The "mysterious Mr. Zzylch" boarded the posh Gulfstream executive jet for his Russian business trip accompanied by a few friends, a pizza somebody grabbed along the way and the board game Risk, just for laughs.
Zzylch, as millionaire Washington telecom mogul Walter C. Anderson once jokingly called himself, was in negotiations with Russian officials to lease their moribund orbiting spacecraft, Mir. They needed money. He had plenty.
So there he was leaving Reagan National Airport in October of 1999, on his $21 million airplane with gold-trimmed interior, full wet bar, a pizza and a game of Risk.
"It was hilarious," recalled a friend who made the trip. "Just some guys drinking a beer, playing a board game and on their way to get their own space station."
"It was the grandest adventure," the friend said. "Bunch of guys living a dream."
Four and half years later, the laughter and dreams have faded. The Mir spacecraft was "deorbited" to a fiery death in 2001, after Anderson spent millions trying to save it. He shed his interest in the jet after it burned through $4,000 of fuel one day idling on the runway. And late last month, he was charged by the federal government with evading more than $200 million in income taxes. Prosecutors called him the biggest income tax cheat in U.S. history.
Last week, a federal judge declined to release Anderson on bail, saying he might flee the country. Prosecutors noted his multiple identities -- "Mark Roth, William Prospero, Robert Zzylch, Robert Zzyllick, R. Langer, Rangor Danksjold and Dr. Paul Anderson." They also cited his collection of books about altering an identity, including "Poof! How to Disappear and Create a New Identity" and "The ID Forger." And they pointed out that he has connections around the globe.
'A sense of jest'
As Anderson, 51, faces months of incarceration, friends and fellow space aficionados -- who emphasized that they know little about his business dealings -- portray a man very different from the crafty tax evader depicted in the government's indictment.
They describe a slightly eccentric bachelor whose success at making money went along with a strong sense of rebellion and an array of exotic interests, a man of spartan tastes with a sharp streak of humor.
"There was a sense of jest all the time," said an old friend, Rick Tumlinson, who brought the board game on the jet to Russia. "There was always a lot of laughter and a sense of humor . . . . The guy was a perennial kid."
Tumlinson said Anderson once showed up for a Rolling Stones concert in a stretch limousine and pulled expensive champagne from a plastic shopping bag filled with ice.
He said Anderson once broke a leg paragliding. Anderson also seemed to prefer a cheeseburger and iced tea to a gourmet meal, and he had no qualms about lodging in a cheap motel.
Anderson also had a multimillion-dollar art collection that included paintings by the surrealists Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte and Paul Delvaux. And he had a black pedestal in the foyer of his luxury riverfront condominium on which was mounted a tire clamped in a yellow traffic enforcement boot.
That defiant statement, said Tumlinson, "defines him and his relationship with the government."
When investigators searched his home three years ago, they found a poster in his library that said: "Someday I hope to buy the government, trade it for a dog, and shoot the dog."
Anderson is gray-haired and balding and wears thick, round glasses. In a jailhouse interview a few days after his arrest last month, he talked almost nonstop. He talked like a man accustomed to pliant listeners. Sometimes he veered toward double talk: He bought but did not own things. He was raised a liberal but disliked giving "to fuzzy liberal causes, where the money gets flushed down the toilet." He was for birth control and arms control, and he was nonviolent but not anti-military.
In three recent court hearings, clad in baggy blue or orange prison garb, he has been the picture of suppressed irritation: Though he had expected his arrest after years of government scrutiny, he said, he was "amazed, appalled, angry," when he was picked up Feb. 26 at Dulles International Airport.
Described as offbeat, awkward
The only child of middle-class parents, Anderson grew up in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs of Washington in the 1960s and '70s. His parents separated when he was 12 and divorced in 1968. He attended local colleges but never graduated.
In the 1980s, he lived in a group house in Oakton where, former roommates recalled, he was a Star Trek fan and an amiable, offbeat and slightly awkward companion.
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He came up with the gag name Robert Zzylch, they remembered, because he wanted the last name in the phone book. "He was proud of it. We were kids," said one, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he said he did not want his name associated with a person accused of criminal activity.
In the recent interview, Anderson said that the Zzylch was so catchy that a community newspaper wrote an article about him, dubbing him, the "mysterious Mr. Zzylch."
Once, when he was invited to the wedding of a former Oakton roommate, he showed up without a tie, bearing an unwrapped cardboard box with a green-and-beige, teardrop-shaped ceramic abstract sculpture.
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"I would picture him as . . . no matter what milieu he's in, just not quite fitting in," said the roommate's wife, who also knew Anderson. She spoke on condition she not be named because she is a federal employee.
Anderson entered the telecommunications business on the ground floor, as one of the first few hundred employees of MCI Corp., he said. He then shrewdly rode the tech boom to riches -- forming and then building and selling telecom businesses through the 1980s and the 1990s.
Eventually, he had the condominium in Washington and a mansion in Madrid, the government says. He has never married, but he has had girlfriends in Spain, France, Indonesia and Brazil, investigators say.
In fall 1998, the government says, Anderson paid $2.3 million for two paintings by Magritte and one by Delvaux at Christie's Auction House in New York. Two years later, Anderson bought another Delvaux from a gallery in New York for about $1 million, the government says.
The government alleges that Anderson failed to pay tax on the art and on other purchases, including a $54,633 set of bronze panthers he bought in London in 1998 and $47,101 worth of fine wine he bought at auction in 2000.
In the interview, Anderson was vague about whether he or one of his foundations owned some of the paintings.
"I had some of them at my home," he said. "I got to enjoy them. I did become somewhat attached to them. . . . But I didn't treat them like my own. They were always listed on the books of the foundation as their property."
The indictment alleges that he concealed more than $450 million in income via offshore tax havens and that he owes the federal government $170 million in income taxes and the District $40 million in income taxes and $250,000 in sales taxes.
Anderson has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Dreams of space
Even as he was earning millions, acquaintances said he maintained a separate life as a wealthy, middle-aged Tom Swift, who dreamed of having his own space station, a moon base and a fleet of space tugs.
He was part of what author Greg Klerkx calls "the alt-space movement," -- those who advocate a bigger role in space for nongovernmental agencies and a lesser role for NASA.
In 1997, Anderson used $5 million to establish FINDS -- the Foundation for the International Non-governmental Development of Space, Klerkx wrote in "Lost In Space," a book about NASA's woes.
Invested in the stock market, the money soon grew to $25 million, Klerkx wrote.
Among other things, it was used to help fund a University of Arizona scientist who was interested in the mining of asteroids. It helped pay for the Colorado-based Mars Society's research station near the North Pole.
And it aided a Vermont scientist who built and successfully tested a miniature prototype spacecraft powered by an energy beam.
In October 2000, at the White Sands (N.M.) Missile Range, the craft set an altitude record: 233 feet.
"He obviously was quite wealthy," said Leik Myrabo, the scientist whose beamed energy experiments were supported by $50,000 of Anderson's money. "That was passed around through that community.
"Here's a guy who was willing to step forward and actually encourage development of space in the private sector," Myrabo said. "He was willing to take the risk"
As for the government's allegations, Tumlinson, whom Anderson made the director of FINDS, said: "I only saw him doing good things for people . . . none of us ever saw that other side. We had no idea."
Staff writers Carol D. Leonnig, Yuki Noguchi and David S. Hilzenrath and researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.