Oswald's Tale (14 page)

6

Twice a Hero

The work of Stepan Vasilyevich on Oswald was always studied critically by Igor. A developer could fail to see something in time, so Igor could not be satisfied only with what Stepan reported, but looked to give specific directions.

Igor did want to point out that he had a large number of other matters to oversee, and so it is important to understand that while he kept watch on each project, each developer had to
live
in his case, accumulate every fact, make evaluations, and then come up with proposals for action that would
develop
his viewpoint. Stepan, therefore, was leading the case.

“Now, of course, mistakes were made,” Igor said. “Sometimes our actions were not commenced in time, and some of Oswald’s actions were not prevented; nothing, obviously, can be perfect.”

One early instance—and it still stands out in Igor’s memory—is that Stepan did not take steps to screen Oswald away from one eighteen-year-old at the radio factory who happened to be the only son of an Air Force General who was also a twice-decorated Hero of the Soviet Union, a very high award. But his son, Pavel, was considered to be of “dissident nature” and was dealing in petty activities on the black market. So they were afraid of what a qualified agent could do with young Golovachev—maybe even recruit him over to Western thinking.

Libezin, the big man in charge of proper ideological environment, came walking down Pavel’s aisle and said, “Anyone here speak a little English?” Pavel happened to be the one who did. He was not asking for it, he could have said that he did not know English, but he nodded. Libezin took him to meet Oswald at his worktable, and there they were, shaking hands.

Pavel had studied English from fifth to tenth grade and, of course, it wasn’t much. His first reaction to Oswald was that he looked like an extraterrestrial who had all of a sudden ended up in their factory. “Well,” said Pavel to himself, “if it is not Lucifer, it is a man. That will be proved by time, but there is nothing repellent about him.”

Besides, in that period, Khrushchev had started a campaign for peace and friendship. Society was opening up. You had to keep in mind the specifics of that time. So, there was Pavel, on the second day after this introduction, standing with a pocket dictionary and Lee Oswald next to him with another dictionary. Of course, not knowing that their association would be important someday, Pavel did not keep notes. But then, for many years after, he wanted to forget all of it, the whole goddamn thing, you understand? He really did not keep it in his memory. Now, he doesn’t remember too much, and he doesn’t want to make up stories. He could spin a tale about how he and Lee Oswald went to pick up girls, but that was not the case.

It was more like he took Oswald around the shop and helped him communicate with other workers when a job had to be explained. At first, however, this American’s vocabulary was minimal. Pavel had to explain a word like “falling” by taking a box of matches and dropping it from his hand. That way, he taught Lee a song, “Falling Leaves.”

A few workers were hostile to Oswald, but just a few. There was one, Viktor, a
zhlob,
medium-sized guy, real strong. And Viktor always used to say, “Those American imperialists—if I had a machine gun, I would shoot them.” A real
zhlob.
Viktor had a clear image of his enemy, and he once picked a fight with Lee, although it was broken up immediately. Pavel’s recollection is that Lee was not pugnacious. Maybe he had such qualities hidden inside him, but he was not very big in the bones.

Of course, if Viktor had gone further, Pavel would have gotten in between. It was the very least he could do. While he would not call Oswald a “friend,” it is only because that word in Russian is so holy that not only can you give up your last shirt, but you are ready to die for a friend. If you think in this way, obviously you don’t have a lot of friends. In fact, you are lucky to have one. All others are “pals.” In that sense, Lee was his pal. Maybe more, but still not his friend.

In fact, for a long time Pavel did not see a great deal of Lee other than at work. He did not go for walks with him or hang around with him. Pavel had had to take a job at Horizon in order to earn enough of a new reputation to enter his Institute. Pavel had been kicked out of Komsomol. So, when he left Moscow to go to Minsk, his last school had written such a résumé that he’d even be lucky to get into prison with it.

He could say therefore that for a long time he only saw Lee at work. Once in a while they would meet at lunch, or at the home of some Argentinians named Ziger. But that was all. Since the physical distance between their tables was not much more than five meters, they never did have much desire to meet after closing. After all, they were able to talk to each other through the working hours of each day. If Oswald went out at night, it was to his own places. A cat who walked by himself.

One night that winter, not two weeks after he met Lee, a stranger came up to Pavel on his way home from work. There, right outside his apartment entrance, this stranger showed an identification card from KGB.

Pavel said, “Can we go up to my apartment and talk? It’s winter.”

The stranger said, “Let’s talk here.”

It was too cold, however. Pavel was frozen. So he convinced the man to come upstairs.

They conversed in Pavel’s room. His visitor took out about five pictures, and started off by saying, “Do you know this fellow?” He went through each one of these five pictures, and Pavel said, “No. I don’t know any of them. Who are they?” And received for a reply: “They are state criminals.” At which point his visitor looked at him hard, as if maybe he really did know them well.

Pavel said, “I don’t want you to waste your time. I have never met these men in my life. It’s strange you ask me these questions.”

