85. The Man Who Saved The World: The Great Escape (Ep 6)

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On Thursday night, I again slept with the doors barricaded and my railway ticket under a napkin on the tin tray.

On Friday, feeling emotional and overexcited, I spent the morning cleaning the flat.

I knew I would probably never see the place again, but I wanted to leave everything in perfect order.

I did not doubt that the KGB would study every detail, and I was anxious that they should find things ship-shape.

Washing up done, crockery put away, documents in place, spare cash on the shelf.

Having calculated that 80 rubles would suffice for my journey, I left 220 in a neat pile, enough at that date to keep Layla going for a couple of months.

In spite of all the care I took, I forgot one special item, the snuff I had bought in case I had to deal with inquisitive search dogs at the frontier.

At last, about 4 p.m., it was time to leave.

Well, welcome to the Rest is Classified.

I'm David McCloskey.

And I'm Gordon Carrera.

And that is Oleg Gordievsky writing in his memoir about

the night before he escapes or attempts to escape the Soviet Union.

And we left him last time, Gordon, in this bind of really he escapes or if he dies.

And now the die is cast.

He has got his apartment totally cleaned.

which I find absolutely

fascinating and a great little insight into the man's personality.

So his apartment is cleaned and he is ready to go.

The escape plan, Operation Pimlico, is now in motion.

I'm not sure if I had a few hours left in my apartment, I'd spend it cleaning so that the KGB could

find it in a fit state.

I think I'd make it messy for them and make it difficult for them.

But that's the man, disciplined.

It gets to the ego thing again.

I think he has a sense of superiority and he wants to demonstrate that he, until the last moment, is in control of the situation.

Yeah, right.

That's right.

It's control.

It's a control thing.

And that control is going to be vital because this is a man who, as we said all along, is disciplined and focused.

But the pressure he is going to come under now, I mean, he's been under pressure already.

And now in these final hours as he tries to escape, it is going to get so intense for him.

Because the question is, how do you get out of Moscow under the watching eyes of the KGB who have you under suspicion?

I mean, it's almost impossible for anyone to get out of the USSR, the Soviet Union, without approval.

Normal people who are not being sort of surveilled by the KGB, like, that's hard to get out, right?

Let alone when you're, yeah, a KGB officer under suspicion.

So the plan will be...

For an MI-16 based at the embassy in Moscow to drive him over the border into Finland.

And the idea is that cars cars are not normally subject to search because of diplomatic immunity.

But the question is, how do you get Oleg into a car to the border with no one spotting?

And the plan, Pimlico, as we've we know it's called, is for a rendezvous point close to the border with Finland.

That requires him not being followed, the MI6 team not being suspected or searched.

And the MI6 team, including their wives, are normally tailed by three to five cars and foot surveillance wherever they go.

Their apartments are bugged.

It's a small station.

It's under intense pressure.

Now, it's worth saying that the MI6 station chief, the head of station in Moscow at this time, has outed himself.

We've said before that normally MI6 officers, while they're alive, are anonymous.

But Raymond Asquith

has appeared and talked about his role in the escape, particularly in a BBC documentary a couple of years ago called Secrets and Spies: A Nuclear Game.

And he discusses it.

So we're going to talk about him since he's put this out in the public domain himself.

And he says it's out in the public domain.

Worth noting that Raymond Asquith is also the Earl.

I don't recognise that name, Gordon.

He is the Earl of Oxford.

And he will become, he's not at this point, but he will become the Earl of Oxford.

And he's actually a hereditary peer whose great-grandfather was the Prime Minister Asquith.

I don't think that many

officers are hereditary peers.

No, I don't think any from the CIA will have been because you don't have that kind of system.

We overthrew that system, Gordon.

We overthrew that system.

But in that documentary I mentioned, he actually tells a story about at one point he's having an argument with his wife in their Moscow apartment and they're arguing about where they'd already agreed to take their children on a picnic on the weekend, which park it was.

they've got a different recollection about which park it was going to be.

And so he decides to address the ceiling, knowing knowing that there's a bugging device in the ceiling.

And he just says to them, almost joking, well, where did we agree to go to?

And to his amazement, a note appears a few hours later under the door telling him which park they'd agreed to.

He says, I thought that was a KGB officer with a good sense of humor.

It reminds me, there's a very similar story, pretty close to the same period of time.

And a CIA officer who served in Moscow around the same time, he and his wife got lost on their way to a restaurant where they were going for dinner.

And they literally, all they had to do was just let the KGB officers take them there because the KGB, of course, knew where they were going and exactly how to get there.

So they just followed the surveillance

dinner, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that does give you a sense, though, doesn't it, of just how intense that surveillance is on the families.

And they've practiced the drive so that they know where they're going.

The plan is two cars

raymond asquith and also his deputy and the plan of two cars is of course partly because they think and the original plan has the full family coming out oleg his wife and his two daughters i mean they actually have a plan that if they need to they're going to have to chloroform the kids so that they can cope with being put in a car boot.

So the plan is the two cars are going to leave Moscow on Friday and stay overnight in Leningrad and before going over to Finland on Saturday.

Now, the pretext is that one of the officers' officers' wives needs some medical treatment because she's ill, it's kind of relatively urgent.

And so the families decide that they're going to accompany her and make it a kind of weekend trip for both families, including crucially, a newborn baby.

And the baby is breastfeeding, which is very newborn baby.

But they also kind of figure this might help with the cover story.

And they're making phone calls to London to establish the cover story.

And they're speaking to the ceiling, you know, and moaning and talking about the pain.

And one of the things they'll later learn, actually, is that the KGB didn't think that a posh MI6 officer like Raymond Asquith would take a baby on such a perilous operation.

So it kind of works.

Now,

the plan that Valerie Petit had come up with,

it wasn't this specific when she had written it years earlier, right?

I mean, it was it sort of like phase three is you gin up an excuse to drive to Finland, or was it down to this level of detail?

Because this is some pretty good improvisation, if not.

I think there's a high level of detail.

And all they've done is adapt the plan over the years.

