In the summer of 1981, Gordievsky passed his final exam. His English was far from fluent, but he was now at least theoretically qualified for a posting to Britain. In September, a second daughter, Anna, was born. Leila was proving to be a “first-class mother,” and an attentive and dutiful wife. “She was marvellous in the home,” Oleg reflected. Gordievsky was no longer a figure of scandal. An early sign of rehabilitation came when he was asked to write the department’s annual report. He began to attend more important meetings. Even so, he was beginning to wonder if he would ever gain access to secrets important enough to justify resuming contact with MI6.
Back in Century House, the SUNBEAM team was pondering exactly the same question. Three years had passed without a whisper from Gordievsky. The signal site on Kutuzovsky Prospekt was carefully monitored, and Operation PIMLICO, the escape plan, was kept in permanent readiness. A full dress rehearsal was staged: the head of station and his wife drove to Helsinki along the exfiltration route; Guscott and Price met them on the other side of the Finnish border, and then drove all the way north to the border with Norway. In Moscow, every Tuesday evening at 7:30, whatever the weather, a member of the MI6 station, or one of their wives, would monitor the pavement outside the bread shop, a Mars bar or KitKat at the ready, and watch for a man in a gray cap holding a Safeway bag. Every third Saturday in each month, an MI6 officer carrying a Harrods bag would stand near the clock in the Central Market, pretending to shop, alert for the brush contact signal. “Her Majesty’s Government still owes me £10 for one winter tomato, probably the only one in Moscow,” one officer recalled.
Gordievsky never appeared.
That year, Geoffrey Guscott was appointed MI6 head of station in Sweden—in part because if the Swedish-speaking Gordievsky was sent abroad again, there was a chance he might pop up in Stockholm. He never did. The case had gone into deep hibernation, from which it showed no signs of waking.
Then came a heartbeat, clear evidence of life, courtesy of the ever-reliable Danish intelligence service. PET was also intrigued to know what had become of the Russian spy. A Danish diplomat who regularly visited Moscow was asked to inquire, casually, during his next trip, about Comrade Gordievsky, the charming Russian consular official who spoke such good Danish. Sure enough, at the next reception attended by the visiting Dane, there was Gordievsky, looking confident and healthy. The Danish diplomat reported back to PET that Gordievsky had remarried and was now the father of two daughters. The confirmed sighting was swiftly relayed to MI6.
The most significant element in the PET report, however, and one that sent a surge of excitement through the SUNBEAM team, was contained in a single remark dropped by Gordievsky over the cocktails and canapés.
With studied insouciance, Gordievsky had turned to the Danish diplomat and observed: “I am now learning to speak English.”
Chapter 6
AGENT BOOT
Gennadi Titov had a problem. The head of the Third Department of the First Chief Directorate had a vacancy for a KGB officer in the Soviet embassy in London, but nobody to fill it, at least no one who could be relied on to kowtow to Gennadi Titov—a prime qualification for the job.
The Crocodile was one of those people, familiar in every large bureaucracy, who dispenses patronage on the understanding that the recipient will thereafter be a slave. Titov was boorish, scheming, unctuous toward his superiors, and sneering to his underlings. “One of the most unpleasant and unpopular officers in the whole of the KGB” in Gordievsky’s estimation, he was also one of the most powerful. Expelled from Norway after the arrest of Gunvor Haavik, he had a reputation as a crack spymaster, and continued to run Arne Treholt at long distance, meeting him regularly for enormous lunches in Vienna, Helsinki, and elsewhere. On his return to Moscow in 1977, Titov had won swift promotion by playing brutal office politics, flattering his bosses, and appointing his cronies to key positions. Gordievsky loathed him.
The Center had been struggling to rebuild its London station ever since 1971, when more than one hundred KGB officers were expelled in Operation FOOT. There were simply not enough able, English-speaking officers to make up the shortfall. The KGB had comprehensively penetrated the British establishment during the 1930s, inflicting enormous damage through Philby and the so-called Cambridge spy ring, but its inability to repeat this feat was a source of deep frustration. Various illegals had been infiltrated into the country, and a number of KGB officers were working as journalists or trade representatives, but there was a dearth of spies who could operate effectively under formal diplomatic cover.
In the autumn of 1981, the KGB’s deputy head of the PR Line in Britain, ostensibly a counselor at the Soviet embassy in London, returned to Moscow. The first candidate to replace him was rejected by the Foreign Office because he was suspected by MI5, rightly, of clandestine activities. To fill this plum posting, the KGB needed someone with experience abroad, who spoke English, had a record as a legitimate diplomat, and would not be vetoed out of hand by the British.
Gordievsky began dropping hints that he, and only he, met the criteria. Nikolai Gribin, the newly appointed head of the British-Scandinavian section, was encouraging, but Titov wanted his own creature in London, and hitherto Gordievsky had not demonstrated the requisite degree of subservience. A period of intense jockeying ensued, with Titov attempting to maneuver his own candidate into the post, while Gordievsky exhibited what he hoped was the right combination of enthusiasm, obsequiousness, and fake humility; he lobbied without being obvious, quietly disparaged any rivals, and soft-soaped the Crocodile until the suds flew. Finally Titov relented, though he doubted the British would grant a visa. “Gordievsky’s well known in the West,” he remarked. “They may easily reject him. But let’s try anyway.”
