81. The Man Who Saved The World: Abandoning Communism (Ep 2)

16:49Gordon:That would be brilliant, right? So in a way, the MI6 man showing up in the overcoat and saying, let's have a private conversation. I mean, Oleg can then go back to the KGB and say, this guy wants to meet discreetly and frame it as Oleg himself trying to recruit this guy. So he's got natural cover for, I mean, probably a number of conversations right there with British intelligence. It's natural, but it's also well played on Oleg's part, I think.

17:19David:It's a really, really good point, I think. They're going to agree on lunch. And Oleg is going to tell the KGB. You're right. He's going to tell his colleagues and ask for permission to see them. And it is a kind of classic play, isn't it? Because it means you can make sanctioned contact on the basis that you're going to maybe recruit him. And it's quite interesting because the MI6 guy is going to think, maybe Oleg is trying to recruit me. Sure, yeah, exactly. Maybe I've got this wrong and he's not interested in becoming a spy for us. So, you know, there's this really interesting dance between the two of them.

17:51David:Because over lunch, they meet, they talk, but kind of, again, very warily. And the MI6 officer says, you know, of course, you'll write a report about our meeting. And Gordievsky says, yes, I will, but I'll write it in such a way that nothing serious will be said in it. Now, that, again, is just that hint. So he's saying, yeah, I'm going to tell my bosses at the KGB about it. but I'm not going to, you know, I'm going to make it sound very low key as if nothing happened. Neither side has showed their hand properly, but they're making it clear they want to keep talking.

18:24Gordon:But it goes on for a year.

18:26David:And this is the bit, you know, when you talk to people, it's crazy. So they've nearly reeled in their catch. Gordievsky is there wanting to do it and he gets nothing from them for nearly a year from British intelligence. He says they were quite timid, his whole legs. But one person I spoke to who knew the case very well, told me he finds it actually pretty astonishing and a bit of a screw up that they didn't follow up. MI6 kind of just lose track of it and don't kind of make that final pitch to him.

18:56Gordon:To be fair, we're looking at this with all of the advantages of how the case played out and understanding Oleg Gordievsky's psychology to a degree that was absolutely unknowable at the time, perhaps even to Oleg himself. So on the one hand, you think this is a KGB staff officer and maybe you just take your swing, right? Because you've got him in private conversations. You know that he's willing to do that, right? He's willing to kind of meet with you discreetly, that he's maybe not communicating everything that's said to his superior. So you think maybe you just take your pitch. On the other hand, he's part of a large pool of potential recruits that are out there globally at this point for MI6.

19:40Gordon:I guess you have to kind of look at it through both lenses but it does seem it does seem surprising that there wasn't a little bit more

19:48David:behind it yeah and i guess the other bit which is context is they did worry he was a dangle classic you know it's a classic thing isn't it and a dangle we should say is when you know one service dangles someone in front of the other to make them think that this person is offering themselves up to be recruited if it's actually loyal to their own service and it's just basically being used to run rings around them, identify their officers, you know, waste time. And this is the period after the kind of great mole hunts. MI6 has been played pretty badly. There's been mole hunts through the 60s and, you know, into the early 70s in MI6.

20:24David:There's quite a lot of distrust. There's kind of a lot of caution about how do you run Soviet cases? Are they just dangling in us? Can we do it? And I think there is also that element where MI6 maybe just lacks the sight confidence to kind of really follow this through and the slight fear that okay we might be being played so i think that it's that legacy of kim philby and others which is still i think hanging over mi6 in this period but yeah there's this long break then october 1974 the same mi6 man appears at the badminton court again and it turns out he's soon to be leaving copenhagen and i think it's just a question of him thinking i'll just check in again on that russian and that conversation went a bit nowhere last time.

21:07David:But just in case, I'll go have one more go at him. Finally, they start to meet in a bar at an upmarket hotel and they begin to just open up that bit more. Gordievsky, I think probably that delay has made him more sure that he wants to do it and that he's got to kind of be a bit more forward leaning. And, you know, the MI6 man says, now Mr. Gordievsky, it's dangerous to meet here. Gordievsky's kind of understanding this is becoming more clandestine. And Gordievsky says, well, the Russians don't come here. Now, the fact he's saying that, you're starting to cross the line, aren't you?

21:43Gordon:It's so subtle, though, isn't it? I mean, he's crossed a line.

21:47David:Yeah.

21:47Gordon:He absolutely has. Because the resident, I mean, even if it's his friend, Lubimov, they're going to wonder, if you wrote this up down to last detail, you would ask, why are you meeting in this bar? So it's very subtle, but it's I think a way for him to signal that he's ready to cross a line.

22:07David:And the MI6 man at one point says, you know, in these early conversations, you're KGB. And then he says to Oleg, tell me then who's the PR line deputy in the station? And Gordievsky just stares and goes, I am. You know, it's me. You clearly didn't know that. So they start to meet, you know, a restaurant now on the outskirts of Copenhagen. and Oleg will now pass the point of no return because he'll say he's not telling the KGB about these meetings so clearly now they are moving to the fully clandestine as he starts to meet next in a series of meetings in flats and begins to talk and you know this is the moment he'll tell me this later when I speak to him about it this is the moment he now knows he's crossed the line into being an agent.

22:52David:It's moved in this kind of brief period. And then there's a kind of, you know, one of those weird obstacles. That MI6 officer is leaving. So he introduces the new MI6 officer who's going to be looking after him. And the meeting is a disaster. It's so interesting because, you know, here you go. Again, you think MI6 have got this guy reeled in a KGB officer. They don't understand. They've actually got someone who's going to be one of their greatest agents ever. And this guy is pushy. He seems vain. Gordievsky's English isn't great. So they're speaking together in German. And Gordievsky is also kind of probably thinking to himself, why didn't they send a Russian speaker?

23:30David:You know, this is a bit weird. He's hostile. He's pushing Gordievsky with kind of question after question about KGB operations. And Oleg is just thinking, why is this guy so aggressive? I came with an open soul, is how he thinks about it. You know, he's desperate to do damage to the KGB and spy for the West. And all he's getting is, you know, a kind of a hostile interrogation, it feels. And he feels really disappointed at that. It's really, really bad, actually.

23:59Gordon:Is this a bad cop approach to see if Gordievsky is the real deal? Or is it just a brash case officer who doesn't understand how to work this Russian?

24:09David:I don't think it's great handling. And it's only, I think, decades later, Gordievsky will learn the reasons for the aggression. He meets this case officer years later, and this case officer actually confesses that he thought Gordievsky was a double agent. He thinks he's a dangle, he's a plant. He was finding reports saying that. From the start to the finish, I thought you were an agent provocateur. You know, he's going to later tell Gordievsky. So he's basically just can't believe this guy is the real deal. And so he's just pushing him and interrogating him to see if he can expose that. I mean, this is one of MI6's greatest cases, but they do nearly blow it at the start.

24:44Gordon:Seems to be a theme of great cases, though, is that the intelligence services, it was the same with Tulkachev, right? I mean, the agency, I mean, basically nearly sent him away or tried to send him away on multiple occasions. It's mad, isn't it? The services are not so great at just accepting volunteers, essentially.

25:01David:They're so attuned to the dangle and to the kind of plant in the game, aren't they? that they can't sometimes believe that when they get the real deal, that it's the real deal. Oleg, he's so committed personally. He's going to keep going. And he says he's got three conditions. He doesn't want to hurt his colleagues in the KGB station in Copenhagen. It's kind of interesting condition. I mean, you think of Lubimov, he's his friend. He doesn't want to be photographed and recorded, and he doesn't want any money. And that actually kind of slightly worries the MI6 guy because money, if you're running an agent, money is good, isn't it?

25:34David:you want to be giving him money on the whole.

25:36Gordon:Gives you some control, right? I mean, gives you a connection that will immediately bind you to them and them to you. You would want some transaction as part of this. And frankly, it seems a little odd that he doesn't want some money as a demonstration of his value at all, even a kind of modest amount. What do you think's behind that.

26:00David:It is the fact that he is ideological. The classic thing about why someone becomes an agent is, you know, mice, money, ideology, compromise, ego. He doesn't want the money. It's not compromised. Got a bit of an ego, but not that much. It really is. And I think that's why Gordievsky is interesting. It really is ideology. He wants people to know that. That's why I think he's setting out these conditions. He's desperate to show it and to prove it to them, which is why he wants to set it out in terms of conditions.

26:29Gordon:We'll be there, Gordon, with Oleg Gordievsky and the pillowy embrace of British intelligence. Let's take a break. When we come back, we'll see how he gets on as a spy. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Goal Hangers. The rest is science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. What if your immune system could learn to recognise cancer cells? That's immunotherapy. One type is CAR T-cell therapy. T-cells are your body's watchman. and doctors can now extract these and reprogram them to spot cancer. CAR T cells, they've started showing this real promise

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28:54Gordon:Well, welcome back. Oleg Gordiemski has been recruited by British Intelligence, SIS MI6. And now, Gordon, I guess we're in the part of the dance where both sides are trying to work out how this relationship will actually function.

29:10David:MI6, you know, they've got their man and they're going to fly someone out to Copenhagen once a month. They're going to meet in a safe flat over a weekend, fairly basic flat. They're working with the Danes again, who've wired the place for sound. And also that's going to help in case, you know, stop the Danes accidentally putting him under surveillance and blowing him.

29:31Gordon:They've already broken one of his conditions though. He doesn't want to be photographed or recorded, right? And they're like, well, okay, we'll meet you in this flat and you will be photographed and recorded.

29:41David:I wonder if he really expected that. I mean, he's going to end up breaking all three of his conditions ultimately, but I guess he wanted to set them out, but they broke up on straight away. He would have to assume that they're going to record him.

29:54Gordon:Yeah.

29:54David:But the intelligence starts to flow. And once MI6 in London start to see what's coming back and the volume and the quality of it, they change their mind about the idea. Maybe he's a dangle or, you know, playing a game with them. You know, it's just too good. Particularly, he's got lots of real insights into illegals and how the KGB created these false identities. Of course, that was his job. It is interesting, but they still seem to fail to understand the depth of his ideological conversion. And so, you know, the case officer still brings out newspaper cuttings about how bad the Soviet Union is.

30:29Gordon:He's like, I get it, man. I live there. Yeah. I understand. There's no toilet paper.

30:34David:Yeah, they're bad. I know it. And they don't seem to appreciate how deep-seated his beliefs are. His view that the Soviet system has stifled freedom and is kind of cruel to its own people, and he wants to bring it down. There's a really interesting letter which he actually writes to the chief of MI6, and he gives to one of his case officers, and there'll be a couple in this period, to take back to the chief to see. I mean, I'll just read from it. He says, my decision is not the result of irresponsibility or instability of character. It's been preceded by a long spiritual struggle and by agonizing emotion.

31:12David:But even deeper disappointments at developments in my country and my own experiences have brought me to the belief that democracy and the tolerance and humanity which follow it represent the only road for my country. If a man realizes this, he must show the courage of his convictions and do something himself it's interesting isn't it well you know he's trying to say basically i've been through this struggle and i want to do it there's going to be a softening of his relationship with that case officer he clearly didn't get on with very well at the first one and then two years later he's replaced by a actually an officer who was involved in the case from the very start and spotting him and he's a kind of real russia specialist he's going to be passing microfilm messages from moscow which can be copied he goes into telephone kiosks you know appears to be making a call someone comes by and stops and asks for directions and in that moment passes them a film he'll start to identify people in the kgb station so again he's now breaking his own rule you know he's reporting on his colleagues and he takes a little bit of money not a huge amount but into a uk bank account so i guess he's now on the path you know this is what's involved And it's interesting.

32:23David:There's not that many agents that the KGB are running in Denmark. There are some in Norway. There's one rising star in politics who he says is working for the KGB. There's another lesser one, a lesser agent who gets arrested. And that causes him a bit of anxiety. But back at the embassy, you know, old friend, Smiley Mike Lubimov, doesn't suspect a thing. I have a bit of sympathy for Smiley Mike. But, you know.

32:46Gordon:Yeah, I do too. Mostly just because he seems so affable and smiley.

32:49David:Yeah. And an Anglophile.

32:51Gordon:And an Anglophile. Well, yeah, to boot. I get the sense, though, that the way that he's being run in this period is really patient and ultimately very smart. Because it does seem like SIS is trying to ensure that he can actually remain kind of in harness for a long period of time, right? Yeah. That they don't want him to just, I guess, give names and then have people rolled up. I mean, that does happen a bit here, but it doesn't seem like there's sort of a haste to the way that MI6 is running the case. And maybe part of that is that he actually doesn't have a list of 25 agents that are all high profile, you know, operating throughout Scandinavia that the Brits can collect and then pass to local services to make arrests.

33:36Gordon:Maybe some of it is that the KGB seems to not have that much going on in Denmark, but it's smart, right? It's very patient.

33:44David:Yeah, it's smart. I guess there's two sides to that. One is Gordievsky himself, I guess, is really disciplined. He is a kind of very disciplined KGB officer. So he knows how to run this carefully and how to deal with it. I also think MI6 are learning how to run KGB officers. They've had a pretty rough period at MI6. I'll say. That's pretty mildly. It's a British understatement. In the 60s, you've had Phil being played.

34:11Gordon:We had a rough go at our entire service being turned inside out by the Russians. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But hey, I mean, fair point. We've come back.

34:19David:Fair point. You had Kim Philby and George Blake exposed in the 60s as two senior MI6 officers who'd basically blown the organisation. And so I think if you look at the 60s, there is this view which is, can we actually do this? This is hard to run Soviet agents and really difficult. And actually, I mean, we might come back to him later, but there's a very important character in the history of MI6 called Harold Shergold. And Shergy, as he's known, who is legendary within MI6. And he is a guy who, through the 60s, will... I mean, he's involved in some cases, and we've come to them, which show that you can do it, but you have to be really disciplined.

34:58David:And he, through the 60s, will be trying to rebuild MI6's capacity to run agents against the Soviet Union after the disasters, after the moles, after the mole hunts for non-existent moles inside the service. And so I think that's one of the reasons Gordievsky is so important to MI6, is because it's going to show they can do it.

35:19Gordon:Get your mojo back.

35:20David:Yeah, you got your mojo back, you know, as a service. For a while, I think they'd lost it. I really think they'd lost it. And Shurgi and others have patiently rebuilt the service to be able to do it. And Gordievsky is kind of the test case.

35:31Gordon:Speaking of mojo, Gordon, he meets a woman in 1977.

35:37David:leila while still technically married to yelena he meets leila she is half russian half azari her father now this is important was a senior kgb officer oh she's a kind of journalist secretary and she's come to copenhagen with the world health organization they're introduced she's quite a bit younger but they immediately fall for each other interestingly enough he does give us some kind of dissident literature to read which suggests he's trying to work out you know what he's got

36:04Gordon:Questionable taste when passing materials to his love interests. First, we had the gay porn that he gave to his wife, and now he's giving dissident literature to his mistress. Copy the Gulag Archipelago. Yeah, exactly. It's slightly odd, isn't it? Oleg needs to censor himself in what he's giving to his paramours.

36:22David:Give him some Pushkin or Dostoevsky or something a bit more normal. Give them anything.

36:25Gordon:Give them jewels and shoes. Come on.

36:28David:So he's still technically with Yelena, and that's the problem. And of course, as we said, divorce is bad within the KGB. So now, this is also interesting. He's leading this crazy life of two betrayals. Because, you know, he's betraying the KGB working for MI6, and he's betraying Yelena to be with Layla.

36:47Gordon:You are correct. But his marriage was already over, right? It wasn't like they had, like he and Yelena. In the same way that he's a defector in place to the Soviet system, he was sort of a defector in place to his marriage at that point as well. But you're right. Right. Your point on double betrayal does stand because this guy's, he's gotten himself in all kinds of pickles here by the mid 1970s.

37:07David:Because I think Yelena is going to work out what's happening and there's another woman and they're arguing. And of course, the Brits are listening to them arguing because the flat is bugged. And so they're going to go, is everything okay? He's leading a complicated life at this point. I think it's fair to say.

37:25Gordon:Does everyone have that flat bugged? This is one of the interesting things I think that may have helped him in Denmark, was that the residentura of the KGB station in Denmark is not that large. And it feels like it's a little bit, it's collegial. It's not like a nest of vipers with everyone sort of spying on each other. So, it feels like he's not being monitored closely by the KGB when he's there, which obviously makes, you know, makes it a lot easier for him to strike up a relationship with British intelligence. But is the KGB listening to this too? Or is it just the Brits who are listening to like he and his wife arguing.

38:01David:I think it's just the Brits and the Danes. Yeah. It's a complicated period, but eventually the tour is up and it's time to go back to Moscow. And one of the problems as this is approaching is the possibility of divorce and what to do about the relationship. As we said earlier, this is awkward in KGB circles. Now, Lubimov, his good friend, his mate, Smiley Mike, is going to kind of try and help him. And he's going to say look you know this could be trouble and lubimov has had his own marital issues um and lubimov is going to say you know be careful about this but i'll send reports back to moscow saying you're a good candidate for promotion you're doing really good work there's a job coming up which is a really good job which is deputy head of the third department of the first chief directorate now that what that bit of jargon means is first chief directorate is the kgb bit that spies abroad Third department is the bit that does kind of Britain and Scandinavia.

38:59David:Deputy head, pretty good job. So it's a pretty good prize. Number two in the department, which does Britain and Scandinavia. But there's rivals. There's always rivals in the KGB. It does sound like a particularly brutal bureaucratic place. And Oleg is seen as a bit young, a bit superior to get it. But that's his hope. But he goes back. But the problem is the divorce. So he's in the doghouse. The wife he's divorcing works for the KGB. that doesn't look good it's going to mean he's in trouble as i'm afraid for lubimov as well yeah

39:29Gordon:because you kind of previewed that smiley mike smiley mike had his own marital issues in this

39:34David:period yeah smiley mike sadly is himself going to get pushed out of the kgb because i think his second marriage has gone wrong because of an affair so i think smiley mike is too smiley and at this point he's actually going to leave the kgb but what does he want to do on leaving the KGB. What does a former intelligence officer decide they want to do when they've been pushed out of the intelligence service? He decides he wants to be a novelist. I mean, sound familiar? New I life, Smiley Mike. He's going to be a novelist. He's going to use those great experiences. I mean, who'd have thought you could do that?

40:08David:Shocking. It's shocking, Gordon. But it's not the last time we'll hear from Lubimov and Smiley Mike. He's not finished yet in this story. He's going to come back, but he's out writing his novels, publisher on his back saying, Where's the next one?

40:20Gordon:Was he also doing a podcast?

40:23David:I love that idea.

40:24Gordon:He'd probably been great.

40:26David:He'd be good. I think he'd be good.

40:27Gordon:But Gordievsky, he doesn't get the deputy job.

40:31David:No, because of the divorce, he's given a dull job in personnel. Gets to marry Layla, 1979. One daughter born in 1981, another a few years later. He's learning English at this time, obviously, for obvious reason. There is a scary moment where he's summoned to a meeting and he's told that Kim Philby, no less, has been looking at why a recent case in Norway was compromised. And of course, it's one of the agents that he'd given away, Oleg. And Philby comes to the conclusion there must have been a leak within the KGB. And when he hears this in the meeting, Oleg is literally kind of pinching himself to stop himself blushing and he's feeling sick.

41:06David:He knows it's one he gave away, but he gets away with it. But here's what's interesting, I think, is what he's not doing in Moscow is spying for the Brits. There are no meetings in Moscow during the three or four years that he's back from Copenhagen. It's really interesting, I think. And it is basically, you know, we talked a bit about how MI6 is being patient and had been scarred by the past. I think that's why, you know, I think they are incredibly cautious about the risks to their prize agent by trying to run him in Moscow.

41:40Gordon:What I do find interesting about this, though, is that in the same period, the agency is starting to run Tolkachev in Moscow, inside. Now, different cases, Tolkachev presumably as an engineer would have had a little bit more, maybe freedom of maneuver, less concern about being monitored internally, I suppose. But it is interesting.

42:07David:I agree.

42:08Gordon:That the Brits don't even really, I mean, I'm sure they talked about it but it's not it's not really seriously considered it's just kind of like no it's off

42:16David:the table we're not going to run him inside so i think the scars are there from the penkovsky case now we should just briefly we'll do penkovsky definitely as a podcast for sure but he was a gru so a russian military intelligence colonel early 60s offers himself up first the americans who miss him uh and then the brits and then the brits and the americans you have so much ammunition in

42:38Gordon:these episodes, Gordon. It's not even fair. I'm just like -

42:42David:I just dropped it in. It's a factual statement.

42:43Gordon:Gordon gets to speedbag me with various successes of British intelligence. Yeah, yeah. You've got your own back at other points. Yeah, exactly.

42:50David:And then they run him jointly with a little bit of tension, Pankovsky, and he comes to London and Paris for meetings. But when he goes back to Moscow, they try and run him in Moscow. And there's actually quite a lot of tension between the CIA and MI6 about how to run him, how hard to push him. Brilliant agent. But he gets caught. And he gets caught partly because he's meeting the wife of one of the mi6 officers for a kind of brush contact and he's and he's killed you know he's executed i think it's the scars of that are still with mi6 which is running an agent in moscow and especially maybe one as sensitive as one inside the kgb you just don't want to get them killed that is what you're talking about i mean you're talking about a death sentence if he's caught and so i do think they are playing the long game and maybe i guess thinking about it your point about tolkachev is tolkachev you've got to run him in moscow because that's where he lives

43:43Gordon:you know that's your only option it's your only option he's never going overseas he's never going

43:46David:overseas whereas with gordievsky you kind of know he's been overseas he'll probably get another posting at some point you can resume contact then so you've at least got that option which you didn't have with tolkachev so yeah i guess that explains it but you know i find it fascinating But you can just sit on a case, you know, for three years, three years where there's no contact. I mean, that's patience, isn't it? You've got someone in the KGB and you're like, nope, not going to talk to him.

44:15Gordon:And I guess in this case, to add to the point on, you know, you know, he's going to come out at some point and be posted outside of the Soviet Union because he works in the third department. you have to wonder obviously there's no certainty but you have to wonder if if sis is kind of hoping this guy will end up in london right at some point which would be a major major major prize

44:38David:yeah that's clearly what he wants he's learning english he wants to go for a post in in britain and he kind of starting to play the office politics you know he's buttering up the head of the british section who's a nasty character it sounds he gets kind of cigarettes and pornographic mags imported from the uk and diplomatic bags more porno mags and a weird anyway weird kgb thing um oleg's also starting to read somerset mawme novels you know the ashenden series and others they're a bit out of fashion but they are actually kind of early 20th century spy novels he's translating reports from kim philby never meets him though film b is spending his time helping the kgb and you know writing these reports kgb trying to keep him useful and then one of those strokes of luck, a vacancy opens up in London.

45:21David:And news of this is in late 1981. And Oleg realizes this is the prize. This is the opportunity. One person ahead of him is tapped up first to go there. But when the Soviet foreign ministry apply for that person's visa, it's turned down. The reason is the Brits know he's a spy. That puts Oleg next in line. But the question is, would he get a visa?

45:44Gordon:I think he might be able to, Gordon.

45:47David:Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. The Brits are going to give him a visa. So, you know, of course, a visa application comes into Britain in the name of Oleg Gordievsky to join the Soviet mission in London. And they're like, oh, you know, this is it's Christmas morning. Yeah, the party poppers go off.

46:04Gordon:At Russia House in SIS.

46:06David:Although interesting enough, again, they nearly screw it up because having been too cautious early on, now they're almost too eager because they grant the visa in 22 days rather than the 30, which is the average. because they're obviously so keen. That seems like a mistake.

46:20Gordon:That is a mistake. Just wait a little bit longer.

46:23David:Just wait. I mean, it's, you know, again, just a little mistake. They have to pretend they don't know he's KGB because if they did, he would be refused. And it does raise some questions in Moscow because they're going like, hmm, Oleg's got his visa fast and the Brits don't think he's KGB. They've given him a visa. Hmm, okay. But, you know, anyway, there's a delay, you know, before we can actually go out there.

46:44Gordon:It's just general British incompetence. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Blame it on that. Yeah, exactly.

46:50David:So anyway, he's got to get his paperwork sorted. He uses those months while he's preparing for the job, though, to study the files on Britain. And this is great for him. He's got the reason to go and say, can I just go look at all the operational files or the ones he's allowed to see, at least, on British operations going back to understand it in preparation. So he's reading there all about the Cambridge spies, all about the agents that they've been running. finally end of june books his tickets now departure day is coming he's got his wife he's got his two daughters who are two years old and six months so really young and too young to kind of really understand what's going on but at least for him and his wife there's a degree of excitement his wife of course this is new wife has no idea that he's a spy for mi6 or he's done anything untoward, but he's kind of nervous and he's taught.

47:45David:And he writes about this. On the day he's leaving, he's making sandwiches for relatives for a kind of goodbye meal, and he cuts himself really deeply in his hand. In his mind, this is just a sign of just how wired, how tense he is, because the reason is he knows he's going back into the ring when he goes back to Britain to spy.

48:05Gordon:Well, maybe there, Gordon, with Oleg Gordievsky bleeding from his hand with nervous energy and about to go back into the espionage game. Let's end. And when we come back next time, we will see how he starts spying again in Great Britain.

48:25David:but don't forget if you want to get back in the ring straight away you don't have to be cautious you don't have to wait three years to hear the end of this series like mi6 playing the cautious game you can just go for it just do it join the declassified club at the rest is classified.com and you can hear the whole of this series on oleg gordievsky and get lots of other things as well but otherwise we will see you next time we'll see you next time

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