A bit of a legend
In the late spring of 1989 I was working for Petroleum Intelligence Weekly in London and taking increasing interest in the Soviet oil industry. Perestroika and Glasnost promised access to the previously closed Soviet energy sector and accurate information was becoming vital to potential investors. Helpfully, a number of Soviet experts and academics began to appear in the West.
One of these was Dr Yevgeny Khartukov, a noted energy economist. I went to a talk he was giving at the University of Surrey, in those days one of the only British academic institutions which took an interest in energy. It was well-attended, and Khartukov, who spoke good English, had much to say. He and I hit it off, both of us believing that oil prices were much more influenced by administrative decisions of the US government than by anything that toothless tiger OPEC came up with.
We were chatting over tea after his presentation when a friendly young Russian introduced himself. He was Sergei Smirnov, of the Soviet trade delegation in Highgate, and he had driven Khartukov down to Guilford. He said he was the person at the trade delegation who followed the UK oil and gas industry, though he seemed not to know very much. We exchanged business cards, and I returned to London.
A few days later I received a phone call from Sergei at the PIW office off Charterhouse Square. He suggested meeting for a drink after work. I named my local, the Magdala in South Hill Park, Hampstead, a short walk from my flat. It was best known as the pub where Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in England, had shot her lover dead. We agreed to meet at 8 pm the next day.
As I emerged on a beautiful sunny evening, I saw that parked outside my flat on Heath Hurst Rd was a large Vauxhall with two slab-faced gentlemen both incongruously wearing raincoats. One was playing a small torch onto what looked like a map book between his knees.
“Aha,” I thought to myself, “Sergei’s KGB minders.” I strolled over to the Magdala, found Sergei already ensconced, and we had a couple of pints and a pleasant if inconsequential evening. He seemed to know even less about energy than he had at Surrey University, but he expressed a desire to know more, and to meet again. I agreed out of curiosity as to where this odd relationship was going. I thought he might have been a spy, but equally he might have been a genuine trade delegate. After all, the Highgate Russians had a reputation for being of use to neither man nor beast. When I got home, the Vauxhall had disappeared.
A letter arrived at my flat a few days later. It was headed Ministry of Defence, the address given as Room 100, Admiralty Arch, SW1. There was a matter of interest the MoD wished to discuss. Would Tuesday at 2 pm be convenient? And oh yes, please bring this letter with you. Therein lies my chief regret, that I didn’t keep that hilarious document, but dutifully brought it with me when I drove down to the Mall on Tuesday. I pulled my Ford Escort in on the side and on showing my disabled badge was directed, by a commissionaire, to park “behind Second Sea Lord’s car”, a comic English touch.
Inside, Admiralty Arch was a maze of corridors and rooms, with a generally brown theme. I was expected and, after I had surrendered the letter, was shown to a room 2 or 3 floors up which was not number 100. There I met an intelligent looking man of about forty who explained to me that he worked for the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, but was attached to the Security Service, MI5. I’ll call him George. It occurred to me that George felt working with MI5 was a little beneath him, but he was anxious to say that the two services cooperated closely these days.
Then he came to the point. Sergei was a KGB officer. That in itself was not a problem. There were plenty like him in the embassy at Kensington and one or two others at Highgate. The problem was what Sergei had been getting up to. He had been breaking the travel rules: diplomats from unfriendly countries were not allowed to go more than 25 miles from central London without special permission from the Foreign Office. And when Sergei made his runs beyond the limits, he was doing strange things, disappearing into woods and generally going off-grid. Although my new friend did not say so, I got the impression that Sergei was adept at shaking off the tail. George then asked me to describe my dealings with Sergei in as much detail as I could recall, while he took notes in a Filofax.
When I had finished he asked me a question. Would I be willing to help? I said I would, but felt there wasn’t much I could do. You have already been of help, George assured me. Just keep the relationship going in as natural a way as you can. Don’t push it but respond in a constructive manner if he contacts you again.
Then he asked me why I wanted to help. It’s my “gut patriotism”, I replied. I also mentioned our family connection with a retired senior British intelligence officer, and that greatly interested him. George then told me a little about himself. He had recently finished an arduous tour of duty in a very difficult Middle Eastern country – I guessed Iraq or Iran – where it was very important not to be outed as a British spy. Secondment to MI5, while not exactly a picnic, was comparatively relaxing.
After an hour and a half’s conversation, he took me down to the exit and I embarked on my new part time career as an intelligence agent. Sergei was soon in touch, and as it happened, I was able to invite him along to a big oil industry event, preceded by dinner with one of my American colleagues and two veteran oil executives from Mobil. Sergei did not shine, and everyone clearly found his presence odd, but the evening was not a disaster. The last time I saw him was as he headed to the tube, a neat, alert figure passing rapidly through Bloomsbury.
There must have been some sort of debrief with George, but I can’t now recall it. He did let me know a few weeks afterwards that Sergei had been expelled for persistent rule-breaking. And that, I thought, was that. But a year or two later, I was contacted by two of his SIS colleagues who wanted to discuss Russian gas, I think. We met for lunch in Lamb’s Conduit St, and after introductions, the senior spook grinned at me and said:
“You know, Patrick, you’re a bit of a legend in the office.”
“How’s that?” I asked, feeling obscurely proud of myself.
“You spotted the tail!”
So, the slab-faced men in the Vauxhall weren’t KGB, they must have been from MI5 or Special Branch. Which all began to make sense. In those distant pre-surveillance society days, our chaps had presumably tapped the Trade Delegation phones and heard Sergei making an arrangement with me on the PIW office number. But they didn’t know who I was, or where I lived. It just happened that parking outside my flat gave them a discreet view of the approach to the Magdala.
There was one later contact. Just before Christmas 1993, when we were fairly broke and had two very small sons under three, a large Fortnum’s hamper arrived unexpectedly. It came from George.
“What’s this?” Fiona asked.
“A gift from a grateful nation,” I enjoyed saying.
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