For Zhomov the arrest of the illegals stirred conflicting emotions. On the one hand the arrests were a disaster at the hand of an adversary he had spent his life battling. They had the upper hand now. And they wanted to free Russians whom Zhomov had dedicated himself to capturing. In the case of Zaporozhsky and to a lesser extent Vasilenko, these were men he held responsible for betraying some of Russia’s best agents. It had been Zhomov who had raised with the Americans for years the idea of swapping Zaporozhsky for Ames. It may well have been Zhomov who came up with the idea of luring the former KGB man back to Moscow with just such a plan in mind. Now he was being forced into a trade, but not on the terms he had envisaged. However, spying is a complicated business. And there was an element of schadenfreude—taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune—for Zhomov. After all, Zhomov was FSB. And the illegals were SVR. Their roll-up offered a chance for him and the FSB to press their case that the SVR could not be trusted to look after its own internal security as it had done in the past. In the bureaucratic battles that marked out Moscow’s internal spy wars, this defeat for a rival was also his opportunity. The wheels began to turn.
ON JULY 5, Igor Sutyagin was hard at work in a penal colony in the northern region of Arkhangelsk, near the Arctic Circle. Some days he was winding wire around a cable, other days hauling wood. That day he was shoveling cinders onto a path to make a walkway. An official came up to him. “Get your things together quickly,” the official said. “You’re being sent away.” He was not told where or why. He accounted for his possessions, which consisted of 23 spare buttons, 17 paper clips, 106 postcards, and 74 envelopes. Sutyagin was handcuffed and put on a flight to Moscow, where he was transferred to Lefortovo prison. Being moved around without being told was a normal part of the punishment regime. But when he was asked what size shirt he wore, he sensed something unusual was going on. A prison official even did up his tie for him. He was aware he had not shaved for days, though, as they took his picture. It was the kind of picture you take for a passport or a visa. What are you bastards up to? he thought.
GENNADY VASILENKO HAD been in a prison in Nizhny Novgorod when he was given the sudden order on July 5 to pack up for a transfer. He was placed into a steel cage in the back of a VW. The smell of fresh paint and heat on the drive to Moscow was overpowering. By the early hours of the sixth he was back in Lefortovo. Skripal and Zaporozhsky also made their way to Moscow.
Sutyagin was taken to the office of the head of the prison. Inside were some Americans and Russians. They used only their first names and Sutyagin did not know who they all were, but one was Hoffman, another Zhomov. Sutyagin was told his name was on a list submitted by US officials and there was the possibility of his release and transfer out of the country. But in order for him to be pardoned, he had to sign a confession. He refused. He did not want to admit to being a spy. He also did not want to leave Russia. His dream was to be a free man in his own homeland. Both the Russians and Americans explained to him that he would have to sign if he was going to get out. “It’s a very simple deal: you give your honor in exchange for your freedom,” he would reflect. He could sense from the men in the room that larger forces were at work. He was told the exchange had been agreed to at the highest level—by the presidents of Russia and the United States and then prepared by their secret services. He was told if he said no, then the whole deal was off. He was given two hours to think about it. The pressure was on.
That morning Vasilenko was taken to the same room. He recognized Zhomov, who had interrogated him. One of the Americans introduced himself as the chief of station for the CIA in Moscow. This seemed bizarre. Why would a CIA officer be identifying himself in front of the FSB? Was it a Russian provocation to extract a confession that he really had been a CIA agent? Hoffman read out the details of the agreement between the two governments. If he signed, Vasilenko would be offered a pardon. He was told there was no time. He did not want to admit to espionage, as he had never been a spy. He said he needed time to think. Skripal was brought to the upstairs office. He did not want to confess his guilt, either. But he was told he had to. Hoffman told him, too, to go away and think about it. What about Zaporozhsky? He is likely to have been the one who was happy to sign and get out of Russia as soon as he could.
After a few hours Vasilenko decided he had nothing to lose. Skripal had come to the same conclusion and so eventually, reluctantly, would Sutyagin. “I was between a rock and a hard place and if I didn’t sign, the rock and the hard place would have pulverized me,” he said afterward. Some Russian officials, including the head of the FSB, were said to have been delighted by his confession. The decision to sign something admitting guilt for something he felt he had not done left Sutyagin depressed and angry.
Hoffman finally had all four signed up. The agreement was that they would be pardoned and allowed to leave with one member of their family. The last twenty-four hours were bad for Zaporozhsky. He was beaten and, according to one source, subject to mock execution. Vasilenko was also mistreated. “They really took it out on them,” says one American. It was a sign of just how much anger there was in Moscow at being forced into a trade releasing men they saw as traitors.
On the eighth, the prisoners were expecting to be freed. They were taken to a reception room and allowed to change clothes. The hours passed. No one came for them. Only in the evening were they told that they would have to wait another day. They changed back into prison uniform and returned to their cells. Was it all a trick?
