84. The Man Who Saved The World: A Friendship Shattered (Ep 5)

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On the afternoon of Thursday, the 16th of May, the Thunderbolt struck.

I was sitting at my desk in the resident's office when the cipher clerk brought in a telegram.

As I read the handwritten message, I felt sweat break out of my back, and for a second or two my vision clouded.

Fighting to control myself, I was dreadfully afraid that the clerk must notice how badly shocked I was.

In order to confirm your appointment as resident, said the cable, please come to Moscow urgently in two days' time for important discussions with Comrades Mikhailov and Alyoshin.

Instantly, I sensed that something was badly wrong.

Well, welcome to the Rest is Classified.

I am David McCloskey.

And I'm Gordon Carrera.

And that, of course, is Oleg Gordovsky writing years later in his memoir, Next Stop Execution, about this fateful day in May of 1985 when he's really on the cusp of an incredible professional accomplishment, becoming the actual, resident, the KGB resident, the most senior officer in London while he's spying for the British.

Right on the cusp of this achievement, he is mysteriously and very ominously called back to Moscow for consultations.

And now, Gordon, things are starting to look very dire and very bad for MI6's most prized spy.

That message, just come back for urgent consultations, important discussions in two days' time.

I mean, that is a warning sign.

You know, it's not something that had been pre-planned.

It's not something he'd expected.

There's not much time to decide.

It feels bad, but of course, he doesn't know it's bad.

And so Gordievsky is going to call an emergency meeting with MI6, and he's got only 48 hours to decide what to do.

How does he signal, by the way, for an emergency meeting?

Do we know?

It's just a...

No, I'm not sure actually at this point.

He's got a phone number, I think, he can call for that emergency meeting

so he's going to sit down with his handlers no longer john scarlet at this point and it's a quite a tricky conversation because on the one hand

if if they are onto him he's dead you know it's game over that's the price for treason and it's the end of everything that they've worked for but then on the other hand you know the prize is close being resident and if they were sure he was a spy is that what they'd say it's not so clear.

He's not been suddenly bundled into a van or told, you know, he's under suspicion.

So there's a question.

What do you do about it?

This is a really interesting discussion, I think.

And it's quite a tricky one.

And I think Oleg as well found it a difficult one.

Because he's going to meet his handlers for MI6.

And they're going to ask him if he knows any reason why he shouldn't return.

Now, the answer to that is no, because he doesn't know that he's compromised.

It just feels dangerous.

And they are saying to him, it's up to you to decide what to do.

You're the person in the hot seat.

You decide what to do.

They're saying, do you know that you shouldn't go back?

And he's, of course, saying no.

He said this to me years later.

If they'd asked him, does he feel he should go back?

that might have elicited a slightly different answer.

And the option is on the table to not go back, to basically defect

in London, to just leave.

And I think the MI6 people would say, no, we left it up to him.

But I think Gordievsky himself feels that sense of expectation and pressure from them, that they want him to go back.

And you can understand that a bit.

And I remember someone saying, you know, as he looked at the faces in the room, one person thought they saw in his eyes perhaps a hope for a reprieve and for someone telling him, don't go back and that if they'd said that he might have been relieved and and that they felt they could see this in his eyes as he looked around the room you know the hope that someone might make the decision for him rather than leave it up to him

but he doesn't know for sure

and I think you know he is a driven man you know it goes back to where we started with his character He is the long distance runner.

He is the guy who is, you know, who wants to finish the race.

He doesn't want to give up.

He's got that endurance, that desire to overcome the obstacles.

He's got the bravery.

He's got the dedication.

And I think, as we also talked about, he's got the ideological commitment to what he's doing.

If this had been someone just worried about his own safety or about money, I think you'd go, I'm out.

You know, I'm done.

But he just, he wants to do it.

He is driven to do it.

He's determined.

That ideological component, it seems hard to kind of even exaggerate it here.

It just, it seems so fundamental to who he is that

I suppose at this point, with

no certainty about what's awaiting him in Moscow, to just kind of quit, it would seem really out of character for him.

Because obviously, he's also a person who has to have taken the steps that he's taken.

He's got a tremendous amount of courage.

To me, it would feel out of step with what we know about Oleg Gordievsky for him to kind of wave the white flag and say, Well, I'll just defect, right?

I mean, if he had information

that there was a mole hunt underway inside the KGB, maybe it changes his mind.

But

it just seems out of step with who he is to kind of quit before he finishes the race.

Would you have gone back?

Would you have defected?

I think I would have gone back because I know that Gordievsky understands

the nature of the KGB.

And obviously, in the way that we're talking about the organization in this series, it has, you know, it's sort of a villainous place, but he works there.

These are rivals and whatnot, but they're also colleagues.

He's going home.

I guess with him

being, you know, sort of on the cusp of promotion, you could understand how they might want to talk to you in person about things before they give you the job.

So I think, given all of that,

I would share his concern, but I think I would have gone back.

Yeah.

What about you?

I'd like to think I would have gone back.

