White Deer, Pa. -- Once, when he was young, angry and scared, Arnold Topazov broke free from the Soviet military and climbed across two heavily fortified fences and a ditch, scaling the Berlin Wall years before anyone dreamed that it would ever come tumbling down.

He packed lightly then, an unlikely defector carrying communications secrets, a pocketful of coins and big dreams on a journey that would take him to the inner sanctum of the Central Intelligence Agency.

But now, years later, Topazov can be found on a hilltop behind another barricade made of concrete and wire at the medium security federal penitentiary at Allenwood. He never fired a Kalishnikov in defense of his country, but he shot a hostage with a .357 Magnum during a bank robbery gone awry in Frederick in 1984.

This is his story: Arnold Topazov, Soviet soldier, defector, intelligence asset, armed bank robber and, for the past nine years, prison inmate.

"I got out of the Soviet Union's grasp, just to get into Uncle Sam's grasp," he said.

The tale comes from the attic of the Cold War, a musty place filled with desperate tales from desperate times. But the saga of the ex-warrant officer turned armed bank robber provides TC peephole to a tense and hostile era, when the CIA and its Soviet counterpart, the KGB, valued every shred of secret information like gold.

Back then, even a low-level military officer could exchange communications information for cash.

"What I learned from the Cold War is that it was all a game," he said.

The man who once breached the Berlin Wall now lives in obscurity. Topazov claims to have no friends in prison, and he rarely receives visitors.

Over and over, in legal documents some 2 inches thick, he relives the moments that stand like signposts on an odyssey from a childhood in Ukraine to a military hitch in East Germany to an uncertain life in America.

He is 36 years old, 5-foot-10 and 175 pounds, trim and muscular, his strength returning after a recent 30-day hunger strike to protest his continued incarceration. With shoulder-length brown hair and a brown mustache, he could pass for a rock star -- or a revolutionary. He speaks with the trace of a Russian accent, his language flecked with legal terms, psychological theories and American expletives.

He was born Sergey Vasily'yevich Taranushenko but changed his name to Arnold Topazov when he switched sides, arriving in the U.S. in the summer of 1979.

Asked why he defected, he launches into a lengthy account of his life, from an unhappy childhood in the Ukraine to his draft in the Soviet Army at age 17 to a military tour in East Germany that he compared with prison.

He also talks of the gap between the myth and reality of Soviet life, of trying to live like a "New Socialist Man" while being confined to barracks in East Germany.

"There is no one single factor," he said. "It is a blend of many things. Basically, it came to this: I had enough with the system."

Like almost everything else with his life, Topazov turned inspiration to action from the unlikeliest of sources.

He defected because of a motorcycle.

Topazov was placed under house arrest for riding his beloved Java bike near the Soviet base in Torgau, Germany. It was a nasty sentence carried out by a commanding officer who then destroyed Topazov's motorcycle piece by piece.

Going over the wall

Angered and humiliated, Topazov made plans to flee to the West. He photographed documents relating to communications codes, his specialty. Fearing an interrogation from the KGB, Topazov set out for West Berlin on May 13.

He went by car -- and ran out of gas. He took a train. And then, on May 14, he searched for an opening in the Berlin Wall. A day later, he found a spot, where the wall of guard towers and concrete blocks gave way to two fences.

He rested for several hours, gathered his thoughts, took one deep breath and, finally, ran, crossing a mesh wire fence, a barbed wire fence electrified at the top and a ditch. The dash took less than a minute. It is a journey he now recalls as a blur of sweat and fear.

"Some old man on the western side saw me," he said. "I couldn't speak any German and he couldn't speak any Russian. He shook my hand. I asked for a cigarette. He didn't have one. He gave me a candy."

Topazov had planned to go immediately to the police. But he couldn't find any officers on the street, and he couldn't flag down any squad cars.

So he hopped on a bus and was taken to the central police station by a driver who took him for a fare-cheater.

"Within a couple of hours, they turned me over to the Americans," Topazov said.

Over the next several months, American intelligence officials discovered that Topazov had a great deal to offer. He gave them codes and ciphers, storage sites for nuclear warheads and details on selected Soviet commanders.

And all along, as he gave up his information, Topazov said he felt cleansed. He wanted to infuriate the Soviets, and he wanted to make a life for himself in America.

"I was very [angry] with any shred of the Soviet authority," he said. "I felt, the more I can harm them, the better for me."

