Spies: Chapter 10–Epilogue

On May 28, 1990, two American gentlemen arrived at the gate of my country house," the East German spymaster recalled. "They introduced themselves with disarming candor as representatives of the CIA and presented a large box of chocolates to my wife."

On May 28, 1990, two American gentlemen arrived at the gate of my country house," the East German spymaster recalled. "They introduced themselves with disarming candor as representatives of the CIA and presented a large box of chocolates to my wife."

Persistence was Wolf's strength; patience, the source of his power. "Intelligence is essentially a banal trade of sifting through huge amounts of random information in a search for a single enlightening gem or illuminating link," he wrote.

Wolf interjected that he could always move to Russia, where he had spent the formative years of his life.

Wolf interjected that he could always move to Russia, where he had spent the formative years of his life.

After all, the Stasi was defunct, its infamous archives looted—many of them sold off, he suspected, to the CIA itself.

Wolf mulled his options, but he knew there was something he would not trade.
"My limit is that I will not betray anyone who worked for me," he insisted. "No names."

"Having arrived in 1945 on one of the first flights of returning German communists from Moscow after Hitler's demise," he concluded that "it would be an ironic ending to fly out of Berlin forty-five years later under the cover of the Americans."

"By now," he recalled, "the pressure was intense, and I knew that the German authorities were eager to see me behind bars. Where could I escape to, and what would be the cost of refuge? There were no compelling options, and I was running out of time."

"The border guards cast cursory glances at our documents and waved us on," Wolf recalled. "When we were well out of their sight, we stopped and hugged each other like children playing hooky from a strict boarding school."

"A young man clambered atop the black metal statue," he recalled, "and attached a rope to Dzerzhinsky, but no amount of pulling would bring down this formidable figure."

"With little fanfare," said Milton Bearden, the CIA officer who watched the final ceremony, "the detachment of Red Army soldiers had marched out on the Kremlin wall and had for the last time lowered the Hammer and Sickle, raising in its place the Russian tricolor."

Markus Wolf had waited out the fall of communism and now watched the dissolution of his longtime protector, the KGB.

The paradox is that I did the same thing. So did Klaus Kinkel when he ran the BND. And so did former President Bush when he was head of the CIA.

Three years earlier, Ames was scraping by in a modest one-bedroom rental apartment. Now his lavish home included landscaped gardens, an expensive Jaguar sports car in the driveway, and a maid.

His personnel file painted the picture of a CIA agent who was deeply knowledgeable about the KGB but also careless, clumsy, and erratic.

Yet Ames stayed under the radar, avoiding serious trouble with his employer. In fact, his shoddy work may well have been the key to his success as a double agent. No one believed Aldrich Ames could do something so well.

And, as his colleague Diana Worthen later learned, Ames wasn't shy about spending lavishly; on the contrary, he openly—and carelessly—flaunted his newfound affluence, sporting expensive new suits at CIA headquarters and showing off pricey dental work.

And, as his colleague Diana Worthen later learned, Ames wasn't shy about spending lavishly; on the contrary, he openly—and carelessly—flaunted his newfound affluence, sporting expensive new suits at CIA headquarters and showing off pricey dental work.

In forty years of battling against the CIA, the Soviets had never garnered so much intelligence from a single secret agent.