Although Sergei must have found this separation from family, and the inability to attend his brother and son’s funerals, to be a great sorrow, he did not see an alternative. When I asked him whether he thought he might ever return to Russia, he was quite sure he wouldn’t, and quoted his mother to me from 2010 telling him he should never come back because it would not be safe.
It is possible that Sergei had some sort of crisis after Liudmila’s death in 2012, maybe he had even thought of returning to Russia. Perhaps that’s why Team had made its very generous offers to bring his mother over and install them in a larger house. But if there was such a moment, it seemed well behind him by the time we met.
Some years after he settled in Salisbury, and very much to Sergei’s delight, Richard Bagnall had got in touch. Richard had taken his old agent to the Army v. Navy rugby match at Twickenham, and they met up several times after that. He was not part of Team, and indeed had retired from the service by this point. It seems quite possible that under the old maxim that intelligence officers never quite leave, Richard had gone along with a general effort to gee Sergei up. Certainly the former GRU colonel regarded their relationship as a social one, a measure of the former MI6 man’s diligence about pastoral care in a relationship that had, after all, lasted decades.
Of the theories that would later emerge that Sergei was involved in active intelligence work or had contributed to the notorious Donald Trump dossier compiled by former SIS officer Christopher Steele, there was no indication. Rather Sergei appeared to be a homebody and creature of habit, a man well into his sixties whose cravings for wealth and adventure had faded. He visited Liudmila’s grave regularly, and the corner shop, where he would buy scratch cards a couple of times a week. In the months after Sasha’s death he signed up for membership at Salisbury’s Railway Social Club and became a regular there. His former neighbour and friend Ross Cassidy proposed his membership at the club.
Skripal did sometimes travel up to London for the day and occasionally MI6 made use of his services. The office had given him a similar package to previous defectors like Oleg Gordievsky, Vladimir Kuzichkin, and Vladimir Rezun. In return for a service payment they would sometimes sing for their supper. Gordievsky, an old MI6 hand once told me, had been ‘produced as one of the after-dinner entertainments’. This might take the form of speaking to a training course or conference because after all, in Skripal’s case how many former GRU colonels had many of these people ever met?
As far as I could establish, Skripal’s work had involved talking to some military audiences, possibly to new trainees at the Fort, and to a few friendly intelligence services. In this sense he acted as a consultant about how the GRU might approach a problem or gave insights into its historical operations, say in another European country. But he did not have the energy or time to engage as energetically as Alexander Litvinenko did with the Spanish authorities in the year before his death.
Nevertheless, the use of Skripal as an authority on the GRU, giving occasional assistance to friendly agencies, might have been seen in Moscow as a sort of re-entry into the world of espionage, something that sat ill with his pardon of 2010.
Sergei did not seem to want much out of life at this time. He would make trips about Britain, often connected with military history, cook for himself, enjoy a quiet drink, and talk to his mum when he was missing her.
As in the camp or Lefortovo he would also watch a good deal of television, devoting many hours to Pervy Kanal – Russia’s First Channel. There are entertainment and cultural programmes on it, of course, but the First Channel is also known for following the Putin line closely in its news coverage. Indeed, in its messages about the West’s Russophobia or the imperative need for a strong Russia it might even be regarded as being to the right of the Kremlin in ideological matters. During Skripal’s years in Britain, Putin had of course returned to the job of president, consolidating his power and flexing Russia’s muscle. Military actions in Ukraine as well as interference in elections had people in Western intelligence agencies in quite a state.
Sergei and I discussed the world scene, including the crises in North Korea and Ukraine. He is, or was at least when we were talking in 2017, an unashamed Russian nationalist, enthusiastically adopting the Kremlin line in many matters, even while sitting in his MI6-purchased house. He was adamant, for example, that Putin had not surreptitiously introduced Russian troops into east Ukraine, as much of the Western press reported. If regular units had gone in, he insisted, they would have been sitting in Kiev very soon. Our Ukraine discussion produced an exchange which (from memory) went something like this:
Sergei: The problem with the Ukrainians is that they are incapable of leadership. They need Russia for that. The Ukrainians are simply sheep who need a good shepherd.
Me: Um… Sergei… I feel I should tell you, my father was from Ukraine.
Sergei (unfazed): That’s OK. Don’t worry about it.
I smile whenever I think about that exchange.
There are volumes written about the torment of the Russian exile, lost in a haze of drink and regret. And no doubt it wasn’t easy for Skripal. Equally, he would not allow himself the luxury of self-pity, even if he remained true to his country in general, and in particular to the version of it, the USSR, that disappeared in 1991. By the time I met him he was carrying a few more pounds than when he’d arrived in Britain and his hair had thinned a good deal, but it would have been a great mistake to have underestimated his mental or indeed physical toughness. Life may have lobbed him some gross misfortunes but he still intended to live every day of it to the full.
There were however people who would wish him harm, who were actively plotting it, in fact. Just as he was being watched in the airport and Izmir back in 2004, so there were eyes on him as he made his way around Salisbury. Sergei didn’t have a regular job or commute but at the same time he wasn’t always at home either. Those who would target the old spy needed to establish his ‘pattern of life’. And as that summer, with all its sorrows, ended, time was running out for his carefree existence in Salisbury.
PART THREE
TARGET
17
SUNDAY 4 MARCH
It is mid-winter in Salisbury. There are patches of snow in the city centre following heavy falls a few days earlier. A man in his sixties is walking from Zizzi’s restaurant towards the Maltings. It’s a short journey, around the corner and, briefly, through an arcade to the open area beside the Avon where on sunny summer days people come to loll by the waterside. It takes about one minute, even moving slowly.
Alongside him walks another person. She’s wrapped up against the cold but you can see it’s a young woman. Maybe she is having some concerns. He had become irate in the restaurant, raising his voice at the staff, complaining loudly as the time came to pay the bill. They make their way to a bench. It is not the kind of day when you would normally sit and watch the waterfowl gliding by, it’s far too cold for one thing. But anyhow, they’ve brought some bread to feed the ducks.
As she sits beside him, for anything up to twenty minutes he complains of feeling worse and worse, her concerns are mounting.
He is sweating profusely, he cannot see properly, his world is darkening as his pupils become tiny. The man looks skyward, trying to see the light. Now she is feeling terrible also.