You'd like to think so.

Yeah.

I think we both maybe would like to think so.

Yeah.

But in any case, he does.

Yeah, he does.

He says he goes back, he says he's gonna go.

Valerie Petit, who we talked about before, she's the person who's been managing his case, she's the person who's been there from the late 70s inside MI6, inside MI6.

Yeah, she goes through an escape plan one more time.

He's only got two days, so he does his last assignment on a Saturday, May the 18th.

Takes his two small daughters, who he's going to leave behind, to a park in Bloomsbury, but he's actually leaving

thousands of pounds of cash behind an artificial brick for an agent to pick up.

So he's using his kids as cover there and then gets on the plane to Moscow.

So he arrives in Moscow.

It's the middle of May.

Once he steps off the plane, it's too late because he's not totally sure how much suspicion he might be under, if at all.

But immediately, there's those telltale signs, the slight pause

as the border guard at the airport looks at his passport and then the phone call.

Maybe it's nothing, but he just senses something's wrong.

He gets to his Moscow apartment.

And then this is the crucial bit for him, is that there are three locks on the door, and all three are locked.

And he never uses the third lock.

He only ever locks with the first two.

And that immediately tells him that someone else has been inside who didn't spot that and has come out and has locked all three locks.

He actually has to go get a locksmith to get in.

So he knows.

someone has been in his apartment and he knows therefore it's bugged and he knows now that he is definitely under suspicion.

He thinks there might be cameras, but he knows there's going to be bugging devices.

So now I think the pressure really starts to mount.

But he hasn't been arrested.

He's not arrested, right?

He's not arrested for, you know, when he comes back at customs, there aren't people waiting to jump him in his apartment.

So obviously he understands he's under suspicion, but he's also, he probably thinks they're not certain, right?

Because otherwise

they would have hauled him in at that point.

Yeah, exactly.

There's suspicions, but not arrests.

So he's thinking, maybe I can brazen this out.

So he goes to KGB headquarters, and again, he just senses in his colleague's eyes, his close colleagues, there's just this look of slight fear in their eyes as they look at him.

He can sense they're a bit wary of him.

There's something going on, which just, again, just gives them that sense that something is amiss.

But what's interesting is there's no interrogation at this point.

He's not summoned for a meeting.

They're basically letting him stew.

One thing does happen, though.

He bumps into a colleague, and and the colleague clearly doesn't know about the investigation because the colleague goes, hey, you know, have you heard?

All the illegals are being pulled out of Britain.

Now, that is a big

red warning sign.

These are the deep cover spies who it takes years to build up their identity and put them undercover.

And then they're being pulled out of Britain.

And, you know, why would you do that?

I mean, only if they're compromised, or if you're worried they might be compromised.

Presumably,

as an officer in line PR political intelligence, Gordievsky did know who those illegals were, right?

Once he's resident.

Yeah.

Once he's resident, he might know, but up to this point, the reason there would be any illegals in Britain at all is because he actually didn't have the names or identities of those illegals to provide to MI6.

He's got some details, but not all of them.

Okay.

But clearly, there's a bit of, you know, there's something going on in London.

And what's interesting is the KGB kind of let him stew

for a week.

A week.

There's a full week of tension before he gets a call on May 27th saying, can you please come over from a boss?

There are two people who want to talk to you about high-level agent penetration of Britain.

It's not good.

Disturbing subject line for the Zoom call invite to arrive.

Exactly.

Not great.

So he's driven to a small cottage on a compound, which is for guests of the first chief directorate for which he works at the KGB.

The sandwiches and drink, a couple of guys.

Now, only later does he remember that the other three drink the brandy out of one bottle, but he thinks he's served out of another bottle.

Lesson out there for listeners.

Ever meeting KGB officers, check which bottle they're serving you out of and make sure it's the same one.

Little pro tip from your podcast.

Sodium pentothal, we think?

Some kind of

truth serum.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because very quickly he says a strange out-of-body sensation comes over him and he's fighting to stay alert and he'll actually remember nothing more properly until he wakes up in a bed only in his vest and his underpants the next morning.

Now, he was probably supposed to have remembered nothing of that.

Disconcerting way to wake up, I would think.

It's like a big night out in he's wearing a vest and underpants.

In summer?

Yeah, that's all he's left wearing because I guess he undressed in this kind of delirious state.

I mean, I've never had...

Sodium pentothal.

Have you ever been fed it?

It's not necessarily.

Not that I know of.

Not that I know of.

He doesn't remember the interrogation, though, when he wakes up.

Well, he remembers fragments of it, and that's what's so interesting.

And he thinks one of the only reasons he can remember some fragments is that MI6 had given him some pills to keep him alert.

And he'd taken some that morning.

And he kind of thinks that might have just about

allowed him to remember just some bits of it, even if not the whole experience.

So he can recollect just these fragments.

And you can imagine him there in, you know, waking up the next morning, trying to remember, last thing he properly remembers is drinking some brandy.

And then these fragments come back into his mind during the day.

