Handbook for Spies

by Foote Alexander

I was met by two characters, a man and a woman. The man was a nondescript individual whom I was never to see again. The woman, whom I knew as "Vera," was dressed as a major in the Red Army. Aged about forty, with raven hair, she must have been quite a beauty in her youth. She spoke fluent English, French, and German, so there was no language difficulty at all.

With her and her companion, or possibly it might be more suitable to call him chaperone, as his duties were purely those of an escort, we drove to 29 the 2 nd Izvoznia Ulitza, which was to be my home for the next eighteen months. This was a comparatively modern block of flats and, apart from myself, was occupied by the wives of generals who were away fighting at the front. In my flat, which consisted of a bedroom and a sitting room, I was introduced to Olga Pugachova, my housekeeper, her eight-year-old daughter, Ludmilla, and Ivan, my permanent interpreter who I was told would live with me. Interpreter, escort, guard, all in one. Olga was a pleasant woman, the widow of a lieutenant colonel in the Red Air Force. For a variety of reasons which will be explained later, I think she enjoyed her time as housekeeper. After the introductions we settled down to the usual banquet, which was ready and waiting for us in the flat.

At the banquet, attended by Vera and Ivan, no business was discussed, but when Vera left she said she would come again in the morning with a number of questions to which she would like the answers. She was as good as her word and turned up again the next morning with a list of questions as long as my arm. She was also considerate enough to bring along a nice new German typewriter on which I could write my answers. Before settling down to the questions we had a long discussion on the whole situation in general and Rado's mysterious disappearance in particular. Vera was perfectly au fait with the whole organisation of the network- and indeed knew more about the identities of some of the agents than I did. This was not surprising, since before she had been posted to the Centre she had been in Switzerland and in fact had been the resident director there before Rado. As a result she knew all of the pre-war sources not only by name but from personal experience. In addition to this, she was the officer who had run the Swiss network all through the war from Moscow and knew all our difficulties and all the various transactions, trials, and tribulations in which we had been entangled.

Vera finally left me with the list of questions, and after studying them I was, to say the least, far from happy. It was obvious from the tone of the questions that the Centre regarded me as an agent provocateur planted on them by the British. It was equally apparent that Rado's report (which had been telegraphed to the Centre about a fortnight after mine) gave quite a different version of the story. He had obviously stated that all our Swiss sources were either liquidated or compromised and that at least a couple of years should be allowed to elapse before any effort was made to revive either them or the network.

In the view of the director I had obviously been released by the Swiss police on British intervention, the British quid pro quo being that I would transmit to the Centre only such information as the British would supply, though attributing it to the various sources known to Moscow. The British object in all this being, of course, to hinder the advance of the Red Army by feeding them false information. Equally the director was certain that Rado had been conveniently "liquidated" in Cairo by the British to prevent his giving a different story to Moscow. I was by now comparatively inured to the Soviet conception of Allied co-operation, after my experience with Rado at the time he wished to go into hiding, but this fairly took my breath away. Fantastic as the whole thing was, the Centre obviously believed quite seriously that the British would, in the middle of a war when all the Allies were fighting for their lives, settle down to produce as complicated a plan as this, merely to deceive their allies. The whole conception could only have been bred in brains to whom treachery, double-crossing, and betrayal were second nature. It was, in the abstract, high farce; but, like so much farce, in the concrete it bordered on high tragedy as far as I was concerned. Unless I could clear myself I was obviously in for a very difficult period and might only too easily find myself against a wall as a British spy- which, regarded impersonally, was an interesting twist of fate, but which personally I regarded with the utmost disfavour. If, in addition to all this, Rado was tiresome enough to commit suicide and his body was fished out of the Nile or found in a Cairo back street, then the final factual coping stone would have been put to the elaborate structure of fancy erected by the Centre.

