Every Spy a Traitor, page 19
‘And then?’
‘Leave it to Bernard.’
Chapter 17
Moscow
August 1938
‘May you never be noticed!’
He was thirteen when his grandfather pronounced this in his usual solemn manner as they were walking along a country lane. At first, he’d dismissed it as one more of the old man’s often obscure Ukrainian proverbs, which he was so fond of. In fact, he’d said it twice, once in Ukrainian and then in Russian, as if nervous that the crows looking down on them would disapprove of him having spoken Ukrainian.
It was around the time Sergei Grigoryevich Volkov had become active in the Komsomol, the youth league of the Soviet Communist Party and of course he’d nodded and thanked his grandfather and thought no more of it until the following week when he was deep in a game of chess with his grandfather and they were alone in the house and the old man had picked up a bishop and held it in front of his grandson’s face and once again said ‘may you never be noticed’ and this time Sergei Grigoryevich noticed that there were tears in his grandfather’s eyes and he asked him if he was all right and he’d replied that he was worried about him.
‘But why are you worried about me? I’m doing well at school, I can sometimes beat you at chess and I’m about to be elected to the neighbourhood committee of the Komsomol!’
‘Exactly – you are a very bright boy and you’ve entered the ranks of the Communist Party. You will have the opportunity to enjoy a privileged life but it’ll also be a very…’ He’d paused, searching for the right word. ‘Exposed one. It will bring you many advantages in life, but you’ll risk danger. That is why I say may you never be noticed: it is safer to be anonymous, for people not to notice you.’
His grandfather had died two years later and the next time Sergei Grigoryevich heard that phrase was when he was sixteen and about to leave his hometown of Yefremov in Tula Oblast to go to technical college in Moscow.
It was quite an achievement – there’d even been a paragraph about him in the local newspaper. This was one of the best technical colleges in Moscow and not only did you have to be very bright to pass the tests, but you needed to be loyal, too. His membership of the Komsomol had served him well.
A week before his departure he bumped into one of his former schoolmasters. The man had left the school somewhat hurriedly about four years before and the rumour was that he’d been sacked because he wasn’t a Party member and as far as he was aware, the distinguished-looking and cultured man whose voice would choke with emotion when he was reading particular passages of literature was now a labourer in the iron foundry.
He certainly looked about ten years older when he stopped Sergei Grigoryevich in the street. His face was grimy and his clothes filthy and he asked him how he was and Sergei replied he was well and was about to go to Moscow and the old man – to his shame, he couldn’t remember his name – said he knew, he’d read it in the paper.
‘And I read too that you’re an important member of the Komsomol?’
‘Maybe in Yefremov, but in Moscow… I’ll be no one!’
The former teacher nodded and appeared lost in thought. ‘Maybe that is for the best, Sergei Grigoryevich.’
‘Pardon, comrade?’
The older man fleetingly flinched at the word ‘comrade’. ‘The only advice I would presume to give you is that if you do stand out, then in the long run no good will come of it. There’s an old Ukrainian saying: “may you never be noticed”.’
* * *
Sergei Grigoryevich Volkov arrived in Moscow in the summer of 1924 and for the next twelve years at least he never looked back and rarely returned to Yefremov.
He graduated from the technical college in 1927 and was then sent to an institute in the south of Moscow which specialised in the intensive teaching of foreign languages. He spent the next two years immersed in French and English and was told that the languages would be useful in his ‘next job’, though it was never explained what that job would be.
That only became apparent in 1929 on his graduation. He would be joining the Comintern, he was told – the international communist organisation based in Moscow. He was informed that extensive checks had been carried out and his loyalty was not in doubt.
He was now twenty-one and rather pleased with himself. He had a good job which came with the privileges one would expect of that position, not least of which was his own room in an apartment he shared with three other Comintern employees in the Danilovsky district, close to where the Garden Ring crossed the Moscow River. The apartment even had its own bathroom and kitchen, no sharing with other apartments. And he had access to the shops for Party members with more plentiful supplies and an exemption from military service as long as he completed a set number of civil guard training days each quarter.
It took him until 1937 to gain a serious promotion: until then he’d been rather stuck in the Archives and Records Department and although he was forever being told by his supervisors that this was an important role, he did get the impression he could remain there forever and occasionally thought of his grandfather and former teacher’s saying – may you never be noticed – and decided that was a curse as much as anything else because he certainly wasn’t being noticed and that was doing him no good whatsoever.
And then he did get noticed.
The Archives and Records Department was in the basement of the Comintern headquarters, so the other departments were invariably referred to as ‘upstairs’. And though it was not very noticeable at first, from sometime in 1936 onwards, people began to disappear from departments upstairs. Not in large numbers and not that people discussed such matters, but he’d notice that someone he saw regularly in the canteen or when he visited their office was no longer there.
And of course, it was hard to escape what was going on throughout Moscow: people arrested late at night or in the early hours of the morning, often loyal Party members, many in senior positions – and never seen again. Sent to the camps in the east, the rumours went. Or killed within hours of their arrest. It was best not to think about it, it was nothing to do with him.