You know, and there's questions about books, books by Orwell and Solzhenitsyn that he had, questions about why his daughter knows the Lord's Prayer.

And then he starts to remember that it was a real interrogation.

We know very well that you've been deceiving us for years, someone had said.

And then there's an accusation.

We know who recruited you in Copenhagen, they say.

And they mention the name of the MI6 officer who really had recruited him.

And he can remember kind of vaguely saying, that's not true.

And they're saying, we know you're a British agent.

You'd better confess.

And they just go, confess, confess.

And then they start saying to him, you've already confessed.

So why not just do it again?

And they're talking to him slowly as if he's a child.

And he's just saying, no, I've got nothing to confess and he thinks as he wakes up he's pretty sure that he hadn't confessed but he knows now that they're on to him and clearly they're on to him but also they need a confession and i again it's interesting isn't it with the kgb for all their ruthlessness they need evidence and they need proof they're not just going to kind of

execute some guy without anything kind of concrete.

It's an interesting contrast in that service.

And I think think it goes back to even Stalin's day, where it's both lawless and legalistic at the same time.

Like you go back to the terror, they're shooting people every night in some of these prisons, and yet they need paperwork to justify it, right?

Yeah, and a confession often.

Yeah.

And a confession often, exactly, even if it's been extracted forcibly, right?

You've been intimidated into confessing something you didn't do.

Very paperwork-focused, mountains of paperwork inside the KGB.

And it is all about getting the confession.

And I mean, there's an interesting bit of advice, which is Kim Philby's advice.

And I always remember this.

He did a video to

talk to KGB officers.

I don't think Oleg was at it.

But I'm sure it got passed on.

And one of his bits of advice was: if you're ever confronted, never confess.

Because, you know, they are always trying to get the confession out of you and play up how much evidence they have.

And we saw it.

I mean, they did it with Bettany.

You know, when MI5, you're interrogating Bettany.

they have less evidence than they're making out, and they're trying to use that to get the confession.

So, again, pro tip for anyone captured as a potential traitor is don't confess.

Sorry, I'm maybe giving too much away, but yeah.

It also brings us back to this point of

how did the KGB get onto him?

Because

one would assume if Aldrich James in mid-May,

so, you know, a couple weeks before this, had given Oleg's name that

maybe you have an arrest?

I mean, if Ames says, we've been getting this reporting from the Brits and we ran this kind of analysis to figure out who it might be and Oleg Gordievsky is top of the list.

Or maybe, I guess, speculating here, maybe Ames just says we know that the Brits are running someone inside, you know, the Residentura in London, but we don't exactly know who it is.

And Ames would not have seen a report from the Brits Brits that's got Oleg's name on it.

So I guess you could see how, given that filter through Ames and the Americans, there could be some uncertainty, which would then explain

why the KGB wants the confession.

Yeah, but it does leave that mystery of whether it was definitely Ames.

But yeah.

So then the next morning, you know, he sees the two interrogators back at the office.

And rather comically, they have a go at him because he accused them of resurrecting the spirit of the Great Terror under Stalin.

And they look really annoyed about that.

So he actually apologises.

Yeah, they don't like that.

The interrogators are like that.

You don't want to hear that you're a Stalinist interrogator.

Meanwhile, in London, and this is also important, his wife, Layla, has been contacted and told the whole family need to get back to the Soviet Union in the next few days.

And they're told it's because Oleg has been taken ill.

Now, of course, when MI6 hear this, they know things are going bad because once your family's back in the Soviet Union, they're effectively more like hostages and he can't escape.

So they're in shock.

So Oleg's back in in Moscow after the interrogation he's summoned by a boss and he's told they know what they say is interesting they say they know he's been deceiving them the KGB and he is no longer going to be resident in London but weirdly he's going to stay in the KGB he'll be moved to a non-operational department and Oleg doesn't know how to how to react so he kind of goes it was a strange day the other day and it must have eaten something bad in the sandwiches

and the interrogator says no the sandwiches were fine kind of weird conversation where this is a strange conversation about sandwiches.

It wasn't the sandwiches, Oleg.

It was the brandy.

Yeah, the sandwiches were exceptional.

But, you know, he now knows they're onto him.

He also suspects that they don't have the evidence yet.

And what they're going to do is watch it now, try and collect evidence.

maybe see if he contacts mi6

because that would of course give them the evidence they need if he tries to run if he tries to contact them that's the evidence they need.

So now he's got a problem because he's got really intense surveillance around him.

His apartment block is mainly fellow KGB officers and everyone can see there's as many as 15 cars now outside, people outside the apartment, people in nearby parking lots, people

in markets nearby.

And the fact that it was quite obvious.

was probably designed to put Oleg under a bit of pressure to make him know he was under surveillance.

And he knows he's got to be careful because if he moves too fast, he's going to be in trouble.

I think he has one advantage, though, which is it looks like they're not using officers from the seventh directorate, kind of specialist surveillance teams, but they're using in-house surveillance teams from the first chief directorate, which is the overseas bit.

