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

22:45Gordon:he's not not aware of the uh impending sort of treason charges that yeah exactly but then uh

22:52David:it's interesting because he'll leave from that first meeting and and smiley mike will go and he'll actually go and find his copies of dissident books and then bury them in the garden you know out of fear that he's going to get in trouble too so gordievsky's now you can just sense this pressure building because also the days are ticking on he's starting to take sedatives he's drinking rum which i don't think rum he normally drinks rum that's what he says

23:18Gordon:that that seems like a surprising choice for a russian kgb officer yeah i think it'd be vodka

23:25David:wouldn't you you would needs must needs must so he's starting to think that he's he's going to have to kind of trigger the escape plan now this is going to be the crucial question is can he trigger the plan and can he make it work can he get to mi6 and can they get him out of moscow

23:43Gordon:maybe they're gordon with gordievsky about to crack under the pressure and the impending sort of deployment of this escape plan let's take a break when we come back we will see if he can manage to get out from the kgb's net

24:05Gordon:Right now, get up to 15 % off select storage solutions. Put heavy-duty HDX totes to good use, protecting what's important to you. The solid, impact-resistant design prevents cracking, and the clear base and sides make items easy to find even when the totes are stacked. Find select shelving and tote storage up to 15 % off at the Home Depot to organize every room in your home, from your garage to your attic. Visit HomeDepot.com How doers get more done Tomorrow morning is knocking Stock your fridge now How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink Or a sweet vanilla Smooth caramel maybe Or a white chocolate mocha Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries

24:51David:I'm Mary Beard And I'm Josephine Quinn At the Rest is Fest this September We're putting on a show that can only be described as an iconoclastic romp through the ancient world. We're talking about leaders behaving badly,

25:04Gordon:emperors putting their horses in charge, cities built by asylum seekers and empires getting their comeuppance.

25:12David:There will be some proper myth busting. But we'll also be asking why these myths matter, even when we know they're wrong. So if you love your ancient history and you're free on September the 6th, get your ticket now and join us at London's South Bank Centre. Tickets are on sale now. Just visit southbankcentre.co.uk. That's southbankcentre.co.uk.

25:36Gordon:Welcome back. Now, Gordievsky, Gordon, needs to get out. And he is going to be fortunate, I guess, that Valerie Petit in MI6 has actually spent a tremendous amount of time and energy building just such a plan to help him escape.

25:55David:that's right this goes back actually this plan to the late 70s and had first been formulated in around 1978 when gordievsky is still in copenhagen and he's going back to moscow the first time and mi6 are unsure what might be in store for him so they want to have a plan so it's interesting they that already at this point they get one of the mi6 officers who's based in moscow to go find signal sites that could be used for Gordievsky to signal to MI6 that he needs to escape or needs to contact them. And that officer is going to go around scouting potential sites, and then he's actually going to come out and travel out of Moscow via Helsinki and Stockholm to Copenhagen to discuss those signal sites with Oleg to see if he thinks they work.

26:46David:And this is where I think it's really interesting because of course the advantage with Gordievsky is that he is a KGB officer he is a professional intelligence officer which means he understands how to do a proper signal what the risks are and what could go wrong and he can help them advise on the plan all the way through from that period in the late 70s there's one interesting story someone was telling me which is that you know they were looking at potential post boxes where someone could you know post a letter to which might go abroad or get to mi6 but they were trying to work out is there a post box that could be used and this officer works out there's a particular post box in moscow which looks perfect because it's you know not overseen by anything it's around a quarter so if you had surveillance you could lose the surveillance you turn the corner drop it in the post box and then move on and as the surveillance follows you they wouldn't have seen that and so he says to oleg well this is a great potential postbox and oleg goes i know it i know it and don't use it because it's so good the kgb know that any intelligence service will use it as a drop point and therefore all the letters in it get checked and and you know that is the kind of detail that Oleg can kind of give them because he is inside the KGB and knows it and so originally they're looking for potential signals back at the Copenhagen days and there are three reasons why they might need to he might need to give a signal one is that actually war is about to break out and he's got to tell them another is that there's a high level penetration of the west which of course might endanger him and the third is that if he's under suspicion and needs to get out and so that's the the original plan from the the late 70s and then this gets updated over the years and is kept up to date by valerie and and originally that plan is for his whole family to be able to get out and they update it as the daughters are born to work it out but now crucially olig has to decide what to do about his family and this is the kind of big decision point And it's going to have huge consequences, I think, for him as a person.

28:57David:And it's hard because escaping with a wife and two really young daughters in tow, that almost exponentially increases your chances of being caught or something goes wrong, doesn't it? I mean, it just makes the odds much harder to get four people out, two of them who are very young. And of course, then it's disaster for all of you if you get caught.

29:21Gordon:Well, and I don't think he thinks he can really trust his wife, right? I mean, he's got to figure that even if he tells them like the day of, that there's a real chance that not only would maybe she doesn't come or she keeps the daughters or both, or she might then tell the KGB, right? She's kind of a KGB brat herself. Her family is deeply connected to the institution. She doesn't seem to share Oleg's views on the system entirely in his descent. So I don't think he trusts her. I think he loves her, but he doesn't trust her with this secret.

30:04David:Yeah, that's right. So I think there's a mixture, isn't there, of practical reasons why it's hard to get the family out. But also there's a risk question there. So, you know, I think he decides it's safer for not to do it. I mean, we would obviously never abandon our families if under pressure in Moscow and required to get out. But I don't blame Oleg. You know, actually, in fact, I think most people would, in this scenario, understand that decision, even if it's going to be pretty consequential.

30:31Gordon:Well, and it's pretty heavy, isn't it? Because his wife is going away with the girls up to the Caspian where her father has a dacha. and it i mean i the the kind of way he describes this in his memoir is is it's really heavy he says we parted in the doorway of a supermarket with her mind already on the holiday and on the clothes she was about to buy for the girls she gave me a quick farewell peck on the cheek i said that could have been a bit more tender and she was gone not knowing that by the time she returned to Moscow, I would be either dead or in exile. I mean, talk about, I mean, it's astounding, isn't it?

31:12Gordon:I think most humans would make the decision to remain with their family, sort of regardless of what comes. But he's so dedicated to this mission to kind of really wreck the Soviet Union and the KGB from within. I mean, he's put it above

31:31David:of being with his family he really has and he'll pay a price for it because he won't see them for years and the relationships will will never be the same after that so he's about to go away for a brief trip to a sanatorium out of town and he wants to leave a note for mi6 and and there is one drop site atst basil's cathedral which is this wonderful you know famous iconic building in red square right by the the kremlin so on on june the 30th so already like a month and a half after he first came back to Moscow. He's going to do a three-hour dry clean to get to St. Basil's. And he's got a note. I always remember him reading this note to me.

32:08David:I got him to read it. And he said, I'm under strong suspicion and in bad trouble. Need exfiltration soonest. Beware of radioactive dust and car accidents. Maybe it's worth explaining the last two. Because it's not just a random warning.

32:24Gordon:Well, yeah, it's not the signs of a man who's had too much rum. He's actually very, I think, attuned to the risk. So I guess the radioactive dust he's referring to is what I guess has come to be known as spy dust. It's nitrophenyl pentadienol, which is known as Metka in Russian. And it's basically a tagging agent, right, that the KGB would use. They would put it on cars, door handles, places where foreign intelligence officers would actually make contact with it. And then they could actually see if it might show up. Like, for example, if they're looking at Gordievsky, they could go in with essentially some form of like a black light and see if he had any of the dust in his department or on his car that would establish a connection between him and a foreign intelligence service.

33:17Gordon:So the dust, that actually is a real, very real thing. And then, I mean, the car accidents, I guess, was that a reference to... Staging a car accident. Yeah, staging a car accident to sort of intimidate someone, to create a problem for them, to create an excuse to declare someone persona non grata. So these are all sort of tried and true methods and tactics of the KGB.

33:42David:And so he's got this note with this warding, and he does the surveillance route from the department store this big department store on the side of red square and then he goes into the to the church and i actually i recreated this route in red square many years ago i think 2009 when i was in moscow i was doing a radio documentary you know about gordievsky and i'd interviewed him and i actually kind of recreated this route walking through up into saint basil's but when oleg does it you know he heads to the first floor and he finds a sign saying upper floor closed for redecoration and that's the place where he was not what you want to see yeah it's not what you want to see and so he has to walk out and he's got this note and he basically puts it in his mouth he chews it and spits it out so he's now going to have to try again to to signal and he goes and looks at his uh instructions for the escape plan and they're kept hidden in the sleeve of a book so he has to kind of unpick the sleeve and you know this is on his return then from his sanatorium trip so we're now into mid-july when he needs to signal for the escape now this again i find these signal sites in moscow just fascinating because what what they need is is a site where both him and mi6 could plausibly see each other or walk past each other and it not be suspicious but then both spot each other and you need somewhere where that's going to work you know in every season you know whether it's winter or summer you know if a road is closed and and they decide on a spot on a big busy street outside a bread store near the ukraine hotel now one of the reasons is it's not far from oleg but it's also not far from where diplomats and mi6 officers lived so it meant that they had a reason why they would be passing that because they're coming out of their apartments you know and going past that every evening and the idea is that potentially every night but certainly on every tuesday night at around 7 30 an mi6 officer had to pass that site outside the bread store and see if oleg was there now the first thing is that they have to do that come rain or come shine always every time and all year and one of the interesting things is they have to do it not just when oleg's in town or where they think he might be in town we have to do it all the time even when he's not in town because you don't actually if you if you just do it when he's in

36:10Gordon:town that it's a giveaway makes it even more suspicious right yeah it's got to look like it's part of an established pattern of life of the mi6 case officer and over time i mean in this case they've been monitored for seven years this is something that's probably whatever kgb surveillance is on these mi6 officers probably bored to death by this point and have noted like this it's become so normal for this to happen that it does not look anomalous at all.

36:39David:But I mean, seven years, 1978 to 1985, they've been checking this site every week. And then finally, on Tuesday, the 16th of July, 1985, he's ready to trigger it that evening. The signal needs to be incredibly precise. You don't want him to just be walking past because he could just have had to walk past. And you don't want to trigger an escape plan and everything else. So you need to also come up with something unusual and quite specific so that if you do see it, you know that is deliberate and not just chance. And, you know, as we see, it's slightly absurd. This is a bread shop where there's lots of people, including foreigners, kind of mingle.

37:20David:And the idea is Oleg needs to be holding a plastic bag from the Safeways, which is a grocery store in Britain. and he needs to be holding that bag and that's the signal he wants to get out. And an MI6 officer is going to acknowledge it by walking past him, carrying a Harrods shopping bag and eating a Western chocolate bar. It's very specific. It's very specific. I mean, bordering on the absurd. I mean, if someone's life wasn't in danger, you'd think this is slightly absurd, wouldn't you? I mean, but I guess that's the point. It's got to be unusual and specific. And someone said, look, actually carrying a shopping bag or carrying a Western shopping bag.

38:06David:And of course, Oleg had been in London. So the idea he's carrying a Safeway shopping bag. It's not abnormal. It's not completely abnormal. You could get away with that. And the fact that a Brit is carrying a Harrods shopping bag is not complete. You know, each thing is kind of plausible while being very unusual, I guess. And then, you know, one of the MI6 officers will say, believe me, I've had so many Kit Kats or Mars bars in the glove compartment of my car that I absolutely hate them to this day. So that's the plan. He's going to trigger it in the evening. Now, the first problem is in the morning, his father-in-law calls and invites him to dinner that evening.

38:43David:I mean, how bad is that? Because the KGB are listening.

38:47Gordon:It's been two months.

38:48David:He's been in this purgatory.

38:51Gordon:But you can imagine the father-in-law is probably thinking,

38:53David:oh, my daughter's gone away. Poor old legs by himself. I'll invite him around to dinner. and little does he know it's like dinner on the evening he's supposed to be triggering an escape signal so he says yes he could make it because he thinks he's got to say he's going to make it even if he's going to be late because you know you can't he hasn't got a reason for the and of course the kGB are listening they're eavesdropping on the phone then smiley mike calls lubimov calls and and he's calling to invite him to his dacha the following week it's the friendship isn't it he's saying he knows kordievsky's in in a bad way he knows he's stressed yeah he knows he's stressed and he's saying catch a train monday morning be in the last carriage arrives 11 13 to the to the dapcher and gordievsky says yes so he walks out mid-afternoon does a three hour nearly three hour counter surveillance route summer evening he gets near the bread shop he sees what looks like a black volga car used by the kgb pull up on the pavement and he's looking at the driver and the driver looks back and he thinks this is surveillance and they're on to me but then some people get in and out the car and it moves off he's at the point he's got his bag out now at that point the head of the mi6 station is out for dinner with his wife in the car being tailed of course and he it's not his turn to check the site but he's driving past because as we said it's you know he lives nearby and as he drives past the site he sees a man carrying a shopping bag just after 7 30 and he's thinking i think that's the signal but is my colleague gonna see him as he missed him you know so he's got this kind of question in his mind do you turn around do you kind of do you suddenly park the car and acknowledge it but that will look really weird won't it if you do that but fortunately his colleague who's the kind of the second mi6 officer in the station had also spotted gordievsky as he drove past parks his car around the corner says to his wife i need to get some bread from the bread shop fortunately his wife doesn't go we've got lots of bread at home like why do you why do you need another loaf she knows what's on so he walks out the car pulls out his green harrods bag pulls out a mars chocolate bar starts to eat it walks past stoleg the two men lock eyes just for a second but they look at each other and that's all it takes it's on the escape is activated it's got to get moving now for pimlico to be put in place it's kind of crazy isn't it just that one second it's the magic of a mars bar gordon it can do

41:27Gordon:do amazing things and i i mean i guess this episode is brought to you by and now a word

41:36Gordon:so it triggers it basically will start i guess two days later and And in that two day period, I mean, one of the things that you absolutely need if you're MI6 is you need to let the prime minister know, because if this thing I mean, frankly, if it goes well or goes wrong, there could be real political fallout.

41:58David:Yeah, yeah. And so at this point, you need to get political clearance because getting an agent out of Moscow is risky. everyone thinks it could go wrong if you get caught in the act of an mi6 team trying to bring someone out it's going to be a blow up in international relations and of course as we've just said thatcher is trying to improve relations with gorbachev this is a point of trying to improve relations and so it is a decision for thatcher to take herself here's the problem and again it's like everything that can go wrong does go wrong nearly because at that moment she's not in london She's not in Downing Street.

42:35David:She's up in Balmoral Castle with the Queen at one of the Queen's kind of residences in Scotland. And there's a regular point in the summer where the prime minister, by tradition, goes and stays with the Queen. Although famously, Thatcher and the Queen did not get on terribly well, I think. We saw that in The Crown too.

42:58Gordon:Yeah, we saw that in The Crown. We saw this episode, I think. Yeah, I think. Yeah. playing games and prime minister thatcher was not she couldn't kind of get in the flow i don't know if that was real but that's it's the image i have when i think about this

43:11David:and it's interesting because they're so careful aren't they because they know they can't call they can't make the call on the phone to explain it so someone's got to go up there thatcher's foreign affairs advisor charles pole is going to race to heathrow catch a flight to aberdeen then a car to balmoral now he arrives and yeah i talked to him about this he arrives at balmoral and and the problem is he's got to see thatcher and it's really urgent but there's all the kind of am i allowed to call them flunkies the the equerries i think that's the official term strap hangers the whatever the correct term is sorry i'll get into trouble for that but who were there to protect anyone getting close bureaucratically to the queen are all like you can't just walk in they're like what are you here for and he's like can't tell you and they're like we're the queen's

43:55Gordon:private secretary we're the we're the flunkies we're the flunkies you know he's meeting top

44:01David:the top you know person the private secretary to the queen who's like you gotta tell me why you you you want to see that you know why you gotta kind of break into this meeting and and see the prime minister and he's like you know nope i can't do it so eventually he does he does get there thatcher immediately goes yes she's invested in the person she knows as mr collins you know in this agent she's taken a really personal interest in him is reporting but also his safety and so she says we have an obligation and we will not let him down so on that level it's it's a go there is another obstacle which is in london again just by chance there's a new british ambassador to moscow who is due to go out that week and he's briefed on the escape plan it's kind of excited about this going on in his first week this is good i think it's fair to say he was very very unhappy about it i mean which is it's very foreign office isn't it because no offense friends at the foreign office but i think they don't like a fuss and they don't like the spies causing a fuss on their patch do they was he against it though or was he just i think he was pretty upset yeah i think he knew ultimately that the prime minister is going to sign it off and it's her call so he hasn't got the ability to stop it and that's going to be made clear to him but i think he is pretty much saying this is a really bad idea and this is going to be disastrous and you know he can just see a massive diplomatic row in his first week when his team are caught smuggling a spy out and you know he's thinking this could be the shortest posting in diplomatic

45:40Gordon:history if i get expelled but what are they going to do leave mr collins there to be to be shot like it doesn't seem like a good outcome i asked someone about this when i was

45:53David:preparing this i said to someone what would have happened because gordievsky triggers this right and then once it triggers it he gets the recognition signal from the mi6 officer with the mars bar so as far as he knows it's on and he's going to start making the moves as we'll see to get him out what would have happened if clearance had been denied if they decided it's too risky and the awful truth is he would have made his way as we'll see up to a meeting place and there would have been no one there to meet him yeah there was no way of contacting him and stopping his side of the plan in motion so i think there's also that kind of pressure and that obligation to him to know you are really letting him down if you don't go ahead with this now You know, this is high risk to try and get him out.

46:44David:And there are definitely people at MI6HQ, you know, at Century House, who think it's a trap. They think Gordievsky has already been blown. He's had his wife recalled, this is just a trap to expose our officers and to have a pretext to have a big row. And the whole thing is a provocation. And so, you know, some of the people, pessimists, give it a 1 in 20 chance of working. 1 in 20. 5 % chance. I mean, that is pretty bad. And yet, they're still going to do it.

47:13Gordon:You have a deep obligation to this agent, right? I mean, your service, MI6 or any intelligence service really, has to... The currency with an asset has got to be some measure of trust, a certainty on the part of the asset that they will be protected if they sort of fly a signal like this. I mean, it seems almost inconceivable to me that at the end of the day, I mean, the MI6 people involved in this would have would have lost their minds if the decision had come down from the politicos that, you know, we're just going to let this guy, we're going to hang him out to dry. I mean, you probably would have had people who resign the service and leak it, you know, if that happens, right?

48:00David:Yeah, yeah. I think you're right. There would have been deep anger. So they know it's on. so there's kind of some communication some cable traffic going back between the embassy and in moscow and headquarters in london to say right it's going to be on and it's heading towards basically friday being the moment when the wheels start to turn to get him out on the weekend so gordievsky knows friday is his kind of go day it's interesting there's one more phone call though he makes on thursday again it goes back to the really personal nature of this story because he's going to call lubimov smiley mike again and this conversation i think is really interesting because it's a you know they have been the closest of friends and there is an element of in which gordievsky is going to use that friendship in a way which i think is kind of painful to some extent because Oleg calls Lubimov on the Thursday morning and to confirm the fact that they're going to meet next week because remember he said he's going to the dacha to Lubimov's dacha and Lubimov notices this kind of confidence in his friend's voice which is different from the nervous wreck you know who was drinking vodka and turning on the taps a few weeks earlier now Gordievsky knows the phone is bugged.

49:23David:But he then asks Lubimov an odd question. Did Lubimov remember a short story by Somerset Maugham, this kind of British spy writer, called Mr. Harrington's Washings? And now this is a weird reference because the story by Maugham, who's a kind of semi-spy himself in the First World War era, involved a plan to escape from Russia over the border from Finland. And that is exactly the place where Gordievsky is going to go the following day as he puts Operation Pimlico into practice. And it's crazy because he's saying on a phone which is bugged to a friend do you remember that novel and in that novel are the seeds i mean in general terms not in precise terms of what he is going to do to try and escape from the clutch of the kgb it's wild isn't it why do that if you're gordievsky the way he explains it it's a last two fingers up at the kgb that makes sense to you the two fingers i think it's a british reference to be

50:39Gordon:thumbing your your nose at your middle fingers at somebody does that imply both middle fingers

50:45David:raised it's going like that sorry to use it but it means basically going screw you kgb it's like i'm smarter than you i'm better than you i think it says i'm more cultured than you because he's kind of like i'm gonna have a joke because i'm gonna let you know what I'm planning to do. And I'm so confident that you KGB guys are so stupid and uncultured that you will not understand this reference and be able to work it out and stop me. I mean, it is crazy, isn't it? But I kind of like it.

51:21Gordon:We get a flash of the ego here, you know, the sort of sense of... Because, I mean, really throughout the story, we've been describing him, of course, as ideologically committed, but also as this kind of very deliberate, very disciplined guy who was able to really control himself to an incredible degree and compartmentalize himself. We haven't talked a lot about maybe his ego, but you do kind of get a little flash of it here of the sense that there's some catharsis for him in demonstrating in a real physical way that he is going to win and that he's superior to them.

52:01David:yeah that's what it seems like yeah i think that's right yeah he wants to know and prove and tell them he's better than them that's it and so he's going to sleep that night thursday night with the doors of his moscow flat barricaded out of fear that something might happen that night although of course if they really want to get to him they can but he'll get through the barricades They'll get through the barricades. But I guess it's maybe just again, it's just a psychological thing, isn't it? Because he knows the next day is when he's going to go. So he's barricaded in him and then waiting for Friday morning and for Friday when he's going to try and make his run for it.

52:45Gordon:well then i guess it's really escape or death gordon for olen gordievsky and that feels like the right cliffhanger to end this episode on and next time in the thrilling conclusion of this series about olen gordievsky we are going to look at his escape and see if he can get out of russia and get away from the sort of claws of the kgb that's right but of course if

53:13David:you can't wait you can listen to that episode now and lots more goodies you do not have to eat a mars bar carrying a harrod's we have our own escape for you we have our own escape oh we have a signal site you can go online to the rest is classified.com and join the declassified club no free chocolate but bonus episodes which will tell you the inside scoop for this story and lots of other exciting things but for everyone else we'll see you next time see you next time