Stalin's Romeo Spy
Page 28
The agent in question was Florica Titulescu, a Romanian high society lady. According to ROSSI, with whom Dmitri kept in touch from time to time and who sold him the contact with the lady, she had excellent connections. She was related to Nicolae Titulescu, the Romanian minister of foreign affairs, and she was a lover of the Romanian chief of staff (apparently, General Nicolae Samsonovici, who held the position from December 1934 to February 1937). Thus, she had access to highly valuable Romanian political and military information. As ROSSI also informed Dmitri, she worked for French intelligence, to which, via its agents in Switzerland, she passed Romanian diplomatic and military secrets. The most valuable of these were documents reflecting the political intentions of Romania toward the Soviet Union.20
ROSSI also cautioned Dmitri that, though wary of Germans, Florica played footsie with German agents in an attempt to secure a cushy place for herself in case Germany prevailed in winning Romania over to its side in the event of a military confrontation in Europe.21
Dmitri initially approached Florica at the bar of a Zurich hotel. He describes her as a “shapely, somewhat plump, brunette of dark complexion with a beautiful, albeit slightly coarse, face.” As he had with ROSSI and other foreign agents, he used the same “false flag,” introducing himself as “Joe Perelly,” an intelligence agent working for Japan.22
Soon they arranged to meet over dinner, and sitting at the table, they began making the initial arrangements. With a smile on her face, Florica cautioned Dmitri that if he was going to cheat on her in some way, her powerful friends in politics and intelligence in adjacent countries would make sure that, after the very first trick on his part, “the day [he] tried to leave this country [would] be [his] last one.” And he replied in the same tone that the same fate would await her if she played any tricks on him. Moreover, she wouldn’t even make it to the border; she would be shot on the spot.23
It didn’t resemble a business meeting between two counterparts as much as it did verbal foreplay between prospective lovers. At the end of their dinner, quite taken with Dmitri, Florica promised full cooperation in exchange for implied physical intimacy between them.
As he began working with her, Florica’s demands for sex as a prerequisite for her full cooperation became tiresome to Dmitri. Although her lover, General Samsonovici, was not in truth a “decrepit old man,” as Dmitri refers to him, nevertheless, born in 1877, he was twenty-four years older than Dmitri. Florica’s amorousness wore Dmitri down; he tried to avoid intimacy with her as much as he could.24
Finally, he did something that his superiors characterized as carelessness and disregard for the cause. To avoid Florica’s sexual demands (and without informing his spymaster, Theodor Mally), on their next date, he replaced himself with another Soviet spy, his old collaborator, Henri Pieck.
Florica threw a fit. She thought of Dmitri’s actions as a trick, perhaps because she found the substitute inadequate. Although Pieck was also a ladies’ man, he was not as attractive as Dmitri, because, for one thing, he was middle-aged. When Mally heard about it, he disciplined Dmitri for his prank on Florica. Although he agreed with Dmitri’s assessment of her, he found his actions irresponsible and unacceptable.
For the first time in Dmitri’s spy career, his job took such a toll on him that he talked back to his superiors, whose orders he had always carried out unquestioningly. He rebelled against their having used him as a sex trap, merely a tool in the callous hands of his bosses. It did not help in the least that, as Soviet high-ranking defector Alexander Orlov reveals in his book, Soviet intelligence operatives had contempt for their comrades-in-arms who were used as sex bait, nicknaming such spies “matchmakers.”
When Mally reprimanded him for his poor handling of Florica, Dmitri replied angrily and gloomily, “But I’m a human being, Theodor, and I’m a decent man. Tell me, does an intelligence operative have the right to be decent and preserve his self-respect? I’ll never become a gigolo.”25
But Mally wouldn’t take no for an answer. He agreed that Florica was a difficult “source” to handle. Granted, she involved herself in spying out of love for strong emotions and often acted before thinking. True, she was capricious and, at times, unbalanced. Yet, she was a very important “source” who had access to top classified material that was urgently needed.
