A Secret Life (44 page)
Authors: Benjamin Weiser
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Germany, #World, #True Crime, #Espionage
Kuklinski could not refuse Skalski’s request, but the prospect of working through the night unnerved him. The whole family was supposed to be at Skok at 10:30 P.M. Kuklinski decided to prepare an abbreviated version of the paper, which took him into the early evening. At eight o’clock, he thanked his secretary, who had been typing the report, and asked her to be back the next day at 6:00 A.M.
At home, he drafted a short note to the CIA asking that the exfiltration be postponed until the following night at nine, with Saturday and Sunday as backup dates. He instructed Hanka and Waldek to remain at home and had Bogdan drive him to Skok, hoping to pass the message to the CIA. Bogdan dropped Kuklinski off near the site, and Kuklinski walked alone to Skok, waiting in the darkness for the car to appear. No one came.
After fifteen minutes, Kuklinski returned to where Bogdan was waiting, and they drove home. Kuklinski said they would try to send a message by Iskra the next day.
That night, Burggraf and Davis had gone out hoping to meet the family at Skok, but again had to abort after both found they were being trailed by SB officers. Back at her apartment, Burggraf prepared a scotch and resolved to try one more time on Friday. If they were unsuccessful, she concluded, Tom Ryan would have to make a final attempt to pick up the family on Saturday night on a drive in from Berlin. Burggraf mused that Berlin to Warsaw would be the longest surveillance detection run in history. If they were still thwarted, they would switch to yet another plan, an “exfil package.” A suitcase containing disguises, false travel documents, and currency was being sent from Langley via the CIA station in another East bloc country. It would be left at a dead drop, and Kuklinski and his family would use the contents to try to get out of Poland on their own.
The next morning, Friday, November 6, Burggraf cabled Langley to report the lack of progress. “The continuing presence of heavy surveillance [on the officers] made pickup of Gull and his family impossible last evening,” she wrote. “[Station] will plan to try once again this evening with a similar plan.”
Copies of the cables between Warsaw and Langley were being sent to Tom Ryan in Berlin. When he and his wife had been advised to stay there, Ryan had set a cover story in motion. Using an unsecured phone in the American consulate in Berlin, he called the chief of the political section in the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw. Ryan, whose cover was as a political officer, said that Lucille had seen a doctor in Berlin and would require further tests. Their return would be delayed by a few days. Their daughter, Maureen, would return sooner with friends. Since Poles would be monitoring the call, Ryan knew the SB now would not expect him back immediately or Maureen to be with her parents.
Kuklinski arrived at work on Friday at 6:00 A.M., greeted his secretary, and fortified himself with a cup of Turkish coffee. He put the final touches on the report for Skalski and handed it in well before 8:00 A.M. Skalski beamed. He would have extra time to review it before presenting it to Jaruzelski.
Kuklinski had not slept and was subsisting largely on coffee and cigarettes. Later that morning, he was visited by General Rakowski, a hard-liner on the General Staff. As they talked, an officer entered with a package for Kuklinski from Moscow. Kuklinski opened the carton and found cigarettes, vodka, and a jar of herring inside, an unexpected present from a colonel on the Soviet General Staff.
“So, you also have an agent in Moscow!” Rakowski cracked.
“I have them everywhere,” Kuklinski replied. Rakowski laughed heartily.
That afternoon, Kuklinski attended a party meeting and sat beside Stanislaw Radaj, his friend and classmate from military school who worked on the General Staff. Radaj noticed that Kuklinski seemed distracted. “You don’t look well,” Radaj said, concerned about his friend’s health.
“We’ve been working hard, night after night,” Kuklinski said.
Radaj said he understood and advised Kuklinski to take care. He reminded him of an old Polish adage: Work as hard as you want, but they’ll still spit in your grave.
Kuklinski arrived home early that evening. Although he had not heard from the CIA in two days, he tried to reassure his family. He was certain they had not been abandoned. He guessed that surveillance had been too tight. Privately, Kuklinski worried he was asking too much of his family. The situation seemed hopeless. He considered breaking contact with the CIA and dropping his plans to escape. He even contemplated taking the suicide pill. He quietly consulted with Hanka about their options. She cut him off. The family was completely behind him, she said. They would go together.
They were to try again that night. Kuklinski wanted to send another Iskra message first. He reviewed the device’s operation again with Bogdan, and they left for Iza’s apartment, where Bogdan was expected. Iza was not yet home, and while Bogdan stood guard, Kuklinski knelt in the stairwell of the apartment building, removed the Iskra from his jacket pocket, and typed in the message he had planned to deliver in his note to the CIA the previous night: “Security situation unchanged. We are prepared to meet the car on Friday at Klatka, the following night at Skron, and Sunday at Rabata. Friday, Klatka, Saturday Skron, Sunday Rabata.”
He gave the Iskra to Bogdan and asked him to transmit from the block near St. Alexander’s Church at the Square of the Three Crosses. Kuklinski went to a restaurant at Plac Komuny Paryskiej and waited for his son to return.
Bogdan took a bus to the square and transmitted the message toward the American Embassy. He met up with his father at the restaurant about eight o’clock. Smiling, he said the device appeared to have worked. They ate sandwiches and drove back to Iza’s apartment, where they could see from the lights that she had arrived. As Kuklinski waited outside, he read the CIA’s message that had arrived in the Iskra.
Our officers had heavy surveillance night of 4 November. Could not meet you at Klatka. Prepared to meet you and your family if we are surveillance free 5 November at Skok, 6 November at Klatka, 7 November at Skok, 8 November at Straz.Current plan entails immediate evacuation to west. Destroy all compromising material. Bring [Iskra] with you, or if not possible, throw in river. End X. End X. End.
