Stalin's Romeo Spy

by Emil Draitser

  Excited and jubilant, Isolde suggested that now they could sigh in relief that Iolanta would soon be free and out of danger—it was time to celebrate the occasion. What followed was a replay of their last meeting back in 1925. But, this time, the roles were reversed. Isolde took the initiative, taking Dmitri on a spree of dance clubs and restaurants; they danced and drank all night long.

  What happened next can perhaps be explained by Dmitri’s peculiar state of mind in that period of his life, the first years of his underground existence as an OGPU spy. On one hand, he was excited by the romantic new life that was full of danger. He was a doer, a man of action who welcomed challenge and rushed to tackle the most difficult problems demanded by his job as an illegal operative. On the other hand, judging by his own perception of his life at that time—“a lonely run in the darkness of a stormy night”—he hardly knew where life was taking him. And this was far from an exaggeration. The tension of his new life began taking a toll on him. Unlike the relative security of walking the city streets as an employee of the Soviet Trade Mission, as he had done back in Prague, his life was totally different—now in Berlin, now in London, now in Geneva or Paris, with a passport in his pocket issued in a name not his own. Following OGPU instructions to the letter, he always had to be on his toes. Any unexpected encounter with a familiar face was a source of around-the-clock worry. Once in any public place, be it an open-air market or a hotel lobby, a concert hall or a nightclub, he had to routinely scan the crowd. There was always a chance that someone might take an unusual interest in him.20

  His life became lonelier than ever. Like other illegals, he not only couldn’t visit any Soviet embassy but also had to avoid associating him self in any way, whether formally or informally, with anyone on its staff. He couldn’t get together for a chat over a cup of coffee with a fellow underground operative who happened to be nearby. Even meetings with his controller Bazarov or his assistants Leppin and Erica had to be prearranged, with every measure of precaution in place. All such meetings had to be brief and to the point, dealing with an intelligence task at hand. His mother’s letters (she still lived in Anapa), sent to a safe address in Prague, reached him months later and, as a precaution, had to be destroyed immediately upon reading. He couldn’t keep them to read again later. If he were arrested, the letters could blow his cover.21

  Homesick, longing to find relief from the tense and lonely life and the grim atmosphere of the underground, he asked for a short leave to visit his mother. But his request was denied, based on the urgency of the situation. A man of action, he continued carrying out his orders with persistence and resolve. His country needed him. He turned the danger of his new life into a drug of sorts, which made him forget about how lost and lonely he was again after his wife’s imprisonment.

  And now in Vienna with Isolde, he got the news that his beloved wife was about to join him. Happy and exhilarated as he hadn’t been for a long time, he allowed himself to lose his self-control and to indulge in celebrating the end of his loneliness. Without noticing, he found himself so intoxicated with hard liquor that he didn’t see at what point the nightclub walls had become the walls of Isolde’s apartment. Moreover, he found himself in pajamas and lying in bed next to the naked Isolde.

  When he opened his eyes, she told him that she had taken every precaution for privacy so that he could finally get what he had wanted since long ago. She was ready to give herself to him, but only under one condition: for her sake, he would give up Iolanta once and for all. As he records it in his memoirs, at that moment, his decision to do away with Isolde wasn’t just wishful thinking. He clearly realized that no other course of action would ensure Isolde’s disappearance from his life forever.

  Upon her release from prison, Iolanta was very ill. Her tuberculosis was active, and she was slowly dying. Dmitri took the incapacitated Iolanta to Berlin and placed her in a local hospital. Her tuberculosis in the acute stage, she was barely alive as he took her for consultations with the best doctors he could find. On their advice, she underwent two unsuccessful operations that were supposed to help her—ablation of the lung nerves. She barely survived the surgeries.

  As he learned about Iolanta’s condition, Boris Berman, the legal OGPU rezident stationed in Berlin, exclaimed, “Very well!” And he suggested moving Iolanta to a resort area in the Swiss Alps to cure her tuberculosis. But it wasn’t a mere act of compassion. Iolanta’s genuine illness made her presence in the heart of Europe look natural, and she was entrusted with a keepsake cache of forged passports used by members of the “flying squad.”

