A Secret Life (15 page)

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Authors: Benjamin Weiser

Tags: #History, #Europe, #Germany, #World, #True Crime, #Espionage

BOOK: A Secret Life
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Urbanowicz said that he and the others had noticed it as well, commenting, “It pains us.” But the Soviets had to pay large sums for weapons, he added, noting that Moscow apportioned 30 percent of its national revenues for the arms race.
 
“I realized that I had no idea,” Kuklinski said.
 
Kuklinski and his colleagues had visited Volgograd and a museum commemorating the Battle of Stalingrad. They had stopped in Kiev, where they were received by the leadership of the Ukrainian Military District. Throughout the trip, the Soviets made the Poles feel welcome. Kuklinski said that Urbanowicz was greeted particularly warmly because he was considered a ‘Soviet man.’”
 
But Kuklinski had been shocked by an incident in Kiev in which a military official, the air defense commander of the Kiev Military District, had made a racist toast. “He said, ‘To the health of the whites. Let not those black bastards interfere with our problems,’” Kuklinski recalled. Urbanowicz had then joined in, saying, “‘and also the yellow bastards.’”
 
Kuklinski believed the remarks were directed at the Arabs and Chinese. At the airport in Kiev, as the Poles were about to depart, the Kiev official lavishly kissed Urbanowicz and made more racist comments.
 
Before their meeting ended, Henry told Kuklinski that in two days, when they next met in Hamburg, he would meet an American fluent in Polish, whose rank was comparable to a two- or three-star general. Kuklinski seemed surprised at the introduction of a new person into the operation, although pleased that he would be able to speak in his own language. He asked whether Henry was leaving. Henry reassured him that he would “be good for a few more years.”
 
They discussed Kuklinski’s concerns about the future, his security, and his request for a suicide pill. Kuklinski said that he wanted to stay in Poland “for as long as I can continue my personal battle” against the Soviets. But if caught, he would rather die the death of “a silent hero” and not confess any details to Polish authorities in return for a lesser punishment.
 
Henry said, “I think you are a very brave and dedicated man, and it is a great honor to be your friend.”
 
Kuklinski checked his watch and asked to be dropped off at a shopping area near the
Legia
, so that he could make some purchases to justify his absence.
 
4
 
“STABBING Back”
 
ON A QUIET SUNDAY MORNING, June 24, 1973, David Forden― “Daniel”―trim and well groomed and wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a summer suit, stood unobtrusively in the lobby of his Hamburg hotel. At 10:30, a car pulled up, and Colonel Henry got out. Although they had not previously met, Daniel knew from his briefings that Henry had been essential to the operation, and they shook hands enthusiastically.
 
They drove together to the popular Hansa Theater on Steindamm, where they hoped to make contact with Kuklinski. The
Legia
was moored for two days at Wedel, a marina west of the city. The plan was for Kuklinski to leave his boat, approach the theater, and make eye contact with Henry, who would lead him down into the U-Bahn, the subway system, and up again on the other side, to near a taxi stand. Henry reviewed the site with Daniel, who agreed that it offered an excellent route, including two vantage points for support officers to perform countersurveillance.
 
From the theater, they drove to a small apartment the CIA had rented as a safe house. In Daniel’s experience, safe houses tended to be shabby and small―this room was spartanly furnished with a few chairs―but they had decided to sacrifice size and comfort for security. There would be no doorman or nosy porters. Daniel and Henry spent several minutes straightening and sweeping the room, then left separately.
 
The next day at noon, fifteen minutes before Kuklinski was to arrive, Daniel and Henry met at the theater. They blended easily into the midday crowd, and when Kuklinski did not appear, they returned again, at 2:15, 4:15, and 6:15, but did not see him. Daniel returned to his hotel, while Henry waited in a café. Shortly before 7:00 P.M., he spotted Kuklinski. Catching his eye, Henry led him along the agreed-upon route to the apartment, where Henry called Daniel and signaled that he should join them.
 
When Daniel arrived, he sensed that Kuklinski was expecting someone older. Daniel tried to put him at ease. “It’s a great honor for me to meet you,” he said in Polish, introducing himself. Unlike Henry and Lang, who had maintained the pretense of being military officers, Daniel said, “I’m from the CIA and I’m delighted to be here and working with you.”
 
He explained that the U.S. Army lacked the authority or the ability to run such a clandestine operation overseas, and that the CIA was best equipped to handle the tradecraft, including the secure communications in Poland that would be necessary for their relationship to succeed. Offering belated congratulations for Kuklinski’s forty-third birthday, Daniel noted that he was almost exactly the same age. “You and I are of the same generation,” Daniel said. He said he had lived in Warsaw, knew the city well, and was determined to ensure that Kuklinski’s already superb efforts would endure.
 
Daniel explained the route Kuklinski should use to return to the
Legia
and outlined their plans for meeting the next day. Daniel also asked for a list of car parts Kuklinski could plausibly have bought on the trip, in order to explain his disappearance from the crew. Henry would buy them. Then they went to work.
 
At one point, Kuklinski grabbed the microphone Daniel had placed on the table and spoke with great emotion and purposefulness. He thanked Daniel for his birthday wishes, which had meant a lot to him. On the General Staff, he said, birthdays were rarely celebrated; everyone was too busy. One day, a few years earlier, Kuklinski said, he had told a colleague that it was his fortieth birthday. “For me, it is a certain special moment―in the life of every man―40 years,” Kuklinski recalled saying. “It seems that one is still young, but he is already 40!”
 
His friend joked cynically, “Don’t fuck around. We’ve already had our drink. Get your ass out of here and back to work!”
 
Kuklinski laughed. It was typical of how people were treated on the General Staff, he said. “To a man from whom the last juices are sucked out.” Any flicker of emotion or happiness was “extinguished.” He added, “An individual counts nothing in our system.”
 