Then the man from KGB brought out a photograph of Oswald and said, “You know, you took on a relationship with this American guy so easily, but we would like to tell you that your Motherland now asks that you give us some information so that we know what kind of person he is. We need your help.” Pavel didn’t feel anything like a patriot, but knew for sure they would get cooperation. It was a demand. People senior to himself became nervous if they saw a KGB card in a man’s hand. It was not that Pavel felt any kind of obligation to his Motherland; he was eighteen, and scared to death. That was, Pavel would say, a strong substitute for obligation: being scared to death.

Pavel never looked at a clock during this interview, but it must have taken an hour. A lot of questions went by. The KGB man kept going around and around for quite a while before he touched their main subject. Then he explained, “Oswald is from another country, a hostile country.” It could not be more clear what he was saying. He must have been twice as old as Pavel, short, compact, sharp eyes—one Byelorussian who didn’t show any feelings or emotions, just a small trim fellow with a smooth round face, a long thin pointed nose, and small dark eyes as sharp as his nose. He would depend on that nose. It seemed to sniff out everything inexact that Pavel was saying.

He didn’t threaten Pavel, however, just stated, “From time to time, I’d like to meet with you. My name is Stepan Vasilyevich.”

From Igor: “We can say it now—there were surveillants assigned to be Oswald’s tails, and certain people were assigned to work with him, to become his associates and friends. We were especially careful to check if he was looking for personal contact with another agent. We were interested to see whether there were any signs of a prearranged meeting.”

According to Igor’s plan, various hypotheses were going to be tested in order to find out if Oswald was looking for secrets of a military, political, or economic variety, and also they would look to learn if he had developed any means of communication with foreign intelligence by radio, mail channels, or messenger. KGB would also attempt to find out if he had any means of cryptography to use for secret writing. Igor Ivanovich himself was ready to study Oswald’s letters, should he send any, in order to make certain there was no chemical writing between the lines. Later, when Oswald bought a radio, they checked that equipment, and they were always alert for signs of his ability to communicate through special codes.

Nothing showed up that was suspicious in the first two months, but if Oswald was an American intelligence agent, he certainly would not make quick moves. Sometimes a man who is not an agent will do things that arouse suspicion; that happens often; but not even unfounded suspicions were stirred by Oswald. Studying him with close attention, they began to have a feeling that he was at the least semi-lazy; and very frugal; he didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, went to theatre and cinema within his budget, and had an income of 70 rubles a month in new money for salary and an increment of another 70 rubles a month from the Red Cross, or 140 rubles in all. This was, after all, 1400 rubles a month by the old measure, and so a good amount. Stepan, for example, was only earning 80 rubles in new money, and that was enough for him to get by. There was, for example, no telephone in Oswald’s apartment, and KGB never received information that he wanted one. On those occasions when he wished to make a call, he went outside to a pay phone. It would be better if he had wanted his own instrument, but they couldn’t install it for him, could they?

F
ROM
KGB R
EPORT:
18 F
EBRUARY
1960

By means of personal observation and in conversation, “L” did not notice that
OSWALD
aroused suspicion in his behavior. He was not particularly interested in his work, and often made comments such as, “Why should I saw away at this metal with this saw, I’m not going to become an engineer. My real dream is to learn foreign languages and learn them well.” (He did not say which ones in particular.) He is reserved in conversation, answers questions briefly, self-possessed manner.

Once, according to “L,” he and
OSWALD
were reading President
EISENHOWER
’s speech in
Pravda.
In this speech,
EISENHOWER
attempted to demonstrate technical backwardness of Soviet Union compared to United States.
OSWALD
answered that
EISENHOWER
was lying, that USSR is not technically less advanced than U.S.

OSWALD
almost never talked about life in his country, or how he got here. Sometimes during a lunch break he will exchange two or three words with young people, girls and boys, and will compare life in USSR and U.S. But in those situations as well he speaks positively about position of workers in USSR.

By other reports, however, Oswald soon proved to be one Humpty Dumpty worker. He did not treat his job well. Igor could see that he showed no interest, and his behavior and attitude caused complaints from other workers.

Since Igor and Stepan were not satisfied by this image of him as lightweight, they deliberated whether his psyche was entirely normal. On the other hand, they were aware it could all be a pretense. Once again, they worked on two opposed hypotheses: Either Oswald was part of a foreign intelligence plan, or he was not but had some psychological difficulty. They began to study situations where Lee Harvey Oswald, if he were a spy, might expose himself.

For example, now that he had established contact with Pavel Golavachev, Igor and his people would watch Oswald with Golavachev to see whether the American would try to use him as a trampoline, so to speak, to gain access up to Pavel’s father, a General who knew large secrets.

“You know,” Pavel said to his interviewers thirty years later, “we have class struggle and class hatred, but we also have normal envies. People are envious.” People were always telling him, “Oh, I would like to have had your father. I would have become Napoleon. I could have turned the earth around if I had had a father like yours!” Even at school, when they were all having fun and were all equally guilty of breaking some rule, Pavel would be blamed. He offered this as background for talking about his father. The war damaged a little bit of the General’s nervous system. Honestly speaking, his father liked his children; but honestly speaking, he was also a bit of a despot. A true military person: He wanted everything done punctually and properly, whereas Pavel was born, he would say, a democrat.