The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal (24 page)

Tolkachev carried a recognition signal, a book with a white cover, in his left hand. He greeted the new officer without any hesitation. It was 9:05 p.m., and they climbed into the Zhiguli. The officer delivered to Tolkachev four replicas of the institute building pass made by the CIA for him to examine and also handed him the Discus device once again, reassuring Tolkachev that it had been checked out in the CIA’s laboratories and this time it would work. The CIA package for Tolkachev included a charger for the shortwave radio, a schedule of Western broadcasts in Russian that could be received on the radio, the Trotsky autobiography, information about the crisis in Poland, a small portable cassette recorder, batteries, more “positive intelligence” questions from headquarters, and a note of effusive thanks. “Your courage is truly an example to us all,” it said.
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Although meetings with deep cover officers were intended to be brief, Tolkachev didn’t know that, and he wanted to talk—as he had so often done with Guilsher and Rolph. He complained the CIA had used a wrong exchange rate to calculate his ruble payments, and he was owed much more. He said he needed film for the Pentax; there was a shortage in Moscow stores, and they would sell him no more than five rolls at a time. He wanted the CIA to provide him with a hundred rolls.

Tolkachev also acknowledged he hadn’t turned on the shortwave radio and demodulator to receive the CIA’s secret messages. He was uncertain whether he could pick up the broadcasts, and he had no privacy at home in the evenings. He said his family still didn’t know of his espionage.

Despite these setbacks, Tolkachev said he was determined not to quit. He handed the deep cover officer a schematic diagram and another circuit board—only the second time he had provided the CIA with a valuable piece of Soviet electronics.

Then he gave the deep cover officer thirteen rolls of film. Surprised, the CIA officer asked how he was able to do that if there were restrictions at the institute.

Tolkachev said he had a friend in the First Department who would occasionally slip documents to him on request.

Isn’t that dangerous? the officer asked.

Tolkachev laughed.

“Everything is dangerous,” he said.
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Three weeks later, on March 8, 1982, the Moscow station received a signal from Tolkachev, saying they should prepare for the very first transmission by Discus. As Gerber had anticipated, the station was forced to scramble. The station had already cased several locations, known as Electronic Letter Drop sites. One envisioned Tolkachev transmitting across the Moscow River, with a case officer receiving the signal a few hundred yards away at a train station. The Moscow station wanted enough distance so as not to arouse the KGB’s suspicions.

While the station didn’t know why Tolkachev was getting in touch, the CIA prepared a message anyway to send him in reply, saying the last rolls of film were perfect and they would pay him a lot more rubles.
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The first successful Discus message from Tolkachev wasn’t earth-shattering. Tolkachev wrote that he was eager to provide feedback about the CIA’s four replicas of his building pass—they were “too light”—and he wanted an unscheduled meeting in three days.
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On March 16, the deep cover officer went out to meet Tolkachev. It was 9:00 p.m. in Moscow, and Tolkachev was in good spirits, but worry creased his face. The security restrictions at the institute had been ratcheted still tighter. Now it was impossible for him to get any documents from the office, nor could he get them from his friend in the First Department. He had no film to give the CIA.

Desperate, and unhappy with the CIA’s four replicas of his pass, Tolkachev gave strips of colored paper from the inside pages and a strip cut from the cover of his building pass to the officer; take that back to the CIA, he said, and let them make the replica from this! The officer urged Tolkachev to be careful and not to take any risks. Tolkachev seemed restless but also more introspective than in the past. The case officer wrote afterward to headquarters that Tolkachev “admitted that he had been careless early on in his relationship with us and agreed not to attempt further document photography” until they could work out some of the problems. Tolkachev “really seemed to pause and think about the need for caution.”
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The meeting was quick, just fifteen minutes. The next day, the Moscow station opened Tolkachev’s ops note. He “reluctantly” presented a wish list of more personal favors: a Sony Walkman for his son and earphones with a loop across the head, as well as pencils of various hardness for Oleg’s mechanical drawing. He also wanted some Polish blades for his safety razor, writing that “shaving with Soviet razor blades is an unpleasant” experience. He apologized for asking for such trivial things, noting, “Unfortunately our personal life consists of all types of small things which sometimes exert an influence on the general mood.”
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Gerber knew what he was talking about. The Soviet Union could make missiles but not toasters—or safety razors.

