Next Stop Execution: The Autobiography of Oleg Gordievsky

by Oleg Gordievsky

  One of Jack’s first actions was to hand me the key of a safe house, between Kensington High Street and Holland Park, in which I could instantly go to ground, with or without my family if I ever had to disappear. It was a terraced house, normally occupied by one of the British staff, and a good, anonymous retreat. (Whenever I went on leave, I would hand back the key, and leave it with my friends until I returned.)

  The initial plan was that I should meet the British once a month, but I soon found that I had so much to tell them, so many complicated matters to discuss, that we met far more often. Copenhagen had been shallow water in comparison with London: here we were in mid-ocean.

  *

  Luckily for me, the Centre did not seem to realize that ever since the big expulsion of 1971 the London station of the KGB had been relatively small (we had only twenty-three officers, and the GRU fifteen). The result was that Moscow, regarding Britain as a country of leading importance, kept up a hail of information. Different departments, competing with each other and seeking to justify their existence, poured out briefing papers, instructions, background information and requests of all kinds. To write and generate correspondence was, for them, a bureaucratic imperative, since the greater the volume of paper they sent out, and the more responses they elicited from foreign stations, the more real work they seemed to be doing. The consequence was that the Centre churned out an immense volume of information, any of which I was at liberty to pass on.

  One disadvantage was that documents travelling by diplomatic bag no longer came as film, so that we could not copy them as we had in Copenhagen. But the British were equipped with efficient cameras, and there was always a girl secretary, ready to snap whatever papers I brought with me to lunchtime meetings in a safe flat. I never had any problem explaining where I was going: always it was ‘to meet a contact’. But because it was safest for me to leave the station last, after everyone else had gone out, and be back before the cipher clerks returned from lunch, our meetings were necessarily short. Every day there was a potential danger that one of the clerks might stay in and exercise his right to search rooms and satchels — but that was a risk I had to take. Whenever I got back to my room in good time, before anyone else was around, I would close the door while I removed whatever documents I had taken with me from my pockets. But I could not do that if other people were back, as we were supposed to keep our doors open all the time, and I had to wait for a moment at which I could safely unload.

  At the Embassy, each day began with the Ambassador’s conference, which often degenerated into farce, especially if Popov tried to be funny, or simply made so many critical remarks that he irritated everyone else. Then Guk would give a pep talk, telling people to be vigilant, but he was a poor speaker, and often gave his listeners the giggles. The meeting generally lasted so long — up to two hours — and was such a waste of time that people tended to make appointments so that they could miss it. The GRU, considering themselves an organization apart, would detail a couple of representatives to attend but let it be known that the majority of them had better things to do than sit there for the first two hours of the morning.

  Although most of the KGB strength was concentrated in the Embassy, we also had between six and eight officers attached to the Soviet Trade Delegation, which, for thirty years, had had a building of its own in Highgate. There, modern offices had been built for the KGB and GRU sub-stations, together with separate rooms for a listening post. Besides these, we had four officers working under the cover of journalism, one of them, Yuri Kobaladze, easily the nicest man on the London staff, and three officers attached to international organizations: a completely useless man in the International Wheat Organization, a slightly better one in the International Cocoa Organization, and another in ship repair. Yet the strength of Soviet intelligence in England was considerably greater than these figures suggest. I knew, for instance, that Line X (science and technology) were running several agents, but I never discovered who they were. Also, Nikitenko was running one confidential contact in the circle of Denis Howell, the Labour Party’s Shadow Sports Minister, and another buried in the Jewish community. Again, the GRU, a smaller but more highly disciplined organization than the KGB, was also active but I never had any idea who its contacts were.

  One of my own first tasks was to re-establish contact with Bengt Carlsson, general secretary of the Socialist International, which he ran from an office in North London. This organization was weak, but the Centre had always been fascinated by it, and was determined to keep a close grip on it. Carlsson, still in his thirties, was a leading member of the Social Democratic Party in Sweden. He had been included in the KGB network as a special unofficial contact, a category introduced during the 1970s for prominent politicians close to the KGB, and met its representatives occasionally to share information and ideas.

  I was still in the first months of my stay in England, and everything seemed alien and unfamiliar. Besides, my English was poor. It was thus with some trepidation that I sought out the Socialist International office, which turned out to be modest, on two floors of a little house. I need not have worried: Carlsson proved much more sympathetic than I had expected, and I soon saw how highly he valued his relationship with the Russians. Obviously he was under great pressure from his own organization, for he could not work easily with Willi Brandt, the chairman and German Chancellor, and he was also being chivvied by the socialist parties of Spain, France and Italy, who wanted to break the northern Europeans’ domination of the Labour movement. Caught between several fires, he spoke to me quite emotionally, in English, and I was able to put in a most positive report, stressing the warmth of his feelings towards Moscow.[30]

