THE SPY IN
THE ARCHIVE

How one man tried to kill the KGB

GORDON
CORERA

Copyright

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2025

Copyright © Gordon Corera 2025

Gordon Corera asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Photo of Lubyanka Square by unknown author c. 1900

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Source ISBN: 9780008644796

Ebook Edition © May 2025 ISBN: 9780008644819

Version: 2025-05-06

Dedication

‘Dedicated to all those who want to unveil the truth, but could not do so.’

Vasili Mitrokhin’s inscription for his archive

And you shall know the truth
And the truth shall make you free

John 8:32

Inscribed in the lobby of the CIA’s Old Headquarters Building at Langley

Prologue

THE SKY WAS dark and heavy with storm clouds as a yellow minibus with a ‘Baltic Tours’ sign painted on the side pulled up by the docks at Klaipėda. A sharp-eyed observer on that afternoon of 7 November 1992 might have realised they were not the only ones watching as an odd collection of characters disembarked. Hovering at the edges were a group of tough-looking figures, bulges beneath long coats tracing the shape of weapons as they scanned the decaying, industrial docks on Lithuania’s Baltic coast for any sign of trouble.

The fact that this was the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Russian Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power and led to the creation of the Soviet Union was not a coincidence.

The tour party could not have looked more out of place. A suave, rakish, well-dressed man with greying hair seemed to be directing events. Another man, heavier built, wearing glasses, a blue scarf and a long trench coat seemed to be helping. An elderly woman walked slowly with a stick. She looked bewildered. Another woman with a red beret, perhaps in her sixties, appeared anxious and tried to reassure her.

But then something seemed to go wrong. There was shouting. And swearing. It came from a figure who was hard to see. It sounded like it was in Russian. A lie had been uncovered and a life turned upside down.

The man in charge was remonstrating with his heavy-built comrade who seemed momentarily lost, unsure what to do. The suave man shouted something and the heavy-built man raised a fist. It came down hard. Next, what looked to be the limp body of a younger man was slung over a shoulder and carried up a gangway onto a waiting boat.

The fact this looked more than a little like an abduction was precisely what worried some in the British Secret Service. It was just one reason among many why it was decided at the very highest level not to talk about exactly what transpired that day. A cloak of secrecy and misdirection would be thrown over events that would last for decades. That was despite the fact what had transpired in Klaipėda would change the world. At that moment in homes from South London to suburban Maryland, from Paris to New Delhi, Rome to Sydney, thousands of people were unaware that the sands of time on their lives of secrecy and betrayal had just run out. Ghosts of the Cold War were emerging from the grave. But there was more than just history. Almost everyone believed that conflict was now over. Yet there were a few who could see that the danger had not passed and would return.

There was one other figure in the tour party. Watching events unfold, a wiry, older man was the calm centre of a storm. He did not appear anxious or nervous, those who were there remember. Not even as the limp body of a man was slung over a shoulder. Instead, he stood erect and still, his eyes intense. He looked younger than the seventy years he had lived. For him, the steps from the minibus to the waiting boat might be dangerous but they represented the culmination of his life’s journey. He carried with him a warning that he believed the world needed to hear and a weapon with which to do battle against his foe. The importance of his warning would be missed by almost everybody, and his weapon would draw blood but not deal a mortal blow. At that moment though, he still believed that he was finally about to slay the beast that had preyed upon his country and inhabited his nightmares.

1

The Walk-In

Six months earlier – Vilnius, Lithuania, March 1992

OVER MANY YEARS the old man, spry with grey hair, had learned to suppress his inner rage and replace it with an outward blank demeanour. Appearing unimpressive and uninteresting had served him well. And that day he was counting on it to keep him alive.

He had dressed down for the occasion. Those who met him say he looked almost like a tramp. The look he was actually trying for was that of a poor Russian peasant, one of those hardy folk with weathered faces and held-together luggage whom no one paid attention to as they sat hunched at the station waiting for their train. This image was not simply a cover story. In his own mind, the man saw himself not just as an ordinary peasant but one of those from Russian folk stories who had been called on for an act of unusual heroism.

Seventy years old, scruffy and unshaven, he was pulling along a small two-wheeled luggage cart. Strapped to it was a grubby duffle bag. The impression of being some kind of oddball had been important when he had crossed the border out of Russia on the overnight train.

Normally, the peasants at the station were heading home from the city with their bags laden with all the food they could not buy elsewhere. But with him, it was different. The sausages in his bag were only there to hide what he was smuggling out of Moscow.

These were chaotic times, and the border guards in their olive uniforms and wide-brimmed hats were less rigorous than they used to be, but they still had to think he was just an old man visiting a relative. If they had suspicions and decided to search him then the bag would give up its secrets. Beneath the food and the clothes was a weapon.

He had made it across the border but he was still not safe. He knew all too well that his enemy was present in this country and could still reach him. And anyway, he was never really comfortable in a city, let alone a foreign one. Forests encased by snow were his home. At least Vilnius was cold though. It had been an unusually hard winter and there was no sign of spring. That late March day, the temperature struggled to get above freezing.

The walk north from the train station to his destination was a long one, past the market and the narrow streets of the old town with its mishmash of Baroque churches and grey Soviet buildings. The cobbled paths made pulling his bag difficult as he passed near the remains of the old castle. The shops were better stocked, their windows displaying fancier clothes and fresher food than back home where there were queues for near-empty shelves and overpriced goods. This was another reminder of what he saw as the plight of the ordinary Russian people. His old employer’s headquarters were on the other side of town. He knew that it was a place where in the darkest days of the past, prisoners would be taken from padded cells where they had been tortured across a courtyard to a cellar. There they would be summarily shot, their bodies hauled up and out through a small window to be carted away.

On this journey, he was, as he had been for most of his life, alone. No one else knew what he was doing. Not even his wife Nina. And definitely not his son, Vladimir, even though so much of what he had done was for him.

Finally, a busy traffic-filled road took him to a roundabout. On the far side was the imposing Church of St Peter and St Paul. Outside it looked plain, but inside the church was a riot of ornate Baroque. Older ways were just beneath the surface in Lithuania and the church lay on top of an old pagan shrine. It was built to mark liberation from Russia centuries earlier. Lithuania was now just re-emerging from another period of occupation. The previous January protesters had been crushed under Russian tanks outside the city’s TV station off in the distance. But that had only spurred the drive for independence for the Baltic state, a drive that hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union.

That collapse had loosened border controls and so at last, after many years of waiting, the old man had decided to make his move. Lithuania might be free but Moscow’s presence still hung over the Baltic nation. Tens of thousands of members of the Red Army remained at bases in the country and its spies and informers were everywhere. The old man knew more than anyone what they were capable of. He did not go into the church but instead crossed the road. Directly in front of him, up seven steps, was the British embassy – a suitably grand building with a balcony and twin crests above its pair of large doors, a lion looking down on him.

Each step carried danger. The chance to finally be the hero he had imagined but also to lose everything. Would this time be any different? He needed to hide his frustration and fear. Coming here to the British had not been the original plan. His previous efforts to take these steps had been met with bitter disappointment.

2

The Americans

THE OLD MAN had tried the Americans. And not just once. That had been in Riga, in neighbouring Latvia, as well as here in Vilnius. One time he had shown up at their embassy and been dismissed without even getting a chance to explain. Another time, he had at least managed a conversation. Come back another time, he had been told. But they did not seem interested. They seemed to think he was just like all the others. He had at least managed to open up his bag and show them what he had, handing over a document. It was one he had laboured on for years. And yet still, they had not understood. This had left him utterly bewildered.

He had been convinced the CIA would welcome him with open arms but instead he had been left out on the street. Worse, at one point he had spent what felt like hours sat in the busy reception of the embassy, terrified that he might be spotted, before eventually being dismissed. Perhaps his appearance had been the problem? Or his inability to speak more than a few words of English? He could not know that the real story was more complex.

The US embassies were freshly minted. A few months earlier, the Baltic states had been part of the Soviet Union but when they had declared independence, Western countries had raced to open up diplomatic missions. These were haphazard affairs, overburdened and understaffed. One time the old man had shown up, he had indeed been dismissed out of hand. But another time in Vilnius he had met the right person but at the wrong time. The man he had spoken to was, as he hoped, from the CIA. He was the chief of the small station the agency had opened and a Russian speaker. But the officer literally had their bags packed to head out of the door for their next posting. Come back in another week or two, the American had said, promising to leave a note for their successor. But when that successor had met the old man, all he had seen in front of him was a strange, grubby figure whom he did not take seriously. We are not interested. Beat it. That had been the message.

The man would not know but one of his visits had aroused some interest. Details of his arrival had been cabled back to CIA headquarters in Langley. That was the proper policy with what were called ‘walk-ins’. For all the work trying to recruit agents at cocktail parties, most of the best spies offered themselves up by simply walking into an embassy with no warning and offering to hand over secrets. But so did a lot of fantasists and people on the make who were after a fast buck. So you needed to sort the wheat from the chaff. A walk-in might also be sent deliberately by your opponents to fool you. In these cases, your adversary would ‘dangle’ their own loyal people as double agents to tie you up in knots and smoke out who the intelligence officers were at your embassy. To deal with all of these complexities, procedures had been put in place to deal with them. This might involve having a ‘throw-away’ officer whose cover was already blown to conduct initial meetings so they could take the measure of someone. They could send word back to headquarters who would make the final decision on whether or not to proceed with a follow-up meeting.

The problem for the old man was that he had walked in at the wrong time. A new and controversial policy had been instituted the previous year in the CIA division which looked after the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Milt Bearden, a Texan with a touch of swagger, had been sent in to take over the division as the Cold War came to an end. He had never been part of the intense, insular world dedicated to targeting the Soviet Union. He had been brought in to shake up what many saw as the closed old boys club. One way he did that was by tightening up the rules on walk-ins.

There had been what seemed like an endless stream of people from their old adversary looking to trade whatever nuggets they had in the hope of asylum, a house in Florida and a pot of cash. Some were making it up. Others were low-grade. ‘Another drunk KGB colonel,’ the joke went at headquarters. A couple of KGB guys were turning up at embassies every month. It cost between one and two million dollars to resettle one in the US, maybe three million if there was a family. The CIA was responsible for the money and the hassle, and Bearden had become sceptical the juice was worth the squeeze.

Those in the field had been instructed to hold off recruiting new agents while attempts were made to build a working relationship with Russian spies by sitting down and talking to them through what was called liaison. ‘We are cancelling them as the primary target as their dicks are in the dirt. We will get everything we need from liaison,’ was the message CIA officers in the field remember getting from Bearden. The bar for people walking in and offering secrets had got a whole lot higher. ‘Someone had to give us the dump up front,’ was how Bearden put it. Recruitments, long-term relationships and offers of asylum were not to be placed on the table other than in the most exceptional cases.

The instructions had caused uproar. Old hands of what was called ‘Russia House’ at CIA had spent their careers hunting for every opportunity to recruit a Soviet asset and could not believe they were being told to stand down. Bearden had moved on to a new role by the start of 1992 but the policy of moving on from the old games was still in place. It had not just been Bearden anyway. This was the new direction set by the CIA leadership and the State Department. So when a cable about a grubby old man in the Baltics with a duffle bag arrived in Langley, there had been only a brief discussion. A few thought he was a classic dangle, someone who had been sent to feed false information to the CIA, perhaps in order to divert it from understanding why it had lost so many agents in Moscow a few years back. The Russians had already played that trick a year or two back and a young KGB man had led the CIA a merry dance. No one wanted to be fooled again. Others wondered if he might be a test by Moscow to see if the CIA was still up to its old tricks and all the stuff about building more normal relations was a ruse by the Americans. If they took him in, then the Russians would point the finger and accuse the CIA of double dealing. And if he was for real and the Russians found out about it, that could cause problems for the new relationship.

Anyway, an old man long retired, who had pulled some papers out of a bag which looked like he had typed up himself, did not seem nearly good enough to make an exception over. To do that, you needed as the jargon put it, someone with indisputable bona fides and exquisite access to secrets. This guy seemed like a librarian. All he had were some notes which he could have scribbled down himself and made up. There had been some dissent, especially from a few veterans who wanted to at least check out what he had. But a decision was taken – no shakes for the old guy with the bag. Word went back to the Embassy. Don’t bother.

The man knew none of these reasons for his rejection or even that there had been a discussion. He had been stunned. And angry. They had not grasped that the bag he was trundling round with him like a shabby travelling salesman contained only a glimpse of the riches on offer. He had spent decades forging a weapon, dedicating his life to it and taking enormous risks. He was offering a means to destroy a great evil which had possessed his nation and had its people in its grasp.

In his mind’s eye, he had developed a clear picture of what this enemy looked like. It was a monster. A hydra – or dragon – with three heads. He felt he understood the true nature of this beast more than any other man or woman alive or who had ever lived. The reason was that he had spent almost all of his adult life in its belly, working as its servant. And now, if the beast did not catch him first and if he could only find someone to listen to him, he was going to kill it.

3

A Nice Cup of Tea

British Embassy, Vilnius, March 1992

THE RECEPTIONIST, A young Lithuanian woman, opened the British Embassy’s door. A grubby, lean old man, unshaven and poorly dressed, was standing in front of her. He wanted to see a member of diplomatic staff. He had important information. Please wait in the reception area, she said. She motioned to a space on the left of the entrance where some chairs had been placed.

The old man glanced at the newly bought furniture and rugs. He had never been to Britain and knew little about it other than what he had read in the files. These had painted a picture of a country of class oppression and stuffy tradition. A certain coldness of character was said to mark the people out.

The British Embassy may have looked impressive on the outside but inside it was a fledgeling operation held together on a shoestring, a warren of small rooms. Britain’s Ambassador, Michael Peart, had been given just a week’s notice to set up an embassy a few months earlier. He had initially run everything out of room 602 at a local hotel until he discovered an art gallery in a grand old house and persuaded his superiors to quickly snap the building up before anyone else did.

Just a few weeks before the old man walked in, the Union flag had been hoisted up on a snowy day in the new embassy grounds. Half a dozen members of staff looked proudly on. The transition for the building, like the new country, was haphazard. The electricity supply was so weak that when the Ambassador’s wife switched on the cooker inside the residence which was also situated in the grounds, the heaters inside the main embassy building switched off.

The old man tried to hide his disappointment when a dark-haired, young woman walked into the reception room and greeted him. He assumed that, once again, he was not being taken seriously. As a woman, she could not be a spy or diplomat or anyone important, he thought. But he knew he had to try to make her understand.

He did not know but fortune had smiled on him in the form of this junior diplomat. She was temporarily posted to the embassy as Second Secretary. Still in her twenties, she had spent time in Moscow and spoke good Russian.

The man introduced himself. He said his name was Yurasov. A lie but a necessary one. He could not yet trust anyone with his true name.

What came next was the moment upon which so much would hinge. As it does so often, it came down to two people sat in a room across from the other, each trying to work the other one out. Were they worth taking seriously?

Yurasov’s first impression was that despite being young, and he would later admit rather attractive, the woman had an air of competence. And he had little choice. He would speak.

He explained he wanted to talk to a representative of the British Special Services. This was the usual way Russians refer to spies.

There was no representative of the special services in the embassy, the woman explained. It was the truth. She was not a spy, just a regular diplomat. And the embassy was too new, the terrain still too uncertain for there to be a permanent presence from British intelligence.

The old man seemed introverted and guarded in the way he answered questions. But there was also an intensity to him. It felt as if he was tightly wound, with layers of densely packed emotion and secrets lying just beneath his placid exterior. In his mind, he was unsure how much of himself to reveal. But he did not have long and so took the plunge. He said he had worked for the KGB for close to forty years. In itself, that claim was not much to go on. There were many people who claimed to be KGB who were walking into embassies in those days. Some of them really were KGB. Some were not. And anyway, the KGB was a vast organisation – hundreds of thousands of people, some of them just border guards, little more than thugs, with nothing to offer.

Yurasov went on. He was a former member of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate, the elite department that spied on the rest of the world. That was interesting but also seemed somewhat far-fetched. Officers of the First Chief Directorate were the smooth-talking men who had been trained to charm their targets. This strange man did not seem to fit that profile. But he pressed on. He had important information. He had written a number of volumes about the KGB’s work. Like a travelling salesman, he had brought samples with him. Would she like to see them?

Now it was the young woman’s turn to make a judgement. The man looked unassuming and a little odd. And yet she sensed in front of her was something more than yet another person on the make, trying to escape a Russia that was spiralling out of control. Instinct told her to take a chance.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

It was 24 March 1992 and a profoundly unequal exchange was about to take place. She would give him tea. He would give her the secrets to the world.

The old man went to his bag and began to rummage around. The impression of a tramp lingered as bread, spicy sausages and clothes were pulled out. Then came the papers.

The tea arrived. While he sipped, she read. His first reader, a crucial reviewer, slowly realised that what she held in her hands looked more interesting than the usual dross people tried to pass off.

Her Russian meant she could see it appeared to be material related to the KGB. That was interesting. But there was a problem. These were not actual KGB files. There were none of the markings or stamps to indicate they were official documents. They were simply typed notes. Anyone could have written them. They could easily be made-up. And they were hard to understand, not really organised the way you would expect. She was no intelligence officer and there was no way she could verify the material or be sure of its value. It came down to what she thought of the man.

She gently probed as to how he had come by what seemed to be secret material. ‘That’s my secret,’ he would say when asked. He was evidently not comfortable talking about himself.

The truth was that he was anxious, unsure of whether he was being taken seriously and whether the value of what he was offering was understood. It was not just notes. They were a history. A history of filth. He could not say how he came to have it though. How do you steal an archive? He would not reveal that yet. He needed a commitment first.

He explained to the woman that what was in front of her was only a sample. He had much more. Volumes on Australia and Canada. And on operations in Britain itself. He knew what he was doing – dangle something tempting. He had carefully selected which files to bring with him based on what he knew would interest those in the West. He wished to get this information into the hands of the right people, he said, but it had to be on his terms. He handed over a letter to explain.

Yurasov said he had to return to Moscow that afternoon on the overnight train. Time was short. So what was the young woman to do? The British had their own guidance for diplomats about walk-ins, including instructions not that different from the Americans to be more sceptical in the current times. But she decided she would take a chance on him. If he could give a date when he might be able to return to Lithuania then she might be able to arrange for someone to meet him. He said he could be back the following month on 7 April. With that, the papers went back in the bag beneath the sausages. He could return to being a peasant heading home. He walked out through the door and back into the cold.

Once Yurasov had left the building, the Second Secretary went to see the Ambassador. There was something about the grizzled visitor that made her think he was genuine. The Ambassador trusted her judgement and together agreed they should act on it. That meant telling London. This was easier said than done.

An embassy normally has a secure communications room where clerks can send encrypted messages. But the embassy at Vilnius was too new even for that. It made do with a single, unsecured telex machine which sat next to the temperamental kettle. There was no way of sending back a sensitive message without the risk of the Russians intercepting it. And that might mean trouble for the strange old man. So that meant a journey. The Ambassador agreed that the Second Secretary would head to Berlin – the nearest large embassy where a secure line could be used to contact London.

And so a few days later, towards the end of March, once she had made her journey, a message spat out of a teleprinter inside a grubby twenty-storey building in Lambeth, South London. The place looked so decrepit that many of its occupants liked to joke that it would not have looked out of place in the Soviet Union. This was Century House, home of the Secret Intelligence Service, known officially to the few on the inside as SIS but to almost everyone outside its walls as MI6.

4

Russia House

THE TELEPRINTER CLATTERED into life inside Century House. Incoming was a Dedip – a doubly enciphered telegram. It arrived in the office belonging to the Permanent Under Secretary’s Department. This was home to the officials who acted as liaison between Foreign Office diplomats and MI6 spies. Their job was to manage the process by which Foreign Office ministers approved sensitive missions but they would also handle communications from the diplomatic world destined for the spies, like the message about Vilnius.

The message was walked over by hand to another team on the same floor. Just as she had always done, in the middle of the afternoon, the tea lady would still come round with her trolley and ring a bell so staff could come and grab a cuppa and a bun. But despite that familiar ritual, these were strange, disorienting times for the residents of ‘Russia House’ – a name John le Carré, a former inhabitant, had used for one of his novels and which had, like many of his other terms, bled over into the real world. Those inside its walls had once been the alpha males of the building, strutting around like they owned the place. But not anymore.

Pushing through first one and then a second heavy door took them every morning into a shabby lobby when they entered Century House. Two blue-suited security guards sat bored behind a glass screen, a cat sometimes accompanying them. The guards knew most people who came in by sight and waved them through with barely a check of their pass. There was something dingy, even seedy about the place. A limp plastic tree in one corner along with the brown walls and worn linoleum floors gave Century House the feel of some long forgotten government department. Which is what it was at risk of becoming.

High up in his office in the upper reaches of Century House, the chief, the owlish Sir Colin McColl, knew that the end of the Cold War had led many to question what his spies were really for and whether they were still needed. McColl was a mildly eccentric figure – more anoraks than Savile Row suits but they masked a razor-sharp mind. He knew his service was on the defensive. When he walked round government departments, other civil servants would jokily tease him: ‘Are you still here?’ Fighting the Soviets had been the central mission for the spies. There was not much need for them now, was there?

Over tea and biscuits, he would do his best to convince new recruits that MI6 had a ‘bright, exciting and certain future’. The government’s long-term commitment to them was clear, he would say. After all they were about to move into shiny new offices in Vauxhall. One or two of the fresh young spies thought he protested a little too much and worried about the fact he needed to offer such vocal reassurance regarding their career choices.

MI6 was at that time secret in a very eccentric, British kind of way. Officially, it did not exist. Of course, everyone knew not just that it existed but where it was based (‘spies alight here’ the bus conductors said as they stopped outside Century House). But it had no formal legal foundation. There was growing talk of it becoming ‘avowed’ and going public. McColl was wary but when others pointed out that technically they had been breaking the law and could go to prison since they did not have legal cover for their operations, he reluctantly accepted that change might have to come. He was now busily talking up new priorities like combating organised crime to ensure the place survived.

All of this left the residents of Russia House downbeat. For nearly half a century they had been the elite, working against the hardest and most important target. This had led to them being known as the ‘Sov Bloc Master Race’ by colleagues because of the air of superiority with which they carried themselves around the corridors. Secrecy is the currency of power in this world and the Master Race always gave off the impression that they knew just a bit more than everyone else. The person who ran each division was known in those days by the Orwellian title of ‘The Controller’ – and Controller-Sov Bloc was traditionally a high-flyer, often heading for the top of the service. But, out of the blue, this world had been turned upside down. The maps on the wall, above the tall, battered grey safes in which secrets were locked at the end of the working day, were still of the Soviet Union. But that no longer existed.

Just after 7 p.m. on the evening of 25 December 1991, the Red Flag had come down over the Kremlin. In London, the passing of its old adversary had left MI6’s Russia House feeling a little lost. Since the Sov Bloc was no more, the directorate would be renamed ‘Central and Eastern Europe’. The name and the mission lacked something of the mystique of the past.

What was even more strange was that there were suddenly opportunities the spies would, almost literally, have killed for just a few years earlier. As Russia opened up, individuals claiming to be KGB officials were crawling out of the woodwork offering themselves and their secrets in exchange for money and an escape to the West. A year or two earlier, recruiting one of these people would have been a career-making triumph. Now, there were too many walk-ins, all arriving at embassy doorsteps and dingy restaurants with a bag of supposed secrets and a story to tell, hoping they could trade it for a pay-off and a visa.

But did people even care anymore about their secrets? If government departments and ministers wanted to know anything about Russia, it was about economic reform and political developments. Not that spy-versus-spy stuff from the Cold War. So like the Americans, the Brits were also turning away some of those who came knocking. These walk-ins would often make extravagant and even bizarre demands – one demanded a house with a straw roof, one hundred thousand pounds cash and a Ford GTi car. Sometimes they would be let down gently. Often it was a flat no. In Czechoslovakia, someone had turned up with literally a lorry full of files from the local intelligence service. He and his lorry had initially been turned away as people were not convinced there was room in the embassy to store the once-priceless secrets.

A few inside MI6, like in the CIA, were unhappy at turning their noses up at the opportunities on offer. They wanted to make hay while the sun shone and maintain pressure on the old enemy, eking out every scrap of intelligence and building a stable of agents, just in case things turned bad. When the message from Berlin about an old man with a bag arrived in March, there was a question. Was it for real? As with America, the old man was met with scepticism.

5

The Odd Couple

IT WAS A classic dangle, the head of security insisted to the Controller and the rest of the team as they met to discuss the offer. The security head was the dry, rigorous type and his job was to be the voice of caution, to stop people getting over-excited and falling prey to one of the other side’s games. This absolutely could not be legitimate, he argued. It was a complete provocation, a classic double agent operation, a dangle to waste time and blow the cover of whatever MI6 officer was sent out to meet the supposed source, he was sure. The instincts of a young diplomat in Vilnius – a woman, and not a spy – were not the kind of things many at MI6 put much store by even if she had been smart enough to follow the guidance on handling a walk-in.

But others found aspects of her account more intriguing. The old man seemed very odd, that was true. But arguably that made it less likely he was a dangle since he was so out of character for someone posing as a typical KGB officer. His very lack of charisma made him strangely plausible. The whole story about files and history did sound extraordinary though. But extraordinary things sometimes happened. And the report suggested the man might have details about deep-cover spies. If there was a chance he was the real deal then he would be a worthy prize. And not the kind of thing the Russians would give up in a dangle.

There was an argument. Not an angry one but the kind that happened all the time. In the end, the Controller made the call. He had seen a few dangles in his time and had been caught out once or twice. To be honest, he did not really know if the old man was another one or not. But what did they have to lose? It was worth a punt, he thought. And so he decided to follow it up. That meant sending an officer or two out to the Baltics to check out the character. But this was the trickier part. What you did not want to do was send out a freshly trained officer, a clean skin. For the previous decades, the best and brightest had been plucked out of their initial training to carry out Sov-Bloc work at the start of their careers at a point where no one knew they were spies rather than diplomats. You normally got just one posting under this type of cover. The chances were by the end of it, the KGB would have worked out you were MI6. So if there was a chance the old man was a dangle, you did not want to blow one of your precious young officers. Far better to find some old hands who were already blown or who you did not mind exposing to the other side. The type who had been round the block a little and knew how to handle themselves. The type who might be able to smell a rat. And there were two people who fitted the bill. They were somewhat of an odd couple but knew what they were doing.

At a meeting as the Cold War ended, Colin McColl had raised the possibility that since the KGB did not pose the same kind of threat, MI6 too should move towards liaison with their former opponents, just like the Americans. They could share information and work against terrorism, he had suggested. Sir, those buggers will never change their spots, piped up one sceptical officer. Don’t do it. They will only use the liaison meetings to try and learn how our officers operate and who they are, the veteran officer said.

James – at least that was one of the names he would use – was at the tail end of a long career when he spoke up at that meeting. Most of it had been spent chasing Russians around the far-flung corners of the world. He was old-school MI6, the kind of officer John le Carré would have enjoyed caricaturing. Ex-military, tall and well spoken, his good looks had only partially faded as he entered his fifties. He bought his suits on Savile Row and his shirts at Jermyn Street. He was worldly-wise and had more than a passing eye for the ladies. His private life was, as a result, somewhat complicated. He had not been entirely pleased when women were allowed onto the fast stream entry course for new officers.

In Asia, Africa and the Middle East, his target had pretty much always been the Soviet Union. Recruiting and running agents within Moscow itself was virtually impossible given the scale of KGB surveillance, and so the game was to look for officials serving abroad who you might be able to turn. He had recently formally retired but he was kept on as an experienced pair of hands on contract, making him what is known as a ‘retread’. This had its uses. He was long in the tooth and knew the game but now had an extra layer of deniability if he was ever to get caught on the sometimes risky travels he was now undertaking.

New waters in which to fish had been opened up with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Baltic states had become a key hunting ground, with echoes of Vienna and Berlin in the early Cold War. The sudden arrival of independence and weak border controls meant existing agents who had been previously unable to leave Russia could be met face to face. There was also the possibility of new offers of service to explore as those who had been nervous about leaving took their chances. Over a couple of years, James would make about twenty trips to the Baltics. Many of those were with his somewhat unusual partner on the Vilnius mission, the other half of an odd couple.

Robert was a different kettle of fish. It took only a few minutes of talking to him to realise the large well-built man in late middle age might not actually be Scottish as one of his cover names suggested. This was most obvious when he was telling a joke. The accent, an odd version of how a foreigner might think an upper-class Englishman would speak, would get thicker and thicker as he began chuckling to himself during the telling. By the time he finally got to the punchline it was almost incomprehensible thanks to the combination of his own laughter and the fact the accent had reverted closer to his first language. What made Robert truly unusual was that he was Russian.

Robert was not an MI6 officer. He was what was known as an ‘access agent’, someone used to perform a particular function on a mission. But he was no normal agent. He was such a forceful personality that many felt he was the one handling the officers who were actually supposed to be running him. Using a Russian émigré on multiple missions was highly unusual. But Robert had unique skills. He possessed a gift that James and others came to think of as almost a super-power. He could smell a KGB man at a hundred paces. Not literally. But almost. He could just tell from the way they walked and talked. This particular talent had come through hard-won experience. He had grown up in the Soviet elite. But he had moved in circles which got him into trouble, skirting on the edge of those who tried to work round the system. Run-ins with the authorities had led to at least one visit to the detention room at KGB headquarters where he spent two days in a room so tiny it was basically an upright coffin.

By the early 1960s, he had become involved in the murky world of the high-end black market. He learnt how to move sought after goods in and out of the country. This meant dealing with characters with odd connections as well as KGB officers – not the elite foreign officers but the departments that did internal security, border controls and the like. That had helped him hone his special power. Years of long experience meant that as well as spotting KGB officers, he was adept at dealing with Russian officials. He knew how to speak to them, when to stay quiet and when to talk back. He also knew how to handle himself if things got rough. He did not mind a fight. He did not just speak the Russian language but understood the dialects and criminal slang. He was not a political dissident but he had developed a profound dislike for the Soviet system and particularly its enforcers.

He had met a foreign woman in Moscow in the 1960s. They were married and he ended up in England. And then, by a roundabout route, his unusual background and unique skill set got him work for British intelligence. A stack of false passports and disguises stashed away in the house and sudden calls to travel on short notice were all part of the unusual family life he had created. The smell of cigars wafting through the house was always the sign to his children that their father was back from whatever mysterious adventure he had been away on. And what he enjoyed getting up to was getting one over on the Soviets. He could be jovial but there was also an undercurrent of anger that ran through him, especially when it came to those in power in Moscow who were abusing his country. His superiors at MI6 thought he was both difficult to manage and totally invaluable. Which was one reason he was often paired with James who had the wiles to handle him and perhaps also knew when to restrain him if his instinct to confront his former countrymen went too far. But James was also perhaps conscious of how much he needed Robert and relied on him, particularly since he did not speak the language, leading to a touch of resentment.

The pair were kind-of friends, the type who would argue fiercely and fall out and then get back together again. Both thought the other sometimes took the wrong type of risks. Neither of the men were exactly angels. But angels were not what was called for in the waters in which they swam.

Robert and James became something of a double act at the end of the Cold War. They were not young thrusting types. But their decades of experience meant they were ideal to be sent out on short notice to check out if the goods on offer – possible defectors and agents who were popping up all over Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union – were legitimate or fake. One place they did not travel was inside Russia itself. That would be too dangerous.

There were still risks in their trips. James was always aware that the people they might be meeting in the Baltics or elsewhere might have been planted or dangled by the other side and luring their British contacts into a trap. That meant there was always the possibility of a ‘sandbagging’ – a roughing up or, worse, to teach a lesson. The dangers for Robert were greater than James. It would be easier to snatch him and take him back to Russia to who knows what fate.

They seemed the right pair to head to Vilnius for April, accompanied by a technical officer who could provide an enciphered communications link back to Century House. Their mission was to check out this man Yurasov and take a view on whether he was worth the effort.

6

Waiting

Vilnius, April 1992

SPYING IS WAITING. The seventh of April was the day it had been agreed with the old man that he would resurface. James and Robert sat at the embassy trying not to be impatient. Morning turned to afternoon and then to evening. Coffee to tea and then something harder. But no one came.

They reconvened early the next day. Another day of sitting around. Boredom and frustration. A no-show could mean all kinds of things. Perhaps he was a chancer. Or he had got cold feet. Or perhaps he had been followed and was now sitting in some dank cell with who knows what being done to him.

The next morning – 9 April – they waited again. This time the door opened.

It was James’ first sight of the man. He looked like an elderly peasant rather than a trained spy. Messy hair, mainly grey. A thin moustache. A polo-neck jumper and a cheap jacket. A quiet, intense manner. He trailed a cart behind him with the grubby bag on top. A quick greeting and then he was ushered into a side room that had been specially prepared for the meeting.

Robert took a long, hard look, summoning his super-power. ‘This man is KGB,’ he said quietly to James. He could just tell.

The old man had led a solitary life. It had been like that since childhood. But for the last twenty years he had not been able to talk to a single person – not even his wife – about the work that had become his obsession. And now, in front of these strangers, he understood he was going to have to give up a piece of himself.

But what part? It was too soon to tell them about the beast, he knew. From his earliest days, it had been there, passing into its undead after-life just after he had been born. But they would find this all too strange and dismiss him if he spoke of it. He needed to convince them he was serious but knew that too much of the truth might put them off.

The time for false names though had now passed.

His name was not Yurasov, he said. It was Vasili Mitrokhin.

He would tell them that. But not much more. He was not ready to give up his story. Only he knew who he was and where it had begun.

ACT ONE

The Beast

7

The Birth of Chekism

‘I WAS BORN IN Russia in 1922, in a village in the Ryazan province, a very nice village in the middle of Russia. I can never forget the immense hay meadows and the river Oka – one of the great rivers of European Russia. It is a beautiful part of the country – a beautiful area. I miss it very much and think about it all the time.’

In his own mind, Vasili Mitrokhin was and would always be a mujik – a traditional peasant, whose natural habitat was the Russian forest. He was the second of five children born in Yurasovo, a tiny village of just a few streets. The purity and wildness of Ryazan province, which in his mind was the heart of Russia, would always be home. The surrounding forests were where he and his father would hunt for mushrooms and the meandering river nearby was where they would fish. Long after he left and until his dying days, he would still be restlessly searching for those snow-covered forests of his youth.

His own image of a rural idyll was in stark contrast to the bloody reality of the Russia into which he had been born. He arrived in a country just emerging out of a period of turmoil in which a civil war had raged back and forth across the countryside and where famine, uprisings and ruthless murder had cost the lives of millions. Not far away from his village, in the provincial capital, the city of Ryazan, one of the first Bolshevik concentration camps in the country would be located in the grounds of a convent. Elsewhere in the shadow of the city’s historic cathedrals and monasteries, there had been special tribunals to pass judgement and execution squads to carry out their sentences.

Five years before Mitrokhin had been born, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, had seized control of Russia. The tiny group believed they were driving history towards its inevitable outcome, transforming not just Russia but the world. The Bolsheviks came to power in 1917 thanks to a tight-knit conspiracy and retained a conspiratorial mindset. They understood the precarious nature of their hold on power and that an array of enemies, at home and abroad, was determined to kill their revolutionary dream in its cradle.

As civil war erupted, the Bolsheviks faced the remnants of the Tsarist regime in the form of a White Army, nationalist uprisings in parts of the vast Russian empire and Western meddling. Britain despatched both its military and a roguish bunch of amateurish spies to try to extinguish the revolution. Assassination plots and uprisings fostered a deep insecurity among the Bolsheviks.

The need to defend the revolution had led to the unnatural birth of the old man’s enemy, the beast. Six weeks after taking power, on 20 December 1917, Lenin created the ‘All-Russian Extraordinary Committee to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage’, known by its initials as the Cheka. Its extraordinary nature lay in the belief that the threats against the revolution required a body which, for a limited period, would lie beyond the restraints of traditional morality or the law.

The Cheka was more than a secret police force. It was, in the words of those who founded it, a revolutionary terrorist organisation. Lenin was open in using the word terror to describe what was needed. How can you have a revolution without firing squads, he asked. Repression and violence were required to preserve the revolution. The Cheka was his sword and shield. Its job was not to collect intelligence but to find and destroy enemies.

‘We stand for organised terror – this must be said very clearly.’ These were the words of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the man whom Lenin entrusted to be the Cheka’s first head. He had been born in Poland and grew up in Vilnius. His house was barely a mile from what would become the British Embassy where Mitrokhin would walk in a century later. He was no thug. He spoke a handful of languages and once aspired to be a Catholic priest. But in the late 1890s his obsessional devotion pivoted towards Marxism. Like many Bolsheviks, years of battling the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, including time spent in their prisons, was his real education. The Okhrana had been masters at using double agents and deception to penetrate the vast array of revolutionary groups that opposed Tsarist rule. Its agents were known as shpiks or spooks. Feliks wrote in his diary that to have contact with them left him feeling as if he had been ‘defiled with human filth’. The Okhrana failed to stop the revolution but succeeded in ensuring those who took over, like Dzerzhinsky, were obsessed with treachery as they learned how deeply their own ranks had been penetrated.

In what had been an imposing and grand insurance building in the centre of Moscow, Dzerzhinsky made his new headquarters. It was called the Lubyanka. A mythology sprang up around the man. He became known as ‘Iron Feliks’, a knight of the revolution who slept under his desk, a ‘Saint of Bolshevism’ fired by the belief that the evils of the world could be extinguished to bring about a new order. Out of the mix of myth and reality, fear and violence, a powerful force would emerge which would outlast not just Feliks himself but even the Soviet Union which he served. This was Chekism.

What did it mean to be a Chekist? It meant understanding you were the last line of defence, privileged with the special task of doing whatever was necessary to defeat the many enemies that conspired to destroy the party or the motherland. From Tsarism to Bolshevism and beyond, this world view remained constant. His many successors would often quote Dzerzhinsky’s saying that a Chekist had to have ‘a burning heart, a cool head and clean hands’. It implied the Chekists were incorruptible as they led people towards a world cleansed of injustice. But there was so much dirt that had to be wiped away first to get there, so many enemies who stood in the way who had to be dealt with and so much blood to be spilled by those clean hands.

The Chekists’ belief that they were servants of a higher historical purpose meant traditional notions of justice could be set aside. Their call-sign became a bullet in the back of the head as a Red Terror swept the land. They did not work by investigation of individuals but through the notion that whole social classes, professions or groups were intrinsically guilty and could be liquidated. ‘The Cheka must defend the Revolution and conquer the enemy even if its sword falls occasionally on the heads of the innocent,’ said Dzerzhinsky.

The year that Mitrokhin had been born, the Cheka died. At least officially. On 6 February 1922, it was renamed the GPU, the start of a cycle as it then transformed into the OGPU, the NKVD, the MGB, then, most-famously, the KGB. The name changes were often to expunge the stain of the past. But the truth that Mitrokhin would learn, was that even though it was supposed to have been an ‘extra-ordinary’ short-lived body to stabilise the revolution, the Cheka never died. It simply passed from the land of the living to the land of the dead, an otherworldly beast whose outward form would change but whose dark heart kept beating. As if to make the point, through all the various changes in name that would come over the next century, those who served the beast would always refer to themselves as the same thing: Chekists.

This was the world Mitrokhin had been born into – one of snow-covered forests and the bloody red terror of Chekists. One of whom he would become. He knew that he could not yet talk of that journey and the monster to these people in Vilnius. Tread carefully. So, for the moment, it was just his name.

8

The Bag

Vilnius, April 1992

THE MI6 PAIR now at least had a name for the man sitting across from them in the embassy. That could be run through their files back at Century House to see if there were any traces. He also gave them more proof. The man who called himself Vasili Mitrokhin handed over his pension certificate, passport and Communist party membership card. This was good. He might not be saying much but it allowed them to be sure of who he was.

James then said he needed to do something which he knew seemed odd at a clandestine meeting. He told the old man he wanted to take his photo. In front of a plain background, the old man stared impassively at the camera. It looked like a mug-shot. It would be useful to carry out checks and perhaps also as leverage.

But there were more important questions that they needed answered. These were the same for any walk-in. What did the individual know and how did they know it? Why were they talking now? And what did they want in return?

The MI6 team needed to understand a crucial question to judge his bona fides – that was access. To ascertain if the information being offered was for real, they needed to know how he had come to be in possession of it. How had he come to work for the KGB?

These were the questions which would determine whether or not the old man was going to be taken seriously or hung out to dry like all the other fantasists. The odd couple could quickly see these answers would not come easily. He seemed evasive, a strange character.

Over many years, the old man had retreated deeper and deeper into himself. This was partly to protect what he did from the surveillance and informers which he understood were all around him. But he had not retreated into a private family life. That had been too dangerous and, sadly, too difficult. He loved Nina and Vladimir but he had not shared his secret life with them. They were closer to each other than to him and would not have understood. Sharing his story carried too much risk for them and for him. There was enough to worry about with Vladimir anyway. So he had withdrawn into his own, increasingly febrile mind as well as into his writing. This was the only place he could be free from the beast’s gaze.

But now in Vilnius he understood he had to open up. But how much? There was so much he could not explain or did not want to talk about. But the risk was that the men he was sitting with would not understand and see him as just another former spy out to get what he could for himself or his family or to settle some petty grievance. That was not how he had come to see himself. He did not want it to be about him. It was all about the files. That was always what it had been about.

So he opened his bag. He pulled out a file and with it a world of secrets came tumbling out. Not about him but about the KGB. What was inside made him angry. It was filth. Pure filth. That was the word he came back to again and again to describe what he saw. The degradation of a country and the subjugation of a people. The KGB was just a name, the latest name for an organisation which in itself was the expression of something deeper – an ideology and a mindset drawn from the darkest side to the human character. In the Soviet Union, the enemy was not the KGB but Chekism. This was what he was fighting. But he could not explain it yet. He understood it because, to his shame, he had been part of it. How had he ended up a Chekist? That story was difficult for him to tell, even in his own mind, let alone to strangers. It required confronting an awkward truth. He had once been a true believer.

9

Becoming a Chekist

A SCHOOLING IN CHEKIST denunciation came early for Mitrokhin, as it did for all children of the Soviet Union. When Mitrokhin was ten years old a story swept the country about a boy only a few years older than him. The boy’s name was Pavlik Morozov. Pavlik, so the story went, had been born to a poor peasant family in a small ‘backward’ village. These were the years when rural farms were being ‘collectivised’ by the state, their grain seized leading to famine. But the boy was an enthusiastic member of the Young Pioneers youth movement, with its camping trips and communist teaching. That meant he was shocked to discover that his own father was secretly helping enemies of the state by forging documents for them. The boy performed his duty and reported his father, whose sentence from the judge would be death. But then the rest of the family turned on Pavlik in anger. His body, riddled with stab wounds, was found in the thick undergrowth of a dank, primeval forest. This version of the story contained more myth than reality but was spread far and wide by the state. Statues would be built of Pavlik across the country, and he would be held up as a role model for children for decades to come as someone who paid the price for doing the right thing, placing the security of the state above loyalty to his own family. Children from the youngest age were taught in class that it was their duty to catch spies and expose enemies of the people just like little Pavlik. It was a lesson that the demand for denunciation reached into every corner of life, even that of the most private space of the family.

Mitrokhin was growing up in heroic as well as dark times in which it was possible to believe the Soviet Union was forging a new future. He would be inculcated with a deep faith in the idea of communism and his own journey would have been impossible without the revolution opening new doors. After all, how else could someone from a humble background in a small village have entered the inner sanctum of the state? His father had been a working man, a decorator. In the pre-Revolutionary past, the family would have been consigned to remain at the bottom of the heap. But thanks to the revolution, the young Mitrokhin would be one of those fortunate enough to receive a proper education and see opportunities open up for him.

‘We thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood!’ read the posters in school classrooms. Always and everywhere, there was the smiling picture of Stalin staring down on his people. Iron Feliks had died in 1926, removing from the scene the one person who might have been able to prevent the rise to power of Joseph Stalin. It was under Stalin that the beast, like Mitrokhin, had become fully formed, imbued with his character.

Young Stalin was a choirboy turned street-fighter, seminary student turned atheist Marxist revolutionary, a bank-robbing brigand-poet. He lived his life on the run, schooled in evading surveillance. Spies were everywhere as he learnt that his closest colleagues were informers betraying him to the Tsarist secret police. He, in turn, cultivated his own contacts with the spooks so that he could obtain tip-offs and get his rivals eliminated. A man steeped in treachery and subterfuge had come to power as the result of a conspiratorial revolution and proceeded to mould the state, and its spies, into his own image. The most effective weapon of the Chekist was not the gun but denunciation, the turning of people against each other so neighbour could not trust neighbour, parents lived in fear of their own children, each required to inform on the other, like young Pavlik.

Mitrokhin was also growing up in disorienting times. The Soviet Union was changing at a dizzying pace. Work and food could be hard to come by for his family. That increasingly took them hundreds of miles away to fast-growing Moscow, although they would return to their village in winter. For a while in the 1920s, there had been a calmness in the countryside after the civil war, a feeling the revolution might leave life untouched. But this was the calm before the storm. In 1928, Stalin drove forward collectivisation of agriculture as part of his five-year plan to industrialise the Soviet Union. World revolution would wait while socialism was built at home. Better-off peasants, known as kulaks, were eliminated. Ukraine, the bread basket of Europe, in the start of the 1930s saw a famine that claimed the lives of millions, piles of bodies lying in the streets. Life was cheap.

The failure to meet industrial targets would be explained by the activity of so-called wreckers as Chekists unearthed plots in which counter-revolutionary forces were smashing machinery. British engineers working in Russia were among those sent before show trials where it was revealed that foreign spies, usually the British Secret Services, were pulling the strings. In one trial, a visitor saw a light momentarily illuminate a box at the back of the courtroom. There, just for a moment, he saw the briefest glimpse of the figure of Stalin, watching events unfold. The paranoid conspiratorialism intrinsic to Bolshevism became more extreme under Stalin and intensified as the 1930s progressed. ‘Enemies of the People’ were everywhere, not just coming from abroad but from within.

The darkest period in the late 1930s would be known in the West as the Great Terror. In Russia it was called Yezhovshchina after the leading Chekist, Nikolai Yezhov. Mitrokhin was fifteen and sixteen as this terrifying wave of violence swept across the country. These were the years of waiting for the sound of footsteps up to your apartment from those now called the NKVD – the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In the belly of the Lubyanka, torture chambers were busy. Live bodies would come in and dead ones carted out in trucks with the words ‘Milk and Meat’ written on the side to disguise their grisly cargo.

There was a dark joke during the bad old days that the Soviet Union was divided into three. Those who had been in prison, those who were in prison and those who were waiting their turn. Death came by quota. Moscow province in 1937 was ordered that in the following four months 5,000 people were required to be summarily shot and a further 30,000 sent to labour camps. ‘Millions of people got caught in the millstone of the socialist competition of the Chekists to overfulfill their targets in their hunt for enemies,’ Mitrokhin would reflect. How many were purged in the late 1930s? The KGB itself would later estimate that perhaps nearly twenty million had been arrested and seven million of those had been shot or died in prison.

The terror reached inexorably upwards, into the Communist party, the Red Army and the secret police itself. The Chekists’ primary focus was at home, but fighting enemies meant understanding what was being plotted abroad. So soon after its birth, the Cheka started sending spies overseas. Their mission was different from the spies of other countries because gathering intelligence was second to their primary task of hunting down enemies, especially among exiles. A Special Tasks Group was created to kidnap and murder White Russians and exiled Bolsheviks like Leon Trotsky. But now in the purges, it did not matter if you were a brilliant foreign intelligence officer who had helped recruit a cadre of spies from Cambridge University in Britain. You would still be recalled to your death in a purge.

The Yezhovshchina would eventually consume Yezhov himself. His replacement, Beria, tempered the most extreme excesses while he pursued a sideline in having schoolgirls plucked off the streets so he could rape and kill them. Chekism had mutated into something darker from even the days of Iron Feliks. Those who joined the secret police in the 1930s tended to be fanatics, careerists seeking to get ahead or sadists seeking to inflict brutality.

So how could Mitrokhin explain that he had become part of it? It had happened by chance. As a teenager, Mitrokhin loved history. He had a good memory and an obsession with details. He especially loved documents. They offered glimpses of certainty in an unstable world. After he completed military service in artillery, he had gone to Moscow to train to be a state archivist at the Historical and Archival Institute. In the 1930s, the Institute provided formal training to those who would preserve the vast troves of documents both from Russia’s past and produced by the new Soviet state. For nearly a decade from 1938, it came under the control of the NKVD.

Moscow had grown rapidly to a city of four million in those years. The view of low green- and red-roofed two-storey buildings was replaced by modern six- and eight-storey workers’ flats, tightly packed together, as well as vast factories. The tramcars were so packed that people pushing in at one end would lead to someone being pushed out at the other.

The Historical and Archival Institute occupied a grand building in the centre of the city, originally a printing house from the days of Ivan the Terrible. Students were taught that preserving the past was a subject of academic rigour. But Mitrokhin’s studies would be interrupted by war.

In June 1941, the Nazis invaded an unprepared Soviet Union. Stalin was so shocked he was barely able to speak as his Red Army, crippled by his purges, fell back. Some of the students at Mitrokhin’s Institute headed to the front. One threw himself under a tank carrying a grenade as part of the Moscow Proletarian Division. Thirty-three would die in the war. At first, classes continued with teachers and students extinguishing incendiary bombs which fell on the roof. But as fears grew that Moscow might fall to the Nazi onslaught, orders were issued to evacuate people and property. A stream of crowded freight cars headed to remote parts of the Soviet Union. Whole industrial plants with their heavy machinery were shipped out. Train carriages carried art, musical instruments, museum artefacts, books and historical documents, to preserve cultural heritage.

Nearly 400,000 people headed to Kazakhstan in six months on cramped trains. On the way to Almaty, along with those who worked in Soviet cinema, were archives and those who worked on them. This included a young Mitrokhin, just out of his teens. Almaty was a strange place. Leningrad film-makers were housed with bemused locals, tension sometimes bubbling up. After a year in Almaty, another change. Amidst the other institutes evacuated to the Kazakh capital was the Kharkiv Higher Judicial Institute which had been moved out of Ukraine’s second city. Mitrokhin signed up to become a lawyer. In 1943, after a victory at Stalingrad, the Soviet Union began to push the Nazis out of Ukraine. By 1944, liberation made it possible for the Institute – and Mitrokhin – to go to Kharkiv, a city which had seen brutal back and forth battles between the Nazi SS and the Red Army. The city would host one of the first trials of Nazis accused of atrocities, including the use of vans to gas people wholesale. In 1944 Mitrokhin graduated to become a police lawyer attached to the military procurator’s office. But with that he had been plunged into a dark role in darker times.

This would be a period he could not easily talk about. There were things he could barely confront himself, let alone talk to strangers about. It was part of his journey into the KGB. When he was asked about it, all he could say was: ‘I was deep in horrors.’

10

‘I saw horrors’

THE HISTORIC CITIES and fertile fields of Ukraine would be stained with blood as the war came to an end. This would be Mitrokhin’s introduction to Chekism and some of that blood may have been on his hands. He had been working as a prosecutor alongside the secret police as it sought to reimpose control over society. War had opened the door to all kinds of foreign and subversive influences and Stalin now decreed they needed to be stamped on.

The Red Army had been first in the sights. Stalin’s fear was that it was riddled with subversion, defection and disloyalty. To hunt down enemies inside its ranks, a new body was created during the war. ‘Death to Nazi Spies’ was first proposed as the name. But why only Nazi spies? ‘Death to Spies’ was more far-reaching. Its acronym was SMERSH. Vast columns of Soviet men marched back East as the war ended, heading not for freedom but imprisonment. Any Soviet soldier who survived a German prisoner of war camp must have collaborated to have lived, it was decreed, and that made them a risk. Rather than return as heroes, they were despatched to a labour camp.

The fear was not just of spying but any kind of dissent, as one Red Army captain who would play a central role in Mitrokhin’s intellectual journey found. Alexander Solzhenitsyn had been a committed communist, eager to fight. But in the closing months of the war, while heading towards Berlin as part of the Red Army, he had been arrested by SMERSH. A letter to a schoolfriend had been discovered in which he had referred dismissively to Stalin. He was taken to the Lubyanka and placed in one of those rooms too small to sit down, which had an English name: ‘The Box’. He would be stripped, showered and his head shaved, part of a ritual to break an individual down. The dismissive references to the great leader in his letters were enough to send him to labour camps for eight years. He would be just one of two and a half million citizens who were in the camps. As many again were exiled to the furthest reaches of the country. But those sitting on his tribunal did not realise that in Solzhenitsyn’s case they had sent a man who had always wanted to be a writer on a tour of the hidden places of the Soviet Union which would provide him with the material to challenge the power of the state.

