Then the second stage of the plan would activate. Nikolai would catch the train to Leningrad after shaking off the crumbs. The dry-cleaning would need to shake them for good, so he was free from surveillance. On arrival in Leningrad, he would take the bus to the rendezvous point. Nikolai and Sasha would hide and wait there. The rendezvous was a church about two kilometers south of the Tallinn ferry.
Meanwhile, two MI6 officers driving a diplomatic car would leave Moscow and go straight through. The MI6 officers would arrive at the rendezvous at exactly 4:30 p.m. and hide Nikolai and Sasha in the trunk. The escape plan was code-named TINKER after Peter Pan's fairy, Tinker Bell, an oblique reference to the ferry that would take Nikolai and Sasha to Finland.
At their next meeting, Nikolai politely listened as Bolling outlined TINKER from start to finish. When he finished, all eyes went to Nikolai. Well? They asked.
"I have never seen a more unworkable plan," he said in a low voice. "It is far too complicated and relies on a series of fortunate events completely outside our control. If one step goes wrong, the whole plan falls apart. I won't ever take it seriously and never expect to activate it, as you put it. I am at sea without a life raft. There is no plan."
The MI6 agents looked at one another.
They had no response.
21
One noon when Nikolai was preparing to leave the Soviet Embassy for a lunch meeting with Bolling, Anatoly Anchev called. “Come to my office now!”
Nikolai had bent beneath his desk to retrieve a pencil and stuffed one inch of papers inside his coat. He sat back up and found other officers were paying little heed to his problem. His heart pounded in his chest. He decided to leave his coat in his cubicle, draped over the back of his chair. Almost jogging, he hurried to Anchev’s office. The bully hated waiting. The secretary was expecting Nikolai and sent him right in.
Anchev was scowling when he looked up.
“Look at this,” he immediately began. “This is your August summary. Not one recruit, nothing useful from your contacts. How are you spending your time, Semenov? You are making me look terrible here. KGB Moscow is complaining about your lack of production.”
Nikolai shook his head. “I have been remiss. My wife’s death.”
“That is a horrible thing.”
Nikolai went on. “Plus, my mother’s troubles.”
Anchev’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of trouble?”
“They arrested her for helping a friend with church,” he said, improvising.
“Let it go. That’s an order. If you cannot, back to Moscow you go and remain. Your first duty is the Party, not your mother. Have you forgotten that?”
“No, sir.”
Anchev shook his head. His scowl deepened. “Protocol. We’re finished here. Go find me a traitor!”
Nikolai was keenly observant. He had seen an uptick in the surveillance of him by internal KGB officers. Anymore, they watched everything he did. The bugging, the tails, the inspection of work at the office or in the field. Everything he touched was checked and re-checked by other officers. What did he take to the post office? Payment of a utility bill? They bribed postal workers, getting the clerks to spy for them. They bugged telephones and telephone utility employees to warn of out-of-area phone calls. Nikolai knew it came from Anchev. But he was doubly careful and gave them nothing more to indicate he had crossed over.
Nikolai, his inside coat pocket bulging with top-secret documents, left the confrontation with Anchev and walked casually downstairs to his car. Over the next twenty minutes, he shook the eyes following behind by driving through heavy traffic to a remote parking garage and parking on the fourth level, hurrying to the stairs, and chaining the door shut behind him and locking it with a Bulldog padlock. Then he ran down one floor and jumped inside the sedan left there for him to use by MI5. He had seven sedans in seven different garages dedicated to his use and his use only.
Nikolai met Bolling and pled his case for immediate intelligence meant to placate Anchev. “Of course,” said Bolling, “we’ll provide you with all the intelligence we can spare. We need to keep KGB London happy with you.”
The sharing began: Royal Navy maneuvers in the North Atlantic. Troop gatherings in preparation for the Cuban crisis, looming large on every nation’s radar now. Strategic arms’ talks with the U.S.
MI6’s provision of useful information was unprecedented and meant to dissuade the KGB from recalling Nikolai to Moscow as a failure. Above all else, MI6 needed Nikolai right where he was, working hand-in-glove with them in London. This time around, the information provided was valuable intelligence. It was also available to any citizen with a TV, a map, and The Sunday Times. Whatever else it might have been, it began having the desired effect. Anchev became less hostile. KGB Moscow sent its approval in the form of a demand for more of the same. So the Brits complied, slowly parceling out low-level intelligence intended to secure Nikolai’s London longevity.
When they ran out of low-level information and began crowding the line between low-level and secret, London turned to James Ellis, a young MI5 officer they added to the ULYSSES cell to do one job: make Nikolai look good in KGB London.
He went to work combing open-source information such as magazines and newspapers for facts and “secrets” Nikolai could parade across their desks. Ellis then turned to politics. He made a great showing of Nikolai’s interest in and mastery of American politics as well as British. Who would run against Kennedy in 1964? Who had his ear? Was Robert Kennedy going to break up the UAW? Were Chinese-American relations on the thaw? He even researched where Jackie was getting her hair coiffed and who she was wearing that spring. Ellis, creative beyond hope, then took to making it up. His mind knew no limits. He reported intelligence about American nuclear emplacements in Colorado, about the American air defense system known as NORAD. He reported on ghost British MI5 agents, names, and stations, who “Nikolai thought approachable.”
Best about it all, with rare exceptions, was that the KGB had no way of confirming or disproving the intelligence Nikolai produced by the pound. Reports poured in every day. KGB officers assigned to follow and listen in were called off the case—too risky to be found out and expose Nikolai’s cover. Too great a chance at him being branded as a Russian spy and losing him to history.
Within the KGB rezidentura, Nikolai’s reputation as a top agent doubled and redoubled. Even Anchev started talking to him about British soccer. Nikolai made Anchev look good every time he signed off on one of Nikolai’s reports. In the end, Anchev reported back to Moscow Center that the lie detector hit was an anomaly, that Nikolai was 100% loyal. Moscow Center replied that Anchev should call off the dogs. No more surveillance than was used for all KGB officers.
Nikolai was promoted on a Monday morning to the chief of political intelligence in the rezidentura. He now had access to all PR Line files, not just his own, from which he copied the names of all Soviet spies who had penetrated MI5. It was a pitiful list, only three low-level names, giving MI5 a moment to breathe a great sigh of relief.
22
In mid-August, Nikolai arrived at the safe house, worried.
He told the team, "There's a rumor at London station that KGB is leaking. MI5 has ousted Soviet spies known only to other Soviet spies. Someone is talking."