The series of debriefings between Penkovsky and the MI6/CIA team came to an end in Paris in October 1961. Penkovsky, however, continued to pass a seemingly endless stream of high-value secret military intelligence to the West through a variety of channels: meetings in Moscow with Janet Chisholm; meetings with Wynne at trade missions and fairs in Moscow, Bucharest, Prague and Budapest; contacts at official receptions given by Dr David Senior and Hilary King at the British Embassy in Moscow.
His handlers in Moscow (Chisholm and possibly Howard Smith), London (Shergold and Stokes) and Washington (Kisevalter’s replacement and Bulik) still found it difficult to penetrate the mind of this often naive and at other times highly complex character.
He loved his family, yet he was most certainly not averse to enjoying passing relationships with other women. He delighted in the attention paid to him by Serov’s teenage daughter in London and, in Paris, he paid romantic attention to a particularly attractive receptionist at his hotel, even prevailing upon his MI6 team to organise his dates with her.
Penkovsky was a man who schemed and methodically took advantage of any and every opportunity to cultivate friendships with anyone who might be useful to him. He had the character and personality to raise these friendships to the level of close family relationships, as in the case of Chief Marshal Sergei Varentsov. In London, late at night when he should have been taking a rare opportunity to rest, he insisted on showing Serov’s wife and daughter a good time. He bought well-chosen presents for these and many other friends and colleagues during his trips to the West, knowing that such gestures were likely to reap great future rewards.
Above all this – or perhaps driving it – Penkovsky believed he had a mission in life to somehow save the world from the catastrophe that he saw as a consequence of the reckless military policies and posturing of Khrushchev.
Or was it his obsession with the Communist apparatus thwarting his clearly deserved (to him) promotion to general? Had he not worked hard and successfully for this, committing himself wholeheartedly to the Communist Party since the days of his youth?
Or was it his paradoxical need for material luxuries such as a dacha on the outskirts of Moscow? He had asked MI6/CIA to help him pay for such a house.
His family background had been of minor nobility and worthy professions. His father died honourably fighting for the Tsarists against the Bolsheviks. His mother still lived with him and she would, from time to time, talk with nostalgia about ‘the good times’ with plenty of room in their large house, and servants. Now she bemoaned the family’s circumstances, living in a small apartment near the centre of Moscow. His wife, Vera, also had a proud family history and openly shared Oleg’s frustrations concerning his lack of promotion and shared his desire for worldly goods.
Would he have offered his services to the West if he had been awarded promotion in the mid to late 1950s, giving him status and access to a dacha and other luxuries? Did he ever ask himself this question?
It did not matter. He was now firmly on this path. In a year’s time, or thereabouts, he would be living with his family in England or America. He would have a house with four bedrooms, a beautiful garden and his own choice of car. He would have a pension that would enable him to live in comfort. His mother would probably not attempt to learn English but she would pick up enough to get by and would be happy in her final years.
Vera, Galina and the second child (due quite soon), would quickly learn to speak English: Vera already spoke quite good French and Galina had studied English at school. Galina and her little brother or sister would go to university, marry into prosperous families and give him (Penkovsky) three or four wonderful grandchildren who would grow up as British or American children.
It was with these dreams that he continued to work with great vigour and diligence, mostly gaining access to and photographing secret military documents, classified telephone lists and dossiers on senior military, political and GRU personnel. He also passed on gossip about military and political dispositions and intentions.
The virtually weekly meetings with Janet Chisholm from mid-October 1961 continued into the new year, until the meeting on 19 January when he gave her four film cassettes and told her he had to go to Leningrad, arranging a subsequent meeting for 2 February. During this short gap, Janet went to London for a medical check-up and returned with the news that she was pregnant. She would be able to carry on – but with some changes to the routine – until June or July, after which someone else would have to take over.
Plans were already in place for the Chisholms to be replaced by Gervase Cowell and his wife Pamela who, like Janet Chisholm, was a former MI6 secretary. The Cowells had three children, two of whom were a little too old to accompany their mother to her assignations with Penkovsky, but the third child was still an infant, conveniently confined to a pram.
