early afternoon. I watched him from a distance as he made his way directly to the drinks table and picked up a Scotch on the rocks. Despite his chronically unkempt appearance he did not hesitate to engage prosperous looking Berlin businessmen in conversation, and he seemed able to hold his own in conversation. His German language ability was excellent, revealing the fact that his shabby exterior concealed a good mind. The majority of Americans assigned abroad seldom mastered any language other than English.

  When we were called to table Stankov, stole glances at the place cards nearest him. A cloud of concern crossed his face when he spotted my designation as a representative of the US Mission in Berlin. He would be slow to warm to an official American, but the purpose of this meeting was just to make the contact.

  We engaged in the inevitable desultory conversation of a first encounter between an American and a Russian official. Everyone knew the dance steps. Stankov wasn't volunteering anything, and I knew better than to probe. The fact that Stankov did not barrage me with the usual litany of questions designed to elicit biographic information, a template committed to memory by every neophyte Soviet intelligence officer, led me to conclude that Stankov was not a member of either of the Soviet services.

  By the time we were halfway through the main course the Russian had begun to relax. The wine he gulped down by the glassful didn't hurt. I was impressed by the quantity and variety of alcohol the little Russian could put away. He had consumed two scotches before the meal and accounted for at least a bottle and a half of wine all by himself. He downed a large cognac afterwards. Yet he remained perfectly lucid, even if his motor control was slightly off. The luncheon over, I shook his hand and smiled warmly and thanked him for his excellent company during the meal, and watched as he staggered out the door.

  Pedestrians would have to be extra careful today on the Ku-damm, as everyone called Berlin's main drag, the Kurfuerstendamm.

  Over the course of the next six months the CIA arranged for Stankov to be invited to several social affairs. Each time I would greet him, chat for a while in a totally non-aggressive fashion, and then leave him to his own devices. The Russian was warming up to the American who had become a familiar face in a crowd of strangers. It was like coaxing a timid wild animal out of the woods with a trail of bread crumbs. Finally, surveillance and telephone in
tercepts revealed that Stankov was taking his wife to dinner at a midrange German chop house on Fassanenstrasse, just off the Ku-damm to celebrate her birthday.

  Kate and I were in the restaurant at a table near the door when the Russian couple walked in.

  Stankov spotted me right away and froze for a moment. I quickly stood extended a hand, in feigned surprise at this ‘coincidence.’ Stankov hesitantly introduced his wife and I shepherded them to our table where Kate was waiting, primed and ready to play her role as the bright, friendly all-American girl.

  I asked, “What brings you out tonight, Sergey?”

  The Russian managed to stutter that, in fact, it was his wife's birthday.

  Beautiful Kate, well-rehearsed, piped, “Then you must join us at our table, and the evening will be on Harry.”

  Stankov, who was chronically short of money, hesitated only a moment before accepting the invitation. Our "unofficial" relationship was established.

  Recruiting him was only a matter of time.

  *****

  I ran him for a year, during which time he provided low-level business-related information and gossip that revealed more about West Germans dealing with the Soviets than about internal Soviet affairs. The payoff would come when Stankov returned to Moscow. I steered him toward seeking a position in Gosbank's central offices where he could work his way up the ladder.

  I left West Berlin shortly after Stankov returned to Moscow. I had become rather fond of the little Russian who had been distraught at the idea of going back home.

  I had met with him a couple of times since then when he had traveled to the West on official business. We always concluded these meetings by sharing a bottle of good vodka in the expensive hotel rooms rented for these occasions. After a few years, Stankov ceased to appear, but no one at Langley cared anymore.

  Now death had found Thackery in the snow, and Stankov had disappeared. And it had all begun in Berlin when I had first laid eyes on a shabby little Russian clerk that I was to turn into a traitor.

  CHAPTER 10 - Stankov

  It was a momentous step for Stankov, a step he dared not discuss even with his wife. He had cautioned her not to mention to any of their Soviet colleagues the evening they had spent with the attractive American couple. It would cost him endless hours writing up the contact and being grilled by security, he had told her. Did she want them to be sent back to Moscow to live in the dingy Stalin-era flat they had there and to stand in endless lines just for the necessities of life?

  Berlin was a city unlike any he had ever experienced. Born in a small village in the Urals, he had displayed above average mathematical skills at an early age, and the efficient Soviet educational system had earmarked him for training to hone those skills. A shy, introverted boy, he had progressed quietly but steadily through the system, finally graduating from the prestigious Belarus State Economics University in Minsk.

  The university curriculum was rigorous. Sergey was required to be fluent in not less than two foreign languages (he chose German and English). She and nearly friendless in a part of the Soviet Union he did not know, he turned to drink to escape the pressures of university life. Despite this shortcoming (not uncommon in the USSR), his superior skills had landed him a job at the State Bank in Moscow in the early 1970’s. He spent nine years there eking out a less than affluent existence living in a sixth-floor apartment in a Stalin era building without elevators. Miraculously, he found a woman who had agreed to marry him. They had one child, a boy named Stefan Sergeyevich.