Gordievsky was extravagant in his gratitude. Inwardly, he relished the revenge he might soon inflict on the Crocodile. As the wife of a KGB officer on the way up, Leila was also overjoyed at the prospect of moving to Britain, in her mind a land of almost mythical fascination. The two little girls were growing fast: Maria was a sturdy toddler, energetic and independent; Anna was just uttering her first words in Russian. Leila imagined herself taking her well-dressed, English-speaking daughters to school in London, shopping for food in vast and overflowing supermarkets, and exploring the ancient city. Soviet propaganda portrayed Britain as a place of downtrodden workers and rapacious capitalists, but her time in Denmark had already introduced Leila to the realities of life in the West, and she had briefly visited London in 1978 as part of the Russian delegation to a World Health Organization conference. Like many couples embarking on a shared adventure, the prospect of building a new family life in a foreign country brought them even closer: together they excitedly imagined a place of wide streets, endless classical-music concerts, delicious restaurants, and elegant parks. They would be able to wander the city, read whatever they wanted, and make new British friends. Gordievsky described to Leila the Englishmen he had met in Copenhagen: witty, sophisticated people, full of laughter and generosity. Denmark had been exciting, but they would be even happier in London, he said. When they first met, four years earlier, Gordievsky had painted a picture of how they would travel the world, a successful KGB officer with his beautiful young wife and their growing family; now he was making good on that promise, and she loved him all the more. But Gordievsky also imagined scenes he did not share with Leila. The KGB rezidentura in London was one of the most active in the world, and he would be handling secrets of the first importance. He would re-establish contact with MI6 as soon as it was safe to do so. He would spy for Britain, in Britain, and one day, perhaps soon, perhaps years hence, he would tell MI6 he was finished. Then he could defect; he would finally reveal his double life to his wife, and they would remain in Britain, forever. This, he did not tell Leila.
For both husband and wife, the London posting was the fulfillment of a dream; but they were different dreams.
Gordievsky was issued a new diplomatic passport. The visa application
form was filled out and sent to the British embassy in Moscow. From there, it was dispatched to London.
Two days later, James Spooner, the head of MI6’s Soviet section, was sitting at his desk in Century House when a junior entered and breathlessly declared: “I’ve got some big news.” She handed over a sheet of paper. “Look at this visa application that has just come through from Moscow.” The accompanying letter stated that Comrade Oleg Antonyevich Gordievsky had been appointed counselor at the Soviet embassy, and requested the British government to issue a diplomatic visa forthwith.
Spooner was ecstatic. But you would never have been able to tell.
The son of a doctor and Scottish senior social worker, at school Spooner had belonged to a club for “particularly gifted boys.” He emerged from Oxford University with a first-class degree in history and a passion for medieval architecture. “He was outstandingly clever, and exceptionally precise in his judgments, but it was hard to tell what he was really thinking,” said one contemporary. Spooner joined MI6 in 1971, another club for the particularly gifted. Some predicted he had the makings of a future chief of the service. MI6 has a reputation for swashbuckling, for taking risks and following hunches; Spooner was the reverse. He tackled the complexities of intelligence work like an academic historian (he would later commission the first authorized history of MI6), assembling the evidence, sifting the facts, arriving at a conclusion only after consideration and reconsideration. Spooner was not a man who rushed to judgment; rather, he approached judgment very slowly, incrementally, and fastidiously. In 1981 he was just thirty-two, but had already served as an MI6 officer operating under diplomatic cover in Nairobi and Moscow. He spoke good Russian, and was fascinated by Russian culture. During his time in Moscow, the KGB had attempted to involve him in a classic “dangle,” an approach by a Soviet naval officer offering to spy for Britain. As a result Spooner’s posting was cut short. In early 1980, he had taken over P5, the operational team, including Veronica Price, running Soviet agents inside and outside the Soviet bloc. In many ways he was the polar opposite of Gennadi Titov, his counterpart in the KGB: allergic to office politics, immune to flattery, and rigorously professional.
The SUNBEAM file was one of the first to land on his desk.
With Gordievsky in Moscow, incommunicado and professionally becalmed, the case had floated in limbo. “It was obviously right not to make contact,” said Spooner. “The strategic decision-making was very good. We were playing for the long term. Of course we had no idea what was going to happen. We had no reason to think he was going to get to London.”
But now Gordievsky was coming in from the cold, and after three years of inaction and suspense James Spooner, Geoffrey Guscott, Veronica Price, and the SUNBEAM team swung into action. Spooner called in Price and showed her the visa application. “I was really quite pleased,” said Price, which was her equivalent of being wildly overexcited. “This was terrific. It was just what we had hoped for.”
“I must go away and think,” she told Spooner.
“Don’t think too long,” said Spooner. “This needs to get to C.”