And just as Sergei Grigoryevich Volkov was thinking that maybe never being noticed was not such a bad thing after all, he was approached by Nadezhda Nikolaeva Kuznetsova, an impressive lady who ran the department that liaised with the French, Swiss and Belgian communist parties. She explained that ‘due to circumstances’, there was a shortage of French speakers. Was he perhaps interested in an attachment to her department?
Naturally, it was a rhetorical question because this was how the Comintern worked: employees had no say in what part of the organisation they worked in. She was just being polite.
It was the end of 1937 when he began work in that department, which involved a good deal of translation and clerical work at first but over the weeks more people disappeared and one morning Nadezhda Nikolaeva informed him he was being sent to Paris for a conference.
The conference took place in the middle of May 1938, his first ever visit outside the Soviet Union. The venue was in La Villette in the north-east of the city. The delegates were mostly from the French communist party, along with representatives of the Belgian and Swiss parties and to Nadezhda Nikolaeva’s surprise, from the British Communist Party. She wasn’t expecting them to attend and was thrown by this because there were no English speakers on her delegation – until Sergei Grigoryevich reminded her that he spoke English.
This was how he came to be the principal liaison with the small British delegation, a position that would normally have been occupied by someone more senior.
The British delegation were a poor bunch, intellectually out of their depth and notably lacking in their grasp of Marxist–Leninist ideology. They were all men in their fifties or sixties. But there was one woman, a teacher called Margaret, with extraordinary blue eyes and long blonde hair who told Sergei he could call her Maggie and she was in her early thirties and by far the brightest of the British delegates.
Over the course of the first two days, he and Maggie got on very well: she complimented him on his English and he was fascinated by her beauty and her sophistication and by everything she had to tell him about Great Britain. He realised he was falling in love with her, which was typical – he only ever fell for women who were unattainable.
On the third night she appeared in his hotel room at two in the morning. He had no idea how she’d got in – after all, there were NKVD guards on the corridor where the Soviet delegates were staying – but never got round to asking. The curtain was open just enough to flood the small room with moonlight and he watched as she undressed and slipped into bed beside him and when she left it was past four o’clock and the last two hours felt like twenty minutes and she returned the following night and the one after that, which was his last night in Paris, and this time she arrived earlier and stayed for longer and in between the first and second time they made love, they talked.
She said he was the most wonderful man she’d ever met and the age difference was immaterial and if he ever came to visit England he was to be her guest and he could stay for as long as he liked and he found himself agreeing, though he did wonder whether she had any idea of what the Soviet Union was like, because the notion that he could just go and visit England was about as far-fetched as him being co-opted onto the Central Committee, but he was so captivated by her he decided he really must try in any way he could to get to England.
That was not all that happened on his penultimate day in Paris. They’d been joined the day before by another Comintern official, a nervous-looking man who avoided the conference but remained in the hotel and spent much of his time in conversation with Nadezhda Nikolaeva and that morning she’d told him that he was to accompany the man into the centre of Paris because he had to meet someone but spoke no French and Sergei Grigoryevich’s job was to guide him to his destination and translate if there was a problem and he was to do exactly as the man said.
When they left the hotel in La Villette he did suspect the man had been drinking, which was not in itself unusual for a Comintern official, but he insisted they stop at the bar by the metro station where he told Sergei Grigoryevich to order him a Cognac and after three of these, they made their way to centre of Paris. It was a tortuous journey. Every so often the man would lean into Sergei, his breath heavy with alcohol and say they should change at the next stop and after more than an hour of this they reached Boissière metro station and the man said they should exit there and when they came to the street level, they were on Avenue Kléber.
‘We need to get to Avenue d’Eylau, do you know it?’
Sergei shook his head.
‘It’s meant to be nearby.’
‘I don’t know Paris. I could ask someone – or we could get a map?’
‘A map? Don’t be ridiculous! Where do they find people like you! I’ll wait here, you go to that stall on the other side of the road and ask where Avenue d’Eylau is.’
When they reached Avenue d’Eylau the man looked round and seemed to have an idea of where he was going. He looked at his watch.
‘It’s only noon; I’m early. We’ll go into this bar.’
They remained there for another half hour, during which time the man drank two more large Cognacs and by the time he was ready to leave, Sergei noticed he was unsteady on his feet and he thought that whatever he was doing, he was in no fit state to do it.
‘Wait here,’ he said, his words slurring, ‘and I’ll return in around forty minutes.’ He looked at his watch, his hands shaking slightly. ‘It’s twelve thirty now: if I’m not back by a quarter-to-two, you are return to the hotel and tell Nadezhda Nikolaeva what has happened. Whatever you do, make sure you’re not being followed. And you’d better drink while you’re here. It’ll look suspicious if you don’t.’
