The Big Breach

by Richard Tomlinson

  As a probationer, I was expected to take every opportunity to learn from the work of senior colleagues. An objective of UKA was to acquire advanced Russian weaponry, and one operation had been very successful. Russel told me to read the file, adding, `It's a classic operation, you'll learn a lot from studying it.'

  BATTLE was one of the arms dealers that MI6 had on its books. Arms dealers are useful sources of intelligence on international arms deals and can be influential in swinging the deals to British companies. BATTLE, a multi-millionaire Anglo-Iranian, earned a salary of around œ100,000 per year from MI6. In late 1991, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) asked BATTLE to buy them a consignment of new BMP-3 armoured personnel carriers. The BMP-3, then the most advanced APC in the Russian armoury, was a heavily armed tracked amphibious vehicle, capable of carrying seven infantry and its three-man crew. The MOD heard rumours that its performance was better than western equivalents and asked MI6 for intelligence.

  BATTLE set to work on the deal, flying regularly between the BMP design bureau in Kurgan and Abu Dhabi, and he eventually sealed a deal for the Russians to sell a batch of the lower-specification export variant BMP-3s to the Gulf state. He did not omit to see his MI6 handler every time he passed through London, however, and on one visit mentioned that he had been shown around the advanced variant of the BMP-3 on his last trip to Kurgan. MI6 persuaded him to try to acquire one. On his next trip, with a œ500,000 backhander and forged end-user certificate provided by MI6, BATTLE persuaded his Russian contact to hide one of the advanced specification BMP-3s amongst the first batch of 20 export variants which were shipped to the UAE.

  The consignment of BMP-3s went by train from Kurgan to the Polish port of Gdansk. There the 20 UAE vehicles were offloaded into a container ship and sent on their way to Abu Dhabi. The remaining vehicle, under the cover of darkness and with the assistance of Polish liaison, was loaded into a specially chartered tramp steamer and shipped to the army port of Marchwood in Southampton. From there it was transferred to the RARDE (Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment) for detailed examination and field trials.

  The RARDE technicians were highly impressed by their new toy and established that the BMP-3's firepower was substantially higher than anything in the UK's armory. Field trials on army ranges in Scotland - with the vehicle disguised under a fibreglass shell to prevent being spotted by Russian satellites - revealed that its manoeuvrability, cross-country ability and speed were also better than western equivalents. The complicated and expensive operation was a great success and they invited most of the East European controllerate to their establishment near Camberley to thank us for the operation.

  While reading BATTLE's file, I came across something that, though just mildly interesting at the time, became significant five years later. Some of the meetings that were described took place at the Ritz hotel in Paris, and intelligence on the whos, whats and wheres of these meetings was provided by an informant in the hotel. The informant did not have a codename and was just addressed by a P-number, referring to the number of his personal file. The P-number was mentioned several times in BATTLE's file so, curious to get a better fix of his access, I called up central registry and asked for the file. Flicking through, it was no surprise to learn that he was a security manager at the Ritz and was being paid cash by his MI6 handler for his reporting. Hotel security managers are useful informers for intelligence services because they have access to the hotel guestlist and can be helpful in bugging operations. What was a surprise was that the informer's nationality was French, for we had been told on the IONEC how difficult it was to recruit Frenchmen to work for MI6 and for this reason he stuck in my mind. Although he was only a small cog in the operation and his name was unimportant to me at the time, I have no doubt with the benefit of hindsight that this was Henri Paul, who was killed five years later on 30 August 1997 in the same car crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed.