  Dmitri was appalled by Berman’s remark. He never forgave Boris those words, but he followed through with the plan. First, he brought Iolanta to the small town of Arosa and then moved her to Davos to a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. There, behind a cabinet in her ward, she hid money and false passports for the OGPU European spies.

  Now Davos became Dmitri’s semblance of home. During his many shuttle missions across European borders, he stopped there to see his wife. This didn’t happen too often, though. His selfless dedication to work often kept him away for months on end. In time, he would pay a stiff price for it. But for now, he had what he wanted in his life.

  When things settled down, he responded to Isolde’s plea with as much cool as he could muster. He sent her that fateful cigarette case, with its “damned” inscription, that Iolanta had given him back in Prague to dispose of as he wished. He attached the following note: “I’m returning this trifle for it no longer has any use. In my eyes, it had always been a symbol of a certain phase of Iolanta’s past. But that phase is over, and there’s no reason to think it will come back. Therefore, I hasten to return your gift as a symbolic gesture on my part . . . If at any time in the future you’d like to visit my spouse and me, you will undoubtedly rejoice to see our cloudless happiness.”

  NINE

  The End of “Charlie” and Other British Agents

  Only in English novels everything that [British] intelligence service does goes charmingly smoothly, all ends meet, and the Tower of London mercilessly swallows those who have touched upon the secrets of the British Empire.

  —BYSTROLYOTOV, IN HIS MEMOIRS

  In the unsettled atmosphere in Europe, already volatile due to the effects of the Great Depression, the beginning of the new year of 1933 did not bring much relief. On the contrary, an ominous development put all parties involved on guard. On January 30, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. His foreign policy, outlined earlier in his book, Mein Kampf, kept British diplomatic maneuvering high on the list of OGPU spies’ targets. In the book, he proclaimed an alliance with England (and Italy) as Germany’s security for future protection against both France, which he considered his country’s “unrelenting mortal enemy,” and the Soviet Union, at whose expense, in particular, he wished to enlarge Germany’s “living space.” Therefore, a possible rapprochement between Germany and England threatened to leave the USSR, excluded from the League of Nations, in total isolation. To make things worse, on March 19, 1933, Benito Mussolini called for the creation of the Four-Power Pact, which included Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. Although the German–Soviet 1922 Treaty of Rapallo, an agreement of cooperation and mutual security, was still in force, the USSR was justifiably worried that these countries could come up with an invincible anti-Soviet coalition.

  Luckily, ARNO, the Soviet agent in the midst of the British Foreign Office, recuperated from alcoholism enough to continue selling British diplomatic secrets. In May 1933, he came to Paris and brought with him the next pack of documents. Dmitri again asked him to make a direct connection to his “source” in exchange for ARNO’s retirement on an OGPU pension. ARNO replied that he had been preparing the “source” for such a transfer, but the man was still not ready.1

  He came to Paris again on June 20, accompanied by Lucy but without any new diplomatic dispatches. He claimed that he did not have money to pay the “source.” Lucy told Dmitri that ARNO did not wan
t to come, but she had forced him to because “Count Perelly” demanded that appointments be kept at all costs. She also confided in Dmitri that ARNO had failed to kick his alcohol addiction completely. He still drank from early morning on and was heavily intoxicated all the time. He could collapse at any moment. The doctor diagnosed the early stages of delirium tremens. Moreover, Oldham had been having frequent episodes of severe heart pains, which, in the doctor’s opinion, could lead to his sudden death.2

  Facing the prospects of ARNO’s physical demise, which, seemingly, nothing could prevent, Dmitri again showed exceptional doggedness in pursuing the interests of his country. In the hope of obtaining some more Foreign Office confidential documents, he decided to accompany ARNO back to London. Despite many previous failures to achieve the same goal, he did not give up the hope of restoring him as his agent by rescuing him from his self-destructive behavior. He thought of placing him immediately in a sanatorium and sending Lucy someplace else for recuperation. Then Dmitri could continue working with them, while trying eventually to get to the “source,” which Oldham still guarded zealously. Forwarding his plan to the Center, Bazarov added that the plan was quite dangerous, because, to realize even a small part of it, all other means of getting the British documents exhausted, Dmitri had to stay in ARNO’s home.

