Chapter 1 The Trainee

1. The Trainee

1005 Zulu, Friday, June 14, 1978, US Embassy, Bonn Germany

Maria walks briskly toward the Embassy. It’s a perfect summer morning, sunny, warm with just the right amount of breeze that makes people want to skip work. But Maria is so preoccupied thinking about her new job she doesn’t notice the beauty of the day. She is confident her light blue dress is just right. It’s modest enough for work but shows her figure, one of her assets. She is worried more about how her hair. First, she had pulled it back so it wouldn't draw attention. Then she decided to let it fall naturally about her face. She knows that will get the attention of men, but wonders if it’s the right way to start her new assignment. By the time she arrives she decides she has made the right choice. She goes to the receptionist and announces confidently, “I am Maria Beaumont.”

“Miss Beaumont, welcome to the Embassy. Your paperwork is already processed and in order. Please take a seat and I’ll call Security. They are expecting you. I’ll call Mr. White and he’ll meet you in Security.”

Maria sits down and picks up the latest copy of Der Spiegel. In a couple of minutes a plump middle-aged woman with brown hair in a bun and wearing dark-rimmed glasses approaches her, “Miss Beaumont, please follow me.”

Maria follows the woman to a door with a cipher lock and a “Security” sign above it. The woman fingers the code with her back to Maria so Maria can’t see the code, opens the door and motions for Maria to follow her into a windowless room. When the door is closed the woman says politely, “Please show me your Agency identification.”

Maria hands her photo ID to the woman and watches as she compares the photo on the ID card to her face. Then she picks up a sheet of paper from a desk and compares something on the paper to the ID card. Maria assumes she is comparing her signatures. Finally, the woman says: “Everything is in order. Your clearances were forwarded to us and match your identification card. Please have a seat and wait for your escort.”

Maria sits down and in a few minutes a tall gray-haired man in a well-tailored navy blue suit opens the door and approaches her.

“Good morning, you must be Maria Beaumont, my name is Jack White.”

The security officer interrupts, “Mr. White we have verified Maria Beaumont’s Top Secret SI clearance.  You may formally introduce her to others with the appropriate clearances.”

White responds: “Thank you, Susan. Ms. Beaumont, I hope I haven’t kept you waiting long. I’ll take you to meet Leon Myers. He will be your mentor.”

“No Sir, I just checked in.” Maria felt nervous as Jack, who she knows is the Bonn station chief, leads her out of the security office and down a long stark hall. She assumes they are going toward the office of the legendary Leon Myers. This is her first assignment with the Agency after her classroom training.

It is just adrenalin, she thinks, my usual reaction to meeting a new male authority figure. Will Leon be someone I’ll enjoy seducing? Or another older man who will hit on me or treat me condescendingly? I’ll spend a lot of time with Leon so I hope he isn’t either one. I’ll miss the fun of seduction and sex but it’ll make it awkward if I am working closely with him for a long time because I know I'll soon tire of the sex, I always do.

As they walk Jack inquires, “Did you come straight from Washington?”

“No Sir, I went home to see my parents in Carmel, Indiana for a couple of days before coming here. I flew from Indianapolis to Chicago to Paris. Then I took the train to Bonn; I wanted to see the countryside.”

“Sounds like a long and tiring trip.”

“I got here early yesterday so I had time to rest. Mr. White, tell me about Mr. Myers?"

“Sure Maria, please call me Jack. Leon was in intelligence during the war and stayed in the game. He’s had some career. He has recruited four agents, two in Germany, one in Austria and one in Holland, believe it or not. Mostly he focuses on turning East Germans. He has a knack for gaining their confidence by exploiting their common German heritage and then he plays the ‘German Superiority to the Russians and Americans’ card. He usually convinces them he’s a double agent for West Germany working for the day Germany is rid of the Americans and Russians. For some, this is an exciting possibility. They are the ones he is able to turn. He convinces them they can become a part of a widespread network of ethnic Germans who want to see Germany free of occupying forces and taking its true place in the world again.”

