‘Greatest Escapes With Arturo Castro’ Episode 2: The Spy of Pimlico

Mental Floss is partnering with FilmNation and iHeartPodcasts to bring you the transcripts for Greatest Escapes, a podcast hosted by Arturo Castro about some of the wildest escape stories across history. In this episode, Ed Helms (The Hangover, The Office) helps Arturo unfurl a daring escape from one of the Cold War’s most eccentric double agents: Oleg Gordievsky. Read all the transcripts here.

1. Ed’s Escape
2. Chapter 1: Switching Sides
3. CHAPTER 2: Oleg’s Turn
4. CHAPTER 3: Almost Found Out
5. CHAPTER 4: Eyes Everywhere
6. CHAPTER 5: Chew On This
7. CHAPTER 6: Drunk in a Trunk
8. CHAPTER 7: Reunion
9. Outro
10. Credits

Arturo Castro: Hey, guys! This is Greatest Escapes, a show bringing you the wildest true escape stories of all time. Today we’re telling the story of a Soviet spy who switched sides—and his bonkers attempt to get away from the KGB.

Or as I pronounce it … “keh-buh-guh.”

I’m Arturo Castro, and my guest today is actor, writer, producer, comedian, musician, trapeze artist, and host of his very own podcast, SNAFU. Ed Helms, everybody! Welcome, Ed!

Ed Helms: Thank you so much.

Arturo: Queue applause! Yay!

Ed: Hey, yay. Woo-hoo. So glad to be here. It’s an honor to be here.

Arturo: Oh, thanks.

Ed: You’re fantastic.

Arturo: You’re fantastic. Really, it means a lot to me that you did this. Man, I’m such a fan of your podcast, which we’ll get into in one second.

Something about myself is I find white bearded dudes harmonizing, incredibly soothing.

So I love folk–

Ed: Cool!

Arturo: –folk music, man. I’m such a big fan of folk music, Fleet Foxes. Give me that Mumford & Sons, give me all that’s good stuff. And you were in a folk band, is that right?

Ed: Yeah. Um, I’ve, I’ve never heard, uh, the appeal of folk music described quite that way. I love, but I do love that bearded white dudes harmonizing, come on.

Arturo: Oh they, they just got out of the lumber trade.

Ed:  It either makes your skin crawl or, uh, it just soothes you. And I, I, I honestly go back and forth. Sometimes it drives me nuts. But yeah, I, I, uh, I—my two buddies from college Jacob Ty Love and Ian Riggs, we went to Oberlin College together and I had a banjo background from, from high school and, and we just became the, this trio. Then after college, we all moved to New York City to kind of pursue different things, but kept the music going and, um, and the Lonesome Trio, uh, lives on to this day.

Arturo Castro: The Lonesome Trio. That’s wonderful. And I gotta tell you, you know, I, it’s not, it’s not even a bit that, that I love folk music. I’ve never, um—I’ve never been really good at being like kind of stereotypically Latin. Like most people assume that I like, I like salsa or like reggaeton and sh*t, and I’m really musically, like rhythmically challenged in that sense.

And I, I, I heard Ray LaMontagne for the first time when I just moved to New York and I was, you know, I tried to go to all my friends back in Guatemala being like, you guys have to hear this sh*t called folk music. It’s like really sensitive, like, are you in the forest? You know? Um, and so trying to convince people that I’m actually into folk music has been a lifelong journey.

Ed: That’s so funny.

Ed’s Escape

Arturo: To set the, the tone for this Great Escape thing: Do you have one that you consider to be an escape of your own?

Ed: No, you know what? There’s a funny story. It’s just sort of a silly thing that happened in college. I was really into this band Fishbone. Do you—do you remember this band?

Arturo: I don’t know Fishbone.

Ed: They were like a—they were like kind of a heavy ska band way back in the day.

Arturo: That heavy, heavy ska.

Ed: Yeah. Well, well what’s funny is that they were, um, they were best friends with and toured with the, another band called Biohazard, which was like real metal, like, you know, death metal kind of, um, and–

Arturo: A Ska band and a metal band, that’s a TV show right there.

Ed: Yeah, yeah. They were super hardcore and they were really, uh, and they toured together a lot and they were very different acts, but everyone would just go to these concerts and go bananas. And so I was in college in Ohio and I, we, some friends and I went to go see them in Cleveland and which is, you know, it’s a rock and roll town.

Arturo: So like, were there fans called, call themselves “fish boners”? Or what’s the like, I’m sorry, that’s a stupid question, but I wanna know. I’ll, I’ll–

Ed: It’s a really good question. Um, and I don’t, I, I certainly didn’t refer to myself as a fish boner at the time, but had I thought of that, I think I would have.

Arturo: Great t-shirts.

Ed: And I would’ve—I would’ve made a lot of t-shirts and made a lot of money.

Arturo: Sorry. So you were in Ohio and you were gonna go see Fishbone.

Ed: OK, so, so we go to the, we go to the, uh, I think it’s called the Apollo Theater in Cleveland, Ohio, to see Biohazard and Fishbone.

Now. I was like, really more into fishbone, excited to see them, and they were like kind of joyful, crazy Ska, but Biohazard was first and I was like, love these guys, too. I mean, they’re just super committed and—but I, but I didn’t know ... I kind of—didn’t know, like death metal concert etiquette. So I just was like, whatever’s gonna go down, I want to be in the middle of it.

I wanna be right up front. And so, you know, it’s before the show and everybody’s kind of like mingling around and I’m looking around, I’m like, these guys look intense. Like, there’s a lot of, there’s like skinhead energy in this crowd.

Arturo: Oh no.

Ed: There’s—it’s like, this is kind of a weird vibe and, uh, but like, I’m—I love just a, you know, some human experience. Like, what’s gonna ha, what’s this gonna be like? So I’m, I’m right down in.

Arturo: It’s alive, yeah.

Ed: Yeah, and I’m right down in front and, uh, and they start playing that song, uh, “Carmina Burana.” Do you know that?

Arturo: No.