Issuing a visa for Gordievsky was not a straightforward task. On principle, any suspected KGB officer was automatically barred from entering Britain. Under normal circumstances, the Foreign Office would make a preliminary inquiry and discover that Oleg had twice been posted to Copenhagen. A routine information request to the Danes would reveal that he was listed in their files as a suspected intelligence officer, and the visa would be summarily rejected. But these circumstances were not normal. MI6 needed Gordievsky to be admitted to Britain without delay, and with no questions asked. The immigration authorities could simply be instructed to issue the visa, but that might arouse suspicions, since it would signal that there was something different about Gordievsky. The secret could not be allowed to seep outside MI6. Once alerted, PET was pleased to help. Told by MI6 that the Foreign Office would soon come asking questions, the Danes “massaged the record” and responded that while there had been suspicions, there was no proof Gordievsky was KGB. “We managed to leave enough doubt, so that the visa went through normally. We said: ‘Yes, he’s been flagged by the Danes, but it’s not completely certain.’ ” As far as the Foreign Office and immigration authorities were aware, Gordievsky was just another Soviet diplomat, possibly spooky but perhaps not, and certainly not worth making a fuss about. The British passport office usually took at least a month to issue diplomatic visas; Gordievsky’s permit to enter Britain as an accredited diplomat arrived in just twenty-two days.
In Moscow, that seemed suspiciously swift. “It’s very strange they granted you the visa so quickly,” an official in the Russian Foreign Ministry observed darkly when Gordievsky went to pick up his passport. “They must know who you are—you’ve been abroad so much. When your application went in, I felt sure they’d turn it down. They’ve rejected so many requests lately. You can count yourself very fortunate.” The sharp-eyed official probably kept his suspicions to himself.
The KGB bureaucracy was much slower. Three months later, Gordievsky was still awaiting formal permission to leave the USSR. The Fifth Department of Directorate K, the KGB’s internal-investigation wing, was looking into Gordievsky’s background, and taking its time. He began to wonder if there was a problem. In Century House, too, anxiety levels were rising. Geoffrey Guscott, in Sweden, was told to stand ready to fly to London at a moment’s notice, to receive Gordievsky on arrival. But he did not arrive. Had something gone wrong?
As the weeks of waiting stretched out, Gordievsky spent his time profitably perusing the files in KGB headquarters—one of the most secretive and impenetrable places on earth, unless you were on the inside. The internal security system in Moscow Center was both complex and crude. The most secret operational files were kept in a locked cabinet in the office of the department head. But the other paperwork was retained in the various section offices, and in individual safes handled by the officers overseeing different aspects of the department’s work. Every evening, each officer locked his safes and filing cabinets, placed the keys in a small wooden box, and then sealed this with a lump of plasticine into which he pressed his individual stamp—like the wax seals used on ancient documents. The duty officer then collected the boxes and placed them in another safe in Gennadi Titov’s office. That key was again placed in a small box, and sealed in the same way with the duty officer’s stamp, before being deposited in the office of the secretariat of the First Chief Directorate, which was manned around the clock. The system took up a great deal of time, and a lot of plasticine.
Gordievsky occupied a desk in Room 635, the political section of the British department. In three large metal cupboards were files on individuals in the UK regarded by the KGB as agents, potential agents, or confidential contacts. Room 635 housed only active cases. Redundant material was moved to the main archive. The files were stored in cardboard boxes, three to a shelf, each box containing two files, sealed with string and plasticine. To unseal a file required a signature from the department head. In the British cupboard were six files on individuals classified as “agents,” and another dozen listed as “confidential contacts.”
Gordievsky began exploring, building up a picture of the KGB’s current political operations in Britain. The deputy department head, Dmitri Svetanko, teased him for cramming: “Don’t waste too much time reading, because when you get to Britain you will realize what it is like.” Gordievsky continued his research, hoping his reputation for diligence would be enough to offset any suspicions. Every day he would sign out a file, break the seal, and discover another Briton the KGB was either fishing for or had its hooks into.
These individuals were not spies, properly speaking. The PR Line primarily sought political influence and secret information; its targets were opinion formers, politicians, journalists, and others in positions of power. Some of these were considered conscious “agents,” knowingly supplying information, secret or otherwise, in a clandestine way; others were
classed as “confidential contacts,” helpful informants with varying degrees of knowing complicity. Some accepted hospitality, holidays, or money. Others, merely sympathizers to the Soviet cause, were not even aware the KGB was cultivating them. Most would have been astonished to know that they merited a code name and a file in a locked steel cupboard inside KGB headquarters. Nonetheless, these were people of a different caliber to the nobodies the KGB station had pursued in Denmark. Britain was a major target. Some of the cases stretched back decades. And some of the names were shocking.
Jack Jones was one of the most respected figures in the trade union movement, a crusading socialist once described by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown as “one of the world’s greatest trade union leaders.” He was also a KGB agent.
A former Liverpool dockworker, Jones had fought for the Republicans in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, and by 1969 he had risen to become general secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU), once the largest union in the Western world with more than two million members, a position he held for almost a decade. An opinion poll in 1977 found that 54 percent of voters considered Jones to be the most powerful person in Britain, with greater influence than the prime minister. Genial, outspoken, and intransigent, Jack Jones was the public face of the unions. His private world was more dubious.
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