David Duffy - Last to Fold

“No such luck. What about Iakov? And the KGB?”

“I have a facility for languages, and between the orphanage and the camps, I picked up a bunch. That got the attention of the KGB, and they offered me a way out. Iakov was already a fast-rising officer, the Cold War was heating up, and he understood we needed people who could make their way, operate—fit in—overseas. Smartest man I ever met. He ended up the number two man in the whole organization—on merit, not political connections.”

“So you went to work for the same people who put your mother in prison?”

“Life’s full of ironies, especially if you’re Russian.”

She shook her head. “Christ. Tell me about the spy part.”

A waiter removed our plates and put two bowls of steaming pasta on the table. The mushroom aroma floated upward. Giancarlo offered Parmesan and pepper. I took another sip of wine. The flavors were separating, becoming more distinct—raisins, berries, and something like tar. I didn’t know tar could taste good.

“The spy part’s pretty mundane. No James Bond. I collected information, a lot of it from newspapers, magazines, TV. Sometimes, I tried to get American experts to work for us. I also tried to stop Soviet experts from being recruited by your CIA. Occasionally, I got Soviet experts to pretend they were working for the Americans when they were still working for us. A big game, really.”

Until we caught one of our own people working for the other side. Then the consequences were deadly. I didn’t want to go into that now.

“What if you got caught?”

“It was my business not to. Besides, we all operated under diplomatic immunity. When I was stationed here, I was officially with the Soviet Consulate—cultural attaché, the last time. CIA does the same thing. There’s an unwritten agreement among the professionals—no physical harm. Catch ’em, throw ’em out, don’t hurt ’em. We all knew that if shooting started, it would be hard to stop. Basic self-interest.”

“How’d you do this recruiting?”

“You become a good student of human nature. Figure out what makes people tick, all the psychological buttons you can push. It also helps to get lucky. Believe it or not, your two most famous double agents, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, were volunteers, walk-ins. You had another one, Harold Nicholson, who was still trying to make a buck after he got caught, passing secrets from jail through his son. We used all the techniques you’d expect—bribery, blackmail, sex, appeals to ideology, although those were mainly for show. People have a remarkable propensity to get into trouble, as you know. We’d offer a helping hand.”

“You preyed on weakness.”

“It was business. Your side did the same thing. You do the same thing today.”

“That’s different. I’m dealing with criminals.”

“If you say so.”

We paused for more pasta. It almost put the salad and wine to shame.

“So what happened then?”

“Some bad luck. A decision that didn’t work out. My career dead-ended. I moved here.”

“That’s not very specific.”

“Let’s just say it was 1992, the Cold War was over, a bunch of things came together, I needed a change of scene. I’d done four tours in the States, two in New York. I liked it. It’s Moscow with rules—self-imposed, voluntary rules.”

“Okay, I won’t push it. Married?”

She wouldn’t ask that unless…

“A long time ago.”

She waited to see if I would say more. When I didn’t, she said, “You seem—how shall I put this?—very at home here.”

I smiled. I don’t know whether she meant it, but that was quite a compliment for someone in my line.

“Iakov taught me a valuable lesson. He talked about his days in Beirut and Istanbul and how much better prepared the Americans were for operating there because they came from a more open, more diverse culture. They obviously weren’t local, but they knew how to adapt. I had an advantage my fellow officers did not. I’d grown up surrounded by kids from all over—Germans, Poles, Romanians, you name it—in the orphanage and the camps. I was a chameleon. I could fit in with everybody. When I spoke Polish, I sounded like a Pole. When I spoke Hungarian, people thought I came from Budapest. When I was assigned here the first time, I watched TV—cop shows, sitcoms, even soaps. I read all the newspapers and newsmagazines. Also Rolling Stone and Popular Mechanics and the Village Voice . A lot of it I had to do in secret. Most of my fellow Chekists wore Soviet blinders—everything Western was suspect. They wouldn’t have understood. I was careful, and I got away with it. I learned to fit in. Your turn. I want to finish my dinner.”

“Okay. So happens you’re not the only ex-con at the table. Something I don’t tell everyone every day.”

“Things are looking up.”

“Don’t get excited. One of us rehabilitated herself.”

“See, once a zek …”

“I’m not Russian. You’re just another ex-socialist ex-con to me. Anyway, I grew up in a town called Thibodaux, in bayou country. My father left, like I told you. Mother married again—her third. Then she got banged up bad in a car accident. He was driving, smashed. After that she spent most of her time zoned out on painkillers. He tried to put the moves on me, but he was usually too drunk, and I stayed out of his way. One night, though, when I was seventeen, he spiked my soda with something—maybe my mom’s drugs—and I came to on the floor, him on top of me. I was stoned, but he was blotto, and I was able to wriggle away. I laid him out cold with a frying pan, stole his wallet and his car. I slept off the drugs and used his credit card to fill the tank and took off. Didn’t stop until I reached Miami.

“I moved in with my half sister, from my mom’s first marriage. Pretty soon her boyfriend was hitting on me. He was Cuban-Bolivian, so he took ‘no’ as an affront to his manhood. One night he caught me. My sister came home just in time and called the cops. They arrested him—and me, too, for stealing that bastard’s car. The Cuban got probation. I spent a year in a juvenile detention center.”

Based on the Soviet justice system, I’m in no position to pass judgment on America’s—but in addition to the innocent, it does favor people with money. The boyfriend could afford a lawyer. No one was interested in extenuating circumstances from a seventeen-year-old with a Bardot pout and an empty bank account.

“It was a good lesson,” she went on. “I met girls who’d been in there two, three times, they’re not even eighteen. I didn’t want that. I finished high school, worked my way through community college, and got to the University of Miami on ROTC. Degree in psychology. Did four years in the air force and got my law degree on Uncle Sam.”

“What led you to white-collar crime?”

“My first job after law school, at a Miami firm, one of the partners takes me to dinner, then to a motel. I refuse to go inside. He tells me my job depends on it. I say no. I get fired the next day, professional delinquencies, they said. They refused to give me my back pay.

“The money part was bad enough, but the allegation that I wasn’t up to the job really tore it for me. Who’d these bastards think they were? I had my sister take some pictures of me in my underwear. Wrote ‘Can’t wait till next time’ on one and mailed it to his home. Three days later, he appeared at the door screaming about his wife and marriage. I still had my service sidearm. It wasn’t loaded, but he didn’t know that.”

“Still play with guns?”

“Only when provoked.”

She returned to her pasta.

“What happened next?”