Ed: That, it’s a famous, it’s this famous classical music that’s, that sounds like, uh, it’s from The Omen. It’s that’s like that: “Ooh Ooh Ahh Ahh.”

Arturo: Uh huh. Oh, yeah. Yeah. “Da ta ta.”

Ed: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that they start playing that and it’s getting louder and louder and the tension in the room is just getting more and more intense and uh, and the lights are going out. And I’m on the—I’m in sort of the pit area and uh, and it’s really crowded, like super dense and people are starting to like, jump up and down and get, like, starting to get a little bit, I don’t know, the energy’s changing.

And uh, and then all of a sudden, uh, a hole, like a vacuum forms in the middle of the pit, which is to say like, everyone, everyone kind of realized at the same moment that they didn’t wanna be in the middle of the pit. And it just started to open up.

I don’t know what’s gonna happen. And there’s a lot of scary looking dudes around getting real intense and fired up and excited. And, and then sure enough, the lights come on and the, and Biohazard just starts to [guitar noises], and everyone rushes into this void and crushes up against the front of the stage with like really intense mosh pit rage and anger and like everyone’s just throwing punches for, but for fun, like, it’s just a,

Arturo: Right, right.

Ed: And at first I’m absolutely terrified. How do I get outta this?

I don’t want to get killed. I don’t want to get—like, fall down and get trampled or something. But the music is also kind of awesome and I start seeing people stage diving and I was like, OK, the people that are stage diving are landing on top of the crowd and getting passed back. So, uh, so I was like, this is, this is it. This is my escape.

And so I managed to climb up on the, the, the sort of stanchion or whatever in front of the stage. There was like a, you know, a little row where these big burly security dudes were guarding the stage, but in front of that you could climb onto the railing and jump into the crowd. And so I did, I climbed up and was just like, ahhh! Dove over the stage, landed on top and I was passed all the way to the back.

Arturo: To the concession stand. Directly to the concession stand.

Ed: Directly to a guy handing me a congratulatory beer and he was …

Arturo: Wow, you were like, this is such a…

Ed: –and he was like, congratulations, you’re still alive. But yeah, so I, I did escape with my life.

Arturo: Oh, I’m really happy you did. And also like, I love that, “oh, f***” moment that we’ve all had. When you realize that like you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, you know when like–

Ed: And you’re ill-equipped.

Arturo: Yeah. That you’re ill equipped.

Ed: You just don’t have the knowledge or the, the skillset.

Arturo: You’re like, I just wanna dance, you guys.

Ed: I’m wearing sneakers. You all have combat boots.

Chapter 1: Switching Sides

Arturo: All right man, let’s escape. Let’s rock and roll.

Ed: Oh, yeah.

Arturo: We’re gonna talk about Oleg’s great escape. OK, now to get us there, let’s talk about who he was and what made him that Soviet spy, and why he switched sides from the Soviets to the West. So, first of all, he was in the family business, right? This was sort of like a thing that they did.

Now, his dad was a hardcore Communist. Like to the level where he joined the secret police, and was put in charge of indoctrinating new recruits. And that was how he raised his kids. So you know, no Barney for Oleg and his older brother, no, no. They both became KGB agents. Why wouldn’t you? In 1966, Oleg got his first assignment outside the USSR, where he was posted to the Soviet Embassy in Copenhagen.

The Danish government knew that he was there, but officially he was just part of the embassy staff. But secretly, his mission was to manage the network of undercover spies throughout the country. Not that this would’ve been a real surprise to the Danes because of the 20 workers at the Soviet Embassy, 14 were spies and–

Ed: I pretty much, if you’re, if you’re a Russian in the ‘60s and ‘70s like in another country, you’re probably a spy.

Arturo: Yeah. And also, yeah, I imagine the Danes were too busy being happy to give a f*** about the spies. They were like, ah, un spies? Yeah, it’s cool. I don’t know.

Ed: Sure. What is it like? What are you gonna spy on? Like what do we have to hide?

Arturo: Yeah. What are you gonna spy on? All this happiness and beautiful people like? Go ahead man. Spy for it.

Now living outside the iron grip of the Soviet Union was really exciting for Oleg. He enjoyed seeing just how loosey goosey things were in Copenhagen. Do, do you remember uh, the honey pot story? This honey pot story that I’m about to tell?

Ed: Yeah, yeah. Honey. Well, is it honey pot or honey trap?

Arturo: Honey pot, I believe is the term.

Ed: Honey pot, OK.

Arturo: But honey trap would be more–

OVERLORD/Carl: I am happy to tell you it is both a honey trap and a honey pot.

Ed: Well, you have to have a honey pot to have to set a honey trap.

Arturo: You have to have it. You gotta have it. Thank you, Overlords.

Ed: All right. Um, but no Oleg, uh, I think you, we touched on this before, but he’s, he was a critical, uh, character in the whole Able Archer 83 story that, that my podcast is about. And I’m so psyched we’re talking about him because I have just the tiniest bit of knowledge about Oleg enough to maybe sound like a smarty pants,

Arturo: Yeah, yeah. Go ahead.

Ed: But not, but not enough to really, uh, contribute anything meaningful. But, um, but, uh, but where were we with Oleg? He’s, so, he’s…

Arturo: So he went for a stroll this one time through the Red Light District, which it seems like the, the Nordic states seemed to just all have red light districts, you know, they just call him the district now, I guess.

Ed: Yeah. Sure.

Arturo: So he browsed a shop that was selling sex toys, and he even bought some gay porn and brought it home to show his wife.

He proudly displayed it on his mantlepiece because, you know, freedom. He’s like, look, they were so flexible, these men, and so he bought a gay porn magazine and he put it on his mantle.

Ed: Literally he’s, he’s excited by the gay pornography, not because it is erotic to him, but because it is such a, he’s like, can you believe that they are allowed to do this?

Arturo: And they put him in pictures and they sell them, and they put the red lights. It’s fantastic, you know.

Ed: This would get everyone, this would get you so quickly shot in, in, in the, in Soviet Union at the time.

