Penkovsky’s delegation was touring the country and he went up to Leeds with Wynne. During a car journey on the way north, Kisevalter read from the details that Penkovsky had provided on missile systems while the other members of the team compared notes.30 What struck the team most was Penkovsky’s access to top military figures, especially Marshal Varentsov. He also had access to the classified library of Russian military intelligence and through Varentsov could look at pretty much anything on missiles.
In Leeds on 23 April 1961 the whole escapade nearly descended into farce. After visiting British businesses in the city, Penkovsky stopped at a small restaurant and downed a litre of cold beer. This led to stomach cramps for about two hours until Wynne called a doctor, who diagnosed an extreme kidney irritation caused by drinking the beer too quickly. ‘I feel all right now except that I’m a little weak from the anxiety of this ordeal,’ Penkovsky explained as he walked into Room 31 of the Hotel Metropole at around 10.30 p.m. to meet the team. If he had been taken to hospital, he might have come under suspicion, he said.31 On another occasion, more reminiscent of Austin Powers than James Bond, Kisevalter met Penkovsky and took him towards the hotel. Kisevalter went through the revolving doors only to realise that the Russian was not with him. He then stepped into them just as Penkovsky did the same and they ended up revolving to opposite sides. They then entered the doors again, neither knowing when the other would get out. Eventually they both emerged into the lobby watched by curious guests.32
The team were beginning to suspect that there was something unbalanced about their prize agent. In Leeds he elaborated on a suicidal and almost comical plan he had begun mentioning at the first meeting. All he needed, he explained to the stupefied audience, was for suitcase-size nuclear bombs to be smuggled into Moscow in diplomatic bags. He would hide these in his dacha and then bring them into the city and place them in dustbins where they could be used to destroy the Soviet military command in a pre-emptive strike just before it launched a war on the West.33 ‘Here is a note about target number 1,’ he said, handing over a piece of paper, ‘which must be blown up by a bomb of one or two kilotons.’ The target was the General Staff complex in Moscow. The bomb should be detonated between 10 and 11 a.m. to maximise casualties. He had clearly spent a lot of time thinking about how to do this. The team listened patiently without interruption, both awed and embarrassed by this scheme. Three days later, Penkovsky would sit in front of a blown-up map of the centre of Moscow with a red pen and plot a total of twenty-four targets to be sabotaged in this way. ‘I could run around and set all these in the proper places.’34 ‘Your intentions are very fine,’ replied Bulik, ‘and when the time comes to consider this, your proposition will not be ignored.’ There was no more revealing sign of the deep bitterness Penkovsky harboured against the Soviet elite which had stymied his career. A psychologist might have had something to say about the fatherless spy who decides, in an attempt to prove his new allegiance, that he wants personally to kill and destroy the institutions which have become his family.
Like a priest in a confessional, listening is important for a case officer. Penkovsky was a loner. He had few close friends and so, as with many spies, the relationship with his case officers was intense. He could not talk so frankly with anyone else, including his wife. The spy–officer relationship is close but also fundamentally deceptive. After all, the spy never even knows the true name of the officer he is spilling his heart out to. The intensity of those first meetings and of Penkovsky’s desire to betray startled even the seasoned intelligence professionals in the team. As they listened to him talk, they were all asking the questions every case officer asks when they first meet an agent. What makes him tick? What did he want? How far was he willing to go?
Penkovsky’s frustrated ambition was at the core of his fissile personality. This had been compressed into a thirst for vengeance. But lurking in the background, the team soon realised, were other motivations. For many, though not all traitors, money provides an additional incentive. In some cases, it will be the prime mover. For instance, the official who has got into debt and needs a way out might be offered money for secrets. Penkovsky did not spy for the money, but he certainly kept asking about it from the very first meeting. The references began carefully. He wanted to live better and provide luxuries for his family, he said, including a new dacha outside Moscow. Kisevalter explained that monthly payments would be deposited in a bank account. Could they be backdated to when he first began to collect information and before he actually began meeting the team? Penkovsky inquired. At the end of the second meeting, he admitted he had got into debt. Perhaps the team could supply a one-carat diamond he could smuggle back, he suggested.
