Two MI6 officers flew to Washington that afternoon. At the airport, they were met by a driver and taken to Langley. Accompanied by Burton Gerber, the CIA’s head of Soviet operations, they were then driven to the Maryland home of the CIA’s director, Bill Casey, for an early dinner cooked by Casey’s wife, Sophia. The Caseys were going to the theater later. The two British officers provided a detailed account of the Gordievsky case: from recruitment, through more than a decade of valuable service to MI6, and finally his breathtaking escape. America also owed him an enormous debt, they explained: the RYAN intelligence, accurately reflecting Kremlin paranoia at a perilous moment in East-West relations, had come from Gordievsky. Halfway through the account, Sophia interrupted to say that it was time to leave for the theater. “You go ahead,” said Casey. “This is the best show in town.” For the rest of the evening, the American spy chief listened with admiration, gratitude, and wonder. The appreciation was entirely genuine; the surprise was not. Bill Casey did not reveal that the CIA already had a file on Gordievsky, code-named TICKLE.
* * *
On September 16, a military helicopter skimmed over the sea toward Fort Monckton. C and a handful of his senior officers were waiting by the helipad as it touched down. Out stepped Bill Casey. The veteran CIA chief had secretly flown to Britain to pick the brains of Britain’s newly exfiltrated spy. A lawyer from New York, Casey knew England well from the war, when he had served in London in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA’s wartime precursor, directing spies in Europe. After running Ronald Reagan’s election campaign, he was appointed to head the CIA, with responsibility, in Reagan’s words, for “rebuilding America’s intelligence capability.” A stooped figure with the face of a bloodhound, Casey was about to become embroiled in the Iran-Contra affair and would die of a brain tumor within two years. But at this moment he was probably the most powerful spy in the world, with an acute appreciation of his own abilities. “I’m on top of all facets of the job,” he declared, early in Reagan’s second term. “I have a capacity to size up a situation once I get the facts, and to make decisions.” Casey was in Fort Monckton to get some facts from Gordievsky, and make some decisions. Reagan would soon be meeting Mikhail Gorbachev for the first time, at the superpower summit in Geneva. Casey wanted an expert KGB opinion on what he should say to the Soviet leader.
Over lunch in the guest suite above the gatehouse, with only C in attendance, Casey quizzed Gordievsky about Gorbachev’s negotiating style, his attitude toward the West, and his relations with the KGB. The American scribbled notes on a large yellow pad with blue lines. Occasionally Casey’s American drawl and false teeth left Gordievsky perplexed; C found himself in the odd position of having to translate American English into English English for the Russian. Casey listened attentively, “like a schoolboy.” Above all, the CIA’s director wanted to understand Moscow’s attitude toward nuclear deterrence, and in particular the Soviet view of the Strategic Defense Initiative missile defense system. Andropov had denounced the Star Wars initiative as a deliberate attempt to destabilize the world and enable the West to attack the Soviet Union without fear of retaliation. Would Gorbachev feel the same? Casey suggested some role-playing, and an odd little Cold War drama now played out in MI6’s secret training base.
“You are Gorbachev,” he said. “And I am Reagan. We would like to get rid of nuclear weapons. To inspire confidence, we will give you access to Star Wars. What do you say?”
In place of mutually assured destruction by nuclear weapons, Casey was effectively offering mutually assured defense against them.
Gordievsky/Gorbachev pondered for a moment, and then answered emphatically, in Russian.
“Nyet!”
Casey/Reagan was taken aback. In his imagined exchange, the US was effectively proposing to end the threat of nuclear war by sharing the technology to render it obsolete.
“Why nyet? We’re giving you everything.”
“I don’t trust you. You’ll never give us everything. You’ll hold something back which will give you the advantage.”
“So what do I do?”
“If you drop SDI altogether, Moscow will believe you.”
“That’s not going to happen.” Casey slipped out of character for a moment. “It is President Reagan’s pet project. So what should we do?”
