Baryshnikov’s team did not trust von Scheller. During detailed interrogations it appeared that von Scheller had tried to force Hansen to send a coded message to their German handlers that would reveal that they were operating under SMERSH’s control. Hansen refused and made a statement to SMERSH officers: ‘I’ve become acquainted with the honest and just people [meaning Baryshnikov’s men] who had been described to us [by Nazi propaganda] in a completely different way… If I’m impressed by the country in general as much as the officers and soldiers impressed me, I’ll conclude that any nation would be honored to be a friend of the Soviet Union.’44 Because of this, von Scheller and Hansen were dealt with differently by SMERSH. On October 20, 1945, the OSO sentenced von Scheller to death and two weeks later he was executed, while Hansen was sentenced to imprisonment in labor camps. He survived and was repatriated to Germany after Stalin’s death.
On April 21, 1945, at the end of the war, Abakumov received one of the highest military awards, the Kutuzov Order of the 1st Class, for the successful conclusion of a radio game code named ‘Tuman’ (Fog).45 It remains a mystery why only Abakumov was awarded for this effort because many participants, including Merkulov, were involved in it. The game concerned a German agent, a Russian named Pyotr Tavrin, who was sent by German intelligence to Soviet territory, and his wife. There are two main versions about how and when this happened.
The first is based on the documents of Gehlen’s FHO, studied by E. H. Cookridge, the author of a book about Gehlen and his German intelligence men. He wrote that Pyotr Ivanovich Tavrin ‘had been captured [by the Soviets] on May 30, 1942, in the Rzhev area. He informed his captors that he had been awarded the Orders of the Red Banner and of Alexander Nevsky… and displayed these medals with pride; but after the usual indoctrination he was prepared to go back as a spy’.46
However, Tavrin could not have had the Aleksandr Nevsky Order because this award was established on July 29, 1942, after Tavrin had been captured. The first Aleksandr Nevsky Order was bestowed in November 1942, after (according to Cookridge) Tavrin was smuggled back through the front line in September 1942. Even more questionable is the claim that Tavrin ‘was given a succession of important appointments, first at the ministry of defense, then on the staff of the supreme headquarters and eventually, with the rank of colonel, at the headquarters of Marshal Ivan Chernyakhovsky’, as well as the claim that on October 17, 1943 he was awarded ‘the gold badge of a Hero of the Soviet Union’.47 In August 1944, ‘Tavrin sent a signal saying that he had fallen under suspicion. Gehlen decided to withdraw him and asked Zeppelin [the SD spy organization] to collect him in a Messerschmitt’. At the end, Cookridge cites the supposedly Soviet information that on September 5, 1944 Tavrin, a German spy in the uniform of a Soviet colonel, and his wife were arrested near Smolensk and later executed.
The KGB/FSB version begins from the arrest on September 5, 1944 of a Zeppelin agent with false documents in the name of Pyotr Ivanovich Tavrin (his real last name was Shilo), and a woman, his wife, with false documents for Lidia Shilova (her real last name was Bobrik).48 Surprisingly, in his memoirs Tarasov, who participated in Operation Fog, refers to the couple as the Pokrovskys [sic] and not the Tavrins.49 Over the years the FSB has changed its version of the circumstances of their arrest four or five times, so I will only address the published documents.50
On September 30, 1945 Merkulov reported to the GKO that on May 30, 1942, Tavrin-Pokrovsky crossed the front line and went to the Germans after the OO officer of his unit questioned him about his past. Tavrin had something to hide because from 1931 to 1938, he was arrested three times for embezzlement, and each time he managed to escape. Then he received a new passport under the name Tavrin instead of Shilo. While being held prisoner in German POW camps, in July 1943 he volunteered for German intelligence. Merkulov wrote:
From September 1943 till August 1944, [Tavrin] was personally trained as a terrorist for committing terrorist acts against the USSR leaders. [Heinz] Gräfe, head of the SD Eastern Department, [Otto] Skorzeny, SD member who took part in kidnapping [Benito] Mussolini [in September 1943], and SS Major [Otto] Kraus of the SD post [Russland-Nord] in Riga supervised the training. Additionally, G. N. Zhilenkov, former [Party] secretary of the Rostokinsky Regional Committee in Moscow, who has betrayed the Motherland and currently lives in Germany, guided Tavrin for a long time.
On the night of September 4 to 5 [1944] [Tavrin] was sent over the front line by a four-motor German plane from Riga Airport… The German intelligence organ, the Riga SD branch known as Zeppelin, organized his transportation.
The goal of sending [Tavrin] is to organize and conduct a terrorist act against C.[omrade] Stalin, as well as, if possible, acts against the other members of the government: Beria, [Commissar for Railroad Transportation Lazar] Kaganovich and Molotov… For discovering further intentions of German intelligence, a radio game has been started… Tavrin’s wife, Shilova Lidia Yakovlevna (arrested), who graduated from German courses for radio operators and was sent together with Tavrin, is used as an operator [in the game].51
The details Merkulov described became known from the interrogation of Tavrin conducted in Lubyanka, where the Tavrins were brought after their arrest near Smolensk, by Baryshnikov, head of the 3rd GUKR Department; Aleksandr Leontiev, head of the NKVD Department for Combating Bandits; and Leonid Raikhman, deputy head of the 2nd NKGB Directorate (interior counterintelligence).52 Interestingly, Merkulov stressed Tavrin’s connection to Georgii Zhilenkov, the highest Party official captured by the Germans, who became one of the leaders of the anti-Soviet movement and the Vlasov Army. Before the war, Zhilenkov was a secretary of Moscow’s Rostokinsky Regional Party Committee and a member of the Moscow City Party Committee. After the end of the war Zhilenkov surrendered to the Americans, but on May 1, 1946 they handed him over to the Soviets. On August 1, 1946 the Military Collegium sentenced Zhilenkov, along with General Vlasov and his other close collaborators, to death and they were executed.53
Tavrin-Pokrovsky’s testimony corroborated the words of a captured high-level RSHA officer whom Tarasov identified as ‘John’:
In Zeppelin circles, Pokrovsky [Tavrin] was discussed a lot. He was considered a ‘big bird’ that would bring Zeppelin glory, awards and more power in intelligence activity. In their conversations Hauptsturmführer [Alfred] Backhaus [of the Zeppelin headquarters in Berlin], [Otto] Kraus, and Untersturmführer [Heinz] Gräfe used to repeat: ‘Imagine the consequences if Pokrovsky succeeds in fulfilling his assignment.’54
If this testimony is true, it shows that Walter Schellenberg’s men in the Zeppelin branch had no idea about real life in the Soviet Union and the impossibility of Tavrin’s task.
Tavrin described how after leaving the plane, which had crashed while landing, the couple started out for Moscow by motorcycle. Tavrin was dressed in the uniform of a Soviet Major and Shilova, in that of a Junior Lieutenant. Tavrin had false documents of a deputy head of the OKR SMERSH of the 39th Army of the 1st Baltic Front and a fake typewritten order to come to the GUKR in Moscow.