Undercover with FBI Counterintelligence
Moscow, July 1994
After finishing our meal at Santa Fe, Edward Lee Howard and I returned to the Radisson Hotel and ascended its grand spiral marble staircase to the Business Center.
Howard had brought along his copy of Richard Cote's rewrite, which I now had to edit.
As
we walked, I asked, "Do you ever get recognized by anyone, Ed?"
"Only
once," Howard replied. "By a
foreign student in Budapest who had just read the David Wise book about
me. He freaked out."
We
settled at a conference table and set to work, a page-by-page analysis.
I noted Howard's corrections, additions,
deletions; Howard chain-smoked Doral cigarettes throughout.
When
we finished, Howard went off for a sauna in the hotel's health club.
I returned to my room to empty my head into a
pocket notebook.
At 8:45 p.m. I returned
to the lobby, a lavish affair with a gargantuan chandelier, beneath which a
pianist tapped out musical notes that flew around the huge,
acoustically-challenged room without cohesion.
Howard
found me inspecting an arcade of display windows.
"What's
all this about?" I motioned at Gianni Versace couture and crocodile shoes.
"The
average Russian can't afford this stuff," sneered Howard with disdain. "He earns about $80 a
month. Shall we have a drink at the
Press Club?"
We
entered the club. Howard signed a membership book and we rumped our rears on
stools at the bar. Howard ordered Pepsis
for us both.
"You
do pretty well in Russian," I said.
"I
do okay. I don't speak that great, but I
understand everything."
On
stage nearby, a trio of musicians performed a masterful rendition of the theme
from the movie Once Upon a Time in
America.
An unexpected pleasure for
me though Howard seemed oblivious to its poignancy.
"So
what's next?" I said.
"What
do you mean?"
"After
Safe House is published. Any plans to write another book?"
"I
hadn't thought about it," said Howard.
"You have something in mind?"
"Matter
of fact I do." I sipped my
Pepsi. "Spy's Guide to Central
Europe."
Howard
smiled. "Yeah, I like that."
"A
tongue-in-cheek travel guide with a spy theme," I continued. "After all, who knows Central Europe
better than a well-traveled spy?"
"I
could do that," said Howard.
"Moscow,
St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Vienna, et cetera. Hotels and restaurants, bars and nightclubs,
museums, shopping..."
"And
you'd publish this yourself?" asked Howard.
"That's
right. My own imprint. Enigma Books.
Nothing to do with National Press."
"Yeah,
I like that."
"You
research it," I said. "I'll
write it. You get the byline, because
you're the spy!"
Howard
smiled big. He really, truly loved this
idea.
We
drained our soda and sauntered out for Howard's nickel tour of Moscow.
He parked near Red Square. Young men loitered all around, checking us
out. Howard told me his Volvo had been
busted into once.
"And I had a tire
slashed a couple weeks ago," he added. "Some hoodlum knew I was in a Western-style supermarket. He thought I'd put down a bag of groceries to
change my tire and then he'd grab the bag and run."
A
young man approached us, said he wanted to sell old Russian postage
stamps. We told him no, but he
persisted, following us for five minutes before finding others to harass, and
we wandered around St. Basil's Cathedral.
Howard
pointed to a viewing stand above the Kremlin wall.
"That's where I viewed the May Day
Parade with the generals," he reminisced. "Most of them
are disgraced now."
He pointed to
another ornate building, now derelict.
"That used to be the Communist Party Museum."
We
returned to where Howard had parked.
"My car is still there," he said, as if he expected it not to be.
"I
guess things have changed here, Ed?"
"Yeah,
it's gotten rough."
"Do
you see yourself always living in Moscow?"
"No,"
said Howard. "I don't know. I'd like to visit Chile, Argentina."
"To
live?"
"I
wish. But they'd find me."
"How?"
"Through
family."
Howard
drove us to his apartment in Old Town, the Arbat district, which featured narrow
and dark roads.
He exchanged greetings with his concierge, a babushka who
lived on the ground floor and observed other tenants and their guests.
Up one flight of stairs, Howard keyed two
locks.
"Does
Moscow have a burglary problem?" I asked.
"It's
getting worse."
We
entered a long corridor. I followed
Howard into the first room on the right, his kitchen; he put kettle to gas
fire.
"Just
as well you decided to stay at the Radisson," said Howard. "During the summer they take turns
switching off hot water in districts around Moscow. Mine has been off for three weeks."
He
showed me around his pad. On one end, a
living room with a small, glass-enclosed terrace, overlooking some trees; at
the other end, two small bedrooms, one transformed into a home-office.
"I
guess I'll stay here tonight," sighed Howard.
Normally, he would drive 40 minutes to his
dacha.