“All right,” said Gordievsky. “Then keep it up. You keep up the pressure. Gorbachev and his people know they can’t outspend you. Your technology is better than theirs. Keep it up.” Moscow would beggar itself trying to match Star Wars, he added, pouring money into a technological arms race it could never win. “In the long term SDI will ruin the Soviet leadership.”
Some historians see the meeting in Fort Monckton as another pivotal moment in the Cold War.
At the Geneva summit the following November, the American president refused to budge on the Star Wars program, just as Gordievsky had advised, describing it as “necessary defense.” The first test of the SDI system was announced while the summit was under way. Later described as the “fireside summit,” reflecting the warmth between the two leaders, Reagan “stood firm” on his pet project. Gorbachev left Geneva believing the world was a “safer place,” but also convinced that the USSR would have to reform, and quickly, to catch up with the West. Glasnost and perestroika followed, and then a wave of tumultuous change that, in the end, Gorbachev was powerless to control. Gordievsky’s accurate interpretation of Kremlin psychology in 1985 did not cause the collapse of the Soviet Union—but it probably helped.
The lunch with Bill Casey was only the first of many meetings with the CIA. Just a few months later, Gordievsky flew to Washington under tight security for a secret meeting with senior officials of the State Department, the National Security Council, the Defense Department, and the intelligence agencies. Gordievsky was bombarded with questions, which he answered patiently, professionally, and in unprecedented detail—he was no mere defector but a long-term, deep-penetration agent with an encyclopedic understanding of the KGB. The Americans were impressed and grateful. The British were proud to share the expertise of their star spy. “The information from Gordievsky was very good,” said Caspar Weinberger, Reagan’s defense secretary.
But there was one question he could not answer. Who had betrayed him?
At CIA headquarters in Langley, Gordievsky was wheeled out to give a series of briefings to senior officers. At one of these, he was introduced to a tall, bespectacled man with a thin mustache, who seemed particularly friendly, “quietly and patiently listening” to his every word. Most CIA officers struck Gordievsky as rather formal, even a little suspicious, but this one “seemed different: his face radiated gentleness and kindness. I was so impressed by him that I thought that I had encountered the embodiment of American values: here was the openness, honesty, and decency of which I had heard so much.”
For a dozen years, Gordievsky had lived a double life, a dedicated professional intelligence officer who was secretly loyal to the other side, playing a part. He was very good at it. But so was Aldrich Ames.
Epilogue
PASSPORT FOR PIMLICO
A month after Gordievsky’s escape, the scientific counselor at the Soviet embassy in Paris was surprised to be invited to tea at the Alliance Française by a British diplomat he only vaguely knew. He turned up, on the afternoon of August 15, to be greeted by an Englishman he had never seen before. “I have a very important message for you to give the head of your KGB station,” the stranger said.
The Russian turned pale. He was about to be dragged into something very murky.
The Englishman calmly informed him that a senior KGB officer, until recently the rezident in London, was alive and well and living in the UK under close protection. “He is very happy, but he would like his family back.”
So began Operation HETMAN, the campaign to get Leila and the girls to Britain and reunite the Gordievsky family.
Within MI6 there was a debate about how to play the situation. A formal let
ter setting out a deal with the KGB was rejected as too risky. “Any written document might have been doctored and played back at us in some way.” It was agreed to deliver an oral message to a bona fide Soviet diplomat outside the UK, and the luckless counselor had been selected as the best recipient.
“I’ve never seen a man look so frightened,” said the MI6 message bearer. “He went away trembling.”
The terms were straightforward. Thanks to Gordievsky, the British now knew the identities of every KGB and GRU officer in Britain. These would have to leave. But Moscow could “withdraw people gradually, over a long period, provided the Gordievsky family was set free.” That way the Kremlin would save face, its spies discreetly ejected without a diplomatic fuss, and the family would be reunited. If Moscow rejected a deal, however, and refused to release Leila and the girls, then the Soviet spies in London would be expelled en masse. The KGB had two weeks to respond.