By the first of July 1979, Topazov was in America, granted permanent resident alien status.

"When we drove in from Andrews Air Force base, an officer showed me the Lincoln Memorial," Topazov said. "I was in a state of shock. I wasn't reacting. I was like, 'Well, so what?' "

Topazov was ready to start a new life. He studied English for a year at Georgetown University. He said the CIA gave him an annual $15,000 living stipend -- good for 10 years -- and landed him a job testing modulating equipment at Frederick Electronics. He also rented a one-bedroom apartment in Frederick and began attending night classes at Frederick Community College.

Topazov appeared to be doing fine -- the defector living the American dream.

But there were cracks in the life of the Soviet emigre. Unaccustomed to money management, Topazov spent freely and ran up debts. He also began to drink heavily. Work left him bored and restless.

Mostly, he was encountering the effects of culture shock and the guilt that he began to feel for turning his back on the Soviet Union.

"It was like all of a sudden, you go deaf and mute," he said. "You have all the people around you, but you can't communicate. It was a huge blow to my self-esteem not to make myself understood.

"I went from one society to another," he said. "I did not just take a bus. I certainly was affected by the way I got from the Soviet Union to the United States. I'm not saying I had to be pampered. But I did not know what was going on."

The CIA has declined official comment on Topazov's activities. But a government official familiar with the case confirmed Topazov's links with the agency, a bond so strong that the defector routinely gave lectures on "Soviet Reality" at CIA headquarters in Virginia.

"This is a worst-case situation of what can happen with a defector," the official said. "He comes here, seems to be doing OK, and in some fashion gets unstrung."

Other defectors have encountered similar feelings of disenchantment, detachment and loneliness, according to those who have counseled them. Of the 300 or so defectors who came to the U.S. during the Cold War with vital information, few ever ran afoul of the law.

"We had one who didn't pay his taxes and another who was caught shoplifting," said one woman who has counseled CIA-sponsored defectors. "There were a couple of wife-beaters, here and there. Some have been drunk and disorderly. By and large, no one has been involved in serious criminal activity."

Descent into crime

Topazov's descent into criminal activity began in September 1984. Even now he has difficulty explaining how he turned himself into a bank robber.

He was living in Hyattsville and attending the University of Maryland, studying for a degree in computer science. He said he was tired and depressed. A relationship with another Soviet emigre had dissolved. And yes, he was even a little homesick.

"Let's put it this way, I didn't want to miss nothing, but I guess I was missing everything," he said.

On an impulse, he rented a car and began driving with a vague idea that he somehow wanted to get to Europe via Canada.

"I drove to Buffalo," he said.

And then he zig-zagged from coast to coast on a monthlong spree fueled by booze and phony credit cards, bound for a last shootout in Maryland. He was gone so long even CIA officials filed a missing persons report.

But he would surface.

"I ran out of money," he said. "I had a financial problem. Somewhere in the back of my head, I knew I would have to resolve the financial crisis."

Thus began the short career of Arnold Topazov, bank robber.

He looked outside the window of his room at the Desert Motel in Santa Monica, Calif., and saw his salvation, a Home Savings of America bank branch.

Near 4 p.m., on Sept. 25, 1984, Topazov walked into the bank, pulled a large pistol from his jacket and announced: "All right, everybody, this is a stick-up. Get down."

It was just like in the movies. He even made a clean getaway with $5,974 tucked inside a blue tote bag.

Robbing a bank "is a strange feeling," he said. "It's a high. Not an excitement, but of getting out of a tight situation. I was relieved. It was the same relief when I got across the Berlin Wall."

But Topazov was also depressed and ashamed. He said after the robbery that he played a game of Russian roulette, spinning the chamber of a gun, and pulling the trigger once.

"I couldn't handle it anymore," he said.

Yet he kept moving, winding up in Maryland and winding up broke.

He stuck with the familiar. He chose to rob the bank branch he did business with: the Savings Bank of Baltimore at the Frederick Shopping Center.

On Oct. 23, 1984, Topazov armed himself with a 9 millimeter Beretta pistol, two 9 millimeter clips, a box of 9 millimeter ammunition and a .357 Magnum revolver with a speed loader.

He expected to succeed -- or die.

"It was either get a chunk of money and start a new life or put a bullet in my head," he said.

A disaster

Near the 3 p.m. close, bank manager Glen Whitley noticed a man wearing dark sunglasses, a three-piece suit and an outlandish black wig, carrying a briefcase and two plastic Halloween bags.