  His assignment to the SovTorg office in West Berlin had been unexpected, and he did not intend to risk his first and only chance to get ahead in life by telling the KGB that he was consorting with an American. Besides, he liked Connolly. And the more he saw of the West, the more he admired it. He knew economics, and he recognized a superior system when he saw it. The comparison was inevitable every time he crossed the border between West and East Berlin.

  Sergey did not relish returning to Moscow when his tour was over. When the American, Connolly, had finally suggested he might find happiness working for the CIA, Sergey had not refused.

  “Will you take me to America?” he asked.

  “That’s something you'll have to earn. You see, your position here in Berlin doesn’t give you access to the kind of information we’re looking for. We want you to work for us in Moscow, at Gosbank’s central office.”

  “But I don’t want to go back to Moscow. I want to go to America.”

  “Sergey, my friend,” the American put his arm around Stankov’s narrow shoulders. “You must understand. If you were to defect now, you and your family would end up at a refugee processing center in Munich. I’m sure you could find a job eventually in West Germany, maybe as a street sweeper like the Turks.”

  This stark image did not coincide with Stankov’s vision of his future life in the West. As these words sank in, the American continued, “Your best chance to guarantee a more comfortable future for yourself and your family is to work for us in Moscow. We'll pay you well, and you’ll build up a nice nest egg for when you finally come over. You’ll have something to live on, enough money to start a really nice new life. If you work hard to develop access to truly important information, you’ll earn even more.”

  “But how would we do this? It’s much too dangerous for me to meet you in Moscow. Security is everywhere. I would be caught. It’s impossible.”

  “Sergey, listen to me. I’ve already established a secret account for you and deposited twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  Sergey’s jaw dropped. It was a pretty persuasive argument.

  “You see? You’re already on the way to your nest egg. And you needn’t worry about meetings in Moscow. I won’t ask you to do that, at least not for a long time. I’ll give you a way to communicate with me and for me to communicate with you. To begin, I’ll train you here in Berlin where it’s safe. We have plenty of time before you’ll be going home. By the time your tour here is over, you’ll have all the confidence in the world. If you don’t, then the decision is yours whether to continue with me or not. I couldn’t and I wouldn’t force you to do anything against your own best interests. That’s not the way my organization works.”

  Sergey, still slightly dazed by the idea of owning twenty-five thousand American dollars, mulled this over before asking, “And what happens to the money if I don’t want to continue?”

  “Then you don’t get anything. I told you. It’s already in a secret account I established for you. Once you agree to work with me and have provided good information, you can have it any time you want. Just give me a chance to show you what we can do.”

  “I want the money now.”

  “What would you do with all that money? Could you spend it and risk bringing attention to yourself? Your colleagues and friends would see that you suddenly have money. They would be jealous, and they would be suspicious. The KGB would have you in handcuffs immediately. And your family would suffer, too.

  “You might think you can hide it somewhere. But how long would it be before your wife finds your stash or for someone else to stumble across it by accident? How would you explain it?”

  Sergey could not dispute the accuracy of the argument. He did not plan to tell his wife anything about this conversation. This would be best for her. The temptation, the glimmer of a new and affluent life far away from the drab, gray reality of the Soviet Union was irresistible.

  Over the months to come he met with the CIA man many times for training in clandestine communications and briefings on intelligence requirements. These meetings always took place at a safehouse in the American Sector, and Sergey came to look forward to the sessions. There was the unpleasant business of the polygraph examination, a measure that bemused Sergey. Russians were adept liars. They lived lies every day in order to survive.

  But there were good times, too. Sometimes, Connolly would surprise him with a “night off" and upon entering the safehouse he would find a table laden with delicacies and
liquor and he and the American would get merrily tipsy together.

  When the time came to return to Moscow he was near panic. Connolly had become his lifeline, and he felt like he was being tossed back into a black and bottomless sea.

  It was customary for Soviets assigned to the evil West to return to the Workers’ Paradise carrying numerous gifts for their superiors, items impossible to find in the East: good fountain pens, watches, luxury foods, and above all djinsi, blue jeans. The favored brand was Levi Strauss. No recipient would question how Sergey had acquired the gifts. The CIA supplied him with a suitcase of goods.

  This was the way to advancement and better access to valuable information, and he knew precisely how to play the bribery game. He returned to Gosbank more determined than ever to carry out his instructions. He wanted to catch the brass ring of a good life in the West. Despite his less than salubrious appearance and continued drinking he continued to advance within the bank. On rare trips to the West, he triggered his communications plan, and enjoyed happy, liquid reunions with Connolly. Each time he was assured that the information he was providing was improving, and his secret account continued to grow.

  *****

  Given his access to Soviet economic information, Sergey was perhaps less surprised than most when the Soviet Union finally imploded. His position at the bank insulated him from the wave of unemployment that hit a huge number of less fortunate fellow Russians, and his knowledge of the West even eventually helped him advance further amidst the chaos.

  In 1991, he was called to his boss’s office and told he was to be transferred to a new unit where he would work closely with one of the intelligence services. A week later he found himself installed in an office in Lubyanka where he was assigned to keep the books for certain secret accounts, among them accounts set up by the KGB in the West.