Text copyright © 2018 by Gordon Corera

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  Published by Amazon Publishing, Seattle

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  eISBN: 9781503957466

  Cover design by RBDA Studio

  CONTENTS

  ARRIVAL

  ILLEGALS

  KONON MOLODY

  DEAD DOUBLE

  HARRY AND BUNTY

  THE SPYCATCHER

  THE WATCHERS

  THE MYSTERIOUS KROGERS

  THE HOUSE OF SECRETS

  TWO MEN MEET AGAIN – NOW AS SPIES

  THE SWAP

  AFTERLIFE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ENDNOTES

  ARRIVAL

  Gordon Lonsdale did not arrive by swimming from a submarine off the shore of Scotland, wearing a frogman’s suit with a waterproof container strapped to his back. That was what some excitable reports would later claim. His entry was much more mundane. That was the point.

  The passengers filed off the SS America as it arrived in Southampton from New York in March 1955. Foreigners had to fill out forms and have their passports and visas scrutinised. But as a Canadian – part of the Empire – Gordon Lonsdale joined the British line where checks were cursory.

  A special train then ferried passengers to London’s Waterloo station. It was late and dark, drizzling with rain, when Lonsdale checked into a damp, cold Victorian hotel nearby. Dropping a coin into a meter was the only way to generate any heat.

  The next morning, he headed to the more salubrious surroundings of the Royal Over-Seas League. The League was a stone’s throw from the Ritz Hotel in St James’s and close to the other prestigious clubs in town. The receptionist, Elizabeth, saw a man walk in who was in his thirties, not too tall but with strong cheekbones. His distinctive eyes and dark, wavy hair coupled with an easy manner made her take notice. Lonsdale did the same, noting that she might be a useful subject for his charm. He presented his membership card and explained that he was going to study Chinese at the School for Oriental and African Studies, part of the University of London. She said he was welcome to stay in one of the League’s rooms while he looked for housing. Soon after he went to his room, the phone rang. The Director of the League wanted to meet in half an hour. In the bar the Director made a point of offering a Canadian whisky to his guest and then drew Lonsdale’s attention to the view from the window. Buckingham Palace lay just across Green Park and the Director explained that the flying of the Queen’s Standard meant she was in residence. They should drink to her health. Lonsdale nodded. ‘The Queen’s health,’ the men around the bar said formally. Lonsdale had settled in rather nicely, he could reflect that night, as he began plotting how he could subvert the Queen’s subjects to betray their country.

  Gordon Lonsdale was a spy – not just any spy, but a member of an elite breed apart. He was an illegal. His story has been shrouded in lies. Using declassified documents and sources in Russia and the West, the deceptions can now be stripped away to reveal a story which tells us much about how Russia spies and the challenges of living a double life.

  For the first few weeks, Gordon Lonsdale got to know the city. The League was an ideal base. He could invite friends back to the bar. At one point, his League friends even got him into the Houses of Parliament where he watched the substantial figure of Winston Churchill take his seat. The League also helped him find a more permanent home. He explained to Elizabeth, to whom he was now conveniently close, that he needed a reference. She asked the Director, whose word was enough to get Lonsdale into a swanky Art Deco development called ‘The White House’, a luxury block of flats on Albany Street, right by Regent’s Park. It boasted its own swimming pool, restaurant and cocktail bar.

  A few days after arriving in London, Lonsdale turned off the Strand to reach the back of the Savoy Hotel. At the rear entrance, facing the Thames, was a phone box. He had walked there every day. This time, when he felt beneath the shelf which held the telephone directories, he found a map pin. That was the signal to clear his dead-letter box – a pre-agreed site where information had been left for him. In a small hole in a wall by a flight of steps was a package the size of a wedding ring case. He pushed it quickly into his raincoat pocket. Thirty minutes later he was back in the League. He locked the door and unwrapped the bundle. Inside was a message. It was time to start work.

  A few days later Lonsdale stood in front of Da Vinci’s John the Baptist in the Louvre in Paris. At noon he scratched his left ear with a bandaged finger and then walked out towards the Champs-Élysées. A few minutes later a black Mercedes pulled up. He got in and the car headed out to the suburbs. Jean was tall, thin and in his fifties and gave Lonsdale his instructions. He also handed over some letters from Lonsdale’s wife Galina. Lonsdale read them slowly but then struggled when given the chance to respond to find any words that went beyond vague generalities. That night he flew back to London.

  It was gloomy on the first Wednesday in October as Lonsdale sat in a stuffy room and watched his classmates file in for the start of their Chinese course. The choice of course was not an accident. The class was not comprised of the normal twenty-year-old students. Most were nearly a decade older. About half were foreign or had a business background. Lonsdale was in that category. But the other half wore the uniform of pinstripe suits and bowler hats that marked them out as part of the British establishment – civil servants. And among them, Lonsdale knew, were some spies. This was where they were sent to learn the language ready for a foreign posting.

