Half-Life: The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy

by Close, Frank

  Without a doubt, something significant happened to Bruno on August 23. His birthday on the the twenty-second was carefree. By the twenty-fourth, he was sending duplicitous messages to his parents rather than meeting them in Chamonix, and was also apparently spinning yarns to Anna. Now at Giuliana’s in Rome, Anna did not see the damaged car herself. Bruno simply told her that “a front light was smashed and a mudguard was bent and while the car was in good enough condition for minor trips, it was not good enough for traveling about Europe.”39 The fact that events were moving out of Bruno’s control is obvious from his terse response to Gillo, who remonstrated him for the way he was treating their parents. Bruno replied that “they must get used to it for once.” Gillo’s wife, Henrietta, repeated this quote to MI5 but in a sharper form: “They will have to get used to it.”40

  WHILE IT SEEMS THAT BRUNO MAY INDEED HAVE DRIVEN SEVENTY miles from Circeo to Rome on Thursday, August 24, or Friday, August 25, in all probability his goal was not to take the car to a mechanic. Car repairs of the relatively cosmetic form that he described hardly merit such a trip, and there is no evidence that he contacted the Standard Vanguard dealership in Rome.41 Furthermore, he seems to have used his car in the following days before finally dumping it in Rome prior to his disappearance. In any case, Bruno’s behavior was growing increasingly erratic. Something singular appears to have happened on Wednesday, August 23, and caused a radical change in his life.

  One event that affected Bruno certainly happened that day. In Giuliana’s house, news arrived via l’Unità, the organ of the Italian Communist Party. Over the past month, the stories of witch hunts in America had gone from bad to worse. World War III threatened to erupt as the military confrontation in Korea escalated.42 Then, on the twenty-third, the patent dispute between the Via Panisperna Boys and the US government made headlines. In the version of the story promoted by l’Unità, the government had defrauded the team of Italian scientists.

  Suddenly Pontecorvo found himself in the spotlight, in conflict with the US government. While this was a big story in Italy due to the involvement of Fermi’s team, it was hardly commented upon in the UK. However, Bruno might have feared that the McCarthyist witch hunters would use his communist associations to portray him as a traitor, and that a major public scandal was about to ensue. According to this thesis, Bruno foresaw himself being subjected to further security vetting, which would threaten his ability to continue working as a scientist. And thus he panicked.43

  Although it is possible that the patent crisis set in motion the events that culminated in Bruno’s flight to the USSR, this could not have been the sole cause of his disappearance.

  The most influential member of Bruno’s family was his cousin Emilio Sereni. Sereni was a leading communist and, more significantly, by 1950 had risen to become a minister in the Italian government as well as a member of Cominform (a successor organization to Comintern). He was also well connected with senior members of the Soviet administration.44 Sereni had been in Prague from August 14 to August 18, and, it is believed, had contact with Bruno during the final days of the month.45

  The political implications of the patent crisis may have been what led Bruno to consult Sereni in Rome on the twenty-third or twenty-fourth. However, far from being reassuring, the news Bruno received was worse. Much worse. While in Rome, possibly during a meeting with Sereni, Bruno learned that the arrests of Fuchs, Greenglass, and the Rosenbergs had not been the end of it: the FBI was interested in Bruno Pontecorvo.

  We shall come later to the story of how this singular information reached the KGB. In any case, this news alone would probably have been sufficient to inspire panic in Bruno. Coming on top of everything else, it precipitated his sudden flight.

  Today, we know that by this stage the Soviets were already making preparations for Bruno’s future.46 Thus it seems probable that his trips to and from Rome immediately after his birthday had more to do with Emilio Sereni and other communist contacts than with car repair. It was almost certainly Sereni who both encouraged and arranged the details of Pontecorvo’s defection to Russia, as Ronnie Reed of MI5 subsequently concluded.47

  THAT WEEKEND, FROM AUGUST 26 TO AUGUST 27, THE CLAN GATHERED in Ladispoli. According to Anna’s interview with MI5, Gil and Tito came to Ladispoli from Circeo—Ronnie Reed later commented, “It’s not clear how.”48 On Sunday afternoon, Giuliana said she wanted to go to see some friends a few miles away. Bruno offered to take her in his car, but “when Giuliana told him that her friends were communist or near-communist he refused to take her.” Later, Reed regarded this as significant, but drew no conclusions from it.

