28/2/0
We will acquaint you with the fate of one of the KGB's secret agents from the Cold War era. Moscow guy Oleg Tumanov was conscripted to serve in the Baltic Fleet. In the autumn of 1965, when his destroyer as part of our squadron was cruising the Mediterranean Sea, Oleg secretly left the ship, swam to Africa, and... The Libyans handed him over to the British, the British to the Americans, and the Americans, after numerous tests (including a lie detector test), assigned Tumanov to Radio Liberty, which at that time was broadcasting to the USSR from Munich, was funded by intelligence agencies, and was considered by the Kremlin as one of its most dangerous enemies.
Tumanov so pleased the Americans that they helped the fugitive sailor make a dizzying career in the ideological field: over 20 years he rose to the position of editor-in-chief of the entire Russian service. And almost all this time he actively cooperated with the Lubyanka. In fact, the hostile broadcasting to our country was run by a Soviet agent. That's how it was.
Our correspondent met the former spy in the early 90s, when Oleg was out of work. He lived in a modest apartment near Tsvetnoy Boulevard, forgotten by everyone and ill. He drank vodka glass after glass, eating nothing, and indulged in memories. Our correspondent diligently recorded them. These memories have not been published in Russia yet.
ESCAPE FROM THE DESTROYER
It seems my time has come. Now or never. In the ship's library I leafed through an encyclopedia: what does it say about Libya? Then I conducted a 'reconnaissance by combat': I asked the navigator when we would go to Alexandria? (Actually I was interested in how long we would stay here.) The navigator naively revealed the cards: 'We won't see any Alexandria. We're leaving the day after tomorrow.'
Aha, so I have two nights. Decided: I'll make the attempt tonight, on the night of November 14-15, 1965.
I tore up and discreetly threw overboard all letters and papers. I prepared a light tracksuit, slippers, a flask of fresh water, and several needles in case my legs cramped in the water. The sea seemed warm, but you never know.
In the evening, I lowered my work clothes overboard on a sturdy rope – that's how we 'illegally' washed clothes, and now this rope would help me silently slide into the water. I wasn't going to dive headfirst straight from the deck.
The lights-out signal sounded. Together with everyone else, I lay down on my hard cot in the sailors' quarters and pretended to be asleep. I needed to wait until two in the morning – at that time, besides the two watch signalmen, there is no one on the bridge. And the watchmen, as I had repeatedly convinced myself, are not particularly vigilant at this hour.
Three days ago I turned 21. I was a typical Moscow guy of the mid-60s. No better and no worse than others. I should have finished my service, returned home, found a job I liked, married my beloved girl... But no – fate decided otherwise. Now, very soon, I would have to break with my past, actually betray it. By escaping from the ship, I would run away from everything that had been my life for 21 years. At home, I would be declared a vile traitor, and a military tribunal would sentence me to death. All my relatives and friends would be dragged to KGB interrogations, and some might have trouble at work or school 'for associating with a renegade.'
Isn't the price too high for the upcoming adventure?
Time! Still unable to handle my excitement, I quietly got up, put on a light tracksuit, put on slippers. I didn't forget to take a cigarette and matches: if someone caught me on deck, I would explain that I came out for a smoke. That was not forbidden.
As I was descending to the water, I kicked a 'broniashka' – a steel shutter of one of the portholes. It fell with a clatter somewhere inside the ship. I froze. But no one woke up, no one raised the alarm. Fortune was clearly favoring me that night.
Once in the water, I dived and tried to swim as far away from the ship as possible underwater. Gradually, as the distance between me and the destroyer increased, my confidence returned. There was no turning back. I had already made my choice.
Trying to conserve strength and not lose my breath, I steadily approached the shore. Finally, my feet touched the coastal stones. Getting onto land, I rested a bit, took off and wrung out my clothes, looked around. I lost the flask of fresh water during the swim. I threw away the now unnecessary needles. The watch turned out to be working fine.
I had to escape the pre-dawn cold. Wet clothes stuck to my body. The agitation passed, but now my teeth were chattering from the cold. I oriented myself to where the Egyptian-Libyan border was and set off briskly in that direction, keeping in mind that it was dangerous to linger in Egypt.
The terrain was hilly, without major obstacles for walking. I stopped only when the sun rose. It seemed to me that I had covered a huge distance, but how great was my annoyance when, turning around, I saw the destroyer and cruiser quite close. However, I seemed to have crossed the border and therefore felt safer. I chose a flat, sun-warmed stone in a hollow, lay down on it, and fell asleep.
A couple of hours later, rested and dried off, I moved on, deeper into Libyan territory.