So that, for instance, it's going to be two cars when they've got the kids.

So they've definitely changed it.

But the fundamentals are kind of there.

And so that's the plan.

But of course, as we said, at every stage, stuff just goes wrong.

So the first problem is the new British ambassador, the one who we mentioned last time, is a bit unhappy about the whole fuss being made at, you know, right in his first few days, is arriving in the embassy that Friday and he's going to have a welcome party for staff.

And so, of course, like if you're two officers of the embassy, would they really miss that party?

And if they're not there, it's suspicious.

So they decide, okay, we're going to have to leave after the party and drive through the night.

to still make the rendezvous point, which is going to be 2.30 the next afternoon near the border, where oleg is also supposed to turn up and of course there's no contact with oleg so you can't say can we make it the next day or can we make it a bit later in the afternoon so meanwhile friday afternoon gordievsky oleg knows it's time 4 p.m he leaves the flat now he's wearing something like a track suit and he makes out he's going jogging but rather than jogging he starts slowly and then speeds up.

He runs fast to something like a sprint.

And remember, you know, going back all the way through he's a runner his escape required all the characteristics we spoke about at the start about this long distance runner the physical skills of running are going to be part of it and the endurance and the physical endurance but also the ability to deal with pressure when you're alone that loneliness of the long distance runner.

So he's running, he heads into some nearby woods, he gets on a bus, he thinks he's clean of surveillance, he heads to the Leningrad train station, he walks through a big crowd to try and get there.

He's He's been through metro stations and shops.

When he gets to the station, which takes you to Leningrad in Moscow, the police are everywhere.

And he's panicked about that.

He thinks there's a lot of surveillance potentially on him.

And then he remembers, no, no, no, there's a festival taking place.

That explains it.

So he's already bought himself a fourth class train ticket.

I didn't realize so.

Fourth class.

He's treating himself as he as he leaves.

I think I'd go first class.

Maybe that's suspicious.

Is that like a lavatory seat or something like that?

That seems like it should be.

Is fourth class the bottom of the barrel?

I guess it is.

It's kind of interesting, isn't it?

So much for classless communist society with four classes of train tickets.

But it's an overnight train, which is going that evening.

And he's on the top bunk.

And in the middle of the night, he falls out of the bunk because he's taken some sedatives to kind of calm him down.

And he cuts his head.

And so he's bleeding.

So he's starting to look a mess.

Is he still in the tracksuit?

And I think he's still in the track suit.

And he sees this woman, and he thinks, Oh, I'll talk to her because they're talking about something interesting.

And she just takes one look at him and just recoils and says, If you speak one word to me, I'll scream, she says,

because he just looked, he thinks she thinks he's going to chatter up.

And he's just making conversation.

He's so bad.

He's sweaty.

He's sweaty from the sedatives and

bloody and in a dirty track suit.

So that is Friday night in our timeline.

Meanwhile, the MI6 team head out after the party.

And there's a kind of mix of fatalism, I think, and excitement as they head out with their families.

I think they know this is the last thing they'll probably end up doing in Moscow because if they succeed, people are going to know it.

There's going to be trouble.

And if they fail, they're going to get caught and there's going to be even more trouble.

So it's going to be trouble either way, but either through triumph or disaster.

And, you know, Asquith in the TV documentary will say he was bloody frightened.

The sun is rising on Saturday morning as they're driving towards Leningrad.

They're playing good detail this Dire Straits Brothers in Arms in one of the cars.

That's from Ben McIntyre's, the spy and the traitor.

And Asquith will say it was such a beautiful day.

You'd think nothing bad could happen.

Now, surveillance vehicles are following them almost all the way.

So they've got surveillance on their tail.

And they had to reach the designated spot close to the Finnish border at exactly the right moment, not too early or too late.

So they have to kill some time.

They visit a monastery.

They're still under surveillance.

Meanwhile, Oleg had got to Leningrad.

And then he's taking another train to take him closer to the Finnish border.

Then he gets a bus

and he gets off the bus at a particular point and walks to the rendezvous point, which has a large stone, which is the marker that's recognisable.

And he gets there and it's tall conifer trees.

And he sits there and there's mosquitoes everywhere and they're biting him.

And he also looks at his watch and he is nearly four hours early.

He's tired.

You know, he's stressed.

He's acting oddly.

I guess you should just wait there for four hours with the mosquitoes gnawing you.

But I think the stress is too much.

So he actually decides he's going to hitchhike back to the nearest town to get some lunch.

And he goes to get some

beer.

And a beer.

I mean, it's mad, isn't it?

I think under that intense pressure, you're just not thinking straight, are you?

Probably not thinking straight.

And also, I mean, I guess depending on how well screened the area is, it's potentially in his mind,

like he's more vulnerable waiting there.

But it doesn't seem like that's the kind of spot that would have been chosen.

So it does seem like you're increasing your risk by going back.

And I guess it's understandable because maybe you're at a point where you're thinking, I actually can't sit in one place for four hours.

I'm going to lose my mind.

Just wait.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm going to lose my mind with mosquitoes gnawing me.

I mean, he's been living under surveillance and fear for two months in Moscow.

Two months.

I want to come back to that for a second, though, because up to this point, it doesn't seem like he's had surveillance on him over the past 24, 48 hours.

Yeah, he's lost it.

Has he lost them or had they actually pulled surveillance off?

Because it's a resource game, right?

They've got plenty of different targets to look at.

He's just one of them.

I mean, did they pull surveillance?

And so he was just clean the whole time?

Or had he actually

lost them along the way and they couldn't find him?

They're looking for him, but they can't find him.

Because I think if they lose him,

that's it.

Yeah.

You're throwing all kinds of resources at this in Moscow, right?

So I think a few things are going on in Moscow.

I think one is

they had very intense surveillance early on.

And I think this is part of his game is to play for time.

