I HAD NOT LOST SIGHT of the primary task ahead of me: earning a college degree. My research convinced me that the only viable options were public schools. Their open admission policy guaranteed that somebody with only a high school equivalency diploma would be accepted. (I had taken the GED test and received my certificate in December 1979.) Public colleges also had reasonable tuition, making them affordable even to a lowly bike messenger.
In preparation for my enrollment, I earned twenty credits via the federal College Level Examination Program. The goal was for me to finish my degree as quickly as possible so that I could join the professional ranks while I was still young enough to be hired. I was accepted at Baruch College, a part of the City University of New York, and showed up for my first day of class in September 1981.
In order to maintain my financial cover, I continued my job as a messenger. I took classes in the morning and reported for bike duty in the afternoon. With this demanding schedule, my ability to socialize outside of school or engage in intelligence-gathering activities was reduced to a bare minimum.
It was a strange feeling to return to academia as a freshman after leaving eight years earlier as a professor. The average student at Baruch was about a dozen years my junior, but I began to develop friendships with some of my classmates—including a set of identical triplets who had been separated at birth and had found each other by accident at the age of nineteen. They were now enrolled together at Baruch.
Another new friendship was with a remarkable young immigrant from Hong Kong, with whom I shared at least one thing in common: We both had a laser-like focus on becoming successful in American society.
In calculus, he and I competed for the best grades, and our contest ended in a tie when we both scored 99 percent. But if you consider that I had taught calculus at the college level ten years earlier, you might say my friend was the true winner.
I also remember sitting next to him in political science and noticing how many passages he had highlighted in yellow in his textbook. When I told him that by highlighting so much of the page he was essentially highlighting nothing, his response was astounding: “Those are all the words I don’t understand.”
I could relate well to his challenge, and I volunteered to help him soften his accent by leading him through some phonetic exercises similar to the ones I had used when studying English in Moscow.
Not surprisingly, my friend went on to study at Columbia Law School and became a member of the Columbia Law Review in his first semester, so he was well on his way to making an impact on the world. When I met him again years later, he told me that he had chosen me as the subject for one of the essays required for his application to Columbia. I never saw the essay, but it wasn’t hard to guess that its main thrust was how an American had welcomed this Chinese newcomer to his country with open arms. The irony, for me, was delicious.
While walking between classes one day in early 1982, I saw a bulletin board notice for a current affairs group meeting, and I signed up immediately.
Led by history professor Selma Berrol, the group of about twenty students met on Wednesdays at lunchtime to discuss current world affairs and American politics. For purposes of these discussions, I positioned myself on the left of the political spectrum, with some sympathy for the Western European brand of socialism, but firmly anti-Communist.
Over the next couple of years, this group provided great insight for my reports to the Center about the mood of the country—particularly in 1983, when President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 by a Soviet fighter jet reignited tensions between the US and the Soviet Union that had largely diminished during the period of détente in the 1970s. There was widespread concern in our group that Reagan might push the world to the brink of nuclear war with his aggressive approach to international diplomacy.
Only one person in the group, a guy named Fred, sided with Reagan. Fred was ultraconservative, and the rest of us would chuckle or roll our eyes when he started on one of his rants.
“I’m telling you, the Russians are deathly afraid of Ronald Reagan. We need to show them that we are serious. Historically, appeasement has never worked, and it will not work today. And if the Russians try to keep up with us in this race, they will simply go bankrupt.”
In his own way, Fred actually expressed historical truth before it became evident.
During my years at Baruch I sent profiles of about twenty students to the Center. Those profiles included basic personal data such as their name, address, contact information, physical description, character traits, political leanings, and possible angles for recruitment. The Center was always on the lookout for sources of secret information.
There was quite a variety of recruitment angles: money, addictions, information that would make a person vulnerable to extortion, and radical political leanings, left or right. From that perspective, Fred was a promising lead. Many a right-wing radical had given information to the Soviets under a “false flag,” thinking they were working with a Western ally, such as Israel, when in fact their contact was a KGB operative.
In the summer of 1982, after one full year of college, my two-year stint was up again. It was time for a second return trip to debrief in Moscow and see Gerlinde in Berlin. I couldn’t wait to finally meet my son, who was now a year old.
The stopover prior to Moscow was in Rome. When I arrived there, I made contact with the resident agent to exchange passports and then went to a travel agency to book my flight to Russia on Aeroflot.
“I’m sorry,” the travel agent told me in English. “There is a baggage handlers strike and all Aeroflot flights have been canceled until further notice. She pointed out that Alitalia still had flights going to Moscow.
I paused to think about this alternative. I had been instructed to always use Aeroflot in and out of Moscow. I decided to wait a few days.
To relieve my anxiety, I forced myself out of the hotel, but I was not in the mood for tourism. All I wanted to do was see my wife and son, and every day in Rome stole a day from my time in Berlin. I had to be back in New York in time for the start of the fall semester.