Penkovsky did not appear for the scheduled meeting with Janet on 2 February, nor did he turn up on the alternative dates for more than a month.
He had accompanied a group of American tobacco businessmen on his trip to Leningrad at the end of January. Some of them would return to America via London and Penkovsky cultivated one of them, eventually asking him to deliver a message to a certain person in London. He listened to what Penkovsky had to say but, at the last moment, refused to become involved. The CIA and MI6 were perplexed, agitated and worried over Penkovsky’s failure to meet Janet, so much so that MI6 went to the extreme of tracking down the American tobacco businessmen in London, on 9 March, including the one whom Penkovsky had tried to use as a courier. He told them as much as he could remember which was, in essence, that Penkovsky had noticed Janet being followed after their meeting on 19 January and he did not wish to compromise her safety with further encounters.
Penkovsky had also told the businessman that he would probably be going to the Geneva International Motor Show from 15 to 25 March and the Seattle World Fair starting on 21 April.
The CIA case officer who replaced Kisevalter travelled to London to further debrief the tobacco man. He also had a meeting with Shergold. The two men disagreed about what was happening – and what should happen – in Moscow. The American was of the opinion that things had become too hot for Penkovsky and all activity should cease for up to a year. Shergold said that Penkovsky’s report indicated that it was Janet who was under surveillance and not himself. He would be devastated – said Shergold – if the CIA/MI6 stopped using him. He would take it as an insult and a sign of mistrust. They could change the manner of contact with Penkovsky (no more meetings with Janet) but they should still give him work to do.
Bulik and Shergold went to Geneva on 11 March, but Penkovsky did not turn up at the Motor Show.
Dr Senior, the British Embassy’s scientific attaché, invited Penkovsky to a reception on 28 March, in honour of the British Baking Industries Research Association. Ruari and Janet Chisholm were there and, in the course of the evening, they and Penkovsky engineered a highly professional and successful pass. Penkovsky approached the Chisholms with another Soviet official. Ruari struck up a conversation with the official and eased him away, leaving Penkovsky and Janet together. Janet was now visibly pregnant and Penkovsky suggested she might like to go to the host’s bedroom to rest. Janet left the room. A few minutes later Penkovsky approached Mrs Senior and, as he usually did on these occasions, asked if she would show him round the beautiful apartment. When they entered the bedroom where Janet was resting, both he and Mrs Senior apologised for disturbing her. Penkovsky winked at Janet before turning round to leave. He swung one hand behind his back, exposing a Russian cigarette packet in the palm of his hand. Neither Mrs Senior, nor anyone else who may have been passing by the door, could have noticed either the packet or Janet deftly taking it from him. It contained eleven film cassettes and three written messages.
The procedure for all material passed over by Penkovsky was to send it, unopened, to MI6 in London for examination. Military and political intelligence was translated and sent to the British Joint Intelligence Committee for assessment, before being passed on to appropriate users, such as the Prime Minister, the Foreign Office and the armed forces Ministries.† It was a few days, therefore, before Ruari Chisholm received information back from his headquarters that the package handed to his wife at Dr Senior’s party on 28 March contained a letter Penkovsky had written as far back as 26 January. In it he reported that he had noticed surveillance on Janet after their meetings on 5 and 19 January, but not on the 12th. He urged that street and park meetings with Janet should stop for a few months. There were also later letters in the package, dated 5 and 28 March (the day of the party). He recorded that his trip to Geneva had been cancelled, but he was still hopeful that he would get to Seattle on 19 April. If his trip to Seattle were to be cancelled, that would change everything. It would almost certainly mean that he would be transferred out of the GKKNIR, and that he would have to retire in the autumn, having completed twenty-five years in the army.
The CIA made elaborate plans to receive Penkovsky in Seattle, but he did not turn up: none of the Soviet delegation did. The Central Committee decided not to send any representatives because they believed the Americans were planning some kind of provocation against them at the World Fair. As this decision did not single out Penkovsky, he could continue with his work on the Central Committee.
