The Falcon and the Snowman (19 page)

After the arrest warrant was issued, Carole thought she noticed a change in Daulton. He still boasted of the big deals he was going to pull off, and still entertained lavishly at his cost-be-damned parties that had become a legend on The Hill. But, as she would recall, “He wouldn't relax: he was nervous all the time and always complaining of trouble with his stomach.”

Meanwhile, stresses had begun to appear in the fragile relationship that Carole and Barclay had built for themselves in the small Redondo Beach apartment. Now that she had a steady job, she suggested that Barclay give up pushing drugs, get a real job and then marry her.

Carole believed she was still in love with Barclay, but their apartment was often a battleground, not only over his drug dealing and her fears that he would have to go to jail, but over her suspicions that he was seeing other girls. They were suspicions, unfortunately for Carole, that were justified.

Daulton had fancied the well-built girl, who was four inches taller than he was, for several years, and he was not unaware of the troubles she was having with Barclay. He placed a call to her from Mexico and suggested that she and Barclay come down for a holiday—or, he added, if she wanted to come alone, that would be fine too. Daulton said he needed a mule to carry money—someone to carry cash across the border. The most he could bring over the border, he explained, was $5,000; any amount over that had to be declared to Customs officers. So all she had to do for a free holiday in Mexico was carry that amount for him—and there was nothing illegal about it.

In truth, Daulton had more in mind for Carole than carrying money.

Several times Carole had seen Daulton flashing stacks of $100 bills that he had explained casually he had obtained in Mexico. She'd wondered about the source of all this money but had decided he was probably just doing well in his drug business.

Barclay told Carole he couldn't go to Mexico now because he was scheduled to appear in court within a few days to answer charges on another drug bust. But, he said, she should go and have a good time without him.

Barclay was glad to see Carole off on the plane to Mexico. He had found another interest: her name was Darlene Cooper, and she was yet another teen-age refugee from Palos Verdes.

Darlene had been one of the original “groupies”—the teen-age girls who systematically pursued rock-music stars in the sixties like quarry in a fox hunt, sneaking into their hotels and trying to seduce them and, after succeeding, comparing their scores with one another like frontier bounty hunters. Darlene's family was well-to-do, and she had all the money she needed to finance expeditions to New York, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities on rock stars' concert tours. Darlene was a well-organized camp follower and, according to the gossip heard on The Hill, had one week boasted of bedding at least one member of every group listed on
Billboard
magazine's chart of the top five best-selling single records.

Darlene constantly wove fantasies about her future. Some of her friends had told her that she was tall enough and pretty enough to become a fashion model, especially when she bleached her hair and it came out a stunning blend of gold and ivory, and Darlene began to dream of going to New York City and becoming a model. But that wasn't her only dream. Darlene admired the rugged looks of Barclay Granger, and the day that Carole left to see Daulton in Mexico, Darlene went to bed with Barclay.

Carole's destination was Mazatlán, which had been an obscure fishing village on the Gulf of California in Mexico until the mid-sixties, when travel agents and tour operators, and then tourists, discovered its turquoise waters and beaches with sand like granules of snowy-white sugar. These days, jets were bringing
gringos
by the thousands every week, most of them from Southern California, on charter flights to Mazatlán, where a week under the sun (including hotels and air fare) cost just under $200. For Daulton, Mazatlán had attractions besides sun and sand. It was within driving distance of Culiacán. As the gang warfare there became more intense, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration began having success in deploying undercover agents to fight the drug trade, some of the Culiacán drug traffickers began using Mazatlán as a safer base of operations. Lost amid the hordes of tourists who jammed the high-rise hotels that had sprouted like sunflowers along the edge of the ocean, Daulton could conduct business as well as enjoy himself.

Carole landed at the Mazatlán airport and took a taxi eight miles north of the city to the Camino Real Hotel. As usual, Daulton had chosen to live in the most expensive hotel in town. Perched on a promontory overlooking the Pacific, the city's busy port and nervous tourists floating past beneath huge billowing yellow-and-red parasails towed through the air by speedboats and long tethers, the Camino Real was Mazatlán's newest hotel. Carole located him near the pool; he had a drink in his hand, and mentally she noted that Daulton might have been right—it
did
look like a good life.