Mitrokhin himself was not a victim or even an observer in Stalin’s crackdown but a participant. He was set to work in Ukraine, one of the Soviet Union’s Republics where Stalin was particularly obsessed with reasserting his grip. The Soviet Union was a drawing together of different Republics whose national identities were supposed to be superseded by communism. But as the Nazis surged forward at the start of the war, the Soviet Union had literally and spiritually retreated into Russia. Stalin increasingly presented the conflict as the Great Patriotic War, one defending the Russian motherland. The Nazis meanwhile had sought to exploit different nationalist groups who resented control from Moscow. Some fought with the Nazis because they wanted independence. The sweep of Nazis and then their retreat had left a trail of suspicion which Stalin’s paranoia turned into a bloodbath.

The Chekist priority was to identify not just those who had actively collaborated with the Germans, but anyone who had displayed even the tiniest lack of commitment to Soviet Communism or simply made the kind of compromises many had to just survive occupation. Had someone profited by trading with the enemy? Or made contact with relatives abroad? Or taken food into the forests where resistance groups were operating? Dossiers had been drawn up of suspects and their friends and family paving the way for mass arrests as soon as territory was liberated. This was carried out by the MVD, local state security, with whom Mitrokhin worked.

This process was especially brutal in Ukraine. Special purpose divisions of the MVD were set up to hunt for anti-Soviet partisans. Near Lviv, SMERSH and MVD troops surrounded a forest where partisans were known to be hiding. The troops drew a wide circle and then began to constrict it tighter and tighter. Finally they came face to face with the nationalists. No one survived. The last few who had held out killed themselves rather than fall into Soviet hands. How many died in Ukraine? Over 100,000 over two years with maybe a quarter of a million imprisoned.

It would take years to break the resistance. Britain’s MI6 and America’s CIA started parachuting exiles in to fight, but by then it was too late. What was left of the networks had been penetrated by the Soviets. Moscow ran front groups to lure more Western-backed exiles to their death. In the villages and towns of Ukraine, informers began to whisper about who had done what and summary justice would be delivered. Young men’s bodies would lie in the street for days as a warning to others, their own mothers averting their eyes as they walked past for fear of incriminating themselves by showing any emotion. In some parts of Western Ukraine, every local person in the countryside would get five or ten years in a labour camp. It was assumed they had all somehow aided partisans.

Acting as a prosecutor meant Mitrokhin was part of reimposing Stalin’s will on the Ukrainian people. One of the stranger aspects of Soviet life was the veneer of legality that accompanied repression. Everything had to be done by the book. A case had to be opened and all the paperwork properly filled in before it was presented to the ‘Special Board’ for their verdict. But it was all a charade. Everything was already determined. The purpose of a Stalinist prosecutor was to establish guilt rather than determine if someone might be innocent. Prosecutors were there to simply justify killing and fill in the forms. And like priests, Chekists had a preference for the act of confession. It made things easy, removing the need for evidence. This was normally secured by psychological pressure, creating a sense there was no hope and it was better to give in. Everyone confesses in the end, people were told. But if needed, someone could be given a few ‘hot ones’ to get them over the line and name their accomplices.

For Mitrokhin, his work made him a small cog in the machine of Stalinist control with all the violence, torture, intimidation and denunciations that involved. Hence all he could say was that ‘I saw horrors’. Because the horrors were so unspeakable, he had buried the memory deep in the archive of his own mind. These were stories which he would never unearth. The only time they escaped was at night as he grew old. Then they emerged to haunt him. This was his heart of darkness, a nightmarish journey upstream into the terrors that humanity could inflict. And yet, as he knew in his heart, he had not turned away from being part of the state that inflicted that terror. Not only had he not turned away, but he had willingly plunged himself deeper into its belly when he was offered the chance.

The truth was it was only in hindsight that he understood the horrors for what they were. The fact he could not talk about it for the rest of his life was not just because of what he had witnessed, but because he had been an intrinsic part of it. The real story, one he struggled to tell, was that it had not deterred him from the path he was on. Two years was enough to witness horrors but also for Mitrokhin to prove his worth. And so there came an approach. Not just to be part of the police – but the Chekists.

11

Into the Belly

MOSCOW WAS COMING BACK to life after the punishing years of war when Mitrokhin returned to the capital. Many privations remained, its residents were crammed into tiny, newly built apartment blocks as rationing persisted but there was also a sense of a country ready to rebuild itself. And Mitrokhin himself was now on the path towards being a fully paid-up Chekist, part of what in those days was formally called the MGB, the Ministry of State Security. In 1946, he was despatched on a compressed two-year course at the Higher Diplomatic School in the capital, shortened because of the urgent need for more diplomats and spies, to prepare him for his new role.

In Mitrokhin’s own mind, the offer to join them had been made because he was smart and capable. The reality was that war-time losses meant there were shortages in intelligence, gaps that needed to be filled. People who would not normally be thought quite right – and who perhaps were not really suited to the work – were invited to apply.

For all the terrors and horrors, he had been willing to join the secret police. Why? He was a patriot, of course. He had not fought in the war, and perhaps there was a touch of guilt about that, but he was determined to be part of the future. Patriotism and serving the state made for a good public explanation, even if it was not the full story. There was also the sense of power that being in the secret world offered. The knowledge you were part of the elite and not the masses. Along with that, came an element of self-preservation. In a world in which the powerless risked being denounced by someone else, it was better to be inside rather than outside. The security forces were vast, numbering hundreds of thousands. Even the lowest rung – the camp guards and convoy troops – had power over those they controlled. And as you went further up, you found people like counter-intelligence who would investigate the population for dissent. And finally at the top you had the elite within the elite who travelled the world and spied for the Soviet Union. And this, remarkably, was the door that would be opened for Mitrokhin, still in his mid-twenties.

There was another reason as well, difficult to acknowledge, for taking the job. Around that time he had met Nina Mikhailovna. He and Nina were an unusual match. She was two years younger and more outgoing. Slim, with curly blond hair, she was strikingly beautiful. She was also smart, training to be a doctor. As an intelligence officer, the promise of time abroad and status were surely the kind of things a woman like that would expect from a husband. It was a prestigious position, far more than regular police or prosecutorial work. There were the privileges like better housing, food and medical care for them and the family they would eventually have. A desk officer for the security police earned two or three times as much as a doctor or engineer or teacher. And so for a mix of reasons, Mitrokhin had joined the Chekist cause.

The majority of graduates from the Higher Diplomatic School were headed towards diplomacy rather than spying. They were trained in languages, law, protocol, international relations and the precepts of Lenin and Marx. Bizarrely, ballroom dancing was still on the curriculum. But for those training to be an intelligence officer, the point of the education was not to learn how to waltz with a partner but how to view them with suspicion. They were taught what were known as ‘the rules of conspiracy’. Students were told that every person they came in contact with, whether Soviet or foreigner, had initially to be treated as a potential enemy. They were to be assessed and, if necessary, reported or informed on. The reality of what secret work involved came as a surprise to some. Two interpreters assigned to work on domestic investigations were so shocked by what they were going to be involved in that during their training they killed themselves.

In 1948, Mitrokhin emerged a fully-fledged Chekist. The latest incarnation was the Committee of Information, the last name-change before the KGB was born. Mitrokhin was proud to have been chosen to serve his country. But slowly he would understand that the reality did not match the myth. His initial years would be marked by state paranoia and personal failure. Even though he was now part of the elite foreign spies, Mitrokhin discovered the priority remained rooting out possible subversion and preventing foreign conspiracies reaching into the Soviet Union.

Yugoslavia’s leader, Tito, might have been Communist but he was not sufficiently subservient to Moscow. Stalin’s obsession led to him suggesting an almost childish plan to assassinate Tito to the man who ran his Department of Special Tasks which carried out what was known as ‘wet work’. Mitrokhin’s work was more mundane though. ‘One of our most important tasks was to compromise and discredit Tito’s regime in Yugoslavia,’ Mitrokhin would recall. Mitrokhin was given his orders, as part of a campaign against ‘dissenters’. But it made no sense to him. This seemed a quarrel over small differences, almost like a farce in one of Gogol’s plays where two characters get into an argument about who said ‘um’ first.

This had been Mitrokhin’s first and strange introduction to the elite. Still though, he had to admit he had been a loyal soldier, keen to make his mark and rise up the ranks. This was before it had all gone wrong. That was another thing that was hard to talk about.

12

A Painful Story

Vilnius, April 1992

THERE SEEMED TO be much the man was not telling, Robert and James could sense. Mitrokhin had clearly worked for the KGB. But he skirted over details and avoided questions. He did not want to talk about himself. What he was keen to do was show them the goods.

Out of his duffle bag, he produced ten bulging envelopes. Inside were two thousand sheets of closely typed paper. These he dutifully handed over, like a parent with a precious newborn.

James could not speak Russian so the job of talking to the man and reading the documents fell to Robert. After a few minutes, he turned to James and nodded. It looked good. One volume was on the US. It listed hundreds of KGB agents and confidential contacts – people who had a relationship with the KGB even if they were not fully paid-up agents. Listed were their codenames along with details that would allow them to be identified. There was a similar but shorter list of agents and confidential contacts in a volume on the UK.

The files were fascinating. But also strange. He might have worked for the KGB but what he was pulling out were not official documents. Rather they were typed-up notes about files. So how had he come by them? They needed more answers about how he came to have access and what motivated him in order to judge what to make of him.

The man explained he had worked in the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. He had served under an alias abroad in the 1950s, he explained. He did not dwell on this. There were things which were too difficult, too dark to talk about. He moved on quickly. Then he had spent the rest of his career in Moscow.

Mitrokhin was a difficult man, they were coming to understand. It was precisely his prickliness that had brought him to this place. Those who met him would realise that he was always an odd choice to be a front-line spy for the KGB First Directorate. These were the men who had to be good on the diplomatic cocktail circuit. The type who could sidle up to a British or American diplomat and make small talk while probing for weakness and a chink in the armour. This was not the man in front of them. He was quiet, insular and not exactly blessed with social skills. He seemed to still want to keep his secrets, including about the crucial question of how he came to have access to secret documents and was then able to write up copies. How do you steal a library? Not just a library but the most secret archive in the world?

He was very clear about what he did and did not want to talk about. When they tried to probe him on certain details or specifics, the type that might help validate his story and his material, Robert and James, like others in the future, hit a brick wall.

‘It’s a very long story, and it’s still a painful one for me. I’m not ready to answer that,’ he would say.

The problem for Mitrokhin was that the story of how he came to have access to all those files was one of failure.

13

The Holy Land

IF MITROKHIN HAD been an elite First Chief Directorate officer, how had he ended up in the archives? That was a story he would never fully open up about through his entire life. He would sometimes suggest that it had been a choice driven by considerations of what was best for his family. But that was not true.

He had buried the story deep because it was of failure. It was a failure that shaped his life, filling him with resentment and placing him on a long path that eventually led him to the embassy room and a pair of British spies in front of him. He knew he had to present his motivation as a pure, burning hatred for the KGB and the still unmentioned beast. And it was true that is what his motivation had become. But how it started was more complicated. What had taken him to this place was bitterness and disappointment. He could not – he would not – say too much about it. If he did, he might be misunderstood as just another loser with a grievance rather than what he was – someone with far grander ideas of exposing the truth. But he also knew that hiding his past completely would not work. The gaps would be too evident. And so, he would only ever reveal some parts of his story.

The full truth would be lost somewhere in the past. But it had begun to go wrong almost immediately after he embarked on a career as what he thought would be a high-flying spy in the First Chief Directorate.

His first proper foreign posting had lasted for three years until 1953 and it would scar him, marking both the start of his professional undoing but also his personal revulsion against his own work. That posting was to the new state of Israel.

The Cold War was intensifying and the Middle East one of its battlegrounds so when Israel had come into existence in 1948, it immediately drew the attention of the superpower rivals.

Stalin ordered his spies to make it an ally or at the very least to prevent it falling into the opposition capitalist camp. The Near and Middle East Department of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate began checking lists of Soviet Jews emigrating to Israel so that agents could be recruited and despatched in their midst. Former Red Army officers would join the Israeli military while others headed for politics and government. Some were ordered to immediately start providing intelligence and influencing the direction of the new country, others only to be activated in an emergency. The First Chief Directorate also despatched its own officers to run its growing networks of contacts and agents. This included Mitrokhin.

The centre of activity was the rezidentura or residency – the spy base –- at the new Soviet Embassy at Levin House, a grand building in Tel Aviv which would become known as ‘the castle’. This was where the main action took place. But Mitrokhin’s name was never on the diplomatic list as serving undercover there. And Mitrokhin himself would later say that the reason he found it so hard to talk about this posting was his repugnance for the cover position he was required to occupy in the country.

In Jerusalem, just off Jaffa Road, sat the sprawling Russian compound, built in Tsarist days to serve pilgrims. It was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church and state in 1948. The compound was home to a huge church and a consulate but also hidden in its midst was a small residency. The KGB here used the Russian Orthodox Church as cover and it is where Mitrokhin was most likely based. KGB officers normally used lay positions as their cover but, unusually, he may have posed as a priest. Mitrokhin would, perhaps as a result of this, come to develop a special loathing for the use of the church by the KGB. In his mind, the intermingling of religion and Chekist denunciation corrupted each other.

But Mitrokhin’s aversion to talk about his time there was not just due to distaste but also disappointment. Initially, the new Israeli counter-intelligence service was overwhelmed by the incoming flood of Soviet spies. But then at the start of the 1950s, while Mitrokhin was in the country, things had gone wrong for Moscow. A network of agents was identified and rolled up linked to Mapam, a left-wing political party. Some of the agents were high up in the new country, including in the intelligence community, parliament and the army. The issue was dealt with quietly by Israel’s leaders, shunting those working for Moscow sideways rather than making a fuss.

The problem for Moscow was that the compromise seemed to be due to sloppy tradecraft and overconfidence by those involved, including the Soviet case officers. Mitrokhin most likely had been servicing these agents. Was he himself directly responsible? What exactly went wrong was something he would not speak of. But the station’s cover was blown, agents were lost and everyone there was stained by the failure. In February 1953, a bomb, planted by Jewish activists, exploded at Levin House, the embassy in Tel Aviv. Moscow severed diplomatic relations with Israel, the result of a deep disillusion in the Soviet Union over the direction of the new Israeli state but also the emergence of a new wave of antisemitism at the highest level.

Israel would be the last long-term posting that Mitrokhin had as a First Chief Directorate officer. Some said he was young, untrained and overzealous. Too keen to impress. Not up to it. The result was that in the future, he would only be sent abroad on short-term deployments. There would never again be a full term abroad, the chance to be the proper elite spy he had believed was his proper path. That all meant by 1953, he was back in Moscow, his career having hit the buffers and his country about to go through a crisis.

14

The Death of Stalin

AS MITROKHIN RETURNED to Moscow, a grand set of skyscrapers, known as the Seven Sisters, were rising in the city. They were an expression of Soviet confidence in the future. But as 1953 began, the mood inside the claustrophobic and cramped Lubyanka was apprehensive rather than buoyant as Mitrokhin and his colleagues witnessed the final, dark chapter of Stalin’s life. In the corridors, they could almost sense in the air that a convulsion, another purge of the system, was building. The first signs were newspaper editorials talking of Jews as rootless cosmopolitans with dual loyalties. Zionists were conspiring to destabilise the Soviet Union by persuading Jews to emigrate to Israel, it was said. This was a pretext for Stalin to move against his opponents although it also gave licence for a deep-rooted antisemitism to resurface. One female doctor, a collaborator with the KGB, denounced her Jewish colleagues who worked with the Kremlin saying they had made false diagnoses leading to the death of patients. That led to stunning claims that a group of mainly Jewish doctors had been involved in a secret plot to kill the country’s leaders.

A Pravda front page editorial ran the headline: ‘Foul Spies and Murderers in the Mask of Doctors and Professors.’ These monsters and traitors were perhaps linked to plans by the American and British secret services to create a subversive fifth column in the country, it was said. There was a return to the dark language of the 1930s. Patients began to refuse to take medicine from Jewish doctors fearing they too could be poisoned. Jewish newspapers, theatres and restaurants were closed down. Spy-fever was building once again, a new wave of terror coming.

Mitrokhin became part of a desperate search for plotters. In his case, it was the possible Zionist connections of Yuri Zhukov, the Pravda correspondent in Paris. His wife had Jewish origins which was enough to link him to the so-called ‘Doctor’s Plot’. The hunt swept through the Chekists’ own ranks. There had been many Jews at the time, including in senior positions. Soon one of the only ones left was a man employed by the KGB’s eavesdropping service since they needed a Hebrew speaker. The crescendo was building. How had the plotters escaped detection for so long? The security forces, led by Beria, were publicly accused of a ‘lack of vigilance’ in failing to spot the ‘terrorist’ plot. Beria and the Chekists did their best to make up for this by hunting down every possible plotter but they clearly understood they were in Stalin’s sights.

And then, in March 1953, something unthinkable happened. One day, Stalin did not emerge from his room. Years of absolute power had twisted Stalin’s already paranoid personality into ever more contorted shapes. He was scared of being alone, almost as if unable to trust himself. As his physical and mental strength declined, he would summon his inner circle for late night drinking sessions. Those men had always feared and hated him, knowing that his whim could seal their fate. That meant that the leader lay in his own piss for hours before anyone plucked up the courage to enter his room and see why he had not emerged. As his life lay in the balance, those around him wanted him dead and to secure their own position but also feared moving too fast in case he survived. Beria would switch between sympathetically holding his master’s hand and disdainfully spitting near him, depending on whether at that moment it looked like Stalin might wake up or not. At first, they had all agreed he was just sleeping but eventually they brought doctors. Some of the same eminent doctors who had been arrested as part of the supposed plot to kill him were now approached for help. But no one could save him. The moment Stalin finally passed away, Beria got in his car and raced off.

A man who had ruled for so many years and taken the country through war, was pronounced dead. What did this mean? Stalin’s face had been everywhere. How could he now have abandoned them, people asked. Would there be a return to the dark days of civil war? Huge crowds surged into the centre of Moscow to see his body, as if to prove to themselves that he was really dead. Those who got close would be caught up in a kind of hysterical grief. Hundreds would be killed in a crush.

The sense of shock was compounded when Beria, making his move for power, announced that the Doctor’s Plot was, in fact, not a plot after all and those arrested were actually innocent. Beria had eavesdropped on top Soviet officials in their homes and cars. The tapes revealed how his rivals Bulganin, Khrushchev and others would drink themselves into a state and hurl insults at Stalin and Beria. It was all useful ammunition as Beria now tried to manoeuvre himself into power, posing as a reformer. He offered an amnesty for some of the two and a half million prisoners held in labour camps. Their release led to a wave of stabbings, assaults and rapes. Meanwhile, his erstwhile comrades feared Beria’s rise. Throughout Soviet history, the Communist party and Chekists had tussled over who would have the upper hand in ruling the country. The party apparatchiks were always wary of having any Chekist – let alone Beria – become pre-eminent and so they began their own plot.

That July, Mitrokhin was abroad on a short-term assignment when he received a top secret ‘decipher yourself’ telegram. It contained the shocking news that Beria himself had been involved in anti-state activities. At a meeting of the Presidium in June, the pugnacious Khrushchev had made his move. Beria was removed at gunpoint and accused of being an ‘agent of international imperialism’. The head-Chekist begged for mercy. But he knew too much to live.

Beria’s picture was swiftly taken down from the walls of every KGB office. The whiplash would have been comic, if lives had not been at stake. One top ballerina was married to a Lt General in the KGB, an ally of Beria. When some of Beria’s supporters were purged and the General was sent to jail, the ballerina divorced him for being an enemy of the people. When Beria took power after Stalin’s death, they remarried. But when Beria was executed, the General was sent to the labour camps and the ballerina divorced him all over again.

Within Mitrokhin’s Chekist world, there was bewilderment. One moment Beria and his people were on top, the next they were dead. For Mitrokhin, this was a moment of possibility. Perhaps there could now be change, a move away from the paranoia and the darkness towards a real communist future. ‘I regarded Stalin’s death as a great event for the Russian nation. At least the tyrant was dead and perhaps his successor would be better. I thought this change in leadership would bring improvements in the lives of ordinary Russians. And that turned out to be the case for a while at least.’

15

Hopes Dashed

IN EARLY 1956, a special meeting of his department was called and Mitrokhin was among those summoned. The news the KGB officers would hear would be shocking, a political earthquake whose aftershocks would go on for years. The Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party had just taken place in February, a moment when delegates gathered in the Kremlin from around the country to hear plans for the future. Now, the KGB’s First Chief Directorate was being given an official readout of what had taken place behind closed doors at a special session. In the hall of the Supreme Soviet, Khrushchev had given what would be known as the ‘Secret Speech’. He had begun by reminding Comrades that Lenin himself had worried about the risks of a Cult of the Individual and also detected in Stalin certain ‘negative characteristics’. Stalin had, it could now be said, deviated from true revolutionary principles, including those of collective leadership. He had used extreme methods of repression, partly thanks to his ‘sickly suspicious’ mentality. More than half of the delegates at the Seventeenth Congress in 1934 had been arrested. Cases had been fabricated and confessions obtained by torture.

Khrushchev laid out the charges against the man he had served loyally. The focus was on the ‘mass acts of abuse’ inflicted on the party rather than the people. There was no condemnation of the collectivisation and resulting famine that killed millions. That would risk undermining the whole basis of Soviet rule. But the charge list presented that day was still astonishing. Senior party figures had been killed. The Doctor’s Plot was a fabrication. Even Stalin’s record as a heroic war leader was challenged. He had ignored intelligence about the Nazi invasion of 1941 and made the war costlier and longer than it could have been. After four hours, as Khrushchev finished, there had been prolonged applause but also an awareness that what had been the stable foundations of Soviet rule had just been shaken. The speech was never formally made public but it was summarised and distributed widely among party committees. Forces were being unleashed which Khrushchev himself would struggle to control.

Over two days, Mitrokhin’s KGB section debated what all of this could possibly mean. In some offices, the speech was read and debate kept brief. But in others, like Mitrokhin’s, there was the unprecedented chance to actually speak your mind. The senior officer in charge gave his verdict: ‘Stalin was a bandit!’ These were words which would have got him shot just a few years earlier. Some agreed openly, others more quietly, still nervous. Mitrokhin was one of those who was willing to speak out. But no one knew quite the boundaries anymore of what it was possible to say. For the more hardline of Mitrokhin’s fellow Chekists, the reverse was too much. Aware of their role in delivering the ‘abuses’ now being condemned, a few threw themselves out of Lubyanka windows.

Stalin’s shadow would never pass. He had made the Soviet Union an industrial and military superpower, defeating the Nazis and rivalling the West. But he had done so through terror, famine and repression. On trains people would clandestinely sell homemade calendars with a picture of Stalin on each page. Some would maintain a quasi-religious faith in the man whose image had loomed over them for so long. But for others, the tearing down of an idol led to a deeper loss of faith. A man who was worshipped had not just been brought down from his pedestal but revealed as a monster. The idealism of previous decades in which building socialism and fighting fascism could be used to justify actions had been shattered. So what was there left to believe in now? How could you believe what you were told? What was left in the wake of the idol being smashed was cynicism and uncertainty. Even among the KGB elite, and its agents abroad, there was confusion.

For Khrushchev, the process known as de-Stalinisation was a risk. But he was, by nature, a risk-taker. He believed that just enough distancing from the past would allow the country to reform and overhaul the West while also maintaining the grip of the Communist party. And for Mitrokhin there was the hope that change might be possible. But he, like others on the inside, would also come to understand that it was not so simple. The sins of Stalinism could not all be heaped on Stalin alone.

After all, who had been head of the party in Ukraine, signing the forms to send thousands of fellow Communist party officials to camps and perhaps their death during the purges of the late 1930s? Khrushchev. And who had been in charge as the war ended and as Mitrokhin witnessed the horrors in Ukraine as Moscow’s control was reasserted? Khrushchev again. He had been an integral part of the system which he now condemned. And it was not just him.

All of those party leaders who sat in the Congress and who had stood to applaud Khrushchev and to condemn Stalin had themselves been part of the system. They had been complicit in the terror, the false confessions, the torture and the imprisonment. But even as you went further down into the KGB, they knew they too had been the instruments through which this abuse had been inflicted on the nation. But this truth went unsaid. For Mitrokhin, there was now the promise of change. But at the same moment as he hoped for a better future for his country, his career as a front-line officer was coming to a strange end as he made what would be his last foreign trip as an operational spy, a glamorous but ill-fated mission in the Australian sunshine.

16

Blood in the Water

EARLY IN THE morning of 7 November 1956, Mitrokhin stepped off the passenger ship Gruzia and into the warm sunshine of Australia’s summer. Waiting at Appleton Dock in Melbourne, were a few well-wishers but also some protesters. But there was also an undercover photographer snapping pictures of Mitrokhin and the others disembarking.

For the first time, he would see something of life in the West. As with many KGB officers posted abroad, he could not help but notice the contrast with life back in the Soviet Union. Mitrokhin was one of a small army of KGB officers sent under diplomatic cover to Melbourne for that year’s Olympic Games. The Olympics were on their way to becoming an important theatre for superpower rivalry, the Soviets keen to establish their physical superiority and defeat the capitalist Americans in the arena.

But walking the international sporting stage carried risks. The Soviet Union was closed to the outside world but participating in the games required allowing a group of young athletes to travel. That left them prey to Western spies and, although this was hard to admit, to the possibility they might use the opportunity to defect. So they had to be watched. The KGB team, including Mitrokhin, was not there to collect intelligence so much as to prevent their own people making a run for it.

Mitrokhin was himself being watched as the undercover photographer at the port suggested. Australian intelligence believed there were at least 46 spies among the 520 strong Soviet Olympic delegation and perhaps 30 more whose role was suspected but not confirmed. Its security service, ASIO, was checking the details of every Soviet citizen who got off the ship against a series of lists of suspected spies, including directories supplied by both the US and UK.

In a room, members of Australian security slid a picture of Mitrokhin across the table to someone to see if they recognised him. They were making the most of one advantage they had – a recent defector from the KGB who could see if he could pick out former colleagues among the visitors.

In 1954, Vladimir Petrov, a senior KGB officer in Canberra, had feared his links to Beria might sign his own death warrant and he chose to defect. He had not told his wife and Soviet security officials hustled her onto a plane at Sydney airport. Australian officials then managed to get her off the plane when it refuelled in Darwin. Both Petrovs would be sentenced to death in absentia. One concern from the Australians was that the KGB might use the arrival of so many of its officers to not just carry out espionage but try and assassinate the Petrovs.

The couple were both shown Mitrokhin’s picture snapped by the undercover photographer at the docks. Petrov, who was not altogether reliable, did not recognise him and so an ‘X’ was placed by Mitrokhin’s name on his file. Alongside it were the details of his previous postings that Western intelligence were aware of. There was his time in Karachi, Pakistan in 1953 where he had been serving undercover as a clerk, another of Mitrokhin’s short-term assignments since Israel. Others in those years had included the Netherlands and Iceland. He was not on any list though as a KGB officer known to the West.

The very public defection of the Petrovs had made Moscow even more determined there would be no embarrassments during the Olympics and no more defections. The KGB were right to worry since the CIA had been cooking up plans to lure Soviet-bloc athletes to defect. They were billed the ‘friendly games’ as Australia sought to promote them as a moment of peace in a dangerous world. But then tensions escalated dramatically as the games were about to begin.

When the Hungarian team left for Melbourne at the end of October, their country was in turmoil. What began with protesters chanting ‘Russians go home’ turned into what appeared to be a revolution on the streets of Hungary against Soviet domination. The Hungarian athletes had for a few days dreamt they might end up representing a liberated nation. But then by the time the games actually began, Moscow had sent in its tanks for a bloody crackdown. The KGB was on the front lines as the bodies piled up.

The crushing of the uprising led to one of the most extraordinary confrontations in Olympic history when Hungary and the USSR faced each other in the water polo semi-final in a match known as ‘blood in the water’. The atmosphere around the packed pool was intense, the hatred and animosity all too clear. Some of the Hungarian players were worried their own family members could have been killed back home. They launched insults at the Soviet players in the pool and struck beneath the waterline to try to provoke them. The physical contact began to escalate into real violence.

A man was watching poolside. He had on a brown overcoat and a broad hat even though it was a hot Melbourne day. He was KGB. The orders had been for officials to do what they could to avoid the situation getting out of control. That would just draw attention to events in Hungary. And the Australian press was bound, like the crowd, to take the underdog’s side against the Russians. The senior team official was shouting at the team not to respond under any circumstances. But at half-time, the KGB man took a different line and was shouting and signalling to the Russian team to fight back, contradicting the calls for restraint.

As the game came towards an end, the Hungarians were winning 4–0, each goal cheered. It seemed to the Soviet players as if their eardrums might burst due to the noise around them. And then there were the insults. ‘You dirty bastards. You come over and bomb our country,’ the Hungarian Ervan Zador said to one of the Soviet athletes. He was met with the response that he was a ‘traitor’. More fights were breaking out now in the pool. A nose was broken by a fist. An elbow went into another face. Zador decided to tell a Russian player that his mother had enjoyed carnal relations with a dog. The Russian rose in the water. Zador turned at the wrong moment and the Russian smashed Zador hard in the face. Blood flowed copiously from a deep gash just below his right eye. He swam to the side to get out. But he was told by colleagues to swim across the pool so that everyone could see his bloody face. He was careful not to wipe the blood off as he climbed out and walked past the snapping cameras. Hungarian officials and fans looked set to riot as police were forced to intervene on the sidelines. The referee ended the game a minute and a half early as it looked for a few moments as if the Soviet players might be attacked. Bottles and coins rained down on them as the police escorted the team away.

Soviet officials were furious with their team and vented at them for having ‘stained their honour’ as they gathered, bruised, after the game at one in the morning. But one person had a different view, contradicting the others. This was the KGB officer who had been at the poolside encouraging them on. ‘You should have hit the Hungarian players harder,’ Mitrokhin said to the Soviet team.

No one from the Soviet team managed to defect and the USSR won more medals than the Americans. The Hungarian Zador would defect at the end of the games to the West and in the meantime the images of his bloodied face were a public relations disaster for the Soviet Union. They had already crushed the Hungarian people’s hopes in Budapest and now they had meted out violence at what was supposed to be a sporting encounter. And the KGB – and one man in particular – had screwed up.

With the games over, Mitrokhin headed home and to demotion. It would take three weeks for the boat to reach Vladivostok on New Year’s Eve. Toilet paper was one of the many things it ran out of on the long journey. When the passengers disembarked, they found temperatures of minus 30 degrees centigrade, a world away from the Australian summer they had left. After the crushing of the uprising in Hungary, the thaw that Khrushchev’s secret speech seemed to offer looked at risk. It was a cold and bitter end to what would be Mitrokhin’s final tour as a front-line officer.

17

Banishment

IT WAS ON his return from Melbourne that he had been banished. On Mitrokhin’s file were written the fateful words which brought to an end all his hopes: ‘Not suitable for operational work.’ Rumours would later emerge that he had not just botched an assignment but killed someone. But the truth was far more mundane. He was not up to it. He had performed badly in the field in Israel and Australia. But more than that, he just did not fit. He was ‘gloomy’ and ‘silent’, KGB colleagues would later say, a hard man to get on with. He lacked social skills. Mixing at cocktail parties on the diplomatic circuit was not something that came naturally but nor could he make small talk with his colleagues. He was starting to attract a reputation for being argumentative.

Stalin was gone and some of the dead weight of fear lifted from the system, including the KGB. But Mitrokhin took things a little too far. He lacked the subtlety required to rise up the ranks of the backstabbing and competitive KGB. That required an understanding of how to play the system, to know where the boundaries were in terms of what was permissible to say and how to cultivate the right patrons and speak their minds rather than your own. Instead, the prickly Mitrokhin spoke a little too freely, including about the way the KGB itself had been run in the previous years. He was always complaining. ‘Awkward,’ one of his superiors described him. He may not have been questioning the whole system in a way that suggested he was dangerous but it was enough to get him labelled a problem. His operational career in the First Chief Directorate had not been a success and now, his bosses decided, he needed to be moved.

And so in late 1956, his superiors made a fateful decision whose consequences they could not have seen. He was to be moved. He liked his files. So why not move him to the archive? After all, what damage could he do there?

The news came as a shock to Mitrokhin. There was no hiding the fact this was an unmistakable sign of failure, a humiliation. He thought he was a high-flyer but he was now being sent underground. The archive was where people who had a problem with drink or embarrassed their boss were sent, a place where they could be forgotten.

‘I imagined that the bosses decided that I had exhausted my potential in the field and so they moved me from active service to the archive. It was a very upsetting experience for me,’ he would say.

The First Chief Directorate were the elite – the most fortunate who got to see the world. Time in the West was what Mitrokhin had dreamed of and assumed would be his one day. Now all he would see was the inside of the archive and the queries from other departments and provincial branches about what lay in the endless files. But, as Mitrokhin himself would later reflect, there is a saying in Russia, that you never know what you are going to lose and what you are going to find. Or, as they say in the West, every cloud has a silver lining. ‘Because it was working in the archive that opened my eyes and allowed me to see the truth.’

18

The Deal

Vilnius, April 1992

AS HE SAT with James and Robert in one of the small rooms in the Vilnius embassy with a set of bulging envelopes laid out on the table, the British spies could see there remained many mysteries in the old man’s story. He did seem to be a KGB officer and a strange and unhappy one at that. But none of that in itself explained how he had been able to pilfer the deepest secrets of the KGB and bring out volumes of material on its clandestine operations. How do you steal an archive? Now, at least, the first part of the answer was becoming clearer. You did it by being an archivist. But at this point, the old man did not want to reveal how he had been able to copy materials in the archive, an important question since a regular archive clerk would never have been able to do such things without being spotted or be able to gain access to the most secret files. That part of his story would have to wait.

Neither in Vilnius that April nor later did he want to tell the full story of why he had ended up in the archives. Mitrokhin had presented his motivations only briefly, knowing the gaps in his story would raise questions. The truth of how he had been sent to the archive was too humiliating and might make people think less of him. He hid from the British pair that what had taken him to that place was bitterness and disappointment. He feared if he spoke of it, he would be misunderstood as just another cheap spy, trying to mask grievance or greed with some higher calling. He was different, he knew that. He knew the gaps in the story would be evident. And they would lead many to ponder the balance between personal grievance and ideology in what had driven him to reach this point. To some extent it did not matter. Resentment at being denied what they thought they deserved had been a factor in many of the best cases over the years.

Mitrokhin chose instead to focus on his ideological motivation. But he thought better of trying to explain that he was battling a monster, worried that this would make him sound too odd. Instead, he elected to focus his explanation for his actions on the individual heads of the creature he faced rather than its whole shape. He explained to the British spies that he wanted to harm three organisations – the KGB, the Communist party and the Soviet elite, known as the nomenklatura. He was committed, he made clear, to inflicting as much damage as he could to them, even to destroy them. Mitrokhin was not lying about his ideological motivation. It had become all-consuming. He hated the KGB and what it had done to Russia. He wanted nothing more than to destroy it.

Mitrokhin, then and afterwards, also wanted to focus on the material he had collected rather than his own personal story. He gestured to the ten large envelopes filled with notes laid out before him and told the pair they might be able to keep these. Because he had more. Much more. He could bring this other material out if he came back in June. By then, they would have had the chance to examine what he had given them and understand its true value.

He also mentioned he had tried already to offer his material to the Americans. That did not bother the British pair. Most defectors went to the Americans first – more money and more influence. Over at MI6 they had made a good living out of being second choice, often spotting an opportunity when the Americans had passed one up and missed a mark.

It was time for Mitrokhin to focus on what he wanted in return. There had been a letter he had written to explain things which accompanied his initial pitch to the Americans and British when he had turned up at their embassies. It was signed in his false name of Yurasov. In that and now in his conversations, he made clear that there were two absolutely firm conditions for handing over his secret material.

The first was that when he eventually decided he was ready to leave Russia, there had to be a guarantee of asylum not only for himself but also his close family. There was a wife, a son and a mother-in-law, he said. Family was clearly important to him. Many defectors wanted to get out precisely to get away from their families, often asking to bring their mistresses with them, but Mitrokhin appeared committed to his with a clarity and intensity which suggested something more than just run of the mill loyalty. It would take time to understand just how central they were to the efforts he had been undertaking. But this opened up a difficult area. What did they know of his work?

That was a question for another day though, since there was no sense that his departure along with his family was in any way imminent. It might be years away, it sounded from the way he talked. But he wanted absolute assurances they would all get out when the time came. Mitrokhin understood this was the moment he had maximum leverage so he insisted on this commitment before he would leave the envelopes or agree to bring more.

There was a second demand. And it was unusual. He said he wanted his material to be published. He did not want it to be locked away in a vault and pored over by Western spies. The whole point of his journey, of all the risks he had taken over so many years, was that the truth would be made known to the world. This was very different from the usual fantasists peddling rubbish. They would hardly want to see their made-up nonsense be subject to public scrutiny. But it was also very different from many genuine spies who would understand the normal rules of the game were to keep material secret and exploit it. This was not something MI6 had ever had to deal with before. The service did not yet officially exist and it was not exactly a publishing house. But there was no shaking the man from this desire. ‘My request is that not a line nor a digit from my work will be published without my agreement,’ he said. There were so many things about which the man seemed vague – not least on details of his own life – but on this he was absolutely firm.

The British intelligence officers were quickly learning this was not an easy man to deal with. He was not someone they could charm or cajole. There was something granite-like in his implacability.

It was now late morning. He explained he was getting the 4 p.m. train that afternoon back home and he wanted an answer on his requests before he left. Not from them but from their superiors. That was tight. Getting an answer from London that fast was not easy. They agreed to meet again in the walled grounds of the neighbouring church at 3.15 p.m. to give him an answer.

Robert and James were unsure they would get a response in time but they drafted a quick telegram that their technical officer could encipher and send. It was off by midday. They told Head Office that on first sight the goods looked genuine – more than that, they looked first-class. And it was not a one-time sell but the promise of more riches. The pair’s judgement was that he might well be the real deal but they needed a fast answer from the office to his demands to keep him in play.

James understood the process for assessing whether or not to take in a possible defector was not quick. Normally, there would have to be a meeting or at the very least a secure phone call of members of what was called the ‘defector sub-committee’. This consisted of representatives of MI6, the Foreign Office, MI5 and others and who would collectively agree whether a formal offer could be made to someone. That decision would be based on how good the material on offer would be, balanced against the cost. Once you took someone over, it was a commitment for life. There was no way you took on everybody who came calling, especially not now. The penny-pinchers at the Treasury would never accept that. The way these meetings went, all it took was someone to raise an objection and the whole process would stall.

To his surprise, an answer came back. It said James was authorised to tell Mitrokhin that the UK would ‘probably’ accept him. James and Robert looked at each other and laughed. A probably bought you nothing in the game. Perhaps the calls had never been made and someone was trying to have their cake and eat it back at the office? The pair recognised they had a delicate situation. So they decided to do what they were good at and bend the truth. They agreed to tell Mitrokhin that Britain would indeed accept his family when the time came and forget the word probably. There was a risk here. If they had made a mistake about his credibility they would be in trouble with the office for extending a firm offer without permission. And if London ended up turning him down when they had promised him a way out, then they would have let him down badly. But being a spy meant taking risks. And sometimes being economical with the truth. And the pair were good at that. So in the shadow of the church, they gave him the good news. The deal was on.

19

Gunner

London, April 1992

LIKE PIRATES, ROBERT and James triumphantly carted back their haul from Vilnius. Along with the files, they relayed their initial judgement to the Controller and his team at Century House. The man was strange but he also seemed plausible. He claimed to have access to many of the KGB’s deepest secrets. The real test would be what was in the files. Work began on transcribing and translating the 2,000 pages Mitrokhin handed over that April. A few Russian speakers, Robert included, piled in to help. And the pickings proved rich.

The initial assessment said it looked to be the real deal, with names and details of KGB operations stretching back decades. The material focused on the US, UK, Canada and allied nations, although sometimes it was muddled up. The American volume alone consisted of 800 pages of dense typescript containing the names of hundreds of KGB agents and confidential contacts listed by codename. There looked to be enough detail to allow many to be identified. It appeared messy at times and to have been written in something of a rush. It was often hard to understand quite what it meant. It was oddly organised. The quantity was almost overwhelming. It was not going to be easy to interpret. They realised they would need the author’s help to decipher it all. Maybe that was the idea.

The key value of the material was in counter-intelligence – the world of spy-versus-spy or countering the work of an opposing intelligence agency. It can seem arcane but spy services spend much effort trying to counter or penetrate their opposite numbers. This is because if you want to catch those agents your enemy has recruited in your country – say in your foreign ministry or military or even your own spy service – the most effective route is to get a source inside their spy service who knows the identity of the agents they are running. Mitrokhin had just given the counter-intelligence teams the crown jewels.

Mitrokhin had been smart in what he had provided. He knew he had to show his hand to prove his value. And so he had shown the MI6 officers notes which suggested he had access to the deepest inner sanctum of the KGB. These were the files which related to what Moscow calls illegals. Illegals are shrouded in mythology in Russian espionage and popular culture. They are deep cover operatives who are given years of training to take on not just a new name and identity but even a new nationality. A Russian might be turned into a Canadian who could then move to New York or London. Once they had undergone this transformation they could burrow into Western society in a way a ‘legal’ Russian diplomat could never manage. This would allow them to gain access to people and places that other spies could not reach.

These spies were the pride of the KGB – they had been used to recruit and run the Cambridge spies who penetrated the British establishment, including Kim Philby in MI6, as well as the atomic spies in America who had stolen the secrets of the Manhattan project and the bomb. It was almost impossible for Western spycatchers to identify illegals in the wild since they were supposed to have very little or no contact with embassies. They were among the most sensitive secrets the KGB protected.

And yet Mitrokhin somehow seemed to have been able to match the real names of a Russian with their cover name or ‘legend’. This was sensational. The detail was granular enough in some cases to include things like false passport numbers, providing a concrete lead to chase. This was not information that would be accessible to a regular clerk or officer in the archives. So how had he been able to get hold of this? That was still not clear but something they would need to find out.

Finding Russian spies inside the UK was not MI6’s job but that of its domestic sister service, MI5. Relations between the two services had their ups and downs. During the Cold War, MI6 tended to be more establishment – a bit more public school (though not the top ones). They used to see their cousins at MI5 as glorified policemen (and early on in the 1950s and 60s MI5 often were former policemen from the Colonial Service). Meanwhile, MI5 tended to see MI6 as posh schoolboys with more confidence than competence. Things had improved from the bad old days when the hunt for moles in both services had created deep distrust, but they were still not exactly close. But given the nature of the material, MI5 would have to be informed. On 14 April they were given a limited briefing which informed them of the existence of a new stream of intelligence. No names or details of the source were provided.

Over the coming two months, MI6 would hand over the raw, unprocessed information from Mitrokhin’s chapter on KGB activities in the UK to MI5 in a series of instalments. All of it was with them by 16 June. Sharing did not always come naturally but it had its value. As well as it being their job to chase down agents in the UK, MI5’s efforts could also be used to test Mitrokhin’s bona fides. The Security Service was able to cross-reference Mitrokhin’s notes with cases that it already had in its files but which were not public. For instance, an agent they knew had been recruited by the Russians but who had never been prosecuted or confronted. No one else would have known the details of who they were other than someone who had access to the KGB’s secrets. These checked out. There remained the possibility that Mitrokhin was a dangle from the KGB to confuse the West. If so, they would offer up only what is called chicken feed – material which was technically secret but not that sensitive and could be given to the other side without causing too many problems. But no dangle or defector would ever give up details of illegals whom the KGB had invested years in training and who were prized so highly. MI5 reported back that the material looked credible. The new source, whoever it was, had the goods. MI5 began processing the leads into individual reports to hand over to its investigating officers. Few understood then that among those was one that would lead to a near-disaster for everyone involved. That would be years away.

A new MI6 case like this – involving someone still in their own country and whose life was therefore at risk – would have to be close-hold. The more people who knew details, the more chance of a leak. And the result would be a trip to the Lubyanka for the source and the end of the line for the case. Inside MI6, only a few were read into Mitrokhin’s existence. A senior director oversaw the operation and kept it from many of his colleagues even at the highest level. A few senior people at the Foreign Office – which oversaw the work of MI6 – needed to know. The Chief of MI6, Sir Colin McColl, spoke personally to Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, to inform him about the promising new case in April. On 1 May, MI6 formally put in a written submission to Hurd to get permission to proceed. The submission outlined details of what had happened so far and the nature of the material involved. It proposed Mitrokhin would be run as what is called ‘an agent in place’ to see what more he could provide. The man who had spent so long transcribing the codenames of others in the KGB archives now had his own, courtesy of MI6. They called him GUNNER.

The other people who needed to be told were the Americans. This was important but also delicate. When MI6 achieved a success, it often liked to share the fact with its cousins at CIA. Why? Much that is said about the special relationship between the US and UK is overblown. But the one area where it is special is in the field of intelligence. When it came to signals intelligence, GCHQ and its American counterpart the National Security Agency were joined at the hip and shared everything, dividing up the world between them for targets. But human intelligence – the worlds of MI6 and the CIA – was different. The relationship was more transactional. You had to buy your way into the game. Good human sources were a crucial bargaining chip that MI6 used for leverage. Success helped maintain access to the vast spigot of intelligence from the US machine.

When you got a good case, the emphasis was usually on wrapping up the product with a bow and making sure the Americans knew it was good. But this carried risks. The more people who know about a secret, like the identity of a new agent, the less secret it is and the more danger for the agent. When MI6 recruited KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky it shared details of his remarkable intelligence with the CIA but without saying who their source was. The material was so good that it made it up to the White House. But the CIA, perhaps a touch jealous, did not like not knowing and tasked a team to discover who was behind this goldmine. They identified Gordievsky as one possible name. Unfortunately, one of that team ended up as a ‘walk-in’ at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. That highlighted the risks. But, in this case, there was the complexity that Mitrokhin had already approached the Americans. Even though they had turned him away there was the possibility his name was working through some part of the US system and they would realise their mistake and try to establish contact with him. It was not impossible that the Americans might try and get in on the game and try and run him for themselves. The special relationship was only special up to a point. So the decision was to open up. MI6 contacted CIA and informed them that they were in play with the man who had called himself ‘Yurasov’. When the message arrived at Langley, it caused an immediate stink.

20

How did we miss this one?

Washington DC

THERE WAS NO rejoicing inside the CIA’s Counterintelligence Center when they got the news about the new British agent. Instead, it played into an increasingly bitter argument at headquarters. There was cold fury at a story which seemed to exemplify everything that was wrong with their own agency’s Russia operations.

Paul Redmond was deputy chief of the Counterintelligence Center but only because he had been kicked out as deputy of the old Soviet division after clashes with Milt Bearden over the new policy of making nice with the Russians. Their battles were bad even by the standards of the CIA’s sometimes brutal bureaucratic warfare. To his supporters, Redmond was trying to stop the ship crashing into the iceberg. To his opponents, Redmond was emblematic of the Cold Warriors who could not see that the world had moved on.

‘The KGB is dead,’ Bearden had told Redmond. ‘We are now in liaison with them and we must maintain the moral high ground.’ Bearden had wanted to build relations and avoid anything that could upset the apple cart. That was not Bearden’s policy alone but reflected a view at the top of the CIA and across the administration in places like the State Department where they were inviting Russians to staff meetings (which proved to be an opportunity the Russians used to plant bugs). To Redmond the moral high ground was an exposed place to stand. He believed pressure needed to be maintained on the Russians since the CIA’s adversary was only playing dead. One of the debates was whether Washington’s problem with Moscow had been about communism or whether it was really about Russia. It would take time for the answer to become clear.

Redmond had been shown the cable from headquarters to the Baltics turning down the man called Yurasov, the walk-in who turned out to be Mitrokhin, but he only saw it after the fact. He went bananas. What had happened, he asked. He started sending angry messages out across the system. It was hard to get a clear answer. One CIA Chief of Station did not remember turning away the grubby old man. The next time Mitrokhin had approached, the order to not take him had indeed come from Langley. Redmond made a huge stink and went to the higher-ups. Whatever the ins and outs of why it happened – and the full story would be lost over time as people tried to cover their backs – the Brits were now offering up what could have and should have been the CIA’s source. Redmond saw it as a perfect example of the damage wrought by those who focused on liaison rather than continued recruitment of Russian assets, a sign of what he called a ‘risible naivete’.

‘It was controversial at the CIA as we had our chance,’ Jim Olson, chief of the Counterintelligence Center and Redmond’s boss would say. ‘That’s a cardinal sin in our profession to turn away a good walk-in.’ Olson would come to the view that the turning down of Mitrokhin was a colossal mistake as he flew over to Britain to find out about the new agent. ‘I had the unenviable task of going to London, with hat in hand, to ask MI6 to let us into an operation that should have been ours in the first place.’ Olson found the Brits were their usual charming selves. ‘They were very gracious and very helpful.’

The Americans and Brits might be allies but there was always a touch of rivalry beneath the surface. The Americans sometimes felt their ‘cousins’ could come across as a little superior, something they felt masked a touch of resentment derived from the fact that even though the British thought themselves more nimble and adept at playing the spy game, they still had to rely on and defer to the over-sized Yanks. The Brits wined and dined Olson, taking him to a restaurant part-owned by Michael Caine, although to the American’s disappointment the actor was not there, and they also showed him some of the material. Olson could see the take looked exceptional. ‘The information Mitrokhin produced was a gold mine,’ Olson said. ‘It answered a lot of questions the West had only been able to speculate about previously.’

The CIA wanted access and because of the leads about agents inside the US, so did the FBI. For all the niceties at restaurants, both sides knew there was a hard-edged deal that could be done. One reason was that over at MI6, they had a problem. Money. Mitrokhin had made clear he wanted out eventually and resettlement would be costly. It was not just him but a wider family who would need to be housed and looked after. Things were not like the early days of MI6 when the chief had a safe full of cash and secret bank accounts to dip into. These days, the penny-pinchers at the Treasury would have to sign off on something which looked like it was going to be north of a million pounds. And with Mitrokhin they said no. The general attitude from the bean-counters was ‘well done lads, you’ve won the Cold War. Tea and medals all round. But now it is all done and dusted, your budget’s going to be cut.’

There was a solution. In Ian Fleming’s James Bond book, CIA man Felix Leiter slides over an envelope full of cash to bail out the British spy at Casino Royale’s Baccarat table when Bond’s bid to bankrupt his opponent hangs in the balance. It was not far from the truth from the earliest days of the Cold War onwards. The Americans are moneybags, is how one of those involved in the Mitrokhin operation thought of his allies. So the Brits went to the Americans with an offer. Cash for access. The Americans said as long as they had ‘early and full’ access to the relevant material they could stump up the money. That was a relief. Otherwise they were going to be completely screwed, the MI6 seniors privately knew, especially since they had made a promise to Mitrokhin.

The CIA and FBI had themselves come to a deal – they would put in a million dollars for Mitrokhin’s resettlement. This was not money he would get in his bank account, rather the contribution to an overall package covering housing, pensions and living costs for all three generations of his family. This sizeable donation would cause problems for MI6 who then had to explain to the ever-hawk-eyed Treasury where this unusual income stream came from and what it was for without revealing the secret of Mitrokhin. At a scheduled bilateral meeting in the US attended by the heads of both the CIA and MI6, the deal was brought up. Washington would be provided with material relating to US interests but it was asked to take no action which might endanger the running of the case. With a nod of the head from Director of Central Intelligence, Bob Gates, the deal was agreed.

Washington’s policy of avoiding paying up front for defectors had not quite worked in this case. It looked like a mistake. But there were a few in Washington who in the long run would wonder if it had actually worked out okay for them. They got the access but did not have to deal with a man whom everyone would soon realise was not easy to handle. There was also another reason that a select few in the CIA were relieved that they had not taken in the old man themselves in the Baltics and had not even known his real name back then. That same reason also made them now desperate to find out what he knew. That was because those few carried a dark secret that many others in the CIA were not aware of or did not want to believe was true.

On his first day as Milt Bearden’s successor running the division that looked after Russia, the new head had been paid a surprise visit by Paul Redmond from counter-intelligence. There was something that the new head needed to know, given he was now responsible for Russia operations. There was a mole. The US intelligence community’s operations had been decimated a few years earlier, their agents rolled up in the mid-eighties. And a select few believed it was thanks to a penetration by the KGB. They were still looking for clues as they hunted for a suspect whom they knew must be an insider with privileged access. That made them eager to get hold of whatever Mitrokhin had but also nervous of what might leak out. After all, Mitrokhin was still living in Russia. And the existence of the mole meant his life might be at risk.

