The Spy and the Traitor

by Ben MacIntyre

  That afternoon, Powell left Downing Street without saying where he was going, caught a train to Heathrow, and boarded a flight, which he had booked himself, to Aberdeen. (“It was so secret I later had a problem getting my expenses reimbursed.”) There, he hired a rental car and headed west, in the pouring rain. Balmoral Castle, the royal family’s summer residence since 1852, is a vast granite pile adorned with turrets and set on 50,000 acres of Scottish moors; on a gloomy and damp Scottish evening, it was quite hard to find. The clock was running, and Powell was exhausted and anxious by the time he eventually drew up at the massive gates to the castle in his small rental car.

  The equerry in the gatehouse was on the telephone, conducting a high-level discussion on a matter of considerable royal concern: the queen wanted to borrow the queen mother’s videotape recorder in order to watch Dad’s Army. This was proving hard to arrange.

  Powell tried to interrupt the conversation, but was silenced with a cold look. Cold looks are taught at equerry school.

  For the next twenty minutes, while Powell tapped his foot and looked at his watch, the equerry continued to discuss the royal videotape recorder, its precise whereabouts, and the need to move it from one room in the castle to another. Finally the problem was solved. Powell explained who he was and that he needed to see the prime minister urgently. After another long delay, he was ushered into the presence of the queen’s private secretary, Sir Philip Moore, later Baron Moore of Wolvercote, GCB, GCVO, CMG, QSO, and PC, and chief keeper of the queen’s secrets. Moore was a courtier of ingrained caution and immoveable protocol. On retirement, he would become a permanent lord-in-waiting. He did not like to be hurried.

  “Why do you want to see Mrs. Thatcher?” he asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” said Powell. “It’s secret.”

  Moore’s sense of propriety was piqued. “We can’t have people wandering around the Balmoral estate without knowing why they are here.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to, because I need to see the prime minister. Now.”

  “Why do you need to see her?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “You have to tell me.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Whatever you tell the prime minister she will tell the queen and Her Majesty will tell me. So please tell me your business.”

  “No. If the prime minister wishes to tell the queen and the queen wishes to tell you, that is for them to decide. But I am not able to tell you.”

  The royal courtier fumed. If you are a private secretary, there is nothing more galling than another private secretary being more private than you are.

  Powell got to his feet. “I am going to go and look for the prime minister.”

  With the injured air of a man who has witnessed an intolerable display of bad manners, Moore summoned a footman who led Powell out a side door, into the damp garden, and down a path to what appeared to be a “sort of garden shed.”

  Margaret Thatcher was propped up in bed, surrounded by papers.

  “She was very surprised to see me.”

  It took Powell just a few minutes to explain the situation, and an even shorter time for Thatcher to authorize Operation PIMLICO. The unnamed spy had played a vital part in her premiership, at great personal risk. “We have to honor our promises to our agent,” she said.

  Powell later commented: “She admired him hugely even though it cut against some of her principles—she hated traitors. But he was different. In a different league. She had huge respect for those who stood up to the regime.”

  “Mr. Collins,” whoever he was, had done the West a great service, and now that he was in danger, Britain must do everything in its power to save him, whatever the diplomatic repercussions.

  What Mrs. Thatcher did not know—and never discovered—was that she had authorized an operation that was already under way. Had she declined to approve the escape attempt, there was no way to inform Gordievsky that there would be no one waiting for him at the rendezvous. He would have been abandoned.

  PIMLICO was unstoppable.

  Chapter 14

  THE RUNNER

  Friday, July 19

  10 a.m., British embassy, Moscow

  As the hour of departure approached, Roy Ascot’s mounting excitement competed with a rising dread. He had spent much of the night praying. “I was pretty certain that, however we prepared ourselves, only prayer would see us through the operation.” MI6 had never attempted to smuggle anyone across the Russian border before. If PIMLICO arrived at the rendezvous alone, it would be hard enough, but if, as expected, he brought his wife and two children, the chance of success was infinitesimal. “I thought: this man will be shot. The plan could not work. We all knew how flimsy the whole thing was. We were fulfilling a promise, and we had to do it, even though we were walking into something that wasn’t going to work. I put the chances at twenty percent or lower.”

  A telegram arrived from Century House. The bosses in London “detected signs of wobbliness” on the part of the embassy management, and had composed a message “to stiffen the sinews.” It read: “The Prime Minister has personally approved this operation and expressed her complete confidence in your ability to carry it out. We all here join in standing 100% behind you and are confident you will succeed.” Ascot showed it to Cartledge, to demonstrate the “continuing top-level clearance in London.”

