The signal site on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, as seen from the front of the Hotel Ukraine. The bread shop can be glimpsed through the trees on the left of the picture.
St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square, where Oleg Gordievsky attempted to pass a message to MI6 requesting that the escape plan, Operation PIMLICO, be activated immediately. The “brush contact” failed.
A Safeway supermarket bag, the escape signal flown by Gordievsky at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 16, 1985, at the Kutuzovsky Prospekt signal site.
To indicate that the signal had been received, an MI6 officer would walk past Gordievsky, make brief eye contact, and eat a Mars bar.
The rendezvous site south of Vyborg where the MI6 escape team would attempt to pick up Gordievsky and take him across the Finnish border.
One of the escape cars, a Saab driven by the MI6 officer Viscount Roy Ascot.
Top: The road to freedom. A reconnaissance photo taken heading north on the escape route.
Bottom: The MI6 exfiltration team pauses for a souvenir photograph en route to Norway, a few hours after the fugitive spy crossed into Finland. From left to right: Gordievsky, MI6 officers Simon Brown and Veronica Price, and Danish intelligence officer Jens Eriksen.
One of the three military border barriers at the Vyborg frontier between Russia and Finland.
The view through the car windshield of one of the MI6 officers expelled from Russia in the aftermath of PIMLICO. The British cars, accompanied by a convoy of KGB vehicles, are passing the rendezvous point where Gordievsky had been picked up three months earlier.
The arrest of Aldrich Ames on February 21, 1994, a decade after he began spying for the KGB. “You’re making a big mistake!” he insisted. “You must have the wrong man!”
Arrest photographs of Rosario and Rick Ames. She was released after completing her sentence, but Rick, Prisoner 40087-083, is currently imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Gordievsky greets his family as they arrive by helicopter in the UK, following six years of enforced separation.
The reunited Gordievskys pose for pictures in London, but the marriage swiftly disintegrated.
Gordievsky with Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office in 1987. “We know you,” said Reagan. “We appreciate what you’ve done for the West.”
In the 2007 queen’s birthday honors, Gordievsky was appointed Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG), for “services to the security of the United Kingdom.”
The CIA chief, Bill Casey, who flew to the UK for a meeting with Gordievsky a few weeks after his escape.
The retired spy. Oleg Gordievsky still lives, under an assumed name, in the safe house on a nondescript suburban street in England that he moved into soon after his escape from Russia.
Chapter 15
FINLANDIA
Ascot pointed to the open trunk of Gee’s car. Caroline hurried back from the turnout’s entrance with the baby. Rachel took Gordievsky’s mud-caked, malodorous, and possibly radioactive shoes, tied them in a plastic bag, and threw them under the front seat of the car. Gordievsky climbed into the trunk of the Sierra and lay down. Gee handed him water, the medical pack, and the empty bottle and indicated by hand signals that he should undress in the trunk. The aluminum space blanket was laid on top of him. The women bundled the picnic into the backseats. Gee gently closed the trunk, and Gordievsky disappeared into darkness. With Ascot in the lead, the two cars rejoined the main road, and accelerated.
The entire pickup had taken eighty seconds.
At Kilometer Post 852, the next GIA observation post loomed into view, and with it a memorable tableau. The mustard-colored Zhiguli and the two police cars were parked, doors open, on the right side of the road. A KGB man in plainclothes was in earnest conversation with five militiamen. “They all turned swiftly to look at us as we appeared,” and stared, open-mouthed, as the two British cars drove by, their faces registering a mixture of confusion and relief. “The driver ran back to his car as soon as we were past,” wrote Ascot. “He had such a puzzled and incredulous look on his face that I expected to be stopped and at least questioned about our movements.” But the surveillance cars slotted in behind, just as before. Had they radioed ahead to the border, warning the guards to look out for a party of foreign diplomats? Did they file a report admitting that they had lost the British diplomats for several minutes? Or did they, in more traditional Soviet fashion, assume that the foreigners had merely stopped off the road to relieve themselves, disguise the fact that several minutes were unaccounted for, and say nothing at all? It is impossible to know the answer to this question, but it is easy to guess it.
