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

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Part 1, Chapter 3

Part 1, Chapters 4-6

Part 2, Chapters 7-11

Part 3, Chapter 12-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Part 1, Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Green Ink and Microfilm”

The author outlines the beginning of Gordievsky’s spying for MI6, from early 1975 to 1977. He starts by discussing the motivations for people to spy, dividing them into external and internal reasons. Gordievsky mostly had ideological reasons, as he saw through the hypocrisy of the Soviet system and wanted to work to help establish a true democracy one day for Russia. His relationship with his new MI6 handler, Philip Hawkins, however, lacked warmth. Gordievsky didn’t particularly like Hawkins personally or feel drawn to him as he had with Bromhead. However, he came to respect the handler’s professionalism.

Their first meeting alone was a bit rocky. Hawkins began by firing off questions as if Gordievsky was an enemy under interrogation; Gordievsky thought he’d be accepted more as a colleague and treated accordingly. Finally, he stopped Hawkins and attempted to lay out his terms for cooperation. First, he didn’t want to compromise any of his KGB colleagues in Denmark and put them in harm’s way; they themselves were pawns of the system, he argued. In addition, he demanded that Hawkins not record their conversations or secretly photograph him, and he indicated that he wanted no money—for him, this was a matter of principle.

They met once a month at a safe apartment in a distant suburb of Copenhagen. From the start, Gordievsky’s demands were broken: PET bugged the apartment and installed a hidden tape recorder, which Hawkins turned on before each meeting. The handler then transcribed each tape, translating the German into English, and sent both back to England in a diplomatic pouch that was immune to searches. To test Gordievsky, Hawkins asked him things that MI6 already knew, and the KGB agent answered them correctly. He then went into such precise detail about every operation he had knowledge of that Hawkins knew he must be trustworthy.

Gordievsky’s wife knew nothing of his double life. Their relationship had continued to deteriorate, and because she was also a KGB agent, he knew she would turn him in if she ever learned the truth. Moreover, he was under no illusions about the fate that awaited him if he were ever caught—the KGB was brutal to traitors. Still, he felt good about what he was doing, like it gave purpose to his life. Not long after he started, something else gave his life more purpose: He met another woman and fell in love. Leila Aliyeva was also from a KGB family and worked as a typist for the World Health Organization in Copenhagen. She was younger and more innocent and traditional than Yelena, and Gordievsky felt alive in her presence. She in turn saw him as a wise and funny older man who introduced her to all kinds of new literature. The two began an affair, meeting at different hotels around the city.

The KGB’s work in Denmark wasn’t particularly robust, but in Norway they had several high-profile spies working for them that Gordievsky knew about. He gave all the information he had to Hawkins and MI6, and they sat on it for a while, just upping their surveillance. The conundrum was how best to use Gordievsky’s tips. If they acted to remove spies, the KGB would know one of their own was betraying them, and if they didn’t take extreme care, Gordievsky could be revealed as the source. MI6 wanted to both keep him safe and ensure that they’d continue to get valuable intelligence from him. Because they knew that spies could also be in their own midst, another way to protect him was to minimize how many people knew about him. Only the top leadership of PET was informed; the CIA was kept in the dark, and even most MI6 agents weren’t in on the arrangement.

After two years, Hawkins was replaced by Geoffrey Guscott, the agent who had first identified Gordievsky from Standa Kaplan’s file as a potential spy for MI6. Gordievsky got along well with him from the start, and they began a new level of gathering information. The KGB office received microfilm from its home office that was cut up and distributed to the relevant departments. Gordievsky started taking his clipping with him to lunch and dropping it off secretly to Guscott, who quickly took it to a safe location to photograph before covertly returning it to Gordievsky. Soon, Gordievsky was also taking the clippings off others’ desks while they were out at lunch. It was risky, and there were close calls, but it worked.

Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “A Plastic Bag and a Mars Bar”

This chapter covers Gordievsky’s return to the Soviet Union in 1978 and the elaborate plans MI6 devised to exfiltrate him from there in the case of an emergency. As he knew his second stint in Denmark was coming to an end, he asked Guscott to figure out how he might escape from Russia if the KGB ever discovered his spying. The task was sent to MI6 headquarters in London, where the deputy head of a section, Veronica Price, worked on a plan. Because of the KGB’s iron-fisted control over the Soviet Union, any such plan had extremely long odds of success. Gordievsky had no faith in its success but nonetheless memorized it.

Price worked out the steps for a plan that MI6 called PIMLICO. The best bet was to arrange for Gordievsky to be in a car with diplomatic license plates when crossing the border. While a car didn’t have the same level of legal immunity that diplomatic pouches did, it was a common courtesy to let such cars pass through checkpoints without searches. An elaborately devised series of events would have to be set in motion to even get to this point. First, Gordievsky would have to give some signal that he was in trouble and needed to get out. Every Tuesday, outside a bread shop on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, an MI6 official would pass by to see if Gordievsky was there. Both would be wearing specific clothing, holding specific store bags (Safeway for Gordievsky, Harrods for the MI6 agent). If Gordievsky was there, the agent would acknowledge the signal by walking past him while eating a Kit Kat or Mars Bar and very briefly making eye contact.

Next, on the Friday of the same week, Gordievsky was to take a series of trains and buses toward Finland to end up at the rendezvous point. This location was a pull-off on the highway, where Gordievsky would wait in the bushes for the British diplomatic car. The timing of all this was tricky, as two days’ notice was needed for diplomats to get permission to travel and a special license plate was required to cross the border. If everything went smoothly, MI6 should have the car Friday afternoon with time to drive to Leningrad, stay the night, and pick up Gordievsky on Saturday at the designated highway pull-off. He would then be given a light tranquilizer and hidden in the trunk under a space blanket (to evade infrared sensors at the border).

With Gordievsky back in the Soviet Union, MI6 decided to wait and not risk losing such a high-level source of information. The agency made no attempt to contact him other than monitoring the signal location on Tuesdays as planned. They also devised a second option if Gordievsky wanted to contact them for any reason but wasn’t in danger. Another location was monitored regularly for a signal. If given, Gordievsky was to meet an MI6 agent three weeks later at a precise time at St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square. The two would pass discreetly in a stairwell where Gordievsky could slip the agent a message. As it happened, three years would pass without any message or signal from Gordievsky.

When he returned to Moscow, Gordievsky told the head of his department that he was divorcing his first wife and planned to marry the woman he met in Denmark. He knew this would negatively affect his career, as the KGB had puritanical standards—especially regarding agents who had affairs in the field as Gordievsky had done. His old friend Lyubimov had divorced and remarried, sacrificing several years of professional progress before he had worked his way up again, so Gordievsky knew what to expect. Still, it was worth it to him. He was given a desk job with meaningless tasks but was happy with his new life with Leila. Before long, they were expecting their first child.

Gordievsky decided he’d try to get posted abroad again so that he could gain further knowledge to give MI6. He decided to learn English at age 41 even though he already knew two other foreign languages; it might help him get a position in Britain. He finished his four-year course in just two years and began studying British culture and literature as well. He even helped translate the reports of British spy Kim Philby (who had defected to the Soviet Union) to learn the vocabulary used by diplomats. He and Leila had their first daughter in 1980, and the next year they welcomed a second.

In 1981, PET asked a Danish diplomat planning to visit Moscow to discreetly learn what he could about Gordievsky. The diplomat bumped into him at a party, where Gordievsky casually mentioned that he was learning English. This information, which PET passed along to MI6, signaled that he was safe and perhaps planning to reengage.

Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “Agent BOOT”

This last chapter of Part 1 describes how Gordievsky worked to get posted to London in 1982. The KGB still lacked English-speaking agents a decade after Britain had expelled 100 of them. When a post opened in 1981, the agency had a hard time filling it. Gordievsky quietly angled for the job, was issued a passport, and applied for a British visa. MI6 regarded the application with both excitement and concern. The visa officers normally rejected anyone suspected of being a KGB agent, and a routine request to Danish intelligence officials during the background check would certainly result in such suspicions. MI6 thus contacted the relevant people in PET to alter Gordievsky’s record slightly to make it more innocuous. The reply to the visa office therefore mentioned only slight indications that Gordievsky might be with the KGB but nothing definitive. He was cleared and his visa approved.

Back in Moscow, the approval process took months, and the British started to wonder if something had happened. While waiting, Gordievsky took the opportunity to study the KGB files on Britain, ostensibly to acquaint himself with the situation for his eventual post. In reality, he was gathering whatever he could to relay to MI6. Among the people he learned about were informants and what the KGB called “confidential contacts”—people sympathetic to the Soviet Union who wasn’t actually spying for them. They included Jack Jones, a socialist and union leader; Bob Edwards, a Labour MP who was an actual agent; and Michael Foot, leader of the Labour Party, who would become prime minister if the party won the next election. The last, whom the KGB gave the code-name “BOOT,” was a big deal because “[t]he Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition had been a paid KGB agent” (115). Eventually, Gordievsky’s application was approved, and in June 1982 he and his family flew to London.

Part 1, Chapters 4-6 Analysis

The second half of Part 1 covers Gordievsky’s early years as a spy. Macintyre establishes how the spying was carried out and what the relationship between Gordievsky and his British handlers was like. This helps to illustrate the danger involved for Gordievsky every day. The risk was always present that he could be seen by a colleague in a part of Copenhagen he had no reason to be in or be found carrying the top-secret microfilm that he smuggled out to lunch with him so that his handler could copy it. In describing every detail and close call, Macintyre conveys a sensory experience of the dangers that Gordievsky faced.

In addition, the author discusses the spies that Gordievsky’s intelligence uncovered, particularly in Scandinavian countries. This continues to show the danger to Gordievsky since acting on the information he provided would likely alert the Soviets that the KGB had a mole: Whatever actions MI6 took, they needed to protect their source. In addition, the author’s detailed descriptions of these other spies shows Gordievsky’s significance to MI6; the information he provided was extensive and deep. Macintyre begins to make his case here that Gordievsky had a profound influence on Cold War history.

The theme Living a Double Life runs throughout the book, and in these chapters Gordievsky’s double life deepens. When he became a spy for MI6, he kept it from his first wife, as she was also a KGB agent and they were growing apart anyway. When he met Leila and fell in love with her, he decided not to tell her either. They later married and had children, but still he maintained his secret. Although he loved Leila, by withholding a part of his true identity, he was automatically limiting their relationship and deceiving her. This also, then, touches on the theme The Price of Loyalty. Because of his loyalty to the West, both he and Leila paid a price—though she was unaware of this until he disappeared. Gordievsky, however, was aware all along and had to live with the complex feelings stemming from not being fully honest with the one he loved most. The depiction of their family life in these chapters develops this theme and foreshadows its prominence after he escapes from the Soviet Union.

When Gordievsky returns to the Soviet Union after his second stint in Copenhagen, in Chapter 5, his British handlers devise Operation PIMLICO, the plan to smuggle him out of the Soviet Union in the event of an emergency. Macintyre goes into many of its details here so that its implementation at the end of the book makes sense. It would be too much information to convey then, along with what happened—but it also serves as foreshadowing. Like Anton Chekov’s famous dictum that a loaded gun introduced in a story must always go off by the end, the introduction of Gordievsky’s escape plan signals that it will be used. It harkens back to the Introduction so that now, a third of the way into the book, an escape attempt seems likely. The author builds suspense by inviting speculation about whether it will be successful.