AT 7:06 P.M. ON OCTOBER 8, 1978, William Dyson stepped off an American Airlines plane at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago and proceeded toward Customs and Immigration. At 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, October 10, William Dyson vanished into thin air.
William Dyson is the only one of my fake identities I can clearly remember, because . . . well, it’s memorable. Dyson was supposed to be a resident of Toronto, but he had never been there, and never would.
When I entered the customs area at O’Hare, I faced the most intense sixty minutes of my entire life. As I joined the long line for Immigration, my six-foot-three-inch frame rising above all the average-sized people around me, I felt as if I had a neon sign around my neck that said, “Watch Out for This Guy.” To any bystander, I was just a lanky fellow with European features, piercing blue-green eyes, and dirt-blond hair, but I was carrying two items that would have raised suspicion from even the most junior customs officer. In my carry-on bag, I had a high-quality Blaupunkt shortwave radio, and the pockets of my burgundy leather blazer were bulging with wads of crisp $100 bills totaling about $7,000. On top of that, my light-blue Samsonite suitcase was only half full, with an unusual assortment of clothes for someone returning from a trip to Mexico.
I was prepared to explain everything about my unusual circumstances, and I had rehearsed it many times in my mind, but at the moment, I didn’t want to have to explain anything.
I took a deep breath to calm my nerves, feeling certain that my thumping heartbeat and sweaty palms would be a dead giveaway. As the line inched forward, I was convinced that something about me would prompt the agent behind the counter to ask me to step out for some questions.
Then it was my turn, and the officer waved me toward his desk.
I stepped forward and handed him my passport.
“You live in Toronto?” he asked, looking at me and then back to the pages of the passport.
“Yes.” I swallowed hard and hoped he didn’t notice.
“Are you in Chicago for business or pleasure?”
“I just want to do some sightseeing before I head home,” I said.
The immigration officer took one more look at me, stamped a page in my passport, and handed it back. “Enjoy your time in the Windy City,” he said.
I walked forward, feeling almost ashamed for the near-panicky fear I’d felt during such a routine process.
Customs was even easier. I had filled out the form truthfully, stating that I had $7,000 in cash. Apparently, the amount did not raise any eyebrows. Neither did the jumbled-up contents of my suitcase when the customs agent opened it to look for contraband.
I was now officially inside the United States of America.
As soon as I was out of sight of customs, I set down my luggage with a huge sigh of relief and lit a cigarette. It was perhaps the most satisfying smoke of my life. As the tension in my mind and body eased, I suddenly felt exhausted. All I could think was, I need to find a hotel. I need to get some rest.
Suitcase in hand, I made my way out to the curb and boarded a bus with “Downtown” marked as its final destination.
Once we entered the city, I spotted a sign for a Hilton hotel. Getting off the bus without hesitation, I walked into the lobby and approached the front desk.
“Good evening,” I said to the young clerk who was standing there. “I need a room for the night.”
“I’m sorry, but we’re all sold out,” she said in a tone that let me know she really wasn’t sorry.
I stared at her in disappointment. “Really, you have nothing?”
She looked at her board again, and with some hesitation said, “Well, there is a room right next to the pool area. We sometimes rent it out as a last resort.”
“I’ll take it,” I said without asking any more questions. I desperately needed some rest.
After registering as William Dyson and prepaying in cash, I followed the directions from the front desk clerk, walked to the end of a long hallway, and unlocked the door to my room. What I found was a normal hotel room, with one exception: The entire back wall was made of glass, which afforded a full view of the indoor swimming pool. This was not exactly the type of accommodation an aspiring undercover agent would find ideal for his first night behind enemy lines. I immediately pulled the curtains to cover the glass wall.
If this had been a movie, my next stop would have been the hotel bar for a martini—shaken, not stirred. But this was real life, and as I sat down on the bed to rest my weary feet, it suddenly hit me: I’m in America, and I’m truly on my own!
There was no lifeline to the other side of the Iron Curtain. All I had was a fake passport, a genuine US birth certificate, $7,000 in cash, and my wits.