  Then another potentially lethal snag emerged. In order to leave the Soviet Union by car, foreign diplomats needed formal permission and special license plates. The official garage doing the plating closed at midday on Fridays. Gee’s Ford was replated without a hitch, but Ascot’s Saab was sent back with the message: “Sorry. We can’t plate this because your wife hasn’t got a driving licence.” Caroline’s handbag containing her Soviet license had been stolen the month before, and to obtain a new one, she had sent in her British license to the consular authorities. This had not yet been returned and a new Soviet license issued. Diplomats were not permitted to drive alone; without a codriver with a valid Soviet license Ascot could not get the official plates; without these plates they could not leave the Soviet Union. PIMLICO was about to founder on a tiny but immoveable rock of Russian bureaucracy. At 11 a.m., an hour before the traffic authorities shut for the weekend, Ascot was still racking his brains for a solution when a package arrived from the Soviet Foreign Ministry containing Caroline’s British license and a new Soviet one. “We had an hour to get our car plated in time. I couldn’t believe it, this incredible stroke of luck.” But, on second thought, Ascot wondered if the unexpected and timely return of the license really was serendipity, or part of the KGB setup: “We had cleared the last obstacle to travel, but it all looked very pat.”

  11 a.m., Leninsky Prospekt, Moscow

  Gordievsky spent the morning cleaning the flat from top to bottom. In a very short time, the KGB would tear it apart, rip up the floorboards, demolish his library page by page, and dismantle every stick of furniture. But some odd pride made him determined that his home should look “shipshape” when they arrived to destroy it: he did the washing up, arranged the crockery, washed his clothes in the sink, and hung them out to dry. On the counter, he left money for Leila, 220 rubles, enough to cover household expenses for a few days. It was a small gesture…but of what? His continuing care? Apology? Regret? The money would probably never reach her. The KGB would surely confiscate or steal it. Yet, like the meticulous cleaning of the flat, he was sending a message that said more about him, perhaps, than he realized: Gordievsky wanted to be thought of as a good man; he wanted the KGB, which he had deceived so comprehensively, to respect him. He left no note of self-justification, no explanation for having betrayed the Soviet Union. If they caught him, the KGB would extract all that, and this time with nothing so gentle as a truth drug. He left a spotless flat, and a lot of clean laundry. Like Mr. Harrington, he would not flee without doing his washing.

  Then Gordievsky prepared to throw off the KGB surveillance squad for a fourt
h and final time. The timing was crucial. If he left the flat and evaded his watchers too early, they might finally spot what was afoot and raise the alarm. But if he left it too late, he might not be able to complete his dry-cleaning, and would reach the railway station with the KGB still on his tail.

  He did his packing, meager enough, in an ordinary plastic bag: a light jacket, his Danish leather cap, sedatives, and a small, Soviet-printed road atlas that covered the Finnish border region, doubtless inaccurate since the area was militarily sensitive.

  He forgot to pack the snuff.

  11 a.m., Vaalimaa Motel, Finland

  The Finnish end of Operation PIMLICO was running according to schedule. The team assembled at a small motel, about ten miles from the border. Veronica Price and Simon Brown, traveling under false passports, had arrived in Helsinki the previous evening, and spent the night in an airport hotel. Martin Shawford, the young MI6 officer in charge of coordinating matters in Finland, was already waiting when they drew up in the motel parking lot, followed a few minutes later by the two Danish PET officers, Eriksen and Larsen. Coincidentally, the cars had all been booked through the same rental company at the airport, and to Shawford’s horror three identical cars were now parked in the lot: three bright-red, brand-new Volvos, with sequential license plates. “We looked like a convention. It could hardly have been more conspicuous.” At least one car would have to be changed before the next day.

  The rendezvous point on the Finnish side of the border had been selected when Veronica Price first formulated the plan. Five miles northwest of the border crossing, a forestry track turned off to the right and led into the woods. About a mile along it on the left was a small clearing, where the logging trucks turned, surrounded by trees and invisible from the main road: the spot was close enough to the frontier to ensure Oleg and his family would not remain cramped in the car trunks a moment longer than necessary, but far enough away to be well clear of the border security zone.

  The combined MI6-PET team thoroughly reconnoitered the area around the rendezvous point. The Finnish pine forest stretched away unbroken on every side. There were no houses in sight. Here they would meet the getaway team, swiftly move the escapees from the MI6 cars into the Finnish rental cars, and then split up into two groups. The Finnish team would reassemble at a second rendezvous point in the woods about ten miles farther on, where they could check the escapees’ health, change their clothing, and speak freely without fear of being overheard through the bugged diplomatic cars. Meanwhile, the Moscow team would take the road toward Helsinki, and wait at the first petrol station. The escape team would begin the long journey north to the Finnish-Norwegian border: Leila and one child would travel in the Danes’ car, Gordievsky and the other girl with Brown and Price. Shawford would rejoin the MI6 Moscow team at the petrol station, debrief Ascot and Gee, and make an important call from the public telephone kiosk in the forecourt.

  The call would be automatically routed through to the Sovbloc controller, waiting with the P5 team in Century House. The petrol station telephone might be monitored by the KGB or Finnish intelligence, so the outcome of PIMLICO would have to be reported in veiled language. If Gordievsky and his family were out and safe, Shawford would say that his fishing holiday had been successful. If, however, the escape had failed, he would report that he had caught nothing.

  Having thoroughly checked the rendezvous area, the team drove back to Helsinki, swapped one of their fleet of bright-red Volvos for another model, and dispersed to separate hotels.