The GKKNIR, supported by the GRU, nominated him to lead a group to the Soviet Industrial Exhibit in Brazil. He had his visa, but two days before he was due to travel the KGB wrote to Serov advising him they had reason to believe the Americans had a particular interest in Penkovsky and may attempt to provoke an incident with him. Serov had little alternative but to withdraw him from the group.
‡
Oswald, still working in Minsk, had been trying for more than a year to retrieve his American passport from the embassy in Moscow and return to America. He often met and sometimes socialised with Cuban intelligence service trainees attending a Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs spy academy in Ulyanova Street in Minsk, just a block from where he worked. He developed a fondness for Cuba through these meetings and decided he would do something to support Castro’s administration.
The academy was run by Colonel Ilya Prusakov whose niece, Marina Prusakova, was a pharmacist in Minsk. Oswald met Marina; they fell in love, and married on 30 April 1961.
After extensive correspondence with Moscow, and embassy consultations with the American nationality and immigration authorities, Oswald received clearance on 10 May 1962 to return to America with Marina and their three-month-old daughter, June Lee. They left Moscow by train on 2 June, travelling to Holland where they boarded a ship sailing to New York, arriving there on 13 June 1962.
‡
On a beautiful day in late April 1962, Khrushchev lay sunbathing in the gardens of his holiday retreat in Yalta. Looking directly south, he pondered on the threat posed by American nuclear missiles based just across the Black Sea in Turkey and decided it was time he did something about it.
On his return to Moscow he called a secret meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan, his close political ally and Secretary of the Central Committee Frol Kozlov, Defence Minister Rodion Malinovsky, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Missile Force Marshal Sergei Biryuzov. He knew he would have to work harder to convince Mikoyan and Malinovsky than for the others. He also suspected that Mikoyan would acquiesce if he could win Malinovsky over to his idea.
This was an informal meeting – he assured them – to seek their advice on an idea that had come to him while on holiday, and he hoped they could reach agreement on whether or not to take it forward. Khrushchev’s opening sounded innocuous enough but he followed up with a forceful presumption of their agreement to support his idea in principle, and pressed for their approval of the details.
He referred to intelligence reports that America had intentions to get rid of Castro’s government in Cuba by October. The Soviet Union had to prevent such a coup and he thought the solution would be to install offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba as a deterrent to US intervention.
Those present argued at first that such a course of action could precipitate WWIII, but Khrushchev insisted the Americans would not go that far. He could see no alternative, because it would be logistically impossible for the Soviet Union to help Cuba to defend itself from an American invasion with conventional forces and weapons.
Perhaps it was Malinovsky who suggested they greatly increase the number of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and MiG-21 fighter aircraft provided to Cuba. The Americans would realise, in the face of such an armoury, that they would suffer great losses, not just of aircraft but also on the ground in Florida. They would be reluctant to sustain such losses, particularly with the midterm elections approaching. Mikoyan and Gromyko would have supported this approach, but Khrushchev deemed it too risky. The Americans, he believed, would win such a battle because the distance from the Soviet Union to Cuba would make it impossible to bring in supplies and reinforcements as quickly as they would be needed.
Marshal Biryuzov allowed the politicians to have their say before weighing in with a military assessment. Logistically, he saw no great problem with deploying both defensive and offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba. The Soviet SS-4 medium range ground-to-ground missiles had a range of just over 2,000 kilometres which, from Cuba, would put Washington just within range. Their SS-5 intermediate range missiles could target virtually everywhere in the United States other than Alaska. Both of these weapons were capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Unfortunately, their rockets were huge and it would be difficult to hide their existence from the prying cameras of American U-2 aircraft. Biryuzov volunteered to go to Cuba to scout out the terrain and decide whether or not they could be hidden. Soviet SAMs could, of course, now shoot down American U-2 spy planes as soon as they reached Cuba, but the Americans would not allow that to happen more than once without taking retaliation that would be unacceptable to the Soviet forces. Nor, some argued, would the US just sit back and watch as the USSR constructed missile bases a mere ninety miles off the Florida coast.
Absolutely right, agreed Khrushchev, which was why the whole exercise would be performed with a level of secrecy unprecedented even in the Soviet Union. The Americans would eventually discover the missiles once they were on site, but by then they would not dare to take military action from fear of outright nuclear war. Cuba would be saved from an American invasion by a policy of deterrence.
The high-powered group agreed to send a delegation to Cuba, seeking Castro’s agreement to deploy strategic offensive nuclear weapons there.
‡
One of a series of secret Soviet ‘Military Thought’ papers that Penkovsky had copied to the West was about ‘maskirovka’, the Russian term for denial and deception techniques in warfare. The Americans would have done well to pay more immediate attention to this paper as the Soviets were masters of maskirovka. They employed these techniques to great effect in dispatching an arsenal, including nuclear missiles and bomber and fighter planes to Cuba during the summer and autumn of 1962.
From the outset, only eight people knew about the exercise: Khrushchev, Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan, and Defence Minister Marshal Malinovsky were on the political side, while the military side was led by General Semyon Ivanov (head of the Chief Operations Directorate), who was assisted by Marshal Sergei Biryuzov (commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces), two other generals, and Colonel Vladimir Udalov.
Consultation with Fidel Castro was masked in secrecy. A Soviet agricultural delegation led by Politburo member Sharaf Rashidov arrived in Havana on 29 May. Among the delegates were General Ivanov and several missile and other military specialists who would decide on the feasibility of deploying the missiles in complete secrecy. The Soviet Ambassador approached Defence Minister Raúl Castro and explained that one of the delegates, listed as an engineer called Petrov, was actually Marshal Biryuzov and that he needed to meet Fidel Castro as soon as possible. The meeting took place within fifteen minutes and in due course the Castro brothers and Che Guevara gave their approval in principle, with different degrees of enthusiasm.
Back in Moscow, all records of meetings and agreements were initially handwritten by Colonel Udalov, an excellent penman, and passed by hand. Malinovsky approved the fully fledged plan, still handwritten, on 4 July and Khrushchev approved it on 7 July.
More people were made privy to parts of the plan on a strictly need-to-know basis in the implementation phase. All messages and instructions were carried by hand: never by ciphered telegraph.
The code name for the operation was ‘Anadyr’, the name of a river and town in the extreme north-east of Russia. This was designed to mislead lower-level Soviet commanders and Western spies into thinking it was a military exercise in that region. Troops being mustered for the operation were told they were going to a cold region. Those involved with nuclear missiles were informed that they would be transporting the missiles to a site on the Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya, where nuclear weapons had been tested in the past. Many units were given winter clothing and equipment, including skis.
Even before the plan had been finally approved, the Soviet Union began to charter Western ships to carry general cargo from the Soviet Union to Cuba, reserving their own freighters for matériel.
Raúl Castro led a Cuban delegation to Moscow in early July to discuss Soviet military shipments, including nuclear missiles. He had two cordial meetings with Khrushchev and later, together with Marshal Malinovsky, the Soviet Defence Minister, initialled a draft treaty on the deployment of Soviet forces to Cuba. The Cubans agreed not to make the treaty public until Khrushchev arrived in Cuba on a visit planned for November.
Hundreds of Soviet military specialists started to arrive in Cuba by air under the guise of civilian technical and agricultural experts. One of these experts was General Issa Pliyev, who arrived on 10 July to take command of the Soviet forces in Cuba. With their total lack of expertise in adopted disciplines such as agriculture or urban planning, and their need to pay attention to their true purpose on the island, CIA agents soon became suspicious that something big was afoot.
Suspicions grew when, on 17 July, the Cubans announced a Civil Air Route Agreement for regular Moscow–Havana flights. The CIA suspected that these flights would be used mainly to convey Soviet military personnel and sensitive equipment to Cuba.