  Inside the Embassy, life was dominated by a terrible paranoia about bugging: often the staff appeared able to think of nothing else. To appreciate the extent of their obsession, it is necessary to know the layout of the various Embassy buildings and their neighbours. The building on the corner, nearest Bayswater Road, was the Consulate, No. 5 Kensington Palace Gardens. No. 10, next to it, contained flats, a sauna bath and a small Embassy shop, in which, among other things, one could buy duty-free drink and cigarettes: vodka cost a pound a bottle, whisky two pounds fifty. (In the Embassy itself there was also a small ‘operational’ store of drink, cigarettes and other small presents designed for contacts, so that there was never any fear that big-time boozers like Guk might run out.) The next building, No. 12, was the Nepalese Embassy, and presumed by us to be used as a listening post by MI5. Next to that stood No. 13, the main Soviet Embassy building, which housed the referentura (on the first floor), the KGB and GRU stations, in loft and basement respectively, the Ambassador’s offices and apartment. (The Ambassador’s bedroom was on the floor below the Residency and he was plagued by fears that the KGB was spying on him through the ceiling. Once when Guk pointedly invited him to inspect the KGB’s accommodation, he spent much time glaring at the floors, trying to spot hidden cameras or peepholes.)

  No. 16, across the road, contained offices for Soviet military personnel, and the radio station; and we believed that another building was occupied by MI5, who sat there watching every arrival and departure through telephoto lenses as well as by direct observation. This made it impossible for any of us to come or go without being seen, and made us feel very exposed. Part of No. 18 also belonged to the Embassy, and contained a library, a club and a couple of diplomats’ offices (in one of which I was supposed to spend some of my time). The other half was the Egyptian Embassy, which we also suspected of being an MI5 listening post.

  Our ideas about the Nepalese and Egyptian buildings being used by the British were, of course, ridiculous. But the central supposition, which governed the existence of everyone in the Embassy, was that the British secret services were making colossal efforts, and using every means, to eavesdrop on our communications and conversations — as, indeed, the KGB was doing to the British Embassy in Moscow. Thus people claimed that the British had dug a special tunnel under Kensington Palace Gar
dens, wide enough to admit the passage of small vehicles, for the purposes of espionage. Branches were supposed to lead off underneath various embassies, and the Soviet headquarters particularly, for facilitating the installation and exchange of listening equipment. Because it was assumed that bugging devices had been installed in the Nepalese and Egyptian embassies, no conversations were allowed in the rooms along the walls facing or adjoining those buildings.

  The contrast with Copenhagen was painful. There, we had taken certain precautions, but in summer we used to have the skylights in the roof open all the time. In the London Embassy almost all the windows had been bricked up. The only man still able to enjoy daylight was the Resident, and his room was protected on three levels. First there was a general jamming device, which produced a buzzing noise and was supposed to frustrate listening microphones. Then, in the windows, separate electronic protection produced special sound-waves; and Guk had radio loudspeakers fitted into the space between the two layers of double glazing, which automatically came on whenever he entered the room so that a faint burbling was always audible.

  Electric typewriters were banned because it was thought that they could be bugged. We were not even allowed to use manual machines (although we did), because it was feared that the rhythm of keys being struck could be picked up and decoded. No computer was allowed in the building because that, too, could be easily penetrated. When I played music through a portable radio on my desk, the operational techniques Line officer would come up and say, ‘You really shouldn’t have that thing on, you know. It may automatically transmit anything you say to the opposition. They’re listening through radios all the time.’ People were constantly talking about strange wires which ran down the core of the building, and saying that it was high time for the entire system to be renewed. (This was idiotic because for generations no British person had been allowed to enter the building except under close supervision.) There were notices on every wall reminding us ‘DON’T SAY NAMES OR DATES OUT LOUD.’ Yegoshin, who had a flat in our building in Kensington High Street, once cut me off when I began to say something innocuous on the stairs and whispered histrionically, ‘Stop! The walls are listening!’

  Even with all these layers of protection, the risks were still considered unacceptable, and in the middle of my time a special development team of workmen from the KGB was flown in to rebuild our offices. They removed all our possessions, stripped the walls back to bare brick, put in a kind of mattress foundation, and then lined the room with a box of metal sheeting, like an oven. With that in position, they fixed up lights, pasted up new wallpaper, put down carpets and replaced the furniture. Even then, with the metal boxes more or less hanging within the brick walls, they were deemed to need individual electronic protection, which one switched on with a button whenever one went in.

  The safe room in the basement, used for conferences, received the same treatment: it was stripped, lined with metal, and fitted with electronic protection. All this made it incredibly claustrophobic, and even more so during major conferences, when a room designed for about forty people had to accommodate sixty or seventy. In spite of air-conditioning, the atmosphere grew desperately hot and foetid and any long meeting became a major test of stamina.

  The phobia about being constantly spied on extended into the city. My predecessor as Counsellor, Ravil Pozdnyakov, once warned me in all seriousness never to carry out any operation in Edwardes Square. I told him it would not have occurred to me to do so because the place was so close to home — but I asked him why he had mentioned it.

  ‘Because the whole square is covered by television cameras.’

  ‘Really! Where are they, then?’

  ‘On the roofs of the surrounding buildings.’