On May 24, two case officers went out on the street separately for a meeting with Tolkachev, hoping that one of them could get free from surveillance. Both carried identical packages. One of them succeeded and met Tolkachev at a site near his apartment building at 9:35 p.m. The case officer delivered a bulky bundle: twenty packages of razor blades, forty rolls of Western film that the CIA had repackaged in Soviet boxes, a Sanyo M6600F tape recorder, a Sony Walkman, a headset, extra batteries, and twenty-six boxes of drawing pencils for Oleg. The bundle was so large that at the last minute the Moscow station had removed another twenty rolls of film. They needed space to wedge in 98,850 rubles.

The package also included a new replica of his building pass.
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Over the summer of 1982, Rolph finished his tour in Moscow and went off to another assignment. In late September, Gerber also departed for a new assignment at headquarters. His farewell included a small gift from his colleagues in the Moscow station: a trophy-sized numeral 1 with a metal sphere hanging off the front. It was a memento of the big 1 that had been left on the station door when Sheymov was exfiltrated. The sphere was a reference to Tolkachev, the agent known as
cksphere
. It became a tradition from then onward that the Moscow station put a numeral 1 on the door if a major operation was completed successfully.

That summer, Bill Plunkert arrived in the Moscow station to run the Tolkachev operation. He had been an athlete at Boston College, playing varsity baseball and soccer, and still enjoyed tennis when he could find the time and a court. Plunkert had thrived in assignments when he could meet and recruit people; Moscow was his first taste of “denied area” operations. But as a Soviet specialist, he thought there was nothing better than “wrestling the bear in his own cave,” as he put it. Plunkert was intending not to be Tolkachev’s case officer but to coordinate all aspects of the operation from the station. Then, in his first months, the operation seemed to be sliding into serious trouble.

At the time, the Moscow station was sending deep cover officers out to meet Tolkachev—sometimes two or three at a time. But then five scheduled meetings passed without a successful rendezvous. Plunkert felt the tension grow slowly. A missed meeting or two had happened before, but not five.

By December, the station was fraught with anxiety. In all the previous meetings, the Moscow station had made strenuous efforts to see Tolkachev in a safe environment, as certain as they could be that there was no KGB surveillance. Case officers had aborted a scheduled meeting if they had the slightest inkling of surveillance. Now the stakes were higher than ever—and Plunkert began planning for a meeting with Tolkachev no matter what, even if everyone on the street had surveillance. They would have to make it work. The Moscow station was a tense place under any circumstances, a small cockpit of high achievers, but at this moment the pressure and stress brought them together. None of them wanted Tolkachev lost on their watch.

Plunkert took upon himself the job of meeting Tolkachev. He realized if they lost touch with the spy, it would be an enormous setback for the CIA. If he made a mistake on the street that led to Tolkachev’s arrest and execution, it would haunt him the rest of his life.

From the files, Plunkert felt he knew Tolkachev well—a middle-aged man, with short, quick strides that made it seem as if his feet barely made contact with the ground. The others who had met Tolkachev told Plunkert not to worry: the agent was a real pro, he would take care of the meeting, just let him do it his way. Plunkert also read that Tolkachev had a remarkable ability to just melt away. He looked like Mr. Everyman.
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After using the Jack-in-the-Box and jumping from the car on the night of December 7, Plunkert spotted Tolkachev. The spy looked just as he had been described: nondescript in a fedora, a brown overcoat, brown gloves, black shoes, and a gray scarf tucked inside his overcoat. They met as snow blanketed the city. They exchanged a verbal password. “C’mon, let’s walk,” Tolkachev said.