And I think he knows the surveillance will be reduced and get sloppier as those two months progresses so by this point it's got lighter i also think in moscow they just don't think anyone can possibly escape you know they just don't think it's possible that he could do it and so he has got surveillance on him around his apartment but it's less intense than it might have been and he's lost them at that point but it's interesting and we'll come back to this i think with the cars as well that i think it hasn't set off alarm bells instantly in Moscow.

Because I think he's done dry cleaning routes before.

We talked about it when he did the signal.

He's lost people.

So I think there's this understanding that he occasionally drops out of coverage, but will pop back up again.

And that's clearly happened before because he's done counter-surveillance routes when he's done that signal on the Tuesday night, you know, when he's there with the bag, the Safeway bag.

So I think they will have known that.

occasionally they'll lose him but it for a couple of hours and then he'll come back again so i think that means they've not hit hit the panic button in moscow overnight at that point although you'd think they would be but of course it's also saturday morning at this point he had left the late afternoon the previous day right so he's been gone overnight presumably if there was surveillance of any kind they'd be worried on his apartment in moscow they would see that he's not there and you would have had alarm bells going off Because even if you think it's going to be hard to escape, it's not impossible.

The way that this appears to me is that they had pulled surveillance off of him for this period and that there was no one actually following him at any point.

And nor did they know that he had actually left Moscow.

I think it's also that problem that the KGB don't want to, it's pretty tightly held that he's under investigation.

I don't think it's widely known.

And I think if they have got a little bit of surveillance, they may have...

not wanted to tell people and just hope

so yeah oops yeah yeah yeah so he's gone for his chicken lunch and beer then suddenly he realizes it's one o'clock and he might be late he's in like a parallel universe during this time isn't it he's out of his board yeah i think that's right i think he's in a really weird space and i think you know there's no doubt he's making odd decisions but who can blame him so he actually has to hitchhike with a lorry driver to get back to the site you know and if he gets it wrong he might have missed it which would have been a disaster but he's got a beer and he's back in the grass and he says these were the hardest moments because the mosquitoes are biting him.

He's worried he is too late.

He's missed it.

And if so, they're not going to come back.

He, at one point, he walks out onto the road and he actually then tells himself, stop, this is madness.

I've got to go back and wait.

Now, meanwhile, the MI6 team has been trying to get towards the border.

It's come out of Leningrad.

City surveillance hands over to provincial surveillance.

So again, they're being followed, but I don't think they're being followed in a way that they think they're on an operation.

So it's not the most intense surveillance.

It's kind of regular surveillance, if you like, rather than they're really up to something.

And at one point, you know, this is what's crazy is the idea is they're going to find this rendezvous point and then slip in, have a picnic, and then get out.

But that depends on having a gap between the surveillance car.

And at one point, they're bracketed by KGB surveillance cars.

So one car is in front and one is behind.

And that is a huge problem because you can't do anything at that point.

you've got no room to speed up slow down do anything and so aswith decides to play games with them to kind of annoy them and he slows down to about 20 miles an hour now for of course if it's a real car behind it would have to overtake he's kind of telling them i know what you're doing i'm just going to screw you i'm going to slow down the one in front has to slow down and eventually he kind of plays with them the point where the one in front gives up and comes to the rear.

And so now the cars are behind him.

So it's pretty lucky, but he's about 20 miles away from the rendezvous spot and they're still being tailed by surveillance.

And so they've got to shake off these cars and soon.

And they're running late for the meeting time.

And then they get a stroke of luck.

They had lots of bad luck in this operation.

Here's a bit of good luck.

All the cars on the highway are stopped.

for 10 minutes because a convoy of tanks has to pass.

So the surveillance cars stop behind the MI6 cars.

Then once the military convoy, the tanks pass, the MI6 cars floor it.

Asquith is driving Assaab and his deputy a Ford.

And the advantage they've got is they've got Western cars, which have obviously been imported in, and are faster and better than the KGB surveillance cars.

So they leave them in a cloud of dust as they just floor the accelerator and zoom off.

And that means a gap is now opening up with the surveillance cars behind them, which are still coming out of the traffic, which had stopped for this convoy.

So now they're approaching the site and the marker, which is just after a turn.

So

you've got the ability to lose surveillance.

They hit the corner, they slam on the brakes, they swing off into this lay-by in the forest.

The surveillance cars, now desperate to catch up, roar past.

They've stopped, but are they too late?

I mean, the plan had been to have a kind of fake picnic as as cover.

And so the wives are getting out the picnic stuff.

But as they do, a smelly-looking tramp-like figure, who Asquith will later describe as looking like a Norwegian troll,

will get out of a ditch and just say, which car?

And that's all he says.

I mean, what a moment.

I mean, it's wild.

So Gordievsky actually recognises the driver of the Ford car as the person he'd seen eating a Mars bar, you know, and who he blocked eyes with on the Moscow street.

He takes off his shoes because he's worried he's got that spy dust.

The spy dust.

The spy dust, yeah.

Yeah.

So he puts him in a plastic bag and he's bundled into the boot of the Ford car.

It's the trunk for our American listeners.

Yes.

And a heat-reflecting blanket is put over him, and that's the full infrared sensors.

He's given a bottle in which to urinate and more sedative pills to calm him down.

He gulps them straight away.

Cars get on the move.

They They reckon it takes less than a minute and a half to do that, to get him in, get him ready and move off.

And they're back on the way to the border.

Now, this is, I think, the really interesting bit because they then pass their surveillance cars at a checkpoint coming up.

What it looks like has happened is the KGB assume the Brits stopped for a bathroom break.

And so they just fall back inside them.

And it's interesting because, of course, this provincial surveillance team hasn't been told who they're following or why that it's important.

And they've got a bit of a decision here, I think, because they've got to work out, do they admit that they lost them for a minute and a half and report it?

Or do they just kind of hope for the best and think it was a bathroom break?

And, you know, we're not going to bother reporting that to headquarters.

You're riding your luck there, aren't you?

There's not a lot of upside to reporting that.

It makes you look incompetent if you're the KGB's second chief directorate, guys who are doing this surveillance.

Also, I mean, the reality, I would suppose, of doing this kind of trailing vehicular surveillance is there are going to be short periods where you lose people.

