IF I CAN MAKE IT THERE, I’ll make it anywhere . . .

I was not yet familiar with that line from the famous song “New York, New York,” but I was determined to make it to the Big Apple and put myself in a position to gather useful information for the KGB.

I arrived in New York City on October 12, a magnificent Indian summer day with a cloudless, deep-blue sky overhead and a balmy breeze wafting through the streets. What a welcome contrast to the blistering Mexican heat and the gloomy, stormy European fall!

As soon as the Manhattan-bound bus left LaGuardia Airport, I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of the famous skyline. Finally, I would see with my own eyes what I had previously admired only in photographs. My heart started beating faster with anticipation, but as the bus emerged from the Queens Midtown Tunnel, I was rather disappointed. Compared to Moscow’s expansive boulevards, the streets of Manhattan seemed narrow and constricted. I learned much later that the skyscrapers rising so close above the streets create an optical illusion that seems to squeeze the five lanes down into thin, black bands.

I hopped off the bus at Grand Central Station, taking a moment to gaze at the ornate interior architecture of this busy Manhattan train terminal. After a few moments, I came to my senses, stopped gawking, stashed my luggage in a locker, and set out on foot to look for a hotel.

To assist with my search for short-term lodging, the Center had given me the names and addresses of two extended-stay hotels on the East Side of Manhattan. After a full day of traveling, I was looking forward to settling into a nice, comfortable room with a color TV.

The first hotel was only eight blocks from Grand Central Station, just off Lexington Avenue. When I entered the well-lit lobby, I perked up. This was a very nice place, indeed! On my way to the reception desk, I passed a table where a party of elegantly dressed men and women were enjoying an afternoon drink.

“Do you have any rooms available?” I asked the attractive receptionist.

“As a matter of fact we do. Are you looking for daily, weekly, or monthly occupancy?”

“Monthly,” I responded without hesitation.

“Well, you have a choice. At the low end, there is a room with a single queen-size bed. That rents for $1,800 a month.”

Before I could let out a silent gasp, she chirped on, “But we happen to have one of the presidential suites available as well. Those suites feature a fully functional kitchen and a king-size bed. They’re all on the top floor, with windows overlooking Lexington Avenue. That room is $2,900 a month. What is your preference?”

I hoped that my face didn’t register the shock I was feeling, but it was clearly time to beat a hasty retreat and find something more affordable. At $1,800 a month, I would deplete my cash reserves within three months. Already, my bankroll had shrunk to just over $6,000.

I gave the receptionist the nicest smile I could muster and said, “Oh, I’m just inquiring. I won’t be ready to move until next week. May I have your phone number so I can call when I’ve made my decision?”

With her business card in hand, I turned around and marched outside. The Center had certainly gotten that one wrong! How could anyone have thought that such an establishment would be suitable for my situation? Though I didn’t expect any different results from the second hotel, which was about ten blocks away, I went there anyway just so I could check it off my list. When I found that their prices were similar, I decided to regroup at a regular hotel and give myself time to find a more workable long-term rental.

I found what looked to be a mid-priced hotel on Lexington Avenue and decided to make it my headquarters for the next two days. When the clerk told me they had rooms available, I told him I was ready to check in.

“ID please,” he said absentmindedly as he pulled out a registration form.

I froze for just a moment before doing the only thing I could do in that situation—I pulled out the birth certificate from my jacket pocket and handed it to him.

“I’ll be paying for the room in cash—in advance,” I said.

The man looked at me curiously as he took the birth certificate from my hand, but he accepted it as my identification. The cash probably helped my cause quite a bit.

Next, he handed me a registration form and said, “Just fill this out and we’re good to go.”

I looked at the form, and the first thing I saw was a blank line for name and address. Again this was something the Center hadn’t prepared me for. I didn’t have an American address. The only thing I could come up with was William Dyson’s address in Toronto. So I spent the first two nights in New York with a US birth certificate as my documentation and a Canadian mailing address. This was a rather uncomfortable situation and something I would have wanted to avoid even if I were still in training. But this was the real thing. I wasn’t in training anymore.

During my first night in New York, I was awakened again and again by the insistent hissing of the steam radiator in my room. Staring at the ceiling in the dark, I felt light-years away from everything and everyone I’d ever known. My grand and glorious assignment to infiltrate the United States didn’t seem so grand and glorious at the moment after all. Right then, I realized that New York would offer as many challenges as opportunities and that my vision of a comfortable life in the US needed significant adjustment. But I knew this wasn’t the time to mope or complain. Sacrifices had to be made, and my entire life of discipline and delayed gratification had prepared me well for the situation I was now in.