  ‘Have you ever seen them?’

  ‘No, but they’re bound to be there, because in Moscow we’d certainly put them round any square used by the British.’

  People also assured me that the gardener who looked after the square was an agent of the security service. So convinced were they of this that, in the end, I asked the British point blank whether they did indeed have television cameras there, and whether they retained the services of the gardener. Their response was uproarious laughter at the absurdity of the suggestion.

  Members of the Embassy and KGB were hypochondriacs and, because medical facilities in the West were so much better than those at home, making visits to doctors became a prime sport. I myself — no hypochondriac, I hope — had a narrow escape when having a dental crown repaired by a specialist to whom the British had recommended me. By ill luck my car was spotted by MI5 surveillance near the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, and an investigation was launched into why a Soviet official had been in that area of London: fortunately, before much progress had been made, my own contacts managed to have the hunt called off.

  It was the deliberate policy of the Centre and the Party to make Soviet communities abroad feel as isolated as possible, and to inflate the threat supposedly presented by foreign security services. Thus in London every small accident or setback — a flat tyre, a broken window — was interpreted as an attack or provocation by opposing forces, and, once again, paranoia fed on itself. If anything, the sense of isolation was probably increased by the existence of the Soviet dacha, a lovely castle set in woods near Hastings, which some crazed millionaire had left to the Embassy sixty years earlier. Here, too, expatriates lived in a closed circle of their own: although supposedly for the use of the whole Soviet community, the luxurious accommodation was reserved for the Ambassador and the most senior members of his staff. Once a year, in April, a huge party was held there, the occasion being subbotnik, the day of cleansing, on which the whole of the Soviet Union turned out for major spring cleaning. In Kent this became the excuse for a huge barbecue. After a couple of hours’ gardening, and a token tidy-up of the forest, everyone made merry at a great feast.

  The Residency’s obsession with security was matched by that of the Centre with Operation RYAN, the attempt launched in 1981 to gain early warning of the pre-emptive nuclear strike allegedly being planned by the West against the Soviet Union. I quickly discovered that my colleagues in the PR Line regarded RYAN with some scepticism: they were not seriously worried by the risk of nuclear war yet none wanted to lose face and credit at the Centre by contradicting the First Chief Directorate’s assessment. The result was that RYAN created a vicious spiral of intelligence-gathering and evaluation, with foreign stations feeling obliged to report alarming information even if they did not believe it.

  The continuous demands for RYAN intelligence threw an enormous strain on our resources. We were supposed, for instance, to make a regular count of the number of lighted windows in all government buildings and military installations thought to be involved in preparations for nuclear war, both in and out of working hours, and to report immediately any deviations from the norm. We were also required to identify the methods of evacuation which would be used by government officials and their families, to find out which routes they would use and where they would go. I think even Guk found this ridiculous and, although he paid lip service to the Centre’s demands, he delegated the task of maintaining detailed observations to a junior officer who had no car and was not allowed to travel outside London without special permission from the Foreign Office. The unrealistic nature of these instructions — the yawning gap between the perceptions of the Centre and conditions at the front — perfectly summed up the futility and danger of much KGB activity.

  When I began passing details of RYAN to Jack, he was astonished and could scarcely believe them, so crass were the Centre’s demands, so out of touch with the real world. Yet I believe that in revealing the depth of the Soviet leaders’ paranoia to the British, I made one of my most vital contributions to international safety. By the beginning of 1983 tough speeches by President Reagan and his secretary of state, George Schultz, had put the Soviet leaders into a state of acute apprehension; and their fears were reinforced when they learnt about the United S
tates’ Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), commonly known as Star Wars — the plan for using anti-missile missiles to create a nation-wide shield against intercontinental attack. Because the Americans had landed a man on the moon, the Kremlin reasoned, they had the capability to create the Star Wars system, and were most probably preparing for all-out nuclear war in a few years’ time. By explaining this to the West, I believe I played some small part in keeping international tension to tolerable levels.

  *

  Once clear of the Embassy, we KGB were free to move around as we liked, without restrictions: we were operational officers, expected to initiate our own contacts. With the departure of Pozdnyakov, who had preceded me as head of the PR Line, I was left in control of a European diplomat whom the Centre had classed as an agent and I began to meet him, usually for lunch. To my considerable frustration, I found that, although he was fully prepared to eat large meals, he never told me anything of the slightest interest and our meetings were a waste of time. The trouble was that I could not admit this to the Centre, where Pozdnyakov had become a department head: I therefore had to descend to normal KGB practice and concoct reports which grossly inflated the value of the agent’s contribution.

  As for my British contacts, my seniority made things easier for me, as I did not have to account for my movements too closely. However, I began to find myself in difficulties, for my English was still poor, and I was bringing in so little information that Yegoshin and Titov began to complain to Guk behind my back. My response was to ask my English friends for help: I pointed out that much of my time and mental energy were being spent on feeding them classified or secret information rather than on finding and consolidating KGB contacts, and I asked if they could supply me with some titbit of useful fact each time I saw them.