  Dmitri arrived in London on June 23. Immediately upon his appearance in the country, bad news greeted him: Lucy told him in horror that, for some reason, Sir Robert Vansittart himself had taken an interest in her husband. “Who is he?” Dmitri asked her. “Chief of our intelligence and counterintelligence,” Lucy replied.3

  Dmitri duly informed the Center about it; it is incredible that, when trying to penetrate the Foreign Office, the OGPU did not know either the name of its head, Sir Robert Vansittart, or that there was not one combined British office of intelligence and counterintelligence. The same goes for another episode, which had taken place during Dmitri’s first meeting with Lucy. She told him that her husband was in poor standing with “Monty, head of the Intelligence Service at the Foreign Office and brother of Field Marshal Montgomery.” As Andrew and Mitrokhin point out, the OGPU was not aware that she had misinformed Bystrolyotov on that account as well. Combined with Tsarev and West’s statement that the Center learned about ARNO’s true place in the Foreign Office only after his death, it appears as if the whole ARNO operation was conducted hastily, in a thick “information fog.”4

  According to Bystrolyotov, on hearing the news of Vansittart’s inquest (nonexistent at that point), the Center ordered all its illegal operatives to leave the country at once. Witnessing ARNO’s decline into uncontrolled drinking, Dmitri called for medical help, which did not come quickly. ARNO would fall asleep and wake up only to begin brawling again. Once, when he was making attempts to leave the house, shouting and picking fights with his wife and even with Dmitri, to quiet ARNO down, Dmitri made him gulp down two glasses of gin. It was already after midnight when Dmitri and ARNO’s wife tried to bring the troubled man upstairs, and one of the doctors finally arrived. He drugged ARNO and called an ambulance. Dmitri accompanied the patient to the hospital and then reported to Bazarov: “The worst is over. In a few days, ARNO will come to his senses and be able to walk. No. No retreat, until I carry out the assignment, I won’t retreat.”5

  During his hospital stay ARNO seemed to begin recovering and expressed his willingness to continue cooperating with the OGPU, especially to make good on his promise to procure cipher books for the next year, a promise long overdue. But suddenly some new trouble emerged. Lucy’s patience expired, and she made her final decision to file for divorce. She removed all the valuables from their home and hired a lawyer to get her half of the money that ARNO received from his business transactions.6

  When Lucy’s lawyer met Dmitri, who had come to visit, the man began interrogating him as the representative of a firm through which ARNO had reportedly made two thousand pounds in commissions. The lawyer demanded the name and address of the firm as well as Dmitri’s address and other relevant information. It was not simple to extricate himself from the situation. Since the lawyer could quickly and easily verify Dmitri’s words, Bazarov reported to the Center his concern that Dmitri could be “liquidated” by the “enemy.” As Andrew and Mitrokhin rightly point out, the OGPU bosses truly believed in the existence of Western counterintelligence execution squads that shot down foreign spies on the spot, without due process of the law. (The Center’s own squads of that kind did operate in the West; one example of their activities was the murder of defecting Soviet spy “Ignace Reiss” a few years later, in the summer of 1937.)