Indeed, at the time of the action, midsummer 1936, with international tensions in Europe remaining high, the question of whose side Romania, an immediate neighboring country, would take in a potential military conflict with Germany was strategically important to the Soviet Union. The documents of the Romanian General Staff and Foreign Ministry procured through Florica could help to shed light on both the military potential of Romania and the country’s diplomatic positioning among the major European power brokers.26
Understandably, writing his screenplay in the mid-1960s, Dmitri characterizes Romanian intentions as invariably hostile toward the USSR. The Soviet audience knew nothing about Romanian peace efforts of the early 1930s. The Soviet media always portrayed pre–World War II Romania as anti-Bolshevik, beginning with its severing of relations with Soviet Russia in 1918.
However, in truth, for a long time before eventually siding with Germany in 1940, Romania had remained on the tipping point in its orientation between Germany and the USSR. King Carol II tried to keep the country sovereign and intact territorially, which was not easy. The Soviet Union never agreed to the annexation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in the wake of World War I. Hungary wanted Transylvania back, and Bulgaria claimed Southern Dobrudja. Romania hoped for French support, although it also tried to maintain good relations with Great Britain and Germany.27
This balancing act was complicated by infighting among Romania’s own internal political forces, which tried to influence the country’s foreign policy in favor of different European power brokers. But at the time of the Soviet foreign intelligence actions in which Dmitri took part, ostensibly summer 1936, Romania was closer than ever to cooperation with the Soviet Union. After informal diplomatic contacts between Commissar for Foreign Affairs Litvinov and Romanian Foreign Minister Nicolae Titulescu at the League of Nations in June 1934, Romania formally recognized the USSR. But, as was the case with France, fear of Bolshevism was an obstacle to further Romanian rapprochement with the Soviets. Furthermore, Moscow still refused to accept the annexation of Bessarabia.28
But the Franco-Soviet pact and the Soviet-Czechoslovak pact of May 1935 greatly affected Romanian–Soviet relations. Signing the pact with Czechoslovakia, the Soviets committed, in case of a German attack on that country, to send Red Army troops to the rescue. To do this, they had to cross Romania, with or without its permission. This development forced Romania to turn toward the idea of collective security proposed by the Soviets and to come up with some military arrangements with them. Titulescu was afraid that lack of cooperation from Romania would provoke the Soviets to invade the country and take back Bessarabia. (He also predicted that, if collective security efforts failed, the Germans would make a pact with the Soviets against Poland. As history revealed, both predictions proved true, the first in 1940, and the second a year earlier.)29
The Romanian Army supported Titulescu. Members of the Romanian General Staff became pro-Soviet not because of their political views but because the only strong ally, France, was too far from Romanian borders, and the USSR was their country’s neighbor. The younger army officers even studied Russian to better communicate with the prospective ally.30
Beginning in summer 1935, the General Staff documents reveal a dramatic change in strategy with the redirection of all Romanian efforts toward securing its western borders and leaving very little protection with the borders of the Soviet Union. Moreover, in June 1936, Romania informed Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia that Soviet troops were allowed to cross its territory. Both countries were Romania’s allies in the Little Entente, an alliance formed in the early 1920s to prevent Hungary from attempting to reclaim parts of these countries’ territories that had be
come theirs as a result of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after its defeat in the course of World War I. France supported the alliance by signing treaties with each member country. The Romanian General Staff even worked out a provisional itinerary for Soviet troops crossing Romanian territory in the event they moved to assist Czechoslovakia.31
The situation became even more complicated due to political pressure at home and from abroad. Although at the time he sought an alliance with Nazi Germany, Romanian General Ion Victor Antonescu, chief of the Romanian General Staff in 1933 and 1934, was a regular army general, he exerted considerable political influence and claimed the position of defense minister (which King Carol’s government granted him the next year). And it was clear what he had on his mind: among various documents procured through Florica was a photo copy of a private report from Antonescu to Ribbentrop, Hitler’s Reich Minister Ambassador-Plenipotentiary at Large (1935–36).