  Studying Chinese was easy for Lonsdale. That was because he already spoke the language (he had even helped write a textbook in Moscow). The hardest part was hiding that fact. But it gave him plenty of time to work out who was who on his course. In a break between lectures, he found himself next to a tall, relaxed man wearing a tweed jacket and light-grey trousers. He was another Canadian – Tom Pope from Ottawa. As often happens, the foreigners and Brits kept themselves separate. But slowly the ice broke. Tom Pope, it turned out, threw a mean, martini-fuelled party and all the students came along with friends and other hangers-on to his place in Bayswater. Lonsdale was always at the centre of things – a good storyteller who would wave his hands as he talked. He knew all about theatre and culture but could also drop in the odd reference to having been a lumberjack in Canada. He was an avid amateur photographer and brought along his camera with a flash and took some snaps at one party and asked others to do the same. He promised he would send them round. At one party, another student, an American slightly worse for wear, turned to Lonsdale. ‘Hey, Gordon, I want to share with you a discovery,’ he said furtively. ‘Except for you and me, they are all spies here.’i

  ILLEGALS

  Most spies work under diplomatic cover in a foreign country – posing as something like a second secretary for trade. Everyone knows this happens and so embassies are closely watched. MI5 in Britain for instance carefully assessed each Soviet diplomat posted to London to try and work out if they were an undercover intelligence officer and their movements were restricted and monitored. If such a spy is caught in the act, they have diplomatic immunity and can be declared persona non grata and expelled. There is no risk of prison. Other spies work under non-official cover. Lots of countries do this – a spy posing as a businessman to meet an agent for instance. This makes it harder to find them but also means they have no protection if captured. An American businessman meeting a Russian diplomat in Moscow might still arouse suspicion and investigation though. So Russia takes this a step further. A true Russian illegal is not just living under cover of a different occupation but takes on an entirely different nationality. The Russian will not – to all appearances – be Russian but instead German or Canadian. This makes them immeasurably harder to find.

  Moscow specialised in this approach because in the first few decades after the 1917 revolution many countries did not have formal diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union so there was no option of diplomatic cover.ii Other types of cover – such as business – were also problematic. In addition, there was a pool of ideologically motivated men and women of other countries who were willing to spy for the Soviet Union and who could either use their nationality or adopt a new one to aid the worldwide spread of communism. Some of the greatest illegals operated in Europe in the thirties, including those responsible for recruiting and running Kim Philby and the Cambridge Spies. Their successes created a powerful mythology within Soviet intelligence about this breed apart (also creating a related fear in the eyes of their adversaries). In the mid-1950s the decision was taken to build new illegal networks in Britain and America.

  Recruiting and training illegals takes an enormous investment. But patience has always been a characteristic of Russian espionage. An illegal will not just travel in and out of a country for a short period. They live and immerse themselves in their new identity and nationality for years. This takes their ability to move and work clandestinely to a whole other level. But it also takes a remarkable degree of skill to sustain one’s cover without mistake over such a long period. Men and women capable of such work are few and far between and require huge investment. ‘Let’s put it this way, it was not a mass pro duction,’ Vladimir Semichastny, who became head of the KGB in 1961, later remarked of this breed. ‘There were not so many of them, because it’s unique . . . It is very difficult and very intense work. You do not train illegals . . . in the classes. It’s a piecemeal operation. You work with an individual, one on one. And only in such a way, we can make them look like an Englishman or a Spaniard or a German.’iii Gordon Lonsdale was one of the best.

  KONON MOLODY

  Gordon Lonsdale told everyone he had been born on 27 August 1924 in Ontario. His father was Jack Lonsdale, who walked out on his mother a year after he was born. That was all a lie. The real story was far more extraordinary. Gordon Lonsdale was Konon Molody, born in Moscow.iv His grandfather was from Ukraine but travelled to the far east of Russia to try and make his fortune in the fur trade. His grandmother was from the Lamut tribe in Kamchatka, which is where Molody inherited his slightly Asiatic features. In his false legend he ascribed this to a Native American grandmother – everything, he knew, had to have an explanation. Molody’s father was a prominent scientific writer in Moscow; his mother was a doctor. His sister was born in 1917 and Konon arrived on 17 January 1922. When Konon’s father died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage in October 1929, the family was plunged into poverty.

  In 1931 one of his mother’s sisters came to visit. She had left Russia for faraway California. She was shocked by the destitute situation her sister and the children had found themselves in. They were half starving, Konon desperate for every scrap of food. The aunt suggested she could take the children with her to America for a better life. Konon’s sister refused. But nine-year-old Konon may have been persuaded by the promise of a bicycle. Getting him out required an exit permit. Strings had to be pulled. Konon’s mother knew the wife of the novelist Maxim Gorky, who in turn knew the head of the secret police. This may have been the moment young Konon was first noticed. Next stop was Estonia, where another aunt lived. A false birth certificate provided by a priest allowed him to pose as an illegitimate child and procure an American visa.

  The next six years were spent in the warm climes of California, including school in Berkeley. He was smart and a hard worker. He learnt English quickly and spoke with only the tiniest hint of an accent. The death of his father when he was young also left its mark. He was determined to make something of his life.

