However, the harshest and most painful of his setbacks in Prague was related to his French Embassy operation. In fact, the wound it inflicted on him never healed in full. Every time Dmitri had delivered his loot—photocopies of the most sensitive French diplomatic correspondence—“Golst” couldn’t have been happier. He assured Dmitri that the Center would greatly reward his efforts.14
But one day “Golst” summoned Dmitri to his office and told him that the Center had instructed him to let the French “source” go. Dmitri was both flummoxed and devastated by this news. It was one of those rare instances in his career as a spy when he could not help but protest his superiors’ inhumane treatment of him: “I’m a living per son,” he said to “Golst,” “not some fish stuffing. How can I let go of the ‘source’ that I’ve been working on so hard for three years? I’ve defiled three human souls—my lover’s, my wife’s, and my own. For three years, I’ve been a scoundrel. And now, when I’ve finally procured the secrets for my Motherland, you tell me ‘We don’t need them?’ Where were you before?”15
“Golst” shrugged. He speculated that the order to close the French “source” could have come from a traitor who would face exposure by those who read confidential French diplomatic mail. “That’s for the better!” Dmitri exclaimed. “Then we’ll catch the bastard!” “Golst” hypothesized that the traitor could have wormed his way into the higher echelons of Soviet power and, therefore, was untouchable. “I didn’t understand a thing,” Dmitri recalls, “because I was an idealist and a fool. The situation was revolting, but nothing could be done to change it.”16
He came to see Marie-Eliane for the last time. He told her they had to part forever: he had suddenly been recalled to Moscow and had to leave Prague at once.
The Frenchwoman’s reaction to this news tormented him for the rest of his days. Apparently she was unable to accept that the man she loved was part of a trap the Soviet intelligence had set for her from the very beginning. She fell on her knees, embraced Dmitri’s legs, and cried. Through her sobs, she asked him why they hadn’t let her know before that he could be recalled at any moment, before she had blotted her conscience by giving away her country’s secrets. “I stood in silence,” Dmitri recalls. “Then I tore her hands from my legs and left her lying on the floor.”17
This was the last straw. Dmitri called it quits. On his request, the Prague Trade Mission gave him a letter of recommendation for postdoctoral study at the Moscow Academy of Foreign Trade. He had other plans as well. Quite early in his life, he had developed artistic ambitions. Even at the most trying moments of his life, he never missed a chance to draw a sketch or jot down some notes. It was his way of coping with the overwhelming impressions his turbulent life kept throwing at him. Now it was time to give his long-suppressed creative urges a chance to realize themselves in full. He also wanted to capitalize on his firsthand experience of life abroad and write a satirical book about Western bourgeois life. He already had some literary experience. In 1924, he had published articles about the White emigration in Prague newspapers. In 1927, as he resumed his studies at the Ukrainian Free University, he began contributing to journals specializing in economics. Bit by bit, he gathered material for his future book. Toward the beginning of 1930, the manuscript was ready. He couldn’t wait to take it to Moscow and see it through publication.18
And now came the offer from “Golst” to put all of his plans on hold and resume his spy career in Berlin. The offer didn’t come totally out of the blue, however. Back in the summer of 1925, after his trip to Moscow and interview with Artuzov and Gorb, Dmitri had been ordered to make a short trip from Prague to Helsingfors (now Helsinki). There, in a small café, he met secretly with Mikhail Trilisser, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Department at that time. Good recruiters were hard to come by. At that meeting, Trilisser tested the waters of Dmitri’s feelings about their plans to move him to Germany. Dmitri may have forgotten about it, but now, several years later, when his mind was set on going back to Russia, it looked as if they had decided to act on it after all.19