And right now, when you're watching this crew of, for all they know, foreign diplomats, I mean, they probably don't know it's the MISX head of station from Moscow.

Like it's foreign diplomats who are just driving around.

This probably feels very typical.

very boring.

And you have no indication at this point, given who's in the vehicle, particularly the baby, that they're doing anything operational.

So you're kind of raising your hand for trouble if you report that gap, I would think.

Yeah.

If you're the head of that surveillance team.

No, it does make sense.

And it is fortunate because if they had raised it, then it could have slowed things down at the border.

So the MI6 team back in the cars approached the border.

Now, as diplomatic cars, they should be exempt from being searched.

But there'd been slight despair about a week or so earlier when a British military attaché had allowed his trunk to be searched at the border.

And he shouldn't have done, but they fear it's kind of set a precedent.

And if the search was demanded, the plan was just for the cars to refuse and then they've just got to turn around.

So it's pretty risky.

And one of them actually worries at one point they've forgotten to even lock the boot in which Gordievsky is sitting.

I mean, which is, but I guess, you know, if it's not locked, it almost doesn't matter at that point.

And at that moment, back in London, the Foreign Office advisor to MI6 is gathered with senior staff and he looks at his watch and he says, ladies and gentlemen, they're about to cross the border.

I think it would be appropriate to say a prayer.

And they're going to need it.

Multiple border checks as well, not just one.

The first few go, okay.

Then you've got the big checkpoint.

It's busy.

Everyone's getting their documents checked.

Oleg is in the boot.

He's hot.

He's uncomfortable.

And he's smelly.

Is he various?

Imagine how smelly he is.

He's struggling to breathe.

And now, here come the Alsatian sniffer dogs.

I mean, this is

the problem.

The engine's turned off.

Gordievsky inside can actually hear the dogs sniffing around the car and getting closer to him.

Now, he'd been given actually some snuff by MI6, you know, which we heard about, but he'd forgotten it.

He'd left it behind.

Forgot it.

Yeah, he'd left it behind his immaculately cleaned apartment.

Yeah.

So the risk is he's smelly.

He's dirty.

They're going to smell something.

So one of the wives of the MI6 team opens a pack of cheese and onion crisps to offer it to the dogs.

Do you have have cheese and onion crisps?

Chips, potato chips in America.

Yeah, I think

you can get those flavors.

I'm not sure.

They're quite strong.

Boy, I'm going to say something wrong here and

someone's going to just rip me apart

in the comments.

But I don't think it's a very common flavor.

I mean, you have like sour cream and onion would be more.

Do you have that?

Sour cream and onion.

Yeah, we do.

We do.

More like, yeah.

But I think the idea is it's quite strong.

If you're one of these guys who's working the dogs, though, wouldn't you be ticked if this lady is reaching out of the car and giving the dog chicks?

No, it's supposed to be giving you crisps to the dog.

It's like...

The dog is on duty.

Yeah, but you know.

But then

the dog's still heading for the boot of the car.

So Asquith's wife takes out her baby daughter and changes her dirty nappy on the boot.

of the Ford car over Oleg beneath.

And then as she's doing it, obviously a smelly nappy we've all been there and drops it by the boot just as the dog is approaching it and the dog looks disgusted and slinks off i mean that is

uh some

that's taken on your feet right there by mrs asgrith yeah the earl's the future earl's wife yeah that's that's it's good i mean because that is not something they give you as a uh item of tradecraft is a dirty nappy you know it's not something you can you can be provided with It's a bit of a spy kit.

I don't suggest people go around carrying dirty nappies in case they need to do it.

But they're cleared to go.

They wait in the queue as they approach the Finnish side of the border.

More checks.

Barriers nearly ready to rise.

The phone in the guard's booth rings.

He walks over slowly to answer it, glances at the car, puts the phone down.

Everyone's wondering.

Finally, you know, the barrier swings up and the car pulls out.

And then a few moments later, Gordievsky could just remember this so vividly.

I remember talking to him about it.

Suddenly the music in the car changes.

And he hears the ominous, brooding, opening notes of Sebelius' Finlandia come onto the car stereo.

And that is the sign.

He understands.

He's in Finland.

He's out.

And then a few moments later, the car stops.

the boots flung open.

He could just see blue sky, white clouds, some pine trees.

And there is the face of Valerie, the officer who'd made this plan and who'd seen it through and had been with him from the start.

She's looking down with him and smiling.

And she's been there with a team on the other side of the border.

It had been her plan.

It had worked.

Oleg looks a mess.

but somehow he's calm and controlled.

Then also with her is the MI6 reports officer who's been dealing with the political reporting.

And he'd been working on this, but not actually met Oleg.

And he said, you must be very tired, but we are so very glad to see you.

And at that moment, the team from Danish intelligence are waiting.

So the Danes are still there as part of the mission.

It's interesting.

They're also going to be there.

And of course, they were there at the recruitment.

They're there here at the finish.

It is interesting that they're there.

Obviously, yeah, I think it's interesting.

On invitation, presumably.

I mean, yeah.

I think in some ways, you know, their role is important.

And I think there's part of it, which they were there at the beginning giving some of the initial tips.

But I think it's also useful because he's placed in the boot of of one of their cars.

Because I guess, you know, Finland is still, you know, famously Finland in the Cold War was still ambiguous territory, wasn't it?

The Soviets had a lot of influence over it, so they are not yet safe.

So there possibly is some benefit of having him in the boot of a Danish car now rather than in the...

A car that's got like British diplomatic plates on it.

That makes sense.

I think they've hired cars and amusingly, they hired three cars and then they initially realized they'd all hired cars and their number plates were sequential from the the car hire place, and they were like, That doesn't look good.

And so,

but you know, the MI6 reports officer is going to signal back to London from a payphone at a filling station.

Really enjoyed the fishing, it's been a successful trip, and we've had one guest.

Now, this actually causes some confusion because in London, they kind of go, Whoa, whoa, what one guest?