And it's the classic thing, whereas you want to...

It's your dirty laundry that you might have a mole.

And, you know, you don't want word to get out.

So you're going to use your own surveillance teams rather than tell the rest of the KGB.

But it means they're perhaps not quite as good as the kind of elite Moscow surveillance teams.

So I think that might play to his advantage.

Layla is now back with the two girls.

They're age five and three.

He just tells her there's some plotting against him.

Doesn't tell her what's really going on.

He's still not sure about that.

But now the pressure is growing.

He's drinking.

We said he didn't drink much, but now he's starting to drink and he's smoking.

And who does he go to see?

Smiley Mike.

Smiley Mike.

Smiley Mike.

The return of Smiley Mike.

I'm excited that I feel better now that Smiley Mike is back in the picture.

I love Smiley Mike and is a character.

I know.

Old friend Mikhail Lubimov, his old friend, his boss from Copenhagen, who's now left the KGB and become what else but a novelist.

What else?

What else?

They all try it, David.

Not many succeed, but they all try it.

Did Smiley Mike not succeed as a novelist?

Do we know, like, how did his literary career go?

Yeah, I think it did okay, actually.

I I think it did okay.

He wrote quite a few books.

So he opens the door and Lubimov can see Gordievsky's a mess, you know, and Oleg's, you know, one of the meetings, he steps into the kitchen, turns on the tap, and Lubimov is like, what are you doing?

Is this a counter-surveillance move?

Turning on the taps?

And it's just Gordievsky's like, I'm thirsty.

I need a drink.

My throat is dry.

I need vodka.

You know, he is stressed.

And Oleg tells...

Smiley Mike that he's been interrogated about dissident books.

And, you know, one of the reasons he's telling him is because the two of them have bought the books together.

And Libibov doesn't realize how serious it is because all he thinks it's about is dissident books.

He doesn't know about the suspicions.

So he tells him, like, don't worry if you get fired from the KGB, it's not the end of the world.

Maybe you can become a novelist too.

Become a novelist, too.

He's not aware of the impending sort of treason to do.

Yeah, exactly.

But then it's interesting because he'll leave from that first meeting and

Smiley Mike will go and he'll actually go and find his copies of dissident books and then bury them in the garden you know out of fear that

he's going to get in trouble too so gordievsky's now you can just sense this pressure building because also the the days are ticking on he's starting to take sedatives he's drinking rum which i don't think rum he normally drinks rum that's what he says that that seems like a surprising choice for a Russian KGB officer.

Yeah, you'd think it'd be vodka, wouldn't you?

You would.

Needs must.

Needs must.

So he's starting to think that he's going to have to kind of trigger the escape plan.

Now, this is going to be the crucial question is, can you trigger the plan and can you make it work?

Can you get to MI6 and can they get him out of Moscow?

Maybe they're Gordon with Gordievsky

about to crack under the pressure and the impending sort of deployment of this escape plan.

Let's take a break.

When we come back, we will see if he can manage to get out from the KGB's net.

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

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Welcome back.

Now, Gordovsky, Gordon, needs to get out.

And

he is going to be fortunate, I guess, that Valerie Petit.

in MI6 has actually spent a tremendous amount of time and energy building just such a plan to help him escape.

That's right.

This goes back actually, this plan to the late 70s and had first been formulated in around 1978 when Gordievsky is still in Copenhagen and he's going back to Moscow the first time and MI6 are unsure what might be in store for him so they want to have a plan.

So it's interesting they that already at this point they get one of the MI6 officers who's based in Moscow to go find signal sites that could be used for Gordievsky to signal to MI6 that he needs to escape or needs to contact them.

And that officer is going to go around scouting potential sites and then he's actually going to come out and travel out of Moscow via Helsinki in Stockholm to Copenhagen to discuss those signal sites with Oleg to see if he thinks they work.

And this is where I think it's really interesting because, of course, the advantage with Gordievsky is that he is a KGB officer.

He is a professional intelligence officer, which means he understands how to do a proper signal, what the risks are, and what could go wrong.

And he can help them advise on the plan all the way through from that period in the late 70s.

There's one interesting story someone was telling me, which is that, you know, they were looking at potential post boxes where someone could, you know, post a letter

which might go abroad or get to.

MI6, but they were trying to work out, is there a post box that could be used?

And this officer works out.

There's a particular post box in Moscow, which looks perfect because it's you know not overseen by anything, it's around a corner.

So, if you had surveillance, you could lose the surveillance, you turn the corner, drop it in the post box, and then move on.

And as the surveillance follows you, they wouldn't have seen that.

And so, he says to Oleg, Well, this is a great potential post box, and Oleg goes, I know it, I know it, and don't use it because it's so good.

The KGB know that any intelligence service will use it as a drop point and therefore all the letters in it get checked

and and you know that is the kind of detail that Oleg can kind of give them because he is inside the KGB and knows it and so originally they're looking for potential signals back at the Copenhagen days And there are three reasons why

he might need to give a signal.

