The Main Enemy by Milton Bearden (epub e reader txt) 📕

in getting to the substance of his visit. Wolf’s wife, Andrea, would later dismiss Hathaway as a “typical bureaucrat.”

Hathaway found Wolf willing to listen, but not interested in coming over to the CIA. He treated the exchange as an entertainment—countering Hathaway’s offer of resettlement in California with the statement that life in Siberia wasn’t too bad, either. Wolf was all elusive affability and still a master of his game. He would later describe Hathaway as deadly serious in his efforts to get him to shed light on the terrible losses the CIA had suffered five years earlier.

After that brief meeting, no one ever returned to see if Markus Wolf had changed his mind. Hathaway left a typed card with a contact number in New York and a parole for Wolf to use should he ever want to get in touch, but we never heard from him again.

   6   

East Berlin, June 1990

David Rolph had been through this routine at least a dozen times over the last few weeks, and it was starting to get a little tedious. It seemed that every Soviet who had managed to buy a ticket for a bus vacation in East Germany now wanted to defect to the West. Over the years there had always been a small handful of Soviet walk-ins, but now the floodgates had opened. Rolph was screening as many as four a week, all seeking political asylum. Most were simple tourists, with no special knowledge of interest to the CIA. Rolph and other officers took turns with the screening and politely directed them to seek refugee status through the normal immigration channels. One look at the young Soviet in the waiting room and Rolph sighed and began to think about how soon he could send him on his way. He was wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and a baseball cap and had approached one of the Marine guards, who called to tell Rolph that another walk-in was in the waiting room. As he took him in, Rolph saw a young man in his early thirties and quickly dismissed him as a Russian tourist, just another unhappy factory worker from Leningrad or Moscow.

Rolph was too tired of these sessions to go through the standard, highly structured debriefing process with yet another tourist. He figured he would cut it short and have the guy out the door in a couple of minutes.

“What can I do for you?” he asked far too casually. He didn’t even bother to sit down.

“I want to go to America,” the man answered.

How many times had he heard that line? “Well, that’s very difficult,” Rolph said. “There is a lot of paperwork, and we really can’t help you here.” Time to get rid of this stiff, he thought.

“Oh, I thought it might be possible, because I am a Soviet officer.”

Rolph stopped short. “What did you say?”

“I am a fighter pilot.”

Rolph eased into a chair across from the young man, realizing with a jolt that he had nearly managed to throw a good prospect out on his ear.

Rolph’s Russian tourist turned out to be a major in the Soviet Air Force, a decorated veteran of the Afghan War and now a flight instructor teaching new Soviet pilots how to fly the latest, nonexport version of the Soviet Union’s most advanced fighter, the MiG-29. He was stationed at a Soviet air base not far from Leipzig, deep in East Germany, and had come to East Berlin on his day off in order to contact the Americans.

Quickly trying to make amends for his earlier casual approach, Rolph asked the Soviet how long he could spend before he had to leave. About forty-five minutes, he replied. Rolph handed him a legal notepad and told him to write down as much as he could remember about the MiG-29 that he believed was considered secret. “I don’t know anything about MiGs,” Rolph said. “But we have people in Washington who do. If they are interested in what you write down, then we can work with you.”

Rolph left the Soviet alone for the full forty-five minutes, and when he returned, he found that the Soviet had filled a dozen pages with notes and drawings. He took the notes and told the pilot that if Washington was interested in what he had provided, he would meet him in an East Berlin park the following Saturday. He also told him never to come back to the embassy.

Rolph sent the Soviet’s handwritten notes to CIA headquarters by a secure fax, and the next day Langley cabled back that the pilot was the real thing. His notes had already revealed details about the MiG-29 that American military experts hadn’t known and were very much worth pursuing.

When the two men met as scheduled in an East Berlin park the next Saturday, the pilot agreed to stay in place and spy until the CIA could arrange for his escape. Rolph told him they could meet in a park in Leipzig, which was only a half-hour bus ride away from the Soviet air base where he was stationed. Rolph gave him a camera so that he could secretly take photographs of MiG-29 manuals and other classified materials stored at the base. If he ever missed a meeting, the fallback plan called for Rolph to wait for him two nights later in a small German village about three kilometers from his base.

The MiG pilot took to espionage with relish and began to hand over dozens of photographs of Soviet Air Force manuals. Soon he started asking Rolph to tell him what his CIA code name was. Revealing a crypt to an agent was frowned upon, but the pilot kept asking, and in the end Rolph gave in.

“You are SPANIEL.”

“Spaniel, like a dog?” asked the incredulous pilot. “You call me a dog!”

Rolph tried to explain that the code names were generated randomly by computers and that the name was not a reflection of what the CIA thought of him. That didn’t soothe the infuriated Soviet, who