Arturo: A hundred percent. And so this, this little purchase is what kind of sets us up for, for, for the goofiness of it. Because one night a local police captain invited Oleg and his wife over for a dinner so that the Danish spies could sweep the apartment, and they spotted the magazine and it made them think that he was a hundred percent gay.

Ed: Very. Which is reasonable.

Arturo: Yes. I, I would say particularly if it’s in your mantle piece, like you’re just like, you’re like, hello, welcome to my house, and here is my, here is what I love to do when my wife’s not here.

Ed: I just wanna comment—just that this story could never happen today. Like if somebody showed you pornography in an excited way and they were like, can you believe this is so,—look at the how exuberantly free and happy these people in this pornographic magazine are, and look what like–

Arturo: They’re all smiling! Except for this one guy. He’s got a mask on.

Ed: OK. So the Danes go to his apartment, they find this gay pornography, and they’re like, oh, obviously he’s gay. So we’re going to set a honey trap…

Arturo: There you go.

Ed: … and we’re going to, uh, try to blackmail him to be a, an informant because we know he’s KGB and we want to, uh, flip him. So, uh, so then they get, um, they get a guy to hit on him at a, at a party, right? And, and Oleg’s just like, oh, what a nice guy. What a friendly guy.

Arturo: This guy’s really friendly!

Ed: Like, they just like, make it—they just get nowhere with it. Like there’s just no traction because that’s not, that’s not Oleg’s persuasion. So, um, it’s just a failed honey trap.

Arturo: Also, I can imagine, like, sort of the ego hit that, that, like, devilishly handsome young man must have had. He’s like–

Ed: The Danish, yeah.

Arturo: –like what the f***? Like, what is wrong with, you don’t like ze Keller, like what is wrong with ze Keller. Like, ze Keller’s beautiful. Um–

Ed: I was specifically chosen as a honey trap.

Arturo: I am the hottest agent. I am so sexy. What the f*** is wrong with this guy? And meanwhile, Oleg’s at his house being like, mean, man, these Danes are really f***ing nice. 

So in the end, it wasn’t actually the Danish recruiting that swayed him to turn against the Iron Curtain, but it was the Soviets themselves.

CHAPTER 2: Oleg’s Turn

Arturo: In 1968, the Soviets brutally crushed the Prague Spring when tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia to squash an uprising. It was incredibly violent, incredibly bloody. So before this, Oleg had this dreamy idea of what the Soviet Union was. The stuff that he had learned from his dad about how good it was to be a Communist, you know, but seeing the Prague Spring finally convinced him how brutal the USSR was.

Ed: Sure.

Arturo: Um, so Oleg was an unhappy Soviet in 1972, when one of his old friends showed up at his apartment unannounced. By the way that he was talking, Oleg realized that he was being tested by Western spies to see if he would flip, right? Chatting with his buddy, he said how disappointed he was in the Soviet Union, and it was a message to them that he was ready to cooperate with the West.

Now, I wonder, Ed, what do you think? What do you think he was saying that, like, made him, uh, realize that he was getting recruited about the West?

Ed: I just imagine that these kinds of conversations between spies where they’re trying to sort of suss each other out and, and figure out if, am I giving, like, is he giving me a signal? Is he giving me an opening? Should I be—I would just, I, I picture those conversations as super tense and, and like lots of like overt winking and kind of like, and like–

Arturo: –wild gesturing towards gay porn?

Ed: –like, and like fake laughing, but with like, but, but with like weird, intense eyes.

Arturo: Yeah. It would be, it would be crazy if I liked the McDonald’s, huh? [Laughs]

Ed: Yeah. But Oleg is really, he’s a really fascinating double agent of, ultimately because he’s an idealist and he’s not a, uh, like—like a lot of double agents, um, are, uh, are–

Arturo: –in it for the money.

Ed: They’re either in it for the money or they’re psychotic and they just want the thrill of it. Or because they, uh–

Arturo: They’ve been slighted.

Ed: –or, or because they hate their homeland and they want, you know, they, they want to sort of like doom their homeland for some reason.

Arturo: Mm-hmm.

Ed: Um, you know, like, like there are Americans who, who wound up hating America and becoming double agents for the Soviets at the time. But what’s fascinating about Oleg is that he never didn’t love Russia and or the Soviet Union or what, what Russia kind of represented historically. And he never, he never stopped hoping for the best for Russia. And he felt that by helping the West, he was helping Russia’s future.

Arturo: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Ed: And, or, or, or the Soviet future.

Arturo: Yeah, and, and to, to your point, here’s where—where we see how clever Oleg is, right? Because he also told the KGB that he was gonna go meet with a British agent, right? So his bosses in Moscow told him to go for it. They wanted to see if they could use Gordievsky as a false double agent to fool the British.

But they didn’t know that Oleg was for real, for real, uh, ready to switch sides. When Oleg finally met with the British, he agreed to work with them, under three conditions.

First, he didn’t wanna attack or injure any other KGB agents. He was not offering to become a British assassin. Second, he didn’t wanna be secretly photographed or recorded, which makes a lot of f***ing—I can’t imagine, like, a spy being, like, but just take a lot of pictures of me please. Just like, make sure that you get a good one. It’s for my album. And third, he would take absolutely no pay.

Ed: Right.

Arturo: He wasn’t doing this for the money. He was doing it because he no longer believed in this, in how the Soviets were running it, you know?

Ed: Right. Right.

Arturo: What would it take for you to become a spy, Ed, in this time? What would they have to offer you? You’re in [the] Soviet Union and you’re like, they’re like, you gotta defect to America. What would it take?

Ed: Let’s see, this is 19 ... this is about, this is, like–

Arturo: ’74.

Ed: OK. 1974. So I’m, I’m like about 1 year old.

Arturo: Yeah. Yeah. So

Ed: I would think just like a good, I would just think like a bottle of milk would’ve done it for me.

Arturo: A bottle of milk would buy and then you’re immediately a double agent immediately. So, so in 1974, Oleg started sneaking rolls of microfilm of documents out of the Soviet headquarters on his lunch breaks, right?

He would hand them off to be copied, picked them up on his way back, and dropped them off again before anyone noticed they were missing. But this was also the year that he got his first code name from the British and they named him Sunbeam. What would be your code name?