"The guy opened up his jacket, pulled out a pistol and said, 'I'm going to rob the bank,' and I said to myself, 'Oh, shoot,' " Mr. Whitley recalled.

The robbery was a disaster, as Topazov attempted to flee with $68,691. Alarms were sounded. Dye packs exploded. And finally, it all ended two hostages and a car chase later with Topazov, panicked, surrounded by police, wounding a man whose car he had commandeered. He said he shot the man in the stomach in a reflexive action when the man tried to leave the car.

"If I had any chance of going back and undoing it, I would have," he said. "What can I tell the man I shot, 'I'm sorry'? If I could heal him, it would be a different story. But I can't."

For an instant before his arrest, he considered suicide.

"I couldn't pull the trigger," he said.

The do-or-die robbery created quite a mess -- for the victim, for Topazov, for the CIA.

The agency arranged for a Frederick attorney to handle Topazov's defense, a government official said. The agency also kept the prosecutors and judges informed of Topazov's background.

No trial was ever held. The case was moved from state court to federal district court in Baltimore. Charges against Topazov for the California heist also were dropped.

Topazov pleaded guilty to the Maryland robbery and hostage incident and received a life sentence in March 1985. But three months later, U.S. District Court Judge Herbert F. Murray reduced the sentence to 20 years after a federal psychiatrist report determined Topazov could be rehabilitated.

"Except for the people I hurt, I think my incarceration is a lucky break," Topazov said after the 20-year sentence was imposed.

Topazov has been imprisoned for more than nine years. Much of what he has learned about this country he has discovered on a journey through federal facilities in Missouri, Michigan, Indiana, New York and, now, Pennsylvania.

"There is nothing I can take out of here," he said. "It has added to my life experience. It has exposed me to another side of life. It has made me more cynical."

His mandatory release date for good behavior is Aug. 21, 1996, but he is seeking a parole. He says he has myasthenia gravis, a disease in which the immune system mistakenly attacks muscles, causing a person to become weak and tire easily.

In rare instances, the disease can lead to death.

During the past few years, he also has carried on a provocative legal fight with the CIA, attempting to collect wages he claims he is owed.

In October 1992, the government attempted to strike a deal after Topazov demanded $150,000 and his prompt departure from the country.

David I. Salem, an assistant U.S. attorney, wrote Topazov, "I am authorized, in accordance with services you have rendered on behalf of the United States, to offer you $105,000, the amount that has accumulated to date (from October 1984 to October 1992).

"We do not believe it would be appropriate to pay interest or to attempt to influence in any manner the date of your release," the letter continued.

Topazov rejected the offer.

It is difficult to calculate the exact worth of the information that Topazov gave to the U.S. more than a decade ago. It is easier to tally up the overall bill, however.

According to a government official, the CIA likely paid some $60,000 to Topazov in living stipends. The agency also paid an undisclosed amount for Topazov's legal defense, plus another $13,000 to reimburse the shooting victim for medical expenses and wages lost.

The cost of Topazov's incarceration has run more than $100,000, according to estimates made by a Federal Bureau of Corrections spokesman. Currently, the average cost of housing an inmate at a federal medium security facility runs $15,450 a year.

'A citizen of nowhere'

Topazov's future remains uncertain. The country of his birth was not even a legal entity until after the Soviet Union collapsed. The country he once served militarily no longer exists. And the country he lives in is likely to deport him after his prison release.

"I am a citizen of nowhere," he said.

Topazov said that he wants further developments in his case to take place publicly. He also said he would like to remain in the United States, although he does not know yet how he will support himself.

"The old Soviet Union is now more foreign to me than the United States," he said.

Allenwood is likely his final stop before freedom. He lives quietly. Up at 6 a.m., in bed by nightfall. He is seeking a job as a prison clerk. The long legal battle with the CIA no longer consumes him as it once did.

"I want nothing to do with them," he said.

But there are times when the past intrudes, when historic moments force him to recall that time when he was young and angry and scared.

As the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Topazov watched the spectacle from inside a federal penitentiary and said all he felt was "bitterness." The wall he once scaled had little meaning to him anymore.

But now, he said, he feels a sense of pride for the collapse of a barrier that imprisoned millions.

"I took a a chip out of that wall one time before anyone thought it would come down," he said. "Somehow, that should be recognized."