  It was at this point, according to Tsarev and West, that the Center issued the order to all illegal operatives to leave the island immediately. Whichever of the two episodes triggered the recall, both sources cite Dmitri’s report to Bazarov, expressing his willingness to stay behind and complete his mission. Both the archival account and that of Tsarev agree, however, that when an order came to stop working with ARNO and leave for the continent, Dmitri asked to remain in London alone for the last push. He wanted to obtain British diplomatic ciphers for the next year.7

  Bazarov did not press Dmitri to leave right away. In his letter to the Center, he explains, “To leave now means to lose a significant ‘source,’ which would be equivalent to softening our defense and reinforcing the adversary. Possible losses—today HANS, tomorrow other comrades—are inevitable considering the character of our tasks.”8

  Dmitri received permission. All other members of the group—Bazarov, Mally, Leppin, and Weinstein—left the country. Now was the time for decisive action. Dmitri took ARNO to Hyde Park and, sitting next to him on a bench, made him practice making key imprints in the paste dentists use for taking impressions of teeth. Finally, Oldham learned to produce imprints of good quality, and Dmitri “blessed him for his last battle.”9

  Oldham’s declassified file at the National Archives of Britain reveals details of ARNO’s actions at the Foreign Office on the fateful day of July 13, 1933. In the course of the investigation by the Defense Security Service (DSS), as MI5 was called at the time, which the Foreign Office contacted the next day, four of Oldham’s former colleagues were questioned. At about 5:50 P.M., Oldham entered the Foreign Office main entrance and, spotting one of his former colleagues, Mr. B., weighing diplomatic mailbags at the scales, went over to him and chatted with him for a while. Oldham’s visit by itself was not considered out of the ordinary. It was usual to let old members of the staff come in.10

  Then, saying that he wanted to leave a note for his ex-colleague and friend, Mr. Kemp, who had just left for the day (in hindsight, it became clear that Oldham had watched him leave the building), he sat down in a room still occupied by another clerk, Mr. H. As he began writing his note, Oldham asked the clerk to open one of the cabinets where some of his personal papers still remained.

  This also was not unusual. After Oldham had left the service, on two or three occasions, he was given access to his valuable papers that, for some reason, were still locked in a cabinet in one of the Foreign Office rooms. These visits usually took place at late hours when only a handful of Oldham’s ex-colleagues remained at work. He stayed in the rooms long enough to have a reason for asking those who were about to leave for the day to give him the keys to other rooms, which he promised to return to the clerk on duty. During the subsequent investigation, the night staff also reported that they had seen Oldham on other occasions in various rooms, including the Cipher Room, as late as 11:00 P.M. Once, he was even found asleep in one of the rooms. On another occasion, one of the clerks found him, the keys in his hands, in a corridor leading to the exit. Apparently no one was alarmed about this episode, because it was known that Oldham suffered from alcoholism—on some occasions he even came in tipsy. They decided that he had merely forgotten to return the keys before leaving the premises. On yet another occasion, using the same pretext—that he needed more time to finish the business at hand, since it was after hours
and the keys were locked up—he asked for the combination to the lock of a safe where the keys were held. Taking into consideration that Oldham had been fired from the Foreign Office for almost a year and yet had full access to the quarters, the carelessness of the staff is astonishing. (Andrew and Mitrokhin call the Foreign Office security of that time “primitive;” Richard Thurlow also notes that the office security precautions were “almost nonexistent.”)11

  On the day in question, July 13, 1933, when Oldham again asked to look over his papers, Mr. H. went back to the scale room and asked the permission of his superior, Mr. B., to indulge Oldham’s request. The key to that cabinet was placed on a ring with other keys, including that of the Cipher Room. After a moment of hesitation, Mr. B. gave Mr. H. permission to take the key ring and do what Oldham asked under one condition—that the set of keys never be handed over to Oldham.

  Mr. H. left. After about five minutes, he dashed back in and reported that Oldham had gotten hold of the whole set of keys and taken them into the restroom. He explained how it had happened. When he opened the safe for Oldham, he did not take the key from the ring, assuming that he would lock the cabinet in a moment. The next thing he saw was Oldham rushing out of the room saying that he had to use the restroom. As Mr. H. tried to lock the cabinet, he found that the whole set of keys was gone. Oldham had managed to remove the keys from the cabinet door quickly, without any rattling.