So Skripal’s task, while extolling new levels of friendship and cooperation in his embassy cover role, and indeed searching out opportunities in the property business during his spare moments, was to prepare the means to sow havoc in Spain in the event of general war. If one was looking for some tangible meaning behind the MI5 Director K Branch’s assessment that the GRU was an unreformed outpost of the Cold War, holding out against democratic reforms, then this was a good example. For the GRU had cached radios, weapons, and ammunition in secret sites across NATO countries for use in sabotage operations – and it continued to prepare for war as politicians toasted the new post-ideological era.
As the conversations between Bagnall and Skripal continued each weekend through the height of a Castilian summer, the moment for his return to Moscow drew ever nearer. He had already produced a haul of first-rate intelligence, but for MI6 the idea of having an agent inside the stikliashka, GRU headquarters, presented mouth-watering possibilities.
Skripal though had his own views about this, and they were quite firm. He was not prepared to carry on meeting MI6 handlers once he went home. Any professional officer would have understood why – and of course Skripal had experience of the Baranov and other cases. The FSB had thousands of counter-intelligence operatives working all over Moscow. And imagine all the other suspicious eyes, of those working at HQ or the residents of his block of flats, so many of whom were also GRU people. No. It just wasn’t worth the risk.
So it was that in September 1996, Skripal and Bagnall bade each other goodbye. They had no idea if they would ever speak again. They had established a strong rapport in just a few months, certainly Skripal had a great deal of respect for the MI6 officer, and considered him a friend. And as far as the British spooks were concerned there was no point pressuring the Russian colonel to keep meeting. Safety came first, and you had to take a long view with a successful case.
So Sergei, Liudmila, and Yulia got their flight back to Moscow, leaving Spain’s balmy climate and numerous pleasures. Russians were starting to travel more, of course, but a posting in the West was still regarded as an enormous privilege and for the Skripal family, sadly, their time in the sun had run out.
Liudmila was taking back so many cherished memories, and a suitcase of Western clothes. Yulia had picked up amazing Spanish during their posting, becoming quite fluent. And what about Sergei, boarding that plane back to Moscow? He knew that he had found a way to provide more for his family, and if he ever needed it, a life in the West. Of course this would go better if he continued to provide something to his new employers. As to how on earth that might happen, agent FORTHWITH and his secret masters had come up with an idea.
6
INSIDE THE GLASS HOUSE
The Russia that Skripal returned to at the end of the summer of 1996 was in a state of near-chaos. Boris Yeltsin had in July been re-elected president, emerging triumphant with the backing of his rich business friends, the people Russians called oligarchs, and of course the Western powers, whose darling he remained.
For many of Skripal’s brother officers, both in the intelligence agencies and his old corps (the VDV), however, Yeltsin was a profoundly suspect figure. He was continuing the Gorbachev path of selling everything to foreigners, cared little for the army, whose people lived in pitiful conditions, and was suspected of all kinds of corruption. Under Yeltsin, the army had blundered into a particularly nasty war against Chechen separatists, which he apparently had no idea how to get the country out of.
From the moment that Sergei, Liudmila, and Yulia returned to their flat in Krilatskoye, he was re-immersing himself in the world of the Centre, for half the families there were GRU. The comings and goings of those on foreign postings inevitably prompted conversations while waiting for the lift or heading out to buy vodka from one of the kiosks nearby.
When Liudmila and Sergei unpacked they found places for some mementos of Spain, a picture here or a book there. Among the things they found a shelf for was the little model of an English country cottage that Richard had given Sergei. ‘My opinion about Great Britain was very positive,’ he said, and one of the reasons was ‘this idea expressed in the saying that the Englishman’s home is his castle’. And among the hustle and uncertainty of the Moscow they’d returned to, perhaps that little cottage represented not just an abstract notion but a fantasy of a future life.
They also found a space for a souvenir given to them by Richard, when he had entertained the Skripal family at that flamenco place in Madrid. Was it odd to have it? Well, Liudmila, Sergei insists, knew nothing at the time of the true relationship between this ‘businessman’ and her husband. Given how much his wife and kids liked this new friend from Spain, perhaps it would have been odder if Sergei had insisted that they got rid of it.
If there were worries about the situation that Russia was in, there were also plenty of good things about coming home, of course. Sergei would see his mother, Yelena, much more often. They could get Yulia into School No. 63, nestling among the big tower blocks of Krilatskoye, which had a decent reputation. After the postings in Malta and Madrid they could look forward to some domestic stability as well. Professionally, Skripal was back in the heart of things.
The journey from his flat to the Glass House, stikliashka or Aquarium of legend, was several kilometres as the crow flies. Both lay on the western side of the Russian capital. The headquarters of the GRU had been built on an old military airfield, Khodinka, and that had once been the edge of the city. After the war Moscow had grown so much that it had been engulfed by developments and these had stretched far to the west, by the late 1970s encompassing green-field sites such as the one where the enormous development in which the Skripals lived had been laid out. The Metro had been extended to Krilatskoye and when he boarded it for work each morning, his destination was a station called Polizhayevska. That meant heading on one line towards the city centre, changing trains then coming back out on another one, a journey of forty to fifty minutes.
Coming out of Polizhayevska station, Colonel Skripal would cross the road, heading up Kausien Street towards the office complex that GRU officers around the world looked to for their daily purpose, praise, and promotion. Approaching the nine-storey main office block (its glazed appearance gave rise to its nicknames) he would negotiate the main entrance to the complex, which formed an opening in a two-storey-high office square construction that enveloped the tower and its entrance courtyard. This low-rise building, bristling with surveillance cameras, and wrapping around the central block like a medieval enceinte protecting a keep, had been nicknamed the Fort.
While the big shots who ran the directorates, and the boss himself, had their offices in the main tower, Skripal’s desk was on the second floor of the Fort, close to a walkway leading into the main offices at the same level. His new job was in the 1st Directorate of the GRU, running the personnel department. At this time, he says, there were fifteen hundred people working at the military intelligence headquarters. As Skripal settled into this new role he had the advantage of a powerful ally.