  Most breakthroughs in espionage come after a lot of methodical research and tedious sifting of leads and contacts, but occasionally a worthwhile lead came out of the blue. Such was the case when one morning in June 1992 a former colleague in the TA called me asking for some advice. The sergeant, a keen long-distance runner, had recently gone to Moscow to run in the city marathon. A spectator who spoke English approached him at the finish line and it emerged that he was a colonel in the Russian strategic rocket forces. The two men became friendly and the sergeant invited the colonel to visit him if ever he were in England, not really expecting that it would be taken up. But the colonel did take him up and he was due to arrive at Gatwick airport the following week. `Would we be interested in meeting him?' my former colleague asked. Russel agreed that the story was worth checking out. The following day I took the train out to Clacton-on-Sea, a couple of hours east of London, to visit the sergeant in his home.

  Terry Ryman greeted me at the front door and ushered me into the pin-clean front-room of a small terraced house where his wife served tea. Ryman was in his 40s, greying with milk-bottle glasses, but took pride in his fitness. He worked as a black cab-driver in London to earn his living.

  Ryman verified the story that I'd heard over the telephone. When a friend suggested that they enter the Moscow marathon together, Ryman didn't hesitate. He had spent many years training for war against the Soviets, learning to recognise their tanks and armoured cars, studying their fighting tactics and shooting snarling images of them on the rifle range, and he wanted to experience the country and its people first-hand. When a real-life Russian introduced himself at the end of the race, speaking good English, Ryman was thrilled.

  Colonel Alexander Simakov had invited Ryman around to his flat in a distant northern suburb of Moscow which he shared with his wife, daughter and mother-in-law. Ryman was fascinated and appalled at the cramped living conditions of such a relatively senior officer. Simakov moaned about his pay and conditions and said how much he envied the English lifestyle. `He says he wants to come to England just to see Stratford, Oxford and Cambridge,' Ryman explained. `But,' he added, lowering his voice conspiratorially, `I think he wants to, you know what I mean, defect, to Britain.'

  `OK, when he comes next week, we'll find out if he knows anything useful,' I replied.

  Simakov would have to offer some spectacular CX to be accepted as a defector. As their world crumbled with the Berlin wall, several Sovblock intelligence officers offered their services to MI6, and most were turned away. MI6 only had the budget to accept high-level defectors such as OVATION and NORTHSTAR, and even they had to work for several years en poste before being allowed into Britain. Even the likes of Viktor Oshchenko, a KGB officer specialising in science and technology who offered his services in July 1992, did not have an easy time persuading MI6 that he was worth a resettlement package. His revelation that, while serving in London in the mid-'80s, he had recruited a GEC-Marconi sales engineer was regarded as only mildly important and I saw an MI5 report which concluded that the engineer, Michael John Smith, did not pass damaging secrets. (This did not stop MI5 having Smith arrested in an entrapment operation, and this paper was not made available to Smith's defence at his trial. He was sentenced to 25 years' imprisonment, the judge summing up with the outlandish claim that Smith had done incalculable damage to Britain's national security.)

  Given Oshchenko's difficulty in winning defector status, I would most likely have to persuade Simakov to return to his job in Russia and then earn defector status by providing regular intelligence to the Moscow station. If his intelligence was valuable then he might earn a reasonable salary, paid into a UK account so that his new found wealth would not attract suspicion. Perhaps on his retirement he could be allowed to come to the UK to enjoy his money, but even then MI6 would probably try to persuade him that retirement in his homeland would be more enjoyable. My task on meeting Simakov would be to assess his access and motivation, recruit him if suitable, then persuade him that this was his best option.

  Ryman looked grim when h
e answered the door the following week. He took me through to the living-room, dark because the curtains were drawn against the afternoon sun. A bulky, pallid and unshaven man, dressed in tight polyester T-shirt and jeans, struggled to his bare feet from the sofa. Ryman icily introduced me to his guest, jerked open the curtains and made an excuse to leave. Simakov glared after him as the door slammed shut. Next to the sofa were two large red plastic suitcases, straining against the string which held them together. Beside them was a battered cardboard box, filled with books and journals. He had been reading some of them and they lay opened, scattered on the low coffee-table along with several unwashed mugs and biscuit wrappers.