Regardless of that meeting, the reason for the offer from “Golst” was a massive Soviet effort at the time to create a new pool of OGPU illegal operatives to be infused into Western countries. There were good reasons for it. In the spring of 1927, the global Soviet spy network experienced serious damage. In the course of a few months, Soviet spies were rounded up in eight countries: Poland, Turkey, France, Lithuania, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, and Great Britain. In the wake of these scandals, the last of them, Great Britain, which the Soviets considered their most dangerous adversary, even broke off diplomatic relations. Stalin, by that time in full control of power, was convinced of a well-developed conspiracy of Western powers to destroy the Soviet Union. And he attributed the lack of evidence of such a conspiracy to a dearth of Soviet intelligence efforts in that direction. He demanded drastic strengthening of such efforts. In accord with his wishes, in January 1930, the Politburo decided to reorganize foreign intelligence and intensify its work.20
Since most arrests of Soviet agents involved those who worked in the Soviet missions and resided legally in the countries of interest, to prevent a repetition of similar scandals, the emphasis was on shifting the main spy activities to illegal operatives. In the case that such a spy was arrested, any official affiliation with him could be flatly denied. Thus, a knowledge of foreign languages and an ability to blend into the upper circles of Western societies became the most desirable qualities for a prospective agent recruiter. With mass persecution of the old aristocracy during and after the civil war, individuals with such qualifications were hard to come by. Apparently, at that point, Artur Artuzov, the newly appointed deputy head of the Foreign Intelligence Department, thought of the young man of aristocratic upbringing whom he had screened back in the spring of 1925, Dmitri Bystrolyotov.
Dmitri attributes his decision to accept the offer to his romantic vision of the cloak-and-dagger profession: “All countries of the world would open before me. I’d fly around the world for about five years, and then I’d go to Moscow, to the Academy, but as a different man, more experienced and useful.”21
There was another, even more powerful incentive. Unlike his previous position as an employee of the Soviet Trade Mission, where he enjoyed the security of his diplomatic immunity, working underground under an assumed name presented an enormous risk. He could expect no protection and would have to rely solely on his own wits. And, as Artuzov had warned him during the interview, a recruiter’s job was the most dangerous of them all. He would have to tread the waters carefully and be an excellent judge of people’s characters. The very nature of his task required that, at his own risk, he reveal himself to the prospective agent before the latter decided whether to change sides or not. A recruiter’s mistake could turn fatal.22
The OGPU chiefs believed that Western counterintelligence worked the same as their own agency and also had a free hand over a foreign spy’s life. They believed that, once caught, a spy would be tortured, imprisoned, and even shot without due process of law. Therefore, before sending one of their operatives abroad, the Soviet secret police made sure that he was aware of the mortal danger. If captured, they encouraged him to behave “like a man,” that is, to commit suicide.23
The danger of his new assignment not only did not repel Dmitri, it made the job more attractive to him, even irresistible. It served as a powerful cultural incentive. Soviet spymaster Alexander Orlov attests that “the dangerous work in the underground [was] surrounded in Moscow with such an aura of heroism, that many an intelligence chief, irrespective of his previous service abroad in an official capacity, tr[ied] to get the hazardous assignment as a matter of honor and personal pride.” In addition, for Dmitri, a hero’s halo promised to end the gnawing sense of inferiority he had felt from the early years of his life.24
Although he cites the following lines from one of Pushkin’s Little Tragedies, “A Feast Amidst Plague,” much later in his memoirs than the actual time of his dec
ision to accept the offer to go underground, he does relate it to his spy work abroad. Indeed, it was one of most powerful reasons for that fateful decision:
There is an intoxication in battle,
And on the edge of a dark abyss,
And in the raging ocean,
Amidst terrifying waves and stormy darkness,
And in the Arabian Desert sandstorm,
And in the breath of Plague.
Everything, everything that threatens with ruin
Is fraught with inexplicable delight for a mortal’s heart—
It is, perhaps, his pledge for immortality.
And lucky is the one who, amidst tribulations,
Could find and know these thrills.