IN THE UNITED States, all the illegals had been transferred to New York. Many of the ten had never met each other before. There were no embraces and little emotion. They spoke in English rather than their native Russian. “It is difficult to explain, but you get so accustomed, you live that life,” Elena Vavilova later said. Lawyers were stunned at how fast events were moving. The illegals were told they were heading for Moscow and their children would be joining them. Some had been told who their parents really were, and did not want to go to Russia. But what if some had been recruited to follow in their footsteps? The decision was to send them all to Russia with the exception of Pelaez’s children, since she had not been an illegal and they were older. Juan Lazaro Jr. struggled, it was said, when he had to say good-bye to his parents. He was a teenager with a musical scholarship to his name and a glittering career ahead of him who suddenly was in the middle of a spy drama. When reporters outside court asked if he was going to follow his parents to Moscow he managed only a half smile before heading down to the subway. His half brother did his best to protect and support him. As part of the deal they had to pack up and leave the family house (paid for by the SVR). But they still could not quite take it all in. “I still believe Juan Lazaro is from Uruguay,” Waldo Marsical told reporters the day after his father revealed who he really was. “The only Russian thing my mother likes is vodka with passion fruit.”
ALEX AND TIMOTHY, Heathfield and Foley’s two sons, were already in Moscow. The two young men were bewildered by the speed of events and the sudden realization that their parents were not who they thought they were. The brothers traveled to Russia on July 5 after their mother told them to continue with their planned trip. “If I wasn’t already feeling traumatized enough by the events that were taking place, arriving to Russia truly made it all feel unreal,” Alex later said. As they walked off the plane and before even going through passport control, they were met by SVR officers. The officers explained that they knew their parents and were going to help. The Russians asked the boys to trust them. Instead of going to the hotel they had booked, the brothers were driven to an apartment where they would stay for the coming weeks. “They showed us pictures of our parents and of their childhood,” Alex later testified. The photos included pictures of their parents looking younger and in uniform and wearing medals. “That was the moment when I thought, ‘Okay, this is real.’ Until that moment, I’d refused to believe any of it was true,” Alex said. His parents were not Canadians but Russian spies. This was their paren
ts’ homeland, a country in which the two brothers had never set foot. The boys were taken to see their grandmother—the mother of Donald Heathfield, or to put it more correctly, Andrey Bezrukov. She was a woman they had no recollection of meeting before (although they may have met once when they were babies). She spoke no English and they did not speak Russian.
IN NEW YORK on July 8, the illegals had to plead guilty. They would have to promise never to reenter the United States without agreement from the attorney general and to not profit directly or indirectly from the stories of their time in the United States. Their property would be forfeited. The Murphys had to give up the Montclair house, which they had valued so much it had led to a row with the SVR. But most important, they had to admit who they really were.
As sentencing approached, Juan Lazaro was still holding out. But the pressure was growing to admit the truth. That was required so that a guilty plea could be entered and the swap carried out. Finally, the barriers came down. Just before the sentencing, he finally relented. Pelaez maintains she was shocked to learn that the man she had been married to for a quarter of a century—the father of her child—was a KGB-trained Russian spy. “I had mixed emotions in that cell, where nobody told me what was happening. I am a nearly 60-year-old woman. I love my companion. But I may never forgive him for not being straight with me,” Pelaez added.
The courtroom was packed on July 8. Two Russian officials were present to make sure everything went according to plan. For Maria Ricci and others in the FBI team, the appearance in court was one they would never forget—the culmination of years of hard work. There were mixed feelings in the FBI about the decision to swap rather than prosecute. There were certainly some who wanted a guilty verdict and a prison sentence. That was what normally constituted success in the bureau. But there were those who knew this was different. Some admitted a sense of relief they would not have to go through the paperwork of the trial. And bigger political forces were at work. Sometimes success was not in the sentence, one agent involved in the arrests reckoned, but in the fact that your case makes it all the way up to the White House and results in the president deciding how he is going to use the leverage you have created.
THE SUSPECTS HAD to stand up in court and formally plead. Some, like Patricia Mills, looked broken. Others seemed to enjoy the attention. “As I moved to New York, I failed to register as an agent of a foreign government,” said Anna Chapman. Reporters in the court recall her “breaking into a smug grin at times and twirling her red hair as she turned to look at the courtroom sketch artist.” Her lawyer afterward said she was expecting to go to Moscow and then return to London. Perhaps her Western party lifestyle was not quite over, she was thinking. She would be disappointed.
Richard Murphy had been first. He stood up. The judge asked him to state his name for the record. Murphy looked at the judge. “Which name?” he asked. “That is one of those moments that will stick with me forever,” says Maria Ricci.
22
Vienna
AT 4 A.M. on July 9, the activity began at Lefortovo in Moscow. The prisoners were told to get their bags. Two hours later, they were taken to a van. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Zaporozhsky said to his old colleague Gennady Vasilenko when they sat down inside. Under heavy guard, the convoy made it out toward Domodedovo airport. Their van drove directly to the airfield where the Yak-42 Emergency Ministry plane was waiting.