I really needed a drink, so I opened the bottle of Johnny Walker Red I had acquired in the duty-free shop at the airport.
While slowly imbibing the scotch, I fiddled with the television remote and landed on an episode of Gilligan’s Island—American pop culture at its best.
I woke up with a tremendous hangover the next morning, and after swallowing four aspirin, I gingerly proceeded to the hotel restaurant for my first-ever genuine American breakfast—ham and eggs over easy, of course, with toast and a side of home fries. My time in Canada had prepared me well, at least for the breakfast situation.
With my headache abating, I was ready to face the day. There was much to be done before I could depart for New York City, my final destination.
Back in my room, I searched the Yellow Pages for a hotel where I could find a room. Moving from city to city and hotel to hotel is a time-honored technique for spies to cover their tracks as much as possible.
If the elaborate preparation for my infiltration into the US had one gaping hole, it was my lack of information about Chicago. I had bought a city map at the airport, but I had no idea which areas of the city were safe and which were to be avoided. That ignorance could have cost me dearly.
I chose a hotel at random from the phone book and made a reservation by phone. I did not tip the doorman who hailed a cab for me, and only much later came to realize that this and other small cultural miscues could have easily left a trail that would alert a savvy investigator.
When I gave the cabdriver the address of the new hotel, he looked at me rather quizzically. I soon found out why. As I carted my suitcase to the hotel entrance, I realized I was the only white person on the street. The hotel was a well-worn, run-down multistory building, probably from the 1930s. On my way to the door, I caught a glimpse of what seemed to be elevated railroad tracks.
More warning bells went off in my mind as I entered the shabby, poorly lit lobby. The only furniture was a round table and four brownish easy chairs with a sheen that betrayed many years of use. The reception desk was tucked into a far corner behind a three-by-five-foot Plexiglas window that shielded the clerk from the public.
A German profanity popped spontaneously into my head, which was still a bit tender from the residual effects of the hangover.
The desk clerk was in the process of stubbing out a cigarette into a banged-up aluminum ashtray that was already overflowing with butts. When he finally looked up and saw me, he gave me the same quizzical look I had seen on the taxi driver’s face.
“What can I do for you?”
At this point, my instinct was to get out and go somewhere else, but where? I had no idea where I was or where I should be. Making a split-second decision, which I would have to do many times in the coming months, I decided to proceed with the check-in.
Why not, I said to myself. I’ve lived in worse places.
“I called and reserved a room for two nights,” I said in my best North American accent.
I paid for the room and he gave me a key, directing me toward the elevator.
The room was just as shabby as the lobby—worn carpet, a creaky double bed with two small pillows and an ugly old bedspread, a shower with cracked tile and discolored caulking, and a faucet that dripped incessantly.
Quite fittingly, the black-and-white TV was connected to a rabbit ears antenna and had a coin-operated on switch. For a quarter, I could buy one hour of viewing pleasure.
As I took in my surroundings, I was suddenly shaken by a loud rumbling noise, followed by an earsplitting screech coming from the direction of the window. I opened the curtains and discovered the source of the noise—a metallic gray subway train that was rumbling along the elevated tracks I had seen on my way in to the hotel. The tracks were close enough that I could see the faces of the passengers behind the dirty tinted windows.
What more could I ask for than a pay-TV and an up-close-and-personal view of the “L”? Welcome to the South Side of Chicago! Though I didn’t fully understand it at the time, I certainly realized later that this was the last place in town I wanted to be. If I had gotten mugged with all the cash I was carrying, I could have been stranded in Chicago with absolutely no backup plan.
That evening, I spent three quarters to watch TV and drank the remainder of the scotch to mitigate the noise of the “L” outside my window. Fortunately, the traffic became less frequent as the evening wore on.
The next morning, I did not need an alarm clock to get me up bright and early. The morning commute on the “L” began with a vengeance at 5:30 a.m. Even though I had prepaid for two nights, I decided that one night in that fine establishment was plenty. So after breakfast at a nearby diner, I set out on foot in the direction of the city center.