One is that actually war is about to break out and he's got to tell them.

Another is that there's a high-level penetration of the West, which of course might endanger him.

And the third is that if he's under suspicion and needs to get out.

And so that's the original plan from the late 70s.

And then this gets updated over the years and is kept up to date by Valerie.

And originally that plan is for his whole family to be able to get out and they update it as the daughters are born to work it out.

But now, crucially, Oleg has to decide what to do about his family.

And this is the kind of big decision point.

And it's going to to have huge consequences, I think, for him as a person.

And it's hard because

escaping with a wife and two really young daughters in tow that

almost exponentially increases your chances of it of being caught or something goes wrong, doesn't it?

I mean, it just makes the odds much harder to get four people out, two of them who are very young.

And of course, then it's disaster for all of you if you get caught.

Well, and I don't think he thinks thinks he can really trust his wife, right?

I mean,

he's got a figure that even if he tells them like the day of, that there's a real chance that not only would maybe she doesn't come or she keeps the daughters or both, or she might then tell the KGB, right?

I mean, she's kind of a KGB brat herself, right?

Her family is deeply connected to the institution.

She doesn't seem to share Oleg's

views on the system entirely, right?

And his descent.

So I don't think he trusts her.

Yeah, I think that's true.

He loves her, but he doesn't trust her with this secret.

Yeah, that's right.

So I think there's a mixture, isn't there, of practical reasons why it's hard to get the family out, but also there's a risk question there.

So, you know, I think he decides it's safer for not to do it.

I mean, we would obviously never abandon our families if under pressure in Moscow and required to get out.

But I don't blame Oleg, you know, actually.

In fact, I think most people would, in this scenario, understand that decision, even if it's going to be pretty consequential.

Well, and it's pretty heavy, isn't it?

Because

his wife is going away with the girls up to the Caspian where her father has a dacha.

And

I mean,

the kind of way he describes this in his memoir is...

It's really heavy.

He says, 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.

I mean,

talk about, I mean, this,

it's astounding, isn't it?

I think most humans would make the decision to remain with their family, sort of regardless of what comes.

But he's so dedicated

to

this mission

to kind of

really wreck the Soviet Union and the KGB from within.

I mean, he's, you know, he's put it above being with his family.

He really has.

And he'll pay a price for it because he won't see them for years and the relationships will never be the same after that.

So he's about to go away for a brief trip to a sanatorium out of town and he wants to leave a note for MI6.

And there is one drop site at St.

Basil's Cathedral, which is this wonderful, you know, famous, iconic building in Red Square, right by the Kremlin.

So on June the 30th, so already like a month and a half after he first came back to Moscow, he's going to do a three-hour dry clean to get to St.

Basil's.

And he's got a note.

I always remember him reading this note to me.

I got him to read it.

And he said, I'm under strong suspicion and in bad trouble.

Need exfiltration soonest.

Beware of radioactive dust and car accidents.

And maybe it's worth explaining the last two because it's not just a random

it's not it's not this the signs of a man who's had too much rum he's actually very i think attuned to the risk i mean so i guess the radioactive dust he's referring to is what i guess has come to be known as spy dust it's it's nitrophenyl pentadienol uh which is known as as metka in in russian and i it's basically a tagging agent right that the kgb would use they would put it on cars door handles um places where

foreign intelligence officers would actually make contact with it, and then they could actually see if it might show up.

Like, for example, if they're looking at Gordievsky, they could go in with essentially some form of like a black light and see if he had any of the dust in his department or on his car that would establish a connection between him and the Foreign Intelligence Service, right?

So the dust, that actually is a real, I mean, very real thing.

And then, I mean, the car accidents, I guess, was that a reference to staging a car accident.

Yeah, staging a car accident to sort of intimidate someone, to create a problem for them, to get, you know, create an excuse to declare someone persona non grata.

So he's, you know, these are all sort of tried and true methods and tactics of the KGB.

And so he's got this note with this warding, and he does the surveillance route from the department store, this big department store on the side of Red Square.

And then he goes into the, to the church.

And I actually, I recreated this route in Red Square many years ago, I think 2009,

when I was in Moscow.

I was doing a radio documentary, you know, about Gordievsky.

And I'd interviewed him.

And I actually kind of recreated this route to walking through up into St.

Basil's.

But when Oleg does it, you know, he heads to the first floor.

And he finds a sign saying upper floor closed for redecoration.

And that's the place where he was.

That's what you want to see.

That's not what you want to see.

And so he has to walk out and he's got this note and he basically puts it in his mouth.

He chews it and spits it out.

So he's now going to have to try again to signal.

And he goes and looks at his instructions for the escape plan, and they're kept hidden in the sleeve of a book.

So he has to kind of unpick the sleeve.

And, you know, this is on his return then from his sanatorium trip.

So we're now into mid-July when he needs to signal for the escape.