The Russians and Americans who had negotiated the deal were there, including Zhomov. The spies had not escaped him yet. This was his last chance to see the men he regarded as traitors and he would be on the plane with them. The prisoners could feel the tension. Sutyagin would later say he could sense confusion from the men who had until then been his jailors. “They absolutely did not know how to behave with us.” Some made their anger clear at the fact that a group of men regarded as traitors were being freed. CIA station chief Hoffman was also on board. He had given each of the four men a bag but told them not to open it yet. The flight was mercifully short. Sutyagin and Skripal sat opposite each other and spoke briefly about family. Vasilenko and Zaporozhsky were more animated as they talked. “Do you think it’s a trick?” Vasilenko asked his former KGB colleague. But by midday, they began their descent.
Their destination was Vienna. Few places could have been better suited for a spy swap. It had been a playground for spies throughout the Cold War. Most famously, it was the site for the iconic film The Third Man, written by former MI6 officer Graham Greene. The familiar resonances of the past seemed to echo in everyone’s minds. “The Cold War was over, but the scene in Vienna was proof that the old games were alive and well,” CIA director Panetta later said. “All that was missing was the sound of the zither playing the theme from the movie The Third Man.”
THOUSANDS OF MILES away, the Russian illegals held in New York were also on the move. They were taken by bus from the court late on Thursday, July 8, to a secure area at LaGuardia Airport. Elena Vavilova did not have time to change clothes and remained in her orange prison uniform. They boarded a Vision Airlines red and white Boeing 767-200 charter plane. On the tarmac, some of the field agents who had worked the case said their good-byes to the Russians they had spent years watching.
As they waved them off, some of the FBI team harbored a secret desire. The paperwork had been signed and there was no risk of further incriminating themselves, so the FBI agents hoped the illegals might suddenly open up. They already knew every detail of these people’s lives—they had bugged their houses and listened to the most intimate conversations between husband and wife and parents and children, they had read their messages back and forth to Moscow Center, and knew when they were telling their bosses the truth and when they were lying. But what they really wanted to do was ask the human questions as one professional spy to another. What was it really like? Did they have any doubts? “If I have a regret it is that—because I practically lived with the Murphys for so long . . . Richard Murphy in particular—I feel I know him better than some of my relatives, which may say something quite bad about me,” says Maria Ricci. But for the Russians, they were heading home to an uncertain future. Being too friendly with the Americans who busted you would not go down well with Moscow Center. The questions were left unanswered.
Ricci handed the Murphys their passports and explained that when they got on the plane they would also get their children’s documents, including birth certificates. She reassured them that when they got to Moscow their children would be there. The Murphys thanked her.
At that moment, Anna Chapman piped up. “Can I have my passport back?” she asked the FBI officers. “No, sorry,” they said. “Can I have my UK passport back?” she asked. “No, we are going to keep that one, too.” “Really?” “Sorry about that. We are going to keep that one.” She seemed particularly worried about the impact of the arrest on her British citizenship. Within days of the swap, she was notified via her lawyer that her British citizenship was being revoked and that she could not reenter the country after the swap. She was “particularly upset” at the development, her lawyer said. For all the glamour and trappings of life as a spy she was still a young Russian who wanted to live in the West.
THE FEW DOZEN passengers boarded the Vision Airlines flight. On board the plane were the illegals, some of the FBI team, as well as representatives from the CIA and State Department. They took up only a few rows of seats, leaving many empty. There had been a little bit of competition in Washington about who would get a seat on the flight and witness the end of the show. But those who did make it would later reflect that it would all seem almost anticlimactic. “It was a bit like after a football match where you are banging your heads against the enemy for so long and then it is all over and you shake hands at the end of the game in the middle of the field,” says Alan Kohler, who was one of those on board. The illegals—still in prison clothing—were exhausted and somber. “I was exhausted and slept almost the whole flight,” Vavilova recalls. “We could comfortably stretch o
n the seats. Business class meal was a treat after the prison food.” The plane took off around 9:30 p.m. for the overnight journey.
Murphy was one of the most personable on board. He was curious as to how the FBI had gone about investigating them. “Did you really have microphones in my house?” he asked. Kohler said they did. Others were quieter. Zottoli withdrew into himself and became introspective, trying to process what had happened to him in the past two weeks. Kohler and another agent tried talking to him and asking him what it was like living in the United States as an illegal. He went quiet. “I always knew this day would come,” he said. But, he explained, the longer he lived in the United States, the less he had thought about it. “I could have done this forever. But we lost this one and you guys won. That’s just how this one went,” he said.
The Russians had sent someone over to escort the team back. Ostensibly this may have been for their welfare, but it would also have been to keep an eye on them and make sure no one had any last-minute changes of heart. The minder brought with him all the recent newspapers and he handed them out. The illegals were amazed to find the papers were full of their stories. After days stuck in detention, they were now beginning to understand that their arrest was major international news. Anna Chapman was not making herself popular, and she was not in a good mood. The newspapers in recent days had focused heavily on her. “Russian Spy Babe’s Hot Affair,” one New York Daily News headline read, “‘Anna Chapman was kinky and great in bed,’ says ex-husband Alex.” The article began: “She may have been a true Cold Warrior but she was red-hot in the sheets.” There were references to whips, nipple clamps, and their joining of the mile-high club. What really annoyed her was that there were pictures of her naked.
Russians Among Us Page 27