21

Moscow Spring

THE OVERNIGHT TRAIN back to Moscow for Mitrokhin that April had taken nearly twenty hours. The journey, broken up by glasses of tea brought by attendants, offered him the chance to reflect. After many stumbles, his plan was finally in motion. The British seemed to be interested in what he had offered. He knew they would now study the files further and come to understand their value. That meant he had to wait. That came with its own challenges. The city he was returning to was turbulent and felt like it was spinning out of control.

In the streets ordinary people were laying out their possessions – trivial things like cooking pots and toothbrushes – on tables. They were desperate to sell what they could to get hold of hard cash. At the start of 1992, prices had been liberalised as part of what would be called Shock Therapy. In the next three months, the price of salt rose a hundredfold, a box of matches two hundred and fifty times. Savings and pensions were wiped out. There was nothing on the shelves and if there was, people could not afford it. Now in April, there was a currency shortage. Wages were going unpaid. Capitalism seemed savage and arrogant new leaders seemed stubbornly unwilling to admit the pain it was causing.

But Mitrokhin knew his enemy was adapting, as it always had, seeking a way to survive in this new world. The elite, the nomenklatura, seemed to be able to navigate this mess. From their privileged position, the smart ones had been able to see what was coming and had been manoeuvring in the past few years to preserve their wealth and power, getting jobs in private companies or moving money abroad. He could see them in their flashy suits and fast cars. And, he also knew, the Chekists were also still there, even if their names were changing again. Those who had left were now consultants and security advisers to the new private sector but others remained inside, bitter and resentful. It was hard to know where all of this chaos would lead. What if the situation became more dangerous rather than less for him? How much time did he have? There was also the challenge of life at home.

The Moscow apartment was a haven of sorts. He and Nina had moved into the place when Vladimir was at his special school because the journey was much easier. The fact it was one of the best places to live in the city, with a view of the river, was nothing to do with him and everything to do with Nina and her work. He had not said anything to her about the reason for his Baltic trips and he would not until he was sure where it would lead. Their marriage, he knew in his heart, was not a meeting of minds even if the bond between them had endured. They were very different and the distance between them had been growing over the years. Did she look down on him? She was cultured, her mind open to the world outside, while his world was narrower, centred in the lonely and isolated world of files. He had once been filled with optimism but instead had lived the life of a functionary whose path had been blocked. Much was left unsaid between the couple. And that included the secret life he had been living, the effort that had absorbed him for so many years. That protected her. But the clock was now ticking, time running out on the secret life he had kept even from his family.

22

Moscow Signal

THE MI6 OFFICER knew better than to look over his shoulder as he paced the streets of the Russian capital heading towards a tunnel. That was too much of a giveaway. In the films and books, there was usually some ruse like tying your shoelaces or looking in a shop window. But that was not how it worked in real life. What it took was time. He might be young but this was what he had trained for.

A glance at a mark on a wall might take place at 3 p.m. and last only seconds. But the process leading up to it started seven hours earlier. They call it ‘Moscow Rules’ for a reason. That was the jargon for how you had to play the game when operating in the heart of the enemy, a city where the KGB had eyes and ears everywhere. They had the resources to follow anyone serving at the British or American Embassy who they had suspicions about. So if you wanted to do anything operational it meant patiently dry cleaning yourself to ensure you were clean of any tails with an anti-surveillance route.

Meeting agents in person was out of the question. The risk was too great of leading your tail to them. Oleg Penkovsky in the 1960s had been caught when the wife of an MI6 officer was followed to a park where she had the briefest of contact with him. When Oleg Gordievsky had returned to Moscow, MI6 decided against trying to meet in person, instead waiting for him to get posted abroad. The KGB simply had too many resources. The only contact that could be made was through a signal, something simple and located somewhere where both the agent and the officer could plausibly pass.

One of the most important tasks at any agent meeting is to work out how to communicate. At the end of the April meeting, it had been agreed that Mitrokhin would leave a signal in a tunnel near the British Embassy in Moscow. This would indicate when he would next be coming out and where he would go (in case another Baltic state was looking easier than Lithuania).

That was what had taken the MI6 officer out onto the streets that spring day. It took about six months in Moscow before a new officer had a feel for whether he was clean of surveillance. There would be endless walks on and off the Moscow Metro with its beautiful stations as well as through the crowded streets. Officers who served in Moscow knew the streets of that city better than the town where they had grown up. Making a mistake could cost an agent their life and get an officer exposed and expelled. MI6 knew their opponents had enough resources to follow all of their diplomats all of the time, something they could not always do in return. One MI6 officer, a rather good athlete, had even tried jumping in the Moscow River and swimming across. No one was quite sure whether they were trying to lose their tail or just annoy them.

The route to shake any surveillance might begin at the British Embassy, situated in prime Moscow real estate near the Kremlin. It had originally been built for a sugar merchant from Ukraine. After the revolution it had turned into a residence and guest house for the foreign ministry. When diplomatic relations with Britain were restored, it was offered up as an embassy. Inside, the Ambassador, Rodric Braithwaite, was kept in the dark about the new source. The general rule was that he would be consulted on operations inside Russia but not operations against Russia taking place outside of the country. Technically, Mitrokhin was being met outside Russia, in the newly independent Baltics. So there was no need to tell him.

But nor did the MI6 station inside know much. The station was small, with just a handful of officers. In 1992, it was undergoing a transition. John Scarlett had served undercover there back in the Cold War but now he was back as head of station and for the first time that role was declared to the Russians so he could act as an official line of liaison and communication. That meant he needed to be kept away from sensitive cases. The care around the Mitrokhin operation meant that even those working for MI6 in Moscow could not be told details of the agent. The assumption was that the embassy was wired for sound and locally hired staff would be reporting to the security services. A younger officer, hopefully unknown to the Russians, was given the job of checking the signal site and reporting back what it said as well as marking any response for the agent to see in their turn. They did not know who the agent was either. That kept things safer.

Early in May, the MI6 officer was hours into his route when he finally made it to the tunnel. He glanced at the agreed point, looking for the chalk mark disguised as graffiti. There was always the risk with signals that someone could unknowingly wipe the random chalk mark off the wall. But something was there. A signal is not a detailed message. It is a tiny mark that looks inconspicuous. That left room for ambiguity. The officer reported he had seen the chalk signal in the tunnel. He had no idea who it was from or what it meant but the station duly reported its presence back to London. However, there was confusion about its meaning. The best guess at Century House was that it meant Mitrokhin would return on the overnight train arriving in Vilnius on 11 June.

23

Demands

Vilnius, June 1992

IT WAS A busy time at the fledgeling Vilnius embassy. In two days, on Saturday 13 June, there would be the first opportunity to mark the Queen’s birthday, traditionally a major event at every diplomatic outpost around the world. Drinks were being urgently sourced for the party. But first, they had to deal with the return of GUNNER.

At 9.30 a.m., Robert and James were waiting when Mitrokhin appeared at the door, straight off the overnight train. He was trailing what appeared to be an even larger duffle bag than last time, clearly stuffed with more files. He had been worried border controls might be tightened and wanted to get out everything he could manage while he still could, he explained to James and Robert. But then he dropped a bombshell. He had realised that once he handed over these papers he might lose his best leverage.

Before going any further, he said he wanted to discuss the commitment they had made in April. It had been for asylum for him and his family. That was the promise. That had been the deal. Could he rely on that? Of course, he was told. But now he said he wanted it sooner rather than later. This was a surprise. The assumption in London was that he might be run as an agent in place for as long as two years. Suddenly, that was not on the cards. Getting two more months out of him on the ground in Moscow looked like a stretch. Robert and James explained that their impression had been that defection was going to come some way down the line and while there was a deal it would take planning and work to sort this out. They would, of course, communicate Mitrokhin’s desire to London. And they reassured him, perhaps not altogether honestly, that they were confident it would all be approved.

Mitrokhin was unhappy and made it known. Reassurances that it would probably be fine were not what he wanted. He needed a clear commitment. The exchanges were testy. Once again, the difficult, demanding nature of the man they were dealing with was on display. Robert and James would need to offer more than smiles and promises. The pair sent an urgent encoded telegram back to London explaining the problem. He was leaving later that day on the train and was demanding an answer.

Mitrokhin was not easy to work with. That was the word from those on the ground. This would not have been met with surprise back in Century House. The outside world may like spy fiction and films with their easy heroes and villains but those inside know that is not how their world works. They are dealing with people who are complex and difficult. But they did not quite understand him yet and what made him tick. And that mattered.

The more reflective MI6 officers will spend whole careers fascinated by the question of what makes a man or woman willing to betray secrets. There is a saying within the spy world which is rarely uttered outside because it risks putting off those on whom their business depends. ‘Defectors defect because they are defective.’ Or, to put it another way, no one offers to betray secrets because they are happy. Taking the kind of risks involved in spying requires being driven by something powerful but is also unique to each individual. Working out what that is and then exploiting it is the name of the game.

Many claim to be motivated by a high-minded desire to save their country and serve some greater cause. But that often masks something else. Sometimes it is money. Other times ego. Or a grievance. That had been the case with Oleg Penkovsky, the GRU colonel. As with Mitrokhin, the Americans had missed his initial offer and he ended up approaching a British businessman who led him to MI6. The British would bring in the Americans and run Penkovsky jointly. His intelligence was among the most important ever received, providing crucial insights during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But what few mentioned was that Penkovsky was borderline psychotic – a risk-taker animated by a deep hatred of his military superiors. He had been passed over and he wanted vengeance. At one point, such was his drive to destroy those he felt had wronged him, he asked his handlers if they could get him some small nuclear bombs that he could plant around the headquarters of military intelligence in Moscow. He was using Western spies to wreak his revenge. And they were using him to get hold of Moscow’s secrets. That was how the game worked. It’s a high-wire act trying to manage the demands and expectations of an agent while keeping the show on the road to extract maximum value.

Agents though are not always honest about their motivation, preferring to shroud baser motives with a more idealistic cloak. And for many the truth can be complex and hard to disentangle. Where does grievance end and ideology begin? Where do the personal and political meet? Motivations can shift over time. And people sometimes tell themselves, as well as other people, stories to avoid confronting the truth. But when you sit down with them in that room, understanding what brought them there is vital in deciding whether they are real or fake, how long you can run them for and even whether you will be able to keep them alive or not.

Mitrokhin was driven but different, British spies were beginning to realise. His motivation seemed more mysterious. He was dogmatic and unwilling to compromise, almost naive, as if driven by some quasi-religious or spiritual belief. Money did not seem to be a factor. Ego perhaps, but not in the usual way. His family seemed important. But there was a deep-seated hatred as well. And the very nature of what he was offering also made him different from the other spies who were passing over a handful of documents or office gossip from the KGB. This was a man who spent years taking huge risks writing down notes from the most secret files of the KGB. That said something about obsession, dedication, perhaps an oddly introverted recklessness. Why on earth had he done it?

When he was asked, he had a simple answer, one that did not have to involve explaining the full story: ‘I considered this my duty. Both for mankind and as a Russian patriot.’ The truth was more complex.

In his own mind, the old man had come to see his life and his work as a spiritual struggle against malevolent forces which possessed his nation. Fear was the sinister energy that animated the rotting, hulking corpse of the Soviet Union. He wanted to drive a stake into his enemy’s heart. The way to do that was to set people free through giving them the truth. But how had he come to this understanding? There was no one single moment, no blinding flash or sudden revelation. There instead had been a long journey – twists and turns, dead ends and false trails, a kernel of anger and grievance that grew. That was hard to explain. But it had begun at the end of 1956 when he had been banished.

24

The Cellars of the Lubyanka

IT WAS IN the belly of the Lubyanka that Mitrokhin had come to understand the nature of the beast. The vast imposing headquarters of the KGB took up one side of a square in the centre of Moscow and not long after Mitrokhin started his new job, it had a new occupant. A towering bronze statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the ‘fearless knight of the proletarian revolution’, was unveiled in the middle of the square. He stood watching over his successors and the people of Moscow, an unsleeping, all-seeing eye with a supernatural ability to detect enemies wherever they might be. Given that in Chekist mythology this saint had a special bond with children, each drawn to the other by their moral purity and compassion, it was perhaps fitting, if a little odd, that just across from him and the Lubyanka was a huge shop selling children’s toys.

Mitrokhin would walk past the statue and into the Lubyanka through one of the six pedestrian entrances with its heavy four-metre-high door. Behind that sat a glass vestibule. A flash of his KGB ID card to uniformed guards and he passed through another door into the internal entrance hall. A bust of Feliks sat there, fresh flowers placed around it, another reminder that Chekism was a religion, its founder worshipped.

The imposing external façade of the Lubyanka hid a labyrinthine complex which had expanded over the years into three interconnected buildings. For those who toiled there, the place exuded prestige with its marble, granite and polished wood floors. Long, well-lit corridors lined by a strip of red carpet led to offices which were increasingly cramped as the numbers grew. The best were luxurious with walnut doors and bear skin rugs – sometimes even polar bear skin rugs on the floor. The restaurants offered cheap breakfasts with fresh fruit that was hard to get elsewhere.

But there were hints of darkness that seeped in from the walls. There was netting and grilles on the windows. Some said this was after some secret papers had once blown out, others said it was to prevent people jumping. The lifts with iron doors could make you feel like you were being locked in a cell as they slammed shut.

And for those sent there rather than choosing to work there, the Lubyanka felt very different. One Soviet joke said it was by far the tallest structure in Moscow. The reason was that from it you could see all the way to Siberia and its prison camps. Such was the intensity of being held in the place and knowing your life was in the balance that those prisoners who were brought there but lucky enough to get out alive could recall the tiniest detail – the smell of the floor polish along the mazy corridors, the green shades on the lamps in the interrogation rooms, the cold of the bathrooms in winter and the heat under the roof in the summer, and the tantalising sounds of city life from outside the walls. A more morbid version of the old joke had a different punchline – the reason it was the tallest building was because you could see all the way to eternity from the basement.

The basement was where you did not want to go under Stalin. An enclosed courtyard in the old building had a doorway on one side. It led to what had once been the cellars but which then housed the torture chambers, filled with an array of exotic implements to inflict pain and extract a confession. The cellar babushkas would sweep up the fleshy remains at the end of a day’s work and an outlet allowed the blood to flow straight into Moscow’s sewers. It was into these depths that Mitrokhin now headed.

At the same time as the statue of Feliks had gone up in the square, the old prison had been closed, all part of presenting a new image of the Chekists as heroic protectors rather than brutal oppressors. But the lower reaches of the Lubyanka still had a hidden life. Tunnels connected to the Kremlin and Central Committee building. And now down in the depths, just a few feet from where the prison had once been, was where the archives were housed.

In late 1956, Mitrokhin had been exiled to the Operational Record Department of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate – the official name for the archives. Could he still smell the stench of what had been there before? When he was first sent there, the new assignment was nothing less than a disaster for the young spy. ‘Of course I was very disappointed. The archive was seen as a place of exile, a dead end. I was like someone who had carried out all he was capable of. And there was no chance of further operational work,’ he would say. But later he would see that this exile also offered opportunity. He would come to see the archive itself as almost a ‘living organism’, hidden away in the depths of the Lubyanka, its dark heart beating and its appetite always growing. ‘The archive is the heart of the KGB. The entire service is based on it. That’s where all the information is kept. Information on agent networks. All sorts of information. Without the archive the KGB simply cannot function. Only by working there did I realise how sensitive the archive was. It was extremely important. It really opened my eyes. And I realised I knew so little of the KGB.’

It was a dead-end job where careers went to die. What he saw there would change him. But slowly. After all, it would still take more than a decade and a half for him to take the next step towards acting. There was no single archive for the whole KGB. Each directorate had their own files. The First Chief Directorate, Mitrokhin’s home department, had records of agents recruited abroad and correspondence with officers handling them. The Second Directorate had the much larger collection on Soviet citizens, the millions of informants, criminals, prisoners, dissidents as well as anyone who had travelled abroad or any foreigner who has come into the Soviet Union. Regional KGB offices held their own files. If an individual was mentioned then their name was supposed to be entered into the central master index in the Registry and Archives department which provided a summary and the location of all files.

The archive was not a library that someone could browse, picking up a file that took their fancy. Written permission was needed to see any file. If you worked in the US department and wanted to see a file from your own department then you needed permission from your immediate superior. If the file belonged to another department you needed their permission. You would go down and hand over the slip to a clerk who was stood behind a hatch. They would scurry off and look for it. That was Mitrokhin’s job, answering queries from other departments and regional offices. It was quite a let-down for someone who had thought they would be travelling the world and living the exciting life of a front-line spy.

The KGB was meticulous and highly bureaucratic in the way it organised its files. If someone had aroused sufficient interest as a potential target to be recruited, then, after a discussion, the Head of Department would sign a note ordering an operational cultivation file to be issued containing every detail about the KGB’s relationship with that person.

Mitrokhin would go on to work within a small unit called the File Reception Section who would be sent this note. They would give the file a serial number and inscribe the category to which it belonged onto the front cover. Mitrokhin would then index the papers and ensure the right appendices and annexes were present and that the numbering of the pages was correct. While a file on an agent or operation was active it would usually be kept with the officers working on it in their safes. When a file was completed, it would be sent to the archive. Mitrokhin would put his personal seal on the back page to indicate it was ready to be boxed up. A particularly sensitive file might not be sent to the main archives. Meanwhile, a working or production file contained the material that an agent sent back (but without their identity). When full – about 400 pages – these too would be archived. There were also the files which contained internal correspondence between Moscow Centre and an embassy’s KGB residency with directions, plans, annual reports and updates.

This sprawling vault, drowning in paper, was where Mitrokhin was now destined to spend his days, among faded pages stored on the shelves, outlining the secrets of people’s lives. In the first decade after his banishment, the work was dull, even for a man who loved paper. He was what his colleagues called a ‘clerical rat’, barely worth noticing. Those who did recall him remember him as a ‘bore’ and a ‘pedant’, a stickler for making sure the right signature had been obtained to see a file. The job may have been tedious but through it Mitrokhin would learn that archives and files represented a special kind of power. That was clear as the country’s senior leadership wrestled with the past, something Mitrokhin was given a unique vantage point on as he observed the battle over which files would survive and which would perish.

In the Soviet Union, because so much had been built on secrets and lies the idea that truth – however partial and unreliable – was held in KGB files made them a powerful weapon to be wielded against enemies. In July 1956, the head of the KGB Ivan Serov had written a highly classified note for Khrushchev and the Politburo. It revealed that while in exile in Siberia before the revolution, Stalin had got a thirteen-year-old peasant girl pregnant. The memo detailing the investigation was read in secrecy at a Politburo meeting, signed by everyone and then consigned to a top secret ‘Special File’. Everyone who signed knew there might be a similar document about them as well. The game at the top of the system was to work out who had a file on whom, what might be in it, which ones to keep for future use and which ones you should destroy.

One day Mitrokhin was in the secret section of the Moscow Main Archives Directorate. This was where the old Tsarist Okhrana files were held. Mitrokhin would come to see the unbroken line that connected the KGB with the Okhrana, the way they both used the same tools and methods and how even their files looked similar. During this visit, a colleague showed him a file with Stalin’s name on the cover. But when he opened this file, he found the contents empty. Mitrokhin would muse on what this meant. His view was that Stalin himself had no doubt ordered the file destroyed, likely perhaps because it revealed contacts he had once had with the Tsarist Secret Police. It perhaps detailed their attempts to cultivate him, even if he had not actually become their spy. In true bureaucratic fashion, someone had perhaps obeyed orders by destroying the contents but also worried about destroying the file holding them since its existence would be logged in the registry. Mitrokhin’s best guess was that whoever had carried out the orders was most likely killed in order to cover up what had happened and just in case they had read what was inside.

Khrushchev, after taking power, ordered the destruction of files which detailed the excesses of the Stalinist period, including his own. Files detailing those who had been arrested but later deemed innocent were burned, removing difficult questions about who had been aware or signed off on the mass murders. Mitrokhin learnt Beria’s personal archive had been destroyed on Khrushchev’s instructions. That was because it contained all the incriminating information that the former security chief had collected on Khrushchev and his colleagues. Everyone at the top was so complicit in the dark acts of the state that they knew there was material that could be used against them. If you were powerful enough, you might be able to get compromising files destroyed. But for many and especially ordinary people that was not an option and the KGB was hungry to accumulate more and more information about people’s lives, never knowing when it could be useful. Mitrokhin was learning something about the essence of Chekism and the way in which the stories held in the archives represented both power over people in the form of compromising material but also a kind of insecurity because of the complicity of so many.

As he began in the archives, Mitrokhin was watching carefully for signs that the country might be changing, coming to terms with its past. The possibility of reform still lay open. A central battleground was literature and the arts. This field was important to Mitrokhin, who would always remain deeply attached to Russian culture. Soviet leaders viewed culture as central to revolutionary legitimacy and the means to shape people and their thinking. The boundaries of what the authorities allowed to be published and considered acceptable, as well as the fate of individual writers, would become the barometer to take the political temperature. An initial thaw under Khrushchev raised hopes.

In 1957, the poet Boris Pasternak had his novel Doctor Zhivago published and distributed abroad (with a little help from the CIA). The novel was not explicitly political but nor was it sufficiently pro-Communist for the authorities. Mitrokhin was not a particular fan of Pasternak’s writing. But he watched as the authorities went after the writer. The literary establishment was ordered to turn on him as a ‘Judas’. This provoked Mitrokhin into his first act of secret rebellion. In October 1958, he wrote an anonymous letter to the Literaturnaya Gazeta. He knew, from his own experience, that the KGB might try and trace such letters so he took the precaution of writing it with his left hand. He even worried as he licked the envelope to seal it whether his own spit might give him away if it was analysed at some KGB lab. It was only a small step of rebellion, an angry act of a man who felt the system had turned on him and he wanted to hit back. But it was his first step in becoming a secret writer.

There was a burst of optimism for Mitrokhin at the end of 1958 as the thuggish KGB boss Ivan Serov was replaced by the youthful Alexander Shelepin, who came from outside the security world. It seemed that the generation of dreary, dark Stalinists might be passing. ‘The Chekists can look the Party and the Soviet people in the eye with a clear conscience,’ Shelepin promised.

Shelepin began to reshape the image of the KGB, trying to erase associations with the purges and terror. Out went leather jackets, in came suits and a more cultured façade. This required treating the darkness of Yezhov and Beria as an unfortunate aberration and returning to the Chekist origin story, building up the cult of Feliks to convince people that Chekists were guardians of the narod – the mystical notion of the Russian people. Every KGB office around the country would create a Room of the Glory of Chekists filled with pictures to foster pride in their history and a place where the Chekist oath – to be vigilant and fight tirelessly in the endless struggle against enemies – could be taken. The new Chekism was designed to distance the KGB from the brutality of the Stalinist era but it also heralded a new focus on something subtler and more insidious. The KGB was there not to oppress but to protect the motherland. That meant stopping plots by working among the people and asking them to do their patriotic duty by informing on those who posed a danger.

Shelepin moved up and out of the KGB. Khrushchev ordered his replacement Vladimir Semichastny to destroy more of the files from the 1930s. Nine volumes detailing how central committee members, senior intelligence officers and foreign communists in Moscow had been liquidated were all to be destroyed. In front of him, Mitrokhin could see the past being erased while the future still appeared uncertain.

From the late 1950s and into the 1960s, the balance between opening up and fearing where that might lead veered back and forth. At times, artists and writers responded to signs that the grip was loosening by beginning to experiment. The bravest edged towards politics with calls for change. Into that previously forbidden space, now stepped a figure who would influence Mitrokhin deeply.

Where Mitrokhin’s eyes were being opened by what he read in files, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s education came from eight years in the penal colonies. He had been released in 1953, just weeks before Stalin died. He then became a physics teacher at a school in Ryazan, the province where Mitrokhin had spent his happy childhood. But secretly he was working on a novel about his time in the camps which were known by their abbreviation as the Gulag. When he was detained he had learnt to hide his writing and he continued to take precautions now as he wrote. Scraps of paper with tiny handwriting would be rolled up and squeezed into a bottle which he buried in his garden. When he had finished his manuscript in 1959, he had not known what to do and sat on it. Two years passed before a fresh attack by Khrushchev on Stalin’s cult of personality offered an opening and an anonymous copy of the manuscript turned up at the offices of a journal.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published in 1962 with Khrushchev’s personal support as part of the latest push to distance the country from the days of Stalin. It brought the world of the Gulag to life through the character of Ivan. He was an everyman peasant struggling to survive rather than a traditional hero, someone who dreamed of returning to his simple village life. His story shone a light on the fate that so many had been consigned to – the petty humiliations and absurd punishments, the crushing physical work enforced by capricious guards, the bitter cold, the nettle soup and hiding of tiny scraps of bread. Poor Ivan ends the one day we spend with him relieved – almost happy – to simply have survived even though he faced thousands more just like it. The moral power of Solzhenitsyn’s writing and the way in which it captured the reality of camp life was electrifying. The book became a sensation inside the USSR and around the world. Crowds gathered at kiosks in Moscow desperate to get hold of a copy. Meanwhile, the author began to receive letters from people asking about their story and those still in the camps. A sense of moral duty told him what he had done was still not enough.

This one short novel seemed to herald a profound change in how the Soviet Union confronted its past, an electric shock to its system. Even though he was a loner, Solzhenitsyn would become a leading voice in an emerging movement of intellectuals willing to question aspects of the system. But the window in which the book made its near-miraculous appearance soon closed. Hardliners were aghast at what seemed to be happening and moved to reassert control. Things had gone too far. There needed to be more discipline in the arts, it was argued, or else writers risked undermining the very foundations of the Communist system. There remained the unspoken difficulty that the current leadership had sent many to the gulags. Within the elite, there was a distrust of the voluble, erratic Khrushchev as well as his policies and in 1964 the Soviet leader was surprised by a palace coup. His death seven years later would be noted by a single sentence in the newspaper.

Leonid Brezhnev became First Secretary of the Communist Party, signalling the end of de-Stalinisation and a harder line, in particular against writers and cultural figures. That became clear in September 1965. Two writers, Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, who had been pall-bearers at Pasternak’s funeral and who had also written subversive stories published in the West, were arrested. After a show trial reminiscent of the 1930s, they were sentenced to the camps. That same month, the KGB seized Solzhenitsyn’s archive of notes. A debate was raging at the highest levels about what to do with a writer who was now seen as a problem but too feted to be easily removed.

Brezhnev asserted his authority over the KGB in 1967 by placing a party man rather than a Chekist in charge. As ambassador to Hungary in 1956, Yuri Andropov had seen the risks of loosening the grip of power. But he also understood that the old Stalinist methods of brutal, wholesale repression were outdated. A new kind of efficiency was required. Over the next decade and a half, he would modernise the KGB and its image, paving the way for him to eventually become the country’s leader. The KGB would work among the population watching, infiltrating, informing and taking decisive action against key individuals who might pose a threat. Order 0051 decreed a harder line against ideological sabotage as Andropov stood up a new Fifth Directorate to suppress political dissent. Its target would be intellectuals, students, religious believers and minorities. Chekism was on the rise but in a new, mutated form. Through the 1960s, Mitrokhin’s hopes that change could come from within were fading. Like Ivan Denisovich, ahead of him he could only see an unending path of unchanging days. Then came a surprise. The chance to go abroad again. What happened in those years in his personal and professional life would tip him over the edge.

25

Becoming a Dissident

East Germany, 1967

THERE HAD BEEN one more chance to go abroad in 1967. Mitrokhin was posted to East Germany and it came at a time of profound change for him and the Soviet bloc. Home would be Karlshorst, the impregnable fortress that was Soviet military headquarters and the KGB’s largest base outside the Soviet Union.

It was a fenced off, heavily guarded complex of weathered grey-green buildings. Inside its dark hallways around 400 Soviet intelligence personnel toiled away in what was a small-scale replica of the KGB’s Moscow operation, with dozens of different departments. Some liaised with East Germany’s highly effective spy services, including its foreign branch run by Markus Wolf, so elusive that he was known in the West as the man without a face. The base also had large KGB teams who did counter-intelligence work by making sure that none of the Red Army troops in East Germany could defect. That required an army of informers inside the army. Other KGB teams worked on ‘special operations’. A few years earlier, Karlshorst had been the launching pad for KGB assassins wielding specially designed clandestine guns which sprayed cyanide on targets. In the woods near the base, the weapon had been tested on a dog tied to a tree sending it into convulsions.

Karlshorst was also busy with officers from Mitrokhin’s home department, the First Chief Directorate, running operations against both West Germany and the wider West. The KGB recruited locals to visit the West and gather intelligence. They also tried to turn West Germans who visited the East. All their names were on index cards filed to see who their relatives might be and if they could be compromised by money, sex or pressure. Relations with the West seemed to be opening up a little and the instructions to the KGB were to exploit this by recruiting even more agents.

If he had ventured into one room in September of 1968, Mitrokhin would have found a British RAF corporal being trained by the KGB in covert radio communications and how to take photos with a tiny Minox camera. His name was Geoffrey Prime and he was about to join GCHQ where he would spy for his Soviet masters for years. Down the corridor he would have found other officers searching for the identities of real people that could be stolen, allowing in-house forgers at Karlshorst to create new documents for deep-cover illegals.

Just after Mitrokhin left, a young East German who had just started as a college professor was taken into one of those rooms. He was introduced to a small man from the KGB who gave him a five-minute lecture on class struggle before popping the question – are you in or out? For the committed Marxist, the tantalising offer was to go and live in the West as an illegal. He would be given the identity of a ten-year-old boy called Jack Barsky, who had died in September 1955. After five years more training he would be despatched to the United States. Only a handful of people would know his real identity. But two decades after he walked into Karlshorst, Mitrokhin would seal his fate.

Being a KGB officer in Berlin was a plum posting. There were drunken parties and the chance to get hold of goods from the West, perhaps a fur coat for a girlfriend or mistress. That life was not for Mitrokhin though. Although he could spend his spare time hunting and fishing in the countryside, his working life remained confined to the archives over his four-year posting.

Just as his career had stalled, his wife’s was beginning to take off. Nina was working as a doctor on her way to becoming a leading academic Ear, Nose and Throat specialist. (There was a joke in Russia about a man who goes to a clinic and says he needs an eye and ear doctor. We don’t have one explains the receptionist, only an eye doctor or an ear, nose and throat doctor. I need an eye and an ear doctor, the man insists because ‘I keep hearing one thing and seeing another’.) But in East Germany, his and Nina’s lives were becoming increasingly shaped by their only child. Vladimir had been born on 13 November 1953. At first, all had seemed well. But in the coming years, it would become clear there was something amiss. At first it was small things. He did not move like other children. His fine motor skills were not quite right. It was not terrible at first but over time it seemed to be getting gradually worse. But despite Nina’s job and access to some of the best medical advice, a clear diagnosis was elusive. It did not appear to be motor neurone disease or the obvious illnesses which doctors were aware of. No one seemed able to help. Mitrokhin himself had pushed his superiors to help them find better treatment for him. But that had been turned down by the KGB on a number of occasions. That desire to find some answer to the mystery of his illness would shape Mitrokhin’s path. And so, though he would not admit it, was his anger at the lack of support from his employers. When he would eventually be coaxed into explaining why he was doing what he was doing, he would always choose to focus on more ideological and less personal motivations to explain his journey, something common among those who undertook such a walk. But Vladimir was always central to what he would do. However, the other more political aspect of his motivation would also become clearer during his time in East Germany.

It was while posted at Karlshorst that Mitrokhin observed unfolding events that would prove a crucial bridge from private dissent to a new life of risk-taking and deadly secrets. Mitrokhin had dreamed of a more open form of the Communist system. And in 1968, he watched from Germany as reformers in Czechoslovakia seemed to be building just such a future. It became known as the ‘Prague Spring’ and promised ‘socialism with a human face’ – greater freedom of expression and less heavy handed state control. This was a moment of profound hope and optimism for many across the Communist world, Mitrokhin included. It seemed to offer the possibility that the dream of socialism might still be achieved but through a more liberal and open system.

A new openness seemed to blossom in Czechoslovakia as students and writers began to speak about political ideas, the press no longer afraid of reporting the pent up desire for greater freedom. But as Mitrokhin followed events closely he could see those around him from his own organisation working to undermine that dream. One KGB officer from the department for ‘Special Tasks’, the team responsible for sabotage and assassination, returned to Karlshorst and implied to Mitrokhin that he had just returned from planting American and German weapons in a hidden arms cache. These could then be unearthed in order to claim the reformers were working with the West and planning an insurrection. The KGB drafted the text of an article ready for the press as part of its efforts to portray the Prague Spring as a plot by Western intelligence.

Later, Mitrokhin would learn more, fuelling his hatred for the KGB. In highly restricted and classified files about illegals, he would learn that in the two months after the Prague Spring began, the KGB had sent no less than fifteen illegals to Czechoslovakia. Codenamed PROGRESS, these operations were an attempt to infiltrate and discredit the reform movement by having these illegals pose as Western journalists or visitors in order to gain access to reformers. For Mitrokhin, this said much about the KGB’s First Chief Directorate. Its biggest short-term deployment of illegals was not against the West but against a fellow Soviet-bloc ally. The battle against subversion and ideological sabotage was becoming the overriding priority and these PROGRESS deployments would spread across the Soviet bloc and even into the Soviet Union itself. The elite First Chief Directorate’s priority, it seemed, was not espionage but supporting the crackdown on dissent.

One of the illegals sent to Prague, codenamed GROMOV, was given the job of kidnapping a professor who was one of the leading lights of the Prague Spring. That mission failed and the KGB officer would die a few years later of alcoholism. His name was Vasili Gordievsky. His younger brother, Oleg, was also a KGB officer. Oleg watched what would happen to the Prague Spring with horror and it would lead him to a final break with the Soviet system and a decision to try and offer himself up to Western intelligence. The effect on Mitrokhin was similarly powerful but he was less willing or able to take such a dramatic and dangerous step at this time.

By August 1968, Moscow could take no more. The dream of freedom would be crushed under the heel and tank tracks of the Red Army as it went into Prague. There would be no reform, Mitrokhin now understood. Just a boot stamping on the human face. That was what the entry of those tanks in Prague meant.

Yuri Andropov, who had become head of the KGB a year before, came to Karlshorst soon after. He spoke to the assembled staff, Mitrokhin included, to explain that military action had been vital to prevent instability spreading. For many in the Eastern Bloc, in the Soviet Union and even in the KGB itself, this moment was a turning point. It was no longer possible to kid oneself that reformers would be allowed to change the system. The forces arrayed against them were too powerful.

What worried the KGB in the wake of Prague were signs of its dangerous ideology spreading even within the USSR itself. Something almost unprecedented had taken place in Red Square in the heart of Moscow after the Red Army had gone into Czechoslovakia. There had been a protest.

Blink and you would have missed it. Eight young people had gathered just before noon on 25 August in Moscow where executioners had once beheaded the Tsar’s enemies. As a bell rang for midday, the protesters unfurled homemade banners. ‘Long Live a Free and Independent Czechoslovakia’ read one. ‘Shame on the Invaders’ said another. A poet pulled a Czech flag from underneath her three-month-old baby in a pram. It took only a moment before the KGB rushed in and detained them, leaving some badly bruised, others losing teeth. Then it was all over. It may have been brief but those protesters were part of a small but influential movement emerging in the heady days around the Prague Spring.

While the exterior of Russia appeared monotone, there was a rich complexity underneath. A visitor from the West might see a grey, formless, classless society where everything was controlled. But that was not the whole story and at that time a brave few were exploring how far they could go. In public spaces, a person had to be careful what they said. Everyone knew there were informers. But in private, jokes about the realities of life were commonplace, a means of relieving pressure but also a way of navigating the system. You had to develop an instinct. Who could you trust? Were the friends you had round for dinner people you could talk politics or tell a joke with? Getting it wrong was dangerous. And for each person, there was a decision – how far to compromise, how far to play it safe, how far to push the system. But now for the first time, a few people were taking the risk of speaking openly about the system and questioning the way it worked. Those who had been arrested in Red Square were part of a movement whose most powerful manifestation was something Mitrokhin could understand – a simple documenting of the truth.

In April 1968, an anonymous newsletter called the Chronicle of Current Events surfaced. Over the next decade and a half it would calmly and without hyperbole catalogue abuses of power by detailing the arrests and political trials used to target those who defied the state. It was a samizdat publication in which a small initial run of ‘zero generation’ documents or books would be distributed by hand and then typed up and copied by recipients to pass on to others to do the same, creating a chain that could spread normally censored material across the country. The Chronicle’s cover quoted Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights which guaranteed freedom of expression. The first edition opened with a report about a group of four students, two of whom were studying at the Historical Archives Institute, where Mitrokhin himself had attended years earlier. The four had been arrested the previous January and spent a year in the KGB’s Lefortovo prison before standing trial for spreading ‘anti-Soviet propaganda’ in the form of poems. The Chronicle explained how relatives had battled to get access to the courtroom only to see the three men and one woman sent to prison camps.

The Chronicle and the wider assertion of human rights became a thorn in the side of the Soviet State, exposing its claims of high-principle and people’s rights for what they really were. And it would be tales like these, stories of brave people, recounted and spread by other brave people, that would deeply affect Mitrokhin.

What does it take to resist? The system had been structured to isolate individuals and stop them trusting anyone else – even their closest friend could be an informer. To take the step out of this mental prison and into the risky world of dissent required believing you were not alone. These dissidents were trying to get their message out. And they would be Mitrokhin’s inspiration as he sat abroad.

From East Germany he followed events in Prague and back home in the Soviet Union closely, both in the files but also secretly. Tuning a radio to the BBC World Service was in itself an act of dissent. A flick of the dial was needed every time the signal was lost due to jamming. The broken fragments stirred something in Mitrokhin’s solitary soul because they brought him news that there were others out there who were opposed to what was being done to their country. The dissidents provided an inspiration not just of heroism but also, in the Chronicle of Current Events, a model of what could be done as they detailed the public manifestation of the KGB’s work.

The archivist knew he was not brave in the way the dissident writers were. But, thanks to his work, he had something they did not. Access to the inner workings of the beast itself. So perhaps, he began to wonder, he could one day create his own chronicle – his own record – of what the KGB was doing. This could not be a samizdat publication passed from hand to hand. That was far too risky given the secrets inside it. But rather something that would have to remain secret, a legacy for future generations. It would be a truth even more powerful than the Chronicle which after all only showed the outward manifestations of the monster’s work rather than its true heart.

For Mitrokhin there were no friends he could trust with his dissent or even joke with. Not even his family. He could not speak of politics or his growing doubts to Nina. She was a successful Soviet citizen. To open up to her, risked forcing her to choose and placing her – and their marriage – in a precarious situation. And then there was Vladimir to worry about. He had to be careful for his sake. They were devoted to him and he had to be protected. The doctors and medical care in East Germany, they knew, had been better than in Russia. But as their time there came to an end so their worries for him increased. And it seemed like the KGB could do or would do little to help, adding to Mitrokhin’s sense of frustration and even grievance. But his anger would be kept bottled up within himself.

All of this set him on a path, but if he was to become a dissident, Mitrokhin would have to be a secret one. But at least now he knew that there were others out there.

‘I was a loner,’ he would recall, ‘but I now knew that I was not alone.’

Prague and its aftermath had been the moment when the image of his enemy had finally become clear in Vasili Mitrokhin’s mind as well as his determination to act against it. ‘The Cheka touched everything,’ Mitrokhin would say. It permeated every aspect of life. But its true form was largely unseen. ‘Only the tip of the monster is visible as it begins to emerge from the gloom.’ Now, for him, as he prepared to return to Russia, the image of the beast was becoming clearer.

Interlude

The Dragon Rears its Head

IN THE AFTERMATH of Prague, Mitrokhin, like many a spy, began to see himself as the hero in his own story, even if it was a solitary one. Others may have seen him as an archivist and a failed operative. But he would come to see himself as one of those peasant heroes from Russian folklore, someone who alone understood the nature of the enemy that tyrannised the people. And in his mind, the shape and form of the beast he was fighting was finally becoming clear.

Russia has its own mythology of the Zmei – a dragon which could have many heads. In Greek and Western mythology the closest analogy is the hydra – a serpent-like beast with many heads but one body. The hero Hercules learns that it is not enough to cut off the individual heads because each time he does, the creature regenerates more. For Mitrokhin he came to see his enemy as a three-headed hydra or dragon. Where had that idea come from?

In 1962 a dragon had reared its three heads in Leningrad. It came to life in the city’s Comedy Theatre with an unusual performance of a play. The Dragon had been written during World War II by Evgeny Shvarts. It is a darkly subversive story but he had just about got away with writing it by employing the form of a children’s fairy tale. In the first act of the story, a wandering knight arrives in a village to discover it has been enslaved for centuries by a tyrannical dragon. The beast demands vast amounts of food and regular human sacrifices of maidens. Next to be offered up is the daughter of an archivist. The dragon is tyrannising the people but they are too fearful to challenge its rule. When the knight suggests he could take it on, villagers come up with all kinds of reasons why this would actually be a bad idea. ‘We are so used to him,’ they say. The dragon, they explain to the knight, did some things years ago which helped the village. And also things got worse after the last knight tried to get rid of a dragon who then burned down half the village and drove half the people mad with poisonous smoke in revenge. And, of course, the dragon has its uses in protecting them against all the other dragons out there. ‘While he is here, no other dragon will dare touch us.’ They refuse to entertain the knight’s suggestion that perhaps those other dragons may not actually exist. ‘The dragon has wrenched your soul, poisoned your blood and filled your eyes with smoke,’ the knight explains. The villagers, and especially the mayor, do their best to undermine the knight’s effort. But by the second act a plucky band of proletarian craftsmen, who have been waiting for a hero, will provide the knight with the magic weapons he will need to defeat the beast. There is also a third act in which the knight returns a year after his victory.

When the play was first written, it was said to be about Hitler. But everyone understood it was about all forms of totalitarianism and that meant Stalin. The order came down that it was not to be performed. By the early 1960s, Khrushchev’s thaw was underway and even though Shvarts had just died, his play could now be put on. It was hard not to notice that one of the dragon’s heads in the Leningrad production looked more than a little like Stalin. And some thought the mayor looked more than a little like Khrushchev. The play was a hit. The public were desperate to get a ticket because they feared it would not run for long. They were right. It would be another quarter of a century before anyone dared stage it again.

In Mitrokhin’s mind the Russian people had become enslaved by another three-headed dragon or hydra. Each of the three heads, he believed, represented a distinct part of the whole. One head was the Communist party that had taken over the country. Another was the privileged nomenklatura, the entrenched elite, who exploited it. And finally the last head was the Chekist KGB. This was the one he knew best, the one he hated most fiercely and the one he was part of.

Not everyone saw the darker side. The same year the tanks destroyed the hopes of reformers in Prague, a sixteen-year-old walked towards a place known as the Big House in Leningrad, the imposing local KGB headquarters. There were eight storeys above ground and rumours of more below into which people would disappear.

The teenager walked with a swagger that came from having learnt to fight his corner in the courtyard of the apartment block where he had been brought up. He was from a hard-scrabble background with his father working in a factory. ‘I want to get a job with you,’ he told the official who came out to speak to him. His ambitions had been fired by what he had been watching on TV.

A four-part series called The Sword and the Shield – named after the emblem of state security – had been broadcast on Russian TV that summer. It was part of the KGB’s strategy to bolster its image and erase the stains of the past. Newspapers, magazines, cinema screens and the TV were increasingly filled with heroic portrayals of Chekist spies, especially from World War II. In The Sword and the Shield, a brave Russian spy goes under deep cover to infiltrate the Nazis. There was no trace of the self-doubt of a John le Carré nor the nudge and a wink of James Bond suggesting this was all a bit of fun. Rather there was an earnest message that people owed a debt to the ‘soldiers fighting on the invisible front’ who tirelessly worked to keep the motherland safe.

The series was a sensation. Everyone watched it, including the boy. He would still sing the theme tune, ‘Where does the Motherland Begin?’, as a party piece more than forty years later (the answer was: ‘From the oath that you swear to her in your youthful heart’). The teenager had originally wanted to be an airline pilot but the series had helped change his mind. ‘I wanted to be a spy,’ he would say. ‘What amazed me most of all was how one man’s effort could achieve what whole armies could not. One spy could decide the fate of thousands of people.’ Did he understand what the Chekists had been capable or? ‘My notion of the KGB came from romantic spy stories. I was a pure and utterly successful product of patriotic Soviet education,’ he would say. In truth, he was a successful product of the Andropov era propaganda designed to bolster the image of spies and erase the truth of the past.

There had been a run of these youngsters turning up at the Big House who had watched the TV series recently and the man at reception patiently explained that the KGB did not accept volunteers. The boy was too young and would need to complete military service or higher education first. ‘What kind of higher education?’ the boy asked. Any, the man said, trying to get rid of him. ‘But what kind is preferred?’ The boy was persistent. A law degree, he was told. ‘And that was that,’ the boy would later say. He would go to law school. ‘Nobody could stop me.’ That boy, Vladimir Putin, was on his way to becoming a Chekist.

26

Breaking the Code

Vilnius, June 1992

ROBERT TRIED TO put Mitrokhin at ease in the embassy as his visit in June began. The archivist was still hard to talk to, a man who seemed uncomfortable with others. It was as if he had much he wanted to say but could not bring himself to do so. Instead, he let his files do the talking. The duffle bag was handed over to the MI6 pair who opened it up. It was jammed full of secrets. There were envelopes of what appeared to be typed information, technical and procedural manuals, heaps of exercise books filled with notes. One envelope alone had the names of 645 KGB agents and contacts.

It was clear there was gold in the pages but also that it would require refining to unearth its true value. The latest manuscripts included hundreds of pages which even Robert struggled to translate as he glanced at it. Much of it was in abbreviated form. There were notes and markings which only the author could explain. On just one or two margins, there was a handwritten scrawl, often an angry exclamation – almost as if the author could not contain himself.

In its own way, the archive had been encrypted, encoded with the archivist’s own personality as well as through the unusual way the material had been collected and collated. To make use of the notes, they would need to understand how they had been made and organised. And that would require getting inside the peculiar mind of the author.

Mitrokhin understood all too well that the convoluted nature of the files gave him leverage, especially when it came to the promise of asylum for him and his family. They could not just take his work and abandon him. It was a weapon but it was his weapon and only he knew how to wield it. He explained to the pair he did not need to come out of Russia right now. But he said he could visit the UK in the autumn to work on his material for a while before returning to Russia and organising his family’s eventual defection. There was little room for discussion about these intentions. He was not a man who could be easily handled. James and Robert elected to use their initiative and agree to the idea without checking in with their superiors. He knew a lot from the files, they could see, but they also sensed his experience of the world was somewhat narrow and unusual. And they knew he would have to explain how he had gone about collecting the material in order to unlock its potential. And not just how but why.

‘I wanted to show the tremendous efforts of this machine of evil, and I wanted to demonstrate what happens when the foundations of conscience are trampled on and when moral principles are forgotten.’ That would be Mitrokhin’s answer. He would always see himself as a Russian patriot, certainly not a traitor. Rather everything he would do in the years ahead he would see as an act of patriotic duty, trying to rescue the country he loved from this evil force.

In one Russian folk tale, it is Ivan the son of a poor peasant who has to slay the hydra or the dragon with his sword while sinking deeper into the earth with blood flowing all around him. But as his enemy had come into clear view in the wake of the Prague Spring, what could Mitrokhin, a simple peasant turned archivist, do to face down such a powerful beast? He might have been able to see his enemy clearly but what he really needed to do – his second act – was fashion a weapon that could defeat the beast.

In 1972, an opportunity had arrived. One that had allowed him to make his idea of a chronicle a reality and become that peasant hero he imagined. He had returned to Moscow and to the archives. But there were plans afoot for the First Chief Directorate of the KGB to move house. And they needed Mitrokhin’s help. That was how the files had come to be in his hands and now those of British intelligence. It was how his weapon had been forged.

ACT TWO

The Weapon

27

The Forest

MITROKHIN HAD RETURNED from East Germany to a bleaker country than the one he had departed. At the start of 1972, a strange blueish haze hung over Moscow. Flights were delayed and cars had to use headlights as residents of the city were left coughing and spluttering, their views from apartment blocks obscured by the mysterious fog. Even though it was impossible to miss, the press remained totally silent. It would eventually emerge that a huge fire in peat bogs had spread to just a few miles outside the city which a thousand firefighters had been battling. But no one had dared mention it. That was the way things worked. The truth was suppressed unless it served the party. There were other ways this was made clear. When one father searched for information on his missing daughter, he eventually learnt that the plane she had been on had crashed, killing her. But the disaster had never been reported. Truth was rationed. There were even gradations in what was provided by the news agency TASS. Only the very highest figures received the Red version of the daily newsletter which told you what was actually going on in the country and in the world. The gap between what people were told and what they could see around them fuelled a growing cynicism.

Fear had held people together under Stalin but there had also been a sense of purpose, not least during the war, followed by a new burst of idealism and optimism that flourished after Stalin died and into the 1960s. Sending the first man into space suggested the Soviet Union could be on the cusp of overtaking America and the West. But by the 1970s, those hopes were now ebbing. True believers that the abundance and equality of the final stage of communism was just round the corner were becoming harder and harder to find.

As people lost faith in communism, they reacted in different ways. Religion offered one path. Icons increasingly popped up in people’s houses. The Church of Christ the Saviour in Moscow had been dynamited by Stalin in the 1930s. It was now home to a huge outdoor municipal swimming pool but it also hosted clandestine baptisms in its waters. Others retreated into their private lives and a growing material acquisitiveness. For all the talk of classlessness, the Soviet Union was highly stratified. The hierarchy was most visible in the status symbol of the car. The very highest figures in the state had Zil black limousines to ferry them around with vinyl seats, carpets and air conditioning. Beneath that came bulky Chaika limousines. Then the next tier were in polished black Volga cars. All would be driven down the reserved lane on Moscow’s streets to shops where only they could buy imported goods like perfume, cigarettes and brandy.

Many ordinary people grumbled privately as they waited in a long queue. There was an air of resignation as newspapers pumped out praise for the grey cardinal, Brezhnev. Privately many joked about how the medals on his chest were growing by the day and the talk of the women he consumed at a remarkable rate, not least at his luxurious villa on the Black Sea coast. KGB men had their own privileges but even they would talk between themselves of Brezhnev with disdain.

There were less formal connections that allowed you to work your way round the formal bureaucratic system to do things like obtain a job or university place. Your position got you access to fresh vegetables or perhaps tickets to the theatre – which could be traded with others through what was known as ‘blat’. A professor or a grocer each had an ability to shortcut the system and do you a favour. And so you could barter and get things ‘nalevo’ – on the left, or under the table. A thriving black market operated, a whole alternative economy based on connections, favours and cash which could get you a good cut of beef or a book. On Sundays, right across from the Lubyanka itself you could buy a scarce Dostoyevsky, a rare Pasternak or even a bootlegged Bible – although none of these would be cheap, perhaps costing a week’s wages for a doctor or teacher.

A broader privileged class – an elite – had emerged. And this was one of the heads of Mitrokhin’s beast. What was called the nomenklatura numbered as many as a million people. They were hand-picked based on patronage and nepotism, entrenching their power and passing it on to their children in every sector, from traditional bureaucracies into the arts as well as science and industry. With membership came the chance to shop at special shops, to eat at special restaurants and to travel, bumping ordinary folk off a plane or train if it was busy. ‘The aim of the nomenklatura is to keep power for the sake of power and to protect its privileges. It has nothing to do with the well-being of the people as the communists like to pretend,’ Mitrokhin would say. He seethed with resentment against them, described the class as a ‘new breed of exploiters’ who were ‘quite tenacious and energetic in seizing and holding onto power … Their criminality is steadfast and endemic and is passed on through natural selection to new generations of the caste.’

Mitrokhin sat within the elite. But he was frustrated and angry and had come to hate it. And in his professional life he was now being offered the opportunity to see how the system worked in the way no-one else had ever seen it. On his return to Moscow, the KGB explained they had a special mission for their archivist, one they would have thought of as menial but which they could not have realised would do more damage to the organisation than any other personnel move in their history. Mitrokhin had dreamed about creating his chronicle and as he returned to the Lubyanka he would be given the opportunity to bring that dream to life thanks to a decision to move out of town.