Daulton, who was registered as Ted Lovelance, lived with Carole in the hotel for four days, and it was the start of a curious romance. For years Daulton had dreamed of getting the big-busted girl into bed—one friend joked he'd probably spent $5,000 at it—but despite uncounted gifts, expensive dinners and drugs, he hadn't succeeded. In Mazatlán, Daulton would believe that the tall, willowy, sexy girl was falling for him, and he later boasted in detail of their nights spent in bed at the Camino Real. Carole, in the blank, empty gaze that often characterized her, later said their relationship had been mostly platonic. But during the stormy final months of her affair with Barclay, and for a short time after that, she used Daulton to lean on.

On the night of Carole's arrival, they celebrated with margaritas and dinner at Señor Frog's, a noisy Mazatlán restaurant where seafood was served family style on long tables, while a tinny mariachi band strolled past and serenaded the diners. Afterward, they went for a swim in the hotel pool before going to bed. It was probably one of the happier episodes in Daulton's frequently tormented life.

They hired a car the next day and went sight-seeing like tourists along the spectacular curving shoreline near Mazatlán. They lunched on the jumbo shrimp for which Mazatlán is famous, then visited an arcade of shops that promoters had built to cater to the growing number of American tourists who visited the resort.

Carole admired a leather jacket in one shop, and Daulton immediately bought it. When she admired jewelry at another shop, he bought that for her too.

After they went swimming, with Carole wearing a bikini that caused one distracted American tourist to fall into the pool, Daulton returned to the arcade and spent $800 on an Oriental cloisonné vase and some pottery for Carole. During their shopping trips and at meals, she observed that the wad of cash in Daulton's wallet seemed inexhaustible; and later, she discovered why: whenever he ran out of cash, he merely picked out more from a suitcase in the room. Carole asked where the money came from, and Daulton boasted that he'd found a profitable new enterprise—selling stolen securities in Mexico.

The idyll over, Daulton bought an airline ticket to Los Angeles for Carole and kissed her good-bye.

The reason Daulton had so much cash at Mazatlán was that three days before he met Carole at the Camino Real he had made another delivery in Mexico. Chris had supplied him with another batch of month-old key-list ciphers that were supposed to have already been destroyed and copies of TWX messages regarding Rhyolite.

Along with the documents, Daulton gave the Soviets a personal message from Chris. It was in code, about thirty numbers printed on a 3-by-5-inch file card. Chris had devised the code during a quiet moment in the vault. The code was based on the number seven. Starting backward, he took the letters of the alphabet and assigned each a number based on seven. Z, the last letter of the alphabet, was assigned 7; Y was 14; X, 21; W, 28, and so on. And then he reversed the digits. X became 12; W, 82; and so forth. At the end of his coded message was the telephone number of a pay phone in Hermosa Beach, the town north of Redondo Beach. Chris had told Daulton that they needed a means to communicate with the Russians from the United States and suggested in the note that the KGB men in Mexico call the number at a specified hour—he gave them a day and time—if they had any messages. What Chris didn't say to Daulton was that he was trying to set up an independent channel of communication so that he could deal with the Russians himself and not have his fate so wrapped up in the whims of his friend. He figured the Russians could easily crack the simple code, and later he found out that he was right.

Chris's message was one symptom of mild stresses that had begun to develop in the partnership.

Unlike Daulton, Chris was not motivated in their joint enterprise by economic reasons. But he believed the Russians must be paying more for the documents than Daulton was reporting to him, and he didn't like being made a fool of. In truth, Daulton by now had received more than $10,000 from the Soviets and Chris had received only about $3,000 of it.

But money was only a minor cause of the fissures beginning to form in the espionage alliance.