Ed: Cowboy Red. No, I don’t know.

Arturo: Cowboy Red. I would like mine to be Fish Boner.

Ed: Fish Boner, good one.

Arturo: Nobody, nobody would know. Um, so 1974 was also the year that Oleg met his second wife, Leila. She was a secretary at the World Health Organization in Copenhagen, and the pair began a very low key, very slow motion affair. You know, he had code names for this affair too. Also. What is a slow motion affair?

Overlords. What? What is this? That it happened? Was it tantric? Is that what you’re referring to? Like slow motion? [It’s] just slow simmering. Answer me.

OVERLORD/Carl: That is correct. It took many years for him to leave his first wife and choose Leila.

Ed: Mmkay.

Arturo Castro: OK. Slow motion affair. Got it. So Oleg was, uh, leaving the Soviets for the British and he was also leaving his first wife for Leila. Also, women named Leila tended to make men in the ‘70s go insane.

Ed: Sure!

Arturo: See George Harrison, Eric Clapton, you know, like, which is also a crazy story in and of itself. Her name was actually Pattie Boyd, but whatever.

Ed: [guitar noises]

Arturo: [guitar noises] Leila, something in the way she moves. Mash up! So after four years in 1978, things were going really well for both of them. Right? But Oleg was recalled to Russia. So pack your bags Ed, we’re going to the Kremlin.

CHAPTER 3: Almost Found Out

Arturo: Oleg was stationed in Moscow for the next few years and he spent this time building his new family with Leila.

Ed: Right, right, right.

Arturo: Yeah. They were married in 1979 and their first daughter was born the next year. Now, meanwhile she had no idea that he was actually a double agent between the Soviet Union for the British. And Oleg was never really comfortable in Russia anymore, so he wanted to be back in England.

Ed: There was no gay pornography, which at that point for him, it, again, not a turn on. It just was something that had become like a comfort.

Arturo: He’s like, yes, yes, yes, democracy, but what about the gay porn? Where can we get this?

Ed: It was a comfort blanket for him. Just wants to know it’s there.

Arturo: Exactly. So in the summer of 1981 Oleg passed this super spy English exam that qualified him for a post at the Russian Embassy in London, and this is where you’re talking about. So by the—by that fall, his second daughter was born and the KGB were finally convinced that the new marriage was more solid than the first one.

This feels like a weird detail, but it was important because it helped the KGB decide that Oleg could be trusted. Right? They’re like, if he can make two marriages work, he can do this.

Ed: Well, no, they, it is true that the KGB, if, if you had a, a rocky relationship with a spouse, then you were a risky agent.

Arturo: Which makes sense, right? More collateral. Yeah yeah yeah.

Ed: Of course. You couldn’t—there was like more openings for, for, uh, you know, to get in trouble or blackmailed or whatever.

Arturo: Exactly. And, and they’re like, well, this man wasn’t happy in his first marriage. He left and created a second marriage. This is a reliable man. So they let him take the job in London and because if there’s anything to be said about the KGB, it’s—they’re romantics. Finally, when Oleg arrived in London in June, 1982, he was in easy reach of his British spy friends.

Now he could pass them even more information at even lower risk. The British spies decided to switch it up with his nickname—with his code name, and the new code name was Nocton. This was his British code name? OK. So the Brits, uh, were passing along intel to the CIA too.

And the Americans didn’t know Nocton’s identity, which is important later, but they did know that he was a high ranking KGB officer, so they gave him their own nickname and codename. The, the, the spy community’s gonna be up in arms that I keep calling it a nickname. Um, they called them Tickle. So now he is Tickle.

Ed: Tickle. Right, right, right.

Arturo: I, I love the idea of like a copywriter being like, what’s a catchy one? You know that that’s their only, their only job is to pick code names.

Ed: Tickle! Let’s call him Tickle!

Arturo: Tickle!

Ed: Tickle’s fun.

Arturo: Yeah, we go with Tickle cause he, ’Cause that’s what we feel. We feel tickled when we get this information.

Ed: He makes us giggle. He makes us giggle.

Arturo: So once he was in London, he was able to spend hours talking with them, discussing the KGB methods, the identity of hidden agents. You know, it’s just tons of secrets that MI-6 had never understood before. Now meanwhile, the rest of the KGB was focused on the idea of whether or not the United States and the rest of their European allies were going to start a nuclear war. That’s where it comes in.

Ed: Boom.

Arturo: But one important thing is that the KGB spies were supposed to be tracking all sorts of weird things, right? Like looking for signs that the West was preparing for a sudden nuclear attack.

Ed: Uh, no, but it really, it really was fascinating that, that this system that the Soviets set up where they were basically telling their spies, like, give us intel so that we can try to figure out if an attack is getting planned. And it was things like, you know, how many lights are on at the Pentagon–

Arturo: Yeah, that’s exactly it.

Ed: –and, and—and you’re like, well, I don’t know. There’s a hundred lights on tonight at the Pentagon. OK. But usually there’s 200, so what’s going on? They’re planning something and there were some things that you could point to that were more practical. Like, are you seeing troop movements? Are you seeing–

Arturo: Right.

Ed: –like, uh, hospitals building up supplies or, you know, the—the things that might indicate they expect to have lots of casualties. Um, those might be reasonable, uh, indicators of potential war conflict. But so much of it was not reasonable that it became this insane, crazy arbitrary algorithm.

Arturo: Arbitrary. I was gonna say, it just seems like, so, like ineffable, right? People are like, I don’t know, tell me how much, how many burgers are they stashing, right? Because they wanted to know how many, they did. They wanted to know how many cows–

Ed: Right

Arturo: –were getting killed at a slaughterhouse. And the one that you’re talking about is like, they, they were monitoring how much blood was being stashed in blood banks, which makes a little more sense–

Ed: Right.

Arturo: –but like, cows? I don’t f***ing know, man.

