Last of the Cold War Spies (14 page)

He managed to gain another meeting with Roosevelt in October, meeting in the president’s study. Straight told him that cutbacks had stopped his joining of the NRPB. Could he think of any other agencies that might take him on?

Roosevelt, appearing concerned, frowned and thought hard but couldn’t think of one. He was not going to take on someone without a civil service rating and no work experience to speak of. There just would
not be a spot for him in tight employment times, even with his impressive degree and training under Keynes. “Why not get some outside experience and then join the government?” Roosevelt finally suggested.

It was not what the driven young man wanted to hear. Forget the White House or the State Department. The president couldn’t even come up with a single agency. Straight decided to pass the time while on the job search by gaining more electioneering experience. He had loved the cut and thrust of Plymouth and so went to Fiorello LaGuardia’s headquarters in New York to volunteer in his mayoral reelection campaign. He worked Manhattan’s East Side on Park Avenue where he was staying in his mother’s apartment. It made his task easier. Straight pushed hard for votes for LaGuardia’s deputy, Thomas E. Dewey.

He enjoyed the experience and was thinking ahead to the day he would fulfill his perceived destiny and run for high office. He felt he had been born to it. In the meantime he waited for that piece of paper with Binny’s blue ink drawing to be presented to him. It was the reason he had returned to the United States. Blunt had taken the drawing from him on August 4, taking his phone number in New York as well. Straight would be there until contact was made.

It was late October. He was becoming apprehensive.

Straight was alone in his mother’s apartment one night in late October 1937 when the phone rang. He answered it.
³
A man with a thick European accent said that he brought greetings from his friends at Cambridge. The caller told him the name of a restaurant he was in a few blocks away. Straight said he would meet him and hurried out, remembering to employ the tradecraft Blunt had taught him. An hour later, he entered the restaurant.

A chunky man in a tight-fitting business suit was sitting alone at a table for two and watching the entrance. Straight was a few inches taller than the man, who had a nose like a boxer’s and thick lips.
⁴
Other descriptions of this man, whom Straight would know as Michael Green, added to his portrait. Russian agent Hede Massing, who defected to the FBI in 1947, regarded him as “one of the most pedestrian of my Russian co-workers.” Green was “every inch the Soviet apparatchik
or bureaucrat.” This fitted Straight’s appreciation of him over time as someone rather rigid in his approach, uninspiring and without flair.

David Dallin, the Soviet expert, was even less flattering. He spoke of his villainously low forehead “topped with straight, pale, reddish-blond hair.” Dallin described his lips as “puffed” rather than thick, and for good measure added that they were “choked with saliva when in motion.” Completing the sinister characterization, Dallin noted that “his eyes were slightly slanted up and inflamed. They were the small, unpretty eyes of the unimaginative, frightened little man.”

Regardless of Green’s appearance, Straight was in awe at that first encounter. The Russian stood up, smiled, shook hands, and uttered the “verbal parole” or passwords of prearranged greetings. This ensured he was not an imposter, on the very slim chance that the FBI had set up Straight.

The man shook his hand firmly, saying his name was Michael Green.
⁵
Green, alias William Greinke, Michael Ademic, and other names, had at least two code names for communications back to Moscow—MER and ALBERT.
⁶
His real name was Ishak Abdulovich Akhermov. Despite the efforts of defectors to vilify his appearance and manner, he was the most important and effective “illegal” (that is, not working via the Soviet Embassy and originally an illegal immigrant sent by Soviet Intelligence) KGB control in the United States during his two underground tours of duty from 1937 to 1946. Straight was one of the first agents he would run in the United States and was considered a very important recruit.

Despite his age and inexperience in espionage, Straight would not be farmed out to one of the local rings, such as that run by Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, the Russian-born Jewish underground leader. Straight was a deep-cover agent who would not be known as a spy to local rings. He would be run direct from Moscow via top Russian controls like Green. Straight would avoid involvement with local communist agents other than by chance or in the normal run of events where the interests of liberals and the extreme left merged publicly. Straight would continue to cultivate his image as an outspoken, concerned liberal that he had projected so well to his mother and the Roosevelts.

He had been informed by Blunt that he was being treated as someone special in the eyes of Stalin and the Moscow Center, and this made him edgy at the first meeting. He wanted to impress Green, who by contrast was at ease. Green apologized for not getting in touch earlier. He had the
phone number but not the address, which he needed in order to make an initial meeting. He apologized for not having the other half of the drawing by Bin Crompton, which Blunt had taken from him. The control said he had mislaid it, which unnerved Straight, who kept asking for it. Green ordered a three-course meal; Straight had eaten earlier. He took in everything about the Russian: his English was good despite the accent. He had an affable manner. Straight began to relax. No FBI agents were likely to barge in and arrest him. He stopped asking for the piece of paper with his darling’s drawing on it and began to like his first U.S. control.

