Those who observe the meetings of these bodies notice how often attractive young Russian and East European women accompany some of the middle-aged male MPs who make up the bulk of their membership. In most cases these women have doubtless been hired solely for their research skills. But the suspicion remains that in at least some cases someone has assigned them to these elected officials, with the aim of influencing their decision-making or obtaining sensitive information. This does not necessarily involve treason. Some politicians are stupid and naive enough to hire and hobnob with questionable assistants without considering that anything might be amiss.
In 2010, for example, Britain’s Security Service was alarmed to note that Katya Zatuliveter, a Russian citizen working in Parliament, had met a Russian intelligence officer based at the embassy in London. The spycatchers were convinced that they had spotted an active and dangerous spy. The use of attractive young women – lastochky (swallows) – to seduce Western targets was a mainstay of the KGB playbook. Ms Zatuliveter had a lengthy affair with her employer, Mike Hancock MP. He was a classic target: forty years older than her, portly, self-important, married – and also a member of the House of Commons Defence Committee and the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. She later bedded a senior NATO official (also married) dealing with Russia and Ukraine. No young British woman could enjoy a comparable career in Russia.
The Home Secretary ordered Ms Zatuliveter’s deportation. She appealed (odd behaviour if she were in fact a spy) – and MI5 suffered an unprecedented public embarrassment. The appeal tribunal included Sir Stephen Lander, the former director of MI5, as one of the three judges. The evidence MI5 presented in open court was unconvincing – and so too, apparently, was what it argued in the secret sessions. The tribunal concluded that it was unlikely Ms Zatuliveter was a spy: far more likely, she was just ‘an immature, calculating, emotional and self-centred young woman’.31 That she had met a Russian intelligence officer in London counted in her favour: were she really a spy, she would shun any such contact and meet her case officer only on her regular trips to Russia. It was astonishing that, even in secret, MI5 was unable to produce conclusive evidence of any wrongdoing. Nor was it clear why the service had risked publicly demanding its quarry’s deportation. A quiet warning would have stopped any espionage in its tracks. And if Ms Zatuliveter was a real spy, why not watch her in action? One explanation may be that MI5’s once-fearsome expertise in Russia has decayed severely since the end of the Cold War.
Whatever its practical failings, MI5 and sister services are right to believe that Russian citizens visiting the West under their own names are a far bigger part of the Kremlin’s espionage effort than old-fashioned ‘illegals’. A plausible example of the new echelon would be a comely young PhD student bearing a passport from an East European country (Commission officials responsible for counter-intelligence sometimes mention Bulgaria in this context). This ‘student’ of EU affairs is attractive, inquisitive and ruthless. She gets a job first as an intern, then as an assistant. That creates one line of attack. Simultaneously, she is researching her PhD (perhaps on EU energy policy, or trade relations with Russia, or some other topic of interest to the Kremlin). In one sense her behaviour is entirely legitimate. It is not a crime to ask questions flirtatiously, or to sleep with officials who answer them. Her identity may be forged, but is more often completely legitimate: perhaps acquired during a brief but perfectly convincing marriage to a Bulgarian. Only a detailed security vetting would uncover a family connection with Soviet-era intelligence structures and a stint learning spycraft in Russia. This ‘student’ (an amalgam of some real-life examples) will probably avoid any position where she comes under direct scrutiny: a job at NATO, for example, or in the commission’s new External Action Service. But her flatmates, bedmates or officemates may work in just such roles, and she will be only one step behind. Indeed, secretaries in sensitive offices in the European Union’s institutions turn out surprisingly often to have been born in the core countries of the former Soviet Union. They have EU passports now and it would be a suspicious soul who begrudged them a chance to make the best of the careers open to them. Nobody seems bothered by their presence or willing to check up on them; and if they did, it would be hard to know if a regular trip to see family in Russia was just that, or included a meeting with a spy agency. Such people are one arm of the Russian effort abroad and I will return to them later. But when they are not available, Russia’s spymasters turn to another reservoir of potential agents: the diaspora.
4
Real Spies, Real Victims
The Russian diaspora’s presence in the West reflects one of the great triumphs – and vulnerabilities – of the post-1991 era. The free movement of people from East to West was a defeat for the merchants of mind-control in Moscow, who feared that capitalist fleshpots would be an ‘ideological distraction’ for the hard-pressed proletariat of the ‘world fortress’. But the new regime in Russia is more resilient. It flourishes on contacts with the rich world, which offers everything from financial services to luxury goods, and it places no obstacles in the way of those wanting to leave. The Soviet leadership created the largest prison camp in history, keeping hundreds of millions of people bottled up behind the Iron Curtain, with travel privileges tightly rationed and dependent on cooperation with the KGB. Now tens of millions of Russians have travelled abroad: they are free (visa regimes permitting) to work, holiday, study, marry and invest there. Whatever counter-intelligence worries the new era creates, nobody should wish for a moment that the clock be put back to the dark days before 1989. But for Russia’s spymasters, targets and means of espionage overlap in this diaspora. These compatriots may know the secrets of the country they are living in. Or they may be able to help steal them. It is a sad truth that however far émigrés may flee oppression and corruption, their personal ties with their country of origin will always leave them vulnerable to bullying and blackmail.
The new problem is a greatly amplified version of an old one. As we will see in a later chapter, in the huge movements of refugees that followed the Second World War émigré communities from Soviet-block countries easily became pawns in spy wars. As the Cold War intensified, and the gulf between East and West deepened, personal ties across the Iron Curtain were increasingly scanty and easily scrutinised on both sides. Even so, they occasionally led to spectacular breaches in security. A successfully hushed-up scandal of the 1980s involved an émigré from one of the Baltic states (then still occupied by the Soviet Union) who worked as a dentist. That might seem an occupation of no interest to the KGB. But this particular dentist had a contract to provide treatment to the staff of a Western foreign ministry.[22] His files provided a perfect means of distinguishing between mainstream diplomats and intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover. When the spies were due for a dental check before or after an overseas posting, their agency’s personnel office made the appointment, not the foreign ministry’s. The intelligence officers’ files had a distinctive coding – doubtless for budgetary reasons. The KGB, in a clever bit of spycraft, tracked him down and threatened his family members inside the Soviet Union with the many miserable fates awaiting those who displeased the authorities there. When news reached him of their troubles, he was distraught – and with no security training, an easy target.
The result was devastating. The intelligence service concerned went to great lengths to post its best and brightest young officers under carefully constructed diplomatic cover. They cheerfully did the worst jobs in the embassies they were assigned to, toiling over visa applications and stationery invoices in the hope of staying unnoticed. Had they worn neon lights flashing the word ‘spy’ they could hardly have been more conspicuous. The KGB knew just whom to watch. Often it waited for years before taking any action, allowing the targets to work diligently in the belief that their efforts were unseen. In fact they left a toxic trail over a web of contacts that the KGB could investigate at its leisure. To this day, the damage done by the dentist is unknown. Unmasked when some KGB records became available after 1991, he admitted everything and escaped prosecution. This KGB operation was a brilliant piece of work, done with the greatest difficulty in a well-protected NATO country at the height of the Cold War. The task now is much easier. Russians who live abroad, working in everything from finance to showbiz, are a force-multiplier for the regime back home. Even if few have access to secrets themselves, their friends, relatives, colleagues and sporting partners may do so.