  `I have defected,' he announced triumphantly in a thick Russian accent. He paused for a moment, then realising that I was not about to give him an ecstatic bearhug, he adjusted the cushions and sat back down on the sofa.

  `Tell me a bit about yourself, first,' I asked, putting off discussion of defection until later. In good English, Simakov related his life story. He had been born into a poor family in a village north of Kiev in the Ukraine. His father was killed in a mining accident when he was five and his mother died of tuberculosis when he was seven, so he and his two younger sisters were bought up by his maternal grandmother. The young Simakov would probably have followed his father into the mines but from an early age showed a talent for mathematics. He got the best grades of his class in every term except one, when he had broken his leg and couldn't walk the three miles to school. Simakov was still proud of this achievement and rummaged in the cardboard box to dig out the certificates to prove it. His mathematical prowess was his only hope of getting out of a life of poverty.

  Simakov won a scholarship for secondary education at a military school in Kiev. Finishing there with high grades, he was selected to join the Soviet Strategic Rocket Force as a research scientist. After basic military training, he studied for a degree and a doctorate in Leningrad. Compulsory English lessons there fuelled a lifelong interest in England and particularly its literature - he knew far more about Shakespeare's plays than I would ever be likely to know. On completion of his studies he was posted to the Soviet ballistic missile test ranges in the far eastern peninsula of Kamchatka and spent his entire career working there as a flight-test engineer. After compulsory retirement from the military in his mid-40s, he had been unable to get another job and he, his wife and eight-year-old daughter were forced to move into the one-bedroomed Moscow flat of his ageing mother-in-law. Life soon became intolerable; his military pension was decimated by inflation, his daughter started to suffer from asthma and his wife was desperately unhappy.

  The final straw came when Simakov emerged from his flat one morning to find his Lada on bricks, with all four wheels missing. He vowed to move to England where, he fondly believed, such things never happened. He set about scouring the streets of Moscow to find an Englishman who could help him accomplish his plan and he stumbled across Ryman. The two of them made an unlikely couple. Fate had transpired to bring them together and produce the tragedy which I could see was about to unfold.

  Simakov's aspirations were wildly starry-eyed. In return for defecting, he wanted `a house with a straw roof and a garden full of flowers for his wife, œ100,000 cash and a Ford Orion Gti with Executive pack'. He produced a copy of Autocar magazine from his cardboard box and jabbed his finger at a picture of the car of his dreams.

  It was not going to be an easy task to let him down. Far from being able to waltz into the country, he would probably be hard pressed to persuade the Home Office to give him leave to remain. Only if he had some spectacular CX could MI6 ask the Home Secretary to make an exception of him. Depending on how much CX he produced, he might receive a few thousand pounds in a one-time payment. Thereafter, he would have to rely on DSS housing and income support. Simakov's surly nature wasn't going to make things any easier either. He had quickly outstayed Ryman's welcome, but being used to the cramped quarters of his mother-in-law's flat he couldn't understand why Ryman was fed up with him living on the sofa. `I don't understand Terry,' Simakov said, scratching his stomach. `When we were in Moscow, he was like a long-lost brother. Now he doesn't want to know me.'

  Ryman was just as unhappy with the situation. He thought he had done his duty and expected me to take Simakov off his hands. `My wife is going spare,' he explained out of earshot of Simakov. `He can't stay here much longer.' It was a mess that I couldn't sort out immediately. Everything would depend on how much CX Simakov could produce but, as his knowledge was too complicated for me to assess, it would require the expertise of one of the technical specialists in the office. I bade goodbye to the odd couple in Clacton and returned to Century House.

  There were around 15 specialist officers in MI6 who provided expertise which the IB, with their broader career paths, could not master. They covered technical disciplines such as chemical, nuclear and biological weapons and ballistic missiles, or had expert knowledge in areas of particular interest such as the Middle Eastern oil industry. Martin Richards, who dropped out of our IONEC, was earmarked for this branch.

