His father, Leonid Poleshchuk, was a senior KGB counterintelligence officer, most recently the deputy rezident for counterintelligence in Lagos, Nigeria. He would not say why.Īrrested? Impossible. “Your father’s been arrested,” the man said. A large man let him in and flashed a badge.
HIDDEN FLOWERS NIGERIA MOVIE WINDOWS
Through the windows of the ground-floor apartment he shared with his parents, he could see strangers moving about. The 23-year-old journalist had been working late for Novosti, the Soviet press agency. He decided to leave Athens-but not for Moscow. Only a few days earlier he had called his brother-in-law in Kiev, where Alex was studying, and been assured his son was doing well.īokhan assumed that both the KGB and the GRU were watching him. He knew instantly that the cable was a ruse. His boyhood nickname, back on a collective farm in Ukraine, was “Mole.” Now a stocky, powerfully built man of 43, he had been working for the GRU for 16 years-and feeding Soviet secrets to the CIA for 10. It said Bokhan’s son, Alex, 18, was having trouble in military school and suggested the deputy take his vacation now, three months early, and return to the Soviet Union to deal with him.īokhan froze. After they chatted for a while, the rezident said, “By the way, Sergei, this cable came in” and tossed it over. BuyĪs the deputy chief, Bokhan was privy to all GRU spy operations aimed at Greece, the United States and the other NATO countries. This story is a selection from the November issue of Smithsonian magazine. Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $12 Sergei Ivanovich Bokhan stayed behind to talk to his boss, the local rezident of the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence agency.
Gordievsky decided to risk his life and go.Īthens, May 21, 1985: After the Tuesday-morning staff meeting at the Soviet Embassy, Col. They urged him to go to Moscow, but they also provided him with an escape plan in case he signaled that he was in danger. His MI6 handlers assured him they’d picked up no sign anything was wrong. But if he returned home, he could be shot.
If he refused the summons, he would destroy his career. Now, he feared, the KGB’s counterspies had become suspicious and were recalling him to confront him. He’d been back at headquarters only four months earlier, and all seemed well. “Because I knew it was a death sentence.” “Cold fear started to run down my back,” he told me. That Friday, Gordievsky received a cable ordering him to report to Moscow “urgently” to confirm his promotion and meet with the KGB’s two highest officials.
Moscow seemed to have no clue he’d been secretly working for MI6, the British secret intelligence service, for 11 years. A skilled intelligence officer, he had been promoted a few months before to rezident, or chief, of the KGB station in the British capital. London, May 17, 1985: Oleg Gordievsky was at the pinnacle of his career.
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