Gordievsky’s fears for his family grew by the day. His pride at having bested the KGB was coupled with a soul-crushing guilt. The people he loved most were now prisoners of the Soviet Union. Margaret Thatcher’s offer to strike a secret deal with Moscow was highly unorthodox, as Gordievsky acknowledged in a letter sent to the prime minister: “To set aside procedures and allow the unofficial approach to go forward was a unique act of great generosity and humanity.”
It did not work.
The offer of a secret arrangement was received in Moscow with disbelief, and then fury. In the month since Gordievsky’s disappearance, the KGB had scoured the country, unwilling to believe he could have escaped. Leila was repeatedly interrogated about her husband’s whereabouts, as were other members of his family including his younger sister and mother. Marina was petrified. Olga Gordievsky was stunned. Every colleague and friend was grilled. Leila maintained a dignified front, insisting that her husband was the victim of some plot or a terrible mistake. She was tailed everywhere by six KGB surveillance officers. Her daughters were even watched on the school playground. Almost every day she was hauled into Lefortovo Prison for more questions. “How did you not know he was spying for the British?” they asked, again and again. Finally, she snapped. “Look. Let’s be clear. I was a wife. My job was to clean, cook, shop, sleep with him, have children, share the bed, and be his friend. I was good at it. I’m grateful he didn’t tell me anything. For six years of my life I was a perfect wife. I did everything for him. You, the KGB, you have thousands of people with salaries whose job was to check up on people; they checked him and checked him and cleared him. And you come to me and blame me? Don’t you think that sounds stupid? You didn’t do your job. It wasn’t my job, it was yours. You ruined my life.”
Over time, she got to know her interrogators. One day, one of the more sympathetic officers asked her: “What would you have done if you had known that your husband was planning to escape?” There was a long pause before Leila answered: “I would have let him go. I would have given him three days and then, as a loyal citizen, I would have reported it. But I would have made sure he had gone for sure before I did so.” The interrogator put down his pen. “I think we will not put that in the report.” Leila was in enough trouble already.
Mikhail Lyubimov was brought in for questioning by Directorate K. “Where could he be?” they demanded. “Is he with some woman? Is he holed up in a hut somewhere in the Kursk region?” Lyubimov, of course, had no idea. “Every aspect of my relationship with Gordievsky was combed through, looking for clues to his treachery.” But Lyubimov was as mystified as everyone else. “My theory was simple, and based on his appearance when I last saw him: I thought he must have had a nervous breakdown, and possibly committed suicide.”
Ten days after the meeting in Paris, a message came back from the Center, conveyed by the luckless scientific counselor, in the form of a “long tirade of abuse.” Gordievsky was a traitor; his family would remain in Russia; there would be no deal.
Britain prepared its response, Operation EMBASE. In September the Foreign Office released the news of Gordievsky’s defection (though not, yet, the sensational details of his escape). Dramatic headlines splashed across every newspaper: “The Biggest Fish Ever Netted,” “Friend Oleg, Master Spy,” “Russia’s Ace of Spies; the Super-Spy Who Went West,” “Our Man in the KGB.” On the same day, the British government expelled twenty-five KGB and GRU officers identified by Gordievsky: a wholesale purge of Soviet spies. That day, Thatcher wrote to Ronald Reagan: “We are making it clear to the Russians, on my personal authority, that while we cannot tolerate the sort of intelligence actions which Gordievsky has revealed, we continue to desire a constructive relationship with them. In the meantime, I think it is no bad thing that he [Gorbachev] should have presented to him so starkly, early in his leadership, the price to be paid for the scale and nature of KGB activities in western countries.”