Thus—glory to you, Plague!25
First, when Iolanta expressed her unwillingness to go to Berlin and tried to talk him into going to Moscow, he agreed. But when in the morning “Golst” appeared at his door again, Dmitri (unexpectedly even to himself) answered, “Yes.” At night he burnt his manuscripts and all his literary work. He left Iolanta temporarily behind in Prague, boarded a train to Moscow, and at the first station hopped on a train heading to Berlin. Comrade Dmitri Bystrolyotov disappeared. Now, he became an illegal operative under the code name ANDREI, which was later changed to HANS.26
The first order of business in going underground was to assume a new identity. “Golst” tipped Dmitri off about an opportunity to obtain a legitimate passport. It involved a trip to the city of Danzig (now Gdansk), which since 1919, under the Treaty of Versailles, had been considered a free city under the protection of the League of Nations. The doyen of the Diplomatic Corps in that city was in a position to issue a passport at his discretion. Diplomatic councils of various countries carried out the doyen’s duties on an alternate basis. That year, the consul general of Greece, one Henry Habert, presided over the corps. “Golst” advised Dmitri not to take the man’s grand appearance seriously for, as the OGPU had learned, he was a crook, a member of an international gang of drug dealers who had wormed their way into the League of Nations. Habert himself was not even Greek, but a Jew from Odessa.27
Dmitri already knew that he could act. To remind the reader, he had once crossed the Soviet border in Batumi by making the customs guards believe that he was not a Russian, but an Italian sailor. To escape harassment by the Farnaiba crew, he successfully feigned uncontrollable rage. And, when Mr. Fischer was compromised, he acted as a powerful lawyer who could get him out of trouble.
“Your Excellency,” Dmitri said in English as he entered the doyen’s luxurious residence. He sat on the edge of a chair in front of the imposing old man, who wore a monocle in his eye, a false shirtfront, and white garters. “Please help your unlucky compatriot. My briefcase along with my passport has just been stolen.”
“Where were you born?”
“In Saloniki.”
“Do you have a birth certificate?”
“Alas! It was burned in the city hall fire a decade ago.”
(Back in his Constantinople days, Dmitri had heard about the Saloniki fire that destroyed many birth records.)
“Which of the Greek embassies know you?”
“None, I regret.”
“Can anyone in Greece vouch for you?”
“Alas, I never saw my homeland. My parents fled the country when I was a baby.”
“What’s your name?”
“Alexander S. Gallas.”
“Do you speak Greek?”
“To my shame, no. Not a word.”
“Well,” Habert said, “I’m afraid I can’t help you. Good-bye!”
Dmitri put two hundred dollars on the doyen’s desk.
“What’s that?”
“For the poor people of Danzig.”
“This is not a charity. Take your money and get lost.”
When he realized that he was failing his first assignment, Dmitri decided to act more aggressively. Apparently, he was inspired by American movies of the period: in 1928, Lights of New York, the first all-talking film, about a chorus girl involved with gangsters, had already appeared in Europe. His face assuming a vile expression, he pulled out a pack of American cigarettes, stuck one in his mouth, and struck a wooden American match over the papers in front of the doyen.
Habert looked at him in outrage. In a hoarse voice, Dmitri barked at him in American slang, “Button your lip. I need an ID. In a flash!”
Habert turned pale. “Where are you from?”
A few days before, Dmitri had read in the Berlin papers about an international scandal: In broad daylight, the chief of the British police, a colonel, was gunned down in downtown Singapore. The assassin escaped, but the police established that he was an American mobster, a drug dealer, and a spy for Japan.
“Singapore,” Dmitri said.
“Do you know what happened there?”
“I do.”
“And do you know who killed the colonel?”
“Yes. Me.”
His fingers trembling, Habert filled out a blank passport as Dmitri dictated. “Take it. That’s all.”
“No, that’s not all. Give me that Greek king’s portrait,” Dmitri pointed at the doyen’s desk.
Habert was about to remove the portrait from its frame wrapped in ribbons, the colors of the Greek flag, white and blue, but Dmitri stopped him. “Don’t touch it. I want it with the frame. For the idiots at customs. Got it?”
Habert saw his visitor to the door. Here Dmitri made a wrong move: he switched back to the image of the polite Greek refugee who had presented himself at the beginning of his visit. That made the doyen suspicious. He suddenly grabbed Dmitri firmly by his waist and asked in Russian, “Vy tol’ko chto iz Moskvy?” (Are you straight from Moscow?)