Ed: Right, right. But it, it just [goes], it just—it’s like if you’re convinced something’s gonna happen. And a lot of historians believe that the Soviets really did think that NATO was going to attack them. And so if you, if you think that everything you see is gonna be through that prism and you’re gonna be like, uh, what’s the reason that all of this extra cow slaughtering–

Arturo: Yeah.

Ed: –indicates, indicates a pending nuclear attack? And you just sort of fill in the blanks and all of a sudden you have all these reasons.

Arturo: So our guy, Oleg, is caught in the middle of this, right? He was telling MI-6 everything he knew about the KGB, and then he was telling the KGB whatever they wanted to hear about how many cookies were in the f***ing shop or whatever it was, right?

Ed: Right.

Arturo: So he knew that this put him in a really dangerous spot and he was right to be worried, right? The KGB did know that someone was passing their secrets to the British because the British were sharing those secrets with the Americans and the Russians, which I did not know had a spy in the CIA. So, fortunately for Oleg, the Brits weren’t telling the CIA about Tickle’s identity.

That was in part because they enjoyed dangling secrets over the Americans. So that’s really a win for being petty.

Ed: Sure.

Arturo: You know, they’re like, thank you. Thank you for being mad at your cousins. So the Russians were really on the hunt for their traitor.  And if the KGB found out that it was Oleg, this is what they do.

They’d call him back to Russia to squeeze him for information before they finally did away with him. Right? But now, if he needed an escape route back to England, he would need to get his wife and his two kids out as well. So together with the British spies, they cooked up this plan called “Operation Pimlico,” named for the Pimlico neighborhood in London.

Are you ready for the super intelligent spy plan, Ed?

Ed: Oh yeah, this is a good one.

Arturo Castro: Yeah. OK, here we go. Very elaborate. 

If things go bad in Russia, they would stuff Oleg in the trunk of a car and drive like f***ing hell to Europe.

That’s it. That was the plan. I sh*t you not, and if the whole Gordievsky family was together, then the plan became much more elaborate.

They would stuff one man, one woman, and two children in the trunks of two cars and then drive like hell to Europe. Woo. Thank God. I would, I would be like, guys, I feel safe. I feel heard. I feel understood.

Ed: I would be like, OK, so I’m gonna go back. I’m in London. I’m happy as a clam, my family’s all happy. I’m about to go back to Russia to find out if they know I’m a spy. If they do know I’m a spy, then you stick me in a trunk and try to get me back. And by the way, I’m also claustrophobic, so I’m not down with any of this.

Arturo: No, also, but that you bring up a really interesting point that I’m like, why do you go back anyway? Like, you know what I’m saying? If you know that you are in imminent threat, why go through the f***ing process of like, just checking in, you know?

Ed: Because I think it’s, you, you’re getting into the psychology of spies at this point, which I can never wrap my head around. Um, like the amount of information and the amount of kind of like, uh, ruses and, and lies that you have to kind of maintain to be a, a spy, let alone a double agent. Right. It’s incredible. It’s mind blowing. And what’s more insane about these guys, people like, uh, Gordievsky and, uh, I, I got to interview, um, uh, a KGB spy.

Arturo: Yeah, you did? Whoa.

Ed: A guy named Jack Barsky, yeah. And, and what’s crazy about these guys is that they’re, they’re, they’re so confident. If you were like, OK, Moscow wants you to come home and check in, and if you don’t come home, then they’re gonna know you’re a double agent and so you better go home.

But so, in my mind, you’re like, uh, well maybe I should just take my chances and stay here because if I do go back and then they, then they interrogate me, am I more screwed? Well, a guy like Gordievsky is so confident that he’s been playing his cards perfectly the whole time that he’s like, eh, I’ll just go back.

Cause they don’t—I know they don’t have anything on me. I know that they might suspect I’m a double agent, but they can’t prove it, and I know they can’t prove it. Now what? That’s an insane level of confidence. Like to me, I would be like, I think I covered all my bases, but I’m not sure.

Arturo: I feel like it wouldn’t take that much if they, they tell me, come back to Russia. I was like, that’s it. I’m dead. No, f*** it, I’m staying. But you, you know, to your point too, like that—once you’re in that mindset, and you’ve been so used to just playing this card, that I don’t think it, it dawns on you the option of just staying, right?

Because then that just defeats a whole thing that you, like, whatever—you build your personality around and your mind games about, like you don’t know how to do anything, or you’re sort of going on autopilot by going back to the Soviet Union.

Ed: And we’re looking at this from the standpoint of like—we’re just average schmoes, who, if we got put in these situations, we would melt down and sing like a canary and just be like, I’m guilty. I did it. All right.

At this point, Oleg Gordievsky is, I think he’s been a double agent for over 10 years.

He has an incredible, uh, set of skills, set of kind of like, mind games and like I said, confidence and this is just part of it. You go back and you play the game and he just feels like he’ll get away with it and he’ll get sent right back.

Arturo: But that almost—that confidence almost bit him in the ass.

Ed: It did, it did.

Arturo: It really did. Yeah. So in May 1985, it finally happened, right? The—the KGB recalled Oleg to Moscow via Telegram. So they said that he was getting a promotion and needed to come back for some high level secret preparations, but things didn’t feel quite right for Oleg, right?

He confirmed with his British contacts: If he gave the signal, they would launch Operation Pimlico to get him out of Russia.

CHAPTER 4: Eyes Everywhere

Arturo: On May 19, 1985, Oleg arrived in Moscow where he had had an apartment. There’s a feeling that he got. He describes the chill shooting up his spine, which, if you’re a spy like Oleg, that doesn’t seem overly paranoid, that’s a really bad sign. The deadlock—the deadbolt lock on his apartment had been turned. So his place must have been combed by other agents before he arrived. They were searching vigorously for gay pornography. On the bright side, he was now a colonel in the KGB, so there were rules about how to treat somebody of his rank.

The Soviets actually had to gather evidence and hold a trial if they suspected him. So that bought him some time. But Oleg knew that they were onto him.

Ed: Mm-hmm.