I
was glad to be staying elsewhere; Howard's apartment gave me the creeps.
We
sat in the living room.
"You
own this place?" I asked.
"Yeah. Yeltsin gave apartment dwellers a one-time
chance to buy their apartment for a token fee. I'm told it's now worth $300,000."
"And
the dacha? You own that?"
"No." Howard shook his head. "I may lose it."
"Why?"
"Budget
cutbacks. There's two things that could
happen: One, some general wants it, they
take it from me and give it to him. Or
two, they just shut it down, no one lives there."
"Why
would they do that?"
"It's
expensive to maintain. Constant
repairs. Full-time security. I can see them saying, It's too expensive,
shut it down."
"What
would you do, live here?"
Howard
shrugged. "I'd have to."
The
kettle whistled. I followed Howard back
into his kitchen; he brewed two cups of English breakfast tea.
I
sat at his small table. Howard remained
on his feet. A propos of nothing, he
returned to The Deal we had touched
on earlier in the day.
"It's
awfully tempting to try to make a deal like that," said Howard. "But I've made a life here. I've been here nine years. I've set up a business. It would be hard to turn my back on
that."
"If
that's the case, I guess you ought to stick it out," I said.
But
Howard was just rationalizing.
"The
U.S. government should have to pay me back for these nine years," he
continued. "You know, there's
something called the Mole Relief Act. I think it means that if I'm proven
innocent, the government would have to compensate me for the nine years of
misery they've caused."
"Really?"
"Yeah,
I read about it recently. The Mole
Relief Act.” He pulled out a pack of
cigarettes. “I'm going to smoke. Let's go out on the terrace."
I
followed Howard through the living room to his narrow terrace. He grew pensive, took me through his exchange
of faxes with FBI Special Agent John H.
"Maybe
you could write something for me I could fax to him," said Howard. "But there's still a problem with the
Russians."
"Why?"
"My
KGB contacts will say, Don't rock the boat.
They'll say, we're fine with
what you're doing, but if word filters up to Yeltsin's people, it may mean
trouble."
Howard
wanted to take a walk, so we grabbed our jackets and aimed ourselves into a
light drizzle outside.
His street was
dark and muddy.
"A
couple of female news correspondents rent an apartment above me, one English,
one American," said Howard. "I've invited down for drinks a few times, but they've thought of
every excuse not to come."
"Do
they know who you are?"
"No. Nobody knows.
I go by the name Ed Janovich. I
keep a low profile."
Within a couple of minutes we reached Arbat's
main street, a winding pedestrian precinct.
Scores of teenagers congregated on the cobblestoned path, blasted on
booze. Empty beer bottles strewn around;
broken glass littered the pavement. Vodka and cigarettes changed hands at a busy kiosk.
Nearby, a roaring fire in a large trash can
warmed whoever needed toasting. It made
me think of the proles in George
Orwell's 1984.
"This
is the most fashionable street in Moscow," said Howard.
We
strolled past Baskin-Robbins, closed at this hour, about 11 p.m. Then a pizzeria. Howard wanted to pop in for dessert, but they
were closing, too.
It
seemed like Howard wanted the evening to continue, to be in my presence as long
as he could; starved, perhaps, for American companionship.
Years later, a scene in the TV series Millennium reminded me of Howard this
July night in Moscow:
The character
Frank Black recognizes a devil and says, "You must be so
lonely." When the devil repeats
this line to three other devils sitting inside a donut shop, they look down, recognizing
the truth they all share and, one by one, they slink out into the night.
Howard
and I turned around, walked past the young drunks of Arbat. Ed bought a pack of Dorals from the kiosk and
we trudged through sludge to his apartment building.
"You
want to come back in?" asked Ed.
"Nah,
I'm beat. Let's call it a night."
As
he drove me to the Radisson, Howard said, "Can you believe this is the
best part of Moscow? You can't imagine
what it's like in other parts of town."
Sad. So very sad. For Moscow. For Howard.
Next
morning, 6:15 sharp, Howard rounded into the Radisson's forecourt. Punctuality was a trait he shared with John H, his FBI pursuer.
I climbed in, and we
took off to the airport.
"I
really like your idea about a Spy's Guide," said Howard, as I prepared to
launch from his car.
"Great."
"I
could take research trips myself. Would
you cover expenses?"
"Of
course."
"And
you think there's money in it?"
I
nodded. "I'll pay your time, at
least."
"Would
I make a couple of thousand?" asked Howard.
"At
least that."
"Then
I'll do it." Howard double-parked
outside the departures.
We
shook hands on Spy's Guide.
I
ventured into the terminal, a gauntlet of exit hurdles to vault.
Behind me, Edward Lee Howard returned to his
austere existence as a defector.