Taken by surprise, Dmitri was about to reply in Russian but managed to switch to English at the last moment. “I . . . don’t understand Polish.”
“Ah, forgive me,” Habert said. “I’m tired. It was a mistake, sir.”28
Dmitri considered his visit to the doyen the first little victory of his new underground life. Moreover, he found the character of the American gangster working for Japanese intelligence quite effective, and he used it in future operations.
Getting a legitimate passport was only the first step in creating an operative base in a foreign territory. Now Dmitri had to come up with numerous details to make his assumed personality blend with the surroundings. Here one could not be too careful. As Dmitri told this writer in the course of our interview, “If you pose as a herring salesman, you should be able to tell one herring from another—a Norwegian herring, an ocean herring, a bloater. You should learn how a herring salesman moves and talks. You should reek of herring.” Because he decided to present himself as a Greek merchant, he first made the rounds of Greek shops in Berlin and made casual acquaintances with several shop owners. To justify his lack of Greek, he repeated the legend he had come up with during his meeting with Habert: his parents had fled Greece when he was a baby. But he kept telling everyone that, nevertheless, he felt himself Greek in his bones.29
Then he joined the parish of the local Greek Orthodox Church. He made friends with exchange students and tourists from Greece attending the services. When they returned to their homeland, they sent him letters and postcards with Greek stamps. On the walls of his apartment, he hung pictures of his “home city,” Saloniki. In case of police inquiry, the very presence of all these items corroborated his Greek image.30
Now a legitimate business cover had to be established, one that would allow him to move around the country and abroad without raising any suspicions. The cover also had to identify his source of income. First, the OGPU made him the sales rep of a Danish businessman, one Skau-Cheldsen, who traded in top-of-the line neckties. How ever, after making some calculations, Dmitri found that such a cover was too thin. His commissions would hardly justify his considerable living and travel expenses. He needed to create a legitimate business, profitable enough to finance intelligence operations.31
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Utilizing his economics knowledge, he suggested creating an import-export company trading in cloth waste. Locating it in Amsterdam would make it convenient for the Soviet intelligence network in all West European countries. To that end, the OGPU brought Dmitri into contact with one Baruch (Bernard) Dawidowicz, an uncle of the OGPU rezident in London. The man had some knowledge of Polish import rags and wastepaper technology. Dmitri appointed him director of the newly formed firm; its name, GADA, was composed of the first two letters of Dmitri’s alias (Gallas) and the director’s surname.32
To facilitate opening the new business, Dmitri struck up an acquaintance with an influential banker and businessman, Israel Pollack. He happened to be a patron of an underground bordello operating in the neighborhood where Dmitri rented a spacious apartment. He won the man’s confidence, charmed him, and soon, on his recommendation, opened an account at an Amsterdam bank and joined the City Chamber of Commerce. For his part, Dawidowicz became a member of a local temple and, through other congregants, soon established the necessary business ties.33
GADA’s official business was wholesale trade in wool cloth. But in reality the cloth was counterfeit. First, the firm collected high-quality wool clippings not only all over Holland but also in Belgium, England, Denmark, and other Scandinavian countries. Then, the raw materials were shipped to Lodz, where Dawidowicz arranged to mix them with a generous amount of cotton. The end result was “high-quality” wool cloth. A Belgian artist (perhaps, a member of the local Communist Party; Dmitri calls him “Comrade Gan van Looi”) employed by one of the major British textile firms provided GADA with the next season’s patterns. The counterfeited cloth produced in Lodz resembled the real thing. To make it look thoroughly authentic, the rolls of that cloth were transported to a shop in England where a machine stamped “Made in England” along its borders. The cloth was then sold for a solid profit in remote areas, such as the African continent and South America. Thus, as GADA representatives, Dmitri and other OGPU operatives obtained a solid base for both a verifiable occupation and the financing of their covert operations in Western Europe.34
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