The Falcon and the Snowman (23 page)

There weren't any problems for Chris on the job: he was continuing to impress his TRW superiors as a likely candidate for promotion, and the CIA offered him another job—this time as a courier between the United States and the bases in Australia. He turned down the offer, realizing that before the CIA hired him he would have to take a lie-detector test that almost certainly would reveal his thefts from the Black Vault. Chris still hated the agency and what it stood for—more now than ever. But what had begun as an impulsive slap at a system he hated was becoming a nightmare. He constantly asked himself, Why haven't they caught us? Chris knew that Lee Harvey Oswald had visited the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City—the
same
embassy—and had been photographed by U.S. agents before John F. Kennedy was assassinated. He knew Daulton had entered the embassy twice. Surely, he told himself, someone must have spotted Daulton and discovered his transactions with the KGB.

There were not only the CIA and the FBI—and possibly the KGB—to worry about; there was Daulton himself. Somehow, the shape of his protest was being distorted. He now realized that Daulton was using some of the money he earned selling secrets about the satellites to expand his heroin trade, and occasionally Chris saw what it did to his customers: there were reports of two customers who had died from heroin overdoses and rumors of a third. One day, near the end of 1975, when Chris dropped by Daulton's home he found a girl, a high school student, lying on the living-room floor. Daulton and several friends were looking down at her, uncertain what to do. Heroin had transmuted the young girl's complexion to an ugly shade of bluish green; there was a gurgle originating somewhere in her chest, and gray saliva had foamed around her mouth. Chris mobilized two other girls in the room, and they undressed the overdosed adolescent and stood her up in a shower. He left the Lee house as soon as that was accomplished, but as he drove away he felt guilt for not having the courage to stay longer, and even more guilt for allowing his protest to be twisted into a medium for killing young people. He asked himself then, as he would many times in the following months: What have I done? What monster have I helped to create?

Chris realized that he had set a trap for himself—and it was beginning to squeeze around him. One of the first things Chris did in 1976 was buy a .25-caliber automatic. He didn't know if, or how, he would use it.

Sometimes when Chris became depressed, he wondered,
Is what I am doing so wrong?
At night, when he was lying in bed and thoughts of the espionage scheme weighed on him, Chris would recall later, he could hear the creaky artificial leg of Rick, and then he had nightmarish visions of orange-and-white mushroom clouds rising into the sky, and he thought, once again, of the insanity of the superpowers—of mankind itself.

In his contempt for the empty nationalism and the CIA dirty tricks of which he was a part, Chris found an anchor to rationalize his decision to continue—and it was reinforced daily as he read of still more CIA activities of which he disapproved.

The communications operators at Pilot were sloppy; they frequently sent messages on the circuit to Pedal that were supposed to go to other stations on the CIA circuit. Some of the messages told of CIA operations and machinations that spanned the globe. When Chris saw the messages clack over his machines, he immediately signaled back:
PEDAL CANNOT PROTECT
.

The operator at Langley would then request destruction of the message and a tight lip about his goof. Chris responded that he was complying with the request, but sometimes he held a copy of the errant message, to show to other members of the TRW security organization who enjoyed reading the agency's missent mail.

Chris increasingly found solace for his confused, ambivalent conscience in drugs and drinks. Early in 1976, Daulton told him that if he was not careful he might become an alcoholic. When all else failed—when even alcohol didn't work—Chris always had one other escape to fall back on. He went to the hills and flew his falcon.

Other demons were taunting Daulton. He feared that he was losing his on-again, off-again struggle against heroin. Unlike some addicts, he occasionally managed to kick the addiction by himself; he would keep himself off the drug for two or three months, then be drawn back to its pleasures. A lot of the money he was getting from the Russians was going for heroin, sometimes at a rate of $1,000 a week—not injected but snorted. Daulton had prided himself that he could always “turn off” his addiction when he wanted, but as he confessed to Betsy Lee Stewart, it was becoming harder and harder to do so; he also dreaded the prospect of returning to jail, and was depressed because he was not getting what he wanted most—the respect of his father.