As the KGB bloated, the Lubyanka had become over-stuffed. The First Chief Directorate had been making the case for some time that as the elite foreign spies they needed their own, more secure compound to house their secrets. First Chief Directorate officers also liked to think of themselves as different. They were the ones with clean hands, far away both physically and morally from the dirtier world of the grubby secret police. And so the decision was made to create a purpose-built new headquarters in a more isolated rural location on the outskirts of Moscow, an echo of the CIA’s home in Langley, Virginia. Out in the forests, just past the southwest edge of the outer ring road, Yasenevo would be a towering temple to foreign espionage.

Known as ‘the woods’ or ‘the forest’, Yasenevo opened on 20 June 1972. Access roads were marked ‘Sanitary Zone’ to provide a vague pretence of secrecy. Barbed wire, electronic sensors, dogs and guards circled the complex. The Lubyanka may have been haunted by ghosts, but old hands found Yasenevo soulless if more luxurious. Senior Generals had big black limousines to bring them to the door where they would then ride up to their offices in private elevators. Everyone else would be ferried in on special unmarked KGB buses which traversed Moscow, picking up staff, usually near a Metro station, at a set time to bring them to the new office at around 8.30 a.m. for the start of the working day at 9 a.m.

Mitrokhin would arrive at the first of three checkpoints and show his pass to get in, a plastic card with his picture in civilian clothing and his military number. On the pass was a grid with holes punched in which indicated which parts of the building you were allowed into. Only senior officials had passes that got them into both the Lubyanka and the Forest. Mitrokhin, because of his special role, would have both.

Mitrokhin’s new office had a view of the trees. That was something. To get there he would walk past the lake to enter the main building with its marble façade. Past the bust of Feliks set in the wall and over the polished wooden floors. New officers of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB would in the 1980s still lay flowers and bow their heads for a moment’s silence by that bust.

No expense had been spared inside to emphasise the sense that even within the Soviet elite, those who worked here were the creme de la creme. The best furniture was imported from Finland. There was air-conditioning, a pool, tennis courts, gyms and a medical clinic. The second floor, where the bosses worked, had its own luxurious sauna and massage rooms with fluffy dressing gowns. The shops stocked caviar and salmon. The canteen was where young officers went to drink coffee, smoke and gossip (the food was so good that local staff who worked there stole it by cramming as much as they could into their pockets). But sitting around gossiping was not something the solitary Mitrokhin indulged in.

The archivists were still a breed apart. Oleg Gordievsky, a First Chief Directorate officer working in the Forest on and off in the 1970s, could vaguely recall the quiet Mitrokhin. ‘He was already a typical archivist, a member of that mysterious group of people who lived behind double doors with heavy locks, came out for 40 minutes to have lunch and sat completely silently, shunning any sort of contact.’

Mitrokhin dwelt among the files. These were carefully controlled. An officer had a safe bolted to the wall in their office. Every time they left, they had to lock all of their documents away and then seal it with a plastic strip which had their own personal number on it. The safe could not be opened without snapping the plastic. The safe key would be handed over to a duty officer in the hallway who would sign a logbook and lock away these keys. And if someone needed to see a file from the archive then they would take the lift down to the windowless basement and hand in their slip through a screen. Then the file would be extracted from the heavy steel vaults by an archivist belonging to the 15th Department which looked after the files for the First Chief Directorate.

When the Directorate moved, its files had to go with them. This was a huge job. They needed to be sorted and sifted to work out which could stay in central Moscow, which needed to be sent in heavily guarded lorries to Yasenevo and which could be destroyed. Then at their new home, they would need to be catalogued and checked. Overseeing this huge operation was a painstaking job which would take years. And it belonged to Mitrokhin. The archivist had become disillusioned, watching how the desire to crush dissent was becoming the focus of the KGB’s work. Now he was in the right place to take the next step.

28

The Notetaker

EVERY DAY MITROKHIN was plunging deeper and deeper into the abyss, reading and absorbing the truth and the lies of the KGB. And every day, he could see his enemy more clearly, its figure emerging from the gloom. Now he, the peasant’s son, had come up with a way to hurt, perhaps kill, it. And his weapon would be forged from tiny slips of paper which he tucked into his shoe.

The KGB, maybe even more than other bureaucracies, ran on paper. Moving all the files would take a decade. Mitrokhin would be personally responsible for supervising the transfer of 300,000 files from Lubyanka to Yasenevo – the secret archive of the First Chief Directorate. Each file had to be individually checked. What did it contain? Was there information that was still operationally relevant or just history? Did it need to be kept and moved or could it be put into storage or discarded?

Inventories and index cards had to be compiled on the contents so that they could be put in the right place on arrival. Mitrokhin oversaw this laborious process, inspecting and checking each set. This could all be done in the privacy of one of his offices. Once he had completed his checks, files were placed in batches and in sealed containers. These were driven to the woods on Thursday mornings. Mitrokhin would accompany them like a bodyguard to ensure that they had not been tampered with. There they would be unloaded and moved to the new archive.

No one else, apart from the most senior of officers, had this kind of access to the whole archive. And none of them would have the time or inclination to spend their days working their way through it. This meant that Mitrokhin would see and know more about the files of the KGB’s foreign spies than any other individual alive or dead.

Mitrokhin was also now senior enough to have his own office in both Yasenevo and the Lubyanka after 1972. This was vital in providing him with the privacy to go about his work. He started carefully in the Lubyanka, fearful of being caught. Initially, he tried to commit key facts to memory. He would then write them up when he got home. But it was difficult to recall much and make sure he got it right. There had to be a better way. But he was not a natural risk-taker.

He studied the security closely. There were no special cameras or alarms at the Lubyanka. Security was not as tight as you might imagine. Once an old peasant woman was found wandering the corridors. She explained she was looking for children’s toys. That would be the department store next door, it was explained. A guard had let her in assuming she was a cleaner. On another occasion, a man was found drunk and asleep on a window sill. No one had any idea how he had got in and the man himself could not remember when he was roused.

So Mitrokhin began to write tiny notes. He wrote small and fast. In tiny handwriting he would use his own personal code, a kind of shorthand, to scribble words which represented a codename for an agent or operation. This was to trigger his memory so he could write it up later. He would then scrunch this up and put it in his bin. That way if anyone searched the office, he could try and talk his way out of it by saying they were his notes to remind him of the filing system. Only at the end of the working day, would he retrieve the notes and fold them tight before stuffing them in his socks and shoes.

Over at Yasenevo, the working day ended at 6 p.m. The staff buses left at 6.15 heading for the city. That meant the exits were all busy at the same moment as KGB officers flooded out. That was also to Mitrokhin’s advantage. No one was allowed to bring work home and people were not supposed to bring bags into the building unless they had a special slip giving them permission. But the guards only checked briefcases and bags which people were carrying, never frisking anyone. Their concern was someone smuggling out a whole original file. These were bulky and impossible to hide on your person. Once Mitrokhin realised the checks at both buildings were minimal, he began to take more detailed long-hand notes on paper which he would place into his inside jacket pocket or his trousers or even hide inside a newspaper. How do you steal an archive? Slowly. Over years and years, was the answer.

‘They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work,’ ran the old Soviet joke. But Mitrokhin worked double-time to perform both his day job and collect material for his secret archive. On the surface he was a loyal Soviet officer. Beneath it he was engaged in an act of extraordinary rebellion. He was doing what he had fallen in love with as a teenager, losing himself in the archives, in the files, folders and documents, reconstructing the past out of fragments. He was indulging his professional passion but, out of frustration and failure, using his own special skill to subvert the organisation he worked for.

The bulk of the documents he saw were fairly routine cables from the First Directorate to the Politburo and Foreign Ministry. These were less interesting. But he would also see some operational files of the First Chief Directorate, including personal files of intelligence officers, the correspondence between them and Moscow Centre and details of targets who they were trying to recruit as agents. He did not see everything. There were still some files too classified for him to see such as those on assassinations. Active, ongoing cases of a sensitive nature would also be held with the heads of department or if very sensitive with the head of the directorate. And the most sensitive agents like those run by the counter-intelligence department were also kept out of the main archive. But he would still often see serials of the files as they were being moved.

He did not have time to copy everything. Because of the avalanche of material passing through his hands, he had to be selective. He would often note down the abstracts on the front of the file which detailed its significance as well as key facts. His work was a ‘massive filtering exercise’. He noted what he found interesting and important. And this in turn would change him as grievance and ideology fused. What does it do to a man to see the life of his country and the subjection of its people told only through the files of informers and spies?

There were a few files which he copied out in full. These were sometimes because of their obvious importance. But sometimes it was due to the profound personal impact they had on him. He tried to be disciplined in what he wrote. But just now and again it was too much. To all appearances he was the blank archivist, the grey man lost in files, but the more he immersed himself, the more tormented and obsessed he became. Beneath the placid exterior, there rose rage and bitterness and hatred. Sometimes, as he wrote up his notes, the anger would spill over onto the page, often expressed with a scrawl in the margins. There is a rich seam of understanding to be drawn from the words people scribble in the margins of official files. With Stalin, a single word would connote death for a person. Mitrokhin had his own words which he would scrawl in the margins when he could not bear what he was seeing. Liars was one. But there was another word he turned to again and again. Filth.

29

The Beast’s Filthy Heart

MITROKHIN WAS ON the beast’s trail now as he delved deeper into the files, walking in its footsteps, down into the depths of depravity. The term he would use to describe this was being ‘on the trail of filth’. ‘I could not believe such evil,’ he would say. The full measure of his anger was reserved for the way in which human dignity had been corrupted by his enemy. What gave Chekism its dark character – what made Mitrokhin so angry – was that at its very heart was the need for one individual to betray another. The beast grew bloated by feeding a culture of denunciation. The need to denounce had been drilled into citizenry from a young age with the elevation of Pavlik Morozov, the schoolboy killed for denouncing his father, into a hero and role model. And by the 1970s, the KGB had built an entire culture around informers. This was different from the repressive terror of Dzerzhinsky or Yezhov. Rather than the bullet and mass executions, it instead relied on a more insidious and pervasive presence across society.

Imagine a student simply mentioned that perhaps things in the West were not as bad as portrayed in the Soviet media and there might be things they could learn. One of his fellow students would inform on him. Our student may not yet be an enemy of the state but there was a danger he could become one. And his ideas could infect others. So he is summoned for what was called a ‘prophylactic’ talk. In it, the KGB men would explain the dangers of loose conversation for the student’s liberty and future life. So he turns up at the next meeting and extols the virtues of communism and condemns the West. Everyone understands why. The student will be kept under close watch for a year by informers in his circle to make sure he does not deviate. If he does, he will be locked up. Even if he now becomes a loyal citizen, his name and his story will still be recorded in the files as politically unreliable. If he ever seeks a job, this will be held against him. His life is now marked. And so the files grew. Everyone wondered who the informer was among them that might betray them.

The security police existed not to investigate regular crime but to stop political crime happening and root out dissent. Everyone needed to be watched and everyone was obligated to help. To fail to do so – to not denounce – could in itself be a crime. Chekism depended on cultivating informers – an army of secret helpers – who permeated every layer of society and who would report on friends, colleagues, patients, wives, husbands, students, teachers, families, congregations. The truth was that the KGB was not everywhere or all-powerful but its power lay partly in people not knowing where its reach extended and who you could trust. Stalinist repression had been replaced by a new, less violent but more insidious terror, in Mitrokhin’s mind.

Mitrokhin would read story after story recounting this filth, the stories not just of the famous but the forgotten. It was the small stories of betrayal that cut deepest, like the people pressured to become informers. There was the story of the leader of a Jewish group in Odesa who started a movement against Moscow’s immigration policies. He was arrested for selling foreign watches and offered a choice – become an undercover agent in the Jewish community or face prison. He chose the former. Or there were those who were part of religious groups like the Baptists who had transgressed. They could be compromised to inform, a particularly deep kind of filth, in Mitrokhin’s eyes. KGB officers had production quotas for agents like workers in factories. And just like in a factory, targets could be cheated and gamed by lies or turning in rubbish. This meant what was reported and lay in the files was exaggerated, firstly by the informer to justify his position and then the KGB officer to impress his superiors.

Sometimes a person would be turned into an informer by fear or compromise but Mitrokhin could see there were other times when it was for personal gain. It would be perhaps a manager wanting a promotion, a writer wanting to be published, a factory worker wanting a better shift, the chance to travel or a desire for someone else’s apartment. Colleagues and spouses, lovers and mistresses were denouncing each other to remove a rival or unwanted character from the scene. For all the talk of the Chekists being there to protect the motherland, often they were being used by people to settle personal grudges and advance their interests.

For Mitrokhin, there was a profound anger at the injustice of a world in which a person’s fate could be determined secretly by the workings of an intelligence agency, often the result of some petty grievance or someone seeking advantage. ‘Wherever and whenever a man, a family, a group or a society lives they will find that the intelligence agencies are there too, albeit covertly. They put pressure on a man and influence his fate.’

Mitrokhin could see that beneath the Chekist façade with all its talk of defending the motherland, lay a system which encouraged deceit, petty ambition, immorality and betrayal. Claims of patriotism and ideology were covers for power, ambition and corruption by KGB officers and their agents. It is not hard to understand why a man who thought himself on the path to be an elite KGB foreign spy but instead had found himself humiliated and banished to the archives might feel a particular anger at the way people’s fates were determined by others, often unseen. There was one Bible verse he would quote. ‘Why is it that the path of the unrighteous is strewn with success and all the perfidious prosper?’ he would ask. Others prospered and he had failed. Perhaps some colleague in the Lubyanka a few years before had informed on what he had said? His failure, he thought, must be the fault of this Chekist system.

For Mitrokhin, this filth of informing was the beast’s black heart which corrupted whatever it touched. It infused every human relationship, however private, and made everyone a participant in the darkness. ‘The Cheka touched everything, be it great or small,’ he would say. His country had been enslaved by a beast which grew stronger by feeding off people’s sinful hearts and encouraging the darker side of the human soul. How could this beast be defeated and its hold on the people broken? The answer was by exposing it to the light.

In a world built on lies, preserving the truth mattered even more. The truth could corrode the edifice of lies and set individuals, perhaps whole peoples, free. That was why the KGB and the state were so scared of it. And why it could be such a potent weapon. Russia’s soul had been corrupted. It could only be redeemed and the filth wiped away by confronting people with the reality of their own sin. Mitrokhin wanted the names of those who had been informers to be made public, like the cultured bibliophile in Leningrad who built a wide range of contacts thanks to his passion for art, music and literature, but who was informing on all those whom he met. Mitrokhin noted down his name and address into his archive. Or there was the young woman who as a student had informed on her lecturer because he praised Czechoslovakia’s socialism with a human face to his students. Agent Tatanya won the lecturer’s confidence and then led the KGB to a flat where samizdat publications were found. After graduating, Tatanya would be set to work on foreigners. She too, Mitrokhin thought, needed to be exposed for her crimes against humanity.

Exposure might be painful for those revealed to have been informers, especially if they had been pressured in some way. But he believed this was necessary as only exposure would offer them the chance to become clean. ‘Exposure of Chekism therefore in some way or another contains an invitation to reconciliation; it suggests and eases the path to repentance, to a cleansing of the filth.’

A spiritual quest had begun to drive him.

He understood that almost an entire nation had been drawn under the beast’s spell. And he also understood that he was guilty himself. He, after all, had been there in Ukraine after the war and in the KGB itself in the years after. Perhaps by saying so many were guilty of falling under the power of his enemy provided one of the only ways of explaining why he had done so himself. As he would write: ‘Who is without sin and fault?’

Mitrokhin would come to understand that it was not just an individual’s history that had been warped and defiled by this system but even the whole nation’s history that it had been taught to believe. One day a fellow archivist came up to Mitrokhin. ‘Do you want to see something interesting?’

The story inside the file he was shown had Mitrokhin spellbound and stayed with him. ‘It exposed such a pack of lies that it took my breath away.’ It related to events in Odesa in Ukraine during World War II. In Soviet mythology, perpetuated by novels and TV shows, groups of resistance fighters had bravely held out against enemy forces in the catacombs under the city, carrying out sabotage operations before they were eventually hunted down and killed. One group were Soviet intelligence officers from Moscow, the other Ukrainian locals. Both were lionised as heroes, a ‘museum of partisan glory’ set up in their honour attracted hordes of tourists.

But the file Mitrokhin was shown was the result of a secret KGB investigation into what had really happened and revealed a very different story. The two Soviet groups had actually fallen out with each other and ended up shooting each other in the caves. ‘The miserable farce of gangster-like settling of accounts lasted 3½ years and ended with the death of all concerned,’ Mitrokhin noted in his write-up of the file. And yet this grim tale had somehow been transposed into one of heroism. ‘When one account is deliberately distorted, doubts creep in about the veracity of other accounts and the credibility of history itself,’ he reflected.

There was a suspension of disbelief in everyday life – like watching a play, you had to not ask too many questions or else your sense of reality would collapse. But that was what Mitrokhin believed was needed. He wanted to puncture the bubble of unreality around life. ‘These things must not be hidden. You cannot be an innocent bystander, because one day it will all come out.’

Truth was a weapon, a sword that could be wielded and had almost supernatural power. It could pierce armour. That understanding was why the state did so much to control the truth, to limit the flow of information, to make people disappear from old photographs, to rewrite history, to crush the writers and artists whose plays might mock, or the dissidents whose photocopied newsletters exposed how things really worked. The rarity of the truth being seen or spoken heightened its magical aura. Once it struck, Mitrokhin believed, the sword would reach the very belly of the beast. What he would do is forge a weapon by writing the real history of the KGB. He was preserving the truth. But what was he going to do with it? As well as villains, in the files he would also find the stories of heroes and a lesson of how hard it was to go up against the beast.

30

Heroes and Villains

TATIANA MIKHAILOVA VELIKANOVA was both shy and deeply brave. A talented mathematician and mother of three, she was a teacher who had gone on to become an early computer programmer. But she had also been in Red Square to witness the demonstration against the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968. What she witnessed happening to her friends led her to become a founder of the Action Group for the Defence of Human Rights which campaigned for political prisoners. This was a group which a KGB file described as being full of fanatics and extremists producing anti-Soviet material. She would also become first a contributor and then one of the longest-serving editors of the Chronicle of Current Events.

Mitrokhin read her file carefully and noted particularly how officers complained that she had been officially warned by the state and yet continued to go about her work even as their harassment, searches and interrogations increased. Finally, she would be placed on trial in 1979, accused among other things of illegal contact with foreigners and passing details of political prisoners to foreign correspondents in Moscow. Friends who gathered outside were not allowed into the court but her children were allowed to sit in a side room and watch as their mother was sentenced to four years in a prison camp and five years of internal exile. ‘The farce is ended. It’s over. So that’s that,’ she said as the verdict was announced. She would refuse a later offer of an amnesty to serve her time in exile in Kazakhstan. In Mitrokhin’s eyes, this was true heroism.

The files Mitrokhin spent most time noting down were those like that of Tatiana that recounted the KGB’s efforts against dissidents, and he became obsessed with the story of those brave enough like her to take a stand. He had come to see himself as a secret counterpart to those more public dissidents and so their fate became of deep interest. From his reading he could see heroes and villains, watching a fairy tale unfold as he flicked the pages of the files.

Sometimes heroes could be the most ordinary of people. Like the school music teacher in his home district of Ryazan who had come to the KGB’s attention for founding a society opposing government censorship or the academic who dared to create a club promoting critical thinking, in which members listened to foreign radio. The KGB, for all its resources, could not manage total surveillance of everyone. But under Andropov it had become determined to focus on even the tiniest act of subversion for fear of it infecting others. From its earliest days, the Cheka was haunted by insecurity. In 1917, the Bolsheviks had shown that a small, committed group could topple a vast state. Why could it not be done again? What worried the Chekists once they were in power were not professional revolutionaries but writers and intellectuals – dissidents – who challenged the right of the Communist party to rule.

Mitrokhin was observing but also learning. How dissidents had been caught was of particular interest. It was extraordinary how much effort the KGB would place in trying to find a single person. When someone started sending anonymous letters attacking Marxism–Leninism to party functionaries, forensic examination found traces of pencil drawings. That led to the hypothesis the person had been at art school. A three-year search ensued, using psychological profiles and informers. Eventually handwriting analysis matched the letters to someone who had made an application to the Rostov City Housing Commission and the trouble-maker was unmasked.

One of the faces of Soviet repression that both Mitrokhin and the Chronicle of Current Events detailed was the use of psychiatric prisons as a punishment for dissenters. The Chronicle itself became a victim of this tactic. The first editor of the publication was a poet, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, who typed up the first six copies of the Chronicle to be distributed. She was also one of the eight who demonstrated in Red Square in August 1968. Mitrokhin was perhaps aware this was a type of bravery he was not capable of. In 1970, she was sentenced to indefinite detention at the Kazan psychiatric hospital for what was called ‘sluggish schizophrenia’.

Mitrokhin noted how the KGB by the mid-1970s became aware that the use of psychiatric punishments was causing outrage in the West and it began using Soviet doctors to reach out to foreign counterparts to counter the criticism. A ‘trusted agent’ of the KGB, codenamed ‘Professor’ was ordered to collect details about abuses of psychiatry in Western countries. Nina, his own wife, he knew was part of the medical establishment though not this part. How deep did the corruption go into Russia’s soul?

There was also the way the KGB went after Russians who had gone to the West, expending huge energy in following ballet dancers, cellists, writers and others who had defected, seeking to put agents and informers close to them, trying to discredit them and prevent them receiving awards and recognition. The combination of their departure and their success triggered an insecurity over the claim the Soviet system was superior to that of the West. Mitrokhin had a deep love for Russian culture and took great pleasure in visiting the Bolshoi. That left him particularly outraged as he read how the KGB secretly planned to target the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev who had defected in 1961. His employers had actually looked at whether they could break Nureyev’s legs. Meanwhile, a team of no less than 18 elite First Chief Directorate KGB spies were sent to the Philippines to ensure a Soviet chess player defeated his defector rival. This was the reality of the organisation Mitrokhin served, a place where elite foreign spies spent their time plotting against dancers and chess players.

The KGB campaign against dissidents, led by Andropov, inflicted a heavy toll. Many dissidents were driven to prison or exile. In 1973, two of the leading figures behind the Chronicle of Current Events were put on a ‘show trial’ with echoes of the Stalinist 1930s. They had been broken by lengthy KGB interrogation and confessed to their supposed crimes. The power of surveillance and informants left the movement dispersed and demoralised, back to feeling alone. The beast seemed to have the upper hand.

One of the saddest stories about writers that Mitrokhin noted down concerned a former prison colony inmate called Pereverzev. He had written a novel called Where is the Truth? based on five years spent locked away. But the KGB learnt about its existence after he wrote to Westerners and visited East Germany. He was put under surveillance and two agents were sent to get close to him and obtain the novel. One of the agents, a professional writer himself, read it and privately said it was a brilliant piece of work. But the agents were told to tell Pereverzev that in fact it was useless and full of flaws. They said he should get the views of a proper publisher. The KGB organised for that publisher to also offer negative feedback. Struggling under the weight of criticism of his work by those who should know what they were talking about, Pereverzev lost confidence in his own writing ability and gave up on his novel.

For Mitrokhin, as he began to toil on his own archive, there was still inspiration to be found from those who did put pen to paper. That was particularly the case with one writer who was able to be published. KGB Chairman Andropov was obsessed with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, especially after the writer won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. The KGB had been working to place agents close to him, even sending threatening letters pretending to be from criminals. But Brezhnev was cautious about moving against a figure with so much support around the world.

With his stern looks, intense blue eyes and long rusty beard, Solzhenitsyn had the look of an Old Testament prophet. And that was what he would become for Mitrokhin. Solzhenitsyn would, arguably, do more than any other individual to challenge the legitimacy of the Soviet Union, making him perhaps the most influential and important writer of the twentieth century. He would lay down a path that Mitrokhin would try and follow, a prophet offering a way through the wilderness.

31

The Prophet

IT TOOK ONE hundred and twenty hours of interrogation without sleep before Elizaveta Voronyanskaya finally broke. She was sixty-seven years old and in poor health but for five days in August 1973 she held out while detained in the ‘Big House’, KGB headquarters in Leningrad. She had never married and lived most of her life as a loyal Soviet citizen until her mid-fifties when she took against the Soviet regime with a passion and intensity that was only matched by her love for classical music and reading Agatha Christie and James Joyce. She had come to particularly hate the KGB. But now she found herself in their hands. Worn down by exhaustion and constant questioning, she finally revealed to her interrogators that a secret manuscript was buried in the garden of a dacha not far from the city. The KGB thugs let her go at that point. But she was broken. The guilt of having been forced to confess was likely compounded because she knew she had broken a promise. For years she had been working as a typist and distributor of a secret samizdat network. She had promised to burn the copy of the manuscript she had been entrusted with. But she had been scared that it might end up being the last copy and so instead she had left it buried. Now, the secret police had it. Not long after she was released, her neighbour heard Elizaveta repeating again and again that she was a Judas for having betrayed her friends. At the end of August, not long after her release she was found dead, hanging in the crooked, fetid, dark stairwell of her apartment building.

In their hands, the KGB now held a manuscript which was the most devastating indictment of Chekist repression ever penned. But they were too late. Their actions – and Elizaveta’s death – would only spur its publication and their own demise.

For years, Alexander Solzhenitsyn had laboured in secret on his masterpiece at a secret location he called the Hiding Place, an isolated farmhouse in Estonia. In his dacha, as he paused only to split logs for firewood to keep at bay the cold of thirty below outside, he had felt his hand moving almost of its own accord as if something compressed for half a century was now uncoiling thanks to a powerful unseen force. In a period of feverish intensity, he had written another book about the labour camps. But this time it was not a novel but a factual exposé. It was based on his own experiences and the testimony of 227 others who had been through the system.

The reality of the camps had gone unspoken for many years. Those who had lived through them dared not talk and the younger generation knew nothing. Silence was, in itself, a lie. But now they would be faced with the truth of Chekist terror in the form of the manuscript Solzhenitsyn had written. The book’s proposed title, The Gulag Archipelago, seemed to suggest a constellation of remote islands that lay scattered around Russia that were home to the camps. But it revealed that as well as the outposts to where millions were consigned out of sight, there had also been a vast machinery that brought them there and which was known of but not talked about, from the sham courts that passed sentences to the railway carriages that shipped detainees out to the furthest reaches. Everyone lowered their gaze as those carriages passed by with their human cargo suffocating inside from the stench.

The truth about this vast empire was that it was not located somewhere far away from ordinary life but existed all around, even close to Moscow. Solzhenitsyn thought of it as an invisible empire superimposed over the vastness of the nation. But it could also be seen as a creature perched on top of the nation, its home a cave in the Lubyanka, its tentacles reaching out into every crack and corner of the country, feeding on the life-blood of the people.

The security agencies were often called the ‘organs’ of the state as if they were part of this sinister creature. Solzhenitsyn had suffered from cancer while being detained and he came to think of the Gulag as like a tumour within the body of the nation, spreading outwards to eat away at everything. The detail in the manuscript was overwhelming, but it was an indictment not just of the camps but the whole system of which they were a part.

The reader’s eyes would be opened to a conclusion that was electrifying. What was the whole of the Soviet Union other than one giant Gulag? One in which all the people were trapped. But there was a further insight that made his work even more devastating. This was that the people themselves had been complicit in the functioning of this world. The system was built, maintained and run by people. And not just a few at the top but thousands, probably millions. The state security officers, the citizens who tipped them off and denounced their neighbour, the interrogators and the executioners, the rail car employees who stole possessions and the prison guards in the camps who corrupted everyday life.

Solzhenitsyn had witnessed how the same man could at one point in his life be close to being a devil but at another time be close to sainthood. The suffocating darkness, he believed, lay not out there in the nation but within every human heart. ‘If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it was necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?’

An evil had taken hold of the people, not just the state. By keeping silent, a notion that evil deeds could go unpunished and that there was no true justice had been allowed to take root in the Russian soul. The only way to purge it was to confront people with the truth and demand repentance.

Solzhenitsyn had been a soldier who had obeyed orders and issued commands, before becoming a prisoner in the Gulag and seeing the light. Mitrokhin had been a spy, lying for his country abroad before becoming, in his own way, a prisoner in the archives. And he too came to share this understanding of the darkness in his country and the human heart.

In different ways, the two had seen inside different parts of the secret world and understood its hidden corners. Mitrokhin had his own unique insight into the Chekists’ underground empire that extended from the Lubyanka and fanned out across the country into every home but also reaching across the world. Mitrokhin would learn from Solzhenitsyn and imitate him in his own quiet way. He too would preserve the truth, in the hope that one day it might be a weapon which could be wielded, even if not by himself. And he also increasingly came to share the philosophies that underpinned Solzhenitsyn’s thinking, above all the idea that people should ‘live not by lies’.

When he had finished his masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn was in no doubt about its power and the dangers this brought. So what should he do with his manuscript? An author’s natural instinct is that the point of writing is to be published, to be read and receive accolades. But Solzhenitsyn realised he had to overcome this impulse. Whether his work was published or not, he came to believe, was secondary, especially in his lifetime. Writing was a form of resistance and rebellion, of being true to yourself in a society which tried to control what you could say or do. It was a means of recording the truth in the hope that it would one day be read. ‘I thought of myself as the chronicler of the Archipelago, I wrote and I wrote, but I, too, had little hope of seeing it in print in my lifetime.’

For five years the book had lain dormant as he tried to work out what to do with it. But now, in 1973, he realised his manuscript was in the KGB’s hands because of poor Elizaveta’s forced confession. And so he decided he had no alternative other than to get it out on his terms as fast as he could. A network of secret helpers had already smuggled photographic film of the text to the West. It was time.

On 28 December 1973, Solzhenitsyn was eating lunch in the kitchen when he heard on the BBC’s Russian Service that The Gulag Archipelago had been published in Paris. He calmly finished his meal. In the coming days he wrote a list of what might happen to him. He had begun to compare Stalin’s Soviet Union with Hitler’s Germany and make the case that at least Germany had been forced to bring its former leaders to justice after the war leading to repentance. It would take something equally radical he believed to rescue his country from its collective guilt. A man with a strong sense of destiny, he had hoped perhaps his words might be listened to by his country’s leaders and that they might begin that journey. But he also wondered if he might be killed and martyred, his words taking on a power beyond the grave to shape his country’s future. He increasingly saw himself as a ‘sword in God’s hand’.

In the end, his fate would be less dramatic. Just as he had written in the opening of The Gulag, it started with the sound of footsteps approaching the front door, then strangers whisking him away, giving him just enough time to grab the shabby hat and coat he had kept with him as a souvenir from his previous days as an exile. Then he was stripped, interrogated, just like the first time, before being accused of treason. His punishment this time was deportation and exile out of the country he loved. This was painful for him as it would be for many who were forced or chose to leave, seeing themselves as Russian patriots above all else. He would describe it as ‘spiritual castration’. The day after he was sent abroad, an order was issued to all public libraries to remove all of his works.

The publication of The Gulag Archipelago would be less like the sudden exploding of a neutron bomb and more like the release of a biological weapon, one which spread unstoppably, exposing and attacking the nervous system of the Chekist state. The organs of the state were fighting back, trying to expel the writer and his work before they did more damage, but it was too late and their grip was being challenged in a way never seen before. The book’s impact was immeasurable in shaping how the Soviet Union would be perceived. The truth of the Gulag was there for all to see. Perhaps a book could change the world.

Solzhenitsyn eventually found a temporary new home in rural Vermont in America. It was only then that the West began to understand the man they had feted was not quite who they thought he was. The students at Harvard learnt this when he gave their commencement address in 1978. He may have been fiercely anti-communist but he was also fiercely anti-capitalist. He told them their country was spiritually and morally weak, enfeebled by materialism. People were too cowardly to die for what they believed in. He explained he wanted to purge Russia of Marxism to make it more Russian rather than make it more Western. He described Marxism as a ‘dark, un-Russian whirlwind that descended on us from the West’. He believed Russia was actually decades ahead of the West spiritually but needed to retreat from the world and renew itself from within. If it could rescue itself, then Russia still had a sacred and unique mission to preserve and spread its values around the world. This was a form of Russian nationalism rather than the liberal internationalism many had expected. There was an under-appreciated lesson that those Russians who were most critical of Moscow might not necessarily be as easy bedfellows and allies as some in the West expected, as would prove to be the case with Mitrokhin.

Mitrokhin, inside the system, watched as the KGB relished America’s discomfort with these surprising views from the writer. Mitrokhin’s First Chief Directorate along with the Fifth Directorate even organised a showing of a video of the Harvard commencement address to senior figures in the KGB and the party. But they also continued to work to undermine the exiled writer, as Mitrokhin saw in the files. The archivist read how the KGB organised TV interviews with some of those featured in The Gulag Archipelago in which they claimed Solzhenitsyn had fabricated elements of the story. There were attempts to question his sexuality. The KGB tried to plant stories to imply he had been an informer in prison camps. The files revealed how far the KGB was willing to go. One plan written up to target him, which Mitrokhin noted down in his office, had 19 sections. The first three of these listed 20 different operations. This left Mitrokhin angry.

Mitrokhin shared elements of Solzhenitsyn’s world view which had become bound up with a semi-mystical view of Russia. These ideas were rooted in a world view which looked back on an idealised vision of pre-Bolshevik Russia in which spirituality was seen to reside in the peasantry. This harkening back to a pre-revolutionary time was a form of rebellion against the Soviet state and had wider purchase, expressed in attachment to aspects of the past like religion or peasant folk culture or affection for the village in contrast to the urban, industrial world. These ideas, a form of Russian nationalism, were deeply rooted and would occasionally surface even in the Communist party, KGB and the military. In some of the Republics, especially the Baltics and Ukraine, nationalist stirrings worried the KGB. But Russian cultural nationalism was also growing as Communism faded. In some quarters, there was almost a semi-religious worship of the motherland, a yearning for an idealised vision of the past.

Russia was also portrayed as a victim of the Soviet Union and the Communist party with the idea it had somehow lost out, particularly the ordinary Russian, the peasant from the fairy tale. ‘I started thinking, the Soviet Union is such a rich country with such immense resources and potential and such wonderful people,’ Mitrokhin would say. ‘So how come we lead such a pathetic existence compared to people in the West? And then I started thinking about something else. Russians had lower living standards than people in any other part of the USSR. Russia was used as a milk cow and a workhorse for the rest of the country and as the main donor whenever and wherever money was needed.’

Another aspect of this strain of thought was a veneration of the land and Russia’s natural beauty, which created a form of environmentalism. For Mitrokhin, with his love for the forests blanketed with snow of his youth, this had a special hold. Civilisation faced economic and ecological disaster, he thought. Urban, industrial life was unnatural, Solzhenitsyn had argued, with modern technological society, another Western import, destroying Russia’s natural bounty. Mitrokhin would talk about how ‘evil acts’ by the three-headed hydra had been aimed at the environment as well as humanity.

Mitrokhin would also dwell on the fact that many of those behind the darkness that had damaged Russia were not even Russian by birth themselves. The Russian people had been under ‘alien rule’ for hundreds of years, he thought. They had been treated like cattle exploited in the same way under the Tsars as under Stalin and then the Cheka. In Mitrokhin’s mind, the alien invaders had come to subjugate the Russian soul as well as its people and its wealth. ‘Both Sophia-Augusta Angalt-Tserbtskaya and Joseph Dzhugashvili, non-Russian usurpers of power and promoters of serfdom, were granted the title of “The Great” and “The Wise” by their sycophantic courtiers,’ he would say, using the real names of Empress Catherine the Great, who was originally German, and Stalin, a Georgian, to make his point. Foreign rule was facilitated thanks to the collaboration of Russian ‘grabbers and scroungers’. Together they had stolen the resources that belonged to the Russian people, whether in the coffers of the state or the natural riches that lay in the countryside.

Mitrokhin reached deeper into Russia’s past to explain why people had been unable to challenge the powerful elite who subjugated them. Serfdom had created a slave mentality of dependence and subservience, he came to believe. In his mind the Russian Orthodox Church was part of the problem. It too was alien, another view which had echoes in Solzhenitsyn who sought a return to a deeper, more true and mystical faith.

The baptism of the Slavic pagan Prince Vladimir (or Volodomyr) in Kievan Rus in 988 BCE is often seen as the moment when Christianity came to Russia. But in Mitrokhin’s mind, Vladimir was no hero but a treacherous, cruel man and the Byzantine – or Orthodox – faith he adopted was a disaster, eradicating a traditional, ancestral religion. He would increasingly move towards a Christian faith set apart from the Orthodox Church which he believed had induced Russians to become servile. ‘It ruined the Russians,’ he would say. It made them slaves, unwilling to stand up to evil, instead simply told to obey their masters and withstand whatever was inflicted on them. ‘It has created a people capable of bearing suffering, humiliation, poverty, but incapable of standing up for itself.’ Russia had never learnt to walk without the master’s whip ever since, he thought.

Mitrokhin had seen in the files how the Russian Orthodox Church had become deeply entangled with his enemy, the KGB. Early secularism had been abandoned when Stalin had used patriotism and religion to rally the country against the Nazi invasion. The Orthodox Church would go on to be tolerated so long as it agreed to be under control of the state. Mitrokhin saw how the KGB had clamped down hard on other branches of Christianity, especially if they had foreign links, like Baptists or the Catholics, fearing they could be the means of subversion by Western intelligence services. Meanwhile, KGB agents operated at every level of the Orthodox Church, up to the very top, its priests abroad leafing through parish registers to look for the names of dead babies whose identities could be stolen for illegals. These files he saw made Mitrokhin particularly angry. ‘A whirlpool of filth,’ is how he described what he saw.

Serfdom and Orthodoxy had crushed the soul and now Bolshevism did the same but through new tools and ideas, creating ‘Homo Soveticus’ or ‘Soviet Man’ – someone shaped to always bend to the system, never standing up against it. ‘You’ve only to show a whip to a beaten dog,’ Solzhenitsyn had written.

Mitrokhin’s ideas swirled around his brain, sometimes heading down strange paths. His formal education had been limited and he had no one to discuss his thoughts with, and no means to have them challenged or refined in the way most people might be able to discuss politics. Even in the Soviet Union that might have been possible with close friends and family but that was not possible for a man obsessed with his own secret mission. All he knew was that he too would write. Perhaps one day it might be published. Probably not in his lifetime. But if so, it did not matter. It was the act of writing and committing the truth of people’s stories that mattered. Elizaveta Voronyanskaya used to chide Solzhenitsyn. ‘What’s the point of getting involved in a bullfight on such unequal terms?’ she would say. But perhaps from Solzhenitsyn Mitrokhin was learning that a book could change the world.

Interlude

A New Chekist

YULY RYBAKOV, ALONG with his friend, Oleg Volkov, crept along the bank of the river in Leningrad late one summer’s night in 1976. The pair were dissidents and protest artists, painting political slogans on the back of trams and the like. Now, they were planning their most dramatic act. They nervously took out buckets of white paint and began to daub huge letters on the side of the Peter and Paul Fortress. ‘You may crucify freedom, but the human soul knows no shackles’ were the defiant words they were painting. ‘It’s too long, we will never finish it in time,’ Oleg said to Yuly. But they managed. As soon as they had finished, the pair threw their paint rollers into the river and fled as fast as they could. But the KGB and its web of informers and surveillance soon caught up with them.

The signature of a 23-year-old KGB officer called Vladimir Putin sat on a search warrant for a raid going after the pair as well as their friends. He was also present as notes and typewriters were seized to provide the evidence needed for the inevitable conviction. Rybakov had also been involved in an underground group distributing the works of Solzhenitsyn. He would be sentenced to six years in a prison camp in the Arctic Circle. This was quite literally a return to where he came from since the artist had been born in a gulag, the result of a union between his mother, who worked at the camps, and his father, a prisoner.

For Putin, chasing dissidents like this pair was hardly the romantic life of The Sword and the Shield drama and it was one chapter he would later erase from his biography. But at least he was now a Chekist. He had assumed he would be spotted and approached at university as he obtained the law degree he had been told was his ticket to save the motherland. But four years passed and he had begun thinking about other jobs, perhaps as a prosecutor. But then, finally, a man approached and suggested they talk about his future. Did he want to work for ‘the agencies’? He tried to play it cool as he said yes. The following years had taught him that his romantic notions of spying were not matched by the reality. An instructor at the Red Banner Institute noted the new recruit seemed ‘withdrawn’ and ‘uncommunicative’. A bit like Mitrokhin before him, he did not seem to have the gregarious personality that suggested a career as an elite First Chief Directorate officer who could go out and recruit Americans or Britons. Rather than saving the world, his early months were spent in the department tasked with spying on domestic dissent, precisely the type of work Mitrokhin so despised, going after people like the protest artists.

Next would come the First Department in Leningrad, targeting foreigners in the city. Then down the line, a chance to work with the First Chief Directorate, the place he, like Mitrokhin before, had dreamed of serving. It was during his early years that he met Lyudmila, an airline stewardess. Friends had introduced them at the theatre. She had thought he was poorly dressed and unprepossessing. ‘I wouldn’t have paid any attention to him on the street,’ she said, but he seemed to have a remarkable ability to get tickets for any show on any night. He worked for the criminal investigation department of the police, he claimed. A lie. It took a few years but eventually they married, initially living in his parents’ cramped apartment. He now told her that he worked at the KGB but he spoke nothing of the specifics of his work as instructed. At last though, there came the moment when they could both go abroad, with his chance to be a proper spy. But their destination was not London or New York. Like Mitrokhin, his foreign posting would be to East Germany – in Putin’s case, Dresden.

32

Surveillance

Vilnius, June 1992

AS THEY SAT with him in Vilnius in June 1992, Mitrokhin’s pure, burning hatred for the KGB was clear to the MI6 team, even if they could not quite understand where it had come from or how fiercely it burned. What mattered now was keeping him alive and onside. One question that they needed to understand was how Mitrokhin had not been caught for so many years.

How do you get away with stealing an archive? And not just an archive, but one of the most secret in the world? The answer, they would understand, was to be so quiet and so boring, that no one notices or cares about you. So low-key that no one even knows that the files – or even you – are missing.

‘I was a very ordinary member of Soviet society. I didn’t stand out in any way. I wasn’t a high-flyer. I didn’t reach for the stars. I just did my job. Like all the other Soviet citizens who worked for the system,’ Mitrokhin would say.

He had kept his head down. He needed to. He knew what would have happened if he had been caught. ‘They would have hanged me,’ he would say. ‘There was great danger involved of course. But the danger was somehow addictive,’ he would admit. ‘When you are constantly involved in something risky, it is like a smoker or an alcoholic craving alcohol or nicotine. Although you know it’s bad for you, you go and do it. Because of that craving, I even went to work gladly.’ This strange mix of outward ordinariness and inward intensity marked out Mitrokhin as someone truly unusual.

There had been moments of fear. One time he arrived at his dacha to find a stranger hiding in the attic. He had recently noted a file about an incident in which a friend of Solzhenitsyn had surprised two KGB officers in his attic, probably looking for manuscripts. Were the KGB on to him? Had Mitrokhin stumbled on to someone carrying out a search? To his relief, the person he had stumbled across was just a homeless man looking for a place to sleep.

A number of times he was also convinced he was being followed by what were called the ‘footsloggers’, the slang for surveillance operatives. He wondered if they might be from one of the other KGB Directorates, perhaps the Second. The tailing might be random. It might be for training. But it could be because they suspected something. If you could spot the teams, they said, it meant they were not the best ones. If they were watching, you would never know.

There was one day when he was walking home, notes stuffed in his shoes, when he came to fear he was under surveillance. On this occasion he had been going into the shop belonging to the Dynamo Sports Club, the KGB’s team. There he found himself standing next to a man and his son looking at boots. They were speaking in English. Mitrokhin became petrified. As foreigners, they were likely to be under surveillance. His proximity to them might be interpreted by any surveillance team as a chance for a brush contact in which a message would be passed in a fleeting moment. Mitrokhin tried to work out what to do. As he left, he became convinced he had a surveillance team on him. He decided he would go to more sports shops to try and create the image that he genuinely wanted to buy something. He then made his way back home. His tail seemed to have gone. But as he approached his apartment block, he thought he saw two strange men near his door. By the time he got there they had vanished. As he closed his door and entered inside, he was overcome with fear. Had the men been part of a KGB surveillance team? Should he report this to his superiors? That was the normal thing to do. Failing to do so might be suspicious. But the coincidence with the English people in the shop all felt too much and he simply kept quiet.

Later he would casually ask a colleague about such events. They would explain that it was normal that officers were occasionally subject to surveillance. But had he really been followed? Or was it paranoia seeping in after so many years of clandestine work? Perhaps the archivist was beginning to lose touch with reality. Was he so deeply immersed in his world of files and informers that he was starting to see spies and plots everywhere? A secret life takes its toll. The longer it goes on, the more you risked falling for this kind of paranoia. Walking on the edge and looking over the precipice for years can leave you suddenly losing your balance. Only the adrenalin propelled you onwards. His outward life was dull – one of files and no friends – but the inner life of Mitrokhin had become increasingly dramatic. He had a sense of purpose, of being involved in his own quest, a hero in his own story, its end uncertain but danger all around him.

For the MI6 team, the archivist’s unusual personality posed its own challenges. They knew they would need his help to work on his files. They would also need to come up with a plan to get him and his family out. That would likely require further discussion with him once they had drawn it up to see if it would work. That all meant at least one more meeting in person before the final exfiltration and developing a plan that he would be happy with.

As the June meeting came to an end, there was a discussion of how to communicate future plans. Secret writing was raised as one option. This had been part of MI6’s repertoire of tricks since its founding. Things had moved on from those early days when, to much amusement, one officer discovered that male reproductive fluid could be used for invisible ink. Decades later, it still involved posting letters which looked innocent but which when treated with a special compound revealed a message. This was not straightforward. A letter to Mitrokhin could not be posted from abroad. That would be suspicious. So it would have to be done locally by the MI6 station. This was a challenge. Officers would have to carry out a full anti-surveillance route for hours because if they were being followed then the watchers would simply drop a marker in the postbox after they had gone. The letter immediately below the marker would then be analysed for anything suspicious. The KGB knew which postboxes looked like the best ones in which to surreptitiously drop a letter and precisely for that reason they checked every single letter that went into them.

When the team suggested secret writing, Mitrokhin’s reluctance was clear. He knew from the archive the lengths to which the KGB could go to trace secret letters. In 1962 a Soviet trawler had picked up a canister off the east coast of the US. It contained a ballot paper for elections to the USSR Supreme Soviet issued by Murmansk electoral district along with an anonymous letter for the American people written in pencil as well as top secret military data. The full weight of the state was brought to bear to find the author. A secret scientific research institute as well as fisheries and oceanographic research teams studied ocean currents. Two hundred fishing vessels were identified by the KGB that could have been in the area. The search zeroed in on one trawler and the KGB established which crew had access to a ballot paper when it was issued on one journey and who also were on a second journey when the canister was dropped. Handwriting analysis pointed to one man. Two years after the canister was discovered he received ten years in a labour camp.

Mitrokhin knew much more about how the KGB worked and its capabilities than the British spies. The risks of secret letters were too great. Despite the possible confusion, he said he would use a signal in Moscow again. That would confirm when and where they would meet.

There had been one more question the British had needed an answer on. Was anyone else involved in his work? What did his family know?

He was quiet, introverted and did not go out much. His family was a difficult subject to talk about, the British could see. There were undercurrents of pain and doubt.

‘I didn’t have any friends or people I was particularly close to. I always felt I was on my own. I couldn’t tell anyone about my work, even at home. Especially at home,’ Mitrokhin would say.

So your wife didn’t know?

‘Absolutely not. She had no idea. I never told her. She wasn’t particularly interested.’

She had her own life. The couple did not talk politics. His work and the risks he took had been his and his alone. Everyone knew that this would soon have to change if he and his family were to leave the country. In his mind, Mitrokhin had done much of what he had done for his family. And yet he had done so without telling them or knowing how they would react. As they parted ways, the three men agreed a provisional date of 23 September when they would meet again.

33

Dead Foxes

IN LONDON, TEAMS of investigators from MI5 were now poring over the leads from Mitrokhin’s files. As they toiled away in the Security Service’s gloomy offices at Gower Street in central London, a few miles south an 80-year-old grandmother was going about her daily life in Bexleyheath, pottering about in her garden and making jam from apples. Their two worlds would soon collide. MI6 had handed over 200 leads to MI5 on possible cases from the raw material that had been scanned, translated and processed. On the one hand, this all highlighted what one British spy called ‘the awesome access of the archivist’ (or as another put it, it was always the quiet man who did the most damage). ‘No one had anticipated that a single source could provide such a sweeping and detailed view of KGB operations over a period of more than 50 years,’ Sir Richard Dearlove, who became head of MI6 at the end of the 1990s, would say.

But what should have been a treasure trove for MI5, instead would become first a dead fox and then a very live disaster. Part of the problem was that it had all come at an awkward time. The Cold War which had defined MI5’s recent work had just finished. Counter-espionage – catching KGB spies – had been its bread and butter for decades but that was now seen as the past. The Treasury was demanding budget cuts. Survival meant finding a new threat. The leadership had picked terrorism and in particular Northern Ireland and so they were now battling to wrest the issue from the firm grip of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch. Relations with MI6 were also occasionally fraught. When MI5 tried to move into preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in another bid for relevance, MI6 saw this as a threat to the new turf it was desperately trying to cling to. In one meeting, two senior directors from MI5 and MI6 nearly came to physical blows such was the bad blood.

K Branch of MI5 which looked after counter-espionage was languishing. A few were left to carry the flame, their cries of ‘don’t forget the Russians’ echoing down the corridor as their bosses walked away. There was not much interest and, most importantly, not much money for the old mission. The crucial test in MI5 is how the relatively scarce resource of surveillance teams from A branch were allocated. Everyone thought their investigation was the vital one which required 24/7 coverage of a suspect but now it was terrorism and other cases that went up the list while catching Russians went down. Old hands were shocked to discover that in the 1990s MI5 had even stopped monitoring the phone of Russia’s London ‘Resident’ – the head of spying operations in the embassy. It was into this world that Mitrokhin’s leads from MI6 fell. The problem with Mitrokhin’s information was that for organisations whose job it is to catch spies being told there are lots of them – and what is more you had previously failed to spot them – is not actually very good news. It leads politicians to ask two questions. Why did you not find them before? And what are we going to do now?

When he was prime minister decades earlier, Harold Macmillan came to despair at visits from MI5. He compared them to his gamekeeper walking in and hanging a smelly, dead fox they had just shot outside his office rather than doing what they ought to do and burying it somewhere out of sight (only a member of the British establishment could use this kind of fox hunting analogy). What am I supposed to do with that, would be the response from politicians when presented with the messy carcass of a traitor who had been discovered. If you prosecuted a suspected spy the public would be asking difficult questions about why you had missed them. Getting evidence was not easy and if you failed to get a conviction you looked inept. And going public meant relations with other countries – especially the Americans – could be affected since it would resurrect questions about leaky Brits. Often, that meant it was better just to sweep the dead fox under the carpet and bury it out of sight.

The new leads from Mitrokhin about historic cases were checked to see if they were worth pursuing or relevant to an existing investigation. The priority were those where there was the possibility of ongoing harm. MI5 had the previous year created a computerised database containing all the leads and cases going back to the 1970s which allowed names to be cross-referenced. Any lead would be placed into one of four categories. Category A referred to a major investigation with possible serious and continuing damage such as the loss of secrets. Only a small number of Mitrokhin cases met this threshold. Category B involved a significant investigation into damage which had taken place at some stage. A few fell here. Most of the Mitrokhin leads though were put into C and D which were of marginal or limited significance. A few other leads related to people who had already been prosecuted or who were dead. As leads were followed, they could move up and down the rankings.

In June 1992, one lead reached K Branch of MI5. It was put into Category B. Agent HOLA was the one that would turn the dead fox into a live disaster.

Agent HOLA, Mitrokhin revealed, had been involved in passing secrets from Britain’s atomic weapons programme. This was serious but it was half a century earlier and so was classed as Category B because the damage was not recent. Her name, Mitrokhin revealed, was Melita Norwood. A desk officer was given the lead to investigate. As the officer put her name into the Registry, the service’s vast database of files, it became clear, rather awkwardly, that she was known to MI5.

Norwood had first been vetted for access to secrets in 1945 when she worked for an organisation with the rather boring sounding name of the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association. The name hid the fact it did secret work on Tube Alloys – part of Britain’s atomic bomb programme. Norwood had worked as a personal assistant to the director and had been able to sneak information out of his safe. She had passed her vetting despite the fact she had come to the attention of MI5 in the 1930s as a Communist. Norwood was a true believer in the Communist cause, one of those like Kim Philby, fired by idealism in the 1930s and who had never abandoned the cause.