After a half-hour walk, I noticed that the neighborhood began to look a bit more upscale. When I chanced upon a small hotel with a well-maintained exterior, I decided to investigate. In stark contrast to the place where I had stayed the previous night, the lobby here was well lit, the seating area had comfortable looking furniture of recent vintage, and the reception desk was out in the open—no bulletproof glass.
I approached the clerk and inquired about availability. When she told me there were several rooms available, I made an important decision right on the spot and boldly registered as Jack Barsky. Luckily, the clerk did not ask me for ID. With visions of a nice, safe hotel room, I hurried back to the other hotel to collect my belongings. Before I checked out for good, I had one piece of business left to complete. It was time to commit murder.
I went into the bathroom and locked the door behind me, just to be sure and set about killing William Dyson by destroying his paper identity. Unfortunately, my five years of KGB training did not include instructions on how to destroy a passport, which proved to be more difficult than it might seem. Even the paper pages didn’t want to burn. The passport picture resisted several attempts, before I finally just cut the charred photo into tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet.
Then I tried to burn the plastic cover pages. Again and again, I tried to get them to burn, but they were definitely made from some sort of flame-resistant material. Every attempt resulted in an ugly molten mass and a suspicious acrid smell. Again, the only solution was to cut the plastic into small pieces and send them down the hatch into the Chicago sewer system.
The massacre took a full thirty minutes to complete, but in the end, William Dyson had been eliminated without a trace. I was now temporarily nameless.
To complete the metamorphosis, I cut into the back cover of the small notebook and removed the genuine copy of Jack Barsky’s birth certificate.
I was now an American citizen with only a single piece of identification. It was a tenuous existence indeed. Quickly packing my bags, I applied a liberal dose of air freshener to the room (from my spy “toolset”) and walked out the door. When I finally settled in to my new room at the nicer hotel, the tension of the last forty-eight hours began to gradually melt away.
As I lay on the luxurious bed, staring at the ceiling, the enormity of my situation invaded my consciousness. I was truly a lone wolf in the Second City—alone, but not yet lonely. There was too much to do, too much to think about. The real adventure still lay ahead.
When I awoke the next morning, feeling rested and refreshed after a peaceful night’s sleep, I contemplated my next move. After breakfast at a diner just around the corner from my hotel, I decided that my first priority was to get some American clothes. Heading out into a beautiful autumn day, I strolled up and down the Magnificent Mile, gawking at all the window displays. Clearly, these stores were not for me. They were only for the rich capitalists, and I was not one of them—at least not yet.
Veering off Michigan Avenue, I stepped into what appeared to be a much more affordable men’s clothing store and immediately fell prey to a team of two aggressive salesmen.
“Good afternoon, young man,” the older one said in an ingratiating tone. “You strike me as a rather imposing figure that seems in desperate need of a new outfit or two.”
I was surprised by his forceful approach, but I managed to respond, “Maybe. What do you have? I think I need a new suit.”
If there had been a little man in my head advising me on the right moves to make, he would have screamed, “What? Are you really that stupid? What are you going to do with a suit? You’re an unemployed and undocumented individual—get some more jeans!”
Unfortunately, there was no little man and no voice of reason. Instead, there was a greenhorn undercover agent walking out of that store with a gray flannel suit that came with a reversible vest and two sets of pants. One side of the vest, and the corresponding pair of pants, had a light-blue and gray checkerboard pattern. They were the ugliest pair of pants I had ever seen, but to me they looked so . . . American.
That suit would get very little wear, along with a sky-blue corduroy suit with very wide lapels that I also added to my wardrobe.
I did better at the next store, purchasing a short navy-blue leather coat with a removable flannel liner that would serve me well in colder weather. The salesperson assured me that the coat would keep me warm during the winter. “You know, this coat is made in Poland,” he said, “and it gets really cold over there.”
“Interesting,” I said.