After five days of waiting, and no end in sight for the strike, I decided I was entitled to break the rule. I booked a flight on Alitalia, set the “departed country” sign, and flew to Moscow.
When I got off the plane, Mikhail was waiting for me, and he was visibly upset.
“You should not have done that,” he said. “The passport you just used is now worthless. Do you know how much time and effort it takes to create a working passport?”
I apologized profusely but said, “I had to improvise. I only have a five-week window before reporting back to college, and I’ve already lost a week.”
Mikhail accepted my apology but added sternly, “I want to be very clear. From now on, you will follow our travel instructions to the letter.”
It was the only time Mikhail ever spoke to me in that manner, and it was a warning to remember.
After my customary three-day debriefing session, I flew to Berlin, where Sergej was waiting for me at the airport. He put me to shame by giving me a big plush teddy bear as a present for Matthias, something I had not thought about.
With the help of the KGB, Gerlinde had moved into a larger, four-room apartment in the Friedrichshagen section of Berlin. When she answered the door, I looked past her to see Matthias, who was standing rather shyly in a remote corner of the hallway. As I showed him the teddy bear, he ran away and hid behind his mother, clinging to her skirt.
When Sergej called him, he reappeared and allowed Sergej to pick him up.
I stood there with the teddy bear, feeling like the outsider I was.
Gerlinde half-apologized for the awkward scene. “Matthias is very sensitive, and it takes a while for him to get used to strangers. And you know, you are a stranger to him.”
Though her words were spoken in love, they stung like needles, reminding me that I was an absentee father.
This time, we did not travel far for our vacation trip. The KGB put us up in a guesthouse on the Müggelsee, the largest lake in Berlin. With Matthias in the mix, the marital dynamic had changed significantly. I was no longer the center of attention for Gerlinde. The little one had taken the number one spot.
Like his father, Matthias was a light sleeper, and he caught a cold on the first day. The following nights were anything but restful, in stark contrast to the many nights I had spent with Gerlinde in the past.
Well, fatherhood has its price, I thought as I tried to adjust to the new situation. Every morning I got up at 6:00 a.m, warmed a bottle of milk for Matthias, and took him for a stroll in his carriage.
After three and a half weeks with my family, it was time to go back to Moscow. I left with mixed emotions. I was still very much in love with Gerlinde, but our time together had been chaotic. I tried to bond with Matthias, but three weeks was not enough time to establish a meaningful connection with a one-year-old who had no idea who I was.
During my preparation meetings with Alex in Moscow, I was reminded repeatedly of the need to meet and report on interesting human targets.
“We need you to produce more valuable contacts,” he said.
Rather than try to explain the limitations imposed by my circumstances in the US, I promised to do a better job.
Alex also suggested that I do everything possible to finish college in the next two years.
“We need you on Wall Street. We need you to make contact with decision makers. And as you look for your first job out of college, try to stay away from the larger companies. They may conduct a more thorough background check.”
This time, my itinerary had me flying to Vienna, taking a train to Paris, and from there catching a flight to Washington, DC. I spent my day in Paris sightseeing and finally got to see the famous places I had only read about during my years as a student: Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, Montmartre, Les Tuileries, and the Louvre. The only sight that didn’t live up to my imagination was the surprisingly diminutive Mona Lisa.
The following day, I made my way to Charles de Gaulle Airport, where I got an unpleasant surprise. When I stepped up to the Air France counter and requested a ticket for the flight number I had been given by the Center—not wanting to repeat my transgression from Rome—the young desk agent smiled politely, turned to her left, and announced for all to hear, “Concorde!”
Though ordinarily the sound of this word pronounced in a Parisian accent would be music to my ears, in this context it had the effect of fingernails scratching on a blackboard. Here I was, traveling with a false passport and almost $10,000 in my pockets, paying $1,700 in cash to fly on a plane that catered mostly to the well-off elite.
The needle of my risk meter entered the red zone. A cash-paying customer on this type of flight could easily have triggered closer scrutiny from either the French or the American authorities. Luckily, no one seemed to pay any attention to me, but in my first letter to the Center after returning in the US, I complained strongly about this obvious mistake. I never received an explanation, but I felt I had at least regained the high ground after being chided about the Rome incident.
The Concorde took off from de Gaulle on a dark, rainy evening, and three and a half hours later we landed at Washington Dulles International in bright sunshine, having outpaced the earth’s rotation. The flight itself was nothing special. There was a large display at the front of the cabin showing our speed expressed in Mach (where Mach 1 equals the speed of sound). When the meter went from .99 to 1.00, indicating that we had broken through the sound barrier, nothing happened inside the plane’s cabin. The sonic boom was audible only from below.
I took a bus back to New York and rode the subway to my apartment. After what amounted to a whirlwind trip across Europe and back, I was glad to be home in Woodside. For the first time, I realized that I felt more comfortable in the country that I was spying on than I did in my native land. My trips to Berlin from this time forward would feel more like visits than going home.