The man returned just before one thirty. He looked exhausted, his face flushed, and he was clearly out of breath and he told Sergei he needed another drink and they found a table on its own at the rear of the bar and there was no one close to them and the man moved closer and spoke with a strong northern accent, which if Sergei had to guess he’d say was from somewhere like Volgoda.
‘Do you know Zaslavsky?’
Sergei Grigoryevich shook his head.
‘Nikolai Vasilyevich Zaslavsky, he’s my boss in the International Liaison Department: a very important man.’
Sergei Grigoryevich felt a cold shudder run down his spine. The OMS was the most clandestine and feared section of the Comintern.
‘He was meant to do this job today but he’s ill so I’ve been sent and…’ He gripped Sergei’s forearm with his hand, not letting go. ‘It’s very dangerous… they should have called it off rather than sending me. Just because I speak English!’
‘What were you doing, can I ask?’
‘Seeing as you ask, no, you shouldn’t ask, but all you need to know is that Nikolai Vasilyevich was meant to meet with a very important Englishman, one of our top contacts. They call him Archie, Agent Archie. Apparently, he’s very highly placed in London and the intelligence we get from him is top secret – the best – and he’s visiting Paris and it was felt this would be a good opportunity to pass on a new camera and instructions to him and money too and in return he has documents and film for us.’
The man patted his chest, indicating that was where the material was being kept.
‘Should you be telling me all this?’
‘Of course not, but these days, the pressure is so great that sometimes you need to unburden yourself by sharing what you know. But not a word of it, right? In return I’ll tell Nadezhda Nikolaeva how good you were and I’ll not whisper a word to her about the Englishwoman you’ve been spending the nights with: that’s a deal, eh?’
* * *
During the long rail journeys back to Moscow Sergei Grigoryevich developed a plan. He couldn’t stop thinking about the Englishwoman who said he could call her Maggie and who wanted him to be her guest and now he had a way of getting to England.
He knew what he was planning carried an enormous risk. It could easily prove to be his death warrant, so he didn’t rush.
He waited until the beginning of August to make his first move. It was a warm Sunday, a day when more people than usual were out and about and he took two trams until he came to the banks of the Moscow River, opposite the Kremlin, and walked along until the British Embassy on Sofiyskaya Naberezhnaya came into sight.
He found a bench overlooking a path leading from the embassy and after an hour watched as a tall man wearing a dark suit left a side gate and walked towards him. Sergei waited until he’d walked past and then followed the man for about ten minutes as he headed south across the bridge into Zamoskvorechye and when the man was close to the Church of the Resurrection he caught up with him.
‘Please keep walking and please listen carefully. I have important information for the British authorities. If you’re interested, I will be here this time next week. Tell whoever comes to carry a pair of gloves in their right hand and an umbrella in their left and when I approach, I will ask for a light. Do you understand.’
Sergei had spoken in English and to his credit the other man stayed impressively calm, nodding his head and replied ‘of course’ and walked on, without turning round.
* * *
There’d been much discussion in the embassy about what to do.
The man Sergei Grigoryevich approached was one of the commercial attachés at the embassy and of course he’d reported the encounter immediately to his superior and George Banks had been informed and it was agreed he’d be the man who’d meet the Russian.
‘It’s not unknown for the Soviets to use a trap like this but if it was a trap, I’d have expected them to ask us for something in return first, like bringing money.’
‘So do we go ahead with it, George?’
‘Do you mean, do I go ahead with it, Ambassador? Yes, I think so. It’s one way of spending a Sunday, after all!’
A week later and George Banks followed the man’s instructions, appearing outside the Church of the Resurrection with a pair of gloves in his right hand and an umbrella in his left. Those stipulations felt to him too much like the way an amateur would imagine spies to behave, rather than something decided by the NKVD.
The man who came up to him was clearly nervous and Banks suggested they walk on towards the Church of the Oppressed and was going to make a joke but decided against it and once they were in a side road, in the shadow of the church he shook the man’s hand and noticed it was clammy and he said he’d better make it snappy.
‘I have some information for you but in return I want a guarantee that I will be able to live in England and you will help me reach there.’
The man spoke fast, peering over Banks’s shoulder towards the road. Banks took a step to his left and they both moved deeper into the shadow of the church.
‘What information?’
‘Important information about an Englishman who is a Soviet spy. He was in Paris in May as was I and he met with a Comintern agent while he was there.’
‘I need to know more.’
‘I understand he is very highly placed and the Soviet Union gets excellent intelligence from him. The Comintern agent who met him in Paris handed a camera over to him and got some documents in return.’
‘What is this man’s name, please?’
‘His codename is Agent Archie but I don’t know his real name, though I can endeavour to find out. However, first I need a guarantee that I will be granted sanctuary in England.’
George Banks nodded and said ‘of course’ and then asked the man how he could be sure he was genuine.
‘You will have to trust me, but I work for the Comintern. This is my identity card. You speak Russian?’
Banks said ‘of course’ and looked at the man’s card. It was certainly a Comintern card and the photograph was of the same man, though he’d covered up his name.