CAN A LIE DETECTOR BE DECEIVED?
One day at the end of April my handler Alex warned me that the next day I had to be ready for a serious test. “I advise you to get a good night’s sleep,” he said. “And under no circumstances drink alcohol.” In the morning he took me to a special villa of military intelligence, where he handed me over to two guys. One of them, who had a prosthetic leg, I noticed a ring with a red ruby – a symbol of belonging to the special forces of the US Army. The other, wearing glasses and a white coat, resembled a doctor of medicine. They led me into a room where one wall was a continuous mirror. They sat me in a chair in front of a table, and attached wires to my chest, wrists and forehead, which led to a device the size of a briefcase standing on the table. The one-legged man immediately disappeared – I think to secretly observe me from the other side of the “mirror.” And his colleague, after asking a few purely biographical questions, came behind me and warned:
– Now we will conduct a little test. There is no need to worry, as it will not cause you any harm. I will ask questions, and you must quickly, without thinking, answer them – “yes” or “no.” Only “yes” or “no.” And answer immediately, without a second’s reflection. Please sit still, do not move.
The device on the table turned on, a pen recorder tape crawled out of it. I glanced at myself in the mirror: not the slightest trace of fear on my face. I was holding up well.
“You are Tumanov Oleg Aleksandrovich?” – “Yes.” – “You were born on November 12, 1944?” – “Yes.” – “You graduated from KGB courses in 1964?” – “No.” – “You were a member of the Communist Party?” – “No.” – “You knew a man named Malofeev?” – “Yes.” – “Are you a homosexual?” – “No.” – “Are you deceiving us?” – “No.” – “Is Malofeev your relative?” – “Yes.” – “Did he recruit you to cooperate with the KGB?” – “No.” – “Did you jump ship because you like living in the West?” “Yes.” – “Do you love your homeland?” – “Yes.” – “Did you agree to carry out KGB assignments because you love your homeland?” – “No.” – “Do you consider yourself an honest person?” – “Yes.” – “Do your KGB superiors consider you a promising agent?” – “No.” – “Is the girl you dated in Moscow before your military service named Tanya?” – “Yes.” – “Did your parents know nothing about your intention to defect to the West?” – “Yes.” – “Do you sometimes have to tell untruths?” – “Yes.”
I sit as if in an electric chair. Hands on the armrests. Electrodes attached to my body, and the pen recorder impartially writes out my verdict. Or – acquittal? The polygraph has helped “crack” people even tougher than me.
Sometimes the same questions are repeated. Sometimes it seems such a question has already been asked, but no, two or three words are replaced, and the meaning of the phrase becomes directly opposite. And you cannot think, the pace is kept at a sprint. My simple tricks, when I try to buy time by giving a detailed answer instead of “yes” or “no,” are immediately and sharply stopped.
The ordeal lasted about an hour. Finally, the man in horn-rimmed glasses came out from behind me, turned off the device and began disconnecting me from the wires. Almost simultaneously, Alex and the disabled man with the ring appeared. All three, paying no attention to me, stared at the pen recorder tape. Probably not everything there was smooth, at any rate their faces remained tense, like surgeons who have completed an operation but are not convinced the patient will live.
Then Alex rolled the tape into a tube and put it in his pocket. “Let’s go to lunch,” he said curtly. In the car I “naively” asked him what that was. “An extremely important stage of your verification,” replied Alex without a trace of a smile.
SURROUNDED BY SPIES
In the mid-70s, the guys from the Lubyanka, through a front person, sold an agent of American intelligence one of the volumes of the so-called “Search Book” for good money. This is a secret, constantly updated publication that contained “profiles” of individuals wanted by state security. There was information about me as well. Here it is: “Tumanov Oleg Aleksandrovich. Born 1944, native and resident of Moscow, Russian, secondary education, former candidate member of the CPSU, by profession a draftsman, served as a sailor in military unit 63972 of the Twice Red Banner Baltic Fleet. Height 173 cm, hair dark, face oval, eyes blue, on the right cheek near the temple there are three moles. Father Tumanov Aleksandr Vasilievich, mother Tumanova Evdokiya Andreevna, brother Tumanov Igor Aleksandrovich, close acquaintance Danilova Tatyana Konstantinovna reside in the city of Moscow.
On the night of November 18 to 19, 1965, during the ship’s anchorage in the territorial waters of the United Arab Republic in the Gulf of Salum, 1.5 km from the shore, disappeared. Established as residing in Munich (FRG), works in the news department of Radio Liberty, regularly speaks anti-Soviet speeches under the name Valery Shulgin.
