The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

by Ben Macintyre

Amid the stifling conformity of Stalin’s Russia, it was possible to believe differently in secret but far too dangerous for honesty, even to members of your own family.

‘Only a physical barrier, reinforced by armed guards in their watchtowers, could keep the East Germans in their socialist paradise and stop them fleeing to the West.’

There was a very good reason, he reflected, why ordinary Soviet citizens were not permitted to travel abroad: who but a fully indoctrinated KGB officer would be able to taste such freedoms and resist the urge to stay?

Whenever this man was followed into a particular Copenhagen department store, Clausen would commandeer the loudspeaker system and announce: ‘Would Mr Bratsov of KGB Ltd please come to the information desk.’ After the third such summons, the KGB sent Bratsov back to Moscow.

One of the oldest gambits in intelligence is ‘the dangle’, when one side appears to make a play for someone on the other, lures him into complicity and gains his trust, before exposing him.

Pavel Sudoplatov, one of Stalin’s spymasters, had this advice for his officers seeking to recruit spies in Western countries: ‘search for people who are hurt by fate or nature – the ugly, those suffering from an inferiority complex, craving power and influence but defeated by unfavourable circumstances … In cooperation with us, all these find a peculiar compensation. The sense of belonging to an influential and powerful organization will give them a feeling of superiority over the handsome and prosperous people around them.’ For many years, the KGB used the acronym MICE to identify the four mainsprings of spying: Money, Ideology, Coercion and Ego. But

But all spies crave undetected influence, that secret compensation: the ruthless exercise of private power. A degree of intellectual snobbery is common to most, the secret sense of knowing important things unknown to the person standing next to you at the bus stop. In part, spying is an act of the imagination.

All spies need to feel they are loved. One of the most powerful forces in espionage and intelligence work (and one of its central myths) is the emotional bond between spy and spymaster, agent and handler.

Exploiting and manipulating that hunger for affection and affirmation is one of the most important skills of an agent-runner. There has never been a successful spy who did not feel that the connection with his handler was something more profound than a marriage of convenience, politics or profit: a true, enduring communion, amid the lies and deception.

The best way to test whether someone is lying is to ask a question to which you already know the answer.

The Norwegian connection illustrated a central challenge of the Gordievsky case, and a conundrum of spying in general: how to make use of high-grade intelligence without compromising its source.

Spooner was not a man who rushed to judgement; rather, he approached judgement very slowly, incrementally and fastidiously.

The PR Line primarily sought political influence and secret information; its targets were opinion-formers, politicians, journalists and others in positions of power.

Jack Jones was one of the most respected figures in the trade union movement, a crusading socialist once described by the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown as ‘one of the world’s greatest trade union leaders’. He was also a KGB agent.

Agent BOOT was the Right Honourable Michael Foot, distinguished writer and orator, veteran left-wing MP, leader of the Labour Party and the politician who, if Labour won the next election, would become Prime Minister of Britain. The Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition had been a paid KGB agent.

Lenin is often credited with coining the term ‘useful idiot’, poleznyi durak in Russian, meaning one who can be used to spread propaganda without being aware of it, or subscribing to the goals intended by the manipulator.

In launching Operation RYAN, Andropov broke the first rule of intelligence: never ask for confirmation of something you already believe.

In a craven and hierarchical organization, the only thing more dangerous than revealing your own ignorance is to draw attention to the stupidity of the boss.

‘Our sources in the Soviet Union tended to be those who provided us with information about their military and military R&D. What Gordievsky was giving us was information about the thinking of the leadership – and that kind of information was for us as scarce as hens’ teeth.’

‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.’

The term ‘Finlandization’ had come to mean any small state cowed into submission by a much more powerful neighbour, retaining theoretical sovereignty but effectively in thrall.

The Finns deeply resented the term Finlandization, but it accurately represented the situation of a country forced to look both ways, keen to be seen as Western but unwilling and unable to alienate the Soviet Union. The Finnish cartoonist Kari Suomalainen once described his country’s uncomfortable position as ‘The art of bowing to the East without mooning the West.’

The story is about risk – ‘man has always found it easier to sacrifice his life than to learn the multiplication table’ – and getting out in time.

He had brought along Hotel du Lac, the Booker Prize-winning novel by Anita Brookner.

‘He did what he believed in, and I respect him for that. But he didn’t ask me. He involved me without my choice. He didn’t give me an opportunity to choose. From his point of view he was my saviour. But who put me in the shit-hole? He’d forgotten the first part. You can’t kick someone off a cliff and then put out a hand and say: “I saved you!” He was so bloody Russian.’

Ascot’s daughter, whose dirty nappy had played such a strange role in the Cold War, became an authority on Russian art. The KGB could never quite believe that MI6 had taken along a baby as cover on an exfiltration operation.

At the anniversary celebration he was presented, as a souvenir, with a new travel bag. It contained the following: a Mars bar, a plastic Harrods bag, a map of Western Russia, pills ‘for the relief of worry, irritability, insomnia and stress’, mosquito repellent, two bottles of chilled beer and two cassette tapes: Dr. Hook’s Greatest Hits and Sibelius’s Finlandia.