The Spy Who Loved Nothing

The meeting had not gone well, the man gloomily reflected as he was
driven out of East Berlin. His head was still heavy after a few too
many snifters of cognac. The American's ambitious scheme to build a
life and career in Moscow had sputtered to an unforeseen halt not
unlike a Trabant's two-stroke engine; the only concession the
Russians had made was to invite him back for another meeting in two
weeks' time. The three KGB representatives he had talked to didn't
seem very enthusiastic about his offer to defect from the US Army.
The date was 22 February 1953. It was George Washington's Birthday,
a holiday for all American troops stationed in Berlin. The drunken
man being shuttled out of East Berlin in a Soviet car was Robert
Lee Johnson, a 31-year-old sergeant in the United States Army. Most
competent intelligence services would have considered the Army
clerk useless, dismissing him as an embittered bureaucrat with a
grossly inflated sense of self-worth. Nine years later he would,
through a combination of luck and circumstance, become one of the
most destructive spies the KGB had ever implanted into the US
military.