Now, this, again, I find these signal sites in Moscow just fascinating because what what they need is is a site site where both him and MI6 could plausibly see each other or walk past each other and it not be suspicious but then both spot each other and you need somewhere where that's going to work you know in every season you know whether it's winter or summer you know if a road is closed and and they decide on a spot on a big busy street outside a bread store near the Ukraine hotel now one of the reasons is it's not far from Oleg but it's also not far from where diplomats diplomats and MI6 officers lived.

So it meant that they had a reason why they would be passing that because they're coming out of their apartments you know and going past that every evening.

And

the idea is that potentially every night, but certainly every Tuesday night at around 7.30 an MI6 officer had to pass that site outside the breadstore.

and see if Oleg was there.

Now, the first thing is that they have to do that, come rain or come shine, always,

every time and all year.

And one of the interesting things is they have to do it not just when Oleg's in town or where they think he might be in town, but you have to do it all the time, even when he's not in town.

Because you don't.

Actually, if you just do it when he's in town,

that makes it even more suspicious, right?

Yeah, it's got to look like it's part of an established pattern of life of the MI6 case officer.

And over time, I mean, in this case, we've been monitored for seven years this is something that's probably

whatever kgb surveillance is on these mi6 officers probably bored to death by this point and have noted like this is it's become so normal for this to happen that it it is it does not look anomalous at all but i mean seven years 1978 to 1985 they've been checking this remarkable every week and then finally on tuesday the 16th of july 1985 he's ready to trigger it that evening the signal needs to be incredibly precise.

You don't want him to just be walking past because he could just have had to walk past.

And you don't want to trigger an escape plan and everything else.

So you need to also come up with something unusual and quite specific so that if you do see it, you know that is deliberate and not just chance.

And, you know, as we see, it's slightly absurd.

This is a bread shop where there's lots of people, including foreigners, kind of mingle.

And the idea is Oleg needs to be holding a a plastic bag from the safeways which is a grocery store in britain and he needs to be holding that bag and that's the signal he wants to get out and an mi6 officer is going to acknowledge it by walking past him carrying a harrod shopping bag and eating a western chocolate bar very specific it's it's very specific

i mean bordering on the absurd i I mean, if someone's life wasn't in danger, you'd think this is slightly absurd, wouldn't you?

I mean, but I guess that's the point.

It's got to be unusual and specific.

And someone said, look, actually carrying a shopping bag or carrying a Western shopping bag.

And of course, Oleg had been in London.

So the idea he's carrying a Safeway shopping bag.

That's not abnormal.

It's not completely abnormal.

You could get away with that.

And the fact that a Brit is carrying a Harrod shopping bag is not completely, you know, each thing is kind of plausible while being very unusual, I guess.

And then, you know, one of the MI6 officers will say, believe me, I've had so many Kit Kats or Mars bars in the glove compartment of my car that I absolutely hate them to this day.

So that's the plan.

He's going to trigger it in the evening.

Now, the first problem is in the morning, his father-in-law calls and invites him to dinner that evening.

I mean, how bad is that?

You know, because the KGB are listening.

It's been two months.

He's been like in this purgatory.

But you can imagine the father-in-law is probably thinking, oh, my daughter's gone away.

Poor Oleg's by himself.

I'll invite him around to dinner.

And little does he know, it's like dinner on the evening, he's supposed to be triggering an escape signal.

So he says, yes, he could make it, because he thinks he's got to say he's going to make it, even if he's going to be late, because, you know, you can't, he hasn't got a reason for the.

And of course, KGB are listening.

They're eavesdropping on the phone.

Then Smiley Mike calls.

Lubimov calls.

And he's calling to invite him to his dacha the following week.

It's the friendship, isn't it?

He's saying he knows Gordievsky's in a bad way.

He knows he's stressed.

Yeah.

He knows he's stressed.

And he's saying, catch a train Monday morning, be in the last carriage, arrives 11.13 to the Dacha, and Gordievsky says yes.

So he walks out mid-afternoon, does a three-hour, nearly three-hour counter-surveillance route, summer evening.

He gets near the bread shop.

He sees what looks like a black Volga car used by the KGB pull up on the pavement.

And he's looking at the driver.

And the driver looks back and he thinks this is surveillance.

And they're on to me.

But then some people get in and out the car and it moves off he's at the point he's got his bag out now at that point the head of the mi6 station is out for dinner with his wife in the car being tailed of course and he it's not his turn to check the site but he's driving past because as we said it's you know he lives nearby and as he drives past the site he sees a man carrying a shopping bag just after 7 30 and he's thinking i think that's the signal but is my colleague gonna see him?

Has he missed him?

You know, so he's got this kind of question in his mind.

Do you turn around?

Do you kind of, do you suddenly park the car and acknowledge it?

But that will look really weird, won't it, if you do that?

But fortunately, his colleague, who's the kind of the second MI6 officer in the station, had also spotted Gordievsky as he drove past, parks his car around the corner, says to his wife, I need to get some bread from the bread shop.

Fortunately, his wife doesn't go, we've got lots of bread at home.

Why do you need another another loaf?

She knows what's on.