  On Sunday evening, Anna had a spare ticket for the opera. There was some debate about whether Bruno or Marianne should accompany her; Marianne said she would prefer to go to a dance, as she was “not the intellectual type.”49 Anna remembered this event clearly when interviewed by Ronnie Reed, and the chronology agreed with the record of Sunday the twenty-seventh in her diary.50

  On Monday, August 28, which was to be Anna’s last day in Italy, Marianne went shopping with her in Rome. Anna later told MI5 that Bruno was separated from the group, but joined them at Giuliana’s in the afternoon for a family conference about their sister Laura.51 There was an argument with Bruno about the shopping expedition as the family was extremely short of currency by this time; Bruno had been rationing the milk for the children very carefully, and they had no spare cash at all. In those days there were strict limits on how much currency British tourists could take abroad. The maximum allowance for the Pontecorvo family was £205 plus £10 for the car, and when they left England Bruno had declared only £150 in traveler’s checks and £10 in cash. His bank accounts in England showed that he had not spirited away large sums of cash.52 The group’s lack of money near the end of their vacation is significant, because within two days Bruno would purchase airline tickets for the whole family, on a flight from Rome to Stockholm, for which he paid 602 American dollars in cash.53

  Meanwhile, Bruno visited the University of Rome, where he was seen by Giuseppe Fidecaro, who was then a twenty-four-year-old physics student. Bruno had called there in the hope of seeing Edoardo Amaldi, his old colleague. However, Amaldi was away in the United States, so Bruno met with Mario Ageno, another former colleague and tutor to Fidecaro.

  Fidecaro told me that Bruno came to the institute once during the morning, and then returned for a second visit in the afternoon. He remarked, with a smile, “I couldn’t see Bruno wasting hours of his time running behind [Marianne and Anna] shopping! Conversely I do not see two ladies going around shopping for a full day with a man on their shoulders!” The university was near Giuliana’s house, which enabled Bruno to take part in the family conference that Anna recalled, and then return to the university later.

  Fidecaro recalled that late that afternoon he accompanied Bruno and Mario on a stroll: “At the end of the visit we left the Institute walking together ‘lento pede’ in the warm light of a late summer afternoon in Rome. I think it couldn’t be earlier than 6:30–7:00 p.m.” Bruno and Mario were talking “del più e del meno”—engaging in casual and personal chatter. Fidecaro was not party to their conversation. “After we separated, in the vicinity of the Stazione Termini, everybody went on his own way. Mario and I went home independently.” Giuliana’s house in the San Giovanni district, the Roma Termini railway station, the university, the shopping district, and the garage in Piazza Verdi (to which Bruno would deliver his car the next day) are all in the same area.

  This chronology is consistent with Bruno’s memory, decades later, that he took his car in for repairs on August 29.54 Fidecaro remarked that Mario could have recommended the garage in Piazza Verdi, where Bruno took the Vanguard—and where it remained, abandoned. Sixty years later, Anna would insist that “there was never any hint of anything unusual” in Bruno’s behavior. Up to the time that Anna left Rome, she saw no change in Bruno or Marianne’s manner; Bruno in particular seemed “relaxed and natural.”55 Anna slept
at Giuliana’s and left at seven thirty on the morning of the twenty-ninth. She did not see Bruno or Marianne that day. When she’d said arrivederci to her brother, there was nothing to suggest that thirty years would pass before they would meet again.

  ONCE HE’D DECIDED TO FLEE TO RUSSIA, BRUNO NEEDED TO “LOSE” THE car without raising suspicion. Giuliana, as an innocent party, would have raised the alarm at once if it had remained at her house; if she were involved in the deception, and failed to alert the authorities that Bruno had disappeared, the car’s presence could have created serious problems for her.56 The story of the “accident,” which provided an alibi for Bruno’s trip to Rome on the twenty-fourth (not to repair the car but to meet with Sereni) now could be put to further use.

  On August 29 Bruno took his car into the garage at Piazza Verdi.57 With the car taken care of, that same day he visited the office of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) in Rome and inquired about tickets for Stockholm.

