I ARRIVED IN THE SOVIET CAPITAL in mid-October 1975. Once again, Sergej met me at the airport and a chauffeured Volga limousine took us straight to my new living quarters in the Preobrazhenskoye district, about ten kilometers northeast of Red Square.

Sergej explained that the nearest Metro station, Elektrozavodskaya, was just a ten-minute walk across the Yauza River and that all parts of the city were readily accessible from there.

As we rode up the elevator to the third floor of a conventional, Soviet-style, concrete apartment building, I felt a wave of anticipation about taking over my very first, very own modern apartment.

But as Sergej put down my suitcase and showed me around, I caught sight of a tired-looking old lady in a shabby brown dress—a typical Russian babushka—stirring something vigorously on a gas-fired stove.

What on earth is that woman doing here?

Before I could ask Sergej, he explained the situation to me.

“This is Anna Sergejevna. She is the widow of a Red Army officer who was killed in World War II. You will be sharing the place with her and her son.”

I kept my disappointment to myself as the woman poured us cups of tea and Sergej and I withdrew into my new room—not comfortable, but adequate for my needs—to discuss plans for the weeks and months ahead. Though I was excited about this new phase in my training, my mind momentarily drifted to Gerlinde and her tidy Berlin apartment.

Before Sergej left, he advised me to take as much time as possible to explore the city. “After all, this will be your operational stage for the foreseeable future.”

The following day I set out to explore, armed with maps of the city and the subway system. Wearing slacks, a button-down shirt, and a jacket, I was dressed appropriately for the middle of October—or so I thought. But as the day wore on, I started feeling uncomfortably chilly. Was I coming down with some kind of flu?

As I continued to walk and shiver, I came across a large temperature display on the side of a building. It read minus 8 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit). Winter had arrived in Moscow, and it would keep a hammerlock on the city for the next six months.

I knew I was in Moscow to perfect my English, but as for any long-term plans, I was mostly kept in the dark. I would later learn that, in modern espionage, there are two distinct types of spies: legal residents, who operate under official cover—in a role such as a diplomat, embassy attaché, or a member of a trade mission—and illegals, who operate under fake identities, with no known connection to the country for which they are spying.

Legals have the advantage of diplomatic immunity. The worst that can happen to them is expulsion from the host country. But from an intelligence-gathering point of view, their ability to get close to secrets and secret-bearers is limited. Legal-resident agents often act as channels of communication between illegal agents and the Center and also provide monetary support.

Illegals have no diplomatic protection. If caught, they are subject to the full force of the law. The risk is offset by the potential reward of being able to move around the country freely and get close to unsuspecting targets.

From the moment I was introduced to the KGB, it was clear they were recruiting me to become an illegal. I wouldn’t be deployed as a diplomat or a visiting professor. I would be sent in under the cover of a fake identity and fake citizenship.

What I didn’t know was that the illegals program had been sputtering for many years and had suffered numerous failures. My recruitment was part of a renewed effort to establish a net of illegals in the United States.

The Russian winter was definitely not what I was accustomed to in East Germany. The first snow arrived in late October and promptly stuck to the ground. It would not melt until sometime in April. With highs averaging 25 degrees Fahrenheit and lows around 15 degrees (and dips as low as minus 20), it was easy to understand how “General Winter” had been such a great ally to the Russians against the armies of Napoleon and Hitler.

The icy sidewalks soon turned into an ugly and dangerous mess, resembling a bumpy skating rink that made every step an adventure. The situation was particularly bad in high traffic areas, where a horrible habit of many Muscovites added saliva and mucus to the icy mix of mud and gravel.

To deal with the cold, I wore the hated long underwear I had ditched as soon as I was out from under my mother’s clothing dictates. I also wore a fake-fur chapka, with flaps to cover my ears, and lined mittens on my hands. On extremely cold mornings, I put a scarf over my mouth to combat the icy, piercing wind and took shallow breaths, as Sergej had advised me, to avoid possible lung damage.