  Malcolm Knightley, R/CEE/D, was the missile specialist in the East European controllerate. A physicist by training, he developed his expertise in Soviet missiles in the DIS. Knightley was on secondment to MI6 for two years but was hoping for a permanent transfer judging by the way he laboured fearsomely long hours behind a huge in-tray. I arranged for Knightley to meet Simakov the next day in `Room 14', the suite of MI6 interview rooms in the Old Admiralty Buildings in Whitehall.

  `The guy's a goldmine,' Knightley told me afterwards. `We've got to get him residency here.' Knightley explained that Simakov had worked in mission control for every ballistic missile test the Soviets had done between 1984 and 1990. His information would be invaluable to the DIS, GCHQ and, more importantly, to the Americans. Knightley booked Room 14 for a series of weekly debrief meetings.

  `We've decided to recommend to the Foreign Secretary that we accept him as a full defector,' Russel advised me once the first reports had filtered up to him. `You'll need to get him a codename, write the submission to the Foreign Secretary and sort out his resettlement with AR.'

  AR (Agent Resettlement) were responsible for easing defectors into a new life once their usefulness to MI6 had expired. OVATION, NORTHSTAR and other important defectors all had their own dedicated AR officer who was responsible for helping them find a house, adjust to British life, administer their pensions and, hopefully, find a decent job. AR got in touch with Clacton DSS and found a small cottage for Simakov, so at least he was off Ryman's hands. A few weeks later, his wife and daughter flew out to join him and AR sorted the family out with DSS payments and schooling.

  I wrote the `submission' to the Foreign Secretary arguing that there was justification for allowing SOU, the codename now allocated to Simakov, to remain in the UK. MI6 does not need any authorisation to mount small operations such as Trufax. But operations which might have embarrassing consequences or, as in this case, affected the interests of another part of the civil service, required the authorisation of the Foreign Secretary. Douglas Hurd was notoriously diligent about examining submissions, so my arguments had to be carefully drafted.

  Meanwhile, Knightley finished another long debriefing session with SOU. He stuck his head into my office late one afternoon, clutching a thick sheaf of notes from the four-hour session. `We've hit the jackpot with this guy,' he enthused. `He's just given us the location of the Russian MOD's new strategic command headquarters.' Knightley produced a sketch map showing the location and layout of a new, top secret command bunker set deep inside a mountain in the Urals. It was a Russian equivalent to the American NORAD complex in the Colorado mountains. `I'll be issuing this as a five-star CX. It will go up to the PM,' Knightley said. He later told me that it eventually reached President George Bush's office. `But there's loads more to come,' he added. `Apparently he left a notebook filled with notes from the missile tests in his mother-in-law's sewing-box in Moscow. If we can get that
notebook, we'll really be in business.'

  Knightley explained that the notebook described perturbations in the flight paths of every ballistic missile fired from the Soviet missile test range in Kamchatcka between late 1987 and early 1990. SOU had obsessively and illicitly noted all the numbers in a couple of school exercise books after each test flight. Such detail would aid the DIS's understanding of the accuracy and range of the Soviet missile armory. More importantly, Knightley would pass the intelligence to the Americans who could use it to improve their anti-ballistic missile defences. It would bring considerable kudos for MI6. `We've got to get that notebook out of Moscow,' concluded Knightley.

  7. NOTED FRIEND

  WEDNESDAY, 11 NOVEMBER 1992

  MIRROR ROOM, HOTEL METROPOL, MOSCOW

  I saw Goldstein over in the opposite corner of the crowded conference room just before he spotted me. A bit plumper round the waist, his collar-size maybe an inch bigger, but still fond of Hermes ties, Gucci shoes and expensive Italian suits - flamboyant tastes even by the diverse standards of the eclectic throng of delegates mingling in the elegantly mirrored room. I had not seen him for over five years, since shortly after the trimphone incident, but it was certainly him. Worse, the lift of one eyebrow and the hint of a friendly smile showed that, to my unease, he still remembered me.