Dr. Lee had continued to let his son live at home during his frequent encounters with narcotics officers, but did not conceal his displeasure over what had become of Daulton. His disappointment surfaced particularly painfully for Daulton in an ugly scene on Christmas Eve.

All of the family had been home for the holidays. The Christmas tree was surrounded, as usual, by a mountain of packages. There were cocktails and then champagne with dinner, and both father and son were close to being drunk when the confrontation began:

“For God's sake, why don't you get out of this dope racket and do something constructive? Be useful,” Dr. Lee pleaded.

“Jesus Christ,” Daulton exploded angrily. “Do you know what I'm doing? I'm working for the government right now. I'm working for the goddamned government right now.”

“Oh, sure.”

Dr. Lee's sarcasm clawed at Daulton.

“I am, I am,” he insisted.

His father grew angrier and angrier and finally left the room. Daulton broke into tears. “Why don't you believe me?” he said sobbingly. “I'm working for the CIA!”

Daulton concocted a plan that he believed would convince his father that he was a success: he would buy him a vacation home on the coast in Mexico—at Puerto Vallarta or Acapulco. He'd also get off smack and put some money into a legitimate business—maybe the Golden Cove Deli. David had learned it was available for $10,000.

Now he had to get the Russians to pay for both.

But he wondered again about Chris; he wasn't as free as he'd been at first with the stuff the Russians wanted. Daulton felt that he was in a squeeze: on one side he was being squeezed by the eager Russians, who had an insatiable appetite and were willing to pay sums that potentially could dwarf his income from drug dealing; and on the other, Daulton thought he was being squeezed by Chris, who wasn't giving the Russians some of the stuff they asked for. When he could not decide how to deal with his many problems, he retreated to heroin or cocaine yet again; more and more, drugs became the only refuge that gave him peace.

26

“You've got a letter here,” his sister said over the telephone from Santa Cruz.

The news excited Daulton. “Open it,” he said. Inside the envelope, Daulton's sister found only a picture postcard. She noticed that the handwriting on the card was unusual—lots of Cyrillic flourishes, which made her wonder if it had been written by a woman or a foreigner. The message was brief:

Dec. 22

Am anxious to look at your book of antique rugs, Luis. Looking forward to seeing you on your next visit.

Your friend

John

Daulton was delighted to receive the card. He needed cash to finance his escalating legal battle to avoid going back to jail. He flew to Mexico City on December 29, seven days after the date on the card, and following instructions received at his previous Mexico City meeting, met The Colonel that evening at the Bali Restaurant. The city was ablaze with the glow of neon lights depicting the Holy Family, the Christ Child and other tableaux that were a fixture in Mexico City during the holidays. Because the meeting had been called on short notice, Daulton told the Russian he had not had a chance to get much new information; he presented to him several KG-13 ciphers he had received several months previously from Chris and held for a future delivery. There was also another coded message from Chris. Later, when they decoded it, the KGB men discovered that they were accused of being “incompetent” by their secret source in California. Chris was piqued that the Soviets had taken so long to set up a phone link, and he told them so.

It was a routine delivery. The only problem was a clash over Daulton's living style. The Colonel complained that he was living too capitalistically and deplored Daulton's affection for Mexico City's fanciest hotels. Not only was such high life too conspicuous for a secret agent, he said, but—and this seemed to bother him even more—it was unbecoming for a servant of socialism. He gave Daulton the name of another hotel. Daulton had never heard of it, but reluctantly, he agreed to move; he checked out of his $50-a-day room in the Holiday Inn and rode in a taxi forty-five minutes to the outskirts of the city, each moment growing more unhappy. Spy or not, Daulton told himself, he wasn't going to live in the slums. He checked into the hotel, a small, two-story workingman's hotel in an industrial part of the city, and an hour later, without even opening his bag, he checked out and returned to the Holiday Inn. When he saw The Colonel the next morning, he ridiculed the Russians' choice. “It was a fleabag,” he protested. The Russian laughed but didn't try to change his mind; he was beginning to realize that Andrew Daulton Lee was not an easy agent to control.

