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On Tuesday, February 28th, two coffee mugs quarter filled with Stolichnaya vodka sat on my kitchen table. One was mine; the other Michael’s.
I never did mix well with alcohol. Only twice in my life have I ever been seriously drunk. The first was at a New Year’s Eve party in college. I fell down the stairs five times trying to get to a toilet on the second floor. Woke up the next day, didn’t remember a fucking thing.
Given my past history with alcohol, guess I shouldn’t be sitting here drinking with Mr. KGB Khalatsyn. He downed his; then he asked for a refill. I obliged him, then — Gulp! — another one went down his hatch. The single cup I finished sipping was enough to buzz me. While passing him documents, I made the mistake of pouring myself a second. Then he asked for number three. He chugged his, so I chugged mine.
Then he poured me another: Gulp! Dumb and dumber.
My Russian friend smiled; then it fell off his face when I passed him two reports published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private think-tank. They cost me $1.50 apiece. To this I added a modest finder’s fee of $5. Guess even this tiny markup was more than his socialist mind could cope with. Michael complained, “You charge me $6.50 apiece for this, pardon my English, shit?”
“Michael” — You cheap bastard! — “lemmes’splain somethin’. A $10 commission is less than adequate given the information you supplied me.” Pointing a thumb at my chest, “I spent a great deal of my professional time finding out what NBER stood for, their address, telephone number, etc. Considering all the trouble I went through to get these,” I made vague waving motions at the reports, “uh, these, uh...” — Fucking little pieces of shit! — “things, how dare you complain to me about a” — Fucking! — “stinking $10. By the way, when am I gonna start getting them big orders you been promising?”
“Very soon. I’ll order the journal from you,” he said, speaking of a signal processing journal, Trends & Perspectives in Signal Processing. Then he gave me my next order, a list of several graduate level engineering textbooks.
My turn to whine, “Michael, this is not a big order.”
“John, I worry about you. You must be careful. I do not want you to get in trouble with your government.”
I shrugged. “Fuck the government.”
“John, what do think will happen if I give you a $3,000 order and—”
“You kidding? Gonna spend it.” I raised another mug-full to my mouth: gulp! “This stuff tastes like shit.”
“— you put it in the bank? You—”
With my brain sloshing around inside its bony home, I assured him, “Not going in no bank, Michael.”
“— will draw the attention of the IRS.”
“No. I’ll buy something nice for some nice young lady. Ha, ha, ha...”
“You will get into trouble because the bank will tell them. Yes, it’s true. I read about that in the New York Times.”
“Michael, Michael, my dearest comrade. Don’worry’boudit. I know what I’m doing. There are ways—”
“Who is the young lady you wish to shower with gifts?”
“Yet to be determined... Besides, $3,000 is not a lot of money. There are ways of—”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“I wish. Still looking. That’s why I need money... I have a job, Michael. I could—”
“And what if this Yet-To-Be-Determined-Girlfriend asks you where you got the money to buy such expensive presents?”
“She wouldn’t — I wouldn’t. Was only kidding. I’d spend it all on me.” I leaned closer as my face slid into Not For Nothing seriousness. “You can’t buy love, Michael.”
He grinned. “Don’t be so sure of that, my friend.”
The Russians have a word, vranyo, which means roughly this: You know I’m lying, and I know you know, and you know I know you know, but I go ahead with a straight face and you nod seriously and take notes.
Michael threw some vranyo at me: “John, could you please clarify something for me? I made a small wager with a colleague. He claims that in America students keep their diplomas in folders. I say that they’re put on boards and hung on walls. Could you help settle this matter? If it’s no trouble, can I see your diploma, please?”
I nodded seriously, stood up, steadied myself, amazing considering my condition, and wobbled a few steps to where the diploma hung on the wall, right outside the kitchen.
“Here ya go, Michael, looks like you win.”
He smiled. “Thank you, John. Looks like I’ve won $50.”
“That makes me very happy, Michael. How ‘bout splittin’?”
Grinning, “Not this time.”
Tonight he paid me the $150 — the big money? Vranyo.
***
DRIP, DRIP, DRIPPING...
Not only did I have a leak in the ceiling of my living room, but I also had one in my checking account: withdraw money to buy documents for Michael, then get paid, then turn over the money to the FBI, then wait to get paid again. Wait and wait and wait — and still waiting! My good credit rating was in danger of being indelibly stained. At the end of every month, those to whom I had certain financial obligations lined up with cupped hands. They demanded satisfaction for the next 30 days.
Luckily on February 29th, the day after my meeting with Michael, new money flooded into my accounts. Charlie had mailed me a $600 check along with a note: “A little something extra for your troubles.”
My mind works on the assumption that the glass is always half-full, so that “little something extra” I figured for my stipend. That made me one happy little fishy. I’d get to swim around in a bowl the Bureau would fill up with $600 every month.
On March 9th, Michael phoned. “Please order the (signal processing) journal. I would like it a week from today. I promise you extra compensation for your efforts.”
On March 12th, I called Charlie. “I ordered two sets of the journal, one for you and one for our friend. Put it on my American Express card ($900), so I’d like to get paid ASAP. The $600 you paid me was for February. When will I be getting March’s stipend?”
“That’s not a problem, John. We know that things are a little tight for you right now. That’s why we gave you the extra $600 last month. We foresaw that something like this might happen.”
