It was Gavrilov from Special Service-I who de-briefed the man whom the world knew as Colonel Abel. They got on well together. Much the same age as one another, worldly-wise so far as Soviets can be, they met almost every day for nearly two years. There was no hidden recorder. It was lying there, turning slowly, quite openly on the table, the latest Uher, bought in West Berlin.
Reel after reel went to the evaluation unit who sent copies of significant sections to other departments and sections of the KGB.
Zagorsky had been given a pleasant apartment over-looking the river. Two rooms and the usual facilities, and a middle-aged lady who cleaned up the place every day. It wasn’t an onerous duty but she did sometimes complain about the tangle of wires that sprawled onto the floor from his hi-fi and short-wave receiver.
His wants were not extravagant and most of them were easily and willingly provided. In the first summer Zagorsky and Gavrilov took a simple meal every day in a small restaurant within sight of the KGB HQ. They played middle-grade chess and exchanged reminiscences of other cities they had both known in the Soviet Union and abroad. They both confessed to a liking for Paris as a permanent home but neither of them had ever been there.
It was after one of those protracted meals that Gavrilov said, with a smile, “We were amused when we saw the newspaper cuttings about your trial and it mentioned the coded messages that were supposed to be letters from your loving wife and daughter.”
Zagorsky shrugged. “Who wrote those damn things?”
“There was a team. When it was decided to use that format for coded messages we got in a lady novelist and we created this little family for you, like a radio serial.”
Zagorsky smiled. “It was well done. It influenced people. It even made me feel homesick when they read them out in court.”
“We heard that when the pilot’s family were pressing for an exchange that you weren’t very happy about it. Why was that?”
Zagorsky looked for a few moments at the people walking in the sunshine and then he looked at Gavrilov.
“Off the record or on the record?”
“Off. Nobody’s ever raised the point. I was just curious, that’s all.”
“First of all I was disappointed that Moscow hadn’t offered an exchange for me. The embassy didn’t contact me. Nobody. I was just left to rot. I hadn’t talked to the Americans. The press made that clear. So I took it as a sign.”
“A sign of what?”
“That Moscow didn’t particularly want me to come back so long as I wasn’t talking to the CIA. Then out of the blue is the stuff in the newspapers about an exchange with young Powers.” Zagorsky shrugged. “You get rather paranoid when you’ve been in prison for years. Years with no contact with my own people and my own country. Virtually the only friendly contacts I had were from the people who put me in jail.
“So when there is a suggestion about an exchange I am well aware that the initiative did not come from Moscow but from the pilot’s parents and I asked myself what sort of reception I would get when I returned to Moscow.” Zagorsky smiled at Gavrilov. “As you know, with a few exceptions it was not a very enthusiastic welcome.” He sighed. “After all those years of risks and difficulties I have heard people suggest that my mission in the USA was a failure.” Zagorsky shook his head. “It no longer angers me. It no longer disappoints me. All I ask … is to be left in peace.”
“That’s no problem, Zag. When the de-briefing is over you’ll have your apartment and the dacha and all the privileges you’re entitled to.”
“We’ll see, comrade. We’ll see.”
“You don’t trust them, do you?”
Zagorsky just smiled as he waved to the waiter for more coffee.
The de-briefing was virtually completed by mid-April and Gavrilov was no longer a daily visitor. Perhaps one short visit a week to tidy up the loose ends in his de-briefing, but no more. Zagorsky still went to the same restaurant for lunch but it wasn’t the same on his own. From time to time he saw KGB officers whom he knew from the old days. They waved and smiled but they never stopped to talk or join him at his table. And being long experienced in the ways of the KGB he knew that it would always be like that. He had spent years in the West, virtually unsupervised, independent and surviving. And that made him suspect. To the KGB he was contaminated. It wasn’t personal. It applied to anybody who had lived independently in the West. Who knew what they might have been up to? And in any case they were men who now knew about the West. Knew the Soviet lies and knew what freedom was like. The experience didn’t necessarily make them pro-Western. There were many things about life in the West that they found abhorrent. But whatever their feelings they knew too much about the lies and fake promises to the people that kept the Bolshevik machine in power. They were not officially ostracised. Nobody was ordered to avoid them. But people knew the system and they didn’t need to be told. There was a KGB word for it. Sanitisation.
Zagorsky knew the system too and he didn’t resent his treatment. He understood the motives, but it didn’t stop him from being lonely. Gradually his outside forays were reduced to a brief daily walk for exercise