Even though he didn't have much new data to offer the Russian, the trip proved to be one of Daulton's finer hours as a con man. He was, by now, getting the hang of dealing with the Soviets. He had learned how to whet their appetites with persuasive promises. With sky's-the-limit optimism, he confided to The Colonel that his friend believed that he had finally found a means to get information about the TRW infrared sensors. Moreover, he boasted, his friend was also optimistic about getting the frequencies used in the code-room transmissions. Both were lies, but they seemed to impress the agent. Finally, Daulton said that he was willing to go to Vienna for training and consultation—but only after he wrapped up some personal legal problems. They could discuss the timing of his trip after the first of the year, he added. Steely Teeth said he was delighted. In observance of the Christmas season, he presented Daulton with three bottles of French brandy and $5,000 in $100 bills. But the night did not produce a one-sided victory. Daulton got drunk, and under probing by the KGB man, he disclosed the full name of his friend in California.

Daulton didn't have to feign optimism when he returned to California.

“Look at the beautiful Benjies,” he gloated, fanning the bills in front of Chris. “Benjies” was his personal nickname for $100 bills. “Benjamin Franklin,” he once said of the man whose face appears on $100 bills, “is my favorite person.” Two years later, Chris would say of Daulton, still with a trace of grudging admiration, “He was really a talented huckster. All he needed, he'd say, was one more month and he'd have President Ford's own diary.”

When Daulton returned from Mexico City, his most pressing need was some legal magic. His hearing before Judge Donahue was scheduled for January 7, 1976, and it was certain that the district attorney's office would try to have him remanded immediately to prison. Furthermore, the narcotics agent who had been burned by Daulton in March—when he'd made the deal to act as an informant and then skipped to Mexico—had refiled charges of selling cocaine. Ken Kahn told Daulton that the policeman was furious and was out for blood.

“Kenny, get me out of this, whatever you have to do,” Daulton implored. Kahn said he would try, but it wouldn't be easy.

“We could send you to a shrink,” he suggested. And with that a plan took shape.

Judge Donahue had a reputation as a compassionate man who would give defendants every chance to rehabilitate themselves if there was the smallest chance of success. A defense strategy emerged: an attempt would be made to prove that Daulton had become, first, a drug user and, second, a drug pusher because of
treatable
psychiatric problems.

On January 7, Kahn urged Donahue to postpone the disposition of Daulton's case until he could undergo a psychiatric examination to determine if there was a chance he could be rehabilitated without prison. This was a turning point in a human life, the lawyer argued; it was an opportunity to save a young man from an exemplary family, a young man who had become trapped in the quicksand of drugs and now needed the court's hand to help pull him out. The judge agreed to an examination.

Two days later, Daulton returned to court to answer the charges of illicit drug sales that had been refiled by the undercover narcotics detective. But after a hearing at which the betrayed detective testified, Kahn won a ruling that the police raid in March had been made with a search warrant issued without sufficient grounds. Daulton was off the hook. As he walked out of the courtroom, Daulton was approached by the angry lawman.

“Lee, as long as it takes,” he said, “I'm going to get you. I'm going to burn you.”

Daulton looked up into the eyes of the detective, who stood almost a foot taller than he did, and decided that he meant it. But Daulton was not one to give anyone the edge, and not long afterward, when two Federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents approached him with an offer that he work as an informant for
them
, he said he wouldn't think of it; lying, he said that he'd agreed to work for a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department narc who had busted him once, and then the cop had leaked the knowledge that he was an informant to another pusher. The DEA men then complained to the Sheriff's Department about the bungling officer who had blown a potentially valuable informant.

Arrangements were made for Daulton to see a psychiatrist in Beverly Hills, and two weeks after the January 7 hearing, Judge Donahue read his report: