A Spy Among Friends (15 page)

In September 1945, Igor Gouzenko, a twenty-six-year-old cipher clerk at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, turned up at a Canadian newspaper office with more than a hundred secret documents stuffed inside his shirt. Gouzenko’s defection would be seen, with hindsight, as the opening shot of the Cold War. This trove was the very news Philby had been dreading, for it seemed entirely possible that Gouzenko knew his identity. He immediately contacted Boris Krötenschield. ‘Stanley was a bit agitated,’ Krötenschield reported to Moscow with dry understatement. ‘I tried to calm him down. Stanley said that in connection with this he may have information of extreme urgency to pass to us.’ For the first time, as he waited anxiously for the results of Gouzenko’s debriefing, Philby may have contemplated defection to the Soviet Union. The defector exposed a major spy network in Canada, and revealed that the Soviets had obtained information about the atomic bomb project from a spy working at the Anglo-Canadian nuclear research laboratory in Montreal. But Gouzenko worked for the GRU, Soviet military intelligence, not the NKVD; he knew little about Soviet espionage in Britain, and almost nothing of the Cambridge spies. Philby began to relax. This defector, it seemed, did not know his name. But the next one did.

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In late August 1944, Chantry Hamilton Page, the vice consul in Istanbul, received a calling card for Konstantin Dmitrievich Volkov, a Soviet consular official, accompanied by an unsigned letter requesting, in very poor English, an urgent appointment. Page discussed this odd communication with the consul, and concluded that it must be a ‘prank’: someone was taking Volkov’s name in vain. Page was still suffering from injuries he had sustained in the bomb attack on the Pera Palace Hotel, and he was prone to memory lapses. He failed to answer the letter, then lost it, and finally forgot about it. A few days later, on 4 September, Volkov appeared at the consulate in person, accompanied by his wife Zoya, and demanded an audience with Page. The Russian couple were ushered into the vice consul’s office. Mrs Volkov was in a ‘deplorably nervous state’, and Volkov himself was ‘less than rock steady’. Belatedly realising that this visit might presage something important, Page summoned John Leigh Reed, first secretary at the embassy and a fluent Russian speaker, to translate. Over the next hour, Volkov laid out a proposal that promised, at a stroke, to alter the balance of power in international espionage.

Volkov explained that his official position at the consulate was cover for his real job, as deputy chief of Soviet intelligence in Turkey. Before coming to Istanbul, he explained, he had worked for some years on the British desk at Moscow Centre. He and Zoya now wished to defect to the West. His motivation was partly personal, a desire to get even after a blazing row with the Russian ambassador. The information he offered was priceless: a complete list of Soviet agent networks in Britain and Turkey, the location of the NKVD headquarters in Moscow and details of its burglar alarm system, guard schedules, training and finance, wax impressions of keys to the files, and information on Soviet interception of British communications. Nine days later Volkov was back, now with a letter laying out a deal.

The Russian had ‘obviously been preparing his defection for a long time’, for his terms were precise: he would furnish the names of 314 Soviet agents in Turkey, and a further 250 in Britain; copies of certain documents handed over by Soviet spies in Britain were now in a suitcase in an empty apartment in Moscow. Once a deal was agreed, and Volkov and his wife were safely in the West, he would reveal the address, and MI6 could collect the papers. In exchange for this haul, Volkov demanded £50,000 (equivalent to about £1.6 million today), and political asylum in Britain under a new identity. ‘I consider this sum as a minimum considering the importance of the material given to you, as a result of which all my relatives living in the territory of the USSR are doomed.’ The Russian provided just enough detail to prove that his information was genuine: among the Soviet spies in important positions in Britain, he revealed, were seven in the British intelligence services or the Foreign Office. ‘I know, for instance, that one of these agents is fulfilling the functions of head of a section of the British counter-espionage service in London.’

Volkov insisted on several more conditions. On no account should the British allude to him in wireless messages, since the Soviets had broken the British codes and were reading everything sent through official channels; the Russians also had a spy inside the British embassy, so any paperwork relating to his offer should be closely guarded, and handwritten. All further communications would be through Chantry Page, who could contact him on routine consular business without raising suspicions among his Soviet colleagues. If he did not hear from Page within twenty-one days, he would assume the deal was off, and take his information elsewhere. Volkov’s nervousness was entirely understandable. As a veteran NKVD officer he knew exactly what Moscow Centre would do, and how quickly, if it got wind of his disloyalty.

The new British ambassador to Turkey, Sir Maurice Peterson, was allergic to spies. His predecessor, Knatchbull-Hugessen, had come horribly unstuck through the spy Cicero. Peterson wanted nothing to do with such people, and his reaction to Volkov’s approach was to shovel the whole thing, as fast as possible, onto MI6: ‘No one’s going to turn my embassy into a nest of spies . . . do it through London.’ Even the MI6 station chief in Istanbul, Cyril Machray, was kept in the dark. John Reed wrote up a report, by hand, and put it in the diplomatic bag. It landed on the desk of Sir Stewart Menzies ten days later. C immediately summoned his head of Soviet counter-espionage, Kim Philby, and handed him the report. Here was another potential intelligence coup, a trove of information that might, like the Vermehren defection two years earlier, change the game completely.

Philby read the memo with mounting, if hidden, horror: Volkov’s allusion to the Soviet spy running a counter-intelligence section in London could only refer to himself. Even if Volkov did not know his identity he had promised to hand over ‘copies of the material provided’ to Moscow, which would soon be traced back to him. The spies Volkov threatened to uncover in the Foreign Office must be Guy Burgess, now working in the news department, and Donald Maclean, first secretary at the British embassy in Washington. This lone defector had enough information to break up the entire Cambridge spy chain, expose the inner workings of Soviet intelligence, and destroy Philby himself. Struggling to compose his features, Philby stalled, telling C the Volkov approach was ‘something of the greatest importance’. He would ponder the memo overnight, he said, and report back in the morning.

‘That evening I worked late,’ Philby wrote many years later. ‘The situation seemed to call for urgent action of an extra-curricular nature.’ The insouciant tone is misleading: Philby was close to panic. He arranged a hasty meeting with Krötenschield, and told him what had happened. Max tried to calm him, in language that sounds like one Englishman discussing a cricket match with another: ‘Don’t worry, old man. We’ve seen a lot worse. The score will be settled in our favour.’ Philby should prevaricate, said Krötenschield, and try to control the situation. That evening, British radio interceptors picked up (but failed to attach any significance to) a sudden surge in coded radio messages passing from London to Moscow, followed by another increase in traffic between Moscow and Istanbul.

The next morning, Philby was back in C’s office, full of enthusiasm, since any hint of reluctance would look deeply suspicious if matters came to the crunch. ‘Someone fully briefed should be sent out to take charge of the case on the spot,’ he said, with the task of ‘meeting Volkov, bedding him down with his wife in one of our safe houses in Istanbul, and spiriting him away, with or without the connivance of the Turks, to British-occupied Egypt’. C agreed. In fact, he had met just the man for the job at White’s Club the night before: Brigadier Sir Douglas Roberts, head of Security Intelligence (Middle East) – SIME – based in Cairo, who happened to be in London on leave. Roberts was an experienced intelligence officer and a veteran anti-Bolshevik. Born in Odessa to an English father and Russian mother, he spoke Volkov’s language fluently. Indeed he was the only Russian-speaking intelligence officer in either the Middle East or London, which says much about MI6’s state of preparation for the Cold War. Roberts would be able to smuggle Volkov out of Istanbul with ease, and Philby knew it. All he could do was hope that his ‘work the night before would bear fruit before Roberts got his teeth into the case’.

Once again, Philby’s uncanny good fortune intervened. Brigadier Roberts was a brave man, a veteran of the First World War, but he had one fear: flying. Indeed, so extreme was his aviophobia that his job description explicitly excused him from having to fly anywhere. When asked to head to Istanbul at once and take over the Volkov case, he barked: ‘Don’t you read my contract? I don’t fly.’

The obvious replacement for Roberts was Nicholas Elliott. From Berne he could reach Istanbul, his old stamping ground, in a matter of hours. He had done a fine job of extracting Vermehren two years earlier, and had excellent contacts in Turkey. He even appears to have met Volkov at some point during his stint in Istanbul. But Elliott, precisely because of his suitability, was the last person Philby wanted to handle the case. For once, instead of delicately planting an idea on the boss and waiting for him to believe he had coined it, Philby directly intervened, and suggested that C send him to Turkey to extract Volkov in person. Menzies agreed, ‘with obvious relief’ at this bureaucratic problem solved. Philby now gave the impression of busily making preparations, while dragging his feet as slowly as possible. He first underwent a crash course in wireless coding, to ensure he could bypass the penetrated embassy systems, and then dawdled for three more days. When his plane finally took off for Cairo, it was diverted to Tunis, causing further delay. He was still en route when the Turkish consulate in Moscow issued visas for two Soviet ‘diplomatic couriers’ travelling to Istanbul.

Philby finally arrived in Turkey on 26 September 1945, twenty-two days after Volkov’s initial contact. The city was looking particularly beautiful in the late summer sun, but Philby grimly reflected that if he failed to prevent Volkov’s defection, ‘this might be the last memorable summer I was destined to enjoy’. When Reed asked him why MI6 had not sent someone sooner, Philby lied blandly: ‘Sorry, old man, it would have interfered with leave arrangements.’ Reed later found himself pondering the ‘inexplicable delays and evasions of Philby’s visit’, but at the time the Foreign Office man held his tongue. ‘I thought he was just irresponsible and incompetent.’

The following Monday, with Philby standing over him, Chantry Page picked up the telephone, dialled the number of the Soviet consulate, and asked the operator for Konstantin Volkov. Instead, he was put through to the consul general. Page phoned again. This time, after a lengthy pause, the telephone was answered by someone who claimed to be Volkov but who spoke good English, which Volkov did not. ‘It wasn’t Volkov,’ said Page. ‘I know Volkov’s voice perfectly well. I’ve spoken to him dozens of times.’ The third call got no further than the telephone operator.

‘She said he was out,’ complained Page. ‘A minute ago, she put me on to him.’ Page’s face was ‘a study in puzzlement’. Silently, Philby rejoiced. The next day, Page called the Soviet consulate again. ‘I asked for Volkov, and the girl said “Volkov’s in Moscow”. Then there was a sort of scuffle and slam, and the line went dead.’ Finally, Page marched over to the Soviet consulate in person, and returned enraged. ‘It’s no bloody good. I can’t get any sense out of that madhouse. Nobody’s ever heard of Volkov.’ Philby was privately triumphant. ‘The case was dead.’ And so, by this point, was Volkov.

The two ‘diplomatic couriers’, hitmen despatched by Moscow Centre, had worked with crisp efficiency. A few hours earlier, two figures, bandaged from head to foot, were seen being loaded onto a Soviet transport aircraft, ‘on stretchers and heavily sedated’. In Moscow, Volkov was taken to the torture cells of the Lubyanka where, under ‘brutal interrogation’, he confessed that he had intended to reveal the identities of hundreds of Soviet agents. Volkov and his terrified wife, Zoya, were then executed.

Philby later reflected that the episode had been ‘a very narrow squeak’, the closest he had yet come to disaster. As for Volkov, Philby dismissed the Russian as a ‘nasty piece of work’ who ‘deserved what he got’.

Konstantin Volkov left no traces: no photograph, no file in the Russian archives, no evidence about whether his motives were mercenary, personal or ideological. Neither his family, nor that of his wife, have ever emerged from the darkness of Stalin’s state. He had been right to assume that his relatives were doomed. Volkov was not merely liquidated, he was expunged.

Philby sent a coded message to Menzies, explaining that Volkov had vanished and requesting permission to wind up the case. In a subsequent report, he proffered several plausible explanations for Volkov’s disappearance: perhaps he had changed his mind about defecting, or had got drunk and talked too much. If the Soviets bugged the consulate telephones, they might have discovered the truth that way. At no point did he even hint at the possibility of a tip-off from the British side. Menzies, comfortable with Philby’s explanations, concluded it was ‘extremely unlikely’ that ‘indiscretion in the British embassy in Istanbul was the cause. The more probable explanation is that Volkov betrayed himself . . . It is quite possible that his quarrels [with the Soviet ambassador] led to him being watched, and that either he or his wife, or both, made some mistake.’

On his way home, Philby stopped off in Rome to visit James Angleton. The strain of the Volkov scare had rattled him, and he proceeded to get extremely drunk. American intelligence knew of the failed defection, and Philby’s desire to see Angleton may have been partly to ‘test the waters’, and find out how the story was playing in Washington. Angleton listened attentively to Philby’s account, and ‘expressed sympathy that so promising a case had been lost’. But the American seemed more preoccupied with his own concerns: he was worried about ‘the effect his work was having on his marriage’ since he had not seen his wife, Cicely, for over a year and ‘felt guilty about it’. Philby was sympathetic. ‘He helped me to think it through,’ Angleton said. After three days of bibulous secret-sharing and mutual support, Angleton poured Philby onto a plane, ‘worse for wear of the considerable amount of alcohol he had consumed’.