In the meanwhile there was obviously nothing for me to do save fill in the questionnaires and answer the questions fully and truthfully. Luckily my conscience was perfectly clear and I could and did answer all the long lists of queries accurately. The system was ingenious and, though it took time, was extremely effective. No pressure was ever brought to bear on me in any shape or form. With the utmost kindness and courtesy the various lists of questions were put to me over a period of weeks. Many of the questions overlapped and dovetailed into others which may have been asked days or weeks before. Questions, apparently put at random, were in fact cross-checks on other points that may have arisen only in casual conversation. As a result, at the end of the time my interrogators- if I can call them that, as I knew them only on paper- had not only the whole story but a complicated, overlapping, interlocking series of questions and answers. Luckily I was telling the truth and so the answers were consistent and easy to give. It would need a very clever man with a very elaborate and word-perfect cover story to stand up to such a test, for the slightest discrepancy would show up at once and give the unseen interrogators more ammunition to break the story down.

During this period of question and answer I was not kept a prisoner in any sort of way. Vera said that I was perfectly free to walk about the streets as much as I liked, provided of course that I was accompanied by Ivan. She did recommend that I stick to the side streets, because if I walked down the main streets I might be picked up for questioning by the police as a foreigner, which might be embarrassing. On several evenings I was taken to the theatre. Tickets were obtainable only on priority and thus not only the spectators but also the allocation of seats were government-controlled. It was not coincidence that on several occasions when I went to the theatre I found myself sitting between English or American officers. Nor was it coincidence that in the seats behind me was sitting a couple of hard-faced individuals who appeared more interested in the row in front than in the scene on the stage. I can also hardly believe that it was a demonstration of inter-Allied amity which made Ivan take me for a walk one day and show me the British Embassy. They were still obviously convinced that I was a British double agent and were giving me every opportunity to prove it and as much rope as I wanted in order to hang myself. It frequently occurred to me that if in fact I had been a British agent the last thing I would have done would have been to talk to anyone in a theatre or go to the British Embassy. The Centre might have credited me and British Intelligence with better sense than that.

The one bright spot to lighten these rather dark days was the news, about a month after I arrived, that the Egyptian police had located Rado and that the Centre were sending someone to interview him. I do not think I was told this news out of any consideration for me, but merely to see my reaction to it. Later I was told that he had been interviewed by an emissary from the Centre hut had refused to continue his journey or to give any reasons for his refusal.

About a fortnight after that, roughly six weeks after my arrival, I was told by Vera that the next day the director himself and some others would be coming to see me. Punctual to the minute, at six the next evening the director arrived. He was accompanied by a couple of stern-looking gentry who were either minor members of the Centre or members of the N.K.V.D. In any case they played little part in the events of the evening, spending most of the time looking hard at my face to judge my reactions to the various questions shot at me. I was told that the director held the rank of lieutenant general. That he was high up in the hierarchy could be seen from his car. The easiest and by far the best touchstone as regards the importance of an individual in the Union are the size and grandeur of his automobile. If (as the director had) he has a large, new black limousine, then one can be sure he is pretty important. If in addition to that he has a bodyguard, then he is more important still. If he has not only a fine new limousine but also another car to house the bodyguard, then one is certain he is a very big shot indeed. The director fell into the last category, and I was suitably impressed.

Outwardly nothing could have been more convivial and pleasant than the early stages of that dinner. A casual eavesdropper would have been enchanted at the sight of so great a man graciously at his ease with an honoured guest. The undercurrents were not so pleasant. I was irresistibly and unpleasantly reminded of a story told me by a former czarist cavalry officer friend of mine in Switzerland. Before the First World War he had been stationed in Siberia, where the tedium got too much for them at times. To lighten the boredom of their existence they used occasionally to have a large and sumptuous banquet. At the end of it they would all draw their revolvers and throw them in the middle of the table, where they would be shuffled by the orderlies. One pistol would be loaded. At a given signal they would all put a gun to their heads and pull the trigger. My friend said that the thought that at the end of the meal one of his comrades, or himself, would be a corpse added spice to the feast. I felt rather the same, only in this case I knew only too well who the corpse would be.