The Man with the Poison Gun

by Serhii Plokhy

  “You have long led the life of a gadabout, never having a permanent base,” he told Stashinsky. “Now you are married, you will have a child, and, naturally, once there is a child, you should have a permanent residence where you can hang your hat.” It did not take Stashinsky long to grasp what Baryshnikov was driving at. The KGB had either postponed or canceled plans to send him and Inge abroad. Moscow was about to become their permanent home. The Americans and West Germans, said Baryshnikov, had opened an investigation into both of the murders Stashinsky had committed. It would be dangerous for him to travel to East Berlin. In fact, he would have to stay in the Soviet Union for at least another seven years. Stashinsky would never need to worry about money—the KGB would pay him a salary of 2,500 rubles per month—and he would be given an opportunity to continue his education, Baryshnikov assured him.

  Stashinsky reacted calmly at first, but then the conversation took another bad turn. Baryshnikov raised the matter of the Stashinskys’ plans to spend Christmas in East Germany with Inge’s family. Everything was ready for their departure; Stashinsky and his KGB handler had already bought gifts for the family and ordered tickets. Arrangements had also been made for the couple to spend some time in Warsaw to allow Inge to familiarize herself with the Polish capital and be ready to answer questions about their alleged life there at the family gathering. Stashinsky had expected to receive the final go-ahead for the trip at the meeting with Baryshnikov. Now Baryshnikov was telling him that “we promised your wife that she could travel without difficulty and could also spend some time in Warsaw. But we cannot let you go to Berlin.”

  Stashinsky was shocked. His worst fears had come true. Before the meeting, he had fretted that the KGB had learned too much about his and Inge’s attitudes toward the Soviet regime and probably would not let them both go to Berlin. He did not mention his fears to Inge and hoped that they would prove groundless, or that he could talk his way out of the situation if it turned difficult. But Baryshnikov made it impossible to get around the decision. According to the general, Stashinsky was in serious danger of being exposed if he went to Berlin. Of course, in the future he could go to West Germany by bypassing Berlin, said Baryshnikov. But he could do so only if he was not accompanied by his wife; if he traveled with Inge, she would naturally want to see her parents in Berlin and thus expose Stashinsky to danger. “He wanted to separate us,” remembered Stashinsky. “The whole situation changed.”2

  The meeting was over. The stunned Stashinsky had much to think about. Baryshnikov’s words made it clear that the KGB wanted one of them, either Stashinsky or Inge, to stay in Moscow as a hostage. They were letting Inge go to Berlin and counting on her love for Stashinsky to bring her back to him. They were also prepared to let Stashinsky go to the West after the child was born, counting on his love for his family to keep him from deserting the USSR. Baryshnikov was trying to turn the KGB’s problems with Stashinsky—his love for Inge and desire to have a child—from an impediment into an advantage. This realization led to an equally disturbing thought: they no longer trusted him. He was not only a perpetrator but also a witness to the crimes they had committed on foreign soil, and he knew what the KGB could do with unwanted witnesses. Were he and Inge now under suspicion? Were their lives in danger?

  “I had to reckon with the possibility,” remembered Stashinsky later, “that something might happen to us both. After the talk with General [Vladimir] Yakovlevich I felt I must warn my wife that she might one day meet with a fatal accident. The same might also happen to me.” He had to do something. “I understood,” recalled Stashinsky later, “that I could no longer vacillate as to my intentions. I must clearly decide what to do. There was no other way out for me.” But what exactly could he do under the circumstances? Should he try to repair his relations with the KGB, or flee to the West? Stashinsky’s growing fears about his and his wife’s safety made the first choice rather unrealistic. And with the KGB’s new rules against traveling as a couple, the second possibility was not much of an option. It was a dead end.3

  27

  NEW YEAR

  On the last day of 1960, Stashinsky and Inge prepared to ring in the new year, and wondered what it would bring them, two KGB pawns trying to escape from a tightly closed trap.