  In 1938 his mother wrote to him from Russia. He was sixteen now and he had to decide what to do with his life. Did he want to stay in America or come back home? To his aunt’s annoyance, Konon said he was going home. Soon after he returned, he joined the Red Army. Molody served undercover with partisans in Byelorussia behind German lines. His bravery marked him out, but it was that decision to return to Russia and not stay in the world of the comfortable West which would really have made him attractive to the spymasters of Moscow. This was a man who knew the West intimately but had freely chosen his own country. Espionage is all about persuading agents to betray secrets. But spymasters know that the spies they employ to run these agents must be men and woman of loyalty or else they can do enormous damage. The need for loyalty is even greater among illegals, who are not even under the watchful eye of embassy colleagues and who will, to all intents and purposes, be living as if they are foreigners. Molody had been singled out as a man who could live such a life and remain loyal.

  After the war, he entered the Institute of Foreign Trade to study law and Chinese. But a friend recalled that soon after graduating in June 1951, Molody simply vanished.

  There are scant details of either Molody’s or any other illegal’s training by the KGB. As well as the spycraft, there was the need to live your cover. Being an illegal requires not just knowing a language like a native but how it is used, the idioms, the nuances, the jokes, the cultural references to films or sports. ‘It is also necessary over time to learn to think in a foreign language,’ Lonsdale later said, and even when surprised to make sure you swear in it. You had to retain control in all situations, never giving in to impulsive actions or words which might give you away. The consequences of every action needed to be thought through, but you also had to do this so quickly that it looked effortless. As any child knows, one lie can quickly lead to another to cover it up, but these could all too easily get you into trouble if they did not conform to the story you had adopted. It was not like the way other spies learnt their cover identity by heart – where they had been born and where they went to school – so they could respond if asked. If you were an illegal you had to inhabit that other identity, not just dredge it up when confronted. An illegal does not adopt his cover. He becomes it. But somehow he must do it without losing sight of his true self.

  Once his training was complete, it was time to head into the field. Molody sailed to New York on an ocean liner. A taxi took him to his hotel near the docks. Over the coming days he would watch city life, catching the subway, taking his breakfast at a drugstore counter, checking he had no tail. After a few days he headed to Central Park. On a bench he saw the man he was there to work for and help. He was lean and trim – and they had met before.

  The man on the bench had many names. At that moment he was known as Emil Goldfus. William Fisher was his real name but he was best known as Rudolf Abel. He had been born in 1903 in Newcastle, England, to Russian parents. Their commitment to communism had led them to flee Russia and then return in 1920 following the Revolution. Their son, a thin, cultured man, had been recruited into Russian intelligence soon afterwards. During the Second World War he had worked undercover behind enemy lines – it was here that he had briefly met Molody. After the war, he became an illegal in America, living in Brooklyn and running a network of agents and couriers supplying intelligence to the Soviet Union.

  A woman was also seated on the bench as Molody joined Abel. After a while she moved and the two men began a conversation about the weather as if they were strangers. They may have met before but the correct code phrases still needed to be exchanged. Once it was done, there was a smile and then Abel began to speak slowly and carefully.

  Molody’s mission was to be responsible for sending messages by radio and running couriers for Abel’s network. Molody moved into a one-bedroom apartment but was out most of the time – his cover as a travelling salesman ideal for taking long counter-surveillance routes to ensure he was not followed. A chalk mark in a particular place meant that a drop had to be cleared – the first time it was a small hole in a wall in an alley near Brooklyn Bridge. Most of his time was in New York, but sometimes there would be trips to Washington, D.C., or even once back to California. In the summer of 1954 he was summoned to meet Abel. There had been a message from Moscow. Molody was ready to step up and become head of his own illegal residency. It would not be in New York, but London.

  DEAD DOUBLE

  In November 1954 Molody took a boat from Seattle to Vancouver. His accent meant he could not pass as English in London so he would become Canadian. The grey weather and rain of Vancouver, he would later say, was good preparation for London. Again, he walked the streets – not to shake surveillance but to soak up life and the geography of the city. He entered Canada using the identity of a ‘live double’ – a living Canadian communist who had handed over his passport. But in Canada he needed to find a stronger cover. That meant assuming the name of a ‘dead double’. This would be Gordon Lonsdale – a child born in Canada in 1924 but who had emigrated to the Soviet Union with his Finnish mother and died there in 1943. Molody first got hold of an identity card and then, in Toronto, the real prize – a Canadian passport.v

  He wrote a letter to the University of London explaining he wanted to study Chinese. Filling in some forms to transfer money to England, the Canadian bank clerk gave him some advice. ‘It might be useful for you to join the Royal Over-Seas League,’ the clerk explained. It was a great place to get to know people and find your feet. The clerk was secretary of the local branch. Molody was rather pleased when he saw the name of the patron of the League: Queen Elizabeth II.

  Molody returned from Canada to New York, crossing over at Niagara Falls as Gordon Lonsdale on 22 February 1955, staying at the York Hotel on 7th and 36th. He saw Abel, and the two men hugged as they parted. Two years later Abel was arrested in a Manhattan hotel room. By then, Molody would be running his own agents in Britain.

 

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