Operation Overflight (36 page)

“I wonder what in the world he is talking about?” I wrote Barbara, “I hope I am not being accused of changing the moral character of America.”

Though I treated it flippantly in my letter, the item disturbed me. Was this due to the Mossman lie? Or, for some reason unknown
to me, was I being criticized in the United States, and my family keeping it from me?

It was the first time that possibility had occurred to me.

By mid-May I had heard that Kennedy and Khrushchev would be meeting in early June for disarmament talks. I tried to remain pessimistic. Journal: “It is very hard to conceive that the two countries will agree on doing away with nuclear weapons when they cannot even agree officially to do away with nuclear tests. I am afraid that if my being released depends on disarmament talks, then there is no hope at all. I like to think it doesn't depend on politics, but I'm afraid it does.”

By the twenty-sixth I was still trying to maintain my skepticism. Writing Barbara about the meeting, I said, “It will probably be over by the time you receive this letter. I suppose it could result in my being released, but I don't think I had better make any plans. … Even if the meeting does not affect me at all, I certainly hope they settle some important problems and try to make this world a better place to live in.”

But by now the pattern was set. Periods of despondency, followed by resignation, in turn followed by rapidly mounting hope, then back to the first.

Although I knew better, I couldn't help anticipating.

The talks were held June 3 and 4, in Vienna. Diary, June 5: “It looks as if the meeting between K. and K. ended pretty well. There has been no official announcement of what transpired and probably will not be, but it looks good from my position. It could be that sometime this month I might be released…

“If I am lucky enough to get out this month, I will be very happy, though I will feel bad about leaving my cellmate in prison. … He is one of the finest people I have ever known. … I sincerely hope he does not have to serve his full sentence. He has about nine more years to go.

“I just finished a book of short stories by Pushkin,
The Tales of Ivan Belken
. I liked it very much. It is the first I have read by him, and I would like to read more, especially
Evgeni Onegin
.”

The last was a coded reminder, for my return to the United States, about a story Zigurd had told me regarding a former cellmate, Evgeni Brick.

During World War II great numbers of people had fled from Russia and its satellites. When the war ended the Soviet Union had declared an amnesty, promising them freedom if they returned.
Zigurd had distrusted the offer. One who hadn't was a man named Evgeni Brick. Approached by American intelligence in West Germany, Brick had agreed to return to the USSR and spy for the United States. The moment he walked down the ramp from the airplane, the Russians had taken him into custody.

I had made a note of the name “Evgeni,” as I was sure the CIA would be interested in the fate of their former agent, just as I was sure British intelligence would be interested in learning what had happened to Zigurd.

The June 5, 1961, entry was the last in my diary.

Letter to Barbara, June 15: “I am sorry I wrote that I might be released after the meeting between K. and K. I cannot help reaching for each little ray of hope and trying to turn it into a beacon of optimism. … One thing that makes me pretty sad is—if nothing happens as a result of the meeting, then I have very little chance of being released at all. If a meeting between K. and K. will not do it, then what will?”

By this time I had heard the news. Asked by the press what Khrushchev had said regarding the Powers case, Kennedy had replied, “The matter wasn't even discussed.”

Winter had turned to summer with only a glimpse of spring in between: a row of flowers the work-camp prisoners had planted outside their barracks.

“The weather is getting hot here,” I wrote home. “We haven't had any rain for several weeks, and most of the days are clear and sunny. I have already got a good suntan by taking my shirt off during my walks. Not everyone can spend a couple of hours each day sunbathing.”

There was very little else to write home about.

I was again persisting in my study of Russian, but with minimal progress; by the time I'd finish translating an article in
Pravda
it was no longer news, but ancient history. Having run out of the right colors of wool, I'd had to leave the second carpet uncompleted, and was now well into a third, this one larger and more ambitious than the first, measuring 25½ by 31½. inches and with seven colors—gold, black, brown, yellow, and light, medium, and dark blue. Reading material was no longer quite so scarce. Barbara had sent thirty paperbacks, including Robert Lewis Taylor's
The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters
and James Michener's
Hawaii
. In addition, I systematically devoured the English books in Moscow University
library:
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
and
The Adventures of Roderick Random
by Tobias Smollett;
The Apple Cart
by George Bernard Shaw;
Arrowsmith
,
Babbitt
,
Main Street
,
Elmer Gantry
, and
Kingsblood Royal
by Sinclair Lewis;
Candide
by Voltaire;
Bleak House
,
Little Dorrit
,
Great Expectations
,
Heartbreak House
,
Nicholas Nickleby
by Charles Dickens;
The Forsyte Saga
by John Galsworthy;
Henry Esmond
by William Makepeace Thackeray;
Tom Jones
—
A Foundling, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams
by Henry Fielding;
Jude the Obscure
by Thomas Hardy;
The Jungle Book
by Rudyard Kipling; the complete works of William Shakespeare; the continuation of Mikhail Sholokhov's Don novels,
Seeds of Tomorrow
and
Harvest on the Don
;
War and Peace
and
Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy;
Octopus
by Frank Norris;
The Prince and the Pauper
by Mark Twain;
The Store
by T. S. Stribling;
The Titan
by Theodore Dreiser;
Typee
by Herman Melville; and
Wuthering Heights
by Emily Bronte.

Even visits to the dentist became memorable breaks from the routine. I lost a filling, which had to be replaced, not once but several times. It finally stayed, but became badly discolored. The dentist's equipment was extremely primitive. Even here were those jars of leeches. By this time I had no doubt as to how they were used, having seen doctors applying them to people's backs in the prison movies. But I never could understand why the dentist had them. Fortunately, I never found out.

“Well you heat it and it bursts, and becomes a big, white, fluffy, soft—”

Finally I gave up. How do you explain popcorn to a man who has never seen or tasted it?

A pigeon flew through the top of the window and got caught between the panes of glass. I climbed on to the cabinet and got it out, bringing it back into the cell with me. But I'd been spotted. Hearing a rush of feet up the stairs, I released it before the cell door opened.

Did they think we were going to try to cook it and eat it, or use it to send a message?

Actually, I'd hoped to have it for a pet for a little while. Yet I knew that even if we could manage to hide its presence from the guard—a nearly impossible feat—I wouldn't have been able to keep it long. I could never have made it a prisoner too.

We were never sure whether our cell was bugged. Occasionally, out of boredom and curiosity, we would voice the most fantastic lies, or denounce the Soviet authorities in the vilest possible terms, hoping for someone to come in and reprimand us. Then we'd know. No one ever did. Somehow this was in itself depressing, knowing that no one really cared that much.

When starting my journal I had been careful to include only things which would not irritate my captors, hoping in this way to ensure their letting me take the journal with me upon release. Now I no longer bothered to censor myself. Many pages were devoted to the lack of freedom of expression in the Soviet Union; the prevalence of one viewpoint and one viewpoint only, the “correct” one; the use of lies which, through constant reiteration, became credible truth. Listening to Radio Moscow one day, I heard an American Communist denounce the United States as a place where there is no freedom. “Of course the Russian people believe this,” I wrote. “They do not stop to think that this man is going to return to the country where he knows no freedom, and that once there he won't be sent to prison for what he has said. While here he would be tried and convicted of uttering anti-Soviet propaganda.” Yet the Russian people believed this, just as they believed their leaders alone were for peace, that only the United States stood in the way of disarmament.

In my opinion, I noted, the controlled press, as found in the Soviet Union, is as insidious a form of brainwashing as exists.

This one-sided interpretation of the news bothered me greatly, not only because of its obvious effect on the thinking of the Russians but also because I realized a man subjected to it for a long period, denied comparisons, other sources, would almost inevitably emerge thinking like a Communist.

How long would it take? I wasn't sure. But I suspected that by the end of ten years the process would be fairly complete.

July 4 was a particularly bad day. But all holidays were, as I'm sure is true with prisoners everywhere, whatever their sentences or crimes. When you lock up a man, you lock up his memories too.

There were few periods of excitement or elation now. Only mail affected my mood.

With one exception, my outgoing letters from Vladimir were not censored in the sense of words being crossed out or letters returned
for rewriting, though every letter was read, which in itself imposes a subtle form of censorship on the writer. The exception was a letter in which I mentioned my cellmate's name and sentence. This was not permitted, and I had to rewrite the letter, deleting this information. Also, as far as I could determine, I had received every letter written by my wife or parents, and none of these had been censored.

Therefore I was surprised when, in early July, I received a letter from my father, dated June 14, in which a number of words were inked out. Reading to the end, however, I discovered a P.S. in my father's handwriting: “I blocked out a few names that I didn't want to mention in this letter. We are still doing our best to help you. Will continue. Your Pop.”

My father wouldn't have made a good spy. Holding the letter up to the light, I was able to guess at a few of the deletions. The edited portion read: “I could not find out what was discussed at the K.K. meeting June 3, but I did have a call from _____________ [Abel's?] lawyer in N.Y. He is in touch with _____________ [Abel's wife in?] East Germany and ____________ is working for a ____________ release from that end and Mr. Donovan ___________ this end. Just how much good it will do is yet to be seen. I was told I would receive a letter from ____________ in E. Germany. I have not received it yet but will soon, I know.”

What was this all about? As far as I could determine, my father was attempting to arrange something with Abel's wife and this Mr. Donovan, who I assumed was Abel's attorney. As far as I was concerned, he was wasting his time, and I wrote him to that effect.

In early August I received a letter from Barbara in which she mentioned that the New York
Herald Tribune
had recently published an article speculating on an Abel-Powers swap, the two men to be released to live in a neutral country.

I wouldn't agree to that, I wrote her. To accomplish this, I would have to ask for political asylum and, as far as I was concerned, this was tantamount to renouncing my country. I was an American, and I wanted to come home, very badly. “I know nothing will come of the negotiations, because as far as I know Abel is not a Soviet citizen, and why should the Soviet Union agree to exchange for a noncitizen? It is just that my father is grasping at straws.”

A day or two later I received a letter from my father which dumbfounded me. I read it over and over, in disbelief.

According to my father, he and his attorney, Carl McAfee, had attempted to see President Kennedy shortly before he left for Vienna, but had been told that Kennedy wanted two hundred dollars for an interview. My father, not being able to afford it, had been forced to drop the interview plans.

I couldn't believe it! I knew little of Presidential protocol, but that a President of the United States could charge a citizen for his time was incredible. Kennedy certainly didn't need the money. Although to my father two hundred dollars was a great deal of money, to Kennedy it was nothing.

It seemed far more likely that one of Kennedy's aides was using his privileged position to line his own pockets, even if it meant profit at the suffering of a grieving parent. I decided upon my return to the United States to determine whether there was any truth to the story and, if so, to do everything in my power to make it public. I was sure that the American people wouldn't stand for such a thing.

This callous heartlessness greatly shocked me. I tried to convince myself it simply couldn't happen. Yet, in my isolation, anything seemed conceivable.

I had stopped writing in the journal in March. In September, when I started again, more than a little of my bitterness remained, spilling over onto the pages: “I am afraid I will never be a Kennedy supporter in the future. … It seems to me that Kennedy would have tried to get me released. I don't expect him to go out of his way to help me, but I feel that I would have been released long before now if he had made the slightest effort when he met with Khrushchev. … I don't mean to complain or bemoan my fate. I did as good a job as I could for them, and in return they should try to aid me. …