Arrest sanctioned by the military prosecutor of the Twice Red Banner Baltic Fleet.”
Here there are at least three inaccuracies. First, my eyes are not blue, but green. Second, my mother’s patronymic is not Andreevna, but Andrianovna. And finally, I have only one mole on my right cheek, not three. A typical example of a purely Russian attitude to business. Even to such a thing as the search for “state criminals.”
I sometimes got the impression that only two kinds of people worked at Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe: CIA agents and KGB agents. Even in the West, a lot has been written about the activities of American intelligence services. A fact, as they say, universally acknowledged. But the intelligence services of Eastern European countries were not idle either. Polish counterintelligence until 1971 regularly received information from Captain Andrzej Czechowicz, who was embedded in Radio Free Europe, and when he returned to Warsaw, he was replaced by Mieczysław Lach. The Bulgarians used the services of their state security officer Hristo Hristov. The Czechoslovaks “placed” Pavel Minaržík in Munich. And these are only those whose names were revealed and made it into the press. That is, merely a tiny part of the iceberg.
I know people who were everyone's favorites at Radio Liberty and who are long gone – they took to the grave the secret of their long-standing collaboration with the Soviet state security. I also know those who continue their secret activities to this day. Do I condemn them? No, I do not.
WHERE DID THE "BUGS" COME FROM?
With the appearance of my daughter and her first independent crawling trips across the floor, there is an episode to which I still have no explanation. One day – the girl was about a year old – she crawled out of the bedroom, holding some foreign object in her cheek. I picked her up, and she spat it out of her mouth. Wow! It turned out to be a miniature microphone with a magnetic suction cup. It was cleverly disguised as the round head of a screw. Where did Sasha pick off this "bug," who placed it and when? I was greatly alarmed by the accidental discovery. What was it? A routine check that all employees were subjected to from time to time? Or had counterintelligence started taking me seriously?
After brief reflection, I thought it best to throw my find into a trash container. I told neither my wife nor the security service. However, at the next meeting in Karlshorst, I told my colleagues about the "bug," which seemed to puzzle them greatly. They advised me to thoroughly search the entire apartment and to follow the rules of conspiracy even more strictly. Returning, I conscientiously scoured all the rooms but noticed nothing else suspicious.
At Radio Liberty, it was no secret to anyone that security service employees could easily enter any apartment in the absence of the owners and conduct an unofficial search. In particular, for this reason, I kept no special equipment at home except a container for photographic film made in the shape of an electric battery. It was a genuine battery that powered my radio, and inside it there was a container.
I recall, sometime in the mid-70s, I left for work, leaving my new girlfriend in the apartment. In the afternoon, she called me furious:
"Who did you give the keys to the apartment?"
"I didn't give them to anyone. What happened?"
"What do you mean! I woke up because someone was opening the door with a key. Thinking it was you back from work, I ran to the hallway half-naked. And, oh God, there stand two complete strangers. They said hello to me, turned around, and left."
"What did they look like?"
After she described the uninvited guests, there was no doubt: they were the head of the radio station's security service and one of his employees.
TANKA GAVE BIRTH TO A SON
I was "exposed" by an officer of our foreign counterintelligence who defected from Greece, named Gundarev. He knew for sure that the KGB had its man at Radio Liberty. He could list some indirect signs pointing to me. In general, he knew a lot. When he fled, my superiors in Moscow immediately became worried and decided that my jig was up. Time to go home.
On February 23 we in Munich always celebrated Soviet Army Day. Some, like me, had indeed once been associated with the Soviet armed forces, some served in the Vlasov army, and some in the White Army. If you had military service, you celebrated. On this day, we gathered a good male company and drank heavily.
The day of February 23, 1986, was no exception. I returned home after a friendly drinking party quite late. I poured myself another half-glass of vodka and drank it with a crust and a pickled cucumber, remembering with a kind word my distant Moscow relatives who once fought.
That day fell on a Sunday, and Monday was my day off as always, so I was sleeping in.
The phone woke me at six in the morning. Somewhere on the other end of the line, something clicked, beeped, and a cheerful Russian voice burst into my ear:
"Sleeping, editor? Have you heard the latest news? Tanka gave birth. A healthy boy, weighs four kilograms. Everyone is waiting for you at the christening. Chase away your American gang and come. Everyone is waiting."
Oh, what a cheerful and rollicking voice! But I felt as if I had been electrocuted.
