FedEx to Fresh Aire: Part Four

     Waiting around for Artur to finally call me, I had already been at the embassy with copies of my faxes and I had called someone that probably would be interested in what I had taken from Artur's "trade communications center". Artur didn't need to know that I saw an embassy "recruitment" opportunity for myself from the strategic materials and military related faxes that he was getting. I knew that intelligence guys from the US, Israel, and Germany were already in Poland sniffing out and sourcing real sellers of this stuff. So I thought I could open that door for myself by giving the CIA Desk a head's up on what I had found.
     (Jane at the USIA, my former boss, was leaving soon. In fact, I would no longer be doing English teaching gigs for her as the functions of the USIA were being absorbed into the State Department.  English Language Fellows recruited out of US colleges and universities would now hold the fort down as far as American language and culture propaganda goes. No longer did I have the luxury of a sympathetic insider to screen the CIA jobs and give me tips on what I should or shouldn't do with my enigmatic employers of sort.)
     One concern I had about using the material I had found at Artur's was that, if accepted in the role of materials tracker, the CIA would begin monitoring Artur's phone lines (if they weren't already). It was an unsavory thought that I might be causing a good friend to be watched, but, then again, if any of the stuff I saw was real, it was an opportunity for me to insert myself into the "Track a Terrorist" game in Eastern Europe and Russia. In the end, I convinced my contacts at the US Embassy to allow me to do strategic materials tracking.

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     The call was to my old friend in Krakow, Dennis, at Teledyne...the guy selling the Water Pik. Dennis could always give me a reality check on a lot of the items described in the faxes. While I always disliked his telling me to stay away from things I don't know or understand, he'd usually relent and tell me things I needed to know. He helped me get my geiger counter and some other devices he "happened to have lying around".  He also had the first fiber optic connection for communications and internet in Krakow.  I wonder how that happened?  His telecoms and computer room looked like a major NOC at Lockheed Martin in 2003...ten years later. He told me that he and his wife had sex in the computer room almost daily because of the amount of hours they had to spend in there relaying data around the world. I won't deny that Ms. Jakoboska was an attractive woman. Dennis always counted on me affirming that fact but I got a funny feeling he would kill me if I made too much eye contact with her when she was in the room.

Water Pik...Newer Version

     I knew he'd call or see the same people I was in contact with at the embassy and give them a report on me. That was free press to the people that I needed continuing confirmation of my worthiness to keep my job.  And what about Teledyne? The big strategic materials buyer and broker in the US was not in Poland selling Water Piks to make money. Believe me, it was a front for gaining access to some of the same materials I saw on those faxes. And you can be assured of another thing. Teledyne was working with my Embassy folks at a much greater level of cooperation than I was granted. I got orders to do things and got paid for it if I did them. Teledyne, on the other hand, was working hand in hand with the same folks with a complete game plan and strategy. The company was one of the subject area experts for the CIA in it's efforts to monitor bad stuff that might be coming out of Eastern Europe and Siberia. They were also "buyers" that could take ownership of nuclear industry related materials and could, in so doing, take such things out of the hands of opportunistic sellers (criminals that had illegally acquired bad stuff in Russia) and stop the potential outflow to terrorists or other "unfriendly" players intending to use it for terrorism or to sell to terrorists.

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  The rules of the Track a Terrorist game were pretty simple. My instructions were always either to Follow People or Follow Stuff.  Stuff that people had didn't always stay with them so it was important to know who or what I was tracking.  Stuff was the general term for material being tracked. Bad Stuff  was usually poisonous or could hurt you in some way during transit and Hot stuff was the term for radioactive Stuff that was...obviously...also Bad Stuff.  I was also instructed if and when I could touch or take stuff - like removing something from a train that has reached the end of its scheduled service and no one was there to receive it. Also, bad guys often (but not always) transported bad stuff. I was therefore always to assume that it was very bad for me to be found out or suspected of tracking them. Instructions always read, "If you think they smell anything, abort the tail and disappear." I was never stiffed money because of an abort if I had gotten pictures and recorded data of the stuff and/or the bad guys.  Details in my reports were important. Exact times and places, locations of material to the ones transporting it or to other unsuspecting passengers. If it was bad stuff, exactly how long it had been near other passengers.

     Difficult situations might arise if I knew that the bad stuff was really dangerous to be around and there were innocent passengers unknowingly being exposed to it. If on a train or bus (or stations along a route), where I was almost always assigned, I could consider suggesting other seats to passengers for some reason but I had to be careful or sneaky to do this without drawing attention to myself. One such time, I purposely spilled my coffee in a seat that was directly under some hot stuff. I didn't know if there was lead or other shielding around the stuff in the brown paper bagged parcel but I took the opportunity to make the seat the worst place to sit on the whole train. Another risky thing that was "extra credit" work was getting information from the bad guys. Mics that could be planted were the least risky and usually yielded the most results. The most risky was striking up a conversation with an obviously nervous or volatile bad guy that was paranoid about everyone around him. Making it look as natural a thing as possible was critical. If a conversation went sour or there was a bad vibe, that was a recommended abort signal. Desperate people in the middle of such dangerous and illegal operations can be pretty nervous and suspicious of people around them. Fear of life in prison if caught vs becoming rich from one successful delivery can make people do crazy things.

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These were pre-Axis of Evil days, but we're talking about many of the same characters:  North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan/Pakistan and some pre-Al Qaeda Muslim groups in Africa and the Middle East. It should also be mentioned that the Israelis and the German military had their own watchlists. Post Soviet-era military generals and other rogue officers were seen as particularly vulnerable to being enticed to steal a nuclear device and sell to whomever they could. The fall of the Soviet-Bloc and the halting of their military machine resulted in millions of soldiers and former military installation workers going hungry. The high level of resentment to Gorbachev's Glasnost and Perestroika was evident everywhere. And, as Soviet State assets were being sold off to privateers - some are now the Oligarchs we are hearing about in the current FBI investigation - the former military saw its chance to sell off assets of the Fatherland that had just caved in to capitalism.  This incredibly dangerous time in former Soviet Bloc countries was, for me, the scariest time of all during my days there.