You know, does that mean Oleg and only one other person?

And if so, what's happened to the kids?

You know, they think maybe his wife's come out, and then he has to explain, No, no, no, just one person has come out.

And actually, the person on the other end of the phone line is actually quite upset about this because they kind of think, Has the family been abandoned?

Did they not make it?

What happened to the wife and kids?

A car with Oleg will drive north through the night towards Norway without stopping, head into the Arctic Circle.

Summer sun disappears just briefly for a few hours before it rises again.

Eventually, they come to Norway's north, then they take a flight back down south to Oslo and then to London.

And of course, the Monday morning,

what happens?

Mikhail Ubimov, that old friend of Oleg,

is waiting at the station for the train, which is supposed to carry Oleg for their time at his dacha.

And his friend doesn't emerge from the last carriage, as it had been promised, and they would never speak again.

And the KGB is going to realize he's gone.

He's gone.

Well, there, Gordon, let's take a break.

And when we come back, we will see how

everything shakes out for Oleg, for Smiley Mike, for everybody in the aftermath of this incredible escape.

You say you'll never join the Navy.

That living on a submarine would be too hard.

You'd never power a whole ship with nuclear energy.

Never bring a patient back to life.

Or play the national anthem for a sold-out crowd.

Joining the Navy sounds crazy.

Saying never actually is.

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Hi, David McCloskey here from The Rest is Classified with an exciting announcement for U.S.

listeners.

My new novel, The Persian, drops in the States on Tuesday, September 30th.

Now, this book takes readers deep into the heart of the shadow war between Iran and Israel.

The protagonist of this book, Cameron Esfahani, is a dentist living out a dreary existence in Stockholm, and he agrees to spy for Israel's foreign intelligence service, the Mossad.

He proves to be a very skillful asset, helping Mossad smuggle weapons, run surveillance, conduct kidnappings, but when Cam tries to recruit an Iranian widow seeking to avenge the death of her husband, the operation goes terribly wrong and lands him in prison under the watchful eyes of a sadistic officer whom he knows only as the general.

Now, after enduring three years of torture and captivity, Cameron Esfahani sits in an interrogation room across from the general, preparing to write his final confession.

Now, Cam knows it is way too late to save himself, but he has managed to keep one secret, and if he can hold on to it, he might at long last find redemption.

The book drops on September 30th and can be found wherever books are sold.

Do be sure to stick around at the end of this episode because I'll be reading an excerpt from the Persian.

Oleg Gordievsky has escaped the Soviet Union.

And Gordon, I have to think that when the dust settles pretty quickly after this escape, it's not looking so good for the old KGB.

No, it's a humiliation, isn't it?

Their future London resident, under suspicion, has escaped under their noses.

There's no official statement, but a few days later, the new British ambassador, the one who just arrived, is summoned to the foreign ministry.

This is his nightmare.

This is his nightmare.

A photograph comes out of the ambassador with all his team, you know, of the embassy when he presented his...

credentials and the official places a finger on the faces of the two MI6 officers who'd smuggled Gordievsky out of the country.

You know, they know exactly what's happened at this point.

And the ambassador is told that those two and others have got 48 hours to leave the country.

So meanwhile, Gordievsky comes to Britain.

He goes to a safe house in the Midlands initially.

C, the chief of MI6 at that point, it's Chris Kirwin, you know, meets him.

He's taken to the fort, the services training facility where he's going to be debriefed extensively.

And this begins another productive period for Gordievsky.

It's not over his importance because, you know, the reports officer who'd worked, you know, on his, on his files is going to start working through all the details they can now extract about him.

You know, he is going to become an advisor to Margaret Thatcher on how to deal with the Soviet Union.

She's going to express her gratitude to him about how much he'd helped.

And actually, even while he's at the fort, the Americans are going to turn up.

That September.

So he's got out in July and September.

Bill Casey, who's this kind of rather famous head of the CIA under Reagan, actually comes to the fort to see Gordievsky.

And the reason is Reagan is about to meet Gorbachev in Geneva for a summit.

And Casey, someone described this scene to me who was there.

And Casey sat in front of Gordievsky with a yellow and blue CIA notebook.

I don't know if such a thing still exists.

I would like one if it does.

With a big seal on it.

And the person who was there described him as scribbling like a schoolboy.

Casey famously was a mumbler.

Big mumbler.

Yeah.

Big mumbler.

didn't speak very clearly and so c the chief of mi6 is occasionally having to translate for oleg what he's saying and they do a kind of role-playing game where casey says you know you're mr gordpachov he says pointing to gordievsky and i'm mr reagen what about if we give you access to star wars what do you say casey says and gordievsky leans back in his seat and he goes net

And why, says Casey, and he says, I don't trust you.

You'll never give us anything.

And you can see here this role of Gordievsky as being able to give insight into how the Soviet Union think, you know, is still there because, you know, he just attended a meeting in Moscow about the Geneva talks in which the KGB had said there's no point trusting the US since it had no desire for a serious agreement.

So he's able to kind of give Casey an insight ahead of the summit about how the Soviets will react.

And, you know, they have a discussion about whether it's feasible to drop Star Wars and SDI or not and later Gordievsky is actually going to go to the Oval Office and meet President Reagan in person and there's a famous picture of the two of them sacked by the fireplace in the Oval Office and later he'll meet George H.W.

Bush so his influence is still going in these years after he was out and former ambassador to Moscow kind of a real Russia expert called Roderick Braithwaite said something which I think is interesting which is that the importance of Gordievsky was the fact that political leaders could hear something from him.

He as an ambassador, Braithwaite, could write something in a report and the politicians would go, yeah, well, that's just a report for the embassy.

But if Gordievsky says it to Reagan and Thatcher and other people, they listen because this is an ex-KGB guy who's lived there and been there.

And I think that is really...

one of the values he has as an advisor afterwards.

So he's hugely important.

And I suppose the analysis he offers there, I mean, in the example where he's role-playing with Casey, it's not particularly original, right?

No.