  ANNA RADIMSKA, A DARK, SMALL, ATTRACTIVE POLE FROM WARSAW, sold him the tickets, as we know from the subsequent investigation by Ronnie Reed of MI5. She remembered Bruno and Marianne well, because they caused so much trouble. They came to the office on the twenty-ninth and made provisional bookings for themselves and their three children to travel to Stockholm.58 Bruno booked his ticket under the name of Pontecorvo, and the tickets for Marianne and the children under the name of Nordblom-Pontecorvo. Marianne was “noticeably upset and tearful and on one occasion drew [Bruno] back from the counter by tugging on his coattails.”59 The MI5 report adds that “[Bruno] Pontecorvo seemed quite unconcerned.”60

  Marianne missed her mother terribly, as is clear from letters found in the Abingdon house by MI5.61 Originally she had hoped to spend two weeks in Sweden that summer, and the rest with Bruno and the boys in Italy, but her mother had insisted that she stay for at least a month, so this plan had been abandoned.62 Under the circumstances, the prospect of flying to Stockholm with no possibility of seeing her mother would be understandably upsetting. As events transpired, five years would elapse before Marianne had a chance to write home to Sweden, and she would never see her mother again.

  The usual practice was for airline reservations to be confirmed the same day, but Bruno asked for them to be held until the thirtieth, when he promised to confirm and pay. This suggests that there was still some uncertainty about the venture. In response to police inquiries made a few weeks after the Pontecorvos’ disappearance, Anna Radimska said that the Pontecorvos didn’t look very impressive: “I was struck by their shabbiness. They seemed kind of crumpled.”63 Because she thought they were too poor to afford the fare, she bet a colleague that they would not return. When Bruno failed to appear by noon the next day—the deadline for confirming the reservations—the bet was won and the bookings were canceled. At 4:00 p.m., however, Bruno showed up again, alone. Anna had to get busy and renew the bookings.

  The price of the tickets was equivalent to £175 and Bruno produced it in lira. But there was a problem: foreigners with less than six months’ residence in Italy had to pay in US dollars—$602 in this case.64 Anna remembered that when she told Bruno of this requirement, the news made him very angry.65

  Bruno, still agitated, told Anna to hold the reservations, and left. He returned shortly before the office closed, with a handful of hundred-dollar bills. Such high-denomination bills were rather rare in Rome at the time, except among US citizens, or the members of clandestine organizations.

  This suggests that Bruno’s exodus was organized by the Soviets, at a high level. There would ordinarily be no way for Pontecorvo—a British tourist, subject to strict currency regulations—to obtain so much cash after touring for five weeks abroad. His sister Anna was surprised when she learned of this later, recalling how short of money Bruno had been toward the end of the trip.

  Bruno was clearly able to change the money from lira to dollars without much difficulty, in a short span of time. In 1950, MI5 saw this as the first solid clue that some third party had orchestrated his flight. No one at the time, of course, suspected that his cousin Emilio had a link to Soviet finances.

  On August 31, Bruno sent a postcard to his colleagues at Harwell, which they received on September 4: “Had a lot of fun with submarine fishing but I had a lot of car trouble. I will have to postpone my arrival until first day of conference [September 7]. Can you tell Egon Bretscher. Hope everyone has prepared his talk and done good work at Chamonix. I am sorry I missed Chamonix but I could not make it. Goodbye everybody. Bruno.”

  Later, the timing and phrasing of this postcard was forensically debated. The message ended with the phrase “Goodbye everybody.” This sounded terminal, whereas the comment that he would “postpone [his] arrival” implied a temporary delay. As Bruno knew that he was en route to the USSR at this stage, the postcard has been interpreted as further duplicity. However, this supposes that he knew he would be staying in Russia for good, which is not necessarily true.

  That same day, Bruno sent a final telegram to his parents: “From your card it is apparent that you have not received my wire to Milan and poste restante [general delivery] in Chamonix. . . . excuses I could not meet you . . . indisposition children damage to car hope mountains did you good. We are now well.”66

  At eight o’ clock, on the morning of September 1, 1950, Bruno, Marianne, and the three boys flew from Rome to Munich. In Munich they transferred to a direct flight to Stockholm. Their luggage, which weighed a total of sixty kilograms, was contained in ten bags, each of which would be considered carry-on size today. This is because they were carrying nothing more than the possessions they had taken on their camping holiday, all of which were stashed in small canvas bags.