The reality of what he had initiated was now tangible to Chris:
I have become a Soviet spy
. It had begun as a whim. It had started as an almost instinctive gesture of protest against a system of corrupt morality that he had despised, and he had given little thought to where it might lead. Indeed, until he received the call from “Señor Gomez” confirming that Daulton had made contact with the Russians, Chris had only half-believed his friend would have the nerve to go through with it. Now, not only was he beginning to have misgivings, but Chris was disturbed by the increasing enthusiasm Daulton was showing for the enterprise. At first he had seemed panic-stricken at the prospect of entering the den of the KGB. Now, it seemed, he was beginning to
enjoy
it.

Daulton was also beginning to grow uneasy, but for different reasons. He sensed that Chris might be holding back documents on him, and this troubled Daulton. The Russians were a gold mine richer than any he had ever mined—they were there for the
taking
. And they had to be mined for all they were worth.

But in late August, Daulton realized that he had been wrong. When he told Chris that he was ready for another trip, Chris gave him a file of papers marked T
OP
S
ECRET
and R
HYOLITE
and Daulton decided that he didn't have any reason to worry. In this delivery were TWX messages regarding the CIA's secret manipulations of the internal affairs of Australia.

They met at Daulton's house, where Chris gave him the material and Daulton bragged at length about his four days with the beautiful Carole Benedict, and her beautiful breasts. They shared a joint and had a game of chess, and before parting Chris had a final message for Daulton: “Remember, don't tell 'em my name.”

“Don't worry,” Daulton reassured him. “They think you're black—did I tell you that?”

“Let 'em think it,” Chris said as he left the Lee house.

Chris decided that if he had misgivings, there was no turning back now.

21

For the Russians, learning the identity of Daulton's source had become an obsession. Apparently satisfied now that the diminutive American who delivered the documents was not himself employed in a sensitive government job, they continued to press Daulton for his friend's name. In September, Daulton gave part of it to them.

He arrived in Mexico City on the first Tuesday of the month and, as instructed, taped X marks on one of the designated rows of lampposts. The Russians, in giving Daulton directions for a meeting, always used the twenty-four-hour clock; 1800 hours, for example, was 6
P.M.
The following evening, at 1800 hours, he was waiting at a park that had been designated for this meeting on his last trip. Okana arrived a few minutes later with Karpov, but without The Colonel. The Colonel was now his regular case officer, but Okana was still in the picture. After an exchange of the passwords and the usual stroll beneath the trees, Daulton slipped the documents to Okana, who in turn passed them to Karpov. The chauffeur drove away, apparently headed for the embassy to assess the quality of the material. Okana and Daulton went to a restaurant, and after they had ordered a drink, they were joined by The Colonel, his shiny teeth flashing a friendly smile. Daulton greeted him with his first name: “Mikhail!” he said warmly.

Okana, Daulton decided, was deceptively slight. He had informed Daulton that he worked out by lifting weights and said he tried to run several miles daily; from the way the Russian carried himself, Daulton was beginning to realize that his body was mostly muscle. He also noticed that Okana had some capitalistic traits: he appreciated French food and old wines and fussed when his dinner wasn't prepared to his liking. Daulton would recall later: “He'd order fifty-, sixty-dollar bottles of wine. I bet he was telling his control that I had expensive tastes and he had to order good wine to keep me happy.”

“Now tell us who this mysterious friend of yours is,” Okana said near the end of the meal after brandy had been ordered. The Soviet Union, he said, was prepared to pay Daulton much more money—“hundreds of thousands of dollars”—if the Russians were sure the material he provided was authentic and they knew the source.

Daulton was now very nearly drunk and tried to keep up his resistance, but the promise of more money tantalized him. And when they gave him yet another business-size envelope fat with cash, part of his resistance finally melted.

“His name is Cristobal,” he said.

Cristobal's father, Daulton went on, was a former agent of the FBI who now was director of security for a large American defense company. He had helped Chris get a job highly placed in the security field at TRW. He repeated that Cristobal was disgusted with his government and wanted to help the Russian cause. Daulton spelled out a few more specifics of the job and what he knew about the function of the code room in handling messages between the CIA Headquarters, Australia and other countries. The two KGB agents exchanged smiles and seemed visibly delighted at this confirmation that they had penetrated one of America's most important satellite espionage operations at such a key location. Okana ordered more brandy.