On the Sunday morning of September 3, 1939, when war was declared on Nazi Germany, Major Sanders’s identity was changed once again. He was now, officially, Major Joseph Shapiro, thirty-seven years old, and a long-serving and senior officer of MI6.
35
When Hitler gave the order to launch Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941 the Soviet Union and Great Britain became allies. Uncomfortable allies.
In the next six months the Nazi hordes took city after city. Brest-Litovsk, Kiev, Kharkov, Rostov and Smolensk. And in mid-October the Soviet Government left Moscow in what looked like the last few days before the Nazis took the city. In North Africa Rommel had taken over the Afrika Korps. Joseph Kennedy, the United States Ambassador to Britain, counselled his government to abandon the British to their fate.
Then in December 1941 two things happened. It was obvious that the Germans were not able to take Moscow against its grim defence. And at the end of the first week the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States was reluctantly in the war.
It was in December that the British allowed the Soviet Union to set up a liaison unit in London. Members of the Red Army gave speeches to workers in munitions factories, negotiators pleaded for more and more supplies of medicines, medical equipment and arms, and propagandists urged an Allied invasion of France. Inevitably there were members of the Soviet liaison unit whose objectives were subversive.
A separate entity was the Soviet Military Mission. And it was the mission that came under the closest scrutiny of the British intelligence services. The mission consisted of representatives of the Soviet Army, Navy and Airforce and they were responsible for exchanging information about their mutual Axis enemies. Orders of Battle, captured documents and military intelligence. The exchanges were so cautious and the two sides so suspicious of each other that little of real help came from the meetings for either side. The fact that the Soviets were willing to maintain the mission in London despite its ineffectiveness was the basis for the British suspicion that some members of the mission had more covert functions. There were seven members of the mission who were suspected of being NKVD officers. The files on the suspects were passed to Joe Shapiro.
Each file had photographs of the suspect and brief details of his movements and contacts during his time in London. It was the file marked Abromov, Nikolai, that had Shapiro’s attention. Not the report itself which had nothing of any real significance. Contacts with journalists, minor politicians and visits to art galleries. It was the photographs that made him stop. Photographs of Abromov with various people. Some identified, some not. But it was the Russian’s face that stayed in his mind. He had seen him somewhere before. His mind went back over his counter-revolutionary groups in Berlin. There was a connection with Berlin. He was almost certain that it was Berlin.
Shapiro decided that he should find some excuse for meeting the man casually, with other people rather than alone, so that his intent was not obvious. It was a week before there was a suitable occasion. An informal get-together so that the mission could meet some of the Eighth Army officers who had started the defeat of Rommel in the desert. The reception was in one of the conference rooms at the War Office, and Shapiro had gone with Johnson and two of Johnson’s colleagues from his old regiment.
The high-ceilinged, panelled room with ornate chandeliers was crowded when they arrived, with much laughter and the usual rounds of toasts already livening things up as the various victories of the two allies were being celebrated in vodka and whisky, one by one. After fifteen minutes slowly circulating among the groups of people Shapiro had not seen the man named Nikolai Abromov. He was thinking of leaving when he saw him. They saw each other in the same moment and neither of them could believe what he saw. Shapiro was in battledress with Intelligence Corps’ green-based major’s crowns on his shoulder straps and the man going under the name of Abromov was wearing his duty green uniform, jacket, breeches and black boots with a full colonel’s three stars on his shoulder bands. But they had both seen the recognition in the other’s eyes.
Shapiro nodded towards the door and the Russian acknowledged the indication. In the empty corridor they stood facing one another.
Shapiro took the proffered hand. “Nice to see you, Zag.”
Zagorsky smiled. “Nice to see you too, young Josef.” He paused. “Can we talk?”
“Of course. Let’s go to my place. It’s not too far away.”
As Shapiro brewed them some tea Zagorsky looked around the room. The white walls bare of any kind of relief or decoration except for three shelves of books. Books in Russian, French, German and English but almost every one covering the history of Russia, from the days of the Tsars to the first year of the war.
When they were sitting in the only two chairs in the room Shapiro said quietly, “Who talks first?”
Zagorsky smiled. “It might as well be me. Or you’ll think I’ve risen from the dead.”
Shapiro said softly, “And I believe you could if you wanted to enough. When I saw you being almost carried out of that courtroom I thought it was all over for you. What the hell happened?”
Zagorsky said, “Your Russian is really excellent, how did you get that good?”
“They sent me to university. Anyway, tell me what happened.”
“What did you think had happened?”
“I only heard rumours. Rumours that you had been shot the same day, rumours that you were in Siberia in a labour-camp. The usual rumours one hears in these cases.”
“They were going to shoot me. The next
