Next Stop Execution: The Autobiography of Oleg Gordievsky Read online

  Next Stop Execution

  The Autobiography of Oleg Gordievsky

  Oleg Gordievsky

  Copyright © Oleg Gordievsky 1995

  The right of Oleg Gordievsky to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1995 by Macmillan.

  This edition published in 2018 by Lume Books.

  I am profoundly grateful to all my good friends during my co-operation with the British Intelligence, to all those who helped at my rescue, and to all who fought for my family to be reunited.

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One – Escape or Die

  Chapter Two – Origins

  Chapter Three – School Days

  Chapter Four – Coming of Age

  Chapter Five – KGB Pupil

  Chapter Six – Among the Illegals

  Chapter Seven – Copenhagen

  Chapter Eight – Marking Time in Moscow

  Chapter Nine – Changing Sides

  Chapter Ten – Fresh Start

  Chapter Eleven – London

  Chapter Twelve – British Targets

  Chapter Thirteen – Acting Resident

  Chapter Fourteen – Sentence of Death

  Chapter Fifteen – Free Agent

  Chapter Sixteen – The Reckoning

  Author’s Note

  I wish to emphasize that this book is in no sense an official history of intelligence operations, and has not been endorsed by any government authority. Rather, it is a purely personal account of my life and career, and the opinions expressed are mine alone.

  Oleg Gordievsky

  March 1995

  Chapter One – Escape or Die

  Thunderstorms were rolling over Moscow, and occasional heavy showers sent people scurrying for cover. On Tuesday, 11 June 1985, the KGB net was closing round me, and I knew that if I did not break out of the great concentration camp of the Soviet Union within the next few weeks, I would die. The time had come to activate the escape plan which my friends in the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) had prepared for me and held in readiness for years.

  The KGB had planted microphones in my flat, on the eighth floor of the tower block at 103 Leninsky Prospekt, in the south-western sector of the city known as Yugozapad. I feared that they might also have installed a secret television camera. I therefore had to be extremely careful about bringing out my escape instructions, two copies of which were bound into the hard covers of innocent-looking English novels. Taking one of the books, I went into the kitchen where I was doing some washing and put the book to soak beneath it. After a few minutes I was able to peel back the flyleaf and retrieve the sheet of Cellophane containing my secret instructions. Putting the remains of the book down the waste chute, I went into the small box-room, closed the door behind me, and read the instructions by the light of a candle beyond the reach of any probing lens.

  The ease of that little operation reassured me, and it took only a few minutes to refresh my memory about what I must do. To warn the British that I was in danger, I had to appear on a certain street corner at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday, and stand by a lamp-post on the edge of the pavement holding a plastic Safeway shopping bag. Next, at 11 a.m. on the third Sunday after that, I would pass a written message by brush-contact in St Basil’s Cathedral, on Red Square.

  Normal methods of communication were impossible. Telephone lines into the Embassy were bugged, as were the lines into the compound where British diplomats lived. A visit to the Embassy itself was out of the question since the gates were guarded by KGB in police uniform, who would either chase a caller away or detain him in conversation while he was covertly photographed. The diplomats’ compound was similarly guarded.

  By then I was under such pressure that I had become obsessed by the need for secrecy. To preserve the sheet of escape instructions seemed intolerably dangerous, so I made cryptic notes on a piece of paper and burnt the original. Then I crumpled the paper into a tight ball and took it to the underground garage where my car was stored, a couple of kilometres from the flat. The garage was divided up into individual bays by partitions of brickwork with steel grilles across the front of each. It was the centre of much social activity, for it was warm and well lit, and the owners of the cars frequently held parties down there, bringing food and drink and listening to music. But what interested me was that the place had been built to good Soviet standards, and the bricks had been so poorly laid that there were large gaps between them. Assuming that in due course my own bay would be searched, I shoved the paper into a crack at eye level in the communal area, leading to the exit. Now, even if my flat were raided and the book containing the second copy of my instructions were confiscated, I would still have the rudiments of the plan.

  On Tuesday, to reach the signal site on time, I prepared to set off at 4 p.m. Because the weather was so unsettled, I put on a grey raincoat and black rubber boots, as well as a peaked leather cap I had bought in Denmark and now wore as an aid to recognition. To make it look as if I had been shopping, I stuffed the two carrier bags with crumpled newspaper.

  Luckily I was not a conspicuous figure: at 1 metre 58, or 5 feet 8 inches tall, I did not stand out in a crowd; and although, at the age of forty-seven, I had lost much of my hair, my cap concealed the bald patch on top of my head. Nevertheless, as I left the tower block, my first essential was to make certain that no surveillance was behind me, using the technique known to the KGB as proverka, and to the Americans as dry-cleaning.

  Because my car was off the road, having failed its annual technical test, I had to use public transport, and went out on foot, walking five or six hundred metres to the nearest shopping precinct. As always, I steeled myself not to look back: it was a fundamental principle of KGB training that one should appear unworried, and give no sign of concern about being followed.