The next day, it didn’t take long to find a monthly hotel that I could afford. After checking out a few places and realigning my expectations with reality, I found a room on the Upper West Side that rented for only $600 a month. The queen-size bed had several fist-size burn holes in the mattress, and the chair and table were the foldout picnic variety, but there was a chest of drawers and a nightstand to store my belongings, an electric cooktop, a small refrigerator, and an old color TV with rabbit ears. The most important feature was the private bath with a tub and shower.

In the evening on my second day, I set the signal indicating my safe arrival. The signal spot, which was part of the communication plan I had been given, was a brilliant choice that even Eugen would have given an A.

The underpass at the 79th Street Boat Basin and Henry Hudson Parkway has a sidewalk that allows for pedestrian traffic. At the west entrance of the underpass, the sidewalk makes a 90-degree turn, creating a dead zone that made this operation as easy as a walk in the park.

This spot was also convenient for the resident agent, who could easily see the mark while driving by on his way to work—presumably at the United Nations.

The next day, I prepared a brief secret message to inform the Center about the details of my trip since I’d left Mexico. I made it a point to mention the bad hotel choices I had been given. This was the first chit I collected, in case I needed ammunition to balance what would surely be mistakes of my own.

Sergej’s advice was ingrained in me now, so over the next several months, as long as the weather wasn’t too bad, I set out to explore every nook and cranny of Manhattan—from the cavernous financial headquarters along Wall Street; to Chinatown, Little Italy, and Greenwich Village; to Broadway and the majestic Avenue of the Americas; to the richly decorated display windows on Fifth Avenue; and the 770 acres of Central Park. I quickly discovered that this city was alive—it had a heartbeat all its own, and that heartbeat never stopped. What a contrast to the grim utilitarian mood that permeated both East Berlin and Moscow.

I was particularly drawn to the area around the southern tip of Central Park, with its cavalcade of street artists, mimes, musical troupes, and pushcart vendors. I enjoyed the noise and the bustle and the thriving commerce in this little slice of capitalist America. Surely, I would soon discover the ugly underbelly of free enterprise as well.

On one of my walking excursions, I got another reminder of how ill-prepared I was for assimilating into America. In the Soviet Union, cigarettes were dirt cheap and readily available, so it wasn’t uncommon to be approached on the street by a stranger asking for a smoke.

I was walking past Bryant Park on the Fifth Avenue side when a young man approached me and urgently whispered, “Smoke, smoke.”

I reached into my pocket for a pack of cigarettes and politely offered him some.

“Here, take a couple . . .”

His reaction was altogether strange and inexplicable.

“Hey, if I want to play games, man, I’ll call my little brother,” he said with a sneer. “Don’t play me for a fool!”

I had no idea what he was talking about, so I quickly walked away. Only later did I learn that Bryant Park was a hangout for small-time drug dealers and he was offering to sell me a few joints, not asking to bum a cigarette.

Immediately upon moving into the hotel that would be my home for the foreseeable future, I established an observable pattern for the staff at the front desk. I wanted to give the impression that I had business in the city and avoid even the hint of suspicion that comes with the appearance of an erratic lifestyle.

So, Monday through Friday, regardless of the weather, I left the hotel no later than 8:30 in the morning and returned after 5:00 p.m. When the weather was good, I continued to explore the vast city and catalogued potential spots for future operational use. When winter arrived—thankfully much milder than the Moscow freeze—I spent time at the library, museums, or watching movies at one of the second-rate theaters, where two dollars could buy you three hours of American classic cinema, thereby adding bits and pieces to my knowledge of American pop culture.

When spring arrived, I often grabbed a towel and a book, and spent the day in Central Park. On one such afternoon, as I lay in the sunshine and stared up at the blue sky, I realized it was May 18, 1979—Albrecht Dittrich’s thirtieth birthday. But this German, “Dittrich,” was no more. The American flag high atop one of the buildings was a fluttering red-white-and-blue reminder that I was a stranger in a strange land.

Earlier in 1979, I had begun the process of acquiring genuine US documentation. The sketchy plan concocted by the spymasters in Moscow was brilliant in its conception but flawed in its details of execution.