  12 p.m., Kutuzovsky Prospekt, Moscow

  In the diplomatic flats, Caroline Ascot and Rachel Gee did the packing. They could take no personal clothing, since all the space in the trunks was needed to accommodate PIMLICO and his family. Instead, they assembled a number of empty travel bags that looked realistically bulky when stuffed with cushions, but could be folded flat when emptied. The escape kit, first assembled seven years earlier, was retrieved from the British embassy safe: water bottles and children’s plastic “sippy cups” (which would be easier for the girls to drink from in the cramped trunks), two large empty bottles to urinate into, and four “space blankets” made of heat-reflective thin plastic sheeting, of the sort used to reduce heat loss in cases of hypothermia or exertion. Heat sensors and infrared cameras at the Soviet border were believed to be capable of picking up a concealed body, but no one in MI6 was sure how the technology worked, or whether it really existed. The escapees would have to strip to their underwear before pulling the blankets over themselves; it would be hot inside the trunks, and the lower their body temperatures, the less the likelihood of attracting the sniffer dogs and heat sensors.

  Caroline put together a picnic—hamper, blankets, sandwiches, and potato crisps—which they could spread out at the turnout as a form of camouflage. The escapees might take time to emerge from hiding. They might be late reaching the rendezvous. There could be others in the turnout, who might become suspicious if four foreigners simply appeared on the scene with no obvious purpose. The two couples needed to have an innocent explanation for turning off the road, and an English picnic would provide perfect cover. Caroline also prepared a travel bag for Florence, with clothes, baby food, and spare nappies. Rachel Gee took her two small children and mother-in-law to the park. Every so often, she would stop and clutch her back as if in pain. Her performance was so convincing that Gee’s mother asked him: “Are you sure she’s not ill? She doesn’t look a bit well to me, you know.”

  3 p.m., British embassy, Moscow

  The assistant naval attaché, one of several military experts at the embassy, arrived back in Moscow, following a trip to Finland, having inadvertently thrown a very large wrench in the works: he reported that he had been challenged by the KGB border guards at Vyborg, both on leaving and again on reentering the Soviet Union. Against all the diplomatic rules, the guards had demanded to search his car, and the attaché had not objected. “The stupid man had let them put a dog through it,” fumed Ascot. If the border authorities were flouting convention and using sniffer dogs to search British diplomatic vehicles, the escape plan was sunk. Four hot people crammed into the trunks of two cars give off a powerful scent. The attaché had unknowingly set a dangerous precedent, at the worst possible moment.

  Ascot hurriedly forged a formal diplomatic note of protest from the ambassador to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs complaining that the attaché’s car had been searched and insisting that British diplomatic immunity had been violated. The note was not sent, but Ascot took a copy indicating that it had, along with a translation, into Russian, of the relevant clauses of the Vienna Convention. If the KGB tried to search the cars at the border, he would brandish the fake letter. But there was no guarantee that this would work: if the border guards wanted to see what was inside the car trunks, no amount of official protest would stop them.

  There was one final bit of paperwork. Violet, the MI6 secretary, typed up a copy of the escape instructions on soluble paper. If the KGB arrested them, the aide-mémoire “could be dissolved in water or, most uncomfortably, in one’s mouth.” In an extreme emergency, the MI6 team could eat Operation PIMLICO.

  4 p.m., Leninsky Prospekt, Moscow

  Gordievsky dressed in a thin green sweater, faded green corduroy trousers, and old brown shoes, selected from the back of the cupboard in the hope that they might have escaped contamination by radioactive dust or the other chemicals used to alert sniffer dogs. The outfit was probably sufficiently similar to his green tracksuit for the concierge (and KGB watchers) to assume he was going for a run. He locked the front door of his flat. The KGB would be opening it again in a few hours. “I was closing it not only on my home and my possessions, but on my family and my life.” He took no souvenir photographs with him or other emotional mementoes. He made no farewell calls to his mother or sister, although he knew he would probably never see either of them again. He left no note of explanation or justification. He did nothing that might seem out of the ordinary, on the most extraordina
ry day of his life. The concierge did not look up as he passed through the lobby. He had exactly one and a half hours to make the journey across Moscow to Leningrad Station, and to lose his tail for the last time.

  On his earlier dry-cleaning runs, he had made for the nearby shopping precinct. This time, he crossed over the avenue and into a wooded area on the other side that ran the length of the avenue. Once out of sight of the road, he broke into a jog, and steadily increased his speed, until he was almost sprinting. The fat KGB surveillance officer would never keep up. At the end of the park, he crossed over the road, doubled back, and then entered the shops from the opposite side. Plastic bags were rare enough to be distinctive, so he bought a cheap artificial leather valise, stuffed his few items into it, and left by the rear entrance. Then he ran through the full surveillance-evasion menu, methodically and meticulously: jumping on a Metro train as the door closed, alighting after two stops, waiting for the next train to arrive and then making certain every passenger on the platform had boarded before letting the doors close and catching a train in the opposite direction; ducking down one street, doubling back and up another, into a shop by one entrance and then out of the back.