He also began to reel off a long list of Western luxuries he needed, including fountain pens, ties, nail polish and lipstick. After one meeting had finished he had returned to the room ten minutes later with a jacket over his underwear explaining that he had left a notebook down the side of an armchair. The notebook contained a beautifully presented list of items his wife had prepared, written out in red ink and itemised. It contained magazine clippings of fine ladies’ clothes and outlines of the feet of both Penkovsky’s wife and his daughter so that he could purchase the right-size shoes for them. His wife, he said, had become very impressed by Western life and consumer goods while in Turkey. Penkovsky himself was also partial, spending three hours with Wynne in Harrods. At one point, Stokes, who was vaguely the same size, was sent to Oxford Street to get measured for a suit for Penkovsky. The Russian liked good clothes – smart white shirts and two red ruffled umbrellas were purchased for him at one point. Not all the gifts were for him or his family. Many were for his mentors in the Soviet elite (including medication to improve their sex lives). The team appreciated that the consumer goods would help smooth their spy’s access to the centre of power. The thirst for Western goods among those who ruled the country was a little-noticed sign that, even though the Soviet machine was churning out missiles, rockets and military hardware, it was failing to keep pace in the field of consumer goods which people actually wanted. Only the top officials who travelled abroad understood this, but it revealed a weakness which would eventually help undermine Communism.35
Penkovsky would often ask the team to value the intelligence he was providing.36 Payment had been raised in the first letter he passed to Wynne. He mentioned he had heard that some spies had been paid $1 million. The team tried to avoid too many specifics. They would pay $1,000 a month into an escrow account, but there could be more, they said. It was not just money. His repeated pleas for his worth to be acknowledged were as much about boosting his ego and affirming his self-image as a hugely valuable individual as they were about boosting his bank balance. He quite simply wanted to be the best. ‘I wish to do great things – so that I will be your “Number 1”,’ he declared. ‘I consider that I am not just some sort of agent – no, I am your citizen. I am your soldier … I am capable of great things. I want to prove this “as soon as possible”.’ Those last four words he spoke in English as if to emphasise the urgency of his desire to prove his allegiance.37
Lust, like money, often motivates spies, and satisfying that lust is a way of rewarding them. It is also often the expression of the risk-taking, ego-driven personality. At their meeting on 1 May in London, Penkovsky said Wynne had promised to take him to a ‘very big nightclub’.38
‘And you are not going to take us with you?’ asked Bulik.
The issue of entertaining women, as it occasionally can, overlapped with that of money at this point.
‘Now I will spoil Mr Harold’s mood,’ said Penkovsky, looking at Shergy who controlled the purse-strings tightly. ‘I was told that it costs £50 to go to a nightclub. I was told that it costs £10 to dance with the girls and the tables cost a lot. He [meaning Wynne] said £50 so that I would pay for him also.’ At half-past midnight, having done a day’s work as Soviet spy followed by an evening’s work as Western spy, Penkovsky headed off to party.
/> When the five reconvened the next afternoon, Penkovsky was still nursing a sore head but one adorned with a smile. He had left a girl at 4.30 in the morning after two hours at her apartment, he explained, before getting up again at 7 a.m. to go to the Soviet Embassy.39 ‘I was at a most luxurious cabaret. Could you extend my leave for about another ten days?’ he quipped. He had met a twenty-three-year-old girl and proudly told the whole team her telephone number. ‘She was a nice girl, somewhat experienced in her line of work,’ the sated spy remarked.
‘The phone number was what, once more?’ joked Shergy.
She had been paid £15 by Wynne and told he was Alex from Belgrade. In a rather awkward moment, the team then inquired whether he had been ‘careful’. He assured them he had washed himself properly and there was no chance of disease. Her apartment was nicer than his in Moscow, he added appreciatively.
