Arthur Tabolti
The Spy

Dedicated to the loving memory of my mother,

Aza Sabanti.

«No one has ever managed to evade the choice that history places before them.»

Arthur Tabolti, The Spy

Copyright © 2025 by Arthur Tabolti

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

First Edition: June 2025

Cover Design by Catherine Zolotareva

THE DEFECTOR. In lieu of a preface

On November 3, 1947 a heavy Lancaster bomber touched down at a Royal Air Force base just outside London, having arrived from Berlin. Inside the aircraft were three passengers: a civilian man in his mid-thirties—tall, sharp-featured, wearing a gabardine mackintosh and a double-breasted suit; an attractive woman of similar age, fashionably dressed; and a girl of about eight. They were escorted by a security detail of five soldiers led by a junior officer.

The plane had been expected. As soon as it taxied to a halt and its engines fell silent, a long black limousine with curtained windows rolled up to the boarding steps. The guards handed over the passengers to three plainclothes men, who ushered them into the car. Then, with a jeep full of submachine-gun-toting escorts leading the way, the limousine pulled through the gates and vanished toward London.

That same evening, the telephone rang in a house on Kingston Road. The owner picked up.

“Hopkins speaking.”

The caller was Colonel Anthony Browne, one of MI5 Director General Sir Percy Sillitoe’s deputies and the newly appointed head of the Service’s Russian Section. A veteran of the clandestine world, Browne was in his sixties—he had joined the Secret Intelligence Service back when its entire staff numbered just thirty officers. By 1947, that figure had swelled to nearly eight hundred, with MI5 handling counterintelligence while MI6 ran foreign operations.

Browne’s call to Major Hopkins was unusual. They rarely spoke directly—orders usually came through the Russian Section’s operational chain.

“I need you, George,” Browne said, his voice slightly rasping. “Urgent matter. Get dressed and come outside. A car’s waiting. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Emergency summons had been routine during the war. Now, they were rare. Hopkins knew something was happening—but questions were for later. One didn’t discuss business on the telephone.

He grabbed his hat and trench coat, snatched up an umbrella, and stepped outside. The car was already there. A dark-blue Austin Seven from MI5’s motor pool—the ubiquitous Seven of the era—its polished body glistening under the misty glow of streetlamps. The driver wordlessly opened the rear door, slid behind the wheel, and started the engine without a sound.

This part of London still bore the scars of Hitler’s V-2 rockets. Some buildings had been repaired; others remained as jagged silhouettes against the night, their ruins gaping like missing teeth in the city’s skyline. Hopkins assumed they were headed for Blenheim Palace—the sprawling estate twelve miles north of Oxford where MI5 had relocated in 1940. But instead of turning north, the car swung south, tires hissing over the wet pavement as it crossed Westminster Bridge. The streets beyond were empty, watchful. Then London fell away, and they were swallowed by the blackness of the countryside, where only rain-slick heather lined the road.

“Where are we going?” Hopkins asked.

“Where we need to be, sir,” the driver replied politely, though with a tone that discouraged further inquiry. “Forty minutes.”

So Hopkins waited, staring out at the unspooling ribbon of deserted highway.

George Hopkins was thirty. Before the war, he had graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, with a degree in Slavic studies. Even as a boy, he’d had a gift for languages—German, fluent French—but Russian had always been his passion. He dreamed of translating the enigmatic prose of Dostoevsky and Chekhov, whose existing English versions struck him as lifeless, missing the haunting depth of the originals.

Now, it seemed, his skills were about to be put to more immediate use.

But the career of a translator was not to be. The war came, and George was conscripted into the Admiralty department handling Lend-Lease negotiations with the Russian allies. Twice, he escorted convoys to Arkhangelsk. The last one ended badly—the ships were ambushed by German fighters and bombers, three freighters loaded with Studebakers sent to the bottom. During the attack, George took over a dead gunner’s position on an anti-aircraft mount. His frantic shooting did little damage to the enemy, but when shrapnel tore through his shoulder, he kept firing until the raid ended. Command noted his nerve. They awarded him the Military Medal. In the hospital, a man in an unmarked uniform visited him. Asked questions. Offered him a job in counterintelligence.