When it came to procuring food, I had to fend for myself. All Muscovites were in a daily struggle to find decent food, and it was even more difficult for a foreigner who barely spoke the language. My diet was quickly narrowed down to bread, canned fish, and mineral water—the only foods in ample supply—and an occasional restaurant meal. From my childhood and my years at the university, I was used to substandard food, but what really weighed on me was the lack of human company.

With the exception of my two weekly meetings with the English tutor and a handful of meetings with Sergej and various technical specialists, I was very lonely. Every day was work, work, work, and the highlight of my evenings was doing some light reading in English or straining to hear the weak reception of the BBC Worldwide program on the shortwave radio Sergej had provided.

How I wished to be back with Gerlinde! Even a day at my mother’s apartment sounded good. But the last thing I would do in this situation was complain. Instead, I handwrote letters to my mother, assuring her that all was well.

During those first months, I lived the life of a prisoner—with no physical boundaries, but with severe mental and emotional constraints. Only my iron will, discipline, and sense of purpose helped me endure this bleak period and emerge with a fundamentally positive outlook about things to come.

Perfecting my English and developing an American accent took a lot of work and a lot of time, including a twice-weekly, forty-five-minute trip across town to the home of Irina Pavlova, my American-born tutor, the same woman who had interviewed me on my first trip to Moscow. The first half hour of our two-hour lessons was dedicated to boring, but very useful, phonetics exercises designed to remove as much German from my accent as possible. The remainder of the two-hour session was spent in more or less free-form conversation with Irina. Outside of those Tuesday/Thursday sessions, not a day went by when I did not spend at least one hour memorizing new words to expand my vocabulary. Before I left Moscow, I had amassed a vocabulary of around 30,000 English words.

Irina was nice and wanted to be helpful, but her low energy and lack of enthusiasm made it a chore to engage with her in lengthy conversations. Still, it was my task to learn the language, and I took full ownership of it. Every evening, without fail, I spent an additional half hour listening to words on a phonetics tape and repeating them—listening and repeating, listening and repeating—ad nauseam. When it comes to basic life skills, repetition is the midwife of excellence. After continual practice of the most tedious exercises I have ever had to do, the results, though not entirely perfect, were very encouraging.

Along with the spring thaw came an improvement in my living arrangements. When I finally gathered the courage to mention my challenging circumstances to Sergej, he apologized profusely and confessed that he had been wrong to assume that the babushka would cook for me. Apparently, someone had forgotten to tell her.

Within weeks, I was moved into a two-bedroom apartment, with a private bath, kitchen, and—to my great delight—a color television set. Measured by the standards of past accommodations, this was pure luxury. And with the opportunity to watch Russian cartoons, movies, and sporting events, I finally had an entertainment break from the intense world of training.

Sergej added another dash of color to my life by occasionally providing me a ticket to a sold-out premier concert or ballet performance, including an impossible-to-get ticket for the Bolshoi Ballet.

He also gave me tickets to an American theater troupe performance of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and the entertainment highlight of my entire time in Moscow: a sold-out performance by Roy Clark, who came to the Soviet Union as part of a cultural exchange. Clark’s Hee Haw shtick was a rousing success with the Muscovites, and it took me back to my high school years, when I used to listen to British and American music via shortwave radio. Now here was one of my musical icons in person, and he was good! As an American-to-be, I applauded heartily.

In late May 1976, Sergej delivered a letter that my mother had sent to the post office box I used as a mailing address. I had recently written to her that I would not be coming back to East Germany for the summer as I had originally planned. Sergej and I agreed that a return to Germany at this point would only create difficulties—particularly the possibility of meeting old friends and acquaintances who might ask too many questions. I told my mother I would be vacationing with a group of other junior diplomats at a resort in Yalta, on the Black Sea.

I opened my mother’s letter in Sergej’s presence, and within thirty seconds I said, with alarm in my voice, “We have a problem.”

“What?”

“My mother is coming to see me. She and her new husband have booked a trip to Moscow.”

Sergej looked concerned and took a while to respond.

“How much time do we have?”

“They are coming in five weeks and staying for two days before going on to the Black Sea.”

“Okay,” Sergej responded, “we have two issues to deal with: your job as a diplomat and this apartment. Let me discuss this with the comrades.”