From the trunk, Rachel and Arthur Gee could hear muted grunts and bumps, as Gordievsky struggled to remove his clothes in the constricted space. Then a distinctive gush, as he decanted his lunchtime beers. Rachel turned up the music: Dr. Hook’s Greatest Hits, a compilation of the American rock band’s records that included “Only Sixteen,” “When You’re in Love with a Beautiful Woman,” and “Sylvia’s Mother.” The style of Dr. Hook’s music is often described as “easy listening.” Gordievsky did not find it easy. Even crammed into the boiling trunk of the car, fleeing for his life, he found time to be irritated by this lowbrow schmaltzy pop. “It was horrible, horrible music. I hated it.”
But it was not the noise their secret passenger was making that most worried Rachel, it was the smell: a mixture of sweat, cheap soap, tobacco, and beer, rising from the rear of the car. It wasn’t unpleasant exactly, but it was most distinctive, and quite strong. “It was the smell of Russia. It’s not something you would have found in an ordinary English car.” The sniffer dogs would surely register that something in the back of the car smelled quite different from the passengers in the front.
By a process of contortion, Gordievsky managed to remove his shirt and trousers, but the exertion left him clutching for breath. The heat was already intense, and the air inside the trunk seemed to thicken with each gulp. He swallowed a sedative pill. Gordievsky imagined the scene that would take place if the border guards found him. The British would feign surprise, and claim that the fugitive had been planted as a provocation. They would all be hauled off. He would be taken to the Lubyanka, forced to confess, and then killed.
Back in Moscow, the KGB must have been aware that it had a problem. Yet it still did not move to close the nearest land border, or make the connection between Gordievsky’s disappearance and the two British diplomats who had slipped away from an embassy function the previous evening to drive to Finland. Instead it was at first assumed that Gordievsky must have killed himself, and was probably lying at the bottom of the Moscow River, or else drunk in a bar. Weekends are lethargic times in all large bureaucracies, when the second-tier staff comes to work and the boss relaxes. The KGB began looking for Gordievsky, but without particular urgency. After all, where could he possibly run to? And if he had committed suicide, what could be clearer evidence of guilt?
On the twelfth floor of Century House, Derek Thomas, the deputy under-secretary for Intelligence from the Foreign Office, had joined the PIMLICO team in P5’s office to wait for Shawford’s telephone call and learn the outcome of the “fishing expedition” in Finland. At the Foreign Office, David Goodall, the permanent under-secretary, gathered his senior advisers to await word from Thomas. At 1:30 in the afternoon, 3:30 in Russia, Goodall, a devout Roman Catholic, looked at his watch and declared: “Ladies and gentlemen, they should be crossing the border around now. I think it would be appropriate to say a small prayer.” The half-dozen officials bowed their heads.
The traffic crawled through Vyborg. If the KGB was going to flush them out by staging a traffic accident and ramming one of the cars, then it would take place in the center of town. The Zhiguli had vanished. Then the police cars peeled off. “If they’re going to get us, they’ll get us at the border,” Gee thought.
Rachel remembered the training they had undergone, at Veronica Price’s insis
tence, in Guildford woods, squeezed into a trunk under a space blanket, hearing the sounds of the engine, the music from the cassette deck, the unexpected jolts, halts, and Russian voices. “It had seemed crackers at the time.” Now it appeared inspired: “We all knew what he was going through.”
Gordievsky swallowed another pill and felt his mind and body slacken a little. He pulled the space blanket over his head. Even though he was stripped to his underwear, the sweat was running down his back and pooling on the metal floor of the trunk.
Ten miles west of Vyborg, they reached the perimeter of the militarized border area, a wall of mesh fencing, topped with barbed wire. The border zone was roughly twelve miles in width. Between here and Finland were five separate barriers, three Soviet and two Finnish.
At the first border check, the frontier guard gave the party “a hard look” but then waved them through without a document check. The border authorities had clearly been told to expect the diplomatic party. At the next checkpoint Ascot scanned the faces of the guards, “but sensed no special tension in the air directed specifically at us.”
