The Spy and the Traitor

by Ben MacIntyre

  “Do we have a plan?” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” said P5. “We do.”

  Brown was in the garden, trying to distract himself by reading a book in the sunshine, when the call came through from P5: “I think it would be useful if you popped in.” The voice was neutral.

  A minute after he put the telephone down, Brown clicked. “It was Wednesday. That meant something had happened on the Tuesday. It must be the escape signal. Hope suddenly leaped.” Gordievsky might still be alive.

  The train from Guildford to London seemed to take forever. Brown arrived on the twelfth floor to find the team in a scramble of feverish preparations.

  “Suddenly, it was nonstop,” Brown recalled.

  After a series of hurried meetings, Martin Shawford flew to Copenhagen to alert the Danish intelligence service and coordinate plans, before flying on to Helsinki to prepare the groundwork, contact the MI6 station there, hire vehicles, and reconnoiter the rendezvous point near the Finnish border.

  Assuming Gordievsky and his family were successfully smuggled across the Russian border, a second phase of the escape plan would begin, because reaching Finland would not mean that Gordievsky was safe. As Ascot observed: “The Finns had an agreement with the Russians to turn over to the KGB any fugitives from the Soviet Union that fell into their hands.” The term “Finlandization” had come to mean any small state cowed into submission by a much more powerful neighbor, retaining theoretical sovereignty but effectively in thrall. Finland was officially neutral in the Cold War, but the Soviet Union retained many of the conditions of control in the country: Finland could not join NATO, or allow Western troops or weapons systems on its territory; anti-Soviet books and films were banned. The Finns deeply resented the term “Finlandization,” but it accurately represented the situation of a country forced to look both ways, keen to be seen as Western but unwilling and unable to alienate the Soviet Union. The Finnish cartoonist Kari Suomalainen once described his country’s uncomfortable position as “the art of bowing to the East without mooning the West.”

  A few months before, the MI6 Sovbloc controller had paid a visit to Finland to meet up with Seppo Tiitinen, the chief of the Finnish Security Intelligence Service (known as SUPO). The MI6 visitor posed a hypothetical question: “If we had a defector that we needed to bring through Finland, I imagine that you would rather we got him out without involving you?” Tiitinen replied: “Quite right. Tell us about it afterward.”

  The Finns did not want to know anything in advance, and if Gordievsky was intercepted in Finland by the Finnish authorities, he would almost certainly be returned to the Soviet Union. If he was not, and the Soviets discovered he was there, the Finns would come under intense pressure to seize him. And if they did not, the KGB was perfectly capable of sending a Spetsnaz special forces squad to do the job. The Soviets were known to monitor Finnish airports, so simply flying the family out of Helsinki was not an option.

  Instead, two cars would transport the escapees eight hundred miles to the far north of Finland: one car would be driven by Veronica and Simon, the other by two Danish intelligence officers: Jens Eriksen, the officer known as “Asterix” who had worked with Richard Bromhead a decade earlier, and his partner, Björn Larsen. Southeast of Tromsø, at the remote Karigasniemi border crossing, they would enter Norway, and NATO territory. The team debated whether to deploy a military C-130 Hercules to pick them up, but instead decided that a scheduled flight from Norway would attract less attention. From Hammerfest, the northernmost city in Europe, inside the Arctic Circle, they would be flown to Oslo, and connect with another commercial flight to London. The Danes had been integral to the case from the start, and the two PET officers would drive the other escape car and accompany the exfiltration team all the way to Hammerfest. “It was partly courtesy, but we also might need Danish cover to get into Norway: local Scandinavian help in case we hit some snag.”

  Veronica Price retrieved the shoebox marked PIMLICO, containing four false Danish passports for Gordievsky and his family, in the name of Hanssen. She packed mosquito repellent, clean clothes, and a shaving kit. Gordievsky would certainly need a shave. She hoped the Moscow team would remember to bring additional spare tires, in good condition, in case of punctures. That, too, was in the escape plan.

  For nearly two months, the NOCTON team (now renamed PIMLICO) had waited, grim, inactive, and anxious. Now they were excited, and suddenly operating at a hectic pace.

  “There was a complete change of tone,” Brown recalled. “It was a surreal feeling. This was something we’d been practicing for years. Now we were all thinking: My God, we have to do this for real…Will it ever work?”

  In the safe-speech room of the British embassy in Moscow, the personnel of the MI6 station gathered to rehearse an amateur dramatic performance.

  The trip to Finland, in two diplomatic cars, required a cover story that the listening KGB would believe. To make matters even more complicated, a new British ambassador, Sir Bryan Cartledge, would be arriving in Moscow on Thursday, and a drinks reception was to be held in his honor at the embassy the following evening. The two cars needed to be at the rendezvous point south of the Finnish border at exactly 2:30 on Saturday, but KGB suspicions would immediately be raised if Ascot and Gee, nominally two of Cartledge’s senior diplomats, were not present to toast his arrival. They needed a believable emergency. Before leaving home, Gee had passed his wife a note, written on toilet paper: “You’re going to have to get ill,” it read.

  The story would go like this: Rachel Gee would suddenly develop an extremely painful back. Although a woman of considerable vitality, she had suffered from asthma and other health problems in the past, a fact that would be known to the all-hearing KGB. She and her husband would agree to drive to Helsinki to see a specialist. Caroline Ascot, her close friend, would suggest that she and her husband come, too, and “make a weekend of it.” The two couples would drive in two separate cars, and agree to do some shopping in the Finnish capital at the same time. The Ascots would bring along their fifteen-month-old daughter, Florence, leaving their two other children with the nanny. “We decided it was better cover if we took the baby.” They would attend the ambassador’s drinks party on Friday, set off immediately afterward, drive overnight to Leningrad, and then on across the Finnish border to make the doctor’s appointment in Helsinki late on Saturday afternoon.

  The performance started that afternoon, with each of the four actors playing a part. In the flat, Rachel Gee started complaining, for the hidden KGB microphones, of a searing pain in her lower back. The complaints grew steadily louder as the day wore on. “I gave it the works,” she said. Her friend Caroline Ascot came around to see if she could help. “There was a great deal of groaning from me, and poor you–ing from Caroline,” Rachel recalled. Her imitation of a woman in pain was so convincing that her mother-in-law, who happened to be visiting, became alarmed. Gee took his mother for a walk, away from the microphones, to explain that Rachel was not really unwell at all. “Rachel was a wonderful actress,” said Ascot. Arthur Gee called a doctor friend in Finland, on the bugged telephone, to ask for medical advice. He also telephoned a number of airlines to inquire about flights, but rejected these on the grounds of cost. “Why don’t we come, too?” said Caroline, when Rachel told her she was going to have to drive to Finland. The scene now shifted to the Ascots’ flat. When Caroline told her husband that he would be driving overnight to Finland, with their baby, to take poor Rachel to a doctor and do some shopping, Ascot put on a show of extreme reluctance—“Oh God, what a bore. Do we really have to? The new ambassador is arriving. I have lots of work to do…”—before finally agreeing to the trip.

  Somewhere in the Russian archives is a set of eavesdropping transcripts that together add up to a small, strange melodrama, staged by MI6 entirely for the benefit of the KGB.

  Ascot and Gee wondered whether the whole charade was a waste of time, and the escape plan doomed to failure. “Something doesn’t smell right,”
said Gee. Both had spotted what seemed to be unusually high levels of activity at the signal site on Tuesday evening, with large numbers of cars and milling pedestrians, possibly indicating increased surveillance. If the KGB kept them under close watch all the way to the Finnish border, it would be impossible to slip into the turnout and pick up the escapees without being spotted, and the operation would fail. Gee was not even sure that the man with the Safeway bag was really PIMLICO. Perhaps the KGB had uncovered the escape plan, and sent a stand-in while the real PIMLICO was already in custody.