Two days later, he came back with a solution. I would introduce Sergej as my new Russian friend, and with his help we would spend two days of intensive sightseeing to divert my mother’s attention away from a possible desire to visit the East German embassy, the place where I pretended to work.

Because my apartment was a conspirational flat, my mother was not allowed to see it. Therefore, I would move to a hotel for the two days of her stay and simply explain that my apartment was being renovated.

When my mother and her new husband, Werner, arrived, the plan worked very well. With Sergej as our guide, we spent two days seeing some of the sights around Moscow. There was only one glitch: My mother wanted to commemorate her visit, and she had a bright idea.

“Werner,” she said, “why don’t you take a picture of me, Albrecht, and his friend on the streets of Moscow.”

I saw a flash of fear in Sergej’s eyes. Members of the KGB were not to be photographed by anyone other than their own families. However, if Sergej refused, it would look awkward or even suspicious. I could see the wheels turning in his head, and after a lengthy pause he agreed. And thus the only picture of me with a Soviet KGB agent was taken.

One day, Sergej showed up at my new apartment with exciting news.

“Albrecht, tomorrow we are going to visit Lenin.”

This pretty much took my breath away, and I stared at him in disbelief. To me, Vladimir Lenin was the most important person in history. He had taken the theories developed by Marx and Engels and put them into practice. Following one of Marx’s most famous theses—“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it”—Lenin had created the promise of a great future for all mankind.

Lenin had led the Russian Revolution, built the Soviet Union, and laid the foundation for a world without the oppression and exploitation of capitalism. I was thoroughly convinced that, unlike Stalin and his murderous henchmen, Lenin was a pure revolutionary, who had suffered personally for his beliefs. Lenin was my hero, and we were going to pay our respects.

The next day, dressed in a suit and tie, I rode with Sergej in a Volga limousine that let us off at the edge of Red Square. I had passed the famous square many times before and had never failed to notice the endless line of visitors awaiting admission to Lenin’s tomb. Today, the line stretched across the square, past the State Historical Museum, and turned left into the park adjacent to the western Kremlin wall. I expected to have to join the end of the line, but Sergei indicated that this would not be necessary.

“Follow me,” he said, and we walked straight to the front entrance. When he flashed his credentials to the guard, we were promptly admitted.

The mausoleum was flooded in soft yellow light. I felt as if I were entering a holy place and about to see God on display. The others in line to pay their respects maintained a reverent silence as we all moved steadily toward the shrine. And then, there he was, my hero, reclining in a glass case, eyes closed.

As Sergej and I walked the slow circle around the casket, a sudden sense of disappointment fell over me. Was this really the dynamic Vladimir Lenin who had shaken the world? His five-foot-five-inch frame seemed even smaller in the low yellow light, and his embalmed skin looked like ancient, weathered parchment. After the short, silent walk around the casket, I wondered how these preserved remains could hold such an attraction for the masses.

On the drive back to Preobrazhenskoye, Sergej seemed in awe of the experience, and I said nothing to him about my disappointment. I still believed in Lenin and the cause, but given a choice between seeing Roy Clark or Lenin’s tomb, I would not have hesitated to pick the live American entertainer over the embalmed revolutionary.

The willingness to pound the pavement of one’s operational city is one of the necessities of undercover life. Through all four seasons, I explored Moscow in detail, riding the Metro to the end of every line, searching out surveillance routes, and scouting potential dead-drop sites. Before my first year was over, I knew the city better than most native Muscovites. Along the way, I became familiar with the good (well-maintained and colorful historic buildings), the bad (shoddily constructed tenements of a more recent vintage), and the ugly (dilapidated older buildings with muddy backyards in the outlying sections of the city).

One of the best things I discovered was a marvel of modern engineering and construction that every Muscovite could take pride in: the impressive underground Metro system, which the London Daily Telegraph calls “the world’s most beautiful metro” and “as much [an] underground art gallery as [a] transport network.”[3] Each of the 150-plus stations has its own unique design, many with ornate mosaics, statues, or stained glass. Many platforms in the older stations look as if they’ve been pulled out of a palace somewhere. The more modern stations have a sleeker design, but in every case, only the best building materials were used. The architects and builders were given unlimited resources to construct a showpiece for Communism and its great leader, Joseph Stalin, and the Moscow Metro is an example of the greatness that can be achieved if a dictator spares no expense to build a monument to himself.