Moscow’s riposte was immediate. The ambassador, Sir Bryan Cartledge, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry by Vladimir Pavlovich Suslov, head of the department responsible for dealing with foreign embassies. On the desk in front of him, Suslov had the photograph of the new ambassador surrounded by his staff: with a leaden look, he placed two fingers on the heads of Roy Ascot and Arthur Gee. “These two men are political bandits,” he said. The KGB had begun to piece the story together. Cartledge played dumb: “What’s all this about?” Suslov condemned the “blatant activities” of British intelligence officers in the embassy, adding that the Soviet authorities “know of the role assigned in this to first secretaries Gee and Ascot.” Suslov was particularly enraged that Rachel Gee had “acted the part” of a woman with a bad back. He then read out the names of twenty-five British officials, including the two MI6 officers and their secretary, Violet Chapman, and stated they should leave the Soviet Union by the third week of October, the same deadline Mrs. Thatcher had given for the expulsion of KGB staff in London. Most of these people had nothing to do with intelligence, let alone the exfiltration.
Sir Bryan Cartledge met Ascot in the safe-speech room, and blew off steam at gale force 12. The ambassador knew that the prime minister had given her personal stamp of approval to the escape operation, but the fallout was only just beginning. “He was absolutely furious,” recalled Ascot. “He said we had wiped out his embassy, at a time when Thatcher was getting on with Gorbachev (partly because of our friend, but I couldn’t tell Bryan that). There are people who are most eloquent when most angry. He told me how my great-grandfather, the prime minister, would be turning in his grave.” Actually, if Ascot’s famous ancestor was doing anything in his grave, he was probably hooting with pleasure and pride.
In vain, Cartledge sent a most undiplomatic telegram to London, urging an end to the tit-for-tat expulsions: “Never engage in a pissing match with a skunk: he possesses important natural advantages,” he wrote. (His fury rose another notch when that message found its way, verbatim, to the prime minister’s desk.) But Thatcher had not finished her pissing competition with the Soviets. Her cabinet secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, proposed four more expulsions. She did not consider this “adequate,” and insisted another six Soviet officials be thrown out. Sure enough, this prompted the immediate expulsion of six more British diplomats, bringing the overall total to sixty-two evictions, or thirty-one apiece. Cartledge’s fears had been fully realized: “I lost all my Russian speakers at a stroke…we’d lost half our embassy.”
Gordievsky remained in hiding at the fort. Occasionally, he would leave the building and explore the surrounding area, but always under heavy protection. He took a daily jog around the fort’s perimeter, or through the New Forest, accompanied by MI6 officer Martin Shawford. But he could not make any new acquaintances, or contact old friends in Britain. MI6 attempted to make this life seem almost normal, but his only social contact was with members of the intelligence community and their families. He was always busy, but deeply lonely. The separation from his own family was a perpetual torment, the complete absence of news about them a source of anguish that occasional
ly erupted in bitter recrimination. To overcome his misery, he threw himself into the debriefing process, insisting on working long into the night. He veered between resignation and hope, pride in what he had achieved and despair at the personal cost. He wrote to Thatcher: “Although I had prayed for an early reunion with my wife and children, I fully accept and understand the reasons for taking decisive action…I must, however, go on hoping that some way can be found to secure the release of my family as, without them, my life has no meaning.”
Thatcher replied: “Our anxiety for your family remains and we shall not forget them. Having children of my own, I know the kind of thoughts and feelings which are going through your mind each and every day. Please do not say that life has no meaning. There is always hope.” Saying that she wished to meet him one day, the prime minister added: “I am very conscious of your personal courage and your stand for freedom and democracy.”
Within the KGB, the news that Gordievsky had escaped to Britain set off a firestorm of mutual recrimination and buck-passing. Chebrikov, the KGB chief, and Kryuchkov, the head of the First Chief Directorate, blamed the Second Chief Directorate, which was theoretically responsible for internal security and counterintelligence operations. The FCD bosses blamed Directorate K. Grushko blamed Gribin. Everyone blamed the surveillance team, which, since it occupied the lowest rung of the pecking order, had no one else to blame. The Leningrad KGB, responsible for surveillance of the British diplomats, was held directly accountable, and many senior officers were either sacked or demoted. Among those affected was Vladimir Putin, a product of the Leningrad KGB who saw most of his friends, colleagues, and patrons purged as a direct consequence of Gordievsky’s escape.
The Spy and the Traitor Page 37