Nightmover:
How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million
By David Wise
HarperCollins, 356 pages, $25
What makes spy novels fun to read is that there usually is a good guy who goes up against the bad guy. Unfortunately for author David Wise, there is no good guy in the true story of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames. And there really isn’t even a bad guy–just a bunch of mediocre guys, guys who might as well be working for the Department of Commerce (no offense to those who do) instead of at the world’s top spy agencies.
The CIA comes across as befuddled and bumbling; if it were a corporation it would have gone bankrupt years ago. The only organization that looks worse is the KGB, which never understood how much Ames was offering them and almost sacrificed him because of that agency’s inability to do anything subtly.
To be a movie, this story would need a crack American to ferret out the wily Ames. Alas, we have only people who punched a time clock and apparently wouldn’t have known Ames was a mole unless he had grown whiskers.
Even without a hero, a thoroughly bad guy could turn this into a crackling tale, but Ames is no help. He is not so much evil as banal, less crafty than clumsy, more Mr. Magoo than Mr. Bond.
Prosecutors tried to paint Ames’ wife, Rosario, as the foul-mouthed vixen who berates her henpecked husband for his sloppy tradecraft, but she turns out to be just another pampered matron who traded a life of scholarly pursuit for one of shopping.
The lack of good and evil characters is not the fault of David Wise, and what he does bring to the book is admirable research, a network of sources cultivated over a lifetime and a love of detail. In some cases, he is the man who knew too much, and you can imagine him bursting with the joy of his vast insider’s knowledge.
Tellingly, Wise recounts the reactions of people when they learned their friend Ames was a Russian spy. His intelligence colleagues are surprised, but not angry, as if they had learned he was having an affair or suffered from an incurable illness without their ever knowing.
There is no anger because the spy business described by Wise is played like a game. The CIA spent much of its energy fighting the KGB, rather than understanding the world, and vice versa. To Ames, changing sides was just like playing the same game for a different team.
What motivated Ames, and his wife, remains a mystery. Why would two reasonably intelligent people do something so dishonorable, something that would leave their young son a virtual orphan? Why does a man betray his country and send other men to death in exchange for a used Jaguar?
Surely it was the money, and surely Ames is an alcoholic, but their deeper motives may never be known.
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