  The airline manifest reveals more clues about the family’s arrangements. The tickets for Marianne and the boys were in one number sequence, but Bruno’s ticket came from a different block, and was issued from a different office.67 There were two male passengers on the flight, named Wittka and Allegrini, whose tickets came from the same block as Bruno’s and are almost in sequence with his. These men took the same flights as the Pontecorvos, from Rome to Stockholm, via Munich. One of them was stateless, with no checked baggage; the other, identified as Italian, checked two pieces totaling a mere fifteen kilograms. MI5 later suspected that these mystery men might have been assigned to watch the Pontecorvos.68 MI5 made investigations in Rome to ascertain why the family had booked tickets separately, and to identify Messrs. R. Allegrini and F. Wittka. The agency was unsuccessful on both counts. In any case, the presence of the mysterious pair fits with the KGB’s standard practice of firm control.69

  IMAGE 11.1. Airline manifest of the Pontecorvos’ flight from Rome. This shows that Bruno’s ticket number is more akin to those of two accompanying passengers—Wittka and Allegrini—than those of his own family. Ticket numbers are listed individually within a block (e.g., 421733) and by the number of the block (e.g., 523). Names are followed by nationality: STL implies stateless, SWE Swedish, and BRI British. The two columns to the right of the ticket number show the number of pieces of luggage and their total weight in kilograms. Thus the Pontecorvo family took ten pieces totaling 60 kilograms. The shaded highlight against the names of Wittka and Allegrini—who also had minimal baggage, a mere 15 kilograms between them—appear to have been made by MI5. (AUTHOR, THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES.)

  At Munich, the Pontecorvos went to the transit lounge with the other passengers and then flew on to Stockholm, where they arrived late that evening.70 According to MI5 sources, they had booked reservations for the night at a Salvation Army hostel. The sources also reported that Bruno met with a man in Stockholm late that evening. The Stockholm correspondent of the Italian newspaper Il Tempo was more explicit, stating that the Pontecorvos spent the night of September 1 in “a house occupied by the Soviet Embassy” and went to the airport “at about 11 a.m.” on September 2 “in a Soviet Embassy car.”71 Gil recalls only that they were taken to a small hotel.

  Whatever the details, it is ce
rtain that they did not visit Marianne’s parents, who lived no more than a couple of miles from the airport. Gil later recalled, “I wanted to go to my grandmother’s. I asked—why not?—but I don’t recall the answer.”72

  ON SEPTEMBER 2, THE PONTECORVOS ARRIVED IN HELSINKI, FINLAND. Someone in Stockholm had provided further tickets and money. In Rome Bruno had purchased tickets only as far as Stockholm, and had arrived in Sweden with no US dollars. However, when he reached Helsinki, he had over four hundred dollars in cash.73

  Just before the plane landed in Helsinki, a man and woman turned up at the airport and told the staff that they had come to meet the Pontecorvo family.74 The pair asked that the Pontecorvos’ luggage be taken to their car, rather than being placed on the airline coach. A customs official told MI5 that these two people had often visited the Helsinki airport, but he didn’t know who they were. He had always thought they were officials of the British legation.75

  The Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter later learned that there had been several slipups by Swedish officials. For example, Marianne and the children were traveling on a temporary Swedish passport, issued by the Swedish embassy in London. This should have been confiscated upon their arrival in Stockholm. The error was compounded the following day, as they should not have been allowed to leave Sweden for Helsinki on this passport.76 It is thus ironic that the entry into Finland was straightforward for Marianne and the boys, whereas Bruno ran into trouble.

  Bruno was traveling on his British passport, and there was a hitch when Finnish officials demanded to see his visa—there was none. They impounded his passport and deposited it with the Finnish foreign office. As Bruno was a British citizen, this was not a major issue—a visa would be issued overnight and he could recover the passport the next day. He signed various entry papers without hesitation, stating that tourism was the reason for his visit, and that the length of stay would be about a week. He also told officials that they could get in touch with him at his hotel.