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| Monaco, mid-1980s |
Washington D.C., October 1993
On the drive up River Road past the pastoral horse farms of Potomac, John H spoke of his love for Albuquerque, where he
had settled his family twelve years earlier.
About to celebrate his 25th year with the FBI, he had evaded the fast
track, and administrative posts, preferring to ensconce his wife and two sons
in one home after early stints in New York City and Seattle.
The Bureau offers this kind of non-ambitious
career to those who want to hunker down and steer clear of supervisory roles at
Headquarters.
John
H was born in Germany. His parents, of
Russian extraction, spent the latter part of World War II in a displaced
persons camp. Given the choice of
returning to the Soviet Union or emigrating to America, it was no contest. They settled in Michigan.
I
parked the car in quaint Potomac Village and we nabbed a quiet table at
Renato's, an up-market Italian restaurant.
I
ordered a glass of pinot grigio. John H
asked for ice water.
"It's
not because I'm on duty," he said.
"I'd join you, but I can't drink."
"Can't
drink alcohol?"
John
H shook his head. "When I was four years-old, in Germany, there was a big party going on, lots of wine everywhere.
I snuck down to the basement and drank a whole bottle of wine. They had to rush me to the hospital. I was sick for days, almost didn't make it. The result is, just the odor of wine sends me
reeling."
John
H ordered ravioli; I, a pizza. For the
next hour he filled many pages with meticulous notes about my background.
"When
I was 14, in 1969, living in southern California, my family traveled to
London for what was supposed to be a three-week summer vacation," I
began. "We never returned, swapped sunny blue skies for dark clouds and rain.
I think my father was suffering a mid-life crisis, long before that
phrase became fashionable. Anyway, he
wanted to grab a hold on life before it grabbed a hold on him.
“The
entrepreneurial project that facilitated our upheaval—trans-Atlantic charter
flights—disintegrated. And my mother had a great idea for going into business: Cheesecake."
"Cheesecake?"
"Yup. London didn’t have any. And my mother had a killer recipe. The Hard Rock Cafe had just opened. It became their first customer, for which my mother baked five cheesecakes each
day. Pretty soon they were up to 40 cakes a day for a handful of customers.
My mother baked from six in the morning till eight at night, in an oven
so small it had room only for two cakes per baking. My father delivered the cakes and, directed by my mother, found new customers. My grandmother washed cake tins. My brother and I earned our pocket money
grinding cookies for the cake crust in an old milk-shake mixer we'd brought from California and which needed an electrical transformer three times its weight in order to work without electrocuting anyone.
"I’d eat cheesecake for breakfast and arrive home from the American School every afternoon to rows and rows of cooling cheesecakes in the
living room. My parents' operation was
bursting out of our house, so they found a retail shop down the road and soon added chocolate cake and apple pie to their production schedule."
John
H smiled. He no doubt wondered what my
family's cake business had to do with my ability to ruse Edward Lee Howard. But he had to hear the whole story for it to
make any sense.
"Soon, business was so good my parents needed even more space," I continued. "My dad wanted to buy the lease of a
run-down restaurant next door, and remove the wall dividing both premises, create
one large bake-house. The landlord gave
an oral approval, but after taking my parents’ key money he demanded a much
higher rent to consummate the arrangement in writing. My dad refused on principle. So the wall didn't come down. My parents used the restaurant space for
storage and finishing cakes.
"When the
landlord saw this, he squawked: 'You
can't run a baking operation in there because the lease stipulates it has to be a
restaurant.'
 |
December 1974, London
That (real) '70s Show |
"I was just out of high
school, and I said to my parents, 'Okay, I'll open a restaurant in the front
part and that'll satisfy the lease.'
"We
already had tables and chairs, an old microwave oven and assorted cooking appliances.
"With a little paint, and
some partitions, I had it up and running within a month and called it Tricky
Dick's Coffee House, after our sitting president, who was on his last legs. One of our menu specialties was
Alger Hiss Pumpkin Pie."
John
H chuckled.
(Hiss, a spy in the U.S.
State Department, had hidden the self-incriminating microfiche in a pumpkin
patch; Tricky Dick Nixon, then a U.S. Attorney, had successfully prosecuted
him.)
"It
became an institution," I continued. "Not because it was a front for a baking operation, but because it
was an anarchist's picnic, full of eccentric characters.
“I
left the place in my brother's hands, sporadically, and ventured off to college
in the States. First Cape Cod, then American University in Washington, D.C., but never
stayed long enough to get a degree. I studied criminology and political
science and got to know a Georgetown University professor named Carroll
Quigley, who took me under his wing and coached me along, sending me out of his
office with controversial books in brown bags.
 |
| Tim Hardin |
“Tricky
Dick's was my practical education, hiring and firing staff, dealing with the
mentally insane, people with names like Bronco John and Burned-out Paul.