By this time they reach Leon’s office and knock on the door. Jack opens the door and motions her into Leon’s office. Leon is sitting behind a bare desk reading a single sheet of paper. He looks up as they enter. At first glance, he is beginning to gray and too old for her to enjoy seducing and too kind looking to treat her like a kid. He is athletic looking for his age and the ruggedly handsome type of man other men, and most women, enjoy being with. More likely she thinks he’ll try to seduce me.

“Maria, this is Leon Myers. He will be your supervisor and mentor. Leon, Maria Beaumont, your new associate. This is a formal SI introduction.” (SI is special intelligence. The “formal introduction” means both Leon and Maria are known to Jack as having the top secret security clearances needed to access SI information. Only after a formal introduction by a third party, always made in a secure area, can they talk or share top secret information. Jack has violated security by doing the introduction in a non-secure office.) “We have great expectations of Maria and want her to learn from the best, namely you Leon”.

“Pleased to meetcha Maria and thank you for your confidence in me, Jack.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Myers. I am grateful for the opportunity to work with you and I hope to learn from you. I’m sure you know you’re a legend. I feel fortunate to be given this opportunity.”

“I don’t know about being a legend, more like dumb luck, but I know I’m ready for a coffee refill. How about we get a cup and go where we can talk? Oh, Jack, have you assigned Maria an office and whatever she needs or do I need to take care of that?”

“It’s taken care of Leon. She’ll be in Tom’s office, as soon as he moves to his new office. We wanted her to be close to you. Beware, Tom is grumbling about being displaced to accommodate a trainee.”

“He’ll get over it and the old lecher will likely find a way to use it as an excuse to chat up this beautiful girl. Oh, excuse me Maria, this beautiful woman.”

“That’s ok Mr. Myers, I know I am young.” Maria thinks it doesn’t sound like he is going to be condescending, at least not deliberately, and he has a strong confident voice that suits his handsomeness. She can already see it’s probably easy for him to gain the confidence of someone he’s trying to recruit.

“Thanks for being understanding, Maria, let’s get some coffee, then you can fill me in on your background.”

As they leave Leon’s office and walk down a long beige hallway to an alcove with a coffee urn Leon thinks to himself Maria seems promising. She is a very attractive girl with long black hair and dark eyes, a near perfect figure. Her bust is just large enough to make her attractive to men but not so big as to call too much attention to her, which can be a disadvantage in their work. He is sure she will have no difficulty discreetly attracting male companions. It pleases Leon that with her facial features she can pass as Jewish or from any Mediterranean or Latin American country. She’ll be able to handle a variety of assignments.

They fill coffee cups and Leon leads Maria down another bare hallway to an unmarked door with a cipher lock. He beckons her to watch as he slowly fingers in the combination so she can see and memorize it. They enter the SCIF (Special Compartmented Information Facility) and finding it unoccupied sit across from each other at a bare conference table.

“We can talk here without you worrying about sticking to your cover. Always assume any area outside a SCIF is bugged, as we assume it is. I saw your reaction to Jack’s breaking the rules by doing our formal security introduction in an insecure area. Sometimes the old timers get careless. Don’t ever get in the habit of breaking the rules. It’s the rules that keep us safe in our work as well as protect the information we are being paid to protect.”

“I hope Mr. White didn't notice my reaction. I didn’t want to offend him, Leon.”

“I’m sure he didn’t notice Maria. Now tell me about yourself and what you have done at the Agency so far.  The more I know about you Maria, the better I can plan your training in field work. If I understand your background, education, and training it helps me avoid putting you into situations you aren't ready to handle. Our work is mostly routine but sometimes it can be dangerous if you are not prepared. So take your time and tell me as much about your family, the experiences of your childhood you feel shaped you and what in your education and experiences most influenced your decision to join our Agency.”

Maria explains: “I am an only child. My father Guy is French Catholic and my mother Judith is Jewish American. Mother is independent and strong-willed, which I confess she passed to me. She agreed to college only if she could leave the small Indiana town where our family has been successful and respected shopkeepers for three generations. She wanted to go a non-Jewish college in an eastern big city. She met father, a foreign student, in her junior year at the University of Pennsylvania. They fell in love quickly and married right after graduation, which allowed father to stay in America.  I think mother married a non-Jew partially to spite her religious parents and partially because religion isn't important to her.”