Penkovsky’s hunger for recognition also expressed itself in his repeated request to see a government representative to present himself officially. The British were initially at a loss how to deal with this, much to the Americans’ amusement until Penkovsky asked to be flown to Washington to see the President. Eventually, a solution was found to appease him. At their fourteenth meeting, Shergy turned to him. ‘Now listen attentively. In ten or fifteen minutes a high-ranking representative of the Ministry of Defence of Great Britain will come here. He is personally speaking for Lord Mount-batten, the Minister of Defence [Mountbatten was actually Chief of Defence Staff at the time]. The most important thing for you is to realise that he is in a position to give you complete assurance for your future, for the promises given to you, and to confirm what we have told you.’ Shergy left the room to bring in the special guest.
The man who walked in that night – the same night that Blake was taken to Wormwood Scrubs to serve a forty-two-year sentence – was C, Dick White. Chiefs of MI6 do not normally meet agents, but White knew this was not just any agent. Penkovsky was crucial for MI6 as an organisation. He offered a chance to overcome the disasters of Philby and Blake and restore the relationship with the Americans and the service’s reputation in Whitehall.40 White explained that Lord Mountbatten regretted he could not meet Penkovsky personally but he had a message: ‘I am filled with admiration for the great stand you have taken, and we are mindful of the risks that you are running. I have also had reported to me the information which you have passed on. I can only tell you that it would be of the highest value and importance to the Free World.’
‘I have hoped for this for a long time now,’ replied Penkovsky. ‘I did the best I could to prove my faithfulness, my devotion, and my readiness to fight under your banners until the end of my life.’ Penkovsky then said he wished to swear fealty to Queen Elizabeth II and President Kennedy whose soldier he had become. ‘I hope that in the future I will be blessed by this fortune personally by the Queen.’
‘I beg that he proceed with caution in view of the great risk,’ White said, asking Kisevalter to translate. ‘But I want him to know that should the time come when he must leave Russia and make his home in the Western world, the obligations that we undoubtedly have towards him will be firmly and clearly fulfilled.’
‘This is clear to me and I think you,’ said Penkovsky. ‘Please fulfil my request that the Lord at some convenient moment state to Her Majesty the Queen, that her forces have been increased by one member – this colonel who is located in Moscow on the Soviet General Staff and who is fulfilling special assignments, but actually is a colonel in Her Majesty’s Service.’
Wine was served for a toast. White then made his excuses to be escorted out by Shergy. When Shergy came back in, Kisevalter explained that Penkovsky was keen to know what impression he had made. ‘Oh very good indeed,’ said Shergy. That was only part of the truth. After the very first meeting, Shergy had reported back to White that Penkovsky was unstable and motivated by vanity. White believed that Penkovsky was ‘neurotic, highly risky and crazy’ but he also knew the material was gold dust and set about skilfully using it within Whitehall to try and restore his service’s standing.41 At later meetings, Penkovsky would say that he had appreciated the visit but wondered why he had not met the Queen yet.
Shergy and the others knew they were on to a winner with Penkovsky – a fantastically well-placed spy who was willing to remain in place and collect more and more information rather than defect. Penkovsky himself asked for a small Minox camera to photograph documents which he was trained to use during the meetings. His enthusiasm and his willingness to take risks was astonishing. But that posed a problem, the same one the CIA had faced months earlier and failed to overcome – how were the secrets to be passed in Moscow?