Questions had been raised by MI5 about Norwood’s possible communist associations but further investigation had found nothing and she was given clearance to access sensitive material. The Security Service had no idea she had been recruited as a Soviet agent in 1937 – one who would eventually be awarded the Order of the Red Banner during a visit to Moscow in 1979. Her case had been kept under review and further investigations did raise some concerns. Her security clearance was revoked in 1951 and a new application refused in 1962. Then in 1965, a new source had suggested she had been involved in espionage immediately after the war. An extended investigation – including phone taps and surveillance – led to the view the following year that even if she had been a spy in the 1940s she was now a ‘harmless and somewhat uninteresting character’ and anyway there was no evidence that could be used in court.

But Mitrokhin’s new notes were a problem. They revealed that in 1967, after the investigation had concluded, Norwood was still active and had recruited a civil servant codenamed HUNT. It showed MI5 had missed Norwood’s ongoing work. The Security Service was relieved to find HUNT had died of a heart attack in the 1970s. So one less problem to worry about. However, Mitrokhin’s file now made it look as if Norwood had not been just a low-level agent but a genuinely important one. The ‘atomic spies’ had helped the Soviet Union test its own bomb in 1949 far faster than the West had expected, shaping the contours of the Cold War. This had been one of the most significant and consequential triumphs of Soviet intelligence (both the GRU, military intelligence, and the KGB were involved). Norwood was far from the most important. Klaus Fuchs, who had gone from the UK to join the US weapons programme, was far more significant. But nonetheless this was not trivial espionage.

The MI5 officer asked to look into the Mitrokhin lead then discovered another problem. Norwood was still alive and living in South London.

So what was to be done?

At that moment the priority was to protect Mitrokhin. In June 1992, he was still living in Russia so the risk to his life was real. That made MI5 and MI6 cautious about directly approaching Norwood for fear of her telling the Russians. Moscow might be curious as to who could have tipped London off about such a historic case and that could lead them back to the archives and the source. As well as protecting Mitrokhin personally, the aim was to keep secret for as long as possible what he had provided so it could be analysed and exploited before the Russians could react and warn active spies.

The MI5 officer’s inquiries showed Norwood had been linked to the Communist party as recently as 1991. That suggested she was still ideologically committed and less likely to offer a quick confession. The desk officer approached MI5’s own in-house lawyer. They said the Mitrokhin material would probably not stack up as evidence in court since they were not original documents and there was little chance of a prosecution. The risk, it was thought, was that it might look like MI5 was harassing an old lady for something that took place fifty years earlier.

So the decision was made to do nothing. They did not bother to consult officials, ministers, the police, wider government lawyers or anyone else. The case was left open rather than closed but even when some of the tightest restrictions around Mitrokhin’s material were lifted the following year and MI5 took another look, they decided, again by themselves and not at the most senior level, to leave Norwood alone. The case was too old. There were other fish to fry – new leads were coming from the Stasi files as well as from Mitrokhin. After that, the case and Melita herself, ‘slipped out of sight’. A mistake, so it proved.

34

A Goldmine

INSIDE THE CIA at Langley, Paul Redmond had set up a small group in the Counterintelligence Center, including an FBI translator, to handle the product from Mitrokhin. By July, they had been handed over their mother-lode of counter-intelligence leads. They were given the raw Mitrokhin material to translate themselves, partly as there was too much for the British to do by themselves. But along with it came a warning, almost a plea, to ensure nothing leaked that might endanger the agent in place. ‘My British colleagues and I did agree to keep the information closely held. At the same time, this goldmine was translated, prioritized, and investigated, and all the information was put into its compartmented database.’

When MI6 parcelled out the goodies to the Americans, they assured their CIA counterparts that they were handing over all the material. Redmond assumed that was bullshit because no one did that, a view confirmed when the head of one Western European counter-intelligence service revealed that he had got material on his country that the Americans had not seen. But that was all part of the game and, in time, they would get everything.

Redmond was blown away by the detail. Mitrokhin’s American volume contained hundreds of names of KGB officers, agents and those they had been in contact with in the US dating back for decades. Redmond always knew the KGB was ambitious but to see concrete, unassailable proof of the scope of its ambition was stunning. For instance, the KGB had managed to plant a bug under a chair inside the Senate Foreign Relations committee meeting room. It was also intercepting the communications of defence contractors revealing the Pentagon’s priorities. Details about Line X – the KGB department involved in trying to steal technology from the West – showed it was doing spectacularly well. Companies like IBM had been deeply penetrated with multiple agents around the world helping the Soviets catch up. There were also quirky stories like a 16-year-old American high school student from a well-to-do family who had been so taken with Kim Philby’s story and idealistic notions of espionage that he travelled to Moscow as a tourist and offered himself up to the KGB in 1968. A second meeting had taken place in Mexico before he failed to show up for a third in London.

The files also revealed ambitious but unrealistic attempts to try to recruit top diplomats like President Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. There were insights into the Active Measures programme – the way in which the KGB’s Service A which ran disinformation operations had been trying to sow division in American society, for instance over racial politics in the 1960s. They revealed extensive attempts by the KGB to push conspiracy theories about the assassination of President Kennedy which would have a lasting impact, particularly the notion that the CIA was responsible.

The files even revealed that around the world, including inside the US, the KGB had buried secret caches of arms and radios. These dumps were designed to be used by teams in the event of war. Mitrokhin had carefully noted down the exact coordinates of where to find them as well as a warning that they were booby trapped with explosives to destroy what was inside if they were tampered with. There were also detailed plans for routes for infiltration by paramilitary forces from Mexico and Canada with the location of arms caches along the way as well as plans to blow up key infrastructure like pipelines and power stations in the US. A file on the Port of New York showed how carefully the location and its security had been researched ready for any order to disrupt it, one of many examples where bridges, pipelines, cables and nuclear power stations had been mapped out.

The CIA described the archive as ‘the biggest CI (counter-intelligence) bonanza of the postwar period’. The CIA’s Chief of Operations told MI6 Chief Sir Colin McColl, the information was ‘of critical interest to CIA’. The FBI described the material as ‘the most detailed and extensive pool of CI ever received by the FBI’. Mike Rochford, a Russian speaking expert who would be deeply involved in counter-intelligence, was one of those, along with more than a dozen analysts, assigned to work on the cases. In all there would be around 550 leads from the material. A team from the CIA and FBI came over the Atlantic to London. They wanted to talk about the many leads. They were keen to track the people down and take action. That was only going to be possible once Mitrokhin was out. Otherwise the risk was that round-ups – especially if it was into something as sensitive and secret as illegals – would immediately create the suspicion that there was a mole or penetration somewhere in the KGB and that could lead back to Mitrokhin.

‘It was swell. It was just great,’ John Martin, the man in charge of prosecuting spies for the US Department of Justice would later recall. Martin had spent years chasing after the KGB and Mitrokhin had given him a chance to get one over on them. ‘What a swell kick in the ass,’ he said. The description of the material as a goldmine was right, if a little misleading. It was true there were treasures buried within. But those nuggets would take work to extract.

As with Britain, it was going to take serious effort to work out which leads were still relevant and needed to be investigated and which were more of historic value. In some instances, dormant cases were re-opened as new pieces of the puzzle were offered up. There were notes about the KGB’s relationship with Felix Bloch, a State Department diplomat. That case had been of enormous interest in Washington because he had been suspected of espionage but without enough evidence for a prosecution. Mitrokhin was also able to help confirm details about a KGB agent known as ‘Sasha’. The former Head of Counter-intelligence, James Jesus Angleton, had torn the CIA apart for years in the mistaken belief Sasha was a CIA officer, inflicting terrible damage. Mitrokhin had highly detailed information to confirm the suspicion that the agent was a man called Aleksandr Kopatzky who had worked in Berlin with the Americans.

Another lead set off alarm bells. It referred to a long-running agent with different codenames who passed US military intelligence of sufficient importance for the case to be discussed with KGB Chairman Andropov. He had been active for many years but over one 18-month period he provided enough material to fill 26 volumes of KGB production files, each consisting of up to 400 pages. Mitrokhin did not have access to his operational cultivation or production file itself but had transferred notes from operational correspondence related to him into his US volume. This included clues to his identity in terms of his work in West Germany and the fact his recruitment and running had been aided by a Russian Orthodox priest. A hunt began which would lead to the most senior military officer convicted of espionage at the time.

At that moment, George Trofimoff was planning a retirement move from West Germany to Florida where he hoped to enjoy sunshine and the good life. He had been born in 1927 in Berlin to a family of Russian exiles with roots in the pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russian army. He ended up working with the US army in World War II and became a US citizen. He made his life in West Germany where he worked for army intelligence in Nuremberg at the Joint Interrogation Centre, screening those coming over from the East. He rose to become a colonel and still worked there as a civilian with top secret clearances after leaving the military. A larger than life character with an ego and a paunch to match, he would be married five times and constantly found himself in debt. He had been an easy play for the KGB when they had used his foster brother, a Russian Orthodox priest, to recruit him and then pass money in return for secrets starting in the late 1960s. His work would go undetected until Mitrokhin provided the clues. He would first be questioned in Germany but only when he retired to Florida would he finally be arrested. While living in a community of retired military officers, he would fall for an FBI false flag approach in which a Russian speaking officer who claimed to be working for the successor to the KGB offered him money to cover his debts.

But the majority of names in Mitrokhin’s volume were already known in some way to the FBI. Sometimes this was due to previous investigations or because they had been identified by previous defectors. But often it was because they were actually double agents or dangles being run by the FBI to try and lure the KGB into a trap. The US and UK, like the KGB, had decided the best way to limit the other side’s effectiveness was to keep them busy dealing with false cases, hopefully also making them miss a real one amid all the dross.

By the time the US had narrowed down the list to spies they did not know about and who might be still alive, the list was much smaller. There were ten cases considered to be a priority. The FBI began to dig. One or two were deemed not worth the effort based on the fact their access to secrets had been limited. In other cases, it was easier to leave them alone. In one case, the individual had apparently gone crazy and retreated ‘off the grid’, living in a cabin surrounded by barbed wire and warning that anyone who stepped on his property would be shot. A risk assessment was made that it was not worth the risk to life and limb to go after him. In the end there would be only two prosecutions out of the ten, Trofimoff one of them. But for those who worked on the archive that did not capture the importance of the material. ‘The depth and breadth of Mitrokhin’s contribution to the United States should not be measured by the number of prosecutions for espionage,’ reckons Mike Rochford. ‘His information filled large gaps of intelligence that the West needed to know in order to more fully understand the treachery and modus operandi of a totalitarian regime’s use of its intelligence services.’

But as Rochford and Paul Redmond’s small group in the CIA’s Counterintelligence Center began working on the Mitrokhin leads in 1992 in conditions of extreme secrecy, there was one question they were particularly eager to see if the archivist’s work could help answer: a dark secret that only a few were aware of.

Mitrokhin’s work with MI6 was tightly held in both London and Washington. That was for good reason. If it had leaked while he was still moving in and out of Moscow, he would be finished. And those inside knew that such secrets did sometimes get out. How? A mole. If Moscow had an agent within British or American intelligence who could give away the secret to their handlers then the archivist was as good as dead.

There was always one question that any new agent was asked when recruited in the Cold War. Were they aware of any penetrations of the intelligence agency for whom they would now be working? This was a matter of personal safety for the agent. If there was a traitor in, say, the CIA or MI6 then that agent would be at great risk. But it also reflected the obsession with moles, a fear instilled above all by the British traitor Kim Philby who early in the Cold War had compromised many of both MI6 and the CIA’s agents and operations. And in Washington some knew they had just such a penetration.

35

Molehunts

DEEP WITHIN LANGLEY, behind a door with five locks, a small team was engaged in a lonely but high-stakes molehunt. For some on the team it was personal. Agents they had once run, grown to like and whose lives they held in their hands were now dead. It had all begun to go wrong back in 1985. That year, out of nowhere, the CIA’s Russia House had been dealt a series of crushing blows. Agent after agent who had been carefully cultivated and recruited over years had failed to show for meetings and disappeared. Some in the CIA clung on to the idea that this was all due to a penetration of their communications systems. Officers in the field wondered if even the plug points they were using might be wired for sound by the KGB. That possibility was infinitely preferable to the alternative of a traitor in their midst. The agency had taken years to recover from the last bout of fever, one fuelled by paranoia rather than fact.

But a small band remained convinced they had been penetrated by the KGB and began investigating. CIA officers would see colleagues acting quietly around their backs and wonder what they were up to. Sometimes it was because those officers were running cases off the books as they were so worried there was a mole and did not want new agents compromised. But after a while the molehunt ran out of steam. Only a few people – increasingly seen as obsessives, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union – kept the flame alive. They would sometimes think of themselves as ‘the CIA within the CIA’. For everyone else in the agency, let alone the rest of the US government, the focus on spy-catching looked out of date and a weird obsession.

In 1992 the molehunters were hopeful Mitrokhin might offer fresh clues. They scoured his files for any sign of what led to the losses. But while he had plenty of history, painfully for them Mitrokhin had retired in 1984, just before the compromises. The mole was still at large. And Mitrokhin may have had a lucky escape. The traitor responsible was CIA officer Aldrich Ames who had walked into the Soviet Embassy in April 1985. He had worked in the CIA’s Soviet and Eastern European division and sold out many of its agents. And he was still in the CIA in the early 1990s when Mitrokhin offered himself up as a walk-in. Just months before he approached the Americans and then the British, Ames had been transferred to work on the CIA’s counter-narcotics efforts. He would not be arrested until 1994.

Ames was not the only traitor within the US intelligence community. Robert Hanssen, working at the FBI, was another mole. At one point, he had worked in the Soviet Analytic Unit specifically looking for illegals. Secretly he had first volunteered for the GRU in 1979 (which meant Mitrokhin would not have known the details). He did later approach the KGB but only after Mitrokhin had retired. He would not be caught until 2001.

Were there even more moles? Those who worked in the US intelligence community at the time still believe that not all the compromises of their agents could be attributed to Ames, Hanssen and another CIA officer Edward Lee Howard. They would believe there was a fourth man. Ironically, Paul Redmond himself, decades later, would be accused of this, without proof. One of the reasons cited was the claim that he had refused to allow leads from Mitrokhin to be entered into any databases other than his own in order to protect himself. In fact, he had been doing that precisely to protect the Mitrokhin case from the real traitors he knew were operating at the time.

Australia received its Mitrokhin leads in September and here one lead in particular proved significant but deeply difficult. That was because the country also had its own ongoing and highly sensitive molehunt. There had already been indications of a serious penetration of the country’s security service, ASIO. For a few years, every time ASIO had come close to recruiting a Russian, their target would suddenly disappear from the country. There were other signs in the late 1970s and early 1980s that the KGB had welcomed a walk-in who had provided highly sensitive information. But the inquiries stalled until MI6 informed their allies that Mitrokhin’s notes included a communication from a KGB officer in Australia to Moscow which had the retirement date of the mole as 1983. There were other details as well about the person’s role in a section dealing with espionage. That narrowed down the list but it still took years and false starts before the suspect was finally identified. The former senior officer would not confess and it was decided it was not possible to prosecute him in court. That meant he was able to enjoy his KGB funded retirement before dying without the world knowing the truth in 2006. The man’s name – as well as the investigation and the role of Mitrokhin – would remain secret for a further two decades as the authorities sought to firmly keep a lid on the issue, including the fact that Mitrokhin’s notes revealed that on his retirement he had approached another officer to see if they could take over his KGB work. That officer had declined but did not report the approach.

36

Another Philby?

MOLEHUNTS HAD WREAKED havoc among Britain’s spies in the Cold War. The spotlight of suspicion had danced around MI5 and MI6, alighting on a rich array of characters suspected of secretly working for Moscow. There had been the genuine disaster of Philby in the early Cold War which had devastated MI6, undermining its confidence as well as its reputation. After the experience of years of denial about him being washed away, it had then been too easy to go too far the other way and see moles everywhere when there were none. In the difficult decades after Philby’s exposure, officers from MI5 and MI6 were secretly tailing each other around London streets and train stations, convinced they were working for Moscow. The idea that the KGB was all-powerful and engaged in a ‘monster plot’ took hold in London as it did in Washington with the idea that fake defectors were being sent out deliberately to manipulate people into believing the wrong thing and stop them spotting the real traitors in their midst.

That all meant that even though much of what lay in Mitrokhin’s files was history, it was still of enormous interest to those few pursuing answers about the past. These were people who spent months, even years, poring over his files to understand why, say, an agent like Penkovsky had been caught back in the 1960s. Mitrokhin offered confirmation from the inside. In that case, the KGB had put occasional surveillance on the wives of British Embassy staff in Moscow and one had been spotted talking to a man on a bench while pushing her pram. A huge surveillance effort identified the man as Penkovsky. This kind of detail mattered because the alternative was a leak from the inside – another Philby who had blown the operation. That possibility had obsessed some like Peter Wright, an MI5 officer whose controversial 1980s memoir Spycatcher had pushed the extraordinary idea that a head of MI5, Roger Hollis, had himself been a long-time KGB agent. There was no evidence to back that up in Mitrokhin’s archive.

One problem was that even with someone who had the level of access enjoyed by Mitrokhin, definitive answers were not always possible. Because there were so many files, Mitrokhin had not noted every single one he saw in the First Chief Directorate. He could easily have missed something. There were, it would eventually be noted, ‘significant gaps’. And he did not have access to everything. There was the theory that British agents could have been recruited outside of Britain – while working abroad, say, as a diplomat or businessman or student with that recruitment kept off the books of the British department and out of its files. Or they could have been recruited by a different Directorate entirely – like domestic counter-intelligence – and again been kept away from the First Chief Directorate as part of the effort to protect their identity. To take one example, there was no direct reference anywhere to Geoffrey Prime, a GCHQ officer who had been recruited by the KGB’s Third Directorate, because Mitrokhin did not have access to their files. But in another list of agents and targets there was a one-line reference to what was apparently another British agent run from Karlshorst. Their file in 1981 ran to fifteen volumes. But their identity was not revealed. Overall though, Mitrokhin was able to put to bed many of the most extreme conspiracy theories about the KGB and its successes and provide answers. Perhaps there had not been as many moles in the Cold War as some feared. But could there be new ones now?

In the 1990s, MI6 would undergo its own fresh molehunt. But unlike the Americans, not just the details but its very existence would be kept secret for decades until now. Its origins came with a tip-off supplied by the CIA. One of their agents – a Soviet turned Russian intelligence officer who was still in place and not a defector – passed on information. It suggested a penetration of the British Secret Service. ‘We had a lead,’ says one American. ‘A very, very good lead to a problem in MI6.’ It was more than just a passing possibility. There was ‘a lot of meat to it’, one of those aware at the time says. The information was duly conveyed to the heads of MI5 and MI6 at the highest levels, including Sir David Spedding who by 1994 had become the new chief. It sparked deep concern and led to a hunt starting.

The resulting investigation went on for years through the latter part of the 1990s. A tiny group were aware of the possibility that among their colleagues in MI6 was an agent for Moscow. It was the deepest secret that some were read into over their entire careers. Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and the KGB’s woes, it was not implausible. After all, Moscow had managed to keep running Aldrich Ames until 1994 and Robert Hanssen as late as 2001 in the heart of the US community. As with any molehunt, this all required the utmost secrecy for fear of the target learning of the investigation. Senior CIA and MI6 counter-intelligence officers would discuss progress in the most careful way, keeping their meetings secret even from their own colleagues. A CIA officer would go to London on normal business and the MI6 officer to Washington. But they would then meet separately outside of their headquarters without telling others in their respective services to discuss the case. A few individuals from the FBI and MI5 were also in on the secret.

The fear was that if news emerged then the echoes of Philby would be hugely damaging. This was especially a concern given the context at the time. The Cold War had just ended and there were people questioning whether the service was needed at all or if it could be cut back significantly. Some feared a big scandal at this moment could signal ‘game over’ for MI6.

The investigation slowly narrowed down a list of suspects. One particular MI6 officer came under suspicion, according to American sources. ‘They had a very good candidate,’ says one person directly knowledgeable of events. But there was never the kind of definitive proof that this individual was responsible which would allow a prosecution or a case to be made. That left a problem. Divisions emerged over how serious the case was. Some came to argue that the lead itself was incorrect and that there had never been a penetration at all. The decision was eventually taken to end the investigation and label it ‘inconclusive’. Nothing more was to be said of it and those involved were told not to speak of it. It was buried. When asked if there was an investigation, one of those understood to have been directly involved paused for a long while before saying: ‘If there was, I wouldn’t be able to discuss it.’

37

Moscow Summer

IN MOSCOW THAT summer, Mitrokhin was unaware of how his precious files were being parcelled up, shared around and then pored over in the headquarters of Western spies. Instead, he watched in despair as Russia’s descent into chaos accelerated, its moral and economic foundations appearing to break down. He could see beggars, prostitutes and drug addicts appear on the city streets. Factories stopped working. That summer’s apple crop would go unharvested and apples instead had to be imported from Western Europe. Russia’s leaders promised everything would be fine after a little pain. But health and education budgets were being slashed. The country seemed to be turning into a cynical, corrupt and uncaring place. Financial pyramid schemes and slick-suited conmen were everywhere. It seemed a free-for-all for criminals who were often indistinguishable from those in charge. That summer plans were announced for a ‘privatisation’ cheque. Everyone would get shares in state companies in the form of vouchers. Unsurprisingly, most people would go on to sell the flimsy bit of paper as fast as they could for something more tangible. That would allow a new class of owners who bought up the vouchers and the companies to emerge. The battle over history and the KGB was also intensifying in the public arena, with arguments over which secrets to keep and which to publish. No one would know that one archivist was already in the process of transferring most of them to London.

The secret of his work was, Mitrokhin knew, one he would eventually need to share with those close to him. It would soon be time to tell Nina. She had a life in Moscow, a career and friends, far more than he had. Would she really want to give those up? He could not be sure, he had to admit. His family life was not altogether easy. While his career had outwardly been one of disappointment, Nina’s had flourished. Equality for women was a founding principle of the Communist system. That of course did not extend to having any women in the Politburo or senior positions in places like the KGB, but nevertheless Nina found it easier than her husband to make her mark. Her expertise as a leading ENT specialist doctor was highly valued enough for her to be able to travel abroad giving lectures. She was still occasionally practising and working in 1992, long after her husband had retired. She also had a role as a doctor attached to a hospital for the Central Committee of the Communist Party, dealing as a specialist on call for senior figures. He had to concede that in their relationship she was the better educated and more successful partner. Her intellect was clearly in excess of his. She was the one who dressed well and who would have looked more at home at a diplomatic reception or cocktail party than her husband. As her career flourished, the distance between them grew. Occasionally, she could look down on him and be somewhat dismissive. What had happened to the idealistic young man she had met? The high-flying young operative had turned into an increasingly reclusive archivist, lost in his files. This imbalance was left unsaid. But now the conversation he knew he had to have with her would force it into the open. Would she follow him or would she prefer to leave him and keep her life?

And, of course, there was Vladimir. This was the hardest problem. The mystery illness was still working its way through him. Both parents worried desperately about their son and felt very protective. Even as the illness created strains between him and Nina, their devotion to him bound the couple together. They did everything they could to seek answers and some form of treatment to deal with his condition. This quest, at least, was one that Mitrokhin could share with his wife. It would include seeking permission to get medical help from abroad. East Germany, even with its better hospitals, had proved a limited help. But in the late 1970s, they went on an extraordinary trip as a family to China. They had desperately hoped that some form of alternative therapy might help. This had been Nina’s doing. This was highly unusual at a time when relations with China were strained and the Cultural Revolution had just ended. But she had the medical contacts to pull strings. Mitrokhin, as a serving KGB officer, needed permission to travel which had been granted. But it did nothing to improve his condition.

Vladimir was now a man rather than a child but the illness had recently confined him to a wheelchair. He had good friends in Moscow, mainly from university, who mattered very much to him. He had been an early adopter of computers and was one of the first to go online using bulletin boards where he had made new friends. He was bright and clever but could also be angsty and irritable. In many ways, Mitrokhin had to admit, the boy was more like his mother than his father, including when it came to his intelligence. He was certainly closer to Nina. One of the sadnesses he kept hidden was that for all his devotion, the young man did not respect him. Perhaps this was because all Vladimir knew was that his father had been a functionary for the KGB, and not even some kind of glamorous operative but essentially a dull and reclusive librarian who struggled to communicate.

But was the distance also because his son did sense there was something more going on? As Mitrokhin had toiled a few years earlier, there had been one moment of peril. One night he had pulled out some notes and was working on them by candlelight in his dacha, absorbed by his efforts, when he had been disturbed. It was Vladimir. His son had woken up and entered the room. He had asked a question: ‘What are you doing?’ How could Mitrokhin explain that he was taking these risks – something which could look like treachery – for him? And how would he react now?

Vladimir had been brought up in the Soviet system and had never really had any reason to question it. He might not understand or want to leave his country and his friends. But equally he could not be left behind. For any young man to have his parents suddenly vanish – and perhaps learn they were in what had seemed like enemy territory – would be a shattering blow, opening them up to a sense of personal betrayal as well as any consequences the state might inflict. But, in his situation, leaving him alone was unconscionable.

The fact that so much of what he had done was for his son was one of the secrets Mitrokhin buried deep and kept even from the British and perhaps even from himself as he became fixated on his quasi-religious struggle against his enemy. But his unwillingness to share his secret life meant a difficult, perhaps dangerous, moment loomed.

38

The Fort

WHEN MITROKHIN WALKED into the now familiar environs of the British Embassy on 2 September he was met with confusion, bordering on panic. The last signal had suggested he would not arrive until 12 September. He was ten days early and the team were not in place. It was another example of how hard it was to communicate with their agent in Moscow. The Ambassador sent back an urgent message. Robert and James scrambled to move forward their plans.

From his house in the remote English countryside Robert raced to Vilnius, while James rushed ahead with his part of the plan, one that had been approved by the Foreign Secretary on 21 August. He flew to the Latvian capital, Riga. With him he carried a British passport for Mitrokhin as well as his own. Both contained genuine Lithuanian visas with entry stamps that MI6 had forged to suggest they had both arrived in the country a few days earlier. He then took a taxi into Vilnius – the only way of travelling between the two cities.

Once he arrived in Lithuania, Robert met Mitrokhin at the agreed location of the Russian Orthodox church and explained what was going to happen next. When James turned up, he handed over a new set of British clothes to Mitrokhin to wear. They had guessed sizes but when they took a look at him up and down the fit was good. He might not speak any English but at least he vaguely looked the part. That mattered because the next moment had been the source of some anxiety. They headed to the airport where a flight had already been booked to Vienna. This was the first time Mitrokhin was going to travel with them. Check-in carried particular risks. The airport remained somewhere the KGB was still thought to keep close tabs. Mitrokhin would not be able to respond in either English or Lithuanian if he was asked any questions. The odd couple became a trio and the Russian was squeezed in-between and behind the other pair so they could take the lead as they approached the desk. Robert explained, loudly to draw attention to himself, that they were diplomatic couriers. There was a back-up plan if needed. A local Lithuanian official was watching and would intervene if things took a turn for the worse. Fortunately, there were no questions. The third member of the trio stayed quiet.

There was one final problem. The flight was delayed. They were due to get a connection from Vienna onward to London. If they missed that, then what? Vienna was not the kind of place you wanted to linger with a Russian asset in tow. A nervous glance on the watches and some fast walking through Vienna meant they just about made it. On board the second plane, James asked for a favour. Would the pilot let their friend visit the cockpit? As they came over London, it was dark and the city was lit up, sparkling like a jewel. Mitrokhin had never seen anything like it.

On 7 September, Mitrokhin arrived for the first time in Britain. He had only ever seen London’s red buses and black cabs in pictures. It was strange to think this might soon be the new home for him and his family. He had arrived in a country he had agreed to work for but which he knew almost nothing about.

There was time for only a brief rest before he got to work. This was undertaken at a safe house in London and also the Fort. The Fort is MI6’s training facility where new recruits are inducted into the secret world. But it is much more than that. The London office buildings the service has inhabited like Century House and later Vauxhall Cross were never really loved by those who worked for MI6. But the Fort was different. It was the service’s spiritual home where officers could live and breathe its past. A small and very private museum in its walls details the strange adventures over the years and some of the gadgets used in operations (from cricket balls to rectal concealing devices). It was also a place that important defectors, agents and visitors were taken to decompress, keep them secure and give them a sense of who they were working for.

Mitrokhin’s 200-page volume on Britain had been passed on earlier in the year to a specialist on Soviet affairs at MI6. Harry had learnt Russian at Oxford and then Cambridge before serving for thirty years from the 1950s to the 1980s as an analyst at the Foreign Office. He then joined MI6 where he had worked on files Oleg Gordievsky provided. He would be assigned to work with Mitrokhin as a translator and helper. The pair got down to work, forging a close relationship which would endure for years.

In what would turn out to be a memorable meeting, Mitrokhin also sat down with the Americans for the first time in London. The team of FBI and CIA officials who were going to work with him were introduced over lunch by their British counterparts. The Americans were stunned as Mitrokhin immediately launched into a broadside. ‘Which one of you works for the CIA?’ he demanded looking at the assembled group. One man, who was actually an FBI employee but had been seconded to the CIA, was pointed out. Mitrokhin proceeded to lay into him verbally. ‘Let me tell you something, I tried to volunteer to you,’ he angrily said. ‘It is your fault that because you turned me down I am here with the British,’ he said. This made clear to his now squirming British hosts that they were very much his second choice. ‘I always wanted to be in the US,’ Mitrokhin said, adding that the CIA had ruined his plans. He then demanded to know what had happened to a document he had left with them during one of his Baltic embassy visits. He wanted it back, he explained. The CIA officer, realising he was dealing with a volatile character, was apologetic about what had happened in the Baltics and said he would look into the whereabouts of the document. As the meeting quickly broke up, the Americans went back to their hotel thinking that might be it and they would have to head home empty-handed. But the Brits told them to hold tight and wait. This was the nature of the person they were dealing with. Mitrokhin was angry and needed to get it off his chest, they explained. They were right and two days later he had cooled off, allowing the Americans to sit down with him.

The unspoken truth was that the British and Americans understood this might be the best and perhaps only chance that they would have to go through the material with all its complexities and idiosyncrasies in the company of the man who had written it. Of course, the plan was to get him out along with his family. And the MI6 officers and their American counterparts were now certainly beginning to understand the importance of his family to him. During his angry outburst, one thing Mitrokhin had let slip was that the reason he had been so keen to go to America was because he thought that would be the best place for medical treatment for his son. It suggested that beyond the desire to damage the KGB and the ideological overlay, sat more personal motives related to his family. Senior British intelligence officers made clear to him they would deliver on the promises to his original demands. They would get him and his family out and they would seek to publish his work. But at the back of everyone’s minds was a question: what if it went wrong?

They had to make the most of the opportunity while they had it, the British and Americans knew. The spies needed to understand how Mitrokhin had compiled and organised his notes. Given these were not original documents how was all the material generated and could it be trusted? That meant Mitrokhin would need to work through the mountainous manuscripts he had already brought out and decipher their code. For the archivist, that meant doing in Britain what he had done over so many years in his own hiding place: reconstituting the fragments and bringing them back to life.

39

The Dacha

AT THE END of a working day, Mitrokhin would return to his ninth-floor apartment in Moscow. He would take out the notes and place them under his mattress. Sometimes he would work on them there in a quiet moment but the real work came on the weekend when he would put the notes into an old shopping bag and head out to his dacha in the countryside, twenty or so miles from Moscow.

For many Russians who toiled in the city, their dacha was a place to escape and reconnect with the rural life. This was especially true for Mitrokhin. It allowed him to recapture the idyll of his youth, the fishing and the hunting he loved and which he associated with the true soul of Russia. But it was also a place where he could toil in secret undisturbed. Creating his archive had been a compulsion, a very private obsession.

The archivist had retreated into his work, both his official duties, which he could not speak much of anyway, but also even deeper into his private clandestine enterprise. Neither of these could he talk to Nina about. The less she knew the better. He knew that many of the spies caught on both sides were uncovered because a wife or lover either betrayed them or made a mistake. It was safer for him not to tell her for both his sake and for hers. If he was ever discovered, she would have a chance of at least surviving by being able to honestly deny all knowledge of what he had been up to. And so the secret that defined his life, the burden that weighed him down, was one he carried alone, withdrawing further and further into himself. What does it do to a marriage to live with such a secret for so many years?

His introverted, single-minded personality combined with her flourishing career meant that keeping his secret life from her was relatively straightforward. But the decision not to tell Nina meant that the world he inhabited narrowed more and more day by day. He was alone with his files and the stories he read in them and the stories he weaved.

The loneliness of Mitrokhin’s life meant his dacha was quiet and an easy place to continue his labours, finding solace in his files. When his family were out or asleep, he would take out the slips of paper containing the tiny writing. He had written his original notes in a personal code, a short-hand to save space and time in which individual letters or symbols substituted for common words. Now, in the way that a soup could be produced by pouring boiling water onto a dried stock cube, he would reconstitute the original document and return the densely packed fragments into their original form.

He would pull out the tiny notes he had written in his special code and then sort them according to subject. He would then rewrite the smaller fragments into larger notes. These would be organised thematically by country, agent or operation. One of the things that was remarkable about Mitrokhin was his memory. Those who worked with him would describe it as photographic. Somehow he could take a word or two and use it to recall a whole paragraph or story. The next stage would be writing up notes in a kind of staccato-like prose rather than long, wordy sentences but still seeking to preserve accuracy and the original meaning. Astonishingly, what he would note down were not some vague recollections of a general story but precise details – names, addresses, passport numbers which would all prove highly accurate. Once a line or two from an original handwritten note had been transcribed, he would strike it through on the original with a pencil. If everything on a note was struck through he would take the original to his hearth and burn it in the fire.

At first, he wrote up the fragments into small notebooks. But he could not foresee the fate of this archive. What if he was gone and his handwriting was illegible and the format too chaotic? That would have rendered his entire effort useless. So in his dacha, he embarked on an illicit relationship with what he would describe as ‘the love of his life’. Her name was Erika. This was the name he gave to the tiny, portable typewriter on which he toiled. It was telling that this was how he described this machine with which he spent so much time rather than his own wife. He typed with two fingers, fast but not too hard. He had to take care of Erika. Mitrokhin’s great advantage as a secret dissident was that he understood how the KGB operated and its means of tracking people down. As part of its efforts to prevent underground publications, it kept tabs on anyone who bought large amounts of ink ribbons so Mitrokhin knew he had to be inventive. Sometimes he used ink from pens which he transferred onto old ribbons. But he also had another trick. He realised he could use concentrated fruit juice as a substitute for ink. He would spend considerable time working out how to brew the most concentrated juice he could manage. ‘I made the ribbons out of old ribbons. I restored them with a special solution then hung them out to dry. Then I didn’t have to go to the shops too often.’ And so his notes would be turned into fragments and then finally into what he would call his volumes, the secrets of the world typed up in a country cottage stinking of fruit.

The bottom of the laundry basket was where notes sat while he was working on them, but when they had been reconstituted and finished, they could be despatched to his new archive. And just like their original home, this would hide in the dark, cold spaces underground. The dacha was raised slightly above the ground and the space beneath the floor was ideal. It was not large. He first had to pull up the floorboards and then crawl underneath. It was damp and deeply unpleasant, littered with the ageing shit from cats and dogs. Occasionally he would be joined by a curious rat. He was now truly walking in the footsteps of filth, providing a fitting home for files which festered with the unmistakable stench of the KGB’s work.

Down there he would use a small spade to dig a deeper hole. Once it was big enough, he could hide the papers. Over time, he would stuff them into a variety of metal containers in order to preserve them against the elements, including a tin clothes-boiler, two tin trunks and two aluminium cases. Solzhenitsyn had buried his manuscripts in champagne bottles. But the first home for Mitrokhin’s notes would be a milk churn.

And so as the years passed, in the middle of the Russian countryside, underneath a modest peasant’s house and hidden in a milk churn, came to be a replica of the most secret archive in the world.

What this meant for its author was that he was spending almost every waking moment immersed in the files. His working days were spent doing his proper job or assessing the files as well as secretly copying them. And whatever spare time he had outside of the office was spent typing them up. Obsession was beginning to take him over.

But what was all of this for?

He could not become an open dissident, the path of a Solzhenitsyn. That led to exile, either East in a Siberian prison camp or West to the world outside. His secret dissent was also in many ways more dangerous than that of a Solzhenitsyn. As a KGB officer, if he was discovered there would be no public outcry from supporters abroad and despatch to a prison camp or overseas. It would instead be a quiet and lonely death. What of escape? The path abroad might be more comfortable but the motherland was a jealous lover and if you turned away, you would be cut off forever and cast out. The forests covered in snow of his youth would be left to memory. And even there he knew from the files the efforts the KGB could go to in order to track down and kill traitors, partly in order to deter others. Mitrokhin wanted to be a hero but also was unwilling to embark on such a journey at this time.

There was a Russian phrase: ‘writing for the drawer’. It meant writing without the expectation of being published. Hoping that one day circumstances might change and the time would come when people could read what had been set down on paper. The audience Mitrokhin hoped for was never intended to be British intelligence. Rather it was supposed to be Russians. For twelve years, he worked on building his archive, knowing it could not be published but hoping one day circumstances might change and it could be. If its existence was discovered, it could bring a death sentence. But committing truth to the drawer brought hope for the future as his obsession intensified.

Interlude

The Devil Comes to Moscow

ON THE EVENING of 6 April 1977, amid smoke and lights, the Devil came to Moscow. And having failed to prevent his arrival, his appearance terrified the KGB.

Outside the Taganka Theatre that evening, there was chaos. Only those with connections like writers and artists and friends of the director had tickets for one of the 650 seats inside. But on the narrow streets surrounding the venue, hundreds more were trying to find a way in. Inside, the small and intimate theatre was buzzing with anticipation. The lucky few were going to see something no one had imagined possible.

Mikhail Bulgakov’s literary masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, was about to be performed as a play. Bulgakov had spent the last decade of his life working on his book doubting it would ever be published, certainly not in his lifetime and maybe never at all. Bulgakov wrote secretly and for the drawer. For twelve years between 1928 and his death in 1940, he watched as the world around him darkened with show trials, purges and denunciations and as his fellow writers disappeared. He responded with a dark fantasy to satirise this world, putting pen to paper with faith that one day the world would be able to read his tale of how Satan arrived in Moscow to wreak havoc and confusion.

In his story, the Devil, unrecognised by most, arrives in Moscow and through his mischief exposes the reality of Soviet life – the fear of arrest, the desperate search for an apartment, the daily compromises and the stifling bureaucracy – highlighting how human nature with all its vices remained unchanged. The Master, a flawed hero, had been writing his own book about Pontius Pilate’s cowardly condemnation of Jesus while also wrestling with his own compromises. ‘Cowardice is the most terrible of vices,’ Bulgakov wrote. Bulgakov himself may have been confronting his own compromises in the 1930s when he chose to take up a personal offer from Stalin to work in theatre and become part of the establishment even though he knew what was going on around him. The Master’s book is rejected and he ends up in an asylum. Meanwhile, his devoted lover, Margarita, dances with the Devil at his ball to persuade him to save the Master she loves.

The book had first emerged in Russia in 1966, a quarter of a century after Bulgakov’s death and immediately caused a sensation, selling out in hours. Its genius may have been recognised but so was its subversive power, leading to an uneasy attitude from the establishment towards it. But now, a decade on, the celebrated theatre director Yuri Lyubimov was staging it as a play. Over four hours, amid music, smoke and strobe lights the audience watched the Devil play tricks on the citizens of Moscow. ‘You are atheists?’ he asks incredulously of those he meets. ‘What kind of country is this? Whatever you ask about, there isn’t any,’ he observes. The audience laughed, understanding the references to spiritual and material poverty. They watched as taboos were broken and the reality of Soviet life – the everyday privations and fears of arrest – were mocked. A huge pendulum swung back and forth across the stage, suggesting lives hanging in the balance, as the narratives moved between the Master and Margarita’s story and Jesus’ confrontation with Pontius Pilate.

Mitrokhin read about the play not only in the news but also in the KGB files which he noted. They revealed the fear it had engendered at the very highest levels of the state. The KGB had been watching closely. It had eyes everywhere in the artistic world, including agents inside the theatre company. There had been pressure on Lyubimov to stop the play. But they had not been able to prevent the opening night.

The archivist copied down one lengthy report sent to KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov in the aftermath of the play’s performance. The KGB was furious. It described The Master and Margarita as ‘a dangerous weapon in the hands of intelligence centres engaged in ideological sabotage against the Soviet Union’. It was well understood among Chekists that a book or a play could indeed be a weapon. The play had made ‘serious accusations against Soviet society’, implying that nothing had really changed since the days of Stalin when the book had been written, it was noted.

When the play suggested healthy people might be sent to psychiatric institutions because of dissenting views, the KGB agents reported that the audience responded with an ‘understanding chuckle’. The play’s focus on universal human ideas rather than class morality, as well as spirituality, were all seen as deeply subversive. Although, like a theatre critic striving to be balanced, a KGB officer also grudgingly offered some positive notes in his review describing the play as a ‘wicked but always effective satire’. The production caused an ‘unhealthy hullabaloo among the theatre-going public’, the file noted and should be seen as a ‘challenge’. The audience laid flowers in front of a picture of Bulgakov on stage at the end of the show. Its success generated invitations to the West and foreigners continued to visit Lyubimov. All of this ‘provide openings for Western Special Services to conduct subversive, destructive work’, the file read.

Lyubimov would eventually be stripped of his citizenship and exiled abroad. But that first night there was only applause as the play finished. The audience erupted with cheers. As they did the spotlight followed the pendulum swinging slowly back and forth between Jesus and the Devil.

One line stayed with the audience – the most famous line from the book that everyone remembered. The Master believed the book he had been working on for so long had been consigned to the flames. But then, beneath the swinging pendulum, the Devil roars: ‘Manuscripts don’t burn.’

The possibility that truth could survive every attempt to destroy it by even the most repressive regime was one that Bulgakov had clung to as he had first written those words in the 1930s. And, as he copied down the KGB file on the play’s impact, it was Mitrokhin who now walked in the Master’s footsteps, preserving the truth and knowing it could be a weapon. His manuscript would not burn.

40

The Illegals

IN LONDON AND Washington in 1992, the spycatchers were working through Mitrokhin’s notes. As they did so, the first hints of a future tension with the archivist could be glimpsed. The British and American spies were less interested in what he considered the most important material, that which related to domestic repression and dissidents. Instead, what they wanted to focus on were the files on agents in the West and especially the KGB’s illegals. The latter were the most closely guarded of any the KGB held. Even an archivist would not normally have had access to them. So how had Mitrokhin been able to copy them, they needed to know? This was something he could answer.

As the years passed, his diligence had led Mitrokhin to rise to one of only three full colonels in the archive, no one spotting the ferocity beneath the placid surface. The KGB’s appetite for paper had continued to multiply. By the early 1980s, the First Chief Directorate alone would be producing a staggering three million pieces of paper a year, according to one officer. And Mitrokhin would transfer 103,000 items into the 15th Department’s agent-operational collection alone, with some of those having multiple volumes.

But Mitrokhin’s greatest opportunity had come in the mid-1970s. At first, Directorate S – the KGB team in charge of illegals – had resisted being relocated to Yasenevo. It had argued it needed to maintain deeper cover for its agents and train them in undercover apartments scattered around the city. That required their officers to stay put in the Lubyanka. Getting to their secret locations dotted around the capital from the new office at the forest was a trek and there would be a higher risk of identification. After a few years though, their senior staff began to regret remaining in the Lubyanka where they were surrounded with plodding domestic operatives chasing dissidents rather than enjoying the spacious new headquarters in the woods. So in 1976, they too began to move, a process which would take six years. And that meant moving the archives.

Mitrokhin was selected to oversee the transfer of Directorate S files – the only person with that responsibility. At the Lubyanka, he would collect the files, check them meticulously against the index and fill in the stock sheets to indicate the contents. This gave him time to study what was inside. Once he was content, he would place his stamp on the files and put them into a box. The box was sealed. The next day, he would accompany the box under armed guard to Yasenevo. There the cartons would be taken to the repository and stored in the rows of tall steel cabinets which only clerks were allowed to access.

That provided him with a new opportunity to glimpse the holy of holies. He did not have access to everything from Directorate S. Its leaders made sure to keep some of their secrets. But he did have access to files that normally would have been kept well away from a regular First Chief Directorate officer, including an archivist. Over the coming years he would get to know the files about illegals better than anyone. And he knew precisely how valuable – and dangerous – they were. There were two categories of files he paid most attention to – those of dissidents because he cared about their fate and those of illegals because he knew their value to others.

Inside were details of those storied illegals of the past, like the ones who had run the atomic spies in America and the Cambridge spies in Britain. But there were also details of their successors, including some who were still active. These would become the focus of intense interest in 1992 for American and British investigators, not least because they suggested there were ten illegals active in America.

41

Codename Dieter

IN JULY 1992, Jack Barsky, the illegal first recruited at Karlshorst in Berlin, was living in rural Pennsylvania. Years in which Thursday evenings had been spent hunched over a shortwave radio adding and subtracting digits to decipher messages from Moscow had come to an end. When a December 1988 radio message had told him to return, he had made a decision. He liked life in America. Not least the wife and child who had no idea who he really was. He was a living example of an ever-present fear for Directorate S, that their illegals embedded in the West would go native. Barsky decided to play dead. He claimed he had contracted a new disease spooking the world called AIDS. He knew Moscow would not want him back with that. And then he just stopped responding to messages. They would think he was dead and they would leave him alone.

His ruse worked. Jack Barsky was now living in rural Pennsylvania and commuting to an IT job in New York. That was until Mitrokhin walked into the British Embassy. There in his notes on illegals in America was reference to a spy codenamed DIETER whose real name was Barsky and who had been based on the US East Coast. There were nine volumes as of 1984, Mitrokhin’s notes said. Mitrokhin did not have all the details but that much material surely meant this agent was serious. And no one had known anything about him.

For all the FBI knew, he was still active and up to who knows what. Could he be part of a major spy ring? Might he be running one of the top moles inside the US government or even the intelligence community? The FBI kicked into gear. Working out who he was and what he was up to became their number one counter-intelligence priority. He was tracked to a remote house in rural Pennsylvania. The nearest neighbour was a quarter of a mile away up on a hill. It seemed the perfect place to hide if you were a spy (in fact it was all he could afford). An FBI agent pretended to be a birdwatcher to explain away the binoculars as he observed. Barsky’s wife was tailed for a week by MI5 when she visited London. This deep cover KGB spy was watched planting shrubs in the garden and teaching his daughter how to play basketball in the driveway. Agents moved into nearby houses. While he was on holiday in Niagara for a weekend, microphones were installed in his kitchen. They could find no sign he was still active. What they would hear was him arguing with his wife. In anger, he eventually blurted out that he was really a deep cover spy who had ignored orders to be recalled because his family meant more to him.

Finally, the FBI confronted him in a hotel. Big binders were laid out in front of him. In them were details like his cover name and addresses where he had sent secret letters. Barsky was smart enough to realise much of it came from his early career and the FBI seemed to know little about recent events or the fact he had cut ties with the KGB. But he also was smart enough to know his best bet was to confess. By agreeing to cooperate fully, he would be allowed to stay in the country and get a real US passport. He would not know for many years that it was Mitrokhin who had given him away. How did he feel about that? ‘Fundamentally he betrayed me. But if he were still alive I would thank him profusely for the betrayal. That allowed me to come out of the shadows. And eventually become a whole person and put humpty-dumpty back together again. I clearly had a split personality and I didn’t know who I really was,’ he now says.

Of the ten illegals, Mitrokhin had identified in the US, the FBI were already aware of five. Another had quit in 1991 and gone to Berlin and then there had been Barsky. That left another three they did not know about. Details of investigations remain classified. However, one lead relating to illegals proved useful because it offered the chance for the US to test the validity of the archivist’s work. Mitrokhin had taken down details of when illegals had been sent out to try and recontact and reactivate old agents with whom the KGB had lost touch. That would provide a crucial clue in a case of a previously undetected spy who had once been at the heart of America’s intelligence community and who could only now, years later, be brought to justice.

In September 1992 as he toiled in Britain, what Mitrokhin did not know was that with MI6’s agreement, the FBI were going to run a test to see if he was the real deal. Mitrokhin’s material on the surface appeared remarkable with its granular detail about illegals down to their passport numbers and addresses. But it almost seemed too good to be true, to some. Could it really be accurate? A test would help convince the doubters and catch a spy.

42

Codename Dan

ROBERT LIPKA’S WIFE had left for work and his kids were on the school bus when he stepped out of his modest three-bedroom house near Lancaster, Pennsylvania one morning in September 1992. He got into his old Ford Econoline van and drove to a local coffee shop. There he studied a horseracing paper, deciding what to bet on that afternoon. A coin collector and a gambler, this was how he filled his days. If he wanted to treat himself he might stop for a ‘Big Classic’ Hamburger at Wendy’s on the way back from the track. Lipka was a big guy – three hundred pounds with wavy dark hair. He was no James Bond but he did think he was cleverer than everyone else and had got away with doing something no one had discovered.

What he did not realise that morning was that his predictable routine was being observed by ‘ghosts’. They were members of the FBI’s Special Support Group whose job was to shadow people without being spotted – hence the nickname. They were there because Lipka had become the FBI’s test case for Mitrokhin. Mitrokhin had passed on details of an agent codenamed DAN who had worked at the National Security Agency (NSA) and from September 1965 to August 1967 had used rural drop sites in places like reservoirs and parks to leave around 200 top secret documents and pick up cash. A few times he briefly met KGB officers in person. He seemed to have offered up important secrets given the way he was described. There were many American leads in Mitrokhin’s archive but the details were unusually specific in pointing to Lipka. Could it be true? If it was, it would mean catching a previously unknown spy but also proving that Mitrokhin had real value, meaning all the other leads would also be worth pursuing.

The local FBI office had been briefed in September but they were not told where the lead had come from. That remained highly classified. Their investigation, led by agent John Whiteside, quickly established that the details seemed to stack up. For three years Lipka had worked at the NSA, America’s largest agency which intercepted and decoded communications (it was so secret it was often jokingly said that the initials stood for No Such Agency). And for two of those years it looked like he had been spying for the KGB. When they started asking questions at the NSA there was shock – he may have been young when he worked there but Lipka had serious access.

Whiteside discovered that like Mitrokhin, Lipka’s job had been all about secrets and paper. And like Mitrokhin he had subverted his role by pilfering it. But where Mitrokhin had to file paper, Lipka was a lowly delivery-boy who was supposed to burn it. He had worked at the Priority Materials Branch of the NSA. The name was a giveaway that even though Lipka was junior he still had access to some of the most sensitive information the US collected through intercepting communications, including intelligence summaries that went up to the White House. His job was to collect top secret reports as they clattered off a noisy teleprinter and hand-deliver them to analysts. He was then supposed to destroy any extra copies. The NSA did not use shredders as there was too much chance of someone putting something back together again. Instead they used ‘burn bags’ to incinerate the documents. But Lipka managed to steal papers by wrapping them around his leg under his trousers or under his shirt. Bags got checked but not people, Lipka, like Mitrokhin, had worked out.

Where Mitrokhin’s volunteering to the Americans had been turned down, Lipka, the notes revealed, had been welcomed aged just twenty when he turned up unannounced at the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC in 1965. He was something of a fantasist but it was mainly about the money. His wife back then in the 1960s had known about his spying and recalled to the FBI how he used to sit on the sofa, count the cash and throw it in the air talking about how they were living in a James Bond movie.

When his assignment at the NSA ended, Lipka left to go to university. He tried to end his spying by telling the KGB he had been an undercover plant from the FBI all along. But the KGB did not buy his lie. Lipka’s espionage may have been ended more than a quarter of a century earlier but that would not stop the FBI now building a case against him. They wanted to show that no matter how much time had passed, there would be a price to pay. There was a problem though. The leads the secret source had given to the FBI pointed to Lipka as a spy but did not have any details about what specific documents he passed to the KGB. Why was that?

It would emerge that Mitrokhin had never actually seen Lipka’s file. Instead he had seen a file sent from the First Chief Directorate of the KGB to the illegals branch. Two illegals were going to be sent out to try and reactivate Lipka. In their file was a summary of Lipka’s activity which they had been briefed on. This was the lead Mitrokhin provided. Not being able to point to specific secrets made building a case harder, although the FBI knew they must be valuable given how much he was paid. The painstaking work would take years and require a ‘false flag’ approach in which an undercover FBI officer approached Lipka pretending to be from Russian intelligence to see if he might be interested in resuming a relationship. His greed would trap Lipka as he complained to the undercover officer that he was still owed money by the KGB. When the FBI finally arrested Lipka, they would find in his basement what he had spent his hard cash from the KGB on all those years before still sitting there – high-end furniture. He was certainly no James Bond.