The operation of the Metro was just as impressive as its facilities. Running deep underground—and serving double duty as a bomb shelter—the Metro is not affected by the weather, and thus the trains always run on time. To get down to the platform from street level, I often had to ride for as long as two minutes on a fast-moving escalator. Once on the platform, there was never a long wait for the next train and the cars always had enough room to accommodate passengers. The doors opened and closed automatically, and a recorded female voice alerted the riders and announced the upcoming station. I heard that voice so many times that, decades later, I could still replay the Russian singsong in my head: “Attention, doors are closing. Next station . . .”

Other training subjects, not covered in Berlin, were added to the agenda in Moscow, including self-defense, analysis of American politics and policy, and visual observation. For three months, I worked with a personal trainer practicing the basics of tae kwon do. These were strictly self-defense moves meant to ward off an attack by criminals, not law enforcement, while in possession of materials or money that might fall into the wrong hands.

“It’s time to improve your field operations training,” Sergej told me at one of our meetings. “We have the best in the world right here, and Eugen, our senior surveillance trainer, is one of them.”

“Okay,” I responded with enthusiasm. I was ready for any new challenge. My English studies were taking up more than half my time in Moscow, and any other activity would be a welcome break from the routine.

When I met Eugen the next week, I found that he was only an inch or two north of five feet tall, but what he lacked in height he made up for in boundless energy. A mischievous twinkle in his eyes seemed to say, “Catch me if you can,” and made him eminently likable. His cleverness bordered on the magical.

Soon after we were introduced, Eugen took me onto the streets of Moscow to teach me the intricacies of surveillance detection.

“You must use the city and its buildings to gain an advantage over someone who might be trying to follow you,” he explained with a grin. “Deserted subway platforms, infrequently used bus lines, elevators in public buildings, escalators in department stores, and strategically placed telephone booths are some of those locations.”

As we walked around the city and he explained the principles of detection to me, I began to see things from different angles and perspectives. Everything we did had to appear normal and not at all suspicious.

“The goal is to draw one or two members of the surveillance brigade close enough to get a good look at their faces,” Eugen said. “If the same face shows up at another location, you have proof that you’re being followed.”

Eugen taught me how to devise a roughly three-hour crisscross trip through town, on foot and with public transportation.

“Plan your route in advance, and there must always be a plausible reason to go from point A to point B.”

Every other month, I did a practice run to check my progress. I never knew when Sergej would drop by and announce, “Tomorrow morning, 9:00 a.m. sharp, you will check for surveillance.”

On those mornings, I’d test one of my preplanned routes through the city. Sometimes I had a tail and other times not. On days when I was followed, they sent a team of eight to ten of the best trackers in the business. They used walkie-talkies to coordinate their efforts and would frequently switch the closest follower to allow that individual to change clothing, add a hat, put on a scarf, or change a jacket.

I learned very quickly that I had an excellent memory and could not be fooled easily. If I recognized a face I’d already seen, I knew without a doubt I was being followed. If that person was now wearing a different hat, a scarf, or a wig, it was a dead giveaway.

These test runs became a serious competition. Both the leader of the surveillance team and I had to file a report after each training exercise, and no one wanted to have to admit to failure. Although these exercises were all in friendly territory, they were incredibly stressful. From the moment I left my apartment, all my senses were on high alert.

It was harder to determine that I was not being followed. Caution is a spy’s best friend; paranoia is his enemy.

One morning, I could feel it in my bones that I was being followed. Everywhere I went, I scanned the faces of the people around me.

Have I seen this person before?

What is she doing here at this deserted bus stop?

Hah! I remember that face, but she’s is wearing a different hat and coat. You lost, young lady!

Is someone hiding behind that tree? Well, I can find out because there’s a public restroom right next to it.

And so it went for three hours.