“What does the job entail?” George asked.

“Hunting German spies. We need men like you. Your languages won’t go to waste.”

“Can I think about it?”

The man smirked. “Will three minutes be enough?”

Three minutes later, George said:

“I’m in.”

After a crash course, he was commissioned as a lieutenant and assigned to MI5’s operational branch.

During the war, catching German agents had been the sole priority. By 1945, seized Abwehr files revealed that 115 Nazi spies had operated on British soil. All were caught. Only one escaped arrest—by swallowing cyanide. Some were turned, feeding Berlin carefully crafted disinformation from MI5’s desks.

Then Churchill spoke at Fulton on March 5, 1946 at Westminster College. A week later, Stalin told Pravda that Churchill was no better than Hitler—a warmonger pushing the West into conflict with the USSR. The Allies became adversaries. The Cold War began.

For MI5, the game had changed entirely. Germany’s spies had always struggled in Britain. The British distrusted Germans on principle. But the Russians? That was different. Memories of the Eastern Front still lingered—the shared sacrifice, the hard-won victory. The Communist Party operated openly, boasting fifty thousand members. Socialist ideals seduced academics, artists, even some in Whitehall. Perfect soil for Soviet recruitment.

MI5 reorganized. A new Russian Section was formed, staffed by the sharpest minds in the service. All other departments answered to it now. And among its officers was Major George Hopkins.

The car turned off the highway onto a country lane and, after some time, came to a halt before wrought iron gates.

“Here we are, sir,” the driver announced.

There was a two-storey manor at the end of a long drive, its entrance flanked by columns, the upper windows wide and generous, the lower ones barred with iron grilles. George knew the place well. Early in the war, it had been acquired—either leased or bought under a front—by MI5’s administrative branch. Here, sabotage teams had trained before being dropped behind German lines: radio operations, explosives, weapons drills under the watch of hardened instructors. Behind the house, screened by a dense stand of oaks and maples, lay a small sports ground and a firing range. George himself had spent months here overseeing the diversionists’ preparation.

Two armed guards meticulously checked their papers before swinging the gates open. The Austin crunched up the drive—its surface strewn with crushed red brick—and stopped at the manor’s entrance. Already parked was the hulking black Daimler belonging to Anthony Browne. Browne himself sat in an armchair on the first-floor drawing room, smoking a pipe and reading The Times, grey morning coat and black bow tie giving him the air of a retired gentleman at his club rather than a seasoned counterintelligence officer. “And what do I look like?” Hopkins caught himself wondering. A junior bank clerk, most likely.

Browne set aside the paper and nodded amiably.

“Come in, George, do take off your coat. Apologies for ruining your evening. You’re doubtless wondering what prompted this.”

“Intensely, sir,” Hopkins admitted.

“You’ll see directly. Come along—there’s something to show you.”

Browne tapped his pipe out into a crystal ashtray, tucked it into his coat pocket, heaved himself up, and led the way out. No guards were visible, but Hopkins knew they were there—one, sometimes two, on every floor.

Descending to the basement, Browne unlocked an iron-bound door. Beyond lay a small room with a low ceiling and a narrow, floor-to-ceiling window overlooking a larger, brightly lit chamber some meters below. This secondary room contained a long central table and four metal chairs bolted to the floor. George knew the setup: the lower room for interrogations, the upper for observation. Sound carried via hidden microphones; the glass was polarised, allowing the watcher to see everything while remaining unseen himself.

Pacing the interrogation room was a tall, powerfully built man—youngish, with black hair cut in that curious Russian military fashion, short at the sides and long on top. His face was dark with stubble, his well-cut black suit (shoulder pads fashionably prominent) sitting awkwardly on him, as civilian clothes often do on career soldiers. