Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring Read Online Free PDF Page A

couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t fucking do it, and I said, ‘Fuck it Walker, you are already dead, man. You are just too dumb to know it. You are totally fucked up.’”
    John sat quietly for several moments and then he looked at me and said, “All I really did was commit another form of suicide. I became a Russian spy.”
    I did not react.
    His answer sounded too pat, too rehearsed, yet believable, as i f parts, i f not all of it, were true. I wanted to believe John Walker. I wanted to believe that he was telling me the truth. But I wasn’t certain.
    We spoke a long time that night and John seemed pleased when I told him that I intended to talk to his mother, Margaret, and his father, John Walker, Sr.
    “You’ll love my mother,” he said. “She’s a typical sainted Italian grandmother. My dad is another story.”
    I mentioned several other persons with whom I wanted to speak, and then our time was up. But as the guard was leading him away, John turned and spoke to me.
    “I know a lot of people will tell you lies about me,” he said. “I don’t know why people feel they have to do that. But they will. You’re gonna have to be careful.”

PART II
    the past
    For I the Lord your God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation
    – Exodus 20:4
    I’ll meet the raging of the skies, but not an angry father
    – Thomas Campbell , Lord Ullin’s Daughter

Chapter 3
    At the turn of the century, Scranton, Pennsylvania became known as the Anthracite Capital of the World because it was located over the largest deposit of coal ever discovered in the United States. Immigrants seeking jobs deluged the booming industrial town, arriving from Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Italy, and Russia.
    Arthur Scaramuzzo was among them. He stepped off a passenger car at the Lackawanna train depot in downtown Scranton in the spring of 1907, a sixteen-year-old boy from Italy with all of his possessions in one bag. Arthur could not speak, write, or understand English according to a note pinned to the breast of his thick wool jacket. Written by an immigration officer in New York City, the note said Arthur was seeking his father, Ralph, who worked in a stone quarry near Scranton.
    Ralph had been the first member of the Scaramuzzo family to come to the United States. Like so many other immigrants, he sent for his family as soon as he could afford to. Arthur was the first to arrive. Eventually, Ralph earned enough to bring all four of his children to Scranton, but at Ellis Island his beloved wife, Rose, was declared “medically unfit” because she had cataracts. She was forced to return to Italy, where she died alone.
    The quarry where Ralph Scaramuzzo worked was owned by Prospero Gaetano, another Italian immigrant. The two men had not known each other before Ralph applied for work, but their common heritage led to a quick and lasting friendship. So it was not surprising that Arthur Scaramuzzo was directed to Prospero Gaetano’s house when he arrived in Scranton. The boy began work beside his father at the stone quarry the next day. It was exhausting, difficult labor. Arthur stood just five feet seven inches tall, but he had broad shoulders for a teenager, and strong arms. At night, he studied English.
    A year later Arthur appeared again at the Gaetanos’ door. This time he had come to ask Prospero Gaetano for the hand of his daughter, Angelina. At fourteen, she weighed a scant ninety pounds and still looked a girl, but she was a good cook and had been prepared by her mother to care for a husband and home. They were married April 28, 1908, in St. Lucy’s Roman Catholic Church in West Scranton. The union lasted more than sixty years until their deaths, one year apart, in the early 1970’s.
    Scranton is a town where changes emerge slowly and memories linger. Children grow up in the same neighborhoods where their parents played as youngsters. Arthur