So he walks out the car, pulls out his green Harrods bag, pulls out a Mars chocolate bar, starts to eat it, walks past Stoleg.

The two men lock eyes just for a second, but they look at each other, and that's all it takes.

It's on.

The escape is activated.

It's got to get moving now for Pimlico to be put in place.

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

Just that one second.

It's the magic of a Mars bar, Gordon.

It can do amazing things.

And I mean, I guess.

This episode is brought to you by

Mars.

So

it triggers, it basically will start, I guess, two days later.

And

in that two-day period, I mean, I guess one of the things that you absolutely need, if you're MI6, is you need to let the prime minister know because if this thing, I mean, frankly, if it goes well or goes wrong, there could be real political fallout.

Yeah, yeah.

And so at this point, you need to get political clearance because getting an agent out of Moscow is risky.

Everyone thinks it could go wrong.

If you get caught in the act of an MI6 team trying to bring someone out, it's going to be a blow-up in international relations.

And of course, as we've just said, Thatcher is trying to improve relations with Gorbachev.

This is a point of trying to improve relations.

And so it is a decision for Thatcher to take herself.

Here's the problem.

And again, it's like everything that can go wrong does go wrong, nearly, because at that moment, she's not in London.

She's not in Downing Street.

She's up in Balmoral Castle with the Queen at one of the Queen's kind of residences in Scotland.

And there's a regular point in the summer where the Prime Minister, by tradition, goes and stays.

with the queen although

famously thatcher and the queen did not get on terribly well, I think.

People saw that in the crown, too.

Yeah, we saw that in the Crown.

Saw this episode, I think.

Yeah, I think, yeah,

playing games, and Prime Minister Thatcher was not, she couldn't kind of get in the flow.

I don't know if that was real, but that's the image I have when I think about this.

And it's interesting because they're so careful, aren't they?

Because they know

they can't make the call on the phone to explain it.

So someone's got to go up there.

Thatcher's foreign affairs advisor, Charles Pohl, is going to race to Heathrow, catch a flight to Aberdeen, then a car to Balmoral.

now he arrives and yeah I talked to him about this he arrives at Balmoral and and and the problem is he's got to see thatcher and it's really urgent but there's all the kind of am I allowed to call them flunkies the the equerries I think that's the official term strap hangers

whatever the correct term is sorry I'll get into trouble for that but who are there to protect anyone getting close bureaucratically to the queen are all like, you can't just walk in.

They're like, what are you here for?

And he's like, can't tell you.

And they're like, we're the Queen's private secretary.

We're the blunkies.

We're the blunkies.

And, you know, he's meeting the top, you know, person, the private secretary to the queen, who's like, you've got to tell me why

you want to see that, you know,

why you've got to kind of break into this meeting and see the prime minister.

And he's like, you know, nope, I can't do it.

So eventually he does, he does get there.

Thatcher immediately goes, yes.

She's invested in the person she knows as Mr.

Collins, you know, in this agent.

She's taken a really personal interest in him, his reporting, but also his safety.

And so she says, we have an obligation and we will not let him down.

So on that level, it's a go.

There is another obstacle, which is in London.

Again, just by chance,

there's a new British ambassador to Moscow who is due to go out that week.

And he's briefed on the escape plan.

He's kind of excited about this going on in his first week.

It was is good.

I think it's fair to say he was very, very unhappy about it.

I mean, which is, it's very foreign office, isn't it?

Because no offense, friends at the foreign office, but I think they don't like a fuss and they don't like the spies causing a fuss on their patch, do they?

Was he against it though, or was he just

set?

Yeah.

I think he knew ultimately that the Prime Minister is going to sign it off and it's her call.

So he hasn't got the ability to stop it.

And that's going to be made clear clear to him.

But I think he is pretty much saying this is a really bad idea and this is going to be disastrous.

And, you know, he can just see a massive diplomatic row in his first week when his team are caught smuggling a spy out.

And, you know, he's thinking, this could be the shortest posting in diplomatic history if I get expelled.

But what are they going to do?

Leave Mr.

Collins there to be...

to be shot?

Like, it doesn't seem like a good outcome.

I asked someone about this when I was preparing this.

So I said to someone, what would have happened?

Because Gordievsky triggers this, right?

And then once it triggers it, he gets the recognition signal from the MI6 officer with the Mars bar.

So as far as he knows, it's on and he's going to start making the moves, as we'll see, to get him out.

What would have happened if clearance had been denied?

If they decided it's too risky?

And the awful truth is, he would have made his way, as we'll see, up to a meeting place, and there would have been no one there to meet him.

There was no way of contacting him and stopping his side of the plan in motion.

So I think there's also that kind of pressure and that obligation to him to know, you are really letting him down if you don't go ahead with this now.

You know,

this is high risk to try and get him out.

And there are definitely people at MI6HQ, you know, at Sentry House, who think it's a trap.

They think Gordievsky has already been blown.

He's had his wife recalled.

This is just a trap to expose our officers and to have a pretext to have a big row.

