Art of Betrayal (26 page)

Wine was served for a toast. White then made his excuses to be escorted out by Shergy. When Shergy came back in, Kisevalter explained that Penkovsky was keen to know what impression he had made. ‘Oh very good indeed,' said Shergy. That was only part of the truth. After the very first meeting, Shergy had reported back to White that Penkovsky was unstable and motivated by vanity. White believed that Penkovsky was ‘neurotic, highly risky and crazy' but he also knew the material was gold dust and set about skilfully using it within Whitehall to try and restore his service's standing.
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At later meetings, Penkovsky would say that he had appreciated the visit but wondered why he had not met the Queen yet.

Shergy and the others knew they were on to a winner with Penkovsky – a fantastically well-placed spy who was willing to remain in place and collect more and more information rather than defect. Penkovsky himself asked for a small Minox camera to photograph documents which he was trained to use during the meetings. His enthusiasm and his willingness to take risks was astonishing. But that posed a problem, the same one the CIA had faced months earlier and failed to overcome – how were the secrets to be passed in Moscow?

One answer was to use Wynne as a courier. The great advantage of the businessman was that Penkovsky was authorised to meet him for work, so there would be no suspicion or need for illicit contact. But Wynne was only in Moscow occasionally. There needed to be a means of making regular contact. No one had ever successfully run an agent in Moscow.
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In previous years, opportunistic spying rather than real running of agents was all that had been possible for MI6 officers, like Daphne Park who had been stationed there in the mid-1950s. When she arrived, her Ambassador had warned her that any Russian who talked to her was either a fool who was risking his life and liberty by doing so or else a KGB plant.
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During a visit to Kalinin with the Assistant Air Attaché, Park had located the local KGB HQ and, finding the door open, walked in, up the stairs to a landing where all the offices of the officials were situated. Each door had the name and position of the person who worked behind it. Park and the Attache got out their pens and their notebooks and spent twenty
minutes writing down every detail. When they later found themselves being watched, they put on swimming costumes and escaped by crossing the Volga.
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This was not the same as running a high-level Russian military intelligence official. But at least MI6 was able to get its people into the city: the CIA remained barred by its own State Department. ‘What do you have?' Shergy asked Bulik at one point, meaning resources and people in the Soviet capital. ‘We have zilch, with a capital Z,' Bulik replied.
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Vienna in the aftermath of the Second World War. On the city's streets, rival intelligence services first began to get the measure of each other. (Getty)

Graham Greene (seated) and film director Carol Reed. Greene's screenplay for
The Third Man
, which Reed directed, captured Vienna after the war on celluloid. (Getty)

Anthony Cavendish on his motorbike in Cairo, shortly before being recruited as the youngest ever member of the Secret Intelligence Service.

Kim Philby just after he left Cambridge in 1933 and around the time he went to Vienna. There, his intellectual commitment to Communism would be reinforced by clandestine activity, and set him on a path to betrayal.

Anthony Courtney at his investiture at Buckingham Palace in 1949. Soon after, he began to organise the infiltration of agents behind the Iron Curtain. His later parliamentary career was cut short by a KGB blackmail plot. (Photoshot)

Lionel ‘Buster' Crabb went missing in 1956 after diving beneath a Soviet cruiser visiting Portsmouth in a disastrous MI6 operation. The frogman's headless corpse was found a year later. (Getty)

MI6 officer and KGB spy George Blake. This picture was released by the police after his escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1966. (Getty)

Kim Philby at the press conference at his mother's flat in 1955, when he denied being the so-called “Third Man” who had assisted Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to flee to Moscow. (Getty)

The young Daphne Park helped train the French resistance in Britain during the Second World War. Initially rejected by MI6, she went to Vienna with military intelligence before being recruited to the Secret Service. In MI6 she forged a formidable reputation with postings in Moscow and the Congo.