  The first shop I entered was a pharmacist: I moved from one window to the other and then to the counter, apparently in search of some item, but in fact to check what was happening outside. My next stop — a savings bank — offered an even better vantage point, as it was on the first floor, and a window on the stairs gave a good view of the street. I hovered there for a couple of minutes, went on to call at a food shop, and walked up a footpath between some small blocks of flats, as if heading for home again. But then I turned quickly into one of the blocks, went up the communal staircase, waited, watched from a window, came down again, and continued.

  I saw no sign of anyone following, yet it was still not safe to relax. I walked on, took a bus for a few stops, then hailed a taxi and went to the transport police station where I was supposed to make inquiries about my car. From there I moved on to the block in which my sister Marina lived, and went in, as if visiting her; but after a few minutes’ observation from a window on the stairs, I came out again, caught the Metro, changed trains once, and so, after three hours’ dry-cleaning, at last reached Kievsky tube station, within walking distance of my rendezvous.

  By the time I took up position on the edge of the pavement, at 7 p.m. precisely, I was feeling exceedingly nervous. Official limousines were pouring past along the big avenue, taking Politburo members home from the Kremlin, with numerous KGB officers in cars behind them. More KGB were undoubtedly on duty in plain clothes, studying the operational situation.

  Knowing this, I had to make a great effort to stand still and pretend to be looking for a friend — especially in that exposed position on the edge of the road. It would have been more natural to
wait at the back of the pavement, against the wall. I held on for what seemed an eternity but was probably no more than three or four minutes. Then I thought: All right, I’ve done it. Whether or not anyone had picked up my message, I could not tell, but at least I had gone through the procedure laid down.

  On the third Sunday, again after extensive dry-cleaning, I made my way to Red Square for the brush-contact. My first objective was the Lenin Museum, now closed, but then the best looked-after public building in Moscow, in its way a temple of Communism. I headed for the underground lavatories, which I knew were clean and spacious. Safely ensconced in a cubicle, with the door locked, I sat on the seat and wrote a note in block capitals on an opened-out envelope:

  AM UNDER STRONG SUSPICION AND IN BAD TROUBLE. NEED EXFILTRATION SOONEST. BEWARE OF RADIOACTIVE DUST AND CAR ACCIDENTS.

  The last sentence was a warning against two common practices of the KGB: that of smearing radioactive dust on the soles of shoes, so that they could follow a target more easily, and of staging car crashes, with which they could bring any operation to a halt and force those taking part into the open. Screwing the paper into a tight ball, I went on towards St Basil’s. To make doubly sure that I had not picked up any surveillance at the last moment, I turned into GUM, the huge department store which runs the whole length of Red Square on the side opposite the Kremlin. There, in the complex of three main alleyways, with shops on three levels, I dodged up and down, back and forth, before I began to feel that I needed space around me, and went back out into the fresh air.

  As always, the square was full of tourists, and there were KGB everywhere, especially in front of the Spassky Tower, the main entrance to the Kremlin. My instructions were to enter St Basil’s and go up the spiral staircase to the first floor. I had been given a hint — no more — that my contact would be a woman: she would be wearing grey, and holding something grey in both hands. The idea was that I would slip her my message as we brushed past each other on the narrow staircase.

  At the last minute I realized that my peaked leather cap was going to be an embarrassment: men are not supposed to wear hats inside Russian Orthodox churches. Besides, the day was hot, and I was pouring with sweat. But my instructions had been to wear the cap as a recognition signal, so I had to keep it on.

  Then came a severe disappointment. I had hardly entered the cavernous ground floor of the cathedral when I saw a sign saying ‘UPPER FLOORS CLOSED FOR REDECORATION’. Now what? For a few minutes I strolled about, hoping that my contact might be there among the crowd, and that if she was, I could slip her my note in the open. Yet after an apparently casual look round, I saw no one dressed in grey, and after twenty-five minutes I gave up. On the way home in the tube, I chewed my SOS into small pieces, and spat them out one by one.

  *

  That evening, when I thought things over in my flat, I realized that the failure of communication was my fault. I had not waited long enough at the signal site: because I had left prematurely, my message had not been picked up. I should have mastered my nerves and held on. Now my predicament was growing desperate, and as I lay awake that night, I racked my brains for the hundredth time, trying to work out who it could have been that betrayed me.

  I had been a member of the KGB for more than twenty years, but for the past eleven years, since 1974, I had been working for the British Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise MI6, first in Denmark and then in England. In 1982 I had been appointed Counsellor at the Soviet Embassy in London — on the surface a diplomat, but in fact a senior member of the KGB station in the British capital. For more than two years, together with my wife Leila and our young daughters Maria and Anna, I had lived in Kensington, worked at the Embassy, and maintained regular contact with my British case officers. In Soviet eyes I had done well, and by the spring of 1985 I had become acting head of station, with the promise that I was to be promoted Resident, or head of the KGB in London, that summer.

