One of MI5's agents at that time was the MP Henry Kirby, who had frequent dealings with the Russian diplomatic community. The plan was simple. MI5 would design an ornament modified to reflect sound, and Kirby would give it as a gift to the Russian Ambassador. The first thing that we needed to know was the kind of present the Ambassador might be likely to accept and place prominently on his desk or in his office. Malcolm Cumming suggested that I visit an old MI5 agent runner named Klop Ustinov, the father of the actor Peter Ustinov.
Klop Ustinov was German by descent, but he had strong connections in the Russian diplomatic community and was a frequent visitor to the Embassy. Ustinov had the unique distinction of having held commissions in the Russian, German, and British Armies. He had dabbled in intelligence throughout the interwar period. He spoke a vast array of languages, and his German/Russian background made him a useful source of information. When Hitler came to power, Ustinov began to work strenuously against the Nazis. He approached Robert Vansittart, a prominently anti-Nazi Foreign Office diplomat, offering to work for British Intelligence. He claimed to be in contact with Baron Wolfgang zu Putlitz, then a First Secretary at the German Embassy in London, who he said was secretly working against the Nazis. Ustinov was recruited by MI5, and began to obtain high-grade intelligence from zu Putlitz about the true state of German rearmament. It was priceless intelligence, possibly the most important human-source intelligence Britain received in the prewar period. After meeting zu Putlitz, Ustinov and he used to dine with Vansittart and Churchill, then in the wilderness, to brief them on the intelligence they had gained. Zu Putlitz became something of a second son to the urbane English diplomat. Even after the outbreak of war Ustinov continued meeting zu Putlitz, by now working in Holland as an Air Attache. Finally in 1940 zu Putlitz learned that the Gestapo were closing in and he decided to defect. Once more Ustinov traveled into Holland and, at great personal risk, led zu Putlitz to safety.
I took a taxi over to Ustinov's flat in Kensington, expecting to meet a hero of the secret world living in honorable retirement. In fact, Ustinov and his wife were sitting in a dingy flat surrounded by piles of ancient, leather-bound books. He was making ends meet by selling off his fast-diminishing library.
Despite the hardship, Ustinov was thrilled by my visit. He remained a player of the Great Game down to his fingertips. Two small glasses and a bottle of vodka appeared, and he began to pore over the plans I had brought with me from the office. He was a round old man with a guttural, polyglot accent, and a sharp eye for the real interests of the Soviet diplomats in Kensington Park Gardens.
"The real danger, my friend, is that they will sell the gift, rather than display it, if it is too valuable," he intoned in a knowing voice. "These are Bolsheviks - men of orthodox tastes. A silver effigy of Lenin, or model of the Kremlin. These perhaps will be more sacred to them."
A bust of Lenin was unsuitable, I explained, because the smooth contours of Vladimir Ilyich's skull were too rounded to be sure of reflecting sound waves. But a model Kremlin offered possibilities. It would be easy to conceal the right type of concave indentations in the complex architecture of the symbol of Mother Russia. Klop Ustinov saw the whole operation as a piece of rich theater and offered to pay a visit to the Ambassador to gather more direct evidence of his tastes.
As the vodka took hold we began to talk of old times. He was an old man, but his memory was still fresh. Tears began to wet his cheeks as he told me the story of what he and zu Puflitz had done for the country. Finally his reserve broke.
"I do these things, Peter, and they leave me here. My wife and I... penniless."
"But what about your pension?" I asked.
"Pension? I have no pension," he flashed back bitterly. "When you work for them you never think about the future, about old age. You do it for love. And when it comes time to die, they abandon you."
I sat silent. It seemed scarcely credible to me that such a man could be left in such circumstances, forced almost to beg. I wanted to ask him why Churchill or Vansittart had forgotten him, but I felt it would only wound him more. Ustinov drank and composed himself.
"But it was fun," he said finally. He poured more vodka with an unsteady hand. There was silence for a moment, and then he spoke again.
"My boy. He is an actor." He pointed to a picture of young Peter on the mantelpiece. "Do you have children, Peter?" I told him I had three, two girls and a young boy.
"Tell him not to join, then," he said quietly. "I would not want my boy to join this game of ours. The gentlemen run the business, and gentlemen have short memories..."
Almost as soon as it arrived, his bitterness melted away. He asked about the office, about Guy Liddell, Dick White, and Malcolm Cumming, all of whom had been closely involved with him during the wartime years. Finally, as late-afternoon darkness closed in on the room, I left. We shook hands and he returned alone to the vodka and his piles of books.
I was too drunk that night to do anything other than go home. But the next morning I tackled Cumming on the subject. He looked embarrassed.
"But I'm sure we sorted his pension out years ago," he barked in a voice louder than usual. "Good God, poor Klop. I'll see Dick straightaway."
Further questioning was pointless. Who precisely had been to blame for forgetting Klop Ustinov was lost in the chase around the mulberry bush of responsibility, an occupation much favored by bureaucrats when oversights are discovered. Ustinov did get his pension, although I never saw him again after that meeting. Not long afterward he died. But at least his widow had the benefit of it. The silver Kremlin operation soon petered out, overruled by the Foreign Office. In truth my heart went out of it that afternoon in Kensington. But I learned a lesson I never forgot: that MI5 expects its officers to remain loyal unto the grave, without necessarily offering loyalty in return.
But in the main, the 1950s were years of fun, and A Branch a place of infectious laughter. As Hugh Winterborn always said: "MI5 is a great life, if you can stand the excitement!" Like the time when we were fitting listening devices in a safe house next door to the Hungarian Embassy. I climbed onto the roof to install an aerial and was seen by a neighbor, who reported seeing a burglar on the prowl. Within ten minutes the police were knocking at the door, accompanied by the neighbor, and pandemonium reigned. Here we were, surrounded by the latest listening technology, receivers and cables spread across the floor. Winterborn desperately lifted the floorboards and began to shovel tens of thousands of pounds' worth of equipment underneath. The knocking got louder. Then burly shoulders began to force the front door. They were clearly convinced by the noise that a burglary was in progress. Finally, everything was relatively shipshape, and I opened the door sheepishly and explained that I was doing some authorized late-night renovations for the owner. I gave the policeman a number to ring to confirm the fact. It was the local Special Branch number.
Even funnier was the time we did a similar job against the Polish Embassy in Portland Street. The house next door was temporarily empty, and A2 obtained access to install a series of microphones. Hugh Winterborn and I led a team of twelve officers from A Branch. Silence was imperative because we knew that the target premises were permanently manned near the party wall. I made a tremendous fuss insisting that everyone remove his shoes to avoid making noise on the bare floorboards. We worked nonstop for four hours in the freezing cold. All the floorboards on the first floor had been raised and I was patiently threading the cables along the void between the joists. After a time one of the leads became tangled on a split joist. Unable to clear the obstruction by hand, I began to ease myself down until one foot was resting on a masonry nail sticking out from one side of a joist. Just as I was inching toward the tangled cable, the nail gave way, and I plunged through the ceiling below. A large section of ceiling crashed fourteen feet to the floor below, reverberating around Portland Place like a wartime bomb. The noise and dust subsided, leaving me wedged tightly up to my waist in the hole in the ceiling. For a moment there was total silence.