Arturo: After a few days, Gordievsky was called in for questioning, and this is where we’re talking about that we would’ve f***ing folded. This guy in the interrogation—the other KGB agents gave a spiked Brandy and dug for details about his British and Danish contacts. They asked him questions for hours and eventually Oleg blacked out. Now he doesn’t even know what the f*** happened. He was just allowed to leave after he came to, so he could only guess that he didn’t give up anything about his counter espionage.

How f***ing scared would you be, bro? If you were like, if you’re like, do you think you have your sh*t together? And then you black out and then you come back and we have all we wanted, like—I’m like, what have I—like dude, I have two tequilas. I’m like spilling f***ing family secrets, man like–

Ed: Yeah. I cannot even imagine that.

Arturo: Yeah. At the end of May, Leila and the kids were brought back to Moscow and  told that Oleg was sick. But … when they get there, he didn’t wanna let them know how dangerous things were. So he acted like things were, you know like everything’s fine! I’m fine! You guys, OK! Don’t be weird about it.

And he sent them off to a vacation at the Caspian Sea.

Saying goodbye was the hardest thing he’d ever done, because, you know, by the time they would get back to Moscow, he was either gonna be dead … or in exile.

CHAPTER 5: Chew On This

Arturo: After his time in the hospital, he was back in Moscow that July, he felt eyes on him everywhere, right? He feared it was only a matter of time before he was snatched. So if it was finally time to engage in Pimlico, so—the plan was supposed to go like this.

Oleg was supposed to stand on the street at 7:30 a.m. and he would be holding a crucial signal, this plastic bag from the Safeway grocery store signaling that he needs a safe way out of this f***ing place. Can you believe?

Ed: What’s so insane is it’s like we give these spies so much credit for being like masterminds and, and coming up with these elaborate schemes. And you can just imagine Oleg talking to his MI-6 handlers and he is like, OK, so, so, so, so what’s the plan guys? And they’re like, uh, you gonna stand there with a grocery bag?

If it’s a—if it’s a Safeway grocery bag, [you’re] gonna jump in the trunk. Wait, what? That’s it?

Arturo: OK but is there more to…

Ed: And then, but, and then, and then what? Oh, well then we just drive. We drive. OK. And you go, we go to—it’s like a safe house somewhere. And then we get in a hot air balloon—or no, no, no, no. We just, we just go, we drive to, to, to Europe.

Arturo: And we hope for the best, we’re–

Ed: We hope–

Arturo: –but we’re gonna bring really positive attitudes.

Ed: Yeah. And yes, I forgot there’s a lot of positive energy around, around this whole operation. We, we’ve been—we’ve been doing a lot of like, you know–

Arturo: Soul searching,

Ed: Yeah. A lot of meditation. We’re just getting, we’re getting real psyched about it.

Arturo: we’re bringing our energy coach Ananda, his real name is Jeff, but he is coming along for the ride and he’s very excited.

Ed: Yeah. So, wait, I just wanna be clear. So I just come to stand there with a bag, and then I just jump in a car and in the trunk of a car and, and that’s it?

Arturo: Yep.

Ed: Aren’t we f***ing spies? Aren’t we f***ing spies?! Aren’t we supposed to come up with cool sh*t like, that doesn’t sound—that doesn’t sound good enough!

So in response to this f***ing Safeway bag, another man would walk past him holding a green bag from the luxury department store Harrods, and he would be eating a chocolate bar.

Then Oleg was supposed to wait for three days, go to church and pass a little note with the details of his situation, and then wait again. So Oleg followed his plan, right? He did his little Safeway shopping back thing at the street corner, message sent, but he didn’t notice anybody else following the plan.

There were no Harrods bag, no chocolates being eaten. So Oleg nervously waited three days and went to church, and he scribbled on a little note that he was ready to pass along, right? And it said, need exfiltration. He worried the whole way that he was gonna be found out because part of the plan was for him to wear a hat in church. And no one wears a hat in church.

Ed: No, not in Moscow. No way.

Arturo: Not in Moscow. You don’t. When Oleg got to the church, there was a sign hanging out in the front which said, all, all hats are welcome. No, they just said that it was closed for redecoration. So Oleg freaked the f*** out. He dashed back home, chewed up and swallowed his note so it would never be found.

And to sleep, he crammed himself with sedatives and Cuban rum, which also, to be honest, at this stage of his, uh, exfiltration, I would be a full blown alcoholic, man. Like, you gotta have something going on for you to calm the nerves.

Ed: Yeah, I mean the, the anxiety–

Arturo: Horrible.

Ed: –that’s what I, I just can’t imagine. I, I can’t carry a lot, like any kind of lie around. I, I just, I can’t pull it off. I’m, I’m too—I’m just too much of a nervous Nellie to—let alone like these grand life or death, you know? It’s just–

Arturo: I, I spend sleepless nights. If, if a waiter says, welcome to the restaurant, and I say, thanks, you too. Like I, I’ll spend a sleepless night being like, oh f***, I f***ed it up. I f***ed it, you know?

Ed: He was already there. He didn’t [crosstalk].

Arturo: He was already there. He didn’t know. He doesn’t, yeah, I’m the one coming to his establishment. God damnit, what a rude thing to say.

So the next Tuesday, anxiety driven as he is—he went back to the street corner once again. He flew his Safeway shopping bag and he was just screaming internally the whole time until finally another man walked by him carrying a green bag and munching on a chocolate Mars bar while making direct eye contact with Oleg as he marched by. Message received.

Ed: Boom.

Arturo: Uh, also, I, I mean, such an awkward f***ing secret spy signal, but, f*** it.

Ed: It’s hard to look sort of serious and—and like, a spy guy chewing on a chocolate bar.

Arturo: And making uninterrupted eye contact. Like what? And it turned out to be the Danish agent. Like he’s hoping for a second run at the honey pot. He’s like, you were gonna f***ing look me in the eye this time. So for the next two days, Oleg visited friends and family, saying his goodbyes. You know, he—he talked about literature with his friends. He jogged around his neighborhood. He tried to act as normal as possible. He was the only one that knew that he was about to run for his life in a very non-complicated way.