  Inge could not understand at first why the KGB refused to let Stashinsky visit her parents in Berlin, and he finally decided to tell her the whole truth, including the kind of work he had done for the KGB in West Germany. It was not an easy decision. Not only did he truly believe that she would be safer if she knew nothing about them, but he simply could not bring himself to make the confession to her. As he said later, “It is not so easy to tell such things to the person you want to live with.” But now the situation had changed dramatically. After his meeting with General Baryshnikov, Stashinsky believed that Inge’s life was already in danger, even though she knew nothing about what he had done in West Germany. Psychological pressure was also mounting. Stashinsky had borne the burden of guilt alone for too long, and now he believed that if he told Inge the truth, she would not only understand but also help him.1

  Inge was shocked—in fact, she fainted—but Stashinsky had read her correctly. Despite her deep religious beliefs and strong sense of morality, she did not turn her back on him. He felt great relief at not having to bear the secret (and the accompanying guilt) alone any longer. Usually when Stashinsky and Inge needed to discuss matters that they wanted to keep secret from the KGB, they would take their conversation outdoors, but it was a cold winter in Moscow, and Inge was approaching her sixth month of pregnancy. They devised a different method of communication. “In our room we picked up notebooks and expressed our thoughts in written form,” recalled Stashinsky. “We considered our plans for the future.” The only future they could imagine at that point was in the West, but to get there they would have to circumvent the KGB and find their way out of a country that had closed itself off behind two Iron Curtains, not one. The second was between the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe, to which the access of Soviet citizens was almost as limited as to the West.2

  For the moment, Inge refused to go to Berlin on her own. The immediate plan was to pressure the KGB into allowing them to go together, so they decided to play for time. Unable to spend Christmas with Inge’s family in East Germany, Stashinsky and Inge spent it with Stashinsky’s family in Ukraine—the second trip there in less than four months. Like all Eastern-rite Christians, the Stashinskys celebrated Christmas on January 7, following the ancient Julian calendar. For them, Christmas 1960 came in 1961. For Stashinsky, this trip home was very different from the one he had taken a year ago, soon after receiving the official award from Aleksandr Shelepin. Back then, while haunted by the sins he had committed, he had also been full of optimism—not only was his career with the KGB taking a turn for the better, but he had also received approval to marry the woman he loved. Now they were married and Inge was expecting their first child, but dark clouds were obscuring Stashinsky’s career and their life together.

  For Stashinsky, that Christmas at home carried a special weight. If his and Inge’s plans came to fruition and they successfully escaped to the West, this would be his last holiday with his family. Stashinsky and Inge would leave Ukraine and the Soviet Union forever, taking refuge in the West and cutting all communication with his family to avoid being tracked down by KGB assassins. Stashinsky took photographs of his wife surrounded by members of his family. There was also a picture of his two sisters, Maria and Iryna, with the elongated faces and prominent noses of the Stashinsky clan. Both were unsure of themselves. Iryna was smiling somewhat artificially, while Maria was more reserved. They were wearing what appeared to be identical dresses—a result of fabric shortages.3

  As they had done a few months earlier, Stashinsky and Inge used their stay in the village, blissfully away from KGB ears, to discuss their plans for the future. They considered applying to the East German embassy in Moscow for an exit visa, but had to abandon the idea;
it was the KGB, not the East Germans, who controlled the Soviet border. Ultimately they devised a different, much riskier plan. Stashinsky hoped that he could appeal directly to his acquaintance Aleksandr Shelepin, the head of the KGB, and ask for permission to follow Inge to East Berlin. From there they would cross to West Berlin and then to West Germany. Stashinsky would use his alias of the East German Josef Lehmann to apply for political asylum. That was one reason why both he and Inge insisted on keeping the old alias when the KGB wanted to create a new identity for the Stashinskys. At first, Inge raised objections to the “Shelepin plan.” “My wife considered it unethical,” recalled Stashinsky later. “She said: we will go to him, he will give us permission, and we will disappear. He will have difficulties.” Stashinsky brushed aside her objections, telling Inge that they had to treat the KGB as it was treating them. Inge eventually agreed.4