Che Guevara, at that time the Minister for Industry, led the next delegation to Moscow at the end of August, bringing with him Fidel Castro’s proposed revisions to the draft treaty. Castro wanted the deployment of nuclear weapons in Cuba to be made public in order to forestall US overreaction when the missiles were eventually discovered. He argued that they were not contravening international law, and keeping it secret would only attract extra suspicion, but eventually he bowed to the Soviet Union’s greater experience in these matters.
Forces personnel and immense amounts of equipment were transported across the Soviet Union by road and rail under incredible and successful measures of secrecy, destined for eight different ports: four in the Baltic and four in the Black Sea. The surface-to-surface missiles were loaded onto the ships under cover of darkness. Easily recognisable deck cargo was covered with planks as a means of camouflage. Crates containing missiles and launchers were lined with metal sheets to foil attempts at infrared photography. Common cars, trucks and farm machinery were carried as deck cargo to give the impression that the ship’s hold contained only industrial products and materials.
Each ship’s captain was given two envelopes just prior to departure from the Soviet port. The first, to be opened immediately, told him to sail to given coordinates in the Atlantic Ocean where the second envelope would be opened in the presence of the senior KGB representative on board. The second envelope revealed the final destination: a Cuban port.
Conditions on board were at times unbearable for the troops. They had to stay below deck or under tarpaulin sheets where they endured temperatures of up to 100o Fahrenheit (38oC). They were allowed fresh air only during the hours of darkness. Some of them were rendered unfit for duty in Cuba. On arrival in Cuba, the troops were allowed to disembark and move to their assigned positions only under cover of night.
As the ships docked, fully briefed Cuban officials assisted with yet more maskirovka techniques to hide the nature of the cargo as it was unloaded. No Cuban dock-workers were allowed in the area and in some cases local inhabitants were evacuated for several days until offloading and dispersal of the goods was complete.
Serov was informed of the huge increase in the numbers of Soviet military ‘trainers and advisers’ going to Cuba and increased the number of GRU personnel in Cuba in proportion. He was not informed – and neither was KGB Chairman Vladimir Semichastny – of the transportation of offensive nuclear weapons. The highest level of intelligence operations were not, accordingly, to a standard commensurate with the importance of the situation. Neither the GRU on the military side, nor the KGB on the political side, had any agents in place to probe the likely reactions of the top military brass and the White House to the presence of offensive nuclear weapons on their doorstep. Both of these organisations performed low-standard mundane operations which contributed nothing to a complex and volatile situation.
Serov was later to be severely reprimanded for this, but it was in the context of his disgrace on another matter – the revelation of Penkovsky as a spy – when the KGB and the party were looking for whatever mud they could find to stick on him. Semichastny, whose KGB’s performance in Cuba had been worse than that of the GRU, was not criticised.
In the true maskirovka style of denial and disinformation, on 4 September the Soviet Ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, gave Attorney-General Robert Kennedy the assurances of Khrushchev that the Soviet Union would not place any surface-to-surface or other offensive weapons in Cuba. Throughout the first half of September, Ambassador Dobrynin gave further similar assurances to Theodor Sorensen, the special counsel to President Kennedy and to Adlai Stevenson, former Governor of Illinois and two-time failed Presidential candidate, now serving as US Ambassador to the United Nations. These assurances were genuine on Dobrynin’s part: he did not know about the delivery of offensive weapons. He conceded that the Soviet Union was supplying military equipment and training to Cuba but maintained that it was purely defensive and of no great significance or threat to the United States.
The first SS-4 intermediate-range ballistic missiles arrived in Cuba on 8 September. Their nuclear warheads arrived on a single ship, in a massive consignment of nearly one hundred, on 4 October.
In spite of some CIA suspicions, the strict application of maskirovka techniques was effective. The CIA failed to discover the true nature of the increase in Soviet shipping to Cuba until the logistics of operation Anadyr were virtually complete. By then, there were more than 40,000 Soviet troops on the island: four times as many as US Intelligence had estimated. Eighty-five shiploads of various military items, supplies and personnel had arrived and more ships were on their way.
With the virtual impossibility of keeping these movements secret for much longer, the Soviet and Cuban intelligence agents permitted the leaking of accurate details to Cuban exiles and exile groups in Miami. This was an inspired act of deception-by-honesty, as the CIA officers at JM/WAVE found the news too incredible to believe.
‡
The KGB’s preoccupation with Penkovsky’s father had again come to the fore. It seemed they now believed he could still be alive and living in another country, because they were unable to locate his grave and could not find a death certificate or any other documentation recording his death. It was unlikely that there would be any more proposals for Penkovsky to travel outside the Soviet Union, but he could continue to work for the GKKNIR for the time being.
Penkovsky was invited to the British Ambassador’s reception, held on 31 May, to celebrate the Queen’s birthday. There was again a successful pass with Janet Chisholm, this time in the cloakroom on the ground floor of the embassy’s East Wing, which also housed Ruari Chisholm’s office. The material passed to Janet included a three-page letter written by Penkovsky on 15 May in which he recorded the first signs of his frustration and even expressed despair at the increasing difficulty of fulfilling his personal commitment to the West. The KGB had evidence that the Americans knew he was a GRU officer and, if they granted him a visa it would be to trick or provoke him in some way. He was sick and tired of it all – he wrote – and was ready to come across. He asked which Soviet city he should go to, if he retired in September, to make it easier and safer for him to leave the Soviet Union. He wanted to know how much money was in his account. He even asked the team to send him a small pistol that he could carry about with him.
The letter ended on a happier note, announcing the birth of the Penkovskys’ second daughter, Marina, on 6 February. Somewhat oddly, in the context of intelligence and counterintelligence, he requested a package of baby clothes.
The alarm bells were ringing in London and Langley.
Greville Wynne was due to go to Moscow in early July to meet with the GKKNIR and the Ministry of Foreign Trade. He was instructed to tell Penkovsky not to attempt to pass any material at the American Ambassador’s Fourth of July party. While the passes at Dr Senior’s party and the British Ambassador’s party had been successful, they were also exceedingly dangerous. It must be assumed that Penkovsky was now being watched by the KGB, so they could not take any further risks.
CIA case officer Rodney Carlson arrived in Moscow on 24 June to join the American Embassy’s diplomatic staff complement. The CIA had fought hard to get this concession from Ambassador Thompson. Carlson’s overt job included liaison with the GKKNIR, so he would be able to make official contact with Penkovsky.
Wynne arrived in Moscow on 2 July to discuss bringing his trade exhibition truck to the Soviet Union. On the way into Moscow from the airport Wynne surreptitiously gave Penkovsky 3,000 roubles, a letter, twenty film cassettes for his Minox camera and a parcel of clothes for little Marina.
In Wynne’s hotel room, with the bathroom tap running, the two men started to talk. Penkovsky broke down and cried. He had had enough. He wanted out.
In the early evening, Wynne went to the British Embassy Club on the top floor of the East Wing to meet Ruari Chisholm, whose office stood directly below. Chisholm gave him a small package to be delivered to Penkovsky. Wynne then returned to his hotel room for his appointment with Penkovsky, who again broke down, but soon recovered his composure.
Wynne showed Penkovsky photographs of both Pamela Cowell (the wife of Gervase Cowell, Ruari Chisholm’s successor) and of Rodney Carlson (the new CIA contact at the American Embassy). Pamela Cowell would take over the role of Janet Chisholm, but there would be a new method of exchanging material. Virtually all bathrooms of British Embassy staff had a tin of Harpic (a liquid lavatory detergent) sitting on the floor near the lavatory pedestal. At receptions where Pamela and Penkovsky were both present, Pamela would go to the bathroom and replace the tin of Harpic with a specially designed fake with a hollow base that contained material for Penkovsky. After a suitable interval Penkovsky would go into the bathroom and exchange the material in the base of the tin. Pamela would later return to replace the original tin, putting the special tin with its contents into her handbag. Wynne showed an example of the specially designed tin to Penkovsky, who practised opening and closing the special compartment.
They met again the following evening for dinner, after which they walked together in a park. Penkovsky repeated his request for a pistol. He said he would be able to carry on working at the GKKNIR until September, but still desired to go over to the West without his family. He could not explain how or why he had come round to that way of thinking; he just wanted to get out of the Soviet Union.
At the GKKNIR meeting the next day, 4 July, two members questioned Wynne at length about the companies, people and products he represented. He had not met either of them before. They insisted he should provide an inordinate amount of detail and printed matter in support of his request to bring his mobile exhibition to the Soviet Union. He was in no doubt these two were KGB officers checking on his bona fides as a pure businessman and nothing more.
That evening, Penkovsky attended the American Ambassador’s reception. Early on, he spotted Rodney Carlson, recognising him from the photograph Wynne had shown him. As numbers thinned out after a couple of hours, he introduced himself to Carlson in the company of some of his colleagues from the Central Committee. At one point they were alone for a few seconds and both confirmed they had nothing to exchange. Penkovsky said, however, that he would have something at their next meeting.
The following afternoon Penkovsky went to Wynne’s hotel room and gave him two cassettes of exposed film, a letter, a coded document and six passport photographs, all of which Wynne handed to Ruari Chisholm a few hours later at the American Embassy Club in America House: commonly called the Yankee Dom. Penkovsky and Wynne arranged to meet again at nine o’clock that evening outside the Peking Restaurant.
Wynne arrived first. Not seeing Penkovsky, he walked casually around the area and soon noticed he was being followed by two men. He spotted Penkovsky but avoided making contact with him until it appeared safe to do so. Penkovsky, too, had noticed that Wynne was being watched, told him to break contact immediately, and advised him to leave Moscow first thing next morning. Wynne went back to the Yankee Dom and was relieved to find Chisholm still there. He told him what had happened.
Penkovsky met Wynne at the airport in his GKKNIR capacity to see him off. He told him the KGB were suspicious of him (Wynne) and it was of the utmost importance that he produce everything that had been asked of him relating to his mobile exhibition and demonstrate his truck to people at the Soviet Embassy in London. He should follow that up by definitely coming to Moscow with his truck in September. Only by concentrating on his legitimate business could he hope to allay the KGB’s suspicions.
Penkovsky was, for a while, alone and virtually helpless. There were emergency procedures for contacting the MI6/CIA team and there were three dead drop sites, but the circumstances were not right to use them. This cooling off period was enforced by circumstance rather than intentional, but it was probably a good thing just the same. Wynne was now back in England, Janet had returned to England to have her child, and there were no embassy receptions to which Penkovsky might be invited.
At last, he attended a reception at the apartment of the American agricultural attaché, to be held on 27 August. After some milling around, Penkovsky and Carlson met and chatted in the presence of others. Carlson excused himself and went to the bathroom where he taped some items for Penkovsky to the underside of the lid of the lavatory cistern. The exchange, however, did not go well. At one point both Carlson and Penkovsky were in the bathroom at the same time and Carlson locked the door. Penkovsky handed Carlson a package of seven exposed film cassettes and three messages. He appeared not to know the procedure because he then asked Carlson if he had anything in exchange. Carlson had to remove the cistern lid to give Penkovsky the items. The men left the bathroom separately and, fortunately, no one noticed either of them.
One of the three messages in Penkovsky’s package was a letter he had written on 25 August. It conveyed a calmer disposition and a more measured approach to his work than of late. He accepted that he was now being watched by the KGB, which annoyed rather than frightened him. He had been commended for his work with the GKKNIR and expected to continue to work for them at least until the middle of September, at which time he might have taken leave until the end of October. If the Central Committee tried to dismiss him in September he would ask Malinovsky, Varentsov and Serov to plead on his behalf to be kept in the army.
He gave warnings about Wynne and the need for him to prove his worthiness as a businessman representing reputable British companies and industries.