Kuklinski said that he hoped the American people appreciated their freedom. “Since you have it every day, you will probably never be able to value it,” he said. “Communist slogans are extremely deceiving and can turn everybody’s head.” He described their so-called utopia as “a feudal system simply adapted to contemporary times.”
 
Kuklinski smoked heavily and sipped the fruit juice that Daniel had poured for each of them. “He can take his spirits clean as well as anyone, I’m sure, but I also feel that he sees no place for alcohol at these meetings, other than as a parting toast,” Daniel wrote later.
 
At about 9:30 P.M., the men embraced, and after Kuklinski left, Daniel tidied up the apartment and returned to his hotel. The tape of the session was taken to Stan, the CIA translator, who had been flown in from Langley to make quick translations of the recordings of each session. Essential information was then cabled to headquarters in case there were immediate follow-up questions.
 
The next morning, Daniel returned to the safe-house apartment and was joined about thirty minutes later by Colonel Henry and Kuklinski. This time, Kuklinski said, he could stay for five hours, but they agreed to stop at 4:30 P.M. to allow him extra time to return to the boat. Henry set off to find an auto-repair store where he could buy an air filter for Kuklinski’s Opel.
 
Kuklinski scanned a list of questions from the CIA and addressed each in detail, sometimes speaking to Daniel and other times talking into the recorder. Daniel marveled at Kuklinski’s concentration and style and realized how effective he must be as a lecturer, a briefing officer, or a leader of troops. Kuklinski said he had recently been nominated to be a deputy chief in the operational training department.
 
The CIA had asked whether Soviet nuclear weapons existed in Poland. Kuklinski said he assumed they did. On an air force firing range in Czersk in northern Poland, on the boundary of the Soviet’s biggest base near Borne-Sulinowo, there had been a presentation of nuclear warheads and of the Soviet troops who were trained to mount them on rockets. Kuklinski said he would try to learn more about the fenced-in compound, which was run by a Soviet general.
 
He stressed that Moscow’s emphasis on an offensive military strategy not only was dangerous but also was crippling Poland’s economy. The Polish armed forces chafed under Moscow’s control. There was “constant friction” between the country’s economic possibilities and program and those “as set forth by the war plans,” Kuklinski said. There was also heavy pressure on Poland to upgrade its divisions, wartime weapons, and materiel reserves.
 
“Our equipment should match that of the Soviet Union,” he said. “The aim is that we should have an immense war machine, conduct large and costly maneuvers, which we cannot afford.”
 
Contrary to Moscow’s claims that it treated Poland as its “best ally,” the Poles were given outdated equipment, and all innovation was stifled. If the Poles improved a weapon, the Soviets would familiarize themselves with the documentation, and the same item would appear on the market as “Made in U.S.S.R.” Whenever Polish and Soviet officials met in Moscow for consultations on the introduction of new weapons, the Poles found it almost impossible to get anything out of their Soviet counterparts. “They cover their files, half pull out a sheet, and read something that is surely doctored,” Kuklinski said disdainfully. “I have heard directly from those who took part in such meetings.” There was no free exchange of information.
 
He recalled that years earlier, in 1956 or 1957, he had visited a Soviet unit in Bialograd, a Polish town near the coast. The Soviet soldiers were living behind three rows of fences. “I almost offended a Soviet officer whom I asked, ‘Were these fences left by the Germans, or put up by you?’ He replied that the Soviets put them up. I then asked, ‘Is it to prevent your own soldiers from going out without a pass, or is it against us, your hosts on this soil?’” It was all so bizarre, Kuklinski said, pausing occasionally to sip juice or draw on his cigarette.
 
After an hour or so, Kuklinski said he wanted to address the subject of war and peace and the contingency plans, which he said were “one-sided,” only offensive.
 
“Defense is not at all included in these plans,” he said. He and like-minded colleagues had pushed unsuccessfully for a new doctrine and war plan. “We have suggested that an alternate war plan should be developed―first, a defensive plan, and then an offensive plan.” They had been told that they “do not know the situation, and should not butt in.”
 
He said the Poles realized that Moscow held “the key to everything” in the Polish military. “Moscow can, at will, draw our armed forces into a conflict that might have nothing to do with our national interests.” There was a split in the Polish military. The leadership did not see the West’s intentions as benign, but many senior officers had more enlightened views, with many looking forward to a balanced reduction in the forces on both sides and to closer political and economic ties―“a rapprochement between East and West,” Kuklinski said.
 
As for Poland’s culture and economy, he went on, “We were always leaning westward. Of course, we have our own achievements, our own culture, but all this is much closer to the European, the West European culture.”
 
He added: “Our present close relationship with the East is based on bloody experiences.” But although the average Polish officer looked forward to the relaxation of tensions with the West, the regime had made it clear that its goal was not to exchange ideas and information, “only to attack the West, and accept nothing.”
 
Later, Kuklinski grew solemn as he discussed his family. He repeated the story he had told Hanka of meeting some Americans in Saigon and seeing them again in Europe.
 
“I did not tell her anything more, although I trust her infinitely, just as I trust myself. She does not know at all what I am doing.” He would keep her ignorant of the true nature of his clandestine activity, so that she could not even accidentally reveal anything if she was interrogated by officials or even questioned by a friend.
 
Daniel asked, “Is your wife at home when you photograph?”
 
“She is not,” Kuklinski said, citing her job as a factory bookkeeper. “She works just as I do. It is worse with the children because sometimes they are at home. This is why I turn loud music on, shut the inner door and tell them I have work to do.”
 
Kuklinski described his darkroom and his renewed interest in the hobby. He developed all sorts of photographs “in order not to arouse suspicions. I am simply again interested in photography.”

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