  Surveillance also seemed heavier around the embassy and diplomatic compound. “My fear was that it was all a setup,” said Gee. The KGB might be putting on its own performance: drawing MI6 into a trap that would lead to exposure, expulsion of both officers for “activities incompatible,” and a violent diplomatic explosion that would embarrass the British government and set back Anglo-Soviet relations at a vital moment. “Even if we were heading into an ambush, I knew we had no choice but to press ahead anyway. The escape signal had been flown.” Ascot still did not know PIMLICO’s identity, but London now decided to reveal what he was: a KGB colonel, a long-term agent, and a person for whom it was worth taking this monumental risk. “It was a boost to morale,” wrote Ascot.

  The MI6 station kept Century House abreast of preparations, although the number of cables passing between London and Moscow was kept to a minimum, in case the KGB spotted the increased activity and became suspicious.

  In London, too, there was disquiet within the tiny circle made aware that PIMLICO was under way. “There were voices saying this is too dangerous. If it goes wrong, this will completely upend Anglo-Soviet relations.” Several senior Foreign Office mandarins were extremely dubious about the escape plan, including the foreign secretary, Geoffrey Howe, and Sir Bryan Cartledge, Britain’s newly appointed ambassador to Moscow.

  Cartledge was due to arrive in Russia on Thursday, July 18. He had been briefed on PIMLICO two months before, but told it was highly unlikely to be implemented. Now he was informed that MI6 planned, two days after his arrival, to smuggle a senior KGB officer out of Russia in the trunk of a car. The exfiltration had been meticulously planned and rehearsed, MI6 explained, but it was also highly risky, and whether or not it succeeded, there would be major diplomatic repercussions. A career diplomat with an academic pedigree, Sir Bryan had already served in Sweden, Iran, and Russia before taking up his first ambassadorial post in Hungary. His appointment as ambassador in Moscow was the high point of his career. He was not happy. “Poor Bryan Cartledge,” Ascot recalled. “He had just started a new job and he had this smoking bomb handed to him…He saw his last ambassadorship going down the tubes.” If the escape team was caught in the act, there was a possibility that the new ambassador might even be declared persona non grata before he had presented his credentials to the Kremlin, a humiliating diplomatic first. The new ambassador registered a strong objection, and argued that the operation be called off.

  A meeting was called at the Foreign Office. Present were the MI6 delegation, consisting of the chief, Christopher Curwen, his deputy, P5, and the Sovbloc controller, and various Foreign Office officials, including Bryan Cartledge and David Goodall, the deputy under-secretary. Goodall, according to one of those present, “got into a frightful flap,” and kept repeating: “What are we going to do?” Cartledge was still fuming: “It’s an absolute bloody disaster. I’ve got to leave for Moscow tomorrow, and in a week I’ll be back again.” The deputy head of MI6 was adamant: “If we don’t go ahead with this, the service will never be able to hold its head up again.”

  At this moment, the meeting was joined by Sir Robert Armstrong, the cabinet secretary, who had crossed the road from Downing Street. He loudly plonked his leather briefcase on the table: “I am quite certain that the prime minister will feel we have an overwhelming moral duty to save this man.” That ended the debate. Sir Bryan Cartledge looked “like a man going to the gallows” as the Foreign Office contingent headed off to inform the Foreign Secretary, who had just returned from a memorial service. Howe remained hesitant. “What if it goes wrong?” he asked. “What if the car is searched?” To his credit, the new ambassador now spoke up: “We’ll say it’s a gross provocation. We’ll say they shoved the fellow in the boot of the car.”

  “Hmmm,” said Howe, dubiously. “I suppose so…”

  Operation PIMLICO still required authorization at the highest level. Mrs. Thatcher would have to give her personal stamp of approval for the escape plan. But the prime minister was in Scotland, with the queen.

  * * *

  Gordievsky made his preparations, appearing to do the sorts of things a man who was about to escape would not do. Attention to detail helped keep the dread at bay. He was now on a mission, no longer mere quarry, but a professional again. His fate was now back in his own hands.