  Then suddenly the ground had opened under me. Summoned back to the Centre, ostensibly for high-level briefings about my new position, I flew to Moscow on 19 May, leaving Leila and the children in London. To my alarm, I found that my flat had been broken into — presumably by the KGB in search of evidence — and that I was suspected of treason. A week later I was taken to a KGB dacha, drugged with doctored brandy and interrogated. Afterwards, I could not remember how much or how little I had given away. I thought I had managed to hold my own — but soon I was told that, although I would be allowed to serve on in the KGB, my mission to Britain had been terminated. I would be granted leave until early August.

  Had my colleagues discovered firm evidence of my treachery, or were they only working on a vague tip-off? I could not tell. Either way I was in acute danger: the KGB were searching for conclusive proof of my guilt. My only hope seemed to be to play for time, and pretend that everything was normal. So I agreed to go for a month’s leave at a KGB sanatorium some sixty miles south of Moscow.

  My family, meanwhile, had been flown back from London. Inevitably Leila realized that something was wrong, but I told her that my problems were due only to the intrigues which constantly raged within the KGB, and she took the children off as planned for their summer holiday at her father’s dacha on the shore of the Caspian. Saying goodbye to her was one of the most difficult moments of my life. We parted in the doorway of a supermarket: with her mind already on the holiday, and on the clothes she was about to buy for the girls, she gave me a quick farewell peck on the cheek. I said, ‘That could have been a bit more tender’, and she was gone, not knowing that by the time she returned to Moscow I would be either dead or in exile.

  Now, in the middle of July, I sensed that I had little time left. At the sanatorium, although kept under light surveillance, I had been free to return to Moscow whenever I wanted; but chance encounters with professional colleagues were unanimously disconcerting. In their faces, one after another, I saw my own fate reflected: even though they said nothing, I could tell from their demeanour that they knew the KGB hounds were hot on my scent.

  Alone in Moscow, I had all too much time for self-analysis and examination. How had I made such a mess of my life? Where had I gone wrong?

  I like to think that I am an easy-going person, without any physical aggression. The only time I retaliate is when I hear myself being insulted, or people making unfair remarks about me; then I am inclined to hit back verbally, and become forceful in argument. My main fault, I know, has always been a tendency to trust people too much. When I was a child, my mother used to tell me that just because someone was kind to me, it did not mean that he or she was a nice person. Several times colleagues had warned me that I was not very good at discerning the true nature of the people I met — a dangerous trait in an intelligence officer, who should see through everyone. Because I trusted too much, I was often deceived.

  Yet this failing had nothing to do with my present predicament. As far as I knew, I had not been compromised by anything that I had said or done. When I am pursuing a long-term strategic objective, as I was then, my nerves are good: in all my dealings with the British, I had made no serious mistake. I know that in the short-term I am prone to attacks of panic — but I had not suffered any yet.

  On the other hand, one of the penalties of leading a double life was that it had drastically inhibited my emotional development. Because Leila had grown up very much a Soviet girl, heavily indoctrinated by Communist propaganda, I had never dared tell her that I was working for the British for fear that she would denounce me. Inevitably this meant that we had never come as close as we might have in normal circumstances: always I had withheld a central feature of my existence from her. Is intellectual deception of one’s partner more or less cruel than physical deception? Who can say? In any case, it was adding to my anxiety.

  But now my overriding priority was to save my own skin, and I decided to stake everything on the third week in July. If I gave a correct signal on Tuesday 16th, my escape would be set up for the following Saturday. On
ce again, therefore, I planned to be standing on the signal site at 7 p.m. on Tuesday.

  On Monday night I slit open my second specially bound novel, brought out the sheet bearing the second copy of my exfiltration plan, developed it, read it, studied it. The document would have meant little to anyone else for it appeared to refer to places in France; but in fact it contained detailed instructions for reaching a rendezvous in the forest near Viborg, on the border between the Soviet Union and Finland. The distances were all real, but for the sake of security the names of French cities and towns had been substituted for Russian originals — Paris for Moscow, Marseilles for Leningrad, and so on.

  To calm my stretched nerves, I was taking sedatives and drinking rather too much Cuban rum, of which a good brand had recently appeared in Moscow. By 9 p.m. my head was not as clear as it might have been, and I wanted to go through the plan again in the morning, when I was fresh. Yet what was I to do with such an incriminating document? After some thought I barricaded the front and balcony doors with furniture, and went to sleep with the plan and a box of matches lying on a metal tray under a newspaper on Leila’s side of the double bed, so that if the KGB did try to break in during the night, my makeshift blockade would at least give me time to burn the most dangerous evidence.

  As luck would have it, on Tuesday morning I got a telephone call from my father-in-law, Ali Aliyevich, who was looking after me in avuncular fashion during Leila’s absence. ‘Come round to supper at seven tonight, and I’ll cook a nice chicken in garlic,’ he said. Seven o’clock! I knew the KGB were listening. Ali lived in Davitkova, on the outskirts of the city, in a direction which coincided well with my rendezvous. But if I suggested, ‘Eight would be better,’ the listeners would immediately wonder, ‘Aha! What’s he doing at seven?’, and make quite certain they did not lose sight of me. So I just said, ‘Thank you. I’ll look forward to it.’ All the same I was annoyed, for I knew that Ali, a most punctual man, would be irritated by my late arrival.