Plunkert’s immediate impression was that Tolkachev looked worn and tired. His voice sounded a bit tense. Plunkert also noticed that Tolkachev looked older than the photograph he had seen. Tolkachev mentioned that he had been bedridden, suffering severe bouts of high blood pressure. But this had not deterred him from checking out top secret documents from the library at his institute, then photographing them when alone at home with the Pentax. As they walked, Tolkachev spoke faster, describing new security procedures he faced. Tolkachev was undeterred, as determined as ever.

Plunkert spoke in Russian, explaining why they had missed the earlier meetings: they had spotted KGB surveillance.

Tolkachev abruptly stopped in his tracks and looked at Plunkert wide-eyed. “You have surveillance?”

“No, no!” Plunkert responded, he meant on previous evenings. Tolkachev was relieved. They walked.

Plunkert realized every word was important and asked if he could turn on a recorder. Tolkachev said yes. Plunkert switched on his concealed tape recorder so the voices could be replayed later at the Moscow station and headquarters. They traded packages—film, batteries, and books for the agent, sixteen rolls of exposed film for the case officer.
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As they were almost finished, they heard a crunching of boots on the snow. Tolkachev and Plunkert glanced anxiously at a tall, senior army officer in uniform walking toward them. They froze. He walked right past, and they exhaled.

After just twenty minutes, they parted. When Plunkert glanced back to make sure Tolkachev was all right, he had melted away.

Plunkert walked back to the wide Moscow boulevard known as the Garden Ring Road and boarded a bus. He sat in the very back, behind all the other passengers. He took off his Russian coat and eyeglasses, then reached into the sack, removed his American street clothes, and put them on. It all happened very fast, just before the bus stopped, and he jumped off. No one had seen him, but he was still apprehensive. What if the KGB was now out looking for him? Two militiamen stood by the door at the embassy, as always. When Plunkert saw another American return from walking his dog, he rushed in, close behind. He walked to the apartment of two colleagues and silently handed them the package from the spy, to be brought to the station in the morning. Plunkert couldn’t speak; the apartments were probably bugged. But he signaled thumbs-up and accepted a whiskey in a water glass. He felt a surge of relief and exhilaration.

The CIA attempted repeatedly to replicate Tolkachev’s building pass, down to the delicate indigo swirls on the paper. At last, Tolkachev said the most recent replica, given to him in May, was good enough. For several months, he used it to smuggle documents out. But suddenly, in August, the institute security procedures changed yet again. Now there was an entirely new pass for checking out documents.

The CIA forgery, so long in the making, was rendered useless.

“It is now extremely difficult, if not impossible, for
cksphere
to take documents home,” Plunkert reported. “There are special permission slips which
cksphere
could use, but extensive use of these slips would surely cast suspicion upon him.” Plunkert wrote that his “visceral” feeling was that Tolkachev “is concerned, due to conditions of work and health, that life is getting tougher and that perhaps his best days are behind him.”

Plunkert’s observations threw the CIA into a fresh round of uncertainty. In a cable to headquarters, the Moscow station described a confluence of factors weighing on Tolkachev: the new security rules, his mental state, and the fact that he was thinking about copying documents with much riskier means, such as the concealed Tropel cameras. Headquarters responded by saying perhaps they should ask for a six-month time-out, to give Tolkachev a breather. The Moscow station agreed. The station said Tolkachev seemed concerned about his security when he talked with Plunkert. “If he sees danger signs—and we think he does—it is possible they are more ominous than he is ready to admit,” the station told headquarters.
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The film Tolkachev passed to Plunkert on December 7 processed perfectly: another 499 pages of secret documents.

For a spy who had saved the United States billions of dollars, Tolkachev’s personal requests remained modest. His son, Oleg, had entered an architect’s training institute, and drafting equipment in the Soviet Union was poor. Could the CIA find a better-quality set in Eastern Europe or the West? Even the erasers in Moscow were shoddy, Tolkachev complained. They left greasy marks on the drawings. Could the CIA find four or five better-quality erasers? “Czech erasers have pretty good quality,” Tolkachev wrote. “My son has been able to obtain half of such an eraser from acquaintances, and we are using it now, but it won’t last him for long.” He also wanted two or three large bricks of Chinese dry black drafting ink and three or four high-quality drawing pens.
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