  Much of Thursday was spent with his younger sister, Marina, and her family in their Moscow apartment. A sweet and unquestioning soul, Marina would have been utterly horrified to learn that her only surviving brother was a spy. He also visited his widowed mother. Olga was now seventy-eight and frail. Throughout his childhood she had represented a spirit of quiet resistance, in contrast to his father’s timidity and conformity. Of all his family members, Gordievsky’s widowed mother was the one most likely to understand his actions. She would never have denounced him, but like any mother, she would also have tried to dissuade him from the path he was about to take. He embraced her and said nothing, knowing that, whether the escape succeeded or failed, he would probably never see her again. Once home, he called Marina to arrange another get-together early the following week: a false trail laid, maintaining the pretense that he would still be in Moscow beyond the weekend. The more arrangements and appointments he made for the future, the better his chances of diverting KGB attention from what he was about to do. It felt manipulative to be using his family and friends as diversions, but they would surely understand, even if they never forgave him.

  Then Gordievsky did something exceptionally foolhardy, and very funny.

  He called Mikhail Lyubimov and confirmed that he was coming to stay at his dacha the following week. Lyubimov said he was looking forward to it. His new girlfriend, Tanya, would be there. They would meet Gordievsky at 11:13 on Monday at Zvenigorod Station.

  Gordievsky switched the subject.

  “Have you read ‘Mr. Harrington’s Washing’ by Somerset Maugham?”

  This was one of the short stories in the Ashenden series. Lyubimov had introduced him to the works of Maugham a decade earlier, when both were in Denmark. Gordievsky knew that his friend owned the complete works.

  “It’s very good. You should read it again,” said Gordievsky. “It’s in volume four. Look it up, and you’ll see what I mean.”

  After some more chat, they rang off.

  Gordievsky had just planted a coded farewell to Lyubimov, and an unambiguous literary clue: “Mr. Harrington’s Washing” is the tale of a British spy who escapes from revolutionary Russia through Finland.

  In Maugham’s short story, set in 1917, the British secret agent Ashenden travels on the Trans-Siberian Express on a mission to Russia. During the journey, he shares a carriage with an American businessman, Mr. Harrington, endearingly loquacious but infuriatingly fastidious. As revolution engulfs the country, Ashenden urges Harrington to take the train north before the revolutionary forces close in, but the American refuses to leave without his clothing, which has not been returned by the hotel laundry. Harrington is shot dead in the street by the revolutionary mob, having just retrieved his washing. The story is about risk—“man has always found it easier to sacrifice his life than to learn the multiplication table”—and getting out in time. Ashenden takes the train and escapes through Finland.

  It was highly unlikely that the KGB’s eavesdroppers were versed in early-twentieth-century English literature, and even more improbable that they would be able to decipher the clue in less than twenty-four hours. But
it was a hostage to fortune nonetheless.

  His rebellion had always been, in part, a cultural one, a defiance of the philistinism of Soviet Russia. Leaving an obscure hint from Western literature was his parting shot, a demonstration of his own cultural superiority. Whether or not he escaped, the KGB would comb through the transcripts of his telephone conversations afterward, and realize they had been mocked: they would hate him all the more, but perhaps admire him, too.

  * * *

  Her annual visit to stay with the queen in Balmoral was one of the prime ministerial duties Margaret Thatcher liked least. The tradition by which prime ministers spend a few days every summer as a guest in the royal Scottish castle was, Thatcher declared, a “tedious waste of time.” The queen did not have much time for Thatcher either, mocking her middle-class accent as “Royal Shakespeare received pronunciation from circa 1950.” Rather than stay in the main castle, Thatcher was housed in a cabin on the grounds, where she spent her days with her red boxes of official paperwork and a lone secretary, as far as possible from the royal world of bagpipes, Wellingtons, and corgis.

  On Thursday, July 18, Christopher Curwen made an urgent appointment to see Thatcher’s private secretary, Charles Powell, at 10 Downing Street. There, in a private meeting room, C explained that Operation PIMLICO had been activated, and now required the personal authorization of the prime minister.

  Charles Powell was Thatcher’s most trusted adviser, privy to the innermost secrets of her government. One of the handful of officials who had been briefed on the NOCTON case, he later described the escape attempt as “the single most secret thing I ever heard about.” Neither he nor Thatcher had been told the real name of the man she called “Mr. Collins.” Powell was sure she would give her approval, but the escape plan was “far too sensitive for the telephone.” She would have to give clearance in person, and only Powell could ask her. “I couldn’t tell anyone in Number 10 what I was doing.”