128 AMERICAN SPYpersonal motivations for pursuing this Soviet developmental. Stacy and I
were close friends with Scott and Amy, another station couple. They had
told us about their own nasty experience with the KGB in Leningrad. The
Leningrad KGB, known for being even more brutal than their Moscow
counterparts, smashed Scott and Amy’s car windshield and pulled Scott
(a husky 220-pound man) through the jagged glass opening. They then
handcuffed Scott and Amy and separated them from each other and from
their small daughter and hauled them off for interrogation at KGB head-
quarters. Shortly thereafter the Soviet government declared them persona
non grata and expelled them from the Soviet Union. After hearing of their
family’s unnecessarily horrific experience at the hands of the KGB, I was
doubly motivated to turn the tables on the Russians.
Scott was senior to me, with extensive Soviet experience. He and I
worked closely together to coordinate a slow, “natural,” and deliberate
cultivation of this potentially valuable asset. Amy worked relentlessly to
monitor all Soviet/bloc activity in Palmera and one day tipped me off that
Boris had a doctor’s appointment in half an hour at a health clinic across
the street from the station. I parlayed that timely heads-up into another
“off the grid” lunch meeting with Boris.
All of our social contacts were either seemingly accidental or arranged
in advance, and we studiously avoided monitored office telephones. Boris
was remarkably relaxed during our encounters, which typically took place
over lunch or at receptions, including his own national day reception at the
Soviet embassy. Hundreds of locals and foreign expats were in attendance,
so my presence there on that date was unremarkable. Although alcohol was
officially banned by then president Gorbachev at all Soviet functions, Boris
invited me to a back room where the “secret” embassy bar was hidden.
There, under the watchful gaze of an airbrushed portrait of a blemish-
free Gorbachev, we continued our good-natured but purposeful verbal
sparring over several rounds of Russian vodka. Over time we developed
a friendship and relationship of (relative) trust, something rather unusual
between a CIA officer and his KGB counterpart. Much of our time was
spent swapping jokes (and lies) along with accusing each other’s service of
clearly being the more heinous.
After one friendly lunch not far from the station, Boris gave me a lift
back to the office in his dip-plated vehicle. He played some Russian pop