But to the point of the former ambassador to Russia, it's insightful because of who is explaining it, who's giving the analysis, right?

Who it is, yeah.

And the source.

Yeah.

He has this very important role then for the coming years, but there are personal costs.

And I think one is that his family is still in the Soviet Union.

So, you know, MI6 are going to try and get him out.

And actually, you know, Jerry Warner, who's a a senior British intelligence officer, goes to Paris and gets the Paris station to engineer a meeting with someone from the Soviet embassy at a club.

And he gives the message to the Soviet diplomat, who's actually not a KGB man.

He says, We've got a message for you.

And the man goes white.

And he goes, You're looking for Gordievsky.

We've got him.

We want his family out.

And the offer that Britain makes is that the expulsions that are going to come from Britain can be minimized and they can also be discreet and slow rather than public and a big row if

the Russians, if Moscow lets Gordievsky's family out.

But the reply from Moscow is just no.

And reuniting him with his family is going to be a priority for British government.

So Thatcher will raise it with Gorbachev repeatedly.

But it takes years.

And it's actually only in 1991, as the kind of Cold War is ending, that they finally are allowed to come out.

Wow.

And then it's a tragedy, really, for Oleg, because it's too late for their marriage.

He'd kept everything from his wife.

He'd not told her he's working for British intelligence.

That had shielded her when she's inevitably interrogated by the KGB.

And it had protected her, but it's also left her kind of bitter, I think, at not having known the truth.

And then their marriage falls apart.

It makes sense because I guess, in effect, he chose

his espionage work over the family.

And he did.

I mean, you can understand the reasons for it, but he left them behind, right?

He left them behind.

And obviously,

it was not, could not have been a comfortable situation for the family in the Soviet Union after he left, period.

Right.

Yeah.

So, yeah, and then his daughters, who are now, I think, about 10 or 11, also barely remember him more than six years after he left.

And

again, there's an element of real personal costs to this because he's never reconciled to them, even to the end of his life, actually.

They're never quite patched up.

And so you do get a sense of a man who'd followed his beliefs, but in doing so, had paid a pretty heavy personal price.

He'd given up a lot.

He'd been wedded to his mission, as you said, but he'd had to put everything else out of his mind.

It's that kind of single-minded tunnel vision of the long-distance runner again, isn't it?

And then, you know, the other characters, I mean, Aldrich Ames, CIA man.

Takes a few years to get him, doesn't it?

It does.

It does.

I mean, 1994.

So Ames gives over the names of, oh, I think almost two dozen

CIA assets in Russia in 85.

And yeah, he's not uprooted until 1994.

Which leads to a crazy fact, which is Gordievsky and Ames meet at Langley.

I mean, this is kind of wild, isn't it?

It's insane.

So Gordievsky is over kind of speaking to people at Langley, doing a talk, and he's introduced to the guy who probably betrayed him.

And he remembers it.

It seems like he's a nice guy.

Now, he's going to get caught later, but there is still this slight debate, and we won't get into the depths of it here, as to whether it was Ames who gave away Gordievsky.

And there's still some dispute about it, isn't there, in Washington?

Because there's still some dispute about whether there might have been other traitors in some CIA.

Yeah.

Period.

Yeah.

Well, and I mean, I guess the other character that we've got to reconnect with is Smiley Mike, because

this is another case, I mean, similar to the family, where in pursuit of this, you know, sort of ideological mission, I mean, Oleg betrayed a dear friend.

I think I said this when we first met Smiley Mike.

I know him, visited him in his Moscow apartment, and in his dacha, the dacha that Oleg, I guess, was going to stay at.

And I went to that dacha a few years ago in Russia.

I spoke to both men about each other, asked Lubimov about him.

And he said, it was not so easy when you work with a man all your life and he's a traitor.

It was not just betraying the Soviet Union, but he betrayed me.

That's quite powerful, isn't it?

Because Lubimov himself had been sacked from the KGB.

He's no kind of KGB super loyalist at this point, but it's the personal betrayal.

Yeah.

You can understand understand it.

And then, and amusingly, talking to Lubimov, because Lubimov also knew Kim Philby very well, the great British traitor from MI6.

And I found it quite funny talking to Lubimov because he would be like, Kim Philby is a hero or Oleg Gordievsky is a traitor.

And you'd be like, well, why is one?

You know, is it not positioned?

I mean, what's the...

I guess where you stand depends on where you sit, right?

I mean, he's

emphatically viewing this from the standpoint of AGB, right?

Yeah.

But then it was interesting because then I, you know, having seen Lubimov, I went to see Gordievsky and I said to Gordievsky, you know, what do you say to Lubimov who says you are a traitor?

And I'll never forget this conversation because we were having this conversation in Oleg's house in Surrey, bottle of wine on the table.

And I broached it gingerly.

He was quite a stern character.

There was a flash of temper, I think, when I raised the accusation that he was a traitor.

And then this is the answer he gave me.

He said, the betrayal question is pointless because it was a criminal state.

The most criminal element of the criminal state was the KGB.

It was a gang of bandits.

To betray bandits was very good for the soul.

I think it's one of the most

interesting comments because I think you can spend this time thinking, oh, you know, it's all about betrayal, espionage.

One side betrays the other.

philby betrays on one side gordievsky the other side but gordievsky when he's faced with this accusation really of betrayal his response is so interesting because his argument is to betray a criminal regime is good for the soul in other words it depends on what you're betraying there is a difference between

someone who betrays their country for base motives and someone who betrays their country because they believe it is criminal and because they believe in a set of values.

And if that is your motivation, it is good for the soul, betrayal.

So in other words, the betrayal depends on what you're betraying rather than simply the act itself.

And I think that kind of for me gets to the heart of the morality of espionage and the sense it's not about moral equivalence in the Cold War between two sides, but it depends on what you're you're betraying and what you believe in.

And that is Oleg, isn't it?

To the point around, I guess, the structure of his soul,

it does seem like his kind of

post-espionage

life in Great Britain, although obviously he's got the family issues,

he seems more well-adjusted than a lot of other kind of defectors or people who have spied and then come out out and they're sort of left in this limbo state.