Kuklinski felt enormous relief as he read the message. Bogdan spent an emotional hour with Iza, who was about to leave for Berlin to buy the medicine for her father.
At about 10:15, each member of the family went separately to Klatka. But again, the CIA car did not arrive. Kuklinski, Hanka, and Waldek returned home; Bogdan went to the farm, carrying the Iskra with him.
When Burggraf arrived at the embassy on Saturday morning, she cabled headquarters to report on the latest failed attempt. “Unfortunately, both teams heavily covered last evening and had to abort,” she wrote. It was time for the Ryans to drive in from Berlin.
But there was a new problem: confusion about where Kuklinski would turn up. In his last message, Kuklinski had proposed Skron as the site for the pickup on Saturday night. The station’s last message to him had proposed Skok. It was decided that the Ryans would go to Skron, and that Davis would drive by Skok, with Burggraf as a backup in her own car in case Davis was drawing surveillance.
At Langley, Daniel and his staff were concerned that the repeated attempts to meet the Kuklinskis were only exposing them to more danger. The problem was that the Warsaw officers were drawing surveillance wherever they went. “Looking at it from here,” headquarters wrote in a cable that would later be sent to the station, “we wonder if the heavy surveillance Warsaw Station is experiencing is because the Poles know there is a source reporting to the Americans, but they still do not have positive identification of the agent, and stepped up surveillance on us may lead them straight to him.”
The Ryans made a good team. Tom and Lucille had trained together, and although Lucille was not a full-fledged case officer, she was as adept as any officer at reading and placing signals and looking for new operational sites. She happily took on the task and established cover stories for her frequent trips. Her favorite activity was shopping. She shopped for clothes, pottery, household items, and decorative wooden eggs, which always made good presents. She also joined a committee for the American School, which was in a different part of Warsaw, and helped run a Girl Scout troop, which met in different homes. After a few months, SB surveillance on Lucille slackened a bit. By one count, she found and cased almost half of the usable operational sites that Warsaw Station submitted over a year to Langley for approval.
Tom and Lucille regularly made long surveillance detection runs through the Polish countryside, and if they noticed surveillance behind them, they would change their plans and go bird watching, picnicking, or hiking. As Tom said, “There were times when we went dancing that we didn’t want to go dancing, times we went drinking when we didn’t want to go drinking. Because you needed a plan for every single move you made.”
It was a chilly Saturday morning in Berlin as the Ryans prepared for their return to Warsaw. They dressed early and packed their car, a dark green four-door Volvo with diplomatic plates. They filled a can of gasoline and placed it in the trunk. They would have to prolong the drive, which usually took about eight hours, to perhaps twelve hours. They knew from experience that the SB tended to initiate surveillance on the outskirts of Warsaw rather than at the Polish border, so they could drive through the countryside and into the forests and kill time there. They had to arrive at Skron at 10:30 P.M. sharp. There could be no accidents, delays, or diversions.
But as Ryan read a cable describing Skron, he realized he did not recognize its location. He turned to Lucille. She studied the map. She had not been to the exact place, she said, but she knew the neighborhood. She was there two weeks earlier, casing new locations. “I think we can find it,” she said.
That morning, Kuklinski’s neighbor, General Hermaszewski, was standing in front of his garage, packing his car for an overnight hunting trip. As he placed his rifles in the car, he looked up and saw Kuklinski being picked up by his driver. Hermaszewski waved, and Kuklinski waved back.
Kuklinski arrived at the General Staff and was summoned to join a group of officers in a conference room for a routine briefing by Siwicki on martial-law planning. Kuklinski mentioned to a few colleagues that he was taking his family to southwestern Poland to visit Hanka’s ailing mother, who was celebrating her seventy-fifth birthday.
The meeting ended about 11 A.M. Kuklinski returned to his office, retrieved his briefcase, and called for his driver. Usually, the soldier drove him home in a black Volga by the same route―Ulica Rakowiecka, Pulawska, Armii Wojska Polskiego, Trasa Lazienkowska, and then the Wislostrada.
“Today, we do not have to hurry,” Kuklinski said.
Kuklinski watched through the window as they passed the familiar landmarks―Lazienkowski Park, the Vistula River, the Royal Castle that loomed over the Old Town―and even the trees and homes of his beloved city.
As they turned off the Wislostrada and onto Sanguszki, nearing his home, Kuklinski’s driver asked him what time he wanted to be picked up the next day. Kuklinski said he would not need him Sunday because of his trip to see his wife’s mother; the driver should return to the motor pool in case anyone else required his services. Kuklinski would call him on Monday.
As they passed Ulica Przyrynek, Kuklinski saw two young people on the street watching his Volga pass. On Rajcow Street, Kuklinski saw two others standing by Najswietsza Maria Panna Church.
At home, Kuklinski embraced Hanka and immediately built another fire, in which he placed the last cache of files he had in his home. There were so many that the smoke began to billow through his house. Coughing and terrified that he might attract the attention of neighbors or even the SB, Kuklinski opened some windows, trying to clear out the smoke. He decided to take the rest of the papers with him out of Poland.
That night, Kuklinski and Hanka had been invited to dinner at the home of Barbara Barszcz, whose husband, Roman, was Kuklinski’s childhood friend. Roman, an engineer, was in Athens on his way home after two years in Libya, where he had worked for a Polish company that was building bridges.
Kuklinski and Hanka decided to make a brief appearance at the Barszcz residence, where they had cold cuts and salad. Barbara felt at ease with Ryszard and Hanka, although that night she sensed some tension in her friends. They told her they were preoccupied by the drive they were taking the next day to see Hanka’s mother. At 7:30 P.M., as Barbara was carrying a tray of tea, Kuklinski said he had to leave to finish some work. He hugged Barbara and departed. Hanka stayed for a few more hours, and then she, too, said good night.
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