The first step, obtaining a library card, was expected to be child’s play. But when I visited a number of branches of the New York Public Library, the first thing I was asked—without fail—was to show some type of ID or a utility bill, to prove my address. Of course, I had neither one.

The need to have identification in order to obtain identification is a classic example of what Joseph Heller—whose signature book I had read with great pleasure—called a Catch-22. Was I really going to get stuck in neutral right at the beginning of this ambitious undertaking? And if I couldn’t get a library card, what did that say about my prospects for one day getting close to Zbigniew Brzezinski?

To my disappointment, the Center had no advice for how to break the stalemate. I knew it was up to me to figure it out, and I certainly wasn’t ready to give up yet. After several weeks spent scouring books and studying newspapers to find a possible solution for my dilemma, serendipity came to the rescue.

The American Museum of Natural History, on Central Park West, with its long hallways, wide staircases, and many cavernous rooms, had become one of my favorite places for surveillance detection. One day I noticed a flyer on the reception desk advertising museum membership. For a reasonable fee, I received a one-year membership entitling me to unlimited visits and discounts at special events. But the only thing that mattered to me was that the museum issued me a membership card with my name and address on it, no verification of identity or address required. This type of card seemed like a long shot as proof of address at a library, but it was worth a try. After all, I had been in the US for almost six months and had made zero progress toward the final goal of acquiring proper identification.

I chose the main Brooklyn branch of the public library system for my Hail Mary pass. After taking a deep breath to calm my nerves, I approached the desk and waited for the librarian to look up at me.

“May I help you?”

“I would like to get a library card. Here’s my application.”

She took the application and said, “We need proof of residence as well.”

“Sure. I have my museum card.” I handed it across the desk to her.

“Okay, give me a minute while I fill this out.”

It took me a moment to realize that my application had been accepted. The plan was back on track!

Step 2 was getting a New York driver’s license. I now had the minimum documentation required—a library card and a birth certificate—so all I had to do was pass the written and behind-the-wheel tests. The written test wasn’t much of a challenge, but I didn’t want to take a chance with the road test, so I took several driving lessons to refresh the basic skills I had acquired in Moscow.

The driving test turned out to be simple as well—almost trivial, in fact. Frankly, I would not allow anyone behind the wheel and out on the streets of the city based on the elementary skills required to pass that test. But, for me, it was all just as well. By May 1979, I was the proud owner of an official New York state driver’s license. This was a great birthday present I gave myself and a huge step toward becoming a fully documented, and legal, US resident. After seven months of living in the shadows, I at least now had something that established me as a resident of New York City.

Step 3 of the process, obtaining a Social Security card, was the task I dreaded most because it required an in-person appearance at a Social Security office. I had no idea what to expect, so I prepared meticulously, with special focus on developing a plausible answer for why a thirty-four-year-old man didn’t already have a Social Security card.

Though, in 1979, it was unusual for someone my age not to have a Social Security card, it was not inconceivable. Two groups were outside the jurisdiction of the Social Security Administration: employees of religious organizations and farm workers. The Center and I had chosen the farm option and consequently weaved it into my legend.

Two weeks before my appointment, I spent at least two hours every day rehearsing my cover story ad nauseam. I also practiced answers to possible interview questions out loud in a secluded section of Inwood Hill Park in the northern section of Manhattan.

On the day of the interview, I dressed in sandals, old jeans, and a slightly smudged T-shirt. I took other measures to create the impression of an ex-farmhand who had only recently arrived in the big city—I hadn’t shaved for three days, and I didn’t wash my hair that morning.

On the table in my hotel room, I had a houseplant and a bottle with motor oil. I ground my fingertips into the soil until my nails were filled with dirt. Then I used a rag to stain my hands with motor oil.

In the bathroom, I studied my face in the mirror and did not see a former farmworker. To remove the sharpness from my eyes, I rubbed them with soapy water until I could no longer stand the stinging pain. The red-eyed, unkempt, and unshaven face that now stared back at me gave me confidence that I had a good chance of pulling this off.

In fact, the ruse exceeded my wildest expectations. At the Social Security office, the nondescript middle-aged interviewer asked me four questions, to which I gave short, monotone answers.

“How is it that you don’t have a Social Security card?”

“Never needed one.”

“Why not?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Just never did.”

“Have you worked before?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Where?”

“On a farm upstate.”

APPROVED.

I was very proud of myself that day. I had overcome my fear and played my script to perfection.

Now I had a Social Security card.

Next up, an American passport.