Like he, it seems like he kind of, maybe it's, maybe it's because of the sort of strength of his convictions.

Seems like he was able to sort of also

grit through really his kind of post-escape life.

No one's post-escape, post-defection life is easy.

And I think everyone knows you're a kind of declining asset over time.

Your relevance and importance is bound to kind of diminish over time.

But I think his, you know, his afterlife is easier than, for instance, Kim Philby's.

I don't think he ever has the doubts about what he did and why he did it.

I think that's the key.

I mean, Philby will always pretend he never had any doubts, but I think deep down, I think he did.

But Gordievsky, you know, that single-mindedness, the ideological motivation is there.

And I think that sustains him.

You know, there's moments of drink and I think there's moments of it's not always easy, but I think the motivation that goes to the core of him is part of that.

I should say, though, that he did live under protection because a death sentence gets passed in absentia shortly after he escapes, which he lives under.

And in later years, he does actually worry quite a lot about being targeted.

I mean, at one point, I think it's in 2007, he actually thinks he might have been poisoned.

Now, it's not clear whether he was, whether there was some element of paranoia, or whether it was real, but he thought he was.

And then you get the Scripow poisoning in 2018, former GIU officer who's come to Britain, who's targeted to be killed.

And that also kind of raises fears.

And the security, which was quite discreet when I used to go see him, was definitely upped after that.

And one thing I learned just recently, very recently, was that there were worries, actually, in the last couple of years, about potential risks or threats to Oleg, because twice Russian diplomats, diplomats, probably intelligence officers, are seen at a restaurant, you know, in Surrey, which he frequents the view is that this wasn't coincidence especially because it happens you know for two people and the worry is it is reconnaissance for him so he's told never to go back there and the security is upped and you know he died earlier this year and it was i was aware he was ill and reaching the end but mi6 kept the death incredibly quiet And the government kept it incredibly quiet.

MI6 actually, you know, bizarrely don't even comment when he dies.

But I think the reason is they wanted to

keep it quiet, be able to do a post-mortem

and run tests so that when they do make it public, they can confidently say there was no foul play.

Because what they don't want is for him to die entirely innocently, as it looks like of old age and all the normal things.

But they don't want people to go around saying, well, was he poisoned?

Was he killed?

And I think there was a real nervousness this year, 2025, that the Russians might play games around his death, that they might try and,

if they found out about it before it was public, you know, kind of try and spread news or spread fake news or that there'd be kind of media questions about whether he'd been poisoned.

So there was that genuine mischief that they feared that Putin could play around it, which goes to the kind of current state of relations and the fact Gordievsky was right in some ways, wasn't he?

Well, former CIA director Bill Burns had this great line when talking about Putin, where he said Vladimir Putin is the ultimate apostle of payback.

And I think Skripal is traded back, you know, in what, 2010, and then assassins come for him in 2018.

So eight years have passed.

I mean, Gordievsky is

one of the most significant...

penetrations of the Russian state in the past century.

So the idea that the idea that the Russians would just forget about him is preposterous.

I mean,

it would be very much in keeping, I think,

with

sort of Vladimir Putin and the Russian state's behavior to consider him a viable target even 40 years almost after he's left the Soviet Union.

Yeah, 40 years after he defects.

It's amazing, isn't it?

And I guess it brings us to this question of,

did it matter?

I think we've made, I think we agree, we've made the case in the series that oftentimes you have human assets like Gordievsky that really can

kind of shift the balance of international security, global peace, geopolitics.

But there's a sense when we talk about these kind of Cold War spy games that they often

almost raise the temperature.

of the Cold War, make it more tense, or maybe even on the other side, that it's, they're ultimately, you know, these kind of back and forth battles between East and West were pointless, you know.

But

I think Gordievsky shows you can have spy games of consequence that affect outcomes.

I think that's right.

Strategic consequence.

He gave that understanding of the mindset.

I remember John Scarlett saying in an interview that the risk in the Cold War and the risk of it going badly wrong was surprise.

What no one wanted to be was surprised.

And what you need was intelligence to give you the confidence to manage situations and that it was things like gordievsky's intelligence which helped stop there being a blowout because suddenly it opened a window into the mindset of the of the other side in a way I don't think anyone else did in that period.

I mean, it is interesting because it makes you think, I agree with you, sometimes spying raises tension and sometimes it lowers tensions.

I mean, it does make you think there's a benefit, you could almost say, in each side having spies in the heart of the other side, if you want to understand them and know and avoid miscalculation or mistakes or paranoia.

It's a kind of interesting argument because if it goes for Gordievsky on the Soviet side, then does it also work the other way that it's useful sometimes for them to have spies in our side in that sense of being able to tell people actually they're not about to launch a first attack?

I mean, there's a famous quote from Harold Macmillan, who was prime minister, who said, It would be much better if the Russians saw the cabinet ministers' minutes twice a week, it would prevent all that effing, dangerous guesswork.

And his point is, you know, actually, maybe it would be better just to give them stuff so that they know what we're doing and what we're thinking to prevent all the kind of dangerous guesswork.

Because the Cold War, you know, there's dangerous guesswork, there's miscalculation, there's

misestimation of your opponent.

And what intelligence does at its highest level is prevent that.

And that's why I think Gordievsky was so important.

There's the counter-intelligence value.

There's the drama.

There's the human story.

But it is that strategic importance, which I don't know.

I don't know what you think, but I think I'd put him down as amongst the most consequential spies, certainly of the Cold War, perhaps full stop.

Yeah, undoubtedly.

I think he's up there in the pantheon.

You know, we did the series earlier in the year on Tolkachev, and I think

you could make a case that

both of these guys are right up there in terms of the most important spies of the Cold War.

I think where Gordievsky, and you know, it's, I mean, it's a sort of

an interesting but potentially useless argument to say which of these two might have been more valuable.

And it's not even, it's probably not even that interesting of a conversation in the end.

But I think the uniqueness of what Gordievsky did was to

not eliminate, but to minimize that guesswork, right?