There would be relief in MI6 in 1992 with news that Mitrokhin’s information stacked up. But that would be followed by horror when an American journalist soon after published a book about the FBI which said that hundreds of leads had been passed to the Bureau by an individual who had access to KGB files. Fortunately, the reference was vague. But it was a reminder that secrets do not stay secret for long – especially in Washington DC. And in London, the realisation that Mitrokhin’s name might come out would spur the desire to control how and when his archive was going to be made public. Mitrokhin had been deeply protective of his life’s work. He wanted it to be public but he also wanted control. After all, for years he had himself pondered and worried how it could be taken out from the drawer in which it had been hidden.

43

Afghanistan

IN EARLY 1984, Mitrokhin was handed a certificate and a personal note of thanks from the head of the First Chief Directorate, Vladimir Kryuchkov. Mitrokhin was congratulated on his work transferring the archives, thanking him for his ‘irreproachable service to the state security authorities’. The reason for the thanks was that his career was now over. After a lifetime in the KGB and in its files, Mitrokhin was retiring. Of course, what the hardline KGB head did not know as he thanked Mitrokhin was that the archivist had secretly transferred a large portion of his archives into milk churns under the floorboards of his dacha.

So what now for the files? The truth was Mitrokhin had no idea, no real plan. He had never intended to become a spy or to take crazy risks by trying to flee abroad or hand over his material to a Westerner. He had simply wanted to record the truth for the Russian people. It was an extraordinary thing to have done. To have spent so long on his labours, to have taken such risks, but to have no idea what to do with it all. Those who dealt with him would later reflect this was unlike any other case they had come across. He was like no other spy they had met because he was not really a spy.

He had spent his life in files and why should that end now, he decided. And so he continued to work on his notes, mainly now in his dacha. Mitrokhin had settled in his mind on writing a series of books. Writing but not publishing, a bit like Bulgakov had done. They would be for the ‘secret drawer’ beneath his dacha. He even had a title for them: In the Footsteps of Filth. The anger he felt sometimes coloured the narratives he wrote, as if he could no longer contain his feelings over what he had seen over all those years, especially on issues like dissidents or the subversion of the church. This would often be expressed in his footnotes and comments accompanying the text. ‘I wrote it in a hurry, and as a result certain notes which I wrote to accompany my account took on an emotional tone, creating a rather unbalanced narrative.’ This, he would explain, was ‘a way of expressing my personal perception of events and my rejection of the criminal intentions, calumnies and deeds of the Soviet nomenklatura’.

He turned to writing up his notes into draft volumes on different countries: Iran, Pakistan, India as well as the US and UK. But he chose in his retirement to first focus on one issue that he believed both urgent and contemporary. It was one that had angered and obsessed him in his final years, embodying what he thought was wrong with the KGB and the whole Soviet Union. It was the truth about a new war his country was fighting and losing and over which the people were being lied to. And as with the events around the Prague Spring in the 1960s and the dissidents in the 1970s, he had a unique insight into the real truth.

In December 1979, the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan. Mitrokhin had been able to see the KGB’s hidden hand in events. The country was an important strategic neighbour to the Soviet Union, often balancing between East and West. The Cheka had long built up extensive agent networks inside to both watch and leverage what was happening to Moscow’s advantage.

The files revealed how the then Afghan leader, Hafizullah Amin, had been overthrown in 1979 based on claims he might be edging towards the Americans and even wilder ideas that he might be working with the CIA. KGB head Andropov in Moscow seemed to have believed that events had to be stopped before they got out of hand as they had done in Prague in 1968. There had been plots to poison the Afghan President’s food before a KGB special forces team was despatched disguised in local uniforms to his presidential palace to kill him. Then followed the full might of the Red Army. The files revealed not just the lies told to justify the invasion, including to the Soviet Union’s own leadership, but also the truth of what unfolded after. Within a few years, what had been supposed to be a quick operation to install a new leader turned into a quagmire. It was the Soviet Union’s version of America’s experience in Vietnam as local Afghans began a war of resistance against the invaders, with a little covert help from the CIA and MI6.

Inside Yasenevo, Mitrokhin could remember how the disaster occasionally broke through the code of silent obedience. One day, a colonel from the First Chief Directorate turned to Mitrokhin and vented his frustration. ‘Doesn’t the war make you ashamed to be Russian?’ he said. Mitrokhin’s reply was telling. ‘Ashamed to be Soviet, you mean!’ he said, without really thinking. It revealed his hatred was for the Soviet system, not for Russia.

The scale of the death and destruction was enormous but hidden from view. But before he had retired Mitrokhin had seen the truth. When the latest reports from the field had been viewed by the select few who needed to know the truth, female KGB clerks had handed them to Mitrokhin so they could be archived. They would often hand him thirty files at a time. He would check them and then approve sending them down into the bowels. But he would also read and note the contents.

He could see how the campaign to crush these new ‘partisans’ in Afghanistan, just like that in Ukraine he had witnessed decades earlier, was bloody and ruthless. The KGB was deeply involved in fighting the war, carrying out operations trying to lure rebels into traps. Villages were destroyed, suspects executed. But there was also another hidden toll – that on the Soviet military. Thousands were dying. The code word ‘Cargo 2000’ would be used to cover the return of the bodies sealed in zinc coffins by air. Every effort was made to keep this out of sight. The bodies would be returned quietly and without ceremony, the funerals secret, the cause of death left unsaid.

Mitrokhin’s parents were buried at a cemetery in the south of the country, at the Kuzminsky Monastery by the river Don. He would sometimes visit and now he could see that Afghan veterans were also being buried there. But he knew no reference could be made to where and how they had died on their tombstones. The Soviet Union was not technically at war in Afghanistan so there could be no military honours for the fallen, no official accounting of the tens of thousands killed or injured. Moscow kept the true cost of the war secret. For decades, Mitrokhin had been learning how the truth was hidden from his fellow citizens and in the tombstones was the final proof that this was a regime based on lies.

In his retirement, Mitrokhin toiled away on the Afghan chapter, writing and rewriting. As he laboured, the tide was turning in the war. The Soviet Union had a new leader in Mikhail Gorbachev from 1985 and within a year he began looking for ways to extricate himself from a conflict that he could see was being lost.

In 1987, Mitrokhin finally finished his Afghan study, destroying his original notes. Its main aim, he said, was like all his work ‘to unmask lies, uncover crimes and reestablish the truth’.

He was deeply proud of this work. So proud that he saw this volume as his calling card. He made two carbon copies of the original. One of these he would take to the US Embassy when he first approached it. The failure to appreciate its value – and even apparently to lose it – would anger him. The second carbon copy he would hand over to the British in the embassy in Vilnius. The last copy – the one he had typed – he would destroy in his dacha before he made his final departure.

The Soviet failure in Afghanistan, symbolised by the final withdrawal of the Red Army over the ‘Friendship Bridge’ in February 1989, marked another important step towards the end of the Soviet Union. But no one could see that end coming. And the old archivist in retirement knew the truth about this war would not come out of its own accord. So he had waited and wondered what to do with his story.

44

Ways of Escape

IN THE SUMMER of 1986 an unusual exhibition opened in Moscow dedicated to the contemporary artist Ilya Glazunov. The centrepiece was his 1977 painting ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son’. In it, a young man in jeans kneels before Christ. Looking on are the faces of Russian heroes of the past – saints, writers and thinkers. In the foreground are two huge greedy pigs, smirking at the viewer by a banquet table with blood running from a cup. Around the edges are barbed wire and in the distance what looks like a labour camp.

There were enormous queues to see this dark and subversive work which suggested the need to turn to God and Russia’s past and away from the sins of both Communism and capitalist materialism.

The sense of uncertainty was inescapable in Moscow in those years. Under the new, young leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the talk was of perestroika and glasnost – change and openness. It was visible on the streets with young people in tracksuits or with longer hair. Some walked around openly in jeans, a symbol of the West. Private firms were now allowed. And the nomenklatura could sense not just the winds of change but also the possibility of a collapse and wholesale transformation. The old elite began manoeuvring into new positions at state run firms and in industry, working out how to seize control of the assets of the state to enrich themselves. There was a sense of things falling apart with more crime at the lowest and highest levels. The black market reached up to the top as KGB money was being laundered abroad amid fears of collapse.

Queues formed at kiosks to buy newspapers filled with surprising revelations. A few brave journalists like Yevgenia Albats were even tracking down some of Stalin’s Chekist executioners to confront them about what they had done. History was becoming a battleground. Could you expose the past and perhaps by doing so open up the possibility of a new future? For the first time, once banned books like The Master and Margarita and Dr Zhivago could now be purchased openly. Even The Gulag Archipelago would be serialised. Perhaps, some wondered, this new thaw could restore the dream of 1968 and the idea of building socialism with a human face.

For Mitrokhin such hopes were foolish and the changes were a smokescreen. His belief that reform was possible had long passed. Behind these cosmetic changes he saw ‘the Chekists are continuing to press agents to take illegal actions and make false denunciations and are using them for their personal, mercenary aim’. The new openness did offer him new avenues and possibilities though. Perhaps even of getting himself and his material out. His thoughts were now increasingly turning to the question that had hung over his efforts from the start but which he had never resolved. What was he going to do with his archive? He faced the problem that the sheer scale of his efforts was working against him.

He had amassed 29 large brown envelopes, stuffed with original scraps of paper filled with notes he had taken inside the archive. Some of the notes showed evidence of having been folded slightly. These were the ones he had placed in his shoe. In one more envelope were some more personal effects including a strange memento he had kept of those days – the sole of one of the shoes he had been wearing. Then there were the ten volumes he had typed up based on the original notes. In addition, there were two smaller wallets which contained the lexicons or dictionaries of KGB intelligence and counter-intelligence terms which he had transcribed. And finally, some small school notebooks in which he had copied material from the KGB’s in-house journal. It was a lot. A small bookcase-worth or enough to fill a large table. It was far too much to carry on his person or even in a suitcase in one go.

He knew that foreign travel was risky. He had noted down KGB Order 00130 issued in 1979 which instituted special checks on anyone working in a range of jobs who planned to travel abroad. The restrictions were even tighter if the destination was the West. The jobs that were covered ranged from scientific students and airline crews to fishermen and tourists and sporting teams. These checks would include looking at any letters they had sent out of the country, what kind of access they had to secret material and queries to KGB officers both in their place of work and country of destination. Relatives would also be checked for suspect links. Only a few were exempt of this intrusion, like members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

The Soviet Union was increasingly starting to fray at the edges and Mitrokhin began to wonder if this might offer opportunities. At one point, he made a trip all the way to the far east of Russia and the island of Sakhalin. On a clear day you could see across the water to Japan. But he did not know how to take the final step to get there. Another time he travelled to the far west and to Karelia. Here, Finland lay just across the border. But again, he could not see a way across. If he would be searched carrying his files he would be immediately arrested. Another plan involved getting onto a committee which issued permits to travel abroad. Then he could use one to go on a long cruise which went from Leningrad to Odesa in the Black Sea, stopping at ports in Western Europe. He thought perhaps he could find a moment to slip away and somehow contact a Western government. He could then arrange for them to pick up the archive in Moscow from some kind of drop-off point. But he knew at each port stop, the tour group would be carefully watched by those in charge. The chance of evading their gaze and getting to an embassy seemed impossible. And, if he acted suspiciously then he was sure to be reported and the KGB might then search the dacha and find the archive.

He was never the most practical man and the ideas became wilder. The craziest came to him in 1987. That May, a young West German had flown a tiny single engine plane into the Soviet Union and landed in Red Square, evading the KGB and causing enormous embarrassment. Mitrokhin actually wondered about trying to use a microlite from the KGB sports club to fly to Finland. He quickly realised the absurdity of it though. And there was the problem of his family. How could he get them out as well as his files?

But then something surprising and beyond anyone’s imagination happened.

Like the saying about how people go bankrupt, empires sometimes collapse slowly and then suddenly. And the Soviet Union – this mighty edifice which seemed so powerful but whose grip had been fraying – was about to move into the sudden phase. The first sign came in Germany.

45

The Wall Comes Down

VLADIMIR PUTIN AND Lyudmila lived in a large, drab apartment building in Dresden stuffed full of fellow KGB officers. They had arrived in Germany in 1985, just after Mitrokhin had retired. At first the couple were homesick but eventually they settled in. Lyudmila noticed how the streets were clean and the windows were all washed once a week. The standard of living was higher than back in the Soviet Union and this was not even West Germany, which they never set foot in. On the weekend they would head to the countryside for hot dogs and beer. They were trying to save up money so they would have enough for a car when they returned to Moscow. Putin was missing the years of perestroika and glasnost back home. Instead, he was entombed in the stultifying atmosphere of East Germany which was taking a harder line against change than Moscow.

Then, in November 1989, something extraordinary happened. The iron grip of the Stasi weakened. The East German regime was no longer confident that Gorbachev’s Soviet Union had their back and would support them if there was trouble. Across the East of Europe change was coming, driven by ordinary people. In Berlin, crowds began to approach the wall that had divided their city and had been the central emblem of the Cold War. First gingerly and then confidently, they crossed it and then began to tear it down brick by brick. No one stopped them. The speed of events was bewildering. For Putin and his wife, the scenes were terrifying rather than liberating. A friend next door in their apartment block of Soviet citizens began to cry and did not stop for a week. ‘She cried for her lost ideals, for the collapse of everything that she had believed in her whole life,’ Lyudmila would recall.

Putin had urgent work in Dresden. He had seen what had happened to the Stasi offices when opponents of the regime broke in and stole sensitive papers. ‘We were afraid they would come for us, too,’ he said. Menacing crowds gathered outside the building that posed as the Soviet Cultural Centre while really being the KGB’s base of operations. Putin’s boss was away and he was in charge.

What was so important about what was inside the building? It was what was in the files, Putin would reflect. ‘I calculated that saving lives of the people whose files were lying on my desk … was worth more than my career,’ he would claim. In the files were the names of KGB agents, including East Germans. He went outside and tried to speak to the angry mob. He also called a nearby military base to see if they could help. ‘We cannot do anything without orders from Moscow,’ they told him. And then came the line he would never forget. ‘And Moscow is silent.’ It was not just East Germany which was collapsing but the whole edifice of communism built by the Soviet Union and enforced by the KGB. A terminal disease had taken hold. And the result was a kind of paralysis. Moscow was silent.

Inside the building the order was given to destroy everything so it did not fall into the hands of anyone seeking the truth. ‘I personally burnt a huge amount of material. We burned so much stuff that the furnace burst,’ recalled Putin. ‘We burned papers night and day.’ Anything that needed to be kept was sent to Moscow. ‘The materials were destroyed or sent into the archives. Amen!’ he would say. Soon after, like the precious files he was so keen to protect, Putin returned home, arriving in a country teetering on the edge of collapse.

46

The Coup

Moscow, 1991

IN MOSCOW, MITROKHIN watched intensely as the Berlin Wall came down. He could see his enemy was floundering, its hold over the people weakening, its ideology bankrupt, its three heads lashing out against each other as they sought to survive. ‘The force binding the troika had been broken,’ Mitrokhin believed. Things which seemed impossible now seemed possible. He had to be patient though, he told himself, and wait for the right time. It was not yet. Still he worked on his manuscripts and notes, unwilling to take the risk of losing them to a rash move. He was typing up more geographical studies, focusing now on the US and the UK. Around him, the world was spinning ever faster.

‘Bring the KGB to justice!’ someone in the small crowd shouted outside the Lubyanka in the snow. They were members of a newly founded group called Memorial whose mission was to uncover and document the truth about the disappearances, show trials and gulags under Stalin. They had travelled out to one of the gulags and brought back a memorial stone which now in 1990 was being placed directly outside the headquarters of the KGB. Flowers were laid and people wept. A priest said a prayer. As it was unveiled a former prisoner pointed across the traffic to the statue of Feliks. It was time for ‘false idols’ to be toppled, he said. The battle over the truth was joined.

The fate of the files of the KGB had become a major public issue. Calls had been growing for their release since the Gorbachev reforms began. While those of the First Chief Directorate were of most interest to foreigners, those of the Second Chief Directorate, with their details of domestic informers and denunciations, were the most sensitive and sought after at home. The KGB was ‘an underground empire which has not yielded its secrets, except for opening up graves,’ one member of the Congress of People’s Deputies went as far as saying in 1989. The legitimacy and authority of the Communist party was being openly challenged by dissidents, journalists and nationalists from across the Soviet Union, including in Russia itself. The power of the state was loosening.

But the past was dangerous and the truth had a habit of getting out of control once it was released. Khrushchev had learnt this when he had half-opened the door with his Secret Speech and Gorbachev half-understood the risks now as he tried to see if there was a way of opening up without eroding the foundations of the entire edifice. A huge bureaucracy controlled the Soviet Union’s historical narrative and how it was conveyed through academia and journalism, all enforced by the KGB. Opening up the past meant facing up to what had been done by the Communist party and that carried risks. In his last years in office, Gorbachev had talked of filling in the ‘blank spots’ in history but he had faced resistance from those who had much to lose. The calls for release of files had been fiercely resisted by the KGB itself. It had started to destroy many of its files systematically to protect itself just like in the 1950s. This had started with the files of those charged with anti-Soviet agitation including high-profile dissidents like Andrei Sakharov, the nuclear physicist turned human rights campaigner who became the first chair of the group Memorial.

A Miss KGB Beauty Pageant was one of the more desperate ideas the KGB came up with as it fought a rearguard action to bolster its reputation. The winning employee, who could supposedly also kill you with a karate kick, was interviewed by American journalists and pictured next to the statue of Feliks. The KGB’s grip had been broken over East Germany but not yet at home and it would not give up without a fight. That became clear in the summer of 1991 as one head of the hydra made a desperate lunge against another amid what seemed like its death throes.

The tanks trundling through the centre of Moscow were met with bewilderment by people. In the early hours of 19 August the KGB hardliners, along with allies, had made their move. The Baltic states had been declaring independence and a new Union Treaty was about to be signed which the hardliners felt would signal the final death knell of everything since it would break up the Soviet Union into constituent Republics. This was, they felt, the point of no return. And so they sent in the tanks and launched a coup. The public reaction was one of anger as well as confusion. ‘Who are you defending? And from whom?’ some demanded of the soldiers who themselves looked unsure of the answer. Gorbachev had been detained at his dacha in Crimea and cut off from the outside world. The KGB had, of course, been tapping his phone and those around him.

For three days, the fate of the Soviet Union hung uneasily in the balance as the KGB tried to reassert its power. One of the leaders of the coup was Mitrokhin’s former boss at the First Chief Directorate, Vladimir Kryuchkov. The hardliner had risen to the top of the entire KGB four years after writing the words of thanks on Mitrokhin’s retirement. But the coup had been hasty and ill-prepared, a desperate last throw of the dice rather than a carefully formulated plan and it soon began to fall apart. Even the KGB itself was divided over taking part and soldiers proved unwilling to take on the army of protesters who turned out on the streets and outside government buildings. The opponents were led by Boris Yeltsin, the elected leader of the Russian Republic who had turned against the Communist party of which he had once been a member. He projected strength while the man chosen to be the figurehead by the coup plotters appeared before TV cameras with his hands visibly shaking. Watching the faces of the men on TV, Vladimir Putin knew right away that it was all over. The coup ended with a whimper. Russians who had faced down the KGB now stood outside government offices, searching bureaucrats as they left for secret files. They celebrated with a roar of ‘Ros-si-ya’. British diplomats watching found this outburst almost frightening in its intensity. Beneath the ideology of communism a Russian nationalism was re-emerging.

Outside the Lubyanka there was an execution. A huge crowd gathered around the ten-ton statue of Iron Feliks. It was now late and dark but camera flashes illuminated his face. ‘Death to the KGB!’ someone shouted. Feliks was not going to be killed the old Chekist way with a bullet to the back of the head. Instead, he was going to be hung. The protesters had brought two cranes. From his fifth-floor window, the head of the First Chief Directorate watched the scene. The Lubyanka was half-deserted and the doors were barricaded. He was the prisoner now. A steel noose from one crane was slung round Feliks’ head. The crane tugged and he swayed for a few moments before being lifted off his plinth. The crowd erupted with cheers and jeers as for a few moments the crane let the old Chekist dangle lazily in the night sky, before he was finally taken down on his side. As he lay expressionless, one protester wearing jeans put his feet on Feliks’ head. Another climbed onto the vacant plinth and shook his fist in the air.

In the middle of the night a few hours later, a handful of KGB officers dared to break out from their besieged fortress and left a message by the corpse. ‘Dear Felix, we are sorry that we couldn’t save you. But you will remain with us.’

Inside the Lubyanka they feared the same fate as the Stasi, the mob storming their buildings. The main worry was, as with Putin in Dresden, the safety of the files. The order had been given to ship as many as possible out of Moscow to military bases. Officers in the Lubyanka went into the archives in the cellars and shoved files into plastic bags and took them out through the underground tunnels. Others worked the shredders. Months earlier at Directorate S they had started destroying some of their files on illegals, terrified they could fall into the hands of the West and reveal the identities of deep cover spies.

All of this made what Mitrokhin was sitting on even more extraordinary. He did not just possess his own copies of top secret KGB files. But in some cases he possessed the only surviving version of a file. The KGB thought it was shredding its history and its own dark past. But their own archivist had undermined their plan.

Mitrokhin had been relieved by the coup’s failure. Rather than save the Soviet Union, the hardliners only hastened its demise. The end came swiftly. Just after 7 p.m. on the evening of 25 December 1991, the Red Flag came down over the Kremlin. The Soviet Union formally ended not with a bang but a whimper, thought Britain’s Ambassador Rodric Braithwaite, as he watched a small gaggle of elderly Stalinists gather on Red Square to mark the moment. The Soviet Union was dead. But what of the constituent parts of the beast that Mitrokhin had faced?

The names would change, just like they did all those years earlier when Mitrokhin had been born and the Cheka had morphed into something else. And in its deepest core, something still survived of Chekism. Iron Feliks had been toppled but his fortress, the Lubyanka, had never been stormed. It still stood, its secrets locked inside, its denizens never purged, a few keeping the faith.

There would be attempts to get the KGB’s successors to unlock their secrets but they would only do so in the most selective of manner, offering the odd file to a journalist or writer which showed them in the best light. Campaigners for the full truth to come out would receive death threats and one saw his own son killed. Whatever it was now called, the Chekists were determined to keep their secrets. And Boris Yeltsin, who had battled the Communist party, would soon decide that a powerful secret service had its uses against the many opponents arrayed against him. But now as the flag went down and the Soviet Union died, the Chekists were in disarray and at their weakest. That included its men who guarded the borders. This had been Mitrokhin’s chance. He made his move and headed to the Baltics.

47

The Plan

AS HE WORKED through his files in the Fort the following September, there was an unspoken tension. Everyone knew the next stage was to see if Mitrokhin could escape his country not for a few days but for good. The archivist’s desire for a more permanent move was matched by that of the spycatchers in the UK and US. They were eager for him to be out of Russia so they could move forward on the leads he had provided. There were also all the leads regarding allies. These were useful collateral for MI6 to trade and buy influence. Intelligence is no good unless you use it. But using it always carries risks of exposing the source. And in this case, you would much rather have that source in London than in Moscow if that happened.

The deal in broad terms had been agreed with Mitrokhin. Escape. Resettlement in the UK. Publication of his work. But there was a crucial question hanging over it all – his family. He would need to talk to Nina and try and persuade her to come out or else everything else risked falling apart.

And it was not just his wife. There was her mother who lived with them. Mitrokhin found her far from easy and her grip on reality seemed to be diminishing by the day. Nina would not leave her behind but there was no way she could be told in advance. She came from a different generation and was not in the best state. She would never understand. And yet, he was clear to MI6 that she would need to come. Because if she did not then Nina would not come. And then he would not go.

Most challenging of all was Vladimir. Vladimir did not know how his father had lived a secret life and nor how much of it had really been for him. Mitrokhin would mask that from the British and perhaps even from himself amid all the talk of anger at what he had seen in the files and the looming shadow of the beast. But helping his son through better medical treatment in the West, having tried everything else, was a driving force. It was his secret devotion. Vladimir had to come out.

Mitrokhin had always understood this would be the moment that could determine everything. He had always known the family would have to all come with him or else he could not go. He would not, as he had always made clear, abandon them. He was a loner. But he was not alone. That made the next discussion particularly hard. James and Robert had made a commitment that Mitrokhin and his family would get out. And that required an exfiltration plan. Exfiltration of an agent is never easy. But this was particularly challenging.

Smuggling out a solitary old man would have been one thing. Not easy or without risk but possible. But a wife, an elderly mother-in-law who could barely walk and a son in a wheelchair was completely different. Their leaving together through any obvious route would immediately ring alarm bells as to why an entire family was leaving Russia and where they were going to and for how long. Any suspicions would quickly lead to the discovery of the old man’s link to the KGB and everything would be over. Oleg Gordievsky had been smuggled in the boot of a car over the border to Finland. But that was hardly going to work with four people, two of whom were effectively invalid. This was a whole added layer of complexity. At least they did not have a dog, one of those involved in the planning joked. More than one agent had insisted on their pet coming with them. This was a problem since it required a difficult discussion with other government departments about waiving quarantine rules.

An exfiltration plan is a performance where every player knows the script. But one where they may be called on to improvise at any moment. Every detail is thought through and planned and every contingency needs to be discussed. What if traffic is bad or a train is late scuppering a meeting? Or if a border guard asks for papers somewhere? Or someone is ill? But Mitrokhin’s plan had an added layer of complexity because of not just the presence of his family but their ignorance as to his work.

The archivist’s son and the mother-in-law so far knew nothing about his clandestine life as a secret notetaker. That meant they had no idea he was planning to leave and take them with him. He would tell Nina but Mitrokhin did not want to tell either of the other two in advance. He knew them both well enough to know they might be resistant to the idea of leaving their homeland for good. No one knew how they would react when they found out they were going to leave Russia. What if they were told early and refused to go? Mitrokhin’s whole plan would fall apart since he knew he and his wife would not leave them. That meant everything would hinge on a family dynamic that could not be easily predicted or controlled.

The operational planners at Century House puzzled over various options for what might offer the best chance of success. Finally, they realised that just as Mitrokhin’s son was central to why the archivist had done what he had done, Vladimir could also be the key to get the family out. The cover story would be that the family were taking Vladimir for medical treatment at a specialist clinic. This was a convincing tale given his condition. And they could explain that the opening up of borders had made this possible for the first time for the family. This story was not just for any curious border guards and officials. It was also for the family itself. Mitrokhin’s mother-in-law was frail and nobody knew how she would react if she was told about everything. And Vladimir himself was also an unknown quantity. How would this young man – his life already so difficult – feel about being confronted with the truth and asked to suddenly give up his friends and his life. So, unusually, the cover story was for those being exfiltrated as much as the outside world.

The plan was to have the family take a train to Lithuania. Then they would travel across Lithuania by car to a port where they could take a boat across the Baltic Sea. The idea of flying out had been discussed but was viewed as too risky. MI6 was working closely with a small group of Lithuanians at the highest level of the state whom it trusted. Their help would be vital in this next stage. These Lithuanians had warned there was too much residual Russian influence at the airport, too many problems with manifests and potential surveillance. That would lead to too many risks of being stopped or diverted. It had just about been possible with Mitrokhin himself when he came out to Britain using a false identity but the presence of his wife, mother-in-law and son would draw too much attention. It also carried too many risks from the family suddenly causing any kind of scene which would be very public. By using their own boat, the hope was that the team could maintain control over the journey and the family at every stage. Or at least that was the idea.

This all required preparation. First came the paperwork. An agent was to obtain documents from the specific clinic the group were supposedly visiting. Forgers then copied the signature of the director to provide proof of an appointment for the benefit of any curious Russian border guards. Then there was the route. Robert and James, still the odd couple, went out to Lithuania to do a recce. If something went wrong – if someone fell ill or there was a hitch – they needed a safe house, a hideaway in the country. They would work with their Lithuanian contacts to smooth everything along. These Lithuanians would be, to varying degrees, brought in on details of the operation only when absolutely necessary. Only two knew the whole story but the idea was they could engage others to help them who did not need to know more. Next, James went to Sweden. Relations with their secret service counterparts in Stockholm were close and they agreed to help with a boat.

Final preparations meant going over every contingency. An operation like this could only ever end in one of two ways for Mitrokhin. Freedom or capture. And the latter could mean death.

Any exfiltration carried risk of exposure and of a serious diplomatic incident. If someone was captured then there would need to be a call to the Secret Service’s political masters and the Foreign Office in the middle of the night and you did not want that to be the first they heard of it. The risk around this operation meant it required political authorisation at the highest level. On 6 October, the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary and the Permanent Under Secretary at the Home Office were consulted by the head of MI6 to ensure that everyone was happy with the plan including the whole family coming out and being resettled. The Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, was briefed and on 23 October gave his formal sign-off for the exfiltration. The Prime Minister was not informed of the case until he was told by the head of MI6 after it was done – the following 13 January which may have been after the US President learnt about it.

The planners at MI6 had come up with one more ambitious and intriguing idea. Mitrokhin was a loner. This, they realised, had an advantage. A plan was concocted which seems almost too wild to be true. They were going to get the archivist out and hope no one noticed. What made Mitrokhin so perfect for this, those at the top of the service realised, was his unusual personality. The fact he had few friends or contacts other than his immediate family meant there was no one who would actually miss him. This presented a tantalising opportunity. What if MI6 got him out of the country and Russian intelligence never even knew he was gone? If that was possible it would offer huge benefits. It would mean the leads about living agents could be worked on carefully and over time. There would be no risk of KGB agents being warned so they could destroy any evidence or running to Moscow. This was different to anything that had been tried before. When Oleg Gordievsky had been exfiltrated from under the KGB’s noses in Moscow they had worked out he had gone within hours of his departure. But he had been a serving officer and under suspicion. Mitrokhin had been retired for nearly a decade and had never fallen under suspicion so there was no real likelihood of active or even occasional surveillance. The KGB’s successors would have little reason to check up on him. And given his family were also leaving, any neighbours or acquaintances might just assume they had moved somewhere else.

It might just work. The complicated plan would involve letters being sent to and from various places to make it look like he was still collecting his pension but always travelling or away. The aim was to make it look like he was still in Russia but just living a hermit’s life, his Moscow neighbours thinking the family had moved to one of the two dachas.

There was another advantage with Mitrokhin. Often spies would steal documents or plans. But Mitrokhin had not actually stolen a single original document. He had simply copied them. Even if someone carried out a check of the official archive, they would find not a solitary file missing or out of place. More than that, once they did work out he was gone, they would have no idea what he had taken. Whenever a spy is uncovered there is always a damage assessment by the unfortunate organisation whose secrets have been stolen. MI6 realised that even when Russian intelligence realised Mitrokhin had gone, they would have no idea what he had copied. And the way intelligence agencies work, if there is even the possibility that an agent or operation is blown then you should proceed as if you know it has been. Given Mitrokhin’s extensive access and the length of his service, Moscow would have to assume that every single agent and operation that had taken place before he retired in 1984 might have been compromised. Everything. Every illegal. Every recruit.

There is always more than one value to be derived from an intelligence operation, insiders reflect. It is not just the specific secrets you obtain but also the way you can use the fact that they have been stolen to play with the mind of your adversary, to cause them to doubt themselves and become suspicious of everything. That was what Philby did to MI6 early in the Cold War. His betrayal had led British intelligence to turn in on itself in a morass of cover-ups, recriminations, personal grudges and institutional rivalries, fuelled by the devastating revelation that a man so many had trusted had been fooling them all along. Mitrokhin – in a different way – was a chance for some payback. At MI6, the possibilities of what could be done with the case led those on the Russia desk to rub their hands with delight. Much, but not all, of the plan was discussed with the man himself while he was in Britain. He did not need to know anything more than what he needed to do.

On 13 October his work in Britain was, for the time being, done. And Mitrokhin began what should be, if all went to plan, one last journey back home to Russia.

As James arrived with him at Heathrow there was the type of glitch that you could never predict. They went to check-in for a flight to Copenhagen. That was not possible, he was told. He had already checked in. That made no sense. Until he realised someone with the exact same name as his alias was also booked on the flight and had already boarded. The flight was overbooked and they had assumed there had been a double booking by mistake for the same passenger and so cancelled James’ reservation. Standing with Mitrokhin by his side, James began to patiently explain that he was obviously not on the flight and needed to get on it. These are the moments where the skills that MI6 train a spy for come in useful. He was able to persuade the check-in staff to offload the poor other James and his companion and get himself and Mitrokhin on board. Eventually they were off. From Copenhagen, they went to Vilnius where there was a change of clothes for Mitrokhin. Off went the smart British outfit and on went the old Russian peasant gear.

As they departed, James made a point to remind Mitrokhin that unless he called their local contact in Lithuania on the phone, then they would meet again in just under a month.

Robert had suggested 7 November as the date for the exfiltration. It had taken quite some effort to get everything ready in time to meet that deadline. He had not explained why he was so keen. But it was his own little joke. That day would be precisely seventy-five years since the Bolsheviks had come to power. It was two fingers at the KGB from a man who hated them so much. But for Mitrokhin that day offered something much more important. Seventy-five years on, the quiet archivist was hoping to put a stake through the hydra’s undead heart to make sure it never rose again.

48

The Exfil

JAMES AND ROBERT arrived back in Lithuania on 5 November arguing even more than normal. Each would berate the other for taking too many risks or for being too loose-lipped. It was a sign of the tension. For James, the longstanding worry about being sandbagged on a foreign job seemed particularly acute this time. He knew the Russians were a real and present threat. At that moment, thousands of Russian troops were still in Lithuania. It would be nearly another year before they would depart the Baltic state (when they did, there was a sign in the rear of the last train to pull out across the border to Belarus reading ‘We shall return’). And there was a less visible presence. The KGB had put down deep roots. Russia’s spies were already pursuing a clear strategy to ensure they could maintain their insight into what happened in the newly independent countries that had previously been part of the Soviet Union. The Baltic states were busy setting up new security and intelligence services. And the Russians were busy trying to penetrate them with their own spies. In Riga, one major in the KGB’s counter-intelligence service, an expert at bugging and burgling, stayed on with the new Latvian service but while all the time secretly remaining loyal to Moscow. He was given the job of recruiting as many informers as he could, planting bugs in the British Embassy and running operations against the CIA. He was not the only one. Every additional person who had to be brought into the loop of the Mitrokhin exfiltration added to the risk that one of them might be a Russian agent or blab something to someone who was, endangering everything. In the end though, it would not be Mitrokhin’s former masters at the KGB who would risk the whole show. That would fall to his son.

Robert and James arrived carrying British passports not only for themselves but for the Mitrokhin family. Their next task was to secure transport. Any vehicle had to fit their team and Mitrokhin’s family so a normal car was not going to be big enough. A rather unglamorous minibus was procured by their local contact. It was not exactly James Bond.

It would be a 300-kilometre drive from the capital to the port of Klaipėda, taking at least four hours, and they wanted to do it without having to make unnecessary stops given such an odd group of people might arouse suspicions. To test if the minibus could make it on a single tank they set out on a dry run. When they were back, they ordered picnic lunches from the only hotel classy enough to provide them. The hotel may have been somewhat bemused as to why anyone would be having a picnic in November but the $140 on offer was more than enough to overcome any doubts.

Then came the first bad news. The mobile radio they had brought crackled into life. The Swedes on the other end explained that the weather looked bad. Really bad. The original boat they had planned to send – a small, speedy motor cruiser – would not be able to do the journey in a storm. They were going to have to go to the back-up. This was a larger, round-bottomed vessel named The Key. James had inspected it in Sweden and knew it was not nearly as fast or as comfortable. The news caused their Lithuanian contact to blow a fuse. This was a disaster, he explained, because his contacts at the harbour had been told to expect a small boat. They were not planning on a thousand-ton vessel. That would attract a lot more attention, including from KGB agents at the port. What was more it would be too big to dock at the harbour at the point where they had planned. It was too late though. The Swedes had already despatched the larger vessel. It was on its way.

James ruminated. Should he insist on the Swedes sending the smaller ship knowing it might not get through if the weather continued to worsen? Then they would be stuck. Or should he take the risk that the larger vessel was not going to be allowed near the harbour? Then they would also be stuck. He opted for the latter option. The weather could not be bribed. Harbour masters could be if it came to it. They would not know until they arrived if they were going to be able to board. This new complication added to the atmosphere of foreboding which already hung over the operation as they prepared for Mitrokhin’s arrival.

The day of the operation started before 6 a.m. with an element of farce. It was still dark as the MI6 team headed down to the sleepy receptionist and asked for their packed lunches. After a few moments, it turned out they had been stored in one of the few rooms with a fridge. But the person with the key to the room was not around that early. The receptionist was going to have to find them. The clock ticked. Eventually, the lunches were exfiltrated and Robert and James headed out to the meeting point where their local contact was due to pick them up with the minibus at 7.15. That should leave plenty of time to drive to the station and meet the train carrying the family which was due in at 8 a.m.

7.15 came and went. No minibus. Traffic? The clock ticked by. 7.30 came. No minibus. Now they started to wonder if something bad had happened. Were they blown? 7.45 came and went. Time to panic. They found a phone and called the home number of their local contact. That was not good security but needs must. The line was out of order. This was another major worry since it was this phone number that Mitrokhin was supposed to call if he was delayed and could not make the train. If there had been a problem at the Moscow end, this meant they would not know. The train might be empty. But the priority was still to be there at the station just in case.

The script was already falling apart. Time to improvise. James pulled out a fistful of dollar bills and walked up to a passenger car. Robert did the talking for him and explained that his friend needed to go to the train station. Fast. Meanwhile, Robert’s job was to find another minibus. Beg, borrow or steal. If necessary take the hotel’s vehicle. Just get one to the station.

James’ requisitioned passenger car raced through the narrow, bumpy streets of Vilnius. The journey might have been a new record but he still knew he was going to be late. The car pulled into the forecourt of the bustling station, he jumped out and looked at his watch. He was 19 minutes late for the train.

As he walked into the cavernous station hall, he saw with despair that the sign for the train was being removed from the arrivals board. He strode as fast as he could around the waiting areas, scanning for any sign of the agent or his family. But there was none. Here he was in Vilnius train station. No colleague. No minibus. No Mitrokhins. Things were not going well.

As he paced around, in the distance he saw a train coming in on the tracks. To his relief, he realised it was the train he had been waiting for. It was late. James stood and waited on the long, bending platform as it slowly pulled in. The doors opened and bleary-eyed passengers began to disembark. Russians and Lithuanians intermingled. Families. Workers. Maybe some KGB agents. But no Mitrokhins.

The train looked to have emptied. James’ despair grew. Perhaps they were still in Moscow. At home, if they were lucky. If not, somewhere worse. But then at the far end of the platform, he finally saw movement. It was a wheelchair being lowered to the ground from the very last coach. There, at last, was Mitrokhin, his wife, his son in the wheelchair and his mother-in-law moving slowly with a stick. There was relief but also the dawning realisation that this was the motley crew he was now going to have to smuggle out of the country.

James welcomed Mitrokhin first and then Nina. He tried not to be too effusive or to talk too much. He deliberately avoided contact with the son and mother-in-law. Did they know what was happening? Did they have any idea who this strange English speaking man might be? It did not look like it. And he could not exactly ask Mitrokhin what they knew. They seemed to still think they were heading for a clinic. If they still did not know what was going on, that was not going to make things easy. James ushered the party down the platform and into the station. It was time to find Robert. In another piece of comic timing, James walked one way around the station while Robert was walking round from the other side. They initially missed each other until the team was eventually reunited.

Robert ushered the group towards a minibus. It was parked with other vehicles in front of the station which was surrounded by busy roads. But it was not their original minibus. What had gone wrong? Robert told them the story. The original vehicle, which had been carefully checked the night before, had let them down. The starter motor apparently had packed up. Their Lithuanian contact had arrived outside the hotel and was sufficiently angry and embarrassed at the failure of the bus that he had drawn out a short-barrelled Kalashnikov hidden under his coat and offered to execute the vehicle. Robert had gently explained that this was unnecessary and the priority was a replacement. Two Lithuanian heavies who had not been part of the original plan were also accompanying the local contact when he had arrived. The atmosphere was combustible, the Lithuanian had explained. Politically, the country was in the middle of an election campaign ahead of a run-off vote on 15 November and there were fears of a coup or the Russians trying something. He had brought them in case of trouble. The muscle – armed with guns – would ride in a Russian jeep at a discreet distance behind the minibus. But they had still needed a minibus to fit in the family and retain the pretence that the whole thing was a medical trip.

It had been time to improvise again. Robert had stepped out onto the road near the hotel to look for a suitable vehicle. It was rush-hour and busy. A minibus passed by. It was small and bright yellow with a white roof. There was a Baltic Tours sign painted on the side. It looked even more likely to break down than the last bus. Robert flagged it down.

The driver was a large man. With him were four large sacks of sugar. No doubt the sugar, if that was what it was, was being ferried around as some kind of a black market deal. Robert pulled out $100 in cash. He promised the man his bus would be returned at exactly the same place in 48 hours’ time. The money may have been an incentive but so was the fact that some of the men who accosted him were clearly carrying guns. The sacks of sugar were quickly unloaded onto the road side. They had raced to the station worried at how late they were. Fortunately, the Mitrokhins had also been delayed. Now it was time to get the tour party on the move.

The yellow minibus was smaller than the one they had originally planned on commandeering. Getting everyone in, including Vladimir out of his wheelchair and onto a seat, made it a squeeze. For the son, what was supposed to be a trip to a clinic was looking rather odd. Who were these people and why were they helping his father? He began to get worried.

The party began the long drive. There were curtains on the windows and once out of the city, they could see the main road take them out into the hills and forests of the Neris Regional Park. Life inside the cramped minibus was not straightforward. For those who knew what was happening, there was tension and fear. Mitrokhin himself said little. His consuming desire was to kill off the beast. He was sure that the journey he was now on would lead him to expose its deeds and ensure it could never return.

At that exact moment, the signs that his enemy might not be entirely dead were present in the Russian capital he had just departed. In the years gone past 7 November had been the day when the leadership – in various states of decay – would stand on the balcony in Moscow’s Red Square over Lenin’s mausoleum and watch a parade of tanks, missiles and saluting soldiers pass them by. This year the day was still a holiday but there was no parade. Twenty thousand demonstrators, carrying red flags, were marching calling for the return of the Soviet Union on the seventy-fifth anniversary of its creation. ‘Long Live Soviet Socialist Russia!’ read one banner. ‘Russia is perishing, and the muzhik [Russian peasant] too!’ proclaimed another. The demonstrators were denied access to Red Square due, it was claimed rather flimsily, to repairs to the cobblestones. Most, but not all, of those who had come were older, looking back with nostalgia for a lost sense of strength and purpose, contrasting it with the present chaos and weakness. Their numbers may have been relatively few but they represented a deeper sense of loss and confusion about the future. That was most keenly felt in the heart of Mitrokhin’s former home, what had been the KGB.

Russia’s fledgeling democracy was struggling to get on its feet. Leningrad was now once again called St Petersburg. In the office of the city’s mayor, Vladimir Putin was an adviser working on external relations. Later he would become deputy mayor. Pictures of Lenin had been taken down from the city offices and people could choose what to put in his place. Many chose Yeltsin. Putin chose a picture of Tsar Peter the Great. He had technically resigned from the KGB but he was still part of the active reserve. The Chekists and the old forces were on the back foot. But they were not dead.

Mitrokhin knew this. And so his sense of purpose was all-consuming as the minibus trundled through the Lithuanian countryside with storm clouds gathering. For the rest of his family, the journey was far more confusing. His wife, Nina, was quiet. Her husband had told her a lot – but perhaps not quite everything – when he had returned to Moscow from his last trip to the UK. The conversation was a private one. He would speak of it only briefly later. ‘I was very grateful to my wife for agreeing to go with me. I wasn’t sure that she would. But I couldn’t see myself leaving without my family and I decided that if she wouldn’t go with me, then that would be that.’

But she had agreed to go and to bring the others. But now in the minibus she seemed less happy, other passengers recall, perhaps because she knew that at some point her son and mother were going to realise what was going on. She had made her choice. But how would they react to the news that they were leaving for a new life?

For the youngest and oldest members of the family the journey was simply confusing. The mother-in-law was sitting next to Robert. She was an unpleasant old lady and rather annoying, he decided. She kept asking him awkward questions. Who was the driver? Why did he look so suspicious? One of the muscle-men had been introduced to her as a ‘medical assistant’ from the sanatorium they were heading for. If that was the case, then why did he have a Kalashnikov, she asked?

She was fidgeting away in her seat. Something was digging into her, she was complaining. What was it? Could he move whatever this thing was? Robert was definitely not going to tell her. It was an F-1, a small Russian hand-grenade about the size of a large lemon he was keeping in his pocket. Just in case things took a turn for the worse.

The son was the bigger problem. He too was asking a lot of questions. Who were the men accompanying them? Where were they going? He seemed smart enough to realise something was amiss. James and Robert did their best to say as little as possible.

Just after passing the city of Kaunas, they pulled in by a green hillside for a stop. They had chosen a bleak and forbidding site for their picnic. The place was officially called the Ninth Fort but more informally it was known as ‘the Fort of Death’, a place filled with the ghosts of the past. When the Soviet Union occupied the country in 1940 it was used as a holding place for political prisoners on their way to disappear in Soviet gulags. Then when the Nazis took Lithuania, it was where 45,000 Jews and others were massacred. In the shadow of the 100-foot-tall angular, haunting memorial with solemn stone faces staring down to recall the dead, the tour group sat and ate their sandwiches as they prepared to go on their way.

49

The Docks

AS THEY APPROACHED Klaipėda, one of the team’s Lithuanian contacts tried using his radio to find out whether it looked clear enough to enter the docks. But he could not raise anyone. The longer he tried with no response, the more anxious James became. Were they walking into a trap? Finally, the radio crackled with a response. All clear. That did not mean it was safe but it was something. The yellow minibus crawled its way through the dilapidated dockyards and headed towards the agreed meeting point.

The site was littered with the remnants of Soviet-era cranes and containers. Klaipėda was one of the few ports where you could cross the Baltic in winter to the Nordic countries and it had its own conflicted history. Hitler himself had appeared triumphantly at the docks in 1939 when Lithuania had been forced to surrender control to Germany. But now it was Russian rather than German influence that hung over the place. A new international ferry terminal had been built a few years earlier, not for tourists but to transport the Soviet Army to Germany. Two railway lines allowed traffic from Moscow to unload directly. Kaliningrad, a Soviet and now Russian enclave, was just a few miles down the coast. And Klaipėda itself was still home to a contingent of the 3rd Guards Motor Rifle Division. They had played a notorious role in trying to put down the push for Lithuanian independence. They had even threatened to march on Vilnius when their commanding general was arrested by the new government. They were holed up at the university and the tension was palpable. When the British defence attaché and ambassador had recently met the Russian colonel in charge they found him cold and angry. The KGB were also no doubt present. The docks were the most important spot in the city and they certainly would have their own people and agents and spies watching it for unusual activity.

It is now afternoon and the docks are still busy as they drive through. People working. Others just waiting. Some watching. The minibus drives slowly – looking for a specific berth that has been agreed as the meeting place. A small boat will take them to The Key since it is too large to dock. Eventually the minibus pulls in at the spot. The heavies are out of the jeep and scanning the surroundings for trouble.

Out of the minibus step two middle-aged men. Robert’s greying hair is unkempt and he looks exhausted. A gun is barely hidden under his long trench coat.

James, carrying an attaché case and in a blue coat with his hair well combed, is trying to take charge, but looking more like a British business executive dropped into the middle of nowhere.

Then the old man emerges out of the minibus, quiet and intense. His hair and moustache look neat, a long coat and a dark blue jacket underneath makes him look smarter than the tramp-like figure who approached the embassy only a few months earlier. He seems almost unnaturally focused, as if under a spell. Next comes his wife. Nina is in a long grey coat, carrying a handbag and with a purple hat on. She looks like she is on a shopping trip or a day out. But anxiety is etched on her face. Then comes an elderly woman in a dark red coat with a blue hat. She appears confused as she walks with a stick. There is some kind of discussion with her. At this moment, she appears to give up trying to understand what is happening.

‘You can do what you like to me,’ she says to those accompanying her.

But not everything is going to plan.

A younger man has been carried out of the minibus. He is wearing glasses and a grey jumper. A blue wheelchair is unfolded and he is placed into it. There seems to be a problem. A quick whispered conversation with his mother turns into shouting in Russian.

A strange family drama unfolds. Perhaps he does not want to go on holiday, a watching passer-by might think?

The men with the unmistakable bulge of guns under the leather jackets are watching intently at a distance but not intervening.

His father is trying to explain that they are going away. They have to. These men are helping them. Until then, the son had no real understanding. It had seemed all a bit confusing. But the truth now hits him like a train.

In a flash, Vladimir can see what is happening. And for the first time he understands who his father really is. What he had been doing in the dacha that night he had walked in on him. That he was not who he said he was. Who Vladimir thought he was. A world and a life is changed, never to be the same again.

Vladimir looks at his father.

‘You’re a spy,’ he blurts out. An accusation, which if overheard, could be fatal.

The others are trying to remonstrate and to cajole him. But nothing is working.

The realisation dawns that he is going away and never coming back. The understanding that he never had the chance to say goodbye to his old life suddenly hits him.

‘What will my friends think?’ he says to one of the Lithuanians present. ‘I haven’t been able to tell them anything.’ This is what worries him most. What the friends he has valued so much will think. The Lithuanian does his best to reassure him.

Escape is so close – feet away – but not yet guaranteed. The shouting gets louder. He begins hurling Russian swear words, pretty much every one that Robert had ever known. There is one word he shouts at his father. It is one that cuts deep. His father believes it is not true but he still understands why his son might use it. The word is ‘traitor’.

Now, Robert is trying to push him in the wheelchair up the gangplank. But as he does so, it becomes clear there is a problem. The wheelchair is too wide to get onto the gangplank that leads to the small boat. Vladimir is clutching the arms of the chair as he shouts and swears.

They are stuck. James begins to panic. Attention is being drawn by all the shouting. It certainly looks to any bystander at the docks as if something very odd is happening.

Robert, normally so confident, seems uncharacteristically flummoxed by the unfolding drama, almost paralysed, unsure what to do. This is not going to plan. James knows Robert is the only one who can deal with this. He looks at him and shouts at him in English: ‘I don’t care what you have to fucking do. Just get him on board.’

So Robert raises his fist. He brings it down hard and hits Vladimir’s hands which were gripping the armrest of his wheelchair. Vladimir’s grip releases.

With that, Robert picks up the seated figure. Vladimir is hauled over a shoulder with a fireman’s lift and carried up and onto the boat.

But what of his father? He remains strangely calm. Those fortunate enough to be released from the Gulag had a superstition. It was that you were never to look back as you walked out of the camp. If you did, then you were doomed to return.

Vasili Mitrokhin never looked back.

50

The Boat

ONCE THE MITROKHINS were stowed in cabins on The Key, the crew prepared for departure. On board were the captain, his wife acting as first mate, and two members of Swedish military intelligence. They did not know the details of the cargo or its significance. The Lithuanians invited Robert and James for a celebratory drink on a neighbouring Soviet warship that they had taken over. The relief was palpable, the drinks went down quickly.

The Key cast off once they were all on board. It was still not out of danger though. They first had to make their way out of the long narrow harbour and through its gates into the Baltic. This took them past the last remains of Soviet coastal defences. A Lithuanian official had been told something important was happening but only two hours before. He had previously been an officer in the Soviet Baltic Fleet and even if his loyalties had now shifted to the new state you could not be too careful. With every additional person in the know, the risk grew. The Lithuanian contacts had also been on hand at the docks watching carefully and ready to intervene if anything went wrong.

The promised storm was now hitting full force. Sheets of rain struck the faces of those on the outside. The boat moved slowly, buffeted by the waves. The journey ahead was always going to be long. Their destination was Kalmar on Sweden’s southeast coast. On a good day it would take eighteen hours. This was not a good day.

The warnings about the weather proved, if anything, an understatement. The Baltic became violent. Crossing in November in a force 9 gale in a largely empty round-bottomed ore-carrier was not pleasant. A bottle of champagne was brought out onto a table along with some food. But as the ship began to sway harder and harder, more and more people began to throw up on what was already a smelly vessel. It became so bad they ended up lying down to avoid being thrown around, puddles of vomit around them. Only James and the captain managed to avoid being sick. They marked their luck by spending the night working through a bottle of brandy.