Straight discussed his efforts to get work and his contacts, such as the president. Roosevelt had helped but not enough to get him a job. After his tour of the country, Straight floated the idea of working for General Motors in Detroit for a few months. He mentioned the possibilities in the State Department. Green seemed to like the General Motors idea.

The Russian finished his meal with coffee and a monologue on the developing aspects of the peace movement, which would become a regular refrain at other meetings.
⁷
It was part of the continuing preparation so well handled by Burgess and Blunt at Cambridge, who in turn had been earlier seduced by Maly and Deutsch. The lecture completed, Green asked his new agent if there were any questions on the topic. Straight said he had none, which showed unusual restraint. Green asked for his check. He told Straight to memorize the name and phone number of a “friend,” Alexander Koral, in Brooklyn, whom he was to call in an emergency.
⁸

Green said he would be in touch by phone and that the next rendezvous would be in Central Park.
⁹
Straight would follow the tradecraft of avoiding any possible American watchers so expertly taught by Blunt. This meant taking circuitous routes over hours to an appointment location.

An early concern for Green was what he perceived as some circumspection, even caution on Straight’s part concerning his attitude to Soviet foreign policy. The Moscow Center put this down to some Trotskyite friends of Straight, who were still imbued with the concept of the new world order as instigated by the (steadily dying) Comintern—that is, communism outside the Soviet Union.

Green was directed to keep working on his new charge. Moscow reminded its agent that Straight was his biggest assignment in the United
States. Green was directed to forget about General Motors in Detroit and to concentrate on getting his new American spy into the State Department.

Straight at last had a specific demand, rather than a general aim. The First Lady could be the conduit to the State Department. He could not approach her at the White House; it was too soon after seeing the president. He had to contrive a “chance” meeting with her, which he did at an unemployed miners’ camp in West Virginia.
¹⁰

He managed to raise the question of his job-hunting with the First Lady and how much he would like to work for the administration, particularly the State Department. They discussed this for some time. Much to his joy, Mrs. Roosevelt promised to write on his behalf to the undersecretary of state, Sumner Welles. A week later Straight had an appointment. He was briefed on the formidable Welles by the ever-faithful Jonathan Mitchell at
The New Republic
.

The novice’s lack of experience was against him. Welles told him he had a hard road in front of him and appeared reluctant to help. He was told there were no openings at State.
¹¹

Straight waited for his next call from Green, and they met in Central Park. They walked together and discussed the problem of getting into State. Straight thought he should offer to work for nothing. His control appeared to be “appraising him and seemed to have prepared topics and lines of conversation to test his thoughts and points of view, and to shape his mind.”
¹²
Straight found him exceptionally humorous and fond of plays on words.

They parted, planning another rendezvous at the New York Zoo.

Green told the Moscow Center that he and Straight had become friends and that the new young agent listened to his advice and followed it. But Green did not like him to keep the company of the editorial staff at
The
New Republic
. The Soviet control worried that the free exchange of mainly liberal, pro-left views were a bad influence on Straight. How could he indoctrinate him with hard-line, Moscow-centrist Stalinist ideology when he was spending time with “a liberal like Roger Baldwin, outwardly a friend of the USSR but in his soul its enemy with great sympathy for Trotsky. [He] cannot help but exert a negative influence on [Straight].”
¹³

Stalin’s obsession with Trotsky had more than filtered through to his spies worldwide. They too had become paranoid about him and the way the West had romanticized him and his plight in exile.

The subject of Trotsky touched a raw nerve. At early meetings with Straight, Green felt some “ideological hesitation”—that is, uncertainty about Stalinism or Stalinist foreign policy. According to the edited files presented by the KGB, Moscow was alleged to have jumped to the conclusion that this was because he had Trotskyite contacts in the United States.

Straight made out that he was misleading the KGB by telling Green about his anticommunist links. The aim, he alleged, was to cause the KGB to think he was undependable and not to be relied on. He feigned limited interest in Russia and Trotsky. But was this a cover, with KGB connivance, for his attempts to infiltrate Trotskyite organizations, known to be connected to defector Walter Krivitsky?

Summaries of the KGB files again suggest that Straight did not quite comprehend what was expected of his new clandestine life when, according to Green: