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

by Ben Macintyre

Gordievsky adopted his first spy-name. Soviet and Western intelligence services used the same method for choosing a pseudonym – it should be close to the real name, with the same initial letter, because that way if a person addressed you by your real name, someone who only knew you by your spy-name might well assume he or she had misheard. Gordievsky chose the name ‘Guardiyetsev’.

Sunk in the grey conformity of Moscow, Gordievsky suffered acute cultural withdrawal symptoms. He was restless, resentful, increasingly lonely and stuck.

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

For Gordievsky, Leila’s gentle personality and simple sweetness seemed a tonic after Yelena’s shrewish disdain. He had become used to calculation in his human relationships, constantly assessing his own actions and words, and those of others. Leila, by contrast, was natural, outgoing and uninhibited: Oleg felt adored, for the first time in his life.

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.

canker

Ames learned: that morality can be malleable;

‘It’s hard to explain, but you just know what to trust and what not to trust. You exercise your judgement.

Almost any human behaviour, if scrutinized sufficiently intensely, can begin to seem suspicious:

Imagine a typical party, to mark a Soviet holiday, in a small central room of the residency. Everything is as it should be: on the table are sandwiches and fruit, vodka and whisky for the men, a bottle of wine for the few ladies.

It is perfectly possible for two people to listen to the same words, and hear entirely different things. This was one of those moments.

cheese and onion is a pungent artificial cocktail of onion powder, whey powder, cheese powder, dextrose, salt, potassium chloride, flavour enhancers, monosodium glutamate, sodium 5’ribonucleotide, yeast, citric acid and colouring.

As the dog circled the boot, Caroline Ascot reached for a weapon that had never been deployed before in the Cold War, or any other. She placed Florence on the car boot directly over the hidden spy, and began changing her nappy – which the baby, with immaculate timing, had just filled. She then dropped the soiled and smelly diaper next to the inquisitive Alsatian. ‘The dog duly slunk off, offended.’ Olfactory diversion was never part of the plan. The nappy ruse had been completely spontaneous, and highly effective.

There are people who are most eloquent when most angry.

‘It is clear that in 1983 Oleg “saved the world” by revealing the Soviet thinking behind RYAN,’ conceded Parshikov. ‘But I wonder if Oleg has achieved his life goal? OK, the USSR doesn’t exist and we in Russia have already forgotten about Communism. But has it become better, safer, for the world?’