CHAPTER 6: Drunk in a Trunk

Arturo: So now we get to the final bit of it, which is—the day finally came. Oleg ducked out of his apartment. Now he knew he was being followed, so he jogged directly into a thick patch of trees. And zig zagged his way to the train station where he boarded on a trip toward Finland. And this trip was wild, man. So Oleg took too many sedatives on the train, and then he ended up falling out of a high bunk bed and gashing his head open.

So he stumbled around bleeding on people. Like, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. No, not exactly. Keeping a low profile, right?

Ed: Yeah, exactly.

Arturo: Screaming about Harrods and Safeways like, shut the f*** up. Oleg. You’re so close. Now. When he finally caught a bus near the Finnish border, Oleg went through a bonkers sequence of events, right, to get to the—to get the bus to stop at the right place. He convinced the driver to pull over, telling him that he was gonna barf all over the seats.

So the bus let him out on the side of the road where he pretended to yak into the bushes until it drove away. Once he was alone, Oleg realized that he was way too early for his meeting with the British spies to pick him up. So what does he do? He, he–

Ed: This is amazing. This is truly the hubris of these guys

Arturo: So, you know what. This is f***ing nuts. So he—he waits, does he wait for like a little, like a good little spy defect, or no.

Ed: Like, like what, what should you do? What should you do in this situation, Arturo?

Arturo: You should f***ing stand there and wait. You stand there and you f***in wait.

Ed: You stand there or you, or you … or you hide in the bushes and you just, You’re like, he was like four hours early, right? Like it wasn’t that long.

Arturo: That’s it. It’s not like a day early, man. Like, you don’t have to like, survive.

Ed: Just hide and, and like, take a nap.

Arturo: Well watch people going, going by. Read a f***ing book, but no, no. Our pal Oleg had a little, he had a little rumbly in his little tummy. So he decided to hitchhike to the nearest town and sit down for lunch. He slammed down a beer. He ate some chicken, bought another beer for the road, and he started walking back to the meeting place.

Ed: By the way, it’s 18 miles. It’s not just like around the corner. It’s like, it’s—it’s far.

Arturo: How fast are you walking, bro? Like, yeah, it’s, it’s completely far.

Ed: You got four hours.

Arturo: And only, only now he realized that he had taken too long and that he might be late. This is the first moment it strikes him when he is walking back, right?

Ed: Yeah.

Arturo: So internally, he was like, what the f*** am I doing? Like, why did I not just wait there? Because externally he was just like walking around with bottled beer, sprinting down the road as fast as it could be. Like, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You know, the worst of all he was wearing corduroy pants, which is a very—you know, like that’s a lot of chafing, buddy. You know? I don’t know about—if, if you’ve ever bought them.

Ed: Well it’s go, it’s gonna make a lot of noise. That’s a lot of swooshing.

Arturo: None of this is spy-like. Like, he’s like—just chicken. His pieces of chicken are falling off of him. He’s drinking beer. He’s just in corduroys … weird.

So fortunately, Oleg finally heard a truck going in the right direction. So he stuck out a thumb and caught another ride back to cover the 16 miles. He would’ve never made it on his own. Now this is a true story. He tried to—in order to convince the truck driver to stop in the middle of nowhere, Oleg told the truck driver that he had an appointment to have sex in the woods. And the driver agreed. Obviously the driver didn’t look at his corduroy pants because everybody knows you can’t have sex in the woods with corduroy pants.

Ed: I guess that is a good, a good way to just sort of be like, Hey, we’re in the middle of nowhere, but I need to get outta your truck. Like, what, what could, could you get? Is there any other good reason …

Arturo: A good excuse is that I would get be—like, I am so sorry. Listen dude, I was planning on robbing you, but I’ve changed my mind. Leave me off here. You know, one of these, which, but it might get you shot. I don’t know. Um–

Ed: I’m a botanist and there’s like a really rare plant over here.

Arturo: Yeah. What is that called? The f***ing Audubon Society. It’s like, if I don’t f***ing catch this bird, I’m gonna be an embarrassment. You understand? And the truck driver being a fellow Audubon Society member—say no more.

Ed: Oh yeah. Get out.

Arturo: The problem was getting him to go away.

Ed: Keep me posted.

Arturo: Yeah that’s right, keep me posted. Here’s my number.

Um, so Oleg swatted mosquitoes and swigged from his beer once he finally got there, and uh, finally he’s waiting on the spot where—his two cars pull up and his rescuers jumped out. Now they were surprised to see only one man and not the whole family as they had planned for, but they opened the trunk for Oleg and he dove inside and they revved the engines. And now Oleg was finally racing towards the border.

Now in the trunk he had a bottle of water, sedatives for his children, which he’s not gonna use now, and a space blanket. They also knew that the Soviets scanned cars with infrared cameras at the Finnish border, so they hoped that the metallic space blanket would hide Oleg from the cameras and allow them to pass through. Did they do any f***ing tests to any—like they were hoping, that like—you were–

Ed: Here’s like some plastic cellophane. Wrap yourself in this.

Arturo: Chew, chew on these ice cubes. That’s gonna make—bring your body temperature down. Um, so the, the sedatives were Oleg’s first move. He pounded them, and fortunately they also gave him an empty jug for piss.

Now, over the next half hour from the darkness of the trunk, uh, Oleg felt them stop at four different Soviet checkpoints on the way to the border. They all seemed to be quick conversations while the drivers and, and the passengers showed papers. But they kept music playing in the car radios, and it seemed like they were doing just fine.

Now, the fifth stop is when it gets tricky. The engine switched off and Oleg could hear voices, they had reached customs. Oleg heard the officers talking and men with dogs circling the cars. Now one of the British officers started feeding chips to the dogs while another complained with a Soviet official about the annoyance of students in Moscow.

That was it. That was like—what, like, they, they found his one niche thing that he loves to complain about, so he let him go. So finally, after what felt like an hour, the British officers climbed back inside, the car crossed from the highway to a dirt road–

Ed: Wait, hold on. They didn’t just check the trunk?