One answer was to use Wynne as a courier. The great advantage of the businessman was that Penkovsky was authorised to meet him for work, so there would be no suspicion or need for illicit contact. But Wynne was only in Moscow occasionally. There needed to be a means of making regular contact. No one had ever successfully run an agent in Moscow.42 In previous years, opportunistic spying rather than real running of agents was all that had been possible for MI6 officers, like Daphne Park who had been stationed there in the mid-1950s. When she arrived, her Ambassador had warned her that any Russian who talked to her was either a fool who was risking his life and liberty by doing so or else a KGB plant.43 During a visit to Kalinin with the Assistant Air Attaché, Park had located the local KGB HQ and, finding the door open, walked in, up the stairs to a landing where all the offices of the officials were situated. Each door had the name and position of the person who worked behind it. Park and the Attache got out their pens and their notebooks and spent twenty minutes writing down every detail. When they later found themselves being watched, they put on swimming costumes and escaped by crossing the Volga.44 This was not the same as running a high-level Russian military intelligence official. But at least MI6 was able to get its people into the city: the CIA remained barred by its own State Department. ‘What do you have?’ Shergy asked Bulik at one point, meaning resources and people in the Soviet capital. ‘We have zilch, with a capital Z,’ Bulik replied.45
Vienna in the aftermath of the Second World War. On the city’s streets, rival intelligence services first began to get the measure of each other. (Getty)
Graham Greene (seated) and film director Carol Reed. Greene’s screenplay for The Third Man, which Reed directed, captured Vienna after the war on celluloid. (Getty)
Anthony Cavendish on his motorbike in Cairo, shortly before being recruited as the youngest ever member of the Secret Intelligence Service.
Kim Philby just after he left Cambridge in 1933 and around the time he went to Vienna. There, his intellectual commitment to Communism would be reinforced by clandestine activity, and set him on a path to betrayal.
Anthony Courtney at his investiture at Buckingham Palace in 1949. Soon after, he began to organise the infiltration of agents behind the Iron Curtain. His later parliamentary career was cut short by a KGB blackmail plot. (Photoshot)
Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb went missing in 1956 after diving beneath a Soviet cruiser visiting Portsmouth in a disastrous MI6 operation. The frogman’s headless corpse was found a year later. (Getty)
MI6 officer and KGB spy George Blake. This picture was released by the police after his escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1966. (Getty)
Kim Philby at the press conference at his mother’s flat in 1955, when he denied being the so-called “Third Man” who had assisted Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to flee to Moscow. (Getty)
The young Daphne Park helped train the French resistance in Britain during the Second World War. Initially rejected by MI6, she went to Vienna with military intelligence before being recruited to the Secret Service. In MI6 she forged a formidable reputation with postings in Moscow and the Congo.
Daphne Park’s American counterpart Larry Devlin looking out at the ferry in Leopoldville. Devlin would be described as the ‘arch-puppeteer’ of Congolese politics. He and Park remained lifelong friends
.
Patrice Lumumba arriving for the Congo’s independence day ceremony in July 1960. Daphne Park had already forged a relationship with the nationalist politician. Devlin would be involved in a plot to assassinate him. (Topfoto)
Patrice Lumumba (centre) at Leopoldville airport, 2 December 1960. He had just been arrested the previous night and would be executed soon after. (Topfoto)
The joint CIA–MI6 team that ran Oleg Penkovsky, one of the key agents of the early Cold War: (from left to right) Michael Stokes, Harold Shergold (Shergy), Joseph Bulik and George Kisevalter, pictured at the Mount Royal Hotel London in April 1961.
Harold Shergold listens as Penkovsky (with his back to the camera) makes a point.
Oleg Penkovsky wearing the uniform of a British Colonel as a sign of his desire to transfer his allegiance from the Soviet Union to the West.
British businessman Greville Wynne was a key go-between with Penkovsky in Moscow. He would later be put on trial and imprisoned for his work for MI6.
Miloslav Kroča was a major in the Czechoslovak security forces and a long-standing agent of MI6.
(Archive of Security Services, Czech Republic)
During the debriefing Kisevalter did most of the talking, but when it came to arranging the tradecraft, Shergold, the details man, took the lead. Options were thrown around including a controlled dead-letter drop in which the material would be left in place for a matter of seconds or minutes before being picked up. Could they meet at a football match and brush past each other at a crowded buffet when getting a glass of beer? The team pored over every detail of Penkovsky’s daily routine and movements to look for opportunities.
Art of Betrayal Page 19