He suggested that the money in his account in the West did not reflect the true value of the material he had passed to them and asked if it could be increased.
The other two messages from Penkovsky were devoted to answering the still continuous stream of requests from the team for information about current political and military matters, including the build-up of Soviet arms and personnel in Cuba and the possible installation of offensive nuclear weapons there.
Penkovsky appeared again at an American Embassy reception on 5 September, this time at the Ambassador’s residence. Carlson was there, but his attempt to tape a package for Penkovsky to the underside of the cistern lid failed because the tape would not adhere properly to its surface. The pass was aborted.
Shergold and Bulik agreed the wording of a letter to Penkovsky, to be delivered to him in Moscow before the middle of September. It praised him for his past work and continued dedication. It reported an increase in the amount in his account from US$40,000 to US$250,000, with a promise to discuss this further the next time they met. It tried to set his mind at rest with regard to Wynne. It then carried out a detailed review of his recent work: the secret documents he had photographed and his messages about the current political and military situation, particularly in Berlin and Cuba.
The letter ended with warm greetings from Janet Chisholm, who had given birth to a son.
Gervase Cowell arrived in Moscow on 2 September to replace Ruari Chisholm. Penkovsky had been told there would be no operational procedure for meetings or exchanges of material with him. Cowell’s wife, Pamela, with whom there was an operational procedure for exchanges using the Harpic tins, arrived ten days later, on 12 September.
A film show and reception at the British Embassy was arranged for 6 September. A few weeks earlier the British Ambassador – the diminutive Sir Frank Roberts – called Warrant Officer Peter Edmonds to his office and asked him to obtain a prestigious British film to show to ‘some people from the Kremlin’. Edmonds, who worked in the Air Attaché’s Office, was responsible for obtaining films from the Army Kinema Corporation on a weekly basis for staff welfare purposes. The BAFTA award-winning A Taste of Honey, starring Rita Tushingham, was selected. Of the seventy Soviet officials invited, only twenty-four turned up. Penkovsky was one of them, and he was able to meet Gervase Cowell, though it was no more than a brief double-take as they passed each other. Yevgeny Levin, the KGB station chief inside the GKKNIR, was also present, so Penkovsky had to be even more careful than usual. There were no exchanges of film cassettes or documents.
The Ambassador had personally asked Edmonds to obtain the film: not Ruari Chisholm, not Howard Smith, not even Edmonds’ boss, the Air Attaché. The Ambassador told Edmonds the guests were ‘some people from the Kremlin’ and that it was they who had initiated a request to be shown a good British film. This kind of contact and innocuous disinformation represented internal security of the highest order. Edmonds was not introduced to any of the guests. At the end of the film, however, the Ambassador and ‘a short, round, bald man in a light grey suit’ entered the tiny projection room and thanked him.‡
A farewell party was held for Dr Senior on 13 September to which Oleg and Vera Penkovsky were invited, as well as Gervase and Pamela Cowell. Few of the invited Soviet officials attended and the Penkovskys were among the absentees. The MI6/CIA team were not unduly worried, partly because so few Soviets were authorised to attend and partly because there was another party two days later to which Penkovsky was invited and he may have judged it best to attend only one of them.
The other party, given by the American acting economic counsellor, was held on 15 September. Carlson was there and had made full preparations for an exchange with Penkovsky. Again, however, Penkovsky failed to attend.
By now there was great concern for Penkovsky’s well-being. He had said he would be going on holiday from mid-September until the end of October, so the worst was not yet feared, but it was troubling that, if indeed on vacation, he had not confirmed his travel plans prior to departure.
† The Admiralty, the War Office (relating mainly to the Army) and the Air Ministry did not merge into the Ministry of Defence until 1964.
‡ In the dim light of the projection room, Edmonds was convinced this was Khrushchev. Ten months later, at the 4 July 1963 reception at the American Embassy, the same little man pushed through the crowd and beamed at Edmonds, saying ‘A Taste of Honey’!