“I believe my education before college was unexceptional. Then I studied European history on a scholarship at Denison, a small liberal arts college in Granville, Ohio, and met many students like myself. I sampled drugs, as was the norm in the early 1970s. I didn't like drugs because they made me feel I wasn't in complete control of my behavior, a feeling I detest. I never used any drugs after my freshman year. I explained this on my application to the Agency and they said it didn’t disqualify me since I have been honest about it and therefore can’t be blackmailed.”

What Maria thinks to herself, but won't tell Leon, is she more than sampled sex in college. Sex thrilled her immensely. She secretly scoured the campus library for books on sexual techniques, read them in private and then tried what sounded exciting. She developed the knack of convincing her partners that trying new things was their idea. She also discovered she liked variety in her male partners.

“Besides English, I am fluent in French, learned from father, and passable German from a year of study of European history at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. I joined the Agency thinking it would be exciting and offer the possibility of foreign travel.” And, she thinks to herself, maybe because my political views, developed at Denison, lean to the left and I will enjoy a job where I might have the opportunity to secretly undermine some of America's "imperialism".

 As she starts to describe her training since joining the Agency Leon interrupts and asks, “Please continue in German.”

Maria switches to German and describes her four months of training in basic spycraft:  “My training consisted of the protocols for approved communications with supervisors at any time and from any location, with my cover associates and with potential recruits. I learned basic encryption techniques, how to maintain a false identity and procedures for carrying out a cover assignment. The instructors drilled into us the importance of security for data, communications and identity, of always using Coordinated Universal Time so there can’t be a time mix up due to different time zones, plus what to tell and not to tell family and friends about our work. They continually stressed the importance of the Agency’s mission and of each of our contributions to the mission.”

“They prepared you well Maria. So we are ready to start the next phase. I like to start with the techniques we use in attempting to recruit new foreign agents. I say attempting because we fail far more often than we succeed and we never know what technique will work for a target. Ah, I am getting ahead of myself. We refer to potential recruits as targets and we always assume we are a target of the other guys. First, I’ll give you some rules I follow and then tell you what has worked for me. But don’t expect to follow my techniques; you will have to develop techniques that work for you. Most of all be patient, it takes time to develop your own methods; just keep reminding yourself it will be worth it to turn even one target into an agent.”

“My first rule is never associate with Agency people outside this building. I never go to lunch, dinner or even a drink with an Agency person. I am always alone or with people associated with my cover identity outside this building. I have found the easiest way to spot a foreign agent is looking at who known foreign agents are with at the local bars and restaurants. This rule has helped me keep my cover for a decade; at least I believe it has.”

Leon details how he chooses targets, how he develops a good rapport with a target, how he judges when a target is promising enough to be a candidate and when a candidate is ready for the “pitch” and how he closes the deal. He makes sure Maria understands his methods work for him because they are a plausible fit with his German heritage, his personality, and his cover background. He stresses again that she will have to develop her own methods. He then explains how he balances his cover work with his Agency work and how he exploits his cover work to help him identify targets and gain their confidence.

Leon notes Maria listens intently but asks fewer questions than he expects for a new trainee. When he finishes answering her last question he sees it is 30 minutes before lunch time. He instructs Maria to go join her cover group so she will have people to lunch with. Outside the SCIF they separate. Maria goes to join the State Department group where her cover is a liaison with the Commerce Department and Leon stops by Jack White’s office to let Jack know how the morning has progressed.

“Well, Leon, what do you think of our new trainee?”

 “She seems to have the right background, good language skills although her German clearly marks her as being from or having learned the language in Southern Germany. We’ll have to account for her accent if we give her any undercover assignments requiring her to speak German.  And she’s attractive enough to make it a real asset if she’s willing to use it. But, somehow I’m not sure of her. I can’t give you any reasons, but I just have this uneasy sense about her?”

“Hmm, then let’s keep a close rein on her until you are sure she is committed to our mission or not. I have strong faith in your instincts, Leon. I’ve never known you to be wrong in assessing people."