Rado on the other hand would be shot for negligence in allowing his cipher to fall into the hands of the Swiss police, for falsely reporting that the network in Switzerland was liquidated, and for embezzling some fifty thousand dollars. The bait which had lured Rado from the safety of Paris as far as the slums of Cairo had been a promise by the Centre to pay him eighty thousand dollars to liquidate the alleged debts of the network in Switzerland and a promise that he would be allowed to return to Paris from Moscow after a stay of only fourteen days. How an old fox like Rado fell for such an obvious lure | and embarked on the plane with me I cannot conceive, as he must have known that his misdemeanours would ultimately be found out. His wife, Helene, was still in Paris, but the director said that steps were being taken to try to get her back to Moscow. I do not know whether or not these were successful. She was a woman of intelligence and I should think it unlikely that she would put her head in the noose and go back to Moscow, in all probability to join her husband against a wall or be sent to the living death of an N.K.V.D. labour camp.
The director was also anxious to get Cissie back to Moscow and asked me if I could think up a suitable scheme to lure her there. She had apparently been interviewed by an agent of the Centre but had been reluctant to make the journey. In this she showed good sense, as the director had several bones to pick with her, not the least being her sending of the en clair telegram to Canada which the Centre was convinced had led to the unveiling of the Canadian spy case.
I was told that though it was against the general rule to send an agent abroad so soon after an assignment in which he had had trouble with the foreign police, the Centre were so short of good people that the director was making an exception in my case and was making arrangements for me to be sent off as soon as possible. He explained that the various networks in the United States had lain more or less fallow throughout the war but that they must now be rebuilt and reinforced as a matter of urgency in view of the "aggressive attitude" of that country. Before the war the network in the States had been principally occupied with industrial espionage, but now that the United States and Great Britain were the greatest potential enemies of the Soviet Union, all types of information were of great value and the network and sources were to be developed as fast and as extensively as possible.
As a result of wartime experience the main rules of the Centre, which had been occasionally allowed to lapse in the past, were to be rigidly enforced. All network chiefs were to live and direct their networks from outside the United States. I was to live in Mexico. There I would live on a genuine Canadian passport. The director added that they had not used the Canadian "cobbler" since before the war so that there might be some delay before the passport arrived. (See Appendix C.)
As a result of my new assignment I received from the Centre numerous books, magazines, newspapers, etc., published in Canada, America, and Mexico in order that I could "read myself in" and familiarise myself with recent developments in those countries. For practical a; well as cover reasons the Centre always requires an agent to have a good working knowledge of the political trends in the countries in which he is living and against which he is working. As I had only one idea, namely to get out of Russia and quit the service of the Centre forever, I naturally feigned great enthusiasm for the project. At last freedom seemed almost possible.
Any idea of a speedy departure from Russia was knocked on the head in November when my health broke down and I became seriously ill with a duodenal ulcer. A legacy from the hectic days of my work for the network in Switzerland, it had not been improved by Russian food and got so bad that I was taken to hospital where I remained for a month and then had a further month in a convalescent home.
I was taken to the Central Military Hospital in Moscow, which was reserved for senior officers and their families, and there I was treated with great kindness and efficiency. The hospital was most competently run on lavish lines, with at least as many doctors and nurses as there were patients. The sanatorium at Bolshova whither I went after my time in hospital was equally comfortable and efficient and I have the happiest memories of this period of my life in Moscow.
I was something of a mystery to my fellow patients as I was an obvious foreigner though I had Soviet documentation. One theory was that I was a high-up German officer, and one elderly general at Bolshova tried to have a conversation with me about military tactics. It was there that I made probably my only contribution to culture and enlightenment during my stay in Russia.
Playing cards were illegal in Russia, but many of the officer patients had brought back packs with them from Germany. I therefore taught all the patients (the sanatorium was mixed, with a preponderance of women) all the gambling I knew. If anyone ever finds a Russian abroad with a profound knowledge of the complexities of gin rummy or stud poker he probably learnt it from me during those winter days in Bolshova.
I returned to the flat in the early days of 1946 but was soon informed that my assignment to Mexico was off as the Canadian spy case had made it impossible for them to get Canadian passports. Vera continued to visit me weekly and she was obviously deeply worried over the Canadian affair, as both she and the director were being blamed for having allowed the organisation to be run against all the rules and regulations.
I gathered that the resident director for Canada had been withdrawn sometime in 1941. Sometime later the intelligence liaison member of the Canadian Communist Party had approached the official Soviet representative in Ottawa and informed him that they were in a position to obtain valuable scientific information. As, owing to wartime conditions, there was no possibility of sending out another resident director who could build up his network in the classic and secure way, the Centre was forced to organise on an ad hoc basis. They had been compelled to use regular members of the legation staff to handle the agents and sources, tasks for which they were not trained, and their position made them particularly vulnerable should anything go wrong. That something did go wrong, and disastrously so, is now history. The repercussions of the case spread far outside the bounds of Canada and affected the Centre's work all over the world, as, quite apart from internal organisational repercussions, it demonstrated clearly to the world Soviet post-war intelligence intentions.
The director and Vera were removed from their posts and replaced about May 1946. I never saw them again nor were they ever mentioned. The Centre has only one penalty for failure.
Vera was succeeded by one "Victor" who became my contact with the Centre. He had not Vera's long espionage background but he had had some pre-war espionage experience in the United States. During the war he had had no connection with the Centre, having served as a staff officer. As a result of his pre-war training he spoke excellent English and was in some ways a pleasanter character than Vera, who had been a little too much imbued with the atmosphere of the Centre to be an entirely agreeable companion.
A little later the new director came to visit me. Like his predecessor, he was not a pure Russian and was also possibly a Georgian, although he had a very Mongolian cast of features and an unimpressive personality, being short and rather squat. About his previous career I know nothing, and the only foreign language he appeared to speak with any fluency was German.
The director said that he was very anxious for me to go abroad on my new assignment as soon as possible. The one great delaying factor was documentation. He said that the Centre could produce admirable passports, as well as the originals if not better, but the day of the forged passport was over for the moment. Owing to post-war restrictions and controls, it was essential for an agent to have a passport whose number and particulars tallied exactly with the details in the central archives of the issuing country. In the old days when travel was easier and authorities less suspicious it had been enough to have a well-forged passport, such as the Special Department of the Centre could turn out in a matter of days. Nowadays, however, there was a tendency for suspicious travel-control authorities to check up with central records and so only the genuine article would do.