Culture | Another spy and traitor How erectile dysfunction led a KGB spy into the arms of MI6
Culture | Another spy and traitor
How erectile dysfunction led a KGB spy into the arms of MI6
In “Redwood” Ben Macintyre shows how personal struggles help recruit informants
Redwood. By Ben Macintyre. Crown; 416 pages; $35. Viking; 464 pages; £25
VLADIMIR KUZICHKIN, a KGB spy who defected to Britain after a harrowing escape from Iran in 1981-82, asked for two things: a horoscope and a circumcision. “Recruiting a vetted circumciser had been hard enough,” writes Ben Macintyre, a historian, but “locating a security-cleared astrologer was impossible”.
“Redwood” is the gripping tale of Kuzichkin’s recruitment into MI6. (“Redwood” was his code name.) It is Mr Macintyre’s latest true-life spy thriller: earlier narratives have looked at Kim Philby, an MI6 officer who defected to the KGb, among others. It succeeds, like his other books, in melding spies’ psychology with an up-close look at the tradecraft of espionage. Each of his protagonists has helped turn the cogs of history at a pivotal moment.
So it went with Kuzichkin (pictured left). A senior officer of the KGB rezidentura in revolutionary Tehran, he arrived as the Shah’s old order broke down and a new, chaotic regime was taking shape. He was aggrieved by the corruption and barbarity of the KGB and the Soviet regime. But his path to treason was personal, hastened by erectile dysfunction and his failing marriage. He turned to MI6 for help. The service dispatched red pills—vitamin placebos, designed to placate the desperate KGB officer, who later thought circumcision, on an astrologically favourable date, would solve his medical problem. His recruitment was sealed over gallons of vodka.
Espionage is often a high-stakes game in which hundreds of people and advanced technology might support a single operation. But “Redwood” shows how it can also be amateurish, bumbling and improvised. Ian McCredie, Kuzichkin’s MI6 case officer (pictured right), tried to confound Iranian eavesdroppers by blasting Persian radio and running the taps. As Kuzichkin escaped via Turkey, MI6 worried about the prospect of a KGB snatch squad. Their answer was to send an officer armed with a large brass lamp to thump any assailants.
“Redwood” also highlights how spies are not always whom you expect. The KGB was convinced that the flamboyant British ambassador, Nicholas Barrington, was the MI6 head of station in Tehran, rather than the dull Mr McCredie. In fact, Barrington “regarded MI6 in much the same light as the people who cleaned his toilet…and swept the tennis courts”. He had no interest in overseeing their work.
Kuzichkin’s secrets may have changed the course of Iranian history. America and Britain, worried by the possibility of a Soviet-backed communist coup in Iran, decided to share Kuzichkin’s intelligence on communist activities with Iran’s regime. Some 4,000-12,000 people were executed in the purges that followed, destroying much of the opposition and consolidating the Islamists’ grip on power.
Kuzichkin, “haunted” by their slaughter, died in 2009. MI6 did not co-operate in “Redwood”, but Mr McCredie spoke at length to the author. Other living MI6 officers appear under flimsy pseudonyms. Their candour may have caused some discomfort inside the service. But the result is another first-rate spy story. ■
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