Arturo: Nope! Uh-uh. Because the  British spies were just like, f***ing students. Am I right? They were both from, like, I don’t know, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in this scenario. But there was also one more thing, which was that the British agents brought a baby with them. And while the guards were talking with the driver, she actually got out and gave the baby a diaper change on the trunk of the car! So the Soviet guards just, like, I don’t—I don’t like your baby. This is poop. I don’t like to do this. So they didn’t make them open it. 

Ed: What?!

Arturo: So, they managed to talk their way out of it by complaining about students in Moscow and by feeding chips to the dogs.

Ed: … alright.

Arturo: So finally, after all this tension, they’re—they’re [on] a dirt road and they finally come to a stop outside a stand of pine trees. When the trunk opens, Oleg was met by the friendly face of his English handler. He had just escaped the KGB. Yay. Good for you!

Ed: Yay!

Arturo: But he had left his family behind. Oooh.

Ed:  There—there’s some aspect to a lot of these guys that’s somewhat psychopathic.

CHAPTER 7: Reunion

Arturo: So, because it was successful, Operation Pimlico is remembered as one of the most daring escapes of the Cold War. A lot of other KGB defectors died trying to escape. So it’s kind of a miracle—like truly!—that Gordievsky got out. Ever since, he’s basically spent the rest of his life trying not to get killed by KGB assassins. Now, MI-6 wasn’t surprised, of course. Like one officer said, he made absolute fools of the KGB.

The only way that they did have to get back at him was to hold his family hostage. So Oleg started lobbying world leaders, asking them for help. He even flew to the U.S. and he went to the White House where he met with President Reagan, and he asked for the U.S. to get his kids back.

Ed: This is also a fascinating moment, uh, in, in the able Archer story because in the run up to the, the Able Archer conflict, Oleg Gordievsky was trying to tell his Soviet handlers that guys, there’s not, like, there’s crazy tension between the East and the West, but they’re not trying to nuke you. They’re not planning to nuke you.

When he went to talk to Reagan, he actually was, was also trying to—to take credit for avoiding nuclear conflict to some extent. Like to—you know, by saying like, look, I helped avoid, you know, a nuclear holocaust during Able Archer because I was telling both sides the right thing. And, um, and that’s another reason why you should really think about helping me.

Arturo: Right, right.

Ed: And it was, it was pretty good leverage. Like, it—it was a good story that he, that he told and, and it, and, but, but what’s fascinating from a historical standpoint is like, you know, a lot of historians relied on his account of Able Archer, uh, and then …

Arturo: Oh, the information came from him? Of what Russians were …

Ed: Well just, you know, his—his narrative of what was happening at that time was, was, is sort of an important part of the historical record, but it’s also, you can now understand that deep conflict of interest in like—of course it behooves him to, uh, to, to bolster his own role in the Able Archer crisis because now it’s a reason to help get his family out of, out of Russia. He can like put, you know, he can tell, uh, foreign leaders like, look, I helped save the world. Now you need to help me get my family out.

Arturo: Like it’s a, it might be an unreliable narrator sort of vibe.

Ed: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Arturo: If it was true, then it’s, it was a great detriment to the, uh, easing of tensions that you lost the, like—one of the only guys in the room being like, guys, nobody’s f***ing fighting. You’re good. Everybody’s OK.

Ed: Yeah. Yeah.

Arturo: But like, unfortunately, he had to go to Britain to, to chill. So in the years since, uh, after he went to talk to Reagan, Oleg had been in hiding and he has lived in safe houses and had to keep watch for Russian assassination attempts ever since. But there is one bright spot though. In 1991 when the Russian government was in turmoil, new leadership stepped in and looking to make amends with the Western world, they finally let Leila and the girls go. They reunited with Oleg that September. Three months after Oleg and his family got back together, the Soviet Union collapsed. So in the end, tickle, tickle, tickle won. Yeah!

Outro

Arturo: Anyway, that’s our story. Ed, thank you so much for being a part of it, man.

Ed: I love it!

Arturo: And thanks for adding so many, so many interesting details of it. I didn’t know that the conversation with Reagan was because a big part of it was–

Ed: It was part of the color of that conversation. Yeah.

Arturo: One hundred percent. I wanna talk about SNAFU for a second too, if you don’t mind.

Ed: So Season 1 is, uh, the story of Able Archer 83, which was an event in 1983. It was the height of the Cold War, and there was so much tension between the United States or NATO and the Soviet Union that this Able Archer exercise, which by any other measure, was just a normal military exercise, was suddenly getting interpreted by the Soviets as possible staging for a real nuclear attack and basically there was this, this kind of like domino reciprocating spiral of, uh, fear and outrage and misunderstandings and miscommunications.

Arturo: Yeah—listeners should go to it because it gives such rich context while also being quite funny and entertaining and f***ing scary.

Ed: It’s, uh, such a cool story. Thank you for, uh, for having me on to talk about this.

Arturo: Awesome, man. Well, listen, we can’t wait to hear your band play and to watch you in whatever awesome movie or show you steal next – and I cannot wait to listen to more SNAFU. Season 2 is out now, and Season 3 is coming soon, right? I appreciate you coming on, brother. Thank you so much.

Ed: Thank you, Arturo. You’re so awesome at what you do. Keep doing it. Thanks a lot.

Arturo: Thank you so much. Later, brother. Bye.

Credits

Arturo: Greatest Escapes is a production of iHeartRadio and FilmNation Entertainment, in association with Gilded Audio. Our executive producers are me, Arturo Castro, Alyssa Martino and Milan Popelka from FilmNation Entertainment, Andrew Chugg and Whitney Donaldson from Gilded Audio, and Dylan Fagan from iHeartRadio.

The show is produced and edited by Carl Nellis and Ben Chugg, who are also, respectively, our research overlord and music overlord. Our associate producer is Tory Smith, who is our other overlord.

Nick Dooley is our technical director. Additional editing by Whitney Donaldson. Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Dan Welsh, Ben Ryzack, Sara Joyner, Nicki Stein, Olivia Canny, and Kelsey Albright.

Hey, thank you so much for listening, and if you’re enjoying the show, please leave a rating or review. My mom will call you each personally and thank you, and we’ll see you all next week.