And the whole thing is a provocation.

And so, you know, some of the people, pessimists, give it a one in 20 chance of working, one in 20, 5% chance.

I mean, that is pretty bad.

And yet, they're still going to do it.

You have a deep obligation to this agent, right?

I mean,

your service, MI6 or any intelligence service, really,

has to

the currency with an asset has got to be some measure of trust, a certainty on the part of the asset that

they will be protected if they

sort of fly a signal like this.

I mean, it seems almost inconceivable to me that at the end of the day, I mean, the MI6 people involved in this would have lost their minds if the decision had come down from the politicos that, you know, we're just going to let this guy, we're going to hang him out to dry i mean yeah you probably think that people who resign the service and and leak it you know if if that is yeah right yeah yeah they would i think you're right there would have been deep anger so they know it's on so there's kind of some communication some cable traffic going back between the embassy in in moscow and headquarters in london to say right it's going to be on and it's heading towards basically friday being the moment when the wheels start to turn to get him out on the weekend, so Gordievsky knows Friday is his kind of go day.

It's interesting.

There's one more phone call, though, he makes on Thursday.

Again, it goes back to the really personal nature of this story because he's going to call Lubimov, Smiley Mike, again.

And this conversation, I think, is really interesting because it's a, you know, they have been the closest of friends.

And there is an element of

in which Gordievsky is going to use that friendship in a way which I think is kind of painful to some extent because Oleg calls Lubimov on the Thursday morning and to confirm the fact that they're going to meet next week because remember he said he's going to the dacha to Lubimov's dacha and Lubimov notices this kind of confidence in his friend's voice which is different from the nervous wreck you know who was drinking vodka and turning on the taps a few weeks earlier.

Now Gordievsky knows the phone is bugged but he then asks Lubimov an odd question.

Did Lubimov remember a short story by Somerset Maugham, this kind of British spy writer, called Mr.

Harrington's Washings?

And now this is a weird reference because the story by Maugham, who's a kind of semi-spy himself in the First World War era, involved a plan to escape from Russia over the border from Finland.

And that is exactly the place where Gordievsky is going to go the following day as he puts Operation Pimlico into practice.

And it's crazy because he's saying on a phone which is bugged to a friend, do you remember that novel?

And in that novel are the seeds...

I mean, in general terms, not in precise terms, of what he is going to do to try and escape from the clutches of the KGB.

It's wild, isn't it?

Why do that?

If you're Gordievsky?

The way he explains it, it's a last two fingers up at the KGB, if that makes sense to you, the two finger.

I think it's a British reference to be thumbing your nose at somebody.

Thumbing your middle fingers at somebody.

Does that imply both middle fingers raised?

It's going like that.

Sorry, to use it.

But it means basically going, screw you, KGB.

It's like, I'm smarter than you I'm better than you I think it says I'm more cultured than you because he's kind of like I'm gonna have a joke because I'm gonna let you know what I'm planning to do and I'm so confident that you KGB guys are so stupid and uncultured that you will not understand this reference and be able to work it out and stop me.

I mean, it is crazy, isn't it?

But I kind of like it.

We get a flash of the ego here, you know, the sort of sense of because I mean, really throughout the story, we've been describing him, of course, as ideologically committed, but also as this kind of very deliberate, very disciplined guy who was able to really control himself to an incredible degree and compartmentalize himself.

We haven't talked a lot about maybe his ego, but you do kind of get a little flash of it here of the sense that there's some catharsis for him in demonstrating demonstrating in a real physical way that he is going to win and that he's superior to them.

He has to be able to do that.

That's what it seems to them.

I think that's right.

Yeah.

He wants to know and prove and tell them he's better than them.

That's it.

And so he's going to sleep that night, Thursday night, with the doors of his Moscow flat barricaded out of fear that something might happen that night.

Although, of course, if they really want to get to him, they they can.

They'll get through the barricades.

They'll get through the barricades.

But I guess it's maybe just again.

It's just a psychological thing, isn't it?

Because he knows the next day is when he's going to go.

So he's barricaded in him in and then waiting for Friday morning and for Friday when he's going to try and make his run for it.

Well, and then I guess it's really escape or death, Gordon, for Olaf Gordievsky.

And that feels like the right cliffhanger to end this episode on.

And next time, in the thrilling conclusion of this series about Oleg Gordievsky, we are going to look at his escape and see if he can get out of Russia and get away from the sort of claws of the KGB.

That's right.

But of course, if you can't wait, you can listen to that episode now and lots more goodies.

You do not have to eat a Mars bar carrying Harrison.

We have our own escape for you.

We have our own.

We have a signal site.

You can go online to the restisclassified.com and join the declassified club.

No free chocolate, but bonus episodes, which will tell you the inside scoop for this story and lots of other exciting things.

But for everyone else, 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 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 finger tips, 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?

2,721 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 Ayatollah's looking down from the wall above.

When Cam was a child, the sight of the Ayatollah's 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 drafts, 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.

Masad 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 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.