“Thought that was my stipend?”
“Don’t worry, John, you’ll get paid. But don’t expect this to be a monthly thing. We’re not in a position to offer you a stipend. We want to project the image that this is entirely a business operation. We don’t want the Soviets to get the idea that someone is subsidizing you. We want you to show them that need. Understand what I’m saying?”
It pained me to admit that the Bureau made sense. CIR had to be real world, and in the real world CIR was on the brink. So was I, by the way, on the brink of taking some real world action.
***
ON FRIDAY, MARCH 16TH, at 2 p.m., six neat little piles of twenty dollar bills were all lined up in a row on the kitchen table; each pile totaled $100. The cash represented a previously agreed upon figure for the signal processing journal. What followed constituted a little something extra that Michael had promised me for my troubles.
One, two, three more twenties hit the table, and a new stack was born.
“Why’d you stop? Keep going.” I tapped the last stack. “How about topping it off? An even seven hundred; I like symmetry.”
A wry grin. “Sorry, John, this is quite sufficient for now. I don’t want to spoil you.”
The next day, Saturday, St. Patrick’s Day, found me mad at the world in general and one I-talian in particular. I was about to part with a large chunk of green. Charlie had called this morning. He said today’s debriefing would have to be short, so we met by the Riverside Church at 120th and Riverside Drive. He pulled up in his crap blue sedan dressed in his Saturday casuals: jeans, a New York Yankee warm-up jacket, and white sneakers.
A far better fashion statement than his usual Detective Columbo mode.
I got in the car.
“How much did he pay you?” Charlie asked, taking out a note pad.
My agreed upon deal with the Bureau was that I was supposed to turn over all the money Michael gave me. The government would reimburse me later — like a lot later.
“Six hundred.” I handed him a sealed envelope. That was the agreed upon price between me and Michael for the signal processing journal — the $600 the FBI paid me instead of a stipend.
He wasn’t so quick to put it into his pocket. Still holding the envelope, he put on his cop’s face and stared at me as if his eyes could probe my secret page, the one that said: Khalatsyn is following standard KGB procedure, so we know he paid you a bonus.
“Is this all of it?” Charlie finally asked.
I nodded and let a smile tell the rest of the story: Yes, he paid me a bonus, and I know you know, and I don’t give a rat’s ass. The Russians call it vranyo.
“OK,” he said, writing something in his pad. My guess: This guy’s skimming.
“By the way, Michael asked me if I wanted an advance.” A dramatic pause, then down came the hammer: “I said, no.”
That drew a pronounced reaction. He put down his pen and rubbed his forehead. “Why did you say that?”
“Why not? You guys are just gonna take it anyway, right?”
If the FBI wanted reality, reality had a price: Let me keep my damn money!
“I know that as a businessman you’re not happy with the current arrangement, money going out and nothing coming in. As a matter of fact,” Charlie said, sounding more upbeat, “that’s what I was working on this morning: the paperwork to get you paid. The money should come in sometime next week.”
Then Charlie let me know exactly what the Bureau expected of me regarding our friend: “We want to know more about him.” He drew three small circles in his note pad. “He goes from his home, to his office, to the U.N.,” he said, moving the pen from circle to circle. “Three places we have no access to. You’re our window. From you we get our picture of him. What does he think of the United States? What’s his home life like? How does he feel about his wife? His job? Boss? How good is his English? How politically aware is he?”
So I let Charlie know exactly what I expected of the Bureau: “I’m not happy with the current financial arrangement. It’s gotta change.”
A week later I got another check from the Bureau: $1,200. ($600 that Michael had paid me and I’d turned over to Charlie; and another $600 for their copies of the signal processing journal.)
Progress was being made.
***
ONE MONTH LATER, ON Friday, April 20th, I leaned against the doorjamb outside my apartment with my arms folded across my chest. I shot the good guy, the one who paid his bills on time, a grin. Michael came up the stairs. He reached the top landing with his tongue hanging out. Theatrics no doubt, because Michael looked a lot more trim and fit than me, and I never had any trouble with stairs.
“What’sa matter?” I said. “Why didn’t you take the lift?” I was being cute, speaking British English at him.
He gave me a tired smile. We headed for the kitchen.
On the table sat a bottle of Rubesco wine. Dom had recommended it.
“I know you guys don’t celebrate Easter, so here’s my May Day present to you.”
He hesitated.
“Take it. It’s good wine, imported from Italy.”
“Oh, OK, then,” he said to himself out loud.
Also on the table was a stack of new books, still in their wrappers. “And for all this,” I said, gesturing, “you owe me $700.”
“Is that all?” He counted out the money in the same deliberate fashion as last time, twenties in piles of $100. At $700 he paused and smiled. “And this is my Easter gift for you, John.” Five more twenties joined their comrades, for a grand total of $800, all of which went into my checking account the very next day. If the FBI got pissed about it, too fucking bad.
By the way, the FBI did not want copies of the engineering textbooks, thus saving the taxpayers $700 I would have charged.
I assume the FBI considered me a controlled asset, which was a step above a criminal informant. But I considered myself a government contractor, which was way above both. And what’s the use of being a government contractor if you can’t rip-off the federal government? They all do it, so why couldn’t I?
This was the ace I decided to keep in the hole and pull out when the time was right.