  Back in Moscow, they went to the KGB’s Lubianka headquarters to see Shelepin, but they got no farther than the duty officer. Stashinsky explained his situation to the officer and asked for a personal audience with the KGB chairman. He was taken instead to a room with a mailbox for letters addressed personally to Shelepin. The trip was a total failure. Not only did the Stashinskys fail to meet with Shelepin, but they also complicated relations with Stashinsky’s KGB handlers, who had been kept in the dark regarding the visit.

  Given the situation, the Stashinskys decided to change tactics. Inge would agree to go to Berlin on her own. The KGB had originally approved a short visit to her parents, but the couple secretly agreed that she would stay long enough to give birth to their child, for whom they wanted East German citizenship. Ideally, she and the child would never come back to Moscow. Once Stashinsky found a way to join them in Berlin, all three of them would go to the West. Their plan required several steps. First, Inge would prolong her stay in East Germany by claiming difficulties with the pregnancy. An accident in Moscow helped them devise a credible cover. Shortly before leaving for East Berlin, Inge had to see a doctor: she had lifted a heavy object and felt sick afterward. The KGB knew of the visit and its purpose. Now the Stashinskys decided that soon after arriving in East Germany, Inge would go to a doctor and, citing complications from the Moscow accident, ask for a note advising her against traveling long distances.

  Inge would then embark on the second stage of the plan, which involved bringing Stashinsky to help her with the newborn child in Berlin. Once again, they pinned their hopes on Shelepin. Inge was supposed to write a personal letter to the KGB chief and send it to him through the Soviet embassy in East Berlin—correspondence from abroad, the couple guessed correctly, would receive more attention than domestic mail. If Shelepin turned them down—and Stashinsky realistically thought that would be the most likely outcome—Inge would go in a different direction and try to contact the Americans with the help of Frau Schade, a friend of her father’s. As Stashinsky recalled later, “She was to tell them that I was an undercover KGB worker who had morally dissociated himself from his employers and wanted to go to the West. She was to ask the Americans to help me in this. She would say that when I had succeeded in reaching the West I would give them details of my work for the KGB.”5

  For better or worse, Bogdan Stashinsky had made up his mind. If Shelepin did not help him, and if it proved impossible to ask for political asylum using his Josef Lehmann identity, he would turn to the KGB’s archenemies, the CIA, and reveal Soviet secrets in exchange for safety and cover. This would be an act of treason, but Stashinsky felt no loyalty to his KGB masters. The couple decided on the place and time of day when the Americans were to contact Stashinsky in Moscow if they accepted the overture. The exact day of the meeting would be agreed upon by Inge and the American agents with whom she would get in touch. If she failed to contact the Americans, for whatever reason, she was to return to Moscow. “In that case,” remembered Stashinsky, “I had decided that on the next occasion when I was given a KGB assignment to carry out in the West I should make contact with the Americans or with German intelligence.”

  They also devised a secret code to help them correspond through the mail, which they knew would be read by the KGB. Shelepin would be called “dear God” in their correspondence. Once Inge sent Shelepin a letter pleading that he allow her husband to join her in Berlin, she was to write in a letter to Stashinsky that she had cut her finger. If that “blood sacrifice” to “dear God” brought no results, Stashinsky would give Inge his go-ahead to make contact with the Americans by advising her to see a seamstress. Altogether there were about twenty code words that they agreed upon to let each other know what was going on in Berlin and Moscow, including such eventualities as Stashinsky being pressured by the KGB or being forced to move to another apartment. Once they were ready, they told Stashinsky’s case officer that Inge had agreed to travel to Berlin on her own. The Stashinskys’ KGB handlers were relieved, believing that the couple had finally realized that there was no alternative to complying with the KGB’s advice and rules.