This all meant the journey would take thirty-three long and excruciating hours. Spying is waiting. And there was not much to talk about. Robert and James, ever the odd couple, had another one of their periodic fallings out over something or other. That was just exhaustion and the tension unwinding.

As he looked at the Mitrokhin family, reeling with sickness, the son and mother-in-law still bewildered by the turn of events, James thought they did not look as if they cared very much whether they made it or not.

Nine hours in, Robert had been sick as a dog almost constantly when Nina came into his cabin with a worried look. Her mother was about to die, she said. Robert went to the elderly woman’s cabin. He found her on a narrow bunk looking very pale, with her hands crossed on her chest. ‘The angels are calling me,’ she moaned. ‘I am dying.’ She was clearly confused. This old woman born in the days of Tsarist Russia before the Revolution was now on a boat with strangers going who knew where.

Robert took her hand. It was ice-cold. He pretended to take her pulse. Speaking in Russian, he reassured her she was not going to die. He had orders to bring her to the destination alive. It was still hard to know if she understood what was really happening or if she thought she was still heading to a sanatorium. Robert came up with an idea. He said he might have to roll the woman over and give her two injections on her backside. She was horrified at the idea. ‘Don’t do it. I won’t die,’ she said, now worried about having to expose herself to this strange man. ‘I’ll keep my eye on you and you may be sure I won’t let you die,’ he said to reassure her. Robert would believe that right until the moment she died nearly a year later in Britain, she did not really understand what had happened to her.

Vladimir was a different case. After the scene at the docks, the concern was that he could have been a very difficult passenger. But surprisingly, he quickly seemed to make some kind of peace with what had just happened. He and his father spoke. There were even smiles. There was the promise of better medical treatment, the beginnings of an understanding of what his father had done and why. If there had been a moment of resistance, it had now passed. He remained edgy and uncomfortable but was no longer unwilling to go. Robert spoke to him in Russian. Vladimir explained that he was worried about not having any personal identity documents. In Russia not having them made you a ‘non-person’ and put you at great risk. Robert went and got the British passport complete with a new name for him and explained this was now his. This seemed to put him at ease, although deeper aspects of the resentment would linger for some time.

Once the boat arrived in Sweden, the beleaguered passengers were met by officials and taken to a good local hotel for the night to recover, watched carefully by some local bodyguards just in case the Russians were already on their trail. The next morning a plane, normally used by Sweden’s royal family, was waiting. From there they flew into a windy Gatwick airport in Britain.

A small welcoming party was there to meet them. James went off with his new girlfriend – soon to become his wife. Robert went out drinking with another MI6 colleague after arriving. The other officer looked at him with a smile. ‘7 November?’ he asked. The colleague had worked out the significance of the date.

Mitrokhin now had a new codename – JESSANT. He and his family were taken to a hotel in Sussex. His mother-in-law was in a daze. Nina was worried. Vladimir anxious. Mitrokhin determined. The British spies were all too aware that the family dynamic was very tricky. They watched and worried about what appeared to be tensions between the four. That was hardly surprising given what had happened and how little preparation some of the family – particularly Vladimir – had been given. Would those relationships be repaired over time, they wondered?

Mitrokhin explained to his family that the plan in leaving was that he would be writing a book. Among those who met the family at the hotel was a well-dressed man in a suit and a waistcoat. He said he was a partner at one of the country’s most prestigious publishers. He was there to reassure the archivist in front of his family that the intention was to get his book published and in doing so reassure them all that everything was above board. The book idea was very promising and the publishers always looked after their authors, the well-dressed man explained. Except the man was not who he said he was. He was not a publisher. He was a senior MI6 officer, there to keep everything on track with the family. Mitrokhin was out. But his life’s work – and the mission he had set himself on to slay the beast – was not yet done. There was to be a final act.

ACT THREE

The Mayor

51

The Book

IN BRITAIN, VASILI Mitrokhin and his family were now the bearers of suitably bland new names. He was Graham. His wife was Elizabeth, his son Peter. His mother-in-law was Gloria. Mitrokhin was in his seventies and he had a sense of time running out. He had taken extraordinary risks, including on behalf of his unwitting family, and he was driven to complete the mission he had set himself on. But this would prove harder than he thought, not least because he did not always make it easy.

His archive still had to be reconstituted from its condensed form. There were the ten volumes he had already typed up in Moscow but the envelopes crammed with notes would be enough to produce another twenty-six typed volumes in London. He began cataloguing his files which were also uploaded onto a computer database, working closely with Harry, the Soviet specialist from MI6 assigned to translate and help. Visitors would come to ask him questions. They would sometimes be surprised when he got bored during a meeting and dropped to the floor to do press-ups. Some found it awkward dealing with his odd views and eccentricities. ‘A nutter’ is how one spy remembers him. Another looks back with regret on a missed opportunity to take the chance to understand the mindset of a certain type of Russian and KGB officer even when the views jarred and did not fit with comfortable Western ideas. There had been much to learn but few who wanted to.

Questions about what a particular reference in his notes meant came not just from MI6 but also a growing number of foreign agencies. In 1995, a team of US prosecutors, including Barbara Cohan, came to London to see if he would help with the trial of Lipka, the former NSA worker identified by his work. He refused to meet them. Why? Some wondered if it was still lingering resentment at America for having snubbed him in 1992 in the Baltics. When he eventually relented and met the Americans on a second trip, they learnt it was also because he found the idea of testifying in court deeply troubling for his own safety, even if he did so in disguise or behind a screen. And, more importantly, if he was to break cover and go public, he thought Lipka too much of a small fry. At the end of one lunch, he suddenly erupted in anger, shouting in Russian, his face red. ‘One doesn’t use a king to kill cockroach,’ he was saying, Harry, his translator, explained to the alarmed visitors.

Mitrokhin wanted to see top Soviet and KGB officials put on trial in the equivalent of the Nuremberg trials for Nazis at the end of World War II, not cases against minor spies like Lipka, as he saw it. Some in the CIA had been angry that Mitrokhin was reluctant to turn up and they asked MI6 if they could dial up the pressure on him. The British warned that would not work. With patience, the American prosecutor Barbara Cohan managed to win him over. It meant she was then able to understand the process behind the creation of his archive. She realised he had not seen Lipka’s original file but rather related material in other files. Normally, his notes would not be admissible in court because they were not original documents but Cohan became convinced that his testimony could still be invaluable. There would be rumours about a ‘mystery witness’ ahead of the 1997 trial but in the end, Mitrokhin was able to retain his anonymity when at the last minute Lipka pled guilty in return for a sentence of eighteen years.

The archive may actually have been too much of a goldmine, one of Britain’s senior spies would later reflect. Why? The idea was to parcel out the leads over years and exploit them with a widening set of allies. But this would not be easy. The reason was that there was almost too much information about other countries. A little was good – a solid lead you could pass on and exchange for something else. But this was of a different scale. And the names being passed often involved the very agencies and foreign ministries who they were liaising with. The result was, to say the least, embarrassing and awkward.

The UK’s neighbour was the best example. MI6 would eventually pass on the names of 300 agents suspected of working with the KGB to the French authorities. It turned out the KGB’s Paris Residency had been prolific, with agents inside France’s intelligence and security agencies, especially in the early Cold War. Among them was an agent codenamed JOUR, a cipher clerk who had spent a quarter of a century providing incredibly sensitive intelligence from the French Foreign Ministry to Moscow and helping the KGB spot other potential recruits. He had also provided details on how cipher machines encoded traffic allowing bugs to be installed in the teleprinters in the French Embassy in Moscow. The even more embarrassing problem was that he was still alive, leaving Parisian politicians in something of a panic of what to do about him.

There would also be difficult conversations with other allies like the Germans and Italians about the scale of compromise. One Italian diplomat, it emerged, had been the victim of not one but two honeytraps in Moscow by so-called Swallows, female KGB agents selected to compromise men. For all the salacious details, this did not make for pleasant reading for his colleagues. The Italian Foreign Ministry found itself investigating no less than thirty of its employees who had been mentioned in Mitrokhin’s notes. And that was only one fragment of the 645 pages of reports with 261 codenames that would eventually be assessed by a special Italian commission created to look into the archive – codenamed IMPEDIAN. But the work would be caught up in the heat of domestic politics with allegations of spying thrown at opponents and counter-claims that they had been fabricated by British intelligence as part of some kind of plot.

In many countries, there was even less publicity thrown on what Mitrokhin had revealed as the decision was taken simply to keep what was inside quiet – like the major general from the Israeli Defence Force General Staff who was retired but still very much alive. That was a pattern officials would see time after time to their frustration. Names would be passed, sometimes by the Americans rather than the British if they had the better relationship. And then there would be silence. It was ‘unconscionable’ how many agents seemed to be protected, thought one spy-hunter. In all there would be 3,500 counter-intelligence reports issued to 36 countries, with around 1,000 agents identified.

In Britain itself, counter-intelligence had come to be seen as a backwater posting and those who worked on Mitrokhin’s files were often seen as oddballs unable to let go of the past. One senior intelligence officer – a veteran of counter-espionage work – was determined to make the most of Mitrokhin’s riches. He would dedicate at least an hour every morning to reading the files and immersing himself in the world of his adversary. He also spent time with Mitrokhin. The archivist was a difficult man, he recognised. Did he like him? He loved him. But in the way you can love a cat that scratches you when you stroke it. That officer wanted to do more than understand. He wanted to use Mitrokhin to wreak havoc on the old enemy. He was infuriated at what he felt was the lack of interest from MI5 in the Russians. They were acting as if espionage had gone away. Like his colleagues in the CIA’s Russia House, he feared that having won, the West would disarm and later pay the price. His ambition was to ensure that no one anywhere in the world would ever volunteer their services to Moscow again in the future for fear that one day, even if it took decades, their betrayal might become public. For him, like others, Mitrokhin’s archive was an ace in the pack to be played in the long game against the Russians, a game that started before he and others had been born and would go on long after they had departed. Playing this card meant publishing as much of the archive as possible. This was also what Mitrokhin himself had wanted – to reveal the truth. Others, not just MI5, raised all kinds of concerns about publishing. But that was what had been promised to him. But how was it to be done?

The secret of the archivist’s departure was just about holding. There were a few leaks from partners who had been passed details. A German magazine in December 1996 reported that a former KGB officer had defected with the names of hundreds of spies. Moscow dismissed it as nonsense. ‘Hundreds of people! That just doesn’t happen!’ a spokesperson for the SVR, the KGB’s successor, responded. ‘Any defector could get the name of one, two, perhaps three agents – but not hundreds!’ The KGB’s heirs did not seem to know he was gone. That part of the plan seems to have worked. The SVR, the new name of the First Chief Directorate, was spending much of the 1990s trying to cleanse itself of the stain of the past. It produced its own histories and even worked with Western historians to reveal select documents. This allowed it to focus on the spy-versus-spy world of Cold War intelligence and highlight its successes. Its gargantuan efforts suppressing dissidents were not mentioned. This was what Mitrokhin was determined to reveal and to confront. For him, only a full accounting of the past would open the way for a cleansing tide to wash over his homeland. But whereas Mitrokhin’s aim was for his work to reach a Russian audience and to focus on the KGB’s role in repression, his archive was now heading towards a Western audience instead. This was one of the causes of growing tension.

Mitrokhin’s priority had always been that his archive be published. The government had agreed to that. But it wanted control over how it was done. Simply exposing the raw archive would cause headaches in all kinds of places. People around the world – including some very prominent and powerful people – would be named as agents or contacts of the KGB. Some would query the facts. And given KGB officers would sometimes exaggerate relationships and that they only had Mitrokhin’s notes and not the original files to go by, the risks of the details being challenged were high. So there needed to be a process.

The doyen of British intelligence historians, Professor Christopher Andrew of Cambridge University, walked into MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross on 17 October 1995. He was regarded as a safe pair of hands and had worked on previous sensitive projects, including books on the KGB with Oleg Gordievsky. He was briefed on the secret of the archive. A few weeks later he was given a first-hand glimpse of the trove. ‘Its scope and secrecy took my breath away.’ For the next three years, he and Mitrokhin would labour on a book in secret. A government working group oversaw the process, largely to ensure certain categories of information were excluded. Andrew would act as an editor, allowing MI6 to retain control over what would finally come out.

But Mitrokhin’s relationship with Professor Andrew and MI6 broke down. Mitrokhin wanted everything to be published in the raw. He had expected Andrew would only act as an editor and not a co-author. Andrew meanwhile believed there needed to be historical context and analysis around Mitrokhin’s notes. He would reflect that there was a parallel with the KGB in which Mitrokhin had worked. Historically, it carried out little intelligence assessment or analysis on the information it collected. Rather raw reports were handed directly to leaders like Stalin. That contrasted with organisations like the CIA where raw intelligence was ‘finished’ into an analytical product by experts. Mitrokhin saw no need for an explanatory or analytic process around his notes. He believed the truth was in his files and he simply wanted the world to see it unvarnished and without commentary. But that would be hard for the lay-reader to digest and understand, Andrew and others thought.

Andrew would come to believe that both Mitrokhin the man and his work could not be understood in Western terms. There was something deeply Russian and different about him. Despite the problems, he retained a deep respect for the archivist. ‘Only a tiny minority of difficult people are heroes. But a surprisingly large proportion of heroes are really difficult people,’ Andrew would say. ‘Mitrokhin is a really difficult person. But he is also a hero.’

Mitrokhin became increasingly agitated as the years passed. He would tell people that he was not going to accomplish what he had set out to achieve. The long delay in publication as MI6 tried to work out what it could or should include was one issue as he worried this would lessen the impact. He also voiced fears of some kind of plot to deprive him of control over his material. Initially it was held in MI6’s registry which he could not access. He felt isolated and would talk darkly of a ‘mafia’ conspiring against him. He even spoke of using lawyers to halt publication. There was a row over who exactly owned the copyright of the notes. One spy thought better of pointing out it was probably the KGB who had the best claim even if they were unlikely to assert it.

Mitrokhin’s anger sometimes boiled over. ‘You know, they treat you like ants,’ he said to one British friend with real anger in his voice, motioning as if those ants were being crushed under his heel. In one furious row, he began shouting that he had been betrayed and it was not his book anymore. He was being fobbed off ‘like a Russian monkey’ with promises of money, he said. He had risked his life – and, as he angrily put it, the ‘lives of his cripples’ – to tell the world the truth. But, he said, ‘the truth was stolen’.

If the ambition of those driving for publication was to present the material in a controlled but unsensational manner, they would fail. As the publication date of 20 September 1999 approached, MI5 saw a draft and realised they had a problem. It was to do with Melita Norwood. Late in the day, they finally asked their lawyers if they could prosecute her but were told it was now too late. For some mysterious reason, it was deemed not even worth interviewing her to see what she knew for intelligence-gathering.

That meant the first person to turn up at the elderly woman’s doorstep in South London was not an MI5 officer but a BBC journalist. A draft of the book had been passed in April 1999 to David Rose who was already working on a major documentary about spying. He had quickly identified agent HOLA as Melita Norwood. The BBC documentary was being timed to come out with the book and the authorities went into a panic. The government working group found itself in a difficult situation since Malcolm Rifkind when he had been Foreign Secretary had decreed that the names of people who worked for the KGB would not be made public unless they had been convicted or agreed to it. Now an exception might need to be made for Norwood given the BBC documentary. But the authorities worried they could face legal action if they could not prove what was being alleged in the book. There was even talk that the as-yet-unpublished book might have to be pulped. Rose was planning to confront her and a lot rode on what she would say. A confession was needed, even if it would be to a journalist not an MI5 officer. Rose called her up and said they needed to talk about a secret that was about to come out. She agreed and he went to knock on her door on a quiet suburban street in August. He had an undercover camera on him to capture what she said. To his immense surprise, looking every inch the grandmother and wearing a crisp white shirt and purple cardigan, she invited him in and sat down at a table. Then she promptly confessed to working for the KGB. She even seemed proud of it. Did she have any regrets? No, she would go on to say. ‘I would do everything again.’

A race then begun between the BBC and The Times, who were serialising the book, as to who would come out first with Norwood’s story. The desire to sell books and make a splash was now overriding the original idea of a sober, serious look at the KGB’s history. The result was sensational headlines about the granny who had given secrets to the enemy, notably ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Co-op’ – a reference to where Norwood did her shopping. ‘I thought I’d got away with it,’ she said. The media focused on the failure to prosecute Norwood, rather than the archive itself. Meanwhile, ministers like Home Secretary Jack Straw were furious because they were taken by surprise and had been given inaccurate information about naming people and the nature of past investigations into the grandmother. The focus was on the UK’s failure to prosecute spies rather than the misdeeds of the KGB that Mitrokhin had dedicated himself to cataloguing.

In the US it was stories of the KGB’s plans for sabotage that made the headlines. This again led to a focus on Western governments’ failings rather than the actions of the Soviet Union. Booby-trapped caches had already been found in Europe based on Mitrokhin’s information. One in Switzerland blew up when a fire-hose was trained on it. ‘What about the sites in the United States?’ one Congressman demanded at a hearing, saying he had heard from the FBI of possible sites in Minnesota, Montana, Texas, New York and California. Weapons – even weapons of mass destruction – could be hidden there, he suggested. Why had nothing been done given the FBI had been aware of Mitrokhin’s information for seven years? Was this about the administration being too scared of confronting Russia now, it was asked? White House officials went crazy, remember FBI officials, leading to urgent messages to field offices to double check any known drop sites just in case. However, the Bureau secretly told field offices that the evidence was that the Russians had only surveyed sites in the US rather than undertake the more practical preparations seen in Europe.

Mitrokhin himself sat down for interviews to promote the book. He was a private man and wore a disguise. He was still worried about his former colleagues coming to kill him. He seemed ill-at-ease, nervous and shy and he declined to answer questions about his motivations. It had taken much persuasion for him to finally relent and allow his real name and biographical details to be included in the book. His own personal story, he thought, was irrelevant. He was just the messenger. The real story was in his files. He sounded like an Old Testament prophet, one of his interviewers who sat down with him thought, his eyes burning intensely as he quoted from the Bible. He tried to convey that a great evil had to be exposed. But he had another warning. It was that danger still lingered. ‘They are still there. It is the same people, the same organisations, the same aims,’ he explained. ‘If we go into the next century having never learnt from the previous one, we are in danger. It’s our task to tell what happened.’ This was the message he had wanted to get out.

But was anyone listening? Mitrokhin was struggling in his real ambition. The readership he had always really craved was not in the West but in Russia. It was the Russian people who needed to know the truth. But his work was not going to be published there. And the focus – at MI6’s direction – was on the KGB First Chief Directorate’s espionage against the West rather than its role in supporting repression and going after dissidents at home.

Moscow was blindsided when the book came out. Conducting a damage assessment is almost impossible when you are dealing with someone who had access to your secret files for decades and when you have no way of knowing how much he had taken. The worst-case scenario was nearly every operation, every agent – even every illegal – up to 1984 might be blown. Some of them may have been turned by MI6 or CIA. Within Yasenevo this was a shattering blow. They would try and undermine the archive’s impact by disputing Mitrokhin’s level of access and even using defectors to discredit him, claiming that Mitrokhin had actually been used by them to reveal details of agents as part of a clear-out. But the book itself was not going to get an airing for the Russian people.

Interest faded, including in the West. The Cold War had ended eight years earlier and it already felt like the distant past. There might be the enduring fascination with individual spies and their motivations, especially if they were now elderly grannies or members of the Cambridge spy ring. But a new millennium was fast-approaching and all the voluminous details of the KGB’s work seemed not just overwhelming but irrelevant to most people. Russia, after all, had changed. It was no longer the enemy. The KGB, the Communist party, the Cheka. They were all gone. Weren’t they?

The publication of his life’s work should have been a moment of triumph for Mitrokhin. But it was not. It was a time of disappointment professionally and trauma personally. He was entering a dark place. He remained close to Robert, the agent who got him out. As two Russians who had both left their country behind they bonded over their mutual hatred for their old masters in Moscow. Robert could see Mitrokhin was exhausted. He worried the archivist was spinning out of control and warned colleagues at MI6. It was not just the arguments over the content of the book and the difficulties of appearing in public to talk about it. There was also something more personal.

Nina had managed to cope with the shock of her life being upended and being suddenly pulled away from friends and into the West. The couple had not talked politics before they left and did not talk about his work now but their relationship survived. She had made a few friends and read art books in her new life in London. The couple travelled together around Britain and farther afield. But then she had fallen ill. At first, she had hoped the pain was arthritis. But then came the news that it was an aggressive motor neurone disease, an echo of her son’s illness and perhaps a sign of something genetic. As a doctor, she knew what it meant and struggled on as bravely as she could. But she deteriorated quickly. Those interviewing Mitrokhin in the summer of 1999 would not know but one of the reasons he seemed so distant was that in the nights leading up to those interviews, his wife would wake her husband up and plead with him to end her suffering. But she also told him they both owed a debt to MI6 and he had to go ahead with the book. In September 1999 as the book emerged, Nina had only a few weeks left to live. And just as Mitrokhin’s journey took another turn, so his homeland was undergoing its own transformation.

52

Chekists

IN THE EARLY summer of 1999, as Mitrokhin was preparing to go public, Russia’s acting Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin went to his old workplace, the Lubyanka. A former head of the FSB, Stepashin joked with his former colleagues about being a former Chekist. The current FSB Director was accompanying him on the visit and offered a friendly retort. ‘There is no such thing as a former Chekist,’ he said. A few days later that current FSB Director, Vladimir Putin, was appointed Russia’s Prime Minister. His rise from lowly KGB officer in Dresden through the mayor of St Petersburg’s office to the pinnacle of power in Moscow was nearly complete.

Two days before news of Mitrokhin’s book appeared in September 1999, a bomb had detonated on the ground floor of an apartment building in Moscow, killing more than a hundred people. It was one of a series of deadly blasts which rocked Russia that month. Two days after The Mitrokhin Archive was published, something strange happened in the city of Ryazan, near where the archivist had been born. Worried residents of an apartment block reported suspicious activity. Police found sacks of what they first said were explosives with detonators attached. Three men were picked up in the city. Then the FSB suddenly announced that the sacks had only contained sugar and that the men were theirs and been taking part in a training exercise. In later years, those who would take a close interest in what happened and argue there was evidence the FSB had been behind the bombing campaign, would end up dead. At the time, the government was adamant that Chechen separatists were to blame. Putin, as Russia’s newly appointed prime minister, made clear he was the man to take tough action against the Chechens. ‘We will pursue them everywhere,’ he said. ‘If we catch them in the toilet, we’ll wipe them out in the shit-hole.’

The trauma of the 1990s with its sense of collapse and humiliation had cut deep. And Putin was a man who seemed to offer an end to those dark days. He would restore order. He had risen partly as he appeared a blank slate who other powerful figures thought they could manipulate and who would protect their wealth and power. But he had also cleverly played on his image as a Chekist. Who better to protect the motherland and restore the power of the state than a selfless follower of saint Feliks?

The Chekists had lain dormant for the early part of the 1990s but were now preparing their return. Demoralised, some had departed to make money acting as consultants or going into business. But a core remained and with them a bitter resentment festered. A story was told that the country had been betrayed and fallen prey to subversion by enemies like the CIA which had plotted to tear the country apart. It had taken a few years for them to start to regroup. The Chekists had made themselves useful enough to Yeltsin that he could not live without them. Who else would keep tabs on your many enemies? When the domestic security service was renamed as the FSB in 1995 its symbol combined the sword and the shield of the Soviet KGB with the double-headed eagle of the Tsarist era. A hybrid beast had been born. Yeltsin that year also established 20 December as a professional holiday to celebrate workers in the Security Services – known to everyone as Chekists’ day. Stamps and medals made a comeback followed by prizes for the best depiction of the FSB in literature or TV and film. The chaos of the 1990s meant there was a growing nostalgia for the past.

Putin would refer to himself as a Chekist and made use of its mythology. The TV series Seventeen Moments in Spring had been one of the KGB’s great propaganda triumphs under Andropov. First broadcast in 1973 it reached 80 million viewers with its stories of a deep cover illegal during World War II. It was rebroadcast every year and remained embedded in the public consciousness. Putin carefully associated himself with its hero, a spy called Stierlitz. When he was interviewed about his past on TV as early as 1991, he recreated a scene in which Stierlitz drove his car, all with the theme tune of the series playing in the background. In a poll in early 1999 Russians were asked who they wanted most as their leader. The fictional Stierlitz came second, after Marshal Zhukov, the real war-time general. The scene had been set for Putin to stride onto the stage. Chekism had survived the demise of its communist parent and rival with whom it used to tussle for supremacy. It had managed to separate itself and then reconstitute itself, like the mythical hydra who can do so after one head is chopped off. Now it was returning purer and harder. And one of its own was Russia’s prime minister. One of Putin’s first acts in the role would be to restore a memorial plaque outside the Lubyanka to Andropov, the only KGB man ever to lead the country. Soon after, Yeltsin would make Putin acting President.

In 2000, Vladimir Putin became the first President to attend Chekist day celebrations personally. His successor as head of the FSB, the hardliner Nikolai Patrushev, gave an interview to mark the day. He spoke of how Feliks would have been proud of those who now toiled in the Lubyanka. ‘They are people with a commitment to the idea of service. They are, if you like, our “new nobility”,’ he had said. The description was telling. The modern day Chekist was part of an elite like medieval knights who served the ruler but also protected the people and kept order, acting in a selfless manner, an echo of the founding myths around Feliks.

Two years later, Patrushev consecrated a new Orthodox church sited at the Lubyanka. There was talk of something called spiritual security and the need to protect Russia’s soul from dark forces. Inside were icons dedicated to the ancient knights that had protected the motherland. Putin too would increasingly associate himself with the Orthodox faith and with it a deeper idea of Russia. ‘Russia,’ he said, ‘did not begin either in 1917, or in 1991. We have a single, uninterrupted history spanning over a thousand years.’ Putin’s ambition was to restore Russia to its glory, to put a stop to its disintegration. American Presidents would say they had looked into his eyes and seen his soul. British Prime Ministers would say that he was a man they could do business with. Some in MI6 thought he might at least bring some stability. And even Alexander Solzhenitsyn, now returned to his homeland, would find himself drawn to Putin’s new vision of a restored Russia. Only a few could understand what his rise really signified. Mitrokhin, in his exile, was one of those. He understood the Chekist roots from which Putin had sprung and he understood what his rise meant.

In the third act of The Dragon, the dark subversive play by Evgeny Shvarts, time has passed as we return to the village that had been supposedly liberated from the dragon. But we find the mayor is now claiming that he was the one who had actually slain the beast. And worse, he has now taken the dragon’s place as the new tyrant, subjugating the people and filling the village’s jail with his critics. Killing the dragon was not enough, the knight realises. The problem lies in the way its malevolent power had gained a hold over the minds of the villagers. ‘We will have to kill a dragon in each one of them,’ he explains. The fight for freedom, the story suggested, required a continual struggle against powerful forces, including those that lie within the human heart. The forces which had enslaved Russia were proving far harder to kill than many people thought. Mitrokhin understood this. But would anyone listen?

53

The Hydra

IN FEBRUARY 2000 as Vladimir Putin prepared to be inaugurated as President, Vasili Mitrokhin, incongruously, found himself in California. The old man, still dressed like a Russian peasant, walked up and down Malibu beach, clutching a plastic bag which held a Russian–English dictionary. He was being shown around by FBI officers, including John Whiteside who had worked on the Lipka case. Where the FBI officers would enjoy steak and eggs for breakfast, Mitrokhin insisted on simple oatmeal. They were pulling out the stops to try to persuade him to testify in an upcoming trial. But Mitrokhin was bruised.

Over black bread and vodka, he would break down in tears when he talked about Nina’s death the previous October. He could smile and be charming but there was a sadness hanging over him as well as a continued fear that the long arm of the Chekists could reach him in the West. The publication of the book six months earlier had also left him unhappy. When an FBI driver turned up with half a dozen copies in the boot of the car in the hope of getting them signed, he had to be told quickly to hide them. Mitrokhin would go berserk if he saw them, the other FBI agents said. The man could not even bear to see the book named after him. He disliked seeing Christopher Andrew’s name first on the cover. But his frustrations went deeper than that.

Mitrokhin was clear eyed in a way very few others could be about his homeland. He could see the continuities with the past that he had documented. ‘There is no great chasm between the old and the new. The new flows out of the old and you have to know the old to understand the new,’ he wrote that year. What of the three-headed monster he had fought?

Mitrokhin observed his old adversary shape-shift. The nomenklatura had survived and even thrived. It had enriched itself and transformed itself into the oligarchs and businessmen who were guilty of ‘pillaging’ the industries that should have been the property of the nation but which instead now made up their private riches. This new ‘criminal wealthy minority’ were, he said, ‘ready to enter the twenty-first century in the guise of oligarchs … They used to be comrades but they have become lords.’ The end of communism had not brought the return of the deeper, ancient, more spiritual Russia whose idea he had nurtured. It had brought something bleak and garish. There was no socialism with a human face, just an unholy mafia capitalism. These ‘grabbers and scroungers’ had worked with foreigners to steal the resources that belonged to the Russian people, whether in the coffers of the state and its now privatised companies or the natural riches that lay in the countryside, sending their wealth and their families abroad.

And what of his old colleagues? ‘The Cheka is still in good shape,’ Mitrokhin would say. The officers of the new organisations like the FSB and SVR that grew out of the KGB still called themselves Chekists, he noted, although they had become the vanguard of nationalism rather than communism. Now they were serving ‘the nouveaux riches, the bankers, capitalists and exploiters, waiting hand and foot on the mafiosi clan of oligarchs’. At this time, he thought the Chekists were effectively a tool of the new elite. What would become clearer in the coming years was that under Putin, the Chekists were determined to not be their servants but their masters. They would force the oligarchs and businessmen of the new nomenklatura to bend the knee so they could reign supreme and unrestrained in a way they had never managed under communism. One head would rule them all.

There had been no justice for the past, Mitrokhin thought. ‘We had 80 years of evil acts by the triumvirate aimed at mankind, humanity and the environment, yet there was nothing to hold over them in the way the Nuremberg Court was used against the fascist leadership in Germany.’ This left him angry. A forgetfulness of the past had allowed those dark forces to not be destroyed but instead reinvent themselves. ‘In the old days the question used to be, “Why is it that the path of the unrighteous is strewn with success and all the perfidious prosper?” The question still remains unanswered today.’ The files – other than those he had brought out – remained closed. And without truth there could be no justice.

As he watched his homeland change or, as he saw it, fail to change, there came a loss of faith in what was possible. ‘The Russians have enough experience of the past to know that there is no future for a country of slaves and masters.’

He wrote as he put the finishing touches to a book that would be published in his name alone rather than with any co-author. It was the KGB Lexicon – a dictionary of what he called ‘Chekist terminology’ – the official terms used by the KGB to govern its work. Hardly a page-turner, it reflected his deep, archivist’s instincts to catalogue and provide order. In it, he was able at last to explain something of himself. ‘This publication (like all the others) is a search for justice and I undertake it as a fulfilment of my duty as a human being, a Russian, a citizen, a patriot,’ he wrote in the introduction. But few seemed interested anymore. The world had moved on. The Cold War was over, wasn’t it?

Mitrokhin did what he had always done over his life. He retreated back into the files, toiling away in his small study. MI6 assigned a new officer, a wise old hand and Russian speaker, to try to rebuild the damaged relationship. Through patience that officer managed to coax Mitrokhin back to work on the planned second volume of his archive with Christoper Andrew, covering KGB activities in the rest of the world. It would take time because of the deep sensitivity around identifying the scale of KGB penetration around the world. The files contained extensive detail about the relationship between India’s Congress party and the KGB. Much would be left out of the book. Some inside the intelligence community felt too much deference had been given to diplomatic concerns and that more should have been revealed. However, even what was published would cause shock waves.

Mitrokhin also returned to his original manuscripts and began to work on extracts. He sat, often smartly dressed in a suit and tie with his glasses on and sunlight streaming in from the window next to him, as he opened the blue folders in which the notes he had collected were stored. They were a reminder of a different time but the same life. There was so much to do. In this work, he found a kind of peace and happiness. He still hoped to publish everything.

‘Since I came, I’ve been busy deciphering my documents. I still haven’t decoded everything. At the moment, I have 40 volumes of decoded documents and in my opinion, it is this raw material without any further polishing, that has the most interest and value. I think these volumes should be published just as they are. What they contain are the bare facts with nothing added or taken away. And this is a priceless source for any historian.’

There was nothing fancy about the way he lived. Money was never of interest and he still aspired to live the life of a mujik peasant, although he now dressed up rather than down as he had done that day in Vilnius, normally smartly attired with a trimmed moustache. For food, his preference was homemade cabbage soup and gherkins which he would pickle himself as he had done in his dacha.

It was just him and Vladimir now. They moved into neighbouring flats in Teddington, near the Thames, after Nina died. The shock of events in Klaipėda and having his life upended receded for the son. He got himself back online and connected with old friends in Moscow. There would even be a girlfriend. Because she was from Belarus, Mitrokhin initially worried she might be seeking to entrap Vladimir, and MI6 carried out discreet surveillance of one meeting to ensure there was no risk. He received excellent medical treatment but it could not cure him. The sense of personal betrayal dissipated. It had been less about what his father had done and more that he had kept it from the rest of the family for so many years. Vladimir, who could once be quite rude about his father, now became more appreciative of what he had done, even, for the first time, proud. It would be Vladimir who would eventually seek to ensure his father’s work would live on and that his files would be made available to a wider audience.

Vasili Mitrokhin, now a British citizen, travelled the length and breadth of his new adopted country on his senior citizen’s railcard. He had been to Paris and visited the grave of the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev whose legs the KGB had talked of breaking as well as the tombstones of other Russians who, like himself, had been exiled from their homeland. The places where émigrés and dissidents had lived in the West held a special fascination for him. Like the mansion off Hampstead Heath in London where ballerina Anna Pavlova lived. And Brighton Beach in New York where many Russians had come to settle because the ocean reminded them of the Black Sea. He was now one of them, an exile seeking to understand where home was now.

Did he miss Russia? There was a sense of loss, even bereavement he would say. What was it that he missed? Forests in the snow, he would answer without hesitation. He tried his best to find them. On a winter’s day he would take a train to England’s New Forest and wander. He travelled with no security, relying instead on the same blank anonymity that he had relied on when walking into the embassy in Vilnius. But he struggled to rediscover those forests of his youth. In his last years, as he ventured further afield, he found a place that came closest. There was something about New Zealand that embodied the purity he had been seeking and that made him decide that he wanted this to be his final home, a place where he could live in the wild and spend his time fishing. But time was running out.

As 2004 began, Mitrokhin was still spending hours every day poring over his archive on what would be his final book. His determination was undimmed to publish as much as he could and see if there was any way of making it reach the Russian people so that they could learn the truth.

‘I don’t think anyone realises how much there is still to do. It’s an absolutely Herculean task. It’s a lot of work and worry and stress. And I’ve never taken time off. I haven’t had a break for literally decades, and I’m looking forward to having a hard-earned day of rest when I can finally turn my back on all this evil to find some peace and quiet, perhaps even pray and think about my own soul.’

Checking translations and studying extracts, he was preparing what he hoped would be the work truest to his vision. He wanted this ‘primer of filth’ as he called it, to be his memorial. Perhaps one day people would understand what it was that he could see so clearly. Relieved of working with a co-author, he intended it to be without commentary, simply a distillation of extracts of the notes written all those decades before, notes that had once been hidden in shoes and extracted from under the watching eyes of colleagues. They would convey what he had learnt about the foe he had battled and which he knew was not defeated.

But time caught up with him. There was no polonium or Novichok or any other KGB poison of the type that would wrack the bodies of other Russian defectors who followed him. Just the more mundane reality of pneumonia taking hold of an old man.

On 23 January 2004, Vasili Mitrokhin passed away.

In Moscow, that same January morning the temperature dropped far below what was normal even in a Russian winter. It was an echo of the bitter chill in Vilnius when an old man had walked up the path to the embassy twelve years earlier. The previous day, his fellow Chekist, Vladimir Putin, handed a pair of religious icons that had been recently returned to the country to the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. Putin was laying the groundwork for a new vision of Russia, one in which the Chekist ideology was fired by a new nationalism. A new statue of Feliks would rise outside Yasenevo. The rest of the world would take years to see what was happening and to appreciate the consequences would be deadly. But Vasili Mitrokhin had been one of the very few who understood what was taking place and who could see clearly. Emerging out of the hard winter ground was the deformed but still recognisable shape of his enemy, wounded but not killed, embittered but not defeated. A hydra was rising again.

Picture Section

The pictures of Vasili Mitrokhin (Private collection)

A picture of Vasili Mitrokhin taken by MI6 officers during their first meeting in Vilnius in April 1992.

Vasili Mitrokhin with his wife Nina (Private collection)

Vasili Mitrokhin with his wife Nina.

Vasili Mitrokhin in uniform (Private collection)

Vasili Mitrokhin in uniform as a KGB captain and then major.

Feliks Dzerzhinsky (RIA Novosti/РИА Новости)

Feliks Dzerzhinsky – the founder of the Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB.

The Lubyanka (FORTEPAN/Dobóczi Zsolt)

The Lubyanka – the KGB headquarters in 1961 when Mitrokhin worked in its archives.

The Hungarian water polo player Ervin Zador (Bettmann/Getty Images)

The Hungarian water polo player Ervin Zador during the famous Blood in the Water match against the Soviet Union during the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Mitrokhin attended the games for the KGB.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Bert Verhoeff/Anefo)

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the author whose views did so much to influence those of Mitrokhin.

A well-prepared ‘Robert’ (Private collection)

A well-prepared ‘Robert’ (his identity obscured) – the agent who helped Mitrokhin escape. This picture was taken as the group stopped at Kaunas during the exfiltration.

The Baltic Tours minibus (Private collection)

The Baltic Tours minibus requisitioned for the exfiltration.

Vasili Mitrokhin and his wife (Private collection)

Vasili Mitrokhin and his wife outside the minibus, with their son Vladimir’s wheelchair visible.

Vasili Mitrokhin with his son Vladimir (Private collection)

Vasili Mitrokhin with his son Vladimir. This picture was taken on The Key during the family’s exfiltration from Lithuania. Vladimir appears to have recovered from events that brought him onto the boat.

Nina Mitrokhin and his mother (Private collection)

Nina Mitrokhin and her mother in Stockholm following their arrival by boat in November 1992.

Melita Norwood (Chris Harris/Shutterstock)

Melita Norwood – the Soviet spy exposed in 1999 thanks to Mitrokhin’s notes.

An East German ID card issued to Vladimir Putin (BStU)

An East German ID card issued to Vladimir Putin when he served with the KGB in East Germany in the 1980s.

A page from Mitrokhin’s notebook (Churchill Archives Centre)

A page from Mitrokhin’s notebook. The notebooks and files are at the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge.

Mitrokhin in London (Private collection)

Mitrokhin in London in 2002 working on his final book Chekisms.

ENDNOTES

Chapter Two

This account is drawn from interviews with more than half a dozen former US officials who were either involved at the time, had spoken to Mitrokhin about what happened or investigated it afterwards. The exact timing and location of the approaches as well as what happened are unclear, partly as records were not kept. At least one of Mitrokhin’s approaches to the Americans was in the Latvian capital, Riga. That led to confusion in early accounts which assumed his approach to the UK had also been in the same city. It is unclear if Mitrokhin made three or four approaches to the Americans in all.

Chapter Three

This account is drawn from those with direct knowledge of events as well as details in The Mitrokhin Archive Volume I. The quote ‘That’s my secret’ are Mitrokhin’s words in The Agent in the Archive, BBC Radio 4, 27 January 2000. Some of the details of the embassy are also drawn from Michael Peart’s ‘A New British Embassy for a New Era’ https://www.britishlithuaniansociety.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/TILTAS_2015-Spring_FINAL.pdf

Chapter Four

Sir Colin McColl’s recollections from an interview with the author for A Century in the Shadows, BBC Radio 4, 2009. See also Gordon Corera, MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service, Orion, 2010. New recruits’ recollections are drawn from Richard Tomlinson, The Big Breach, Cutting Edge Press, Edinburgh 2001. MI6 was avowed and put onto a new legal footing with legislation in 1994.

Chapter Seven

Mitrokhin’s description of where he was born comes from The Agent in the Archive.

Details of Chekism’s foundation and influence are drawn from Julie Fedor, Russia and the Cult of State Security: The Chekist Tradition, from Lenin to Putin, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011, p21.

Some of what happened in Ryazan are from https://gmig.ru/upload/iblock/f59/f599cef077a6c8edd18f3dff63429f21.pdf

A powerful description of the Chekist origins can be found in the chapter on Dzerzhinsky by Konstantin Sheppa in The Soviet Secret Police, eds Simon Wolin and Robert M. Slusser, Methuen, London 1957. Also John J. Dziak, Chekisty, Lexington Books, 1988.

See also Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2007, p189.

Of five members of the Bolshevik St Petersburg Committee in 1908–09, four were Okhrana agents. See Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordiesvky, KGB: The Inside Story, Hodder & Stoughton, 1990, p33.

‘The Cheka must defend the Revolution and conquer the enemy.’ Peter Deriabin and Frank Gibney, The Secret World, Ballantine Books, New York 1987, p65.

Also J.M. Waller (2004), ‘Russia: Death and resurrection of the KGB’, Demokratizatsiya 12(3) 333–55. doi:https://doi.org/10.3200/DEMO.12.3.333-355.

Chapter Eight

‘The Mitrokhin Inquiry Report’ by the Intelligence and Security Committee. June 2000. Hereafter, the ISC Report. It contains an unusually detailed outline of the case, including codenames and authorisations as well as what material was handed over by Mitrokhin and how it was assessed and distributed. https://isc.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/200006_ISC_Mitrokhin_Report.pdf

Chapter Nine

The broad details of Mitrokhin’s life and career are in the two volumes of The Mitrokhin Archive by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin; in Chapter One of Volume I and the Foreword of Volume II. The reference to school posters comes from John Lawrence, Life in Russia, George Allen & Unwin, London 1947, p90 and Martin Sixsmith, The War of Nerves, Wellcome Collection, London, p119. The description of Stalin comes from Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin, pp185–6 and p255. Further details from Chris Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB, p128. The story of Pavlik Morozov is told in Catriona Kelly, Comrade Pavlik, Granta Books, London 2005.

Details on quotas of those from Moscow sent to camps from Yevgenia Albats, The State Within a State, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1994, p81.

‘Millions of people got caught in the millstone.’ Mitrokhin’s description of the quotas comes from an author’s note by him on p37 of his Afghan manuscript https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/WP40-english.pdf

‘The KGB itself would later estimate that perhaps nearly twenty million had been arrested and seven million of those had been shot or died in prison.’ Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB, p140.

Of 139 members of the Central Committee elected in 1934, 110 were shot or imprisoned. Next came the Red Army. In May 1937, eight high ranking generals were accused of planning a coup and within two weeks executed. More than half of Red Army officer corps were purged. Of Yezhov’s top 122 officers in 1937–38, only 21 were still there in 1940.

‘Moscow had grown rapidly to a city of four million in those years.’ The description of Moscow’s changes comes from Allan Monkhouse, Moscow 1911–1933, Victor Gollancz, London 1933.

Details of the Historical and Archival Institute during the war are from https://www.rsuh.ru/news/detail.php?ID=628147&

The details of the move to Almaty are from https://www.tretyakovgallerymagazine.com/articles/2-2015-47/art-evacuation and https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/1042895/Megowan_georgetown_0076D_13461.pdf?sequence=1

‘The city would host one of the first trials of Nazis accused of atrocities, including the use of vans to gas people wholesale.’ Dr Vadim Birstein, Smersh: Stalin’s Secret Weapon, Biteback, London 2011, p249.

‘I was deep in horrors.’ Quote from introduction to The Mitrokhin Archive Volume I and an interview with Christopher Andrew.

Chapter Ten

Christopher Andrew remembers that the intensity of the way Mitrokhin talked about his time in Ukraine, with his mention of ‘the horrors’, was totally out of character with the mild-mannered man he otherwise appeared to be.

On the way in which Soviet prisoners were treated, see Svetlana Alliluyeva, Only One Year, Hutchinson, London 1969, p349 in which Stalin is quoted as saying: ‘In Hitler’s camps there are no Russian prisoners of war, only Russian traitors, and we shall do away with them when the war is over.’ That had been Stalin’s view, one which was particularly shocking given that his own son was just such a prisoner. ‘I have no son,’ he said when asked about him.

The description of his detention comes from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Harvill Press, London 1986. Also Michael Scammell, Solzhenitsyn, Paladin, London 1986, p149.

Descriptions of the efforts to hunt down collaborators also come from V. P. Artemiev and G. S. Burlutsky, ‘Internal Activities of the Soviet Organs of State Security after World War II’, in The Soviet Secret Police.

Specific stories of events in Lviv, Ukraine and Latvia hunting down partisans come from Ilya Dzhirkvelov, Secret Servant: My Life with the KGB and the Soviet Elite, Collins, London 1987, p35.

‘In some parts of Western Ukraine, every local person in the countryside would get five or ten years in a labor camp.’ The Gulag Archipelago, p91.

‘But if needed, someone could be given a few “hot ones” to get them over the line and name accomplices.’ The Secret World, p158.

Over 100,000 over tow years: Robert Hornsby, The Soviet Sixties, Yale University Press, New Haven and London 2023, p13.

Chapter Eleven

‘People who would not normally be thought quite right …’ Secret Servant, p41.

The description of life at the Higher Diplomatic School is from Victor Israelyan, On the Battlefields of the Cold War: A Soviet Ambassador’s Confession, Penn State University Press, 2003.

‘Two interpreters assigned to work on domestic investigations were so shocked,’ Secret Servant, p47.

The story of Stalin’s suggestion of assassinating Tito to the Department of Special Tasks comes from the memoir of its head. Pavel Sudoplatov, Special Tasks, Little Brown and Company, London 1994, pp335–8.

Mirokhin’s work on Yugoslavia against dissenters comes from the two Mitrokhin volumes and also The Agent in the Archive.

Chapter Thirteen

Mitrokhin’s time in Israel is one of the most mysterious. He spoke little of it and seemed particularly unwilling to provide details. The suggestion in a number of places is that his cover position linked to the Orthodox Church was thought distasteful to him. Others believe that this is where Mitrokhin’s career went wrong and that something particularly bad happened. But he continued to be posted abroad on short-term assignments after Israel so it seems less likely as the site of the final failure.

Details of the KGB in Israel come from Shlomo Shpiro (2011), ‘KGB Human Intelligence Operations in Israel 1948–73’, Intelligence and National Security, 26:6, pp864–85, DOI: 10.1080/02684527.2011.619801 and an interview with Shlomo Shpiro.

‘The Near and Middle East Department of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate began checking lists of Soviet Jews emigrating …’ Secret Servant, pp246–7.

The use of priests as cover is referenced by Shlomo Shpiro and also Vladimir Kuzichkin, Inside the KGB, Andre Deutsch, London 1990, p75.

The reference to the painful nature of his cover position is in Christopher Andrew, The Mitrokhin Archive Volume II: Pt 2, Penguin Books Ltd, Kindle Edition, p.xxvii.

Chapter Fourteen

Joshua Rubenstein, The Last Days of Stalin, Yale University Press, London 2017 provides an excellent account of events in this period.

Mitrokhin himself may not have been immune to anti-semitism. FBI agent John Whiteside recalls Mitrokhin making comments about Jews and talking about Jewish books and wondered if they were linked to his time in Israel.

See also John W. Whiteside III, Fool’s Mate: A True Story of Espionage at the National Security Agency, Kindle Edition, p177.

‘Soon one of the only ones left was a man employed by the KGB’s eavesdropping service since they needed a Hebrew speaker.’ Secret Servant, p256.

‘The tapes revealed how his rivals Bulganin, Khrushchev and others would drink themselves into a state and hurl insults at Stalin and Beria.’ Secret Servant, p141.

‘One top ballerina was married to a Lt General in the KGB, an ally of Beria …’ The Secret World, p203.

‘I regarded Stalin’s death as a great event for the Russian nation …’ Mitrokhin’s words in The Agent in the Archive.

Chapter Fifteen

Beria’s fall led to a loss of status for the Chekists for a while and the creation of the KGB out of the larger Committee of Information which preceded it.

See the account of the Twentieth Congress from Kathleen E. Smith, Moscow 1956, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2017 and War of Nerves, p165.

‘Aware of their role in delivering the “abuses” now being condemned,’ Secret Servant, p99.

‘On trains people would clandestinely sell homemade calendars with a picture of Stalin on each page …’ David K. Shipler, Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams, MacDonald and Co, London and Sydney 1984, p313.

‘Even among the KGB elite and its agents abroad there was confusion …’ Jonathan Haslam, Near and Distant Neighbours, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2015, p180.

Chapter Sixteen

Mitrokhin’s arrival and what was known about him are listed in a file at the National Archives of Australia – NAA: A6119, 6282.

The details of events in Melbourne are drawn from Harry Blutstein, Cold War Olympics, McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition, p330 and an interview with Harry Blutstein.

On ASIO and the Petrovs, see David Horner, The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO, Allen & Unwin, Sydney 2014, pp455–8 and The Mitrokhin Archive Volume II: Pt 2, ppxxvii–xxviii.

Mitchell Toy, ‘When the Cold War came to Melbourne’, Herald Sun, 30 March 2022 and https://www.history.com/news/blood-in-the-water-1956-olympic-water-polo-hungary-ussr

Accounts from a Soviet player at http://www.waterpolonline.ru/opinions/?id=1173 and Призер Олимпийских игр Георгий Лезин: «Венгры …Спорт день за днемhttps://www.sportsdaily.ru › articles

Harry Blutstein believes it was Mitrokhin who was present at the pool and encouraging confrontation although the evidence is not definitive. A former senior Indian intelligence officer, B. Raman, also says Mitrokhin was reprimanded for unsatisfactory performance at Melbourne and demoted. B. Raman, The Mitrokhin Mystery, Rediff.com, 28 September 2005. One other source believes something had also gone wrong earlier when Mitrokhin accompanied a delegation to Pakistan.

Chapter Seventeen

Some accounts suggest there was another operational assignment after Melbourne which went wrong leading to the archives, but there would have been little time for this. Others have suggested it was a mistake in Israel which led to his banishment, but again here the timing is not quite right since it comes immediately after Melbourne.

Reference to him being part of the awkward squad comes from the foreword in The Mitrokhin Archive Volume II.

‘I imagined that the bosses decided that I had exhausted my potential in the field …’ and ‘Because it was working in the archive that opened my eyes …’ Mitrokhin’s words in The Agent in the Archive.

Chapter Nineteen

Details of the reception of the files and the process of informing ministers come from the ISC Report into Mitrokhin as well as other sources with knowledge of the operation.

There remain some questions about whether Aldrich Ames was indeed the source who blew Gordievsky. This is because the date of when he said he handed over information to the KGB about Gordievsky comes after Gordievsky’s recall to Moscow. But the idea that he verbally suggested he might be working for the British remains a possibility. For more on this case, see MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service.

Chapter Twenty

This account is drawn from interviews with multiple CIA and FBI officers involved at the time including Paul Redmond, Milt Bearden and Jim Olson. Also Paul Redmond’s review of Mitrokhin’s book in the CIA’s in-house journal and James M. Olson, To Catch a Spy, Georgetown University Press, 2019. Some reckon the US offer was $1 million each from the FBI and CIA but others say it was one million total.

Chapter Twenty-One

Details of life in Russia from Roy Medvedev, Post Soviet Russia, Columbia University Press, 2000, p20 and recollections of those living there at the time.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Details drawn from private accounts of the operation, ISC Report and other sources.

‘I considered this my duty …’ Mitrokhin speaking in The Spying Game, BBC, 19 September 1999.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The FCD archives in 1956 were known as the Operational Records Department. They then became the 12th and later the 15th department of the FCD.

‘Of course I was very disappointed …’ Mitrokhin’s words in The Spying Game.

Some said this was after some secret papers had once blown out, others said it was to prevent people jumping. Inside the KGB, p77 and p41.

‘… the smell of the floor polish along the mazy corridors, the green shades on the lamps …’ Karl Schlögel, The Soviet Century, Princeton University Press, 2023, pp807–12.

‘… a clerk who was stood behind a hatch …’ Oleg Gordievsky, ‘A victory for British gumption’, The Spectator, 9 October 1999.

‘Mitrokhin worked within a small unit called the File Reception Section who would be sent this note …’ John Doe testimony at Trofimoff Trial, Tampa, Florida, 18 June 2001. John Doe was the alias of the SIS analyst who worked with Mitrokhin after his arrival in the UK. His testimony contains the best account of Mitrokhin’s work in the archives and how he copied files.

When it came to normal files, those considered no longer needed were destroyed after ten years, operational files after twenty years. But those considered important were supposed to be kept for longer.

‘Those who did recall him remember him as a “bore” and a “pedant”, a stickler for making sure the right signature had been obtained to see a file.’ Stanislav Lekarev’s account Синдром змея 13 February 2007, at https://flb.ru/

The memo detailing the investigation was read in secrecy at a Politburo meeting, signed by everyone and then consigned to a top secret ‘Special File’, in Young Stalin, p245.

Stalin’s own Okhrana file was long a source of speculation. Could he, as some have suggested, been an agent when he was a revolutionary? It was true he had cultivated his own contacts among the Tsarist spooks, partly to get tip-offs to stay one step ahead of arrest but also to feed the names of his rivals so they could be eliminated. But there was never ever proof that he had been more than one of their many targets.

‘Mitrokhin’s best guess was that whoever had carried out the orders was most likely killed in order to cover up what had happened and just in case they read what was inside.’ The Mitrokhin Archive Volume I, p35.

The same file would then explain that the wrong Ivanov had been shot but now the right one had been killed so the file could be closed. Gregory Feifer and Victor Cherkashin, Spy Handler, Basic Books, 2004, p53.

‘The Chekists can look the Party and the Soviet people in the eye with a clear conscience, Shelepin promised.’ The Mitrokhin Archive Volume I, p6. Shelepin is said to have been helpful to Mitrokhin personally so Mitrokhin felt he owed him a debt and hoped his arrival might be a sign of an opening up.

‘Shelepin began to reshape the image of the KGB.’ Russia and the Cult of State Security: The Chekist Tradition, from Lenin to Putin, p48.

‘Scraps of paper with tiny handwriting would be rolled up and squeezed into a champagne bottle which he buried in his garden.’ Michael Scammell, The Gulag Archipelago and Solzhenitsyn, Paladin, London 1986, p336.

‘Two years passed before a fresh attack by Khrushchev on Stalin’s cult of personality offered an opening and an anonymous copy of the manuscript turned up at the offices of a journal.’ Natalia Solzhenitsyn’s foreword to the 50th Anniversary edition of The Gulag Archipelago, Vintage, London 2023.

Chapter Twenty-Five

There were 1,500 KGB operatives in East Germany at the time as a whole, more than half from the FCD according to an account in Aleksei Myagkov, Inside the KGB, Arlington House Publishers, New Rochelle, New York 1977. Further details from KGB, p465 and The Mitrokhin Archive.

‘If he had ventured into one room in September of 1968 …’ Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5, Allen Lane, London 2009, p578. Prime was run not by the First Chief Directorate but the Third due to the location of his recruitment.

‘Just after Mitrokhin left a young East German who had just started as a college professor was taken into one of those rooms.’ Jack Barsky, Deep Undercover, Kindle Edition, 2017, p89 and interview with Jack Barsky, May 2023.

‘There was a joke in Russia about a man who goes to a clinic …’ Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams, p116.

‘But in East Germany, he and Nina’s lives were becoming increasingly shaped by their only child.’ Information from those who knew Mitrokhin. One suggested Nina may not have accompanied him to East Germany for the posting. One of the CIA’s most important agents of the Cold War, a GRU officer Polyakov was believed by the KGB to have been recruited by the Americans after he had asked for permission while posted in New York to get treatment for his son at a hospital. It had been denied and the boy had died soon after. As a result he was thought to have approached an American military contact and became a highly effective agent for years, rising up to be a Major General. This is the version of the story from former KGB officer Victor Cherkashin in Spy Handler, p114.

‘One KGB officer from the department for “Special Tasks”, the team responsible for sabotage and assassination, returned to Karlshorst and implied to Mitrokhin …’ Note by Mitrokhin on p90 of his Afghan Manuscript – https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/WP40-english.pdf and The Mitrokhin Archive, pp7–9.

‘Codenamed PROGRESS, these operations were an attempt to infiltrate and discredit the reform movement.’ The Mitrokhin Archive Volume I, p326.

Regarding jokes and humour, see Jonathan Waterlow, It’s Only a Joke, Comrade! CreateSpace, Oxford 2018.

‘Blink and you would have missed it.’ This account is from Robert Hornsby, The Soviet Sixties, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2023, p387 and David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb, Viking, London 1993, p19.

‘The Chronicle explained how relatives …’ Copies of the Chronicle are available online and make for powerful reading – https://chronicle-of-current-events.com/2017/02/14/1-1-the-trial-of-galanskov-ginzburg-dobrovolsky-and-lashkova-2/

‘I was a loner,’ he would recall, ‘but I now knew that I was not alone.’ Quoted in The Mitrokhin Archive Volume II: Pt 2, pxxix.

‘Only the tip of the monster is visible as it begins to emerge from the gloom.’ Mitrokhin’s words in the introduction to Vasili Mitrokhin, Chekisms, Yurasov Press, 2008.

Interlude – The Dragon Rears its Head

The Mitrokhin Archive, p8.

Soviet Theatre, eds Laurence Senelick and Sergei Ostrovsky, Yale University Press, New Haven and London 2014, p546.

Seth Wilson, Fairy Tale or Subversion: Evgeny Shvarts’s The Dragon as anti-Stalinist Theatre for Youth, Theatre Symposium (Vol. 23), The University of Alabama Press, 2015.

To understand modern autocrats, read ‘Soviet children’s literature’, The Economist, 23 February 2022; and https://www.thebulwark.com/the-dragon-russias-satirical-parable-of-autocracy-and-the-human-spirit/. The text of the play is taken from https://www.academia.edu/11228426/The_Dragon_by_Eugene_Schwartz

The account of Putin is drawn from Putin’s own recollections in Vladimir Putin, First Person, Hutchinson, London 2000, pp22–3; Philip Short, Putin, Bodley Head, London 2002, p51; and Andrew Jack, Inside Putin’s Russia, Granta, London 2004, pp49–52.

He would sing ‘Where does the Motherland begin’ with returning illegals in 2010. Gordon Corera, Russians Among Us, Collins, London 2020, chap 23.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The strange blue haze is referred to in Hedrick Smith, The Russians, Times Books, 1976, pp420–2.

‘What was called the nomenklatura numbered as many as a million people.’ The Soviet Sixties, p139.

‘The aim of the nomenklatura is to keep power for the sake of power …’ Mitrokhin’s note on p146 of ‘The KGB in Afghanistan’ by the Wilson Center in July 2002 https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/WP40-english.pdf

‘KGB men had their own privileges but even they would talk between themselves of Brezhnev with disdain.’ Inside the KGB, p100.

‘On Sundays, right across from the Lubyanka itself you could buy a scarce Dostoyevsky.’ Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams, p225.

‘Senior Generals had big black limousines to bring them to the door.’ Description drawn from Oleg Kalugin, Spymaster, Basic Books, New York 2009, p272; and Pete Earley, Comrade J, Berkley Books, New York 2007, p61 and p156; and Spy Handler; and KGB, p444.

‘Mitrokhin would arrive at the first of three checkpoints and show his pass to get in.’ KGB, p445 and Victor Sheymov, Tower of Secrets, Cyber Books Publishing, Kindle Edition, p144.

‘New officers of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB would in the 1980s still lay flowers.’ KGB, p23.

Oleg Gordievsky, ‘He was already a typical archivist: A victory for British gumption’, The Spectator, 9 October 1999.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The 300,000 files figure comes from The Mitrokhin Archive Volume I. Mitrokhin was involved in the transfer from 1972 to 1982. He continued to copy files in the two years after this process was finished and before he retired.

Details of how he took notes comes from interviews with a number of those who worked with Mitrokhin and the John Doe testimony at the Trofimoff trial.

‘On another occasion, a man was found drunk and asleep on a window sill.’ Inside the KGB, p110. More on KGB security in Sergei Kostin and Eric Raynaud, Farewell: The Greatest Spy Story of the Twentieth Century, Amazon Encore, Kindle Edition, pp243–4.

‘His work was a ‘massive filtering exercise.’ https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/mitrokin-archive-note-sources

Chapter Twenty-Nine

‘I could not believe such evil.’ Quoted in Michael Binyon, ‘You do not know how deeply the KGB penetrated into the lives of every English person. It’s our task to tell what happened’, The Times, 13 September 1999.

‘Imagine a student simply …’ The example of the student is from Inside the KGB, p35.

Mitrokhin would read story after story recounting this filth: https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/kompromats-folder-34-chekist-anthology.

For Mitrokhin, there was a profound anger: Mitrokhin’s introduction in his KGB Lexicon, Routledge, London 2002.

There was one bible verse he would quote: Mitrokhin refers to this in the introduction to his KGB Lexicon. It is from Jeremiah 12.1, Edition of Russian Bible Society, Moscow 1997, p741.

The Cheka touched everything, be it great or small: Mitrokhin’s introduction to Chekisms.

Mitrokhin wanted the names of those who had been informers to be made public: Both stories including personal details are featured in Mitrokhin’s Chekisms.

As he would write: ‘Who is without sin and fault?’: Mitrokhin in Chekisms which had the clearest explanation of his thinking on this.

The story inside the file he was shown had Mitrokhin spellbound and stayed with him: The Agent in the Archive details the way in which Mitrokhin learnt of the file, since it was one he would not normally have seen.

Also see Chekisms, chap 21.

These things must not be hidden: Michael Binyon, ‘You do not know how deeply the KGB penetrated into the lives of every English person. It’s our task to tell what happened’, The Times, 13 September 1999.

Chapter Thirty

Mitrokhin read her file carefully: https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/case-dissident-velikanova-folder-38-chekist-anthology and https://chronicle-of-current-events.com/2016/02/03/58-1-the-trial-of-tatyana-velikanova/

Mitrokhin did not have direct access to the files of the 2nd and 5th Directorate which dealt with domestic dissidents but saw considerable material because of the role of the First Chief Directorate in looking for contacts that dissidents had abroad.

Like the school music teacher: https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/kgb-directorate-ryazan-oblast-folder-17-chekist-anthology

‘Notes to Practicing Psychiatry for Political Purposes. Folder 28.’ The Chekist Anthology, The Wilson Center, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/practicing-psychiatry-political-purposes-folder-28-chekist-anthology.

The Mitrokhin Archive Volume II: Pt 2, ppxxviii–xxix.

One of the saddest stories about writers: https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/novel-entitled-where-truth-folder-18-chekist-anthology

The KGB had been working to place agents close: The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West, pp406–7.

perhaps the most influential and important writer of the twentieth century: This was David Remnick’s judgement of a man whom he met and interviewed. ‘Solzhenitsyn is the dominant writer of this century. Who else compares? Orwell? Koestler? And yet when his name comes up now it is more often than not as a freak, a monarchist, an anti-Semite, a crank, a has-been, and not as a hero.’ See David Remnick, ‘Alexander Solzhenitsyn Returns from Exile’, The New Yorker, 6 February 1994. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1994/02/14/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-the-exile-returns.

Chapter Thirty-One

Elizaveta Voronyanskaya’s story is told in Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Invisible Allies, Harvill Press, London 1997, chap 5. Also Translator’s Notes at the end of The Gulag Archipelago and Solzhenitsyn, pp815–17. Reference to the Hiding Place is in Natalia Solzhenitsyn’s foreword to the 50th Anniversary edition of The Gulag Archipelago.

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds: The Gulag Archipelago, p168.

I thought of myself as the chronicler of the Archipelago: ibid, p451.

And so he decided he had no alternative other than to get it out on his terms as fast as he could: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1994/02/14/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-the-exile-returns.

But he also wondered if he might be killed and martyred: The Gulag Archipelago and Solzhenitsyn, p924.

The day after he was sent abroad, an order was issued to all public libraries to remove all of his works: ibid, p889.

He explained he wanted to purge Russia of Marxism to make it more Russian rather than make it more Western: The Russians, p506.

Mitrokhin’s First Chief Directorate along with the Fifth Directorate even organised a showing of a video of the Harvard commencement address: The Mitrokhin Archive, pp417–18.

The first three of these listed 20 different operations: https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/solzhenitsyn-codenamed-pauk-spider-folder-40-chekist-anthology

These ideas, a form of Russian nationalism, were deeply rooted: The Russians, p521. Through the Cold War, nationalism of the Republics other than Russia had to be monitored and controlled by the KGB. This was particularly the case in Ukraine. The KGB focused particularly on students as universities were seen as a breeding ground. In one year from 1967 to 1968, the KGB uncovered 25 Lithuanian nationalist groups. But Ukraine was always seen as the greatest problem.

https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/nationalism-case-folder-57-chekist-anthology

‘The KGB of the Ukrainian SSR.’ Annual review by V.V. Fedorchuk of counter-intelligence operations in 1970. Folder 16, The Chekist Anthology, Wilson Center.

In some quarters, there was almost a semi-religious worship of the motherland: The Russians, p371.

So how come we lead such a pathetic existence compared to people in the West?: The Agent in the Archive.

In Mitrokhin’s mind, the alien invaders had come to subjugate the Russian soul as well as its people and its wealth: Mitrokhin’s introduction to Chekisms. A more assertive Russian nationalism often displayed elements of anti-semitism since it was said to be Jewish intellectuals who had brought in the alien tenets of Marxism-Leninism. There is some evidence of this kind of anti-semitism with Mitrokhin. He noted in his book Chekisms how many leaders of the security agencies were Jewish. He said he made this point as a matter of fact rather than prejudice. But FBI agent John Whiteside III also recalls Mitrokhin at one point beginning to rant about Jews.

It too was alien, another view which had echoes in Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago and Solzhenitsyn, p992. He returned to Russia in the mid-1990s, recounted in a remarkable BBC documentary called The Homecoming. He found a country in decay and in his later years, he would come to see Putin as a restorer of Russian greatness https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/books/04solzhenitsyn.html

But in Mitrokhin’s mind, Vladimir was no hero but a treacherous, cruel man: This is all contained in a fascinating footnote in Mitrokhin’s preface to Chekisms – the footnote seems to contain the clearest expression of his religious and personal views. Further personal views on religion are expressed in notes Mitrokhin made on a file on the KGB’s operation against the church. https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/church-gates-folder-1-chekist-anthology

Mitrokhin saw how the KGB had clamped down hard on other branches of Christianity: Chekisms, chap 53.

‘A whirlpool of filth,’ is how he described what he saw: Mitrokhin Archive Volume I, p649.

‘You’ve only to show a whip to a beaten dog,’ Solzhenitsyn had written: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Penguin, London 1963, p53.

Interlude – A New Chekist

The account is drawn from the interviews with Putin in First Person, pp40–1 and p55.

The exact contours of Putin’s KGB career and his roles in different posts are a little mysterious. It is not entirely clear if Putin formally joined the FCD or rather was only seconded to it. Inside Putin’s Russia, p60 and Philip Short, Putin.

The details of the Rybakov case are from https://theins.ru/en/politics/258056 and https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/23/putin-kgb-dissident-soviet-artists/

Chapter Thirty-Two

‘There was great danger involved of course. But the danger was somehow addictive …’ The Spying Game, BBC.

‘When you are constantly involved in something risky, it is like a smoker.’ Mitrokhin speaking on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

‘One time he arrived at his dacha to find a stranger hiding in the attic.’ The Mitrokhin Archive Volume I.

‘footsloggers’, the slang for surveillance operatives. They were also known as the toptuny in Chekist jargon – from the word ‘to stamp’ – named this way as they would have to stamp their feet to fight the cold when they stood on street corners. The State Within a State, p50.

‘On this occasion he had been going into the shop belonging to the Dynamo Sports Club, the KGB’s team.’ The introduction to The Mitrokhin Archive has one version of this story. In his interview for BBC’s The Spying Game Mitrokhin recalls it slightly differently: ‘one day after work I was carrying my notes on me. And on the way home I decided to go into a sport-shop. A man and a child were in there – they were speaking English choosing some shoes. I became very tense as I knew all foreigners were kept under surveillance. On my way home, I felt I was being followed. As I got near my apartment block, I noticed two men who passed right in front of me. When I got up to my flat on the ninth floor, I was overcome with fear. Later I spoke with a KGB colleague who told me that those involved in sensitive work were often followed.’

‘In 1962 a Soviet trawler had picked up a canister off the east coast of the US.’ The story is told in Chekisms, Chapter 32. There were other cases. https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/tracking-down-writers-anonymous-letters-and-leaflets-1957-74-folder-14-chekist-anthology

Another report he saw related to anonymous handwritten letters in 1960 which caricatured senior officials and which were delivered to foreign embassies as well as institutions in Moscow. They were placed in letter boxes around the city. The KGB looked at the text, envelopes and paper and decided the author was familiar with literature, music and church language – they were clearly well-educated. Fingerprints were obtained and it was established one letter box was used more than others. The KGB lay in wait in a camouflaged hiding place. In February 1961, a surveillance team identified a suspect. He was invited to a medical inspection in which another KGB undercover officer posed as a doctor to get his fingerprints. They matched and he was brought in. He confessed to producing a hundred anti-Soviet documents. This story is detailed in the Wilson Center’s archive of Mitrokhin’s Chekism notes – https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/mrakobes-obscurantist-case-1960-61-folder-15-chekist-anthology

‘Absolutely not. She had no idea. I never told her. She wasn’t particularly interested.’ Mitrokhin’s quotes are from his interview in The Agent in the Archive.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Richard Dearlove, ‘Is the age of the Secret Service over?’ The Critic, 11 October 2023.

Other details drawn from the ISC Report and the government response to the report, the BBC series The Spying Game and from David Rose who was the journalist who tracked down and confronted Melita Norwood. Also David Burke, The Spy Who Came In from the Co-op, Boydell Press, 2018, and Christopher Andrew, MI5: The Authorised History, Penguin, London 2009.

Then in 1965, a new source: This source seems to have been VENONA – messages from Soviet intelligence were being slowly and painstakingly decrypted by a tiny group of spies in the US and UK. One had talked about TINA who had provided atomic secrets. For more on Norwood, see the ISC Report and Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5, Allen Lane, London 2009, pp580–1.

Chapter Thirty-Four

The Canadians received theirs along with the Americans in July. The Australians had to wait until September 1992, according to the ISC Report.

Details of Paul Redmond’s group and work on the leads is from Paul J. Redmond (2023), ‘The Ghost of Angleton’, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, DOI: 10.1080/08850607.2023.2167380

Mitrokhin has some interesting details on the arms caches in his p89 footnote of his Afghanistan volume. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/WP40-english.pdf

‘There were also quirky stories like a sixteen year old American High School student.’ The Mitrokhin Archive, p542.

‘The CIA described it as “the biggest CI bonanza of the postwar period.”’ ISC Report.

‘It was swell. It was just great.’ John Martin, ‘KGB Archivist Defects With Motherlode of Documents’, ABC News Nightline, 9 September 1999 and CBS’s 60 Minutes.

‘At that moment, George Trofimoff was planning a retirement.’ Andy J. Byers, The Imperfect Spy, Vandamere Press, St Petersburg, Florida 2005 and evidence from the trial of Trofimoff in Tampa in June 2001.

‘But the majority of names in Mitrokhin’s volume were already known in some way to the FBI.’ Former FBI agent John Whiteside estimates that up to 95% of the 200 cases of possible agents were already known to the FBI in some way.

Chapter Thirty-Five

One of the reasons cited was the claim: Paul J. Redmond (2023), ‘The Ghost of Angleton’, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, DOI: 10.1080/08850607.2023.2167380

Australia received its Mitrokhin leads in September: Traitor: Australia’s greatest untold spy story, ABC Four Corners, 19 June 2023 and Sally Neighbour and Margot O’Neill, The Traitor, ABC Four Corners, 20 June 2023. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-19/russia-spy-mole-in-asio-sold-cold-war-intelligence-four-corners/102469652 and ‘Red Faces over KGB mole hunt’ by Cameron Stewart, The Australian, 10 February 2024.

Chapter Thirty-Six

One problem was that even with someone who had the level of access enjoyed by Mitrokhin: The Mitrokhin Archive, p559.

To take one example, there was no direct reference anywhere to Geoffrey Prime: ibid, p869. p559.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Description of conditions from Roy Medvedev, Post Soviet Russia, Columbia University Press, 2000, pp20–30 and Arkady Ostrovsky, The Invention of Russia, Atlantic Books, London 2018. In terms of the trip to China, one person believes Mitrokhin was not with his son for most of the time he was in China which later led to a sense of guilt.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

There was a second, more remote, family dacha near Penza where he would work in the summers, dress like a peasant and carrying the notes in a sack. The Mitrokhin Archive Volume I.

‘Her name was Erika.’ This is how his close collaborator in MI6 describes Mitrokhin’s relationship with Erika. John Doe testimony at Trofimoff. Also information from Barbara Cohan who talked about this process with Mitrokhin in order to establish its evidential basis in the Lipka trial. Also Ronen Bergman, ‘The KGB’s Middle East Files’, 29 October 2016, https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4869986,00.html

‘I made the ribbons out of old ribbons.’ Mitrokhin in the BBC’s The Spying Game.

‘But the first home for Mitrokhin’s notes would be a milk churn.’ The Secret World, p712.

Interlude – The Devil Comes to Moscow

One of those who received a ticket was David Shipley, the New York Times correspondent, who provides an account of the evening in his book Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams, pp382–4.

The KGB’s account of the opening was noted down by Mitrokhin and is reproduced in his book Chekisms, chap 60, p364.

Chapter Forty

producing a staggering three million pieces of paper: Yuri Shvets, Washington Station, Simon & Schuster Ltd, New York 1984, p25.

Details of the move from the Lubyanka from Oleg Gordievsky, Next Step Execution, Macmillan, London 1995, Victor Sheymov, Tower of Secrets, and KGB, p533. Also John Doe testimony at Trofimoff trial. Oleg Tsarev provides a description of the archives and cabinets as did Alexander Vassiliev.

Chapter Forty-One

Interview with Jack Barsky, May 2023. Deep Undercover by Jack Barsky, Tyndale House Publishers, London, 2018.

Chapter Forty-Two

This story is drawn from Fool’s Mate: A True Story of Espionage at the National Security Agency and an author interview with John Whiteside in 2023. Also The Mitrokhin Archive, pp23–4 and 267–8.

And in London, the realisation that Mitrokhin’s name might come out would spur the desire to control how and when his archive was going to be made public. ISC Report, p44.

Chapter Forty-Three

‘Mitrokhin was congratulated on his work transferring the archives, thanking him for his “irreproachable service to the state security authorities”.’ Christoper Andrew speaking on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

For instance, see the Archive 2/14/1 p162 on the church.

‘I wrote it in a hurry, and as a result certain notes which I wrote to accompany my account took on an emotional tone, creating a rather unbalanced narrative’: https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/mitrokin-archive-note-sources.

Details of Afghanistan from The Mitrokhin Archive, p15.

Mitrokhin’s letter to Christian F. Ostermann, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/WP40-english.pdf. He would complete his Afghan volume in 1987, Iran and South Asia in 1988.

Information from Christian F. Ostermann and Wilson Center notes on their published version of the Afghanistan chapter.

Chapter Forty-Four

the Chekists are continuing to press agents to take illegal actions: Mitrokhin’s author’s note, p38 of the Afghan manuscript at https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/WP40-english.pdf

He had noted down KGB Order 00130: Chekisms, chap 43.

Details of his thoughts of possible escape routes are from The Times Obituary of Mitrokhin and The Mitrokhin Archive, p16.

Chapter Forty-Five

This account is from First Person, pp75–7 and Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy, Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, Brookings Institution Press, Washington DC 2015, p182.

Chapter Forty-Six

‘The force binding the troika had been broken,’ Mitrokhin believed: Mitrokhin’s comments in his introduction to KGB Lexicon, pxxiii.

Memorial was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but only after it was shut down in December 2021 by Putin’s authorities following years of growing pressure on its work. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59853010 p.235, Lenin’s Tomb, p345.

Regarding the fate of the files, see Amy Knight, ‘The Fate of the KGB Archives’, Slavic Review, Volume 52, Issue 3, Fall 1993, pp582–86 and Amy Knight, Spies without Cloaks, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1996 and Yevgenia Albats, The State Within a State. Also KGB, p642.

Details of Miss KGB from, Lenin’s Tomb, p4.

The public reaction to the tanks and the coup are from Adam Curtis, Trauma Zone, BBC iPlayer, Episode 3.

Officers in Lubyanka went into the archives in the cellars and shoved files: The State Within a State, p295.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Details of the political authorisation come from the ISC Report. The plan to keep his departure secret from the authorities seems to have worked. The Secret World, p713. The anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917 is marked on 7 November due to the different calendars in Russia and the West.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Details of the Soviet presence in the country come in ‘Interesting times for a defence attache’ by David Holliday, Journal of the British-Lithuanian Society, Spring 2015 https://www.britishlithuaniansociety.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/TILTAS_2015-Spring_FINAL.pdf

The spy in Riga was Boris Karpichkov – see https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/27/im-a-dead-man-walking-ex-russian-spy-says-defectors-in-uk-are-at-risk. p.255, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1992/11/07/Thousands-mark-75th-anniversary-of-Bolshevik-revolution/1973721112400/

Mitrokhin’s quotes about his wife are from his interview in The Agent in the Archive.

Details on the Ninth Fort from https://www.jewish-heritage-lithuania.org/holocaust/the-9th-fort-in-kaunas/

Chapter Fifty

Mitrokhin’s new codename of JESSANT is referred to in the ISC Report.

Chapter Fifty-One

Information on the Lipka trial from Interviews with Barbara Cohan and John Whiteside III. Also Fool’s Mate: A True Story of Espionage at the National Security Agency, pp156–7 and 168–9; and The Sword and the Shield.

Details of sharing with other countries from officials and others sources: ISC Report notes that in November 1996 this was discussed by the Home Secretary and the head of MI5 following press reports on 31 October. By 1996, information had been shared with twelve other countries. The Mitrokhin Archive, p609. Germany was reported to have received leads on fifty new cases and begun twelve investigations. By 1996, the information would be shared with twelve countries. The Mitrokhin Archive, p22. Ronen Bergman, ‘The KGB’s Middle East Files: Agents in positions of power’, 28 October 2016, https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4870004,00.html

Details about the leaks and the Russian response are from The Mitrokhin Archive Volume I introduction.

Christopher Andrew’s visit to MI6 is referred to in The Mitrokhin Archive Volume I introduction pxxiii. Further information is in the ISC report p20 and ‘Looking behind the KGB façade’, a talk by Christoper Andrew at the CIA auditorium 18 April 2000, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0006122440.pdf

Information about the Melita Norwood case from the ISC Report and David Rose.

Details of FBI communications from an FBI FOIA release of a note to field offices dates 11/10/1999 from the National Security division. Also https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1999-10-28/html/CREC-1999-10-28-pt1-PgH11137-2.htm and interview with former FBI agents.

‘They are still there’: Michael Binyon, ‘You do not know how deeply the KGB penetrated into the lives of every English person. It’s our task to tell what happened’, The Times, 13 September 1999.

Nina died on 21 October 1999, according to private information from a friend of hers. Further details of Mitrohin’s mental state and views in this chapter come from a number of people who knew him at this time.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Kevin Riehle, ‘Post-KGB Lives: Is There Such a Thing as a Former Chekist?’ International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Volume 36, Number 2, Summer 2023.

‘We will pursue them everywhere,’ he said: Arkady Ostrovsky, The Invention of Russia, Atlantic Books, London 2018, p256–60.

A hybrid beast had been born: Russia and the Cult of State Security: The Chekist Tradition, from Lenin to Putin. By Way of Deception, pp228–30 and p160. Robert Service, Kremlin Winter, Picador, London 2019, p241 and Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, The New Nobility, Public Affairs, Kindle Edition, 2010, p5.

Russia … single, uninterrupted history spanning over a thousand years: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-putin-wont-be-marking-the-hundredth-anniversary-of-the-bolshevik-revolution. One of those who would come to appreciate Putin’s Russian nationalism was the elderly Solzhenitsyn who had returned to his homeland.

Chapter Fifty-Three

Mitrokhin would decline to appear in the 2001 Trofimoff trial citing age, health, family and, as his MI6 translator who appeared in his place put it, ‘he feels he hasn’t got very many more years to complete his task of exposing the KGB as a whole’. John Doe Testimony and interview with former FBI agent John Whiteside.

Mitrokhin’s quotes come from his introduction to Chekisms and KGB Lexicon apart from ‘I don’t think anyone realises how much there is still to do’, which are from The Agent in the Archive.

In September 2023, a new statue of Iron Feliks was unveiled outside Yasenevo. ‘His winged words that only a person with a cold head, a warm heart and clean hands can become a security officer have become a significant moral guideline for several generations of employees of the security agencies of our country,’ the head of the SVR said. There was even occasional talk of the old statue being restored to its position outside the Lubyanka. Guy Faulconbridge, ‘Iron Felix rises again over Russia’s spy service in Moscow’, Reuters, 11 September 2023, and https://ria.ru/20230911/pamyatnik-1895498749.html.

Mitrokhin’s final work was the anthology called Chekisms and would be published after his death thanks to the work of his son. Vladimir would spend the final years before he died in 2014 working to secure the legacy of his father’s archive. He would deposit thirty-three boxes of files at Churchill College, Cambridge, between 2012 and 2013, where it can now be viewed, although some parts remain redacted.

INDEX

The page numbers in this index relate to the printed version of this book; they do not match the pages of your eBook. You can use your eBook reader’s search tool to find a specific word or passage.

Active Measures programme, US 180

Afghanistan 223–7

Albats, Yevgenia 230

Almaty 44

Ames, Aldrich 185, 191

Amin, Hafizullah 224–5

Andrew, Prof Christopher, The Mitrokhin Archive 272–3, 279, 283, 285

Andropov, Yuri

ambassador to Hungary 112

KGB head 119, 150, 152, 182, 209, 224–5

propaganda and 126, 281

Angleton, James Jesus 182

ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) 68, 187

atomic spies 82, 176–7, 212

Australia 67–70, 186–7

Barsky, Jack (DIETER) 116, 215–17

Bearden, Milt 8–9, 87, 90

Beria, Lavrentiy 42, 60–2, 68, 108, 110

Berlin Wall 233–4

Big House, Leningrad 125, 155

black market 24, 135, 230, 254

Bloch, Felix 180–1

Bolsheviks 31–2, 41, 150, 163

Braithwaite, Rodric 96, 239

Brezhnev, Leonid 112, 134, 152

Britain see UK

British Embassies

Berlin 15

Moscow 96, 190

Vilnius 11–15, 27–8, 35–7, 53–4, 75–9, 99–102, 197–8, 249

Brzezinski, Zbigniew 180

Bulgakov, Mikhail, The Master and Margarita 205–10, 224, 230

Bulganin, Nikolai 61

Caine, Michael 89

Cambridge spy ring 42, 82, 212–13, 276

Canada 180

Carter, Jimmy 180

Casino Royale (Fleming) 89

Catherine the Great 162

Century House, London (‘Russia House’) 9, 15, 17–20, 81, 100, 243

Cheka (‘All-Russian Extraordinary Committee to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage’) 50–1, 108–10

in Afghanistan 224

Committee of Information 51

First Chief Directorate 74

hardliners 64, 94

Higher Diplomatic School 49, 50

Jews and 60

murders by 42

Special Tasks Group 42, 51

Chekism 31–4, 45–8, 61–2, 125–6, 279–82

becoming a Chekist 39–44, 165–6

character of 36–7, 142, 143–6

Chekists’ day 280, 281

dissolution of Soviet Union 239–40

name-changing 94

hardliners 64

insecurity 150

mythology 103, 105, 108, 147, 281

new 110

plotters 60

preference for confession 48

on the rise 112–13, 284

tracking down executioners 230

chess players 151–2

China 195

Christianity 144, 163

Chronicle of Current Events 120–2, 149, 151

Church of Christ the Saviour, Moscow 134

CIA 7–10

in Afghanistan 225

Amin and 224

on the archive 180

communications systems 185

Counterintelligence Center 87–91, 179, 184

defectors and 69

FBI and 90

finished reports 272

JFK and 180

KGB and 179–84

meet Mitrokhin 199–200

MI6 and 190–1

molehunts 185–7

relations with MI6 84–5

Soviet and Eastern European division 186

in Ukraine 47

Civil War, Russian (1917–22) 32–3

Cohan, Barbara 268

Cold War

‘atomic spies’ 177

Berlin Wall 233

early days 23, 89, 184, 247, 276

end of 18, 22, 25, 173

MI6–MI5 rivalry 83

Middle east 56

Chekism – cont’d.

molehunts 189–91

collectivisation, of agriculture 39, 41, 63

Communist party

Central Committee 105, 110, 194, 231

Chekism and 42, 61

loss of faith in 134, 236, 237

nationalism and 161

Seventeenth Congress 63

Twentieth Congress 63, 65

Yeltsin and 237, 239

Congress of People’s Deputies 236

conspiracy theories 60, 61, 64, 180

Controller-Sov Bloc 19

Copenhagen 247

counter-espionage 173, 174, 270

counter-intelligence (CI) 81–2, 87, 179, 181, 184, 191, 249, 270

Crimea 237

Cuban Missile Crisis 101

Czechoslovakia 20, 118, 119–20, 146

DAN (Robert Lipka) 219–22, 268

Daniel, Yuli 112

defectors 68, 69, 76, 78, 100, 151–2

DIETER (Jack Barsky) 116, 215–17

disinformation operations 180

Doctor Zhivago (Pasternak) 109, 230

‘Doctor’s Plot’ (conspiracy theory) 60, 61, 64

Dragon, The (Shvarts play) 123–4, 282

Dresden 166, 233, 234

Dynamo Sports Club 168

Dzerzhinsky, Feliks 32–3

bust of 136

death 40

Lubyanka employees 281

statues of 103, 105, 235, 238, 288

East Germany 115–22, 152, 166, 195, 233–4, 237

Eastern Europe 8

engineers, British 41

Estonia 156

exfiltration plans 197–8, 241–8, 249–63

famine 31, 39, 41, 63

FBI

on the archive 180

Barsky and 215–17

CIA and 90

KGB’s sabotage plans 275

leads on agents 89

Lipka and 219–22

meet Mitrokhin 199–200

Mitrokhin in California 283

translators 179

Fifth Directorate 112, 161

Finland 231, 232

First Chief Directorate (KGB) 56–7, 105–13, 118–19

15th Department 137, 211

Directorate S files 212, 215, 236, 239

the elite 74

File Reception Section 106–7

Khrushchev and 63

Near and Middle East Department 56

officers in 13, 54, 151, 166

Operational Record Department 105–13

operations 116

Solzhenitsyn and 160

Yasenevo headquarters 136–8, 139–41, 211, 212, 225, 276, 288

See also SVR

Fleming, Ian, Casino Royale 89

‘footsloggers’ 168

Foreign Office, British 17, 78, 84, 199, 245

French Embassy, Moscow 269

FSB 279–80, 284

Fuchs, Klaus 177

Gates, Bob 90

GCHQ 84–5, 116, 190

Germany 257, 269

Glazunov, Ilya, ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son’ 229

Gorbachev, Mikhail 226, 229, 233, 236, 237, 272

Gorbanevskaya, Natalya 151

Gordievsky, Oleg 85, 119, 137, 199, 242, 245–6

Gordievsky, Vasili 119

Great Terror (1937) 41–2

GROMOV (illegal operative) 119

GRU 101, 177, 186

Gulag Archipelago, The (Solzhenitsyn) 156–64, 230

gulags 111–12, 156, 235, 260

GUNNER (Mitrokhin) 84, 99–102

Hanssen, Robert 186, 191

Harry (MI6 Soviet affairs specialist) 199, 267

Higher Diplomatic School (Cheka) 49, 50

Historical and Archival Institute 43, 121

Hitler, Adolf 159, 257

HOLA (Melita Norwood) 175–7, 178, 273–5

Hollis, Roger 190

Howard, Edward Lee 186

Human Rights, Universal Declaration of (1948) 121

Hungary 69–71, 112

HUNT (civil servant) 176

Hurd, Douglas 84, 197, 245

Hydra, The 10, 123–4, 128, 162, 237, 248, 281, 283–9

hyperinflation 93

IBM 180

Iceland 68

illegals (deep cover operatives)

DIETER 116, 215–17

GROMOV 119

identity blown 276

Lipka and 211–13, 221

moles and 186

PROGRESS operations 118–19

training 82, 84

World War II 281

immigration policies 144

IMPEDIAN (Italian investigation) 269

India 224, 286

Iran 224

‘Iron Feliks’ see Dzerzhinsky, Feliks

Israel 56, 270

Italy 269

James (veteran MI6 officer)

back in London 81

background 22–3

breaking the code 128

brings Mitrokhin to London 197–8

British Embassy, Vilnius 27–8, 35, 53–4, 75–9, 99–100

the exfiltration 249–53, 256, 257, 258, 260, 261–3

exfiltration plans 244, 247

paired with Robert 25

Jerusalem 56

JESSANT (Mitrokhin) 263

Jewish populations 56, 57, 59–60, 144

Joint Interrogation Centre, Nuremberg 182

JOUR (French agent) 269

Kaliningrad 257

Kalmar 261, 263

Karachi, Pakistan 68

Karelia 231

Karlshorst, East Germany 115–22, 190, 215

Kazakhstan 44, 150

Kennedy, John F. 180

Key, The (Swedish boat) 250, 258, 261–3

KGB 36–7, 53–4, 189–90, 235–9

Amin and 225

arms/radios caches 180, 275

assassins 115

Baltics States and 250–1

Bearden on 87–8

Bloch and 180–1

Central Committee building 105, 110

CIA and 9–10, 179–84, 186

depictions of 125

diplomatic cover in Australia 67–70

in Dresden 233

eavesdropping service 60

Fifth Directorate 112, 160

file on The Master and Margarita 206–9

Gorbachev and 236

illegals 82–3, 84, 116, 118–19

informers 143–6

Karlshorst base 115–22

in Klaipėda 257

Line X 180

Miss KGB Beauty Pageant 236–7

modernisation 112

Order 0051 (ideological sabotage) 112

Order 00130 (foreign travel) 231

Orthodox Church and 163

Paris Residency 269

previous names 34

Priority Materials Branch 220

privileges 134–5

‘prophylactic’ talks 143–4

raw reports 272

recruiting 269

regional offices 106

resources 95

Robert (‘access agent’) and 24

sabotage plans 275

Second Directorate 105–6

‘Special Tasks’ department 118

Swallows (female agents) 269

Third Directorate 190

tries to reassert power 237

Whiteside and 220

See also First Chief Directorate (KGB); Lubyanka, Moscow

KGB Lexicon (Mitrokhin) 230, 285

Kharkiv 44

Khrushchev, Nikita

de-Stalinisation 65

erratic 61, 112

in power 109, 110, 111

‘Secret Speech’ 63–4, 236

Serov and 107

shadow of 124

Stalin and 108

Klaipėda 1–2, 250, 257–60

Kopatzky, Aleksandr (‘Sasha’) 182

Kryuchkov, Vladimir 223, 237

Labour camps 42, 45, 46, 47, 104, 112, 156, 170

Latvia 197

le Carré, John 17, 22–3

Lenin, Vladimir 32–3, 63, 254–5

Leningrad 125, 146, 155, 165, 166, 255

Leninism 150

Levin House, Tel Aviv 56, 57

Lipka, Robert (DAN) 219–22, 268

Lithuania 198, 244, 249–56, 257, 261

See also Vilnius, Lithuania

London 81–5

Lubyanka, Moscow

during the attempted coup 235, 236, 238–9

‘The Box’ 46

cellars of 103–13

Dzerzhinsky and 33, 281

moving files to Yasenevo 135–6, 211–12

senior officials 136, 140

torture chambers 41–2

See also Yasenevo (First Chief Directorate)

Lyubimov, Yuri 208, 209

McColl, Sir Colin 18, 22, 84, 180

Macmillan, Harold 174

Manhattan project 82

Martin, John 180

Marxism 116, 150, 160

Master and Margarita, The (Bulgakov) 205–10, 230

Memorial group 235, 236

Mexico 180

MGB (Ministry of State Security) 49

MI₅

budget cuts 173–4

databases 175

‘defector sub- committee’ 78

K Branch 174, 175

Mitrokhin’s book draft 273

Mitrokhin’s files 84, 173–8

relations with MI6 83, 174, 189

Spedding and 191

trail Barsky’s wife 216

MI6 47, 88–90, 221–2

in Afghanistan 225

CIA and 179

‘defector sub- committee’ 78

defectors and 76, 100

the exfiltration 249–56

The Fort 198–9, 241

molehunts 190–1

in Moscow 95–7

new recruits 18

Philby and 82, 247

plan for Mitrokhin’s escape 241–8

relations with CIA 84–5

relations with MI5 83, 173–4, 177, 189

‘Russia House’ 9, 17–20

secret writing 169–70

Middle East 23, 56

Mitrokhin Archive, The (Andrew and Mitrokhin) 279, 283

Mitrokhin, Vasili 101–2

on addiction 167

Americans and 76–7

and Andrew 272–3, 283

in Australia 67–70

back in Moscow 133

background 31

banishment 70, 73–4, 102

on the beast’s trail 143–8

becomes Chekist 49–51

in Britain for the first time 198

British Embassy, Vilnius 28, 35–7, 53–4, 75–9, 127–9, 167–71, 197–8

burying notes 203–4

in California 283

cellars of the Lubyanka and 103–13

Chekism and 45–8

childhood and education 39, 40, 41

contribution to the US 179–84

death 288

deciphering documents 286

dissident 115–22

Erika the typewriter 203

the exfiltration 249–56, 258–60

exfiltration plan 241–8

fall of Berlin Wall 235

‘footsloggers’ and 168

foreign postings 55–7, 65, 67–71, 115–22

as GUNNER 84, 99–102

hatred of the Soviet system 76, 135, 225, 248

and his dacha 201–5

immense weight of notes 230–1

as JESSANT 263

later travel 287

letter to Literaturnaya Gazeta 109

life in London 287

meets FBI and CIA officials 199–200

memory 202

new identity 267

on Nina 171

notetaker 139–42, 202–3

parents and 226

resettlement deal 77, 90, 99–100, 241

retirement 223

returns to Moscow 49–51, 59, 93–4

as Stalinist prosecutor 47–8

state archivist training 43, 44

still in Moscow 193–6

still in Russia 177

on Tito 51

in Vilnius 99–102

wants material to be published 77–8

ways of escape 231–2

working at Yasenevo 136–8

working in the First Chief Directorate 55–7, 64

writing up notes 223–4

as Yurasov 4, 11–15, 21, 27–8, 85, 88

KGB Lexicon 230, 285

The Mitrokhin Archive 267–77, 279, 283

Mitrokhin, Vladimir (son)

education 94

escaping Soviet Union 200, 232, 243–4, 252–6, 258–60

family and 77

ill health 117, 122, 194–6

Mitrokhin – cont’d.

life in London 286–7

new identity 267

Vasili’s secret life 4, 36, 242

Mitrokhina, Nina Mikhailovna (wife)

ENT specialist 94, 117, 151

escaping Soviet Union 232, 241–2, 252–6, 258–60

family and 77

illness and death 277, 283

meets Vasili 50

new identity 267

new life in London 277

Vasili’s secret life 4, 36, 122, 171, 194, 201–2, 243–4

Vladimir and 194–5

molehunts 185–7, 189–92

moles 83, 90–1, 184

Morozov, Pavlik 39, 143

Moscow

coup in 235–40

signals 95–7

Moscow Main Archives Directorate 107–8

Moscow Proletarian Division 43

‘Moscow Rules’ 95

Murmansk 170

MVD (local state security) 47

National Security Agency (NSA) 84–5, 219–21

nationalism 32, 46–7, 160–1, 238, 284, 288

Nazi Germany 43, 44, 46, 159, 256, 257, 285

Netherlands 68

New York, Port of 180

Ninth Fort, Kaunas 256

NKVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) 34, 41, 43

nomenklatura 93–4, 134–5, 229, 284

Northern Ireland 173

Norwood, Melita (HOLA) 175–7, 178, 273–5

Nureyev, Rudolf 151, 287

Odesa 144, 147

Okhrana (Tsarist secret police) 33, 108

Olson, Jim 88–9

Olympic Games (Melbourne,1956) 67–70, 69

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Solzhenitsyn) 110–11

Order of the Red Banner 176

Orthodox Church, Russian 56–7, 162–3, 182, 197, 281–2, 288

Pakistan 224

Pasternak, Boris, Doctor Zhivago 109, 112, 230

Patrushev, Nikolai 281

Pavlova, Anna 287

Peart, Michael 11, 15

Penkovsky, Oleg 95, 101

Pennsylvania 215–17, 219–22

Peter the Great 255

Petrov, Vladimir 68

Philby, Kim 82, 176, 180, 184, 189, 247

Politburo 107, 141, 194

‘Prague Spring’ (1968) 118, 119, 149, 151

Prime, Geoffrey 116, 190

‘privatisation’ cheques 193

‘Professor’ (agent) 151

PROGRESS operation 118–19

psychiatric punishments 151

Putin, Vladimir

as a Chekist 165–6, 281

early career 238, 255

fall of Berlin Wall 233, 234

foreign postings 166

FSB Director 279

Orthodox Church and 282, 288

as President 283

as Prime Minister 280–2

as a teenager 125, 126

Putina, Lyudmila 166, 233, 234

radio communications, covert 116

Red Army

in Afghanistan 225, 226–7

Chekists and 42

in East Germany 115

ex-members join Israeli military 56

in Prague 119

Stalin and 45

WWII 43, 44

Red Banner Institute 166

Red Square, Moscow

parade 254

protests 119, 149, 151, 232

Redmond, Paul 87–8, 90, 179, 184, 186

‘The Return of the Prodigal Son’ (Glazunov) 229

Rifkind, Malcolm 274

Riga 197, 249

Robert (‘access agent’)

back in Lithuania 249

back in London 81

breaking the code 127, 128

British Embassy, Vilnius 27–8, 35, 53–4, 75–9, 99–100

the exfiltration 251–4, 256, 258, 259–60, 261–3

exfiltration plans 197–8, 244, 248

James and 25–6

Mitrokhin stays close to 277

superpower 24

Rochford, Mike 181, 183–4

Rose, David, Spying Game 274

Rostov City Housing Commission 150

‘Russia House’ (Century House, London) 9, 15, 17–20, 81, 100, 243

Russian apartment bombings (1999) 279–80

Russian Compound, Jerusalem 56–7

Russian Embassies

London 174

Tel Aviv 56

Russian Service (BBC) 159

Ryazan province, Russia 31, 110–11, 150, 279

Rybakov, Yuly 165

St Petersburg 255

Sakhalin Island 231

Sakharov, Andrei 236

‘Sasha’ (Aleksandr Kopatzky) 182

Scarlett, John 97

Second Directorate (KGB) 105–6, 236

Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) see MI6

Semichastny, Vladimir 110

Senate Foreign Relations, US 180

Serov, Ivan 107, 109

Seventeen Moments in Spring (TV series) 281

Shelepin, Alexander 109–10

Shock Therapy (economics) 93

Shvarts, Evgeny, The Dragon 123–4, 282

Siberia 104, 107

Sinyavsky, Andrei 112

SMERSH 45, 46, 47

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

Andropov and 152

appearance 153

arrested by SMERSH 45–6

hides manuscripts 204

KGB and 112, 168

Putin and 282

sent to Arctic prison camp 165

The Gulag Archipelago 156–64, 230

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich 110–11

‘Sov Bloc Master Race’ 19

Soviet Embassy, Washington DC 221

Special Branch, Metropolitan Police 174

Spedding, Sir David 191

Spycatcher (Wright) 190

Spying Game (BBC) 274

Stalin, Joseph

background 162

death 59–62

exile in Siberia 107

Orthodox Church and 163

in power 40–1, 46, 63, 104

Red Army and 45

shadow of 64, 124

Tito and 51

Tsarist Okhrana files 108

Stalinism 47–8, 65, 108, 159, 239

Stasi offices 178, 233, 234, 238

Stepashin, Sergei 279

Stierlitz (spy) 281

Straw, Jack 275

Supreme Soviet, USSR 170

surveillance 167–71

evading 40, 95–6

power of 152, 165

scale of 23, 150

wives of British Embassy staff 190

SVR 271, 284

Swallows (female KGB agents) 269

Sweden 244, 250–1

Switzerland 275

Sword and the Shield, The (TV series) 125–6

TASS news agency 133

Tel Aviv 56–7

terrorism 57, 173

Times, The 274

Tito, Josip Broz 51

trawlers, Soviet 170

Trofimoff, George 182–3

Trotsky, Leon 42

UK

ASIO and 68

atomic weapons programme 175–7

KGB activities in 83

Mitrokhin volume 53, 81, 199, 224, 235

Russia and 32, 96, 270

US and 83–4, 183

Ukraine 45–8, 65, 144, 147, 225

US Embassies 7, 9

Vance, Cyrus 180

Velikanova, Tatanya Mikhailova 146, 149–50

Vienna 198

Vilnius, Lithuania 8, 247, 252

British Embassy 3–5, 11–15, 21, 27–8, 35–7, 53–4, 75–9, 99–102, 127, 167–71

Vladimir, Prince (Volodomyr) 162–3

Volkov, Oleg 165

Voronyanskaya, Elizaveta 155–6, 158, 164

Washington DC 87–91, 221

West Germans 116, 232

West Germany 182, 233–4

Where is the Truth? (Pereverzev) 152

Whiteside, John 220, 283

Wolf, Markus 115

World Service (BBC) 121

World War II 43–4, 147, 281

Wright, Peter, Spycatcher 190

writers, Russian 109, 110–12, 135, 152–3

writing, secret 169–70

Yasenevo (First Chief Directorate) 136–8, 139–41, 211, 212, 225, 276, 288

Yeltsin, Boris 237, 239–40, 255, 280, 281

Yezhov, Nikolai 41, 110

Yezhovshchina see Great Terror (1937)

Yugoslavia 51

Zador, Ervan 70

Zhukov, Yuri 60, 281

Zionists 59, 60

Zmei (dragon) 123

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND SOURCES

THE BROAD OUTLINE of Mitrokhin’s story has been known since he went public in 1999. But many of the details of his life, work and his exfiltration have never been revealed until now. This is not though an official or authorised account of Vasili Mitrokhin’s life and career. I did not ask for nor receive any assistance or information from British intelligence agencies. A broad overview of Mitrokhin’s career had already been placed into the public domain by the authorities. Some are in the introduction and early chapters of the books Mitrokhin co-authored with Christopher Andrew which make clear the role the British government played. A surprising level of detail can also be found in parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee report into Mitrokhin which, unusually, confirms his relationship with MI6 and provides his codenames and details of the timeline and even authorisations surrounding his approach and exfiltration, as well as how his work was subsequently handled.

However, much of the detail in this book to fill in the gaps has come from conversations and accounts with people with direct knowledge of events. I never met Vasili Mitrokhin. But I spoke to dozens of people who knew him and had worked with him over the years both professionally and personally, almost all of whom spoke to me on condition of anonymity. Mitrokhin was a deeply private person and one who was unwilling to discuss certain parts of his life with anyone. That means there remain some mysteries about certain events – particularly his early career as a KGB officer. I expect and hope that more details will still emerge to present a fuller picture.

There are a number of people I can thank for their help. They include Professor Christopher Andrew, Allen Packwood of the Churchill Archives Centre at Cambridge where the Mitrokhin papers are now housed, as well as Jack Barsky, Milt Bearden, Gill Bennett, Ronen Bergman, Michael Binyon, Harry Blutstein, Irina Borogan, Rodric Braithwaite, Barbara Cohan, Filip Kovacevic, Jim Milburn, Dan Mulvenna, James Olson, Christian Ostermann, Paul Redmond, Michael Rochford, David Rose, Shlomo Shpiro, Andrei Soldatov, Alexander Vassiliev and John Whiteside III. Those others who aided me in my understanding but preferred to remain anonymous also have my deep gratitude. My profound thanks are also due to my agent Georgina Capel, my editor Arabella Pike at William Collins and her team and, last but not least, my family for their patience and support.

About the Author

GORDON CORERA is the co-host of The Rest Is Classified podcast which delves into the world of secrets and spies. He spent twenty years as the BBC security correspondent, covering intelligence and national security issues, reporting from across the United States, Asia, Africa and the Middle East and covering events from 9/11 through to the war in Ukraine. He has presented documentaries focusing on intelligence agencies including MI6, MI5, GCHQ, the CIA, NSA and Mossad, as well as the 2003 Iraq war.

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