At one point, a man came up and asked me for a cigarette. I used the opportunity to scan my surroundings for any suspicious activities or familiar faces. Then I moved on. Later, at the debriefing session, I found out that the guy who bummed the cigarette was an agent. That bold fellow was the only one who ever tricked me.

“You’ve passed the test again,” Eugen said after yet another practice run. “Final score: Dieter ten, surveillance team zero.” I had beaten the best of the best, and Eugen promptly declared me one of his ace students.

He soon extended my training to include dead drops, which are a way for two agents to make an exchange (of a passport, money, or classified documents) by placing or retrieving an ordinary object—something that would not attract the attention of animals or humans (such as a rusty oil can, a piece of hollowed wood, or rock made from plaster of Paris)—at a predetermined location and time.

Eugen subscribed to the principle laid out by Edgar Allan Poe in his short story “The Purloined Letter” that the best place to hide something is in plain sight. I adopted this principle to some degree, but acknowledging Eugen’s superior skills, I never went to his extremes.

“Today, follow closely and watch me very carefully,” Eugen said at the outset of one of our training sessions.

He walked ahead and I followed, never taking my eyes off of him. After fifteen minutes, he stopped and turned around.

“Well, did you notice anything?”

“No, nothing,” I said with confidence.

Eugen broke into a triumphant belly laugh.

“Come with me,” he said.

We walked together back to a raised flower bed close to the sidewalk. I marveled as he pointed out a metal cartridge embedded in the soil, just deep enough for only a half-inch to be exposed.

“I used the art of distraction to catch your attention when we were walking,” he said.

“But I watched you the entire time.”

Eugen laughed again, thoroughly pleased that his sleight-of-hand trick had succeeded so well.

“As I passed the flower bed, I looked to my right—which made you look to the right for just a second as I made the drop.”

I could not remember looking away from him at all, and I realized I needed more work before I could imitate such mastery.

Operating under the generally accepted rules of conspiracy, agents almost never know the details of the decision-making process. I never knowingly met anyone who laid the groundwork for my undercover life. The agents and experts who came to my apartment gave me training or information, but they never let on if they had a larger role in planning my future.

Occasionally, a few agents who were stationed in New York City or Washington, DC, under diplomatic cover would return to the Soviet Union for a visit and stop by my apartment to say hello, drop off a book or magazine, and chat with me about life in America.

The most frequent of these guests was a bright, gregarious redhead named Alex, who came fully armed with a well-developed ego and a gift for self-promotion. When he first arrived at my door, he was proudly wearing a full-length orangish leather coat, which must have cost him a fortune in Western currency. He came in like a whirlwind and quickly let me know that he was an expert in all things American. I listened with rapt attention as he explained the differences and similarities between Russians and Americans.

“Americans are very similar to Russians in that they are very easy to get along with. Of course, they are also very selfish. All they think about is getting ahead in life. They lack what we have—a cause to fight for and sacrifice for. But they’re great to be around.”

When Alex finished his two-year stint at the United Nations, he moved back to Moscow and became a frequent guest at my apartment, second only to Sergej. One day, he briefed me on a central point of my mission: political intelligence.

“We need to get inside the heads of the decision makers,” he said. “We need to understand what they are thinking and to what extremes they might go. Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? If we’d had better intelligence, we could have managed that situation better.”

“So what exactly do you want me to do?” I asked. “How can I come to understand these American decision makers?”

“First of all, you need to sharpen your analytical skills. I will provide you with a number of American publications, and I want you to write an analysis on a topic of my choice.”

“No problem,” I said. “But that is all secondhand information, filtered by the reporters who wrote the articles.”

“That’s true. And that’s why we will need you to establish contacts with people who are connected to influential think tanks such as the Hudson Institute, the Columbia University Institute of Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission. We are especially interested in Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor to President Carter.”

“And how do I get close to these people?” I asked in disbelief.

“We are working on that one. Don’t worry, you will be set up nicely.”

His answer lifted my spirits tremendously. It was yet another sign that I would have the full weight of the mighty Soviet Union behind me.

Alex was an important figure in my life, but I had no idea what his official role was. Was he Sergej’s boss? Was he ultimately responsible for my deployment and my mission? I had no way of knowing. There are no published organizational charts in the undercover world.