  The pregnant Inge boarded a plane to East Berlin on January 31, 1961. In her two suitcases she carried almost all their belongings. Stashinsky was left in Moscow with only essential items and the hope that he would soon follow Inge to the city with no visible borders.6

  28

  BACK TO SCHOOL

  It was around the date of Inge’s departure for Berlin that Bogdan Stashinsky obtained his first genuine Soviet document in years. A passport issued by the Moscow police on January 26, 1961, gave his real name, as well as the place and date of his birth: Bogdan Nikolaevich Stashinsky, born on November 4, 1931, in the village of Borshchovychi in the Lviv region of Ukraine. The passport would allow him to enroll as a student in the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages, where he was supposed to study German and then English.

  The KGB provided Stashinsky with the required letter of reference as well. Issued in the fake name of the director of an equally fake secret research institute, it stated that Stashinsky had been in their employ from March 1951—the year he officially entered the KGB service—to December 1960. He was characterized as an “honest and conscientious worker.” It was also mentioned that he had been awarded the Order of the Red Banner by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “for successful work on an important problem.” The information about Stashinsky’s award, which had been considered a state secret when he was preparing for a new mission abroad, was now regarded as confidential at most: the institute officials who admitted him as a student in the middle of the academic year knew perfectly well that he was a KGB agent.

  Stashinsky entered the language training institute in March 1961 without taking the obligatory entrance exams, which were waived at the KGB’s request. He did so in midsemester, joining a student cohort that was already concluding its second year of study. Stashinsky had earlier studied German at individual meetings with a highly qualified teacher and listened to tape recordings of radio announcers from western and northern Germany, but he was now expected to master the language as one of a relatively large group of students. Some of their professors had never visited the country in whose language they were supposed to be experts. Stashinsky’s studies progressed slowly. Luckily, the KGB’s primary purpose was not language training, but simply pacifying one of their agents with a university degree. Stashinsky was no longer training for illegal assignment in the West. The KGB’s new plans for Stashinsky were less exciting. In recognition of his past service to the secret police and, indeed, to the state, they wanted to help him settle in the USSR, which he was never supposed to leave.1

  Stashinsky, of course, had altogether different plans. Shortly after Inge’s arrival in East Germany, she sent a letter informing Stashinsky about alleged problems with her pregnancy. As they had agreed before her departure, she saw a doctor and received a note prohibiting her from long-distance travel. Stashinsky duly reported the news to Sarkisov, telling him that Inge had not felt well before leaving for East Germany and probably would be unable t
o travel before the birth of their child. By the end of February, Inge wrote to Stashinsky that she had cut her finger, meaning that she had written to the KGB chief, Aleksandr Shelepin, requesting permission for Stashinsky to join her in East Berlin. The letter to “dear God,” as Shelepin was code-named in their correspondence, had been sent through the Soviet embassy. It probably arrived before Inge’s letter to Stashinsky, but there was no response from the KGB boss for some time.

  Meanwhile, the KGB read the letter and discussed the matter. A rumor at KGB headquarters had it that General Aleksandr Korotkov himself was the deciding voice against Stashinsky and Inge’s plans. “Stashinsky cannot be released to the West. Optimal living conditions should be created for him, and a country house should be built for him in whichever part of the Soviet Union he desires,” suggested the general. By the end of March, the response was ready. Sergei Sarkisov informed Stashinsky that Inge had written to Shelepin asking him to let Stashinsky go to East Berlin. The request was denied. Moreover, Sarkisov asked Stashinsky to write to his wife, telling her to stop bothering the KGB chief with her letters. Stashinsky had to agree.2

  The only positive development was that the KGB decided it was time to change Stashinsky’s case officer. His relations with Sarkisov were clearly strained, and the trust that was supposed to exist between agent and handler had failed to develop. Moreover, Stashinsky was no longer being trained for illegal work abroad. Stashinsky was given a new handler and most likely transferred to a different KGB unit entirely.