"Okay," I replied, "I'll be there." And I hung up the phone as if it were burning my hand. That was the alarm signal. "Tanya had a boy." Upon hearing that phrase, I was to immediately wrap up everything and flee without looking back. Flee using any channel rehearsed for such occasions. Flee without asking the Center any questions, without trying to contact them, and without wasting time. Something had happened. I was in serious danger. This "birth" meant the end of my 20-year career in Munich.
Time – six in the morning. It's dark outside. But I know that taxis under my balcony are already waiting for early passengers – to the train station, the airport, anywhere. Just pay... However, I quickly overcame the desire to immediately get into a car and drive far away. No, I couldn't act that way. I had to force myself to get up as usual. Calmly get ready. Take a walk. In short, behave as if nothing had happened. That was my salvation. If I were being followed, I must not show any alarm. Let them think I knew nothing.
There was nothing compromising in my house. Nothing! A Nikon camera – just like any wealthy gentleman's. In my address book – addresses and phone numbers of legitimate friends and acquaintances. A cipher notebook, outwardly absolutely identical to an ordinary notebook, I burned just in case. I have no radio station, no weapons, no poison pills that, as they write in novels, a spy should swallow when threatened with arrest. Nothing.
But there is something else – things dear to me, acquired in Munich over these years. They are dear in the literal sense as well. Antique (18th century) first Russian engravings. Paintings by talented artists of the Soviet "underground" – Oscar Rabin, Mikhail Shemyakin, Oleg Tselkov. A 19th-century icon of Palekh work, the finest painting. A unique library – the entire White Archive and the rarest, most unique volumes of the Red Archive. Periodicals of the Russian emigration of the 1920s-30s. I collected all of this long and carefully. Works of Russian philosophers. A set of newspapers of the Vlasov movement. Collections of the journals "Grani", "Possev", "Kontinent", "Sintaksis", "Vremya i my", "22"... What then, abandon everything? Leave it here? Yes, I have no other choice. I can take only a minimum, only the most necessary.
Yes, and also my philately. Stamps... In ten years of serious collecting, the collection has acquired simply unique specimens and entire series. Here they are – six albums with thousands of stamps of the main and exchange funds. At least I must select the most valuable into one small stock book, at least a hundred of the stamps most dear to me...
With some precautions, I opened the door, went outside and went downstairs. I bought newspapers, drank coffee at the bar, took a walk around the house. It seemed no one was following me. I noticed nothing suspicious. Then I took a taxi and went to the bank, where I withdrew part of the money from my account. At the travel agency, I bought a ticket for the afternoon flight to West Berlin. When giving my surname to the girl, as usual, I mumbled something indefinite, and in the end I was listed on the ticket not as Tumanov at all, but as something like Kumppan.
I decided not to tempt fate and to use a proven route for departure. Although the words "everyone is waiting for you" meant that I was expected on all the pre-arranged routes. There were several. However, the Berlin one seemed most preferable to me because at the border crossing there, no passport was required, and therefore the risk of attracting attention was minimal. Although, of course, even there complications could await me.
Only a few hours remained before departure. I had to say goodbye. I walked around the rooms again, stroked the spines of my beloved books, touched the frames of paintings, drank some wine.
More than twenty years have passed since that day when the young sailor Tumanov, under cover of night darkness, left his military ship and set off on a journey whose end he did not see. That journey could have ended right on the shore if the Egyptians had detained me then. And the Libyans were also capable of stopping the fugitive sailor's journey, handing him over to the Soviet embassy. The Americans from military counterintelligence in Frankfurt believed me, but they might not have. I had no special education and did not shine with exceptional abilities, but fate continued to smile on me: I was accepted at Radio Liberty, made a good career there. I am surrounded by beautiful furniture, expensive paintings hang on the walls. I earn in a month as much as the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee never dreamed of.
Actually, the main part of my conscious life has been lived here, in Munich. And it was filled not only with espionage. And it is even hard to say which was more – if that can be measured, of course – the ordinary decent life of a quite prosperous emigrant ordinary person, or the illegal activities of a KGB agent? Everything intertwined, tangled, merged into one.
I long ago stopped fearing exposure. I didn't look back on the streets to check if there was a tail. I didn't think about whether my phone was tapped. And it couldn't have been otherwise. If it's true that any sensations dull over time, then the sense of danger is no exception. Even at the front, soldiers very soon stop ducking bullets. If, of course, they survive. It seemed to me that "my" bullets had long since flown past. But no, someone eventually took me "in their sights".
Time to leave.
I suddenly caught myself thinking that I had never seriously considered the possibility of returning to Moscow. That is, it always seemed self-evident, but seemed something far, far away.
I went into the hallway, took my modest luggage, opened the door. And I couldn't help but smirk, thinking that now this was a door to a completely different world.