In the other car, Arthur Gee was focused on a different anxiety. He was having what might be termed a “Have I left the iron on?” moment. He could not remember whether, in his haste, he had locked the trunk of the car. Indeed, he was not even sure he had closed it properly. Gee had a sudden, horrible vision of the trunk lid popping open as they passed through the border area, to reveal the spy, in fetal position, curled up inside. He stopped the car, jumped out, headed to the edge of the forest, and urinated in the bushes. On the way back he checked, as casually as he could, that the trunk was locked—which it was, just as the iron is always off. The delay had taken less than a minute.
The next checkpoint brought them to the border itself. The men parked the cars side by side in the fenced parking lot of the immigration holding area, and then joined the queue at the customs and immigration kiosk. Filling out paperwork for leaving the Soviet Union could be a time-consuming business. Rachel and Caroline prepared for a long wait. No sound came from the trunk. Rachel remained in the passenger seat, trying to look bored and in pain. The baby Florence was fractious, helpfully providing distraction and covering any noise with her wails. Caroline took her out of her car seat and stood talking to Rachel through the open door, gently rocking the baby. Border guards passed between the lines of cars, looking left and right. Rachel braced herself to “throw a wobbly” if they attempted to search the car. If they insisted, Ascot would then present his copy of the letter of protest and the terms of the Vienna Convention. If they still seemed determined to open the trunk, he would throw his own diplomatic wobbly, and insist that they were going to immediately drive back to Moscow to launch a formal protest. At that point, they would probably all be arrested.
Two tourist buses were parked nearby, the passengers asleep or staring idly out of the windows. Around the edges of the wired enclosure, wild willow herb grew in purple profusion. The smell of fresh-cut hay wafted across the parking lot. The woman official in the customs and immigration kiosk was grumpy and slow, complaining bitterly about the extra work created by the youth festival and the influx of drunk young foreigners. Ascot made Russian small talk, fighting the urge to hurry her. The border guards were carefully searching the other cars, mostly Moscow-based businessmen and Finnish visitors returning home.
The air was hot and still. Rachel heard a low cough from the trunk, and Gordievsky shifted his weight, rocking the car very slightly. Unaware that they were already inside the border zone, he was clearing his throat, attempting to ensure there would be no involuntary spluttering. Rachel turned up the music. “Only Sixteen” by Dr. Hook echoed incongruously around the concrete lot. A dog handler appeared, and stood, eight yards away, looking intently at the British cars and stroking his Alsatian. A second sniffer dog was inspecting a container truck. The first dog approached, eager and panting, straining at its chain. Rachel reached casually for a packet of crisps, opened it, offered a crisp to Caroline, and dropped a couple on the ground.
The British cheese and onion crisp has a most distinctive aroma. Invented by the Irish potato-crisp magnate Joe “Spud” Murphy in 1958, cheese and onion is a pungent artificial cocktail of onion powder, whey powder, cheese powder, dextrose, salt, potassium chloride, flavor enhancers, monosodium glutamate, 5’-sodium ribonucleotide, yeast, citric acid, and coloring. Caroline had bought her imported Golden Wonder crisps from the embassy shop, which stocked Marmite, digestive biscuits, marmalade, and other British staples impossible to obtain in Russia.
The Soviet sniffer dogs had almost certainly never smelled anything like cheese and onion crisps before. She offered a crisp to one of the dogs, which wolfed it down before being yanked away by the unsmiling handler. The other dog, however, was now snuffling at the trunk of the Sierra. Gordievsky could hear muffled Russian voices overhead.
As the dog circled the car, Caroline Ascot reached for a weapon that had never been deployed before in the Cold War, or any other. She placed Florence on the trunk directly over the hidden spy, and began changing her nappy—which the baby, with immaculate timing, had just filled. She then dropped the soiled and smelly diaper next to the inquisitive Alsatian. “The dog duly slunk off, offended.” Olfactory diversion was never part of the plan. The nappy ruse had been completely spontaneous, and highly effective.