Eventually, the German and Italian governments, naturally unhappy with Titulescu’s foreign policies, forced the king not only to dismiss the foreign minister from his position but to exile him from the country. (Titulescu left the country first for Switzerland then for France, where he died a few years later.) As the Spanish civil war broke out in the middle of summer 1936, Hitler and Mussolini sided with General Franco, creating the balance of power in Europe and making Romania’s immediate future even more uncertain.32
Thus, while Mally agreed that Dmitri had the right to some line of decency that he did not have to cross, he asked Dmitri to be patient for the sake of the cause that the whole Soviet spy group in Switzerland was fighting for at the time. He suggested that a better way to handle Florica for now would be to calm her down by promising her things.
Finally, he vowed to find and prepare a substitute for Dmitri, not only because Pieck was not a good one on account of his age, but his manners were too mild for Florica, whose imagination required someone more edgy and flamboyant.
Taking Mally’s advice, Dmitri began cultivating Florica with talk of some future together, depending on his prosperity. He made some vague promises to her and told her that he wanted to create a truly worry-free life with her, for which he needed to make some money. He asked her to put him in touch with her agents, so he could buy some political information for Japanese intelligence.
And Florica took the bait. She introduced him to another agent, who called himself “Don Luis de Bourbon.” According to her, the impeccably dressed man, complete with tuxedo, a monocle, and a set of diamond rings on his fingers, was the illegitimate son of King Alfonso XIII of Spain. (Most likely, the man had invented it. It is known that, in addition to seven children recognized as his own, the king had three illegitimate children, but none of them fit the profile of “Don Louis.” The man called himself “Prince of Navarre.” Dmitri describes him as bearing a physical resemblance to the famous French comic actor Fernandel. This suggests that “Don Louis” based his claim of relation to the king on their mutual close physical resemblance to the movie star.)33
Florica informed Dmitri that “Don Louis” traded in Spanish diplomatic ciphers. He could also provide Italian and, perhaps, German ones. She claimed he had many contacts with shady personalities everywhere, including Nazi Germany. He had even tried to become a go-between for Franco’s Spanish government and the Nazis.34
Toward the end of 1936, further political developments in Europe became even more worrisome: In October, Franco became dictator of Spain and was declared the head of state. Then the Rome–Berlin Axis alliance was formed, followed in November by Germany’s signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan to fight international Communism. Mally felt that if Dmitri’s group operated in Switzerland for too long a time, it would inevitably appear on the radar of counterintelligence. It was time to move the group to another operational front.35
But, by that point in his life, Dmitri had become fed up with spying. He wanted to quit as soon as possible and go home. And he asked for permission to return.
THIRTEEN
The Return
Even the smoke of our fatherland is sweet and pleasant to us.
—ALEXANDER GRIBOEDOV, WOE FROM WIT
All spies are expendable.
—SUN TZU, THE ART OF WAR
Dear Comrade ARTEM:
I’m tired, sick, and I can’t go on working without a serious rest. From day to day, I feel a growing depletion of my strength, which, naturally, lowers the quality of my work, causing sloppiness in technique. Besides, because of overwork, symptoms of the illness I suffered in 1922–1923, my depression, have reappeared. Resting on my shoulders are business of great importance and the fates of several people. And meanwhile . . . fatigue and fits of depression overwhelm me. I work only by nerves and exerting my will power. [I work] without the slightest joy of success or love of the activity, with a constant thought: “It would be good to lie down in the evening and not get up in the morning.” I have been abroad seventeen years, of them eleven years on our work, of which six years in the underground. Is this not enough to warrant my replacement? [emphasis added]
With comradely greetings, Hans1
The full text of Dmitri’s petition addressed to the legal NKVD rezident in Berlin, Boris Berman (code name ARTEM), appeared for the first time in Pravda at the height of Gorbachev’s campaign for openness. None of the subsequent FSB publications tell the full truth about the reason(s) for Dmitri’s return to Russia. One of them states that he returned to Russia after completing his assignments. Another implies that he was recalled and given a desk job for a serious mistake—the loss of one of his passports. Yet another states that he came home to rest. In the last official SVR posting, his letter pleading that he be allowed to leave is sanitized: it conveniently omits the last phrase. Since the new KGB’s current policy of cleaning up its public image includes airbrushing the historical records to omit prior rough treatment of even its own heroes, the pleading and desperate tone of the concluding sentence makes it clear that this letter was not his first attempt to leave the service.2