Yeah.

At an absolutely tense, white-hot point in the Cold War, there was somebody who was kind of sitting as almost a clandestine bridge between both sides, explaining why neither one actually wanted the Cold War to go hot and making it easier and more rational to sort of escape that kind of dangerous spiral.

And for that alone, I think he's got to be seen as, I mean,

an exceptionally interesting human, but also a spy of real consequence.

I think that's right.

And so with him having departed this year, 2025, I think having run the race, the long-distance runner, he made it to the end.

And I think for that, he deserves a toast.

Maybe not a vodka-fueled toast like Arkady Gook would have had.

He was a wine guy.

He's a wine guy, a red wine guy.

But

I will raise a glass tonight to Oleg and say farewell and thank you for all you did because he was a brave and I think an exceptional man.

I think that's the spot to end it, Gordon.

And we would be remiss, even though we're at the end of a series, if we did not encourage everyone to both raise a glass to Oleg Gorievsky tonight and go and join the Declassified Club at the Restisclassified.com, where you can get access to bonus episodes, early access to series, a whole bunch of other goodies.

Please do go ahead and join up.

And we'll see you next time.

See you next time.

Hey, this is David from The Rest is Classified again.

Here's that short excerpt from my upcoming novel, The Persian, which will be available on September 30th in the U.S., wherever books are sold.

And even though I'm reading right now, the audiobook is wonderfully narrated by Fajr al-Qaisi.

I hope you enjoy.

Where am I, General?

Cameron as Fahani loads his questions with a tone of slavish deference because, though the man resembles a kindly Persian grandfather, he is, in the main, a psychopath.

The general is looking hard at Cam.

He plucks a sugar cube from the bowl on the table, tucks it between his teeth, and sips his tea.

Cam typically would not ask such such questions, but during the three years spent in his care, hustled constantly between makeshift prisons, he has never once sat across from the general, clothed properly with a steaming cup of tea at his fingertips, a spoon on the table, and a window at his back.

Something flashes through the general's eyes, and it tells Cam that he will deeply regret asking the question again.

It has been over a year since the general last beat him or strung him up in what his captors call the chicken kebab, but the memories are fresh each morning.

Cam can still see the glint of the pipe brought down on his leg, can still remember how the pain bent time into an arc that stretched into eternity, and how that glimpse into the void filled him with a despair so powerful that it surely has no name, at least not in Persian, Swedish, or English, the three languages he speaks.

And he's got more than the memories, of course.

He's got blurry vision in his left eye and a permanent hitch in his stride.

What is the spoon doing here?

A spoon?

Two thousand seven hundred and twenty one consecutive meals have been served, without utensils, on rubber discs, so Cam can't help but blink suspiciously at the spoon.

A mirage, an eyeball scooper, a test?

Perhaps the general plans to skin the fingers that pick it up.

The general calms his fears with a nod, a genuine one, which Cam knows looks quite different from the version he uses for trickery, for lulling him into thinking there will be no physical harm.

Cam puts a lump of sugar into his tea and slowly picks up the spoon.

He stirs, savoring the cold metal on his fingertips.

He sets it down on the table and waits, listening to the soft metallic wobble as the bowl of the spoon comes to rest.

You will write it down again, the general says.

He is rubbing the gray bristle on his neck, and Cam follows his eye contact as it settles on the portraits of the two Ayatollahs looking down from the wall above.

When Cam was a child, the sight of the Ayatollahs frightened him.

It still does.

He looks away.

You will write it again, and you will leave nothing out.

It will be comprehensive and final.

Final?

Cam considers another question.

The General's silent gaze screams Do not.

The first draughts, right after his capture three years ago, were utter shit, like all first drafts.

To call them stories would be like calling the raw ingredients spread across your counter a meal.

No, they were just a bunch of facts, information wrung from his tortured lips and committed to bloodstained sheets of A4 paper.

But Cam knows he's being too hard on himself.

As a dentist, his writing had been limited to office memorandums and patient notes.

As a spy, his cables adopted similarly clinical tones.

Just the facts, Glitzman, his handler, the man who'd recruited him to work for Massad liked to say, leave the story to someone else.

Massad had preferred he write in English, not Swedish.

The general, of course, demands that he write in Persian, and it is in Persian that Cam has found his voice.

Now the cell becomes Cam's scriptorium.

In his dragging, tedious Persian script, he writes the Quranic inscription, In the name of God, honesty will save you, across the top of the cover page.

Cam knows that the general appreciates this self-talk reminder right up front.

Beneath it, Cam titles this as the first part of his sworn confession, and then signs his name.

Someone will fill in the date later, because though he does not know the date today, he also knows not to ask.

The general's men will fill in the location for their own files.

He writes the number one in the top left corner.

But which story should he tell?

The general said it was to be his masterpiece.

Perhaps the best of each, he thinks.

He would also like to write something the general will let him finish.

He would like to reach the end.

Across hundreds of drafts, no matter the type of story, Cam has only managed to write one version of the end.

It is the part he fears the most.

Someday, he has told himself, someday he will write a new beginning to the bleakness of the end.

Will he find it here on this last attempt?

A prisoner can dream, he thinks.

As always, Cam completes a final ritual before he starts this draft.

He imagines writing down his last remaining secret in crayon on one of these A4 sheets right in front of him.

One secret.

Three years in captivity, Cam has held on to only one.

Then he pictures a wooden cigar box.

He slides the paper with the secret inside.

In the early days of his captivity, he locked the real secret written on imaginary paper in the imaginary cigar box into an imaginary safe.

But the general's men broke into every physical safe in his apartment, and Cam thought he should also improve his mental defenses.

He now pictures the cigar box with his secret incinerated on a monstrous pyre, the lights and heat so fierce that every dark corner of his brain burns bright as day.

This way Cam's not lying when the general asks him if he's been truthful.

If the story is complete, he's written it all down, has he not?

The prisoner cannot be held responsible for how management handles the papers.

Cam presses the crayon to the paper and begins.