The men returned with the completed paperwork. Fifteen minutes later a border guard appeared with their four passports, checked them against the occupants, handed them over, and politely bid them goodbye.
A queue of seven cars had formed at the last barrier, a belt of barbed wire, with two elevated lookout posts and guards armed with machine guns. For about twenty minutes they inched forward, aware that they were being closely scrutinized through binoculars from the posts. Gee was now ahead of Ascot. “It was a nerve-racking moment.”
The final Soviet hurdle was passport control itself. The Soviet officers seemed to scrutinize the British diplomatic passports for an age, before the barrier was raised.
They were now technically in Finland, but two more hurdles remained: Finnish customs and immigration, and Finnish passport control. It would require only a single telephone call from the Soviets to turn them around. The Finnish customs officer studied Gee’s documents, and then pointed out that his car insurance would be out of date in a few days. Gee remonstrated that they would be returning to the Soviet Union before that. The official shrugged and stamped the document. Gordievsky felt the driver’s door close, and a jolt as the car moved off again.
The cars funneled toward the final barrier. Beyond lay Finland. Gee posted the passports through the grille. The Finnish official examined them slowly, handed them back, and came out of his kiosk to raise the barrier. Then his phone rang. He returned to the kiosk. Arthur and Rachel Gee stared ahead in silence. After what seemed like an eternity, the border guard returned, yawning, and raised the barrier. It was 4:15, Moscow time, 3:15 in Finland.
Inside the trunk, Gordievsky heard the fizz of tires on warm asphalt, and felt a judder as the Ford picked up speed.
Suddenly classical music was blasting out of the tape deck at top volume, no longer the soupy pop of Dr. Hook, but the swelling sounds of an orchestral piece he knew well. Arthur and Rachel Gee still could not tell their passenger, in words, that he was free; but they could do so in sound, with the haunting opening chords of a symphonic poem written by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius in celebration of his native land.
They were playing Finlandia.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, the two British cars nosed onto the forestry road and into the woods. The area looked completely different from the photographs Ascot had studied back in London: “Several new tracks had been made into the forest and there seemed to be too many smart new cars parked in the turnouts around the area with stony-faced men, whom I had never seen before, staring at us.” These were the Danes, Eriksen and Larsen, “ready to ram hostile Soviet pursuit.” Asc
ot was not the only person alarmed by the sudden activity in this usually secluded spot. A battered brown Mini appeared, containing an elderly Finnish woman apparently on a mushroom-collecting expedition. “She understandably took fright and smartly drove off.” Through the trees, Ascot caught sight of Martin Shawford, “an unmistakable blond figure.” As he drove past the beige Volvo and prepared to stop, he saw Price’s face, pressed to the window. She mouthed the words: “How many?” Ascot raised a single finger.
Gordievsky felt the car bump over the forest track.
The scene that now played out was like a slow-motion dream, in silence. Brown and Price ran forward. The Danes held back. Brown opened the trunk of the car. There lay Gordievsky, soaked in sweat, conscious but dazed. “He was semi-naked, in this pool of water: and I immediately felt it was like I was seeing a new-born child in amniotic fluid, and some extraordinary rebirth.”
Gordievsky was momentarily dazzled by the sunlight. All he could see was blue sky, clouds, and trees. He staggered out and onto his feet, helped by Brown. Veronica Price did not approve of emotional displays, but she was visibly moved, “her expression a mixture of recognition and love.” She wagged her finger, in mock admonition, as if to say: “Gosh, you really have been up to something.”
Gordievsky seized both her hands, raised them to his lips, and kissed them, an unmistakably Russian gesture of gratitude and liberation. Then he walked shakily over to where Caroline Ascot and Rachel Gee stood side by side. Bowing from the waist, he kissed their hands, too, first one and then the other. “All we had seen was this great bull coming out of the bushes, and then suddenly there was this courteous, very delicate gesture.” The space blanket was still draped over his shoulders. “He looked like an athlete who had just run a marathon.”
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