In the summer of 1936, a half year after Iolanta had left for Moscow, Dmitri began feeling restless. He wanted to return to Moscow, now for good. In his memoirs, he recalls his yearning for it as strongly as the three sisters of Chekhov’s play do. He re-creates his mood at the time in his unpublished screenplay, “Generous Hearts.” His alter ego, the Soviet spy Sergei, says to his colleagues, “I’m dreaming of the moment before I leave for Moscow, when I can sneak onto the bank of some lake and hurl my pistol into the water.”3
Many factors led to Dmitri’s decision to quit spying and return to Russia. First, he had grown bored with the job. The lure of adventure, so strong when he had accepted the offer to go underground, had subsided significantly. By temperament, he needed tangible results and craved instant gratification for his efforts. But spy work was quiet and tedious, often demanding patience and endurance, qualities that he lacked. As seasoned Soviet spy Samsonov, his first spymaster, expressed it: “Intelligence is risk and work without firm assurance of success . . . There’s no such thing as victory in intelligence work. Every thing is fluid, everything changes, and at no stage of the game can you say calmly: it’s a victory.”4
Now, from the vantage point of his law and medical studies, his spy work felt primitive. Spying employed only a fraction of his abilities and talents. Back in 1930, when he had accepted the OGPU offer to go underground, he considered the move a temporary departure from the path he had envisioned for his life when he was young—to be a painter and a writer. Sporadically, between carrying out his assignments, he managed to take classes here and there: now at the Academy of the Arts in Berlin and then at the same in Paris. He also collected material for his writing. But, as any true artist does sooner or later, he eventually realized that the artist’s calling requires giving oneself fully to one’s talent. He cites the strong pull of his artistic calling as the main reason he was reluctant to join the Party and “even more so,” he emphasizes, “to go
through the for malities of becoming part of the OGPU cadres.” (In time, he would pay dearly for his reluctance: the absence of proper records documenting his service to his country as a spy would—not once, but many times—bring him to the verge of peril, quite in accordance with a Russian proverb, “Without a piece of paper, you’re just a tiny insect” [Bez bumazhki—ty bukashka]).5
The ethical side of his work was the most unpleasant. Eventually, he became totally disgusted with the trade’s sordid practices. Decades later, he would conclude that “like imprisonment, working in intelligence disfigures your soul and life not only directly but also indirectly; it similarly affects the souls and lives of strangers who are forced to become involved in it.” An idealist at heart, it seems that he had initially bought into Cheka founder and head Felix Dzerzhinsky’s definition of an ideal Chekist as a man with a “cold head, a passionate heart, and clean hands.” For the most part living abroad, Dmitri may have talked himself into believing that the Cheka lived up to Dzerzhinsky’s expectations. Of course, Cheka practices have hardly ever been either lawful or bloodless: the Red Terror unleashed by the organization soon after the Bolshevik takeover of power claimed many innocent victims.6
Even Dmitri’s counterpart ROSSI, an international black market code dealer, sensed that Dmitri had been holding on to some moral principles that were incompatible with spying. He told him frankly, “I don’t consider you a novice, but I always feel that among us, true spies, you’re an odd man. To you, this is not ethical, or that is not nice. You’re stuffed with principles like a sack with potatoes. What kind of principles can you have when working with people without principles?”7
Although there is no evidence that Dmitri ever hesitated to handle his “source” in whatever fashion was required for the success of the operation at hand, he often acted against his own moral code and felt uneasy about it. Though the personal gun he had been awarded after handling British agent Oldham extols his lack of empathy toward the man, “For merciless battle against the counterrevolution,” he was quite aware of the inhumanity and baseness of his occupation, often referring to it as “despicable work.” Talking to Iolanta before her departure for Moscow, he admitted that he had often acted cruelly toward his agents, but he had done it because he believed that the high ideals of happiness for all humanity for which he was fighting justified his trespasses.8