"Tim Hardin, the folksinger, was living in a
squat around the corner, down-and-out, a recovering heroin addict on methadone. He’d come in and sing If I Were a Carpenter for his dinner and a pint of whiskey, and he’d make up new lyrics
extemporaneously, and customers, who had no idea he had written the song, would try to correct him."
"So
you dealt with all sorts of people?" said John H.
"On-the-job
psychology and sociology. Later, on the
basis of this life experience, I
managed to get into a university graduate program."
"Of
course," said John H. much amused, mind somewhat boggled, and no doubt thinking, this will keep the security-checkers
busy. "Where?"
"The
University of Southern California ran a Master's program in International Relations out of the U.S. Navy’s European Headquarters building in London. I took a couple of illuminating courses and field
trips: To NATO and the EEC in Brussels, OECD in Paris, and the U.S. Army Russian
Institute in Garmisch.
"Anyway,
my family's cake business finally moved to a factory, so we folded Tricky
Dick's when our lease expired in 1978. I
started writing for a folksy expat newspaper called The American that catered to Americans living in the UK."
"But
how did you get into journalism without any training?" John H scratched his head.
"Same
way I got into the restaurant business:
serendipity. You ever heard of
Bilderberg?"
Like
most other people, John H had not.
"When I was a student at American University I wrote a term paper on the Bilderberg Group."
"Bilder... what?"
"An assembly of captains and kings from Western Europe and North American who meet secretly once a year, some say to rule the world."
"When I got back to London, I rewrote my paper and submitted it to a magazine called Verdict.
"They bought it, published it, and when I saw my scribing in print, I wanted to become a journalist.
"My breakthrough came when I infiltrated the
Ku Klux Klan."
John
H put his pen down and shook his head, incredulous. "Tell me about that."
I took a deep breath; it was a long story, but a good one.
"The
KKK was trying to establish a branch, what they call a Klavern, in Britain. I
penetrated their operation so well, the Imperial Wizard from South Carolina
appointed me its leader. I sold it to the
Sunday People, a high-circulation UK
tabloid, and we lured all the British Klan recruits to a London hotel,
photographed and tape-recorded them saying horrible things about what wanted to
do in Britain, like tar and feather inter-racial
couples."
John
H scribbled with gusto. “Go on.”
"The
Klan’s Imperial Wizard, Robert E. Scoggin, was impressed by my progress and he decided I
had to visit him in South Carolina and get naturalized, his
term for initiation, to make it official."
"You went there?"
"I did. Me and two reporters from the Sunday
People flew to Spartanburg, South Carolina, checked into a Days Inn motel
near the interstate.
"A welcoming
committee picks us up and drives us to Scoggin’s ranch house, pick-up trucks parked everywhere. They guide us into his dark garage and point us
up a creaky staircase. At the top, I
knock a closed door.
"Scoggin opens. He’s decked out in a gold satin robe and hood and he beckons us into his Klan
den, decorated with KKK posters hanging on the walls illuminated with
fluorescent blacklight.
First he takes
us for 20 bucks each, 'membership dues.'
Then he stands us near his altar: a table draped with an American flag, an unsheathed sword and a Bible
opened to Corinthians 12.
"Finally, he
ushers in a bunch of robed Klansmen and women to form a semi-circle around
us. Thus begins a 30-minute ceremony
during which the Imperial Wizard taps our shoulders with his sword and anoints
us with holy water. At the very end,
Scoggin points to a snakeskin nailed to the wall and says, ‘I got that rattlesnake before it got me and
that’s what you’ve got to do with Klan traitors.’
"Then they bring out a tape measure.”
“A
tape measure?” asks John H.
“To
size us for up for our robes and hoods.”
John
H grinned, shaking his head. “Tell me
more.”
“We
spend a week there, attending meetings, handling illegal weapons. On the last day of our visit, Imperial Wizard
Scoggin takes us on a tour of the Blue Ridge Mountains on our way to a
tri-state KKK rally in North Carolina.
I’m driving our rental car, with Scoggin in the front passenger seat and
the two reporters sitting in back.
“I’m
using an alias with the Klan. My only
genuine ID is my UK driver’s license, which I’d packed with my clothes in the
trunk. We do our little tour, during which Scoggin
introduces us to the oldest Klansman in the country, about 92, who looks like
the guy holding the pitchfork in Grant Wood’s famous painting American Gothic. At dusk we cross the border into North
Carolina and find the rally site.
“The
state police have set up a roadblock and we stop behind a long line of cars on
a single-lane dirt road headed into the rally.
I can see up ahead the state trooper is asking to see ID and car papers,
And I’m thinking, Holy crap, the KKK from
three states is about to find out I’m not who I claim to be. The reporters behind me, too, click to the
notion that we’re about to get burned, seriously caught out, and so they’re also looking for an exit
ramp.
"But there’s nowhere to drive,
we’re stuck in a long line of cars, and there’s nowhere to run. I inch closer. Finally, it’s my turn.
"The trooper bends down, looks at me through
the rolled-down window. ‘License and
registration,’ he drawls.
"I pluck the car rental agreement from the glove compartment, hand it to
him. He looks at it, grunts, hands it
back. ‘License,’ he says.
"‘It’s in the trunk," I say.
"Well, go get it," he replies.
"So I climb out. The Imperial Wizard gets out, too, meets me at the back of the car. With the trooper on my left, and Scoggin on
my right, I open the trunk. Both men
are watching as I rummage through my dirty clothes.
"Just as I'm about to locate my license, Scoggin turns
to the trooper and offers his right hand. 'Hi, I’m Bob,' he drawls, 'Imperial Wizard for South Carolina.'"
"The
trooper breaks into a broad smile and says, 'Well, why didn’t you say so,
Bob! You boys go right on through!'"
“Wow!" Says John H. "That’s a good story.”
“Every word, true. So, anyway, I close the trunk and we roll into the
rally site. They have our robes and
hoods waiting for us—red robes, because they made us Kleagles, which is Klan-speak for officer,
since they believed we were going to command the KKK back in Britain.
"But, of course," I add, "that's not what happens."
"What happens?"
"The Sunday People runs two successive front-page, center- spread stories exposing the KKK in Britain and the USA. It ended all Klan activity in the UK forever.
"After
that, I worked freelance for the Sunday
People’s investigative department.
It was a great place to train, under a legendary investigative editor
named Laurie Manifold. I developed my
own stories and specialized in undercover penetrations.
"I infiltrated cults, Ponzi schemes, neo-Nazis, and
a pro-violence anarchist group called Class
War. I was the Prince of Ruse, fooling sleazeballs and scumbags, and exposing them. It's
like being an actor, except you make up your lines as you go along. Main thing I learned, if you don't believe your own cover story, don't expect anyone else to
believe it either.”
John
H sat affixed to his timeline. “What
next?”
"In
1981 I was invited to Poland to write a book about the Solidarity movement,
which had just exploded over there."
"How
did that happen?" asked John H.
"I
received a letter from a Polish journalist."
John
H eyed me with skepticism. "Out of
the blue?"
"Yeah. No, not entirely. He'd read a short book I wrote about
Bilderberg, The Global Manipulators, which
the publisher had advertised in The
Economist.
"He tracked me down and
interviewed me on his radio show about which persons Jimmy Carter, our newly
elected president, would choose for his cabinet.
"I predicted almost all of them correctly,
based on my investigation of the Trilateral Commission, which was borne out of Bilderberg. A few months later his letter of invitation
arrived and pretty soon after that I traveled to Warsaw and Gdansk.
"It resulted in a book, Strike for Freedom! Published in 1982 by Dodd, Mead. After that, after martial law was declared
and Lech Walesa imprisoned, I did more work in Poland, for ABC News."
"When?"
"1984. They gave me a six-month contract
to focus on the outlawed Solidarity underground."
"How
did that come about?"
"My
Polish contact was privy to a secret dialog going on between Solidarity and the
Polish government. ABC News was basking
in glory over their documentary about secret negotiations behind the Iran
embassy hostage release, so they were gung-ho on this sort of thing. I traveled to Poland a number of times,
supplied video equipment to key activists in Solidarity, and coordinated what
they produced.
"The secret dialog came to
nothing, but we were able to report the effectiveness of the underground. How,
for instance, its technicians could cut into the official TV nightly news broadcasts and
announce, 'These newscasters are lying!'
And when Popieluszko, the priest, was kidnapped and murdered by members
of the Polish secret police, we photographed the secret uncensored transcript
of their trial and I smuggled it out of Poland."
John
H smiled, scribbled on. "How did
you get in and out of Poland?"
 |
| Warsaw, Poland, 1984 |
"Business
visas."
"What kind of business?"
"I posed as a mushroom
salesman. I even spent one full day
traipsing around a city called Bydgozsz, tasting mushrooms and pretending to
check out a chain of fast-food mushroom restaurants. One place fed me a four-course meal with
everything made from mushrooms, including mushroom cake for dessert."
John
H raised an eyebrow.
"I never looked at mushrooms quite the same way again. Anyway, New Year's Eve '86, I moved
back to the States and realized I had to do something different. In Britain, freelance journalism is a
respectable occupation. But in the USA,
freelance is a euphemism for unemployed.
I wanted to stay in the information biz, so I became a literary
agent."
"How
did that happen?" John H scratched his head again.
"Serendipity,
as usual. Before leaving Britain I attended a conference on international terrorism at Ditchley Park and met
Robert Kupperman, one of the early pioneers of terrorism studies. Later, we lunched in Washington. Kupperman told me he wanted to write a
book. I knew a few people in book
publishing so I offered to help. I
drafted his proposal for a book called Final
Warning and sold it to Doubleday for six figures."
"So
you're still a literary agent?"
"Not
really. I wear that hat once in a
while. If somebody comes to me with
something good, I try to help them place it."
"So
what hat do you wear most of the time?" asked John H.
"Hold
on, we're getting there," I said.
"In 1988 I moved to Monaco."
"Where?"
"Monte
Carlo, on the French Riviera."
John
H put his open palm to forehead. More
scribbling.
"My
parents had been living in Monaco, and I'd visited a bunch of times through the 1980s. I always thought, this would be an interesting place to
live for a while. In the summer of '88 my
parents called to say a small apartment near theirs had become available. I flew over to take a look and signed a lease
on impulse. Monaco is like a glass
bubble, a very busy city-state removed from reality."
"What
accounts for that?"
"30,000 people, comprised of 93 nationalities, squeezed into a
mile-and-a-half square."
"What
did you do in Monaco?"
"Mostly,
I rationalized that I was there to discover literary talent. I met many interesting people. Out of that came a comic novel."
"Zubrick’s Rock. About a reclusive mega-millionaire who lives
in Monaco but loses his residency status due to involvement in a scandal. He has nowhere else to go. So he takes a long walk, wanders into
Monaco's wax museum and discovers that the reigning Grimaldis took Monaco by
force from the Spinola family 700 years ago.
So the protagonist digs up a
descendant of the Spinolas to legitimize a coup d'etat. The only Spinola he can find on short notice
is a low-life dentist in Hoboken who's an alcoholic and a compulsive
gambler."
John
H had stopped taking notes, studied me.
"After
Monaco I moved to Washington," I said.
"I met Clair George and became a consultant."
"What
kind of consultant?"
"Creative
problem resolution."
John
H smiled. "Go on."
"Private-sector intelligence, by appointment to billionaires and royalty.”
"Can
you tell me about it?"
"I'll
tell you about an assignment I'm currently working, because it relates to my ability
to handle Edward Howard by creating the right illusion.
"I'm involved in a complicated international
child custody case. I represent the
mother's side. The father was given
generous visitation rights, but he uses the child as leverage to extract money
from the mother, who comes from one of Europe's wealthiest families. The child hates being forced to spend time
with his nutcase father, who once tried to kidnap him. So the mother is on pins-and-needles every
summer when the boy is forced to spend five weeks with dad, who is under no
obligation to disclose where he goes with the boy. For five weeks the mother doesn't know where
her son is, or if the father will return him or try to kidnap him again. He'd been heard to mutter under his breath
that one day he'd run off with his son to South America.
“So
the mother hires me. I figure, what I
have to do is monitor this guy, especially when he has custody of his son. And, if possible, I need to influence, even
manipulate his actions, to render him harmless to my client and her son. To do this, I have to get to know the
father, insert myself into his existence."
I paused. "Shall I
continue?"
"Of
course."
"First
thing I do is hire a former CIA operative based in Europe to collect as much
information about the father as possible.
Out of this, I learn what makes the father tick. This is important, because I need to refine
the right story that'll get him to invite me into his life. You only get one shot at this from out of the
blue. I call him on the phone, make my
pitch.
"One week later, we're having
lunch together at a fancy restaurant in Paris.
After an hour of fine food and wine, he's telling me all about his
personal problems, including his ex-wife and their son. By the end of lunch, I'm his new best
friend. Come summer, not a day goes by
that I don't know where the kid is and what he's doing." I paused.
"I only take jobs with a high L.Q."
"L.Q.?"
"Laugh
Quotient. It's my criteria for accepting assignments. It's got to be funny or I won't do it."
John
H grinned. In his profession, he did not
often see this kind of perspective. He
settled the $18 tab and we strolled to my Volkswagen.
"Sorry
my background is so eclectic," I said.
"You
kidding?" said John H. "You
seem tailor-made for this job."
"So
what's your gut," I said. "Am
I heading east [to Moscow]?"
(Howard had already initiated an invitation through Roumanis, his alter-ego.)
"We've
still got hurdles," said John H.
"But I like what I'm hearing. My
gut instinct is that you'll be heading east.
Your name is Robert,” he added, attuned to some kind of metaphysical
wavelength. “That’s the codename Vitaly Yurchenko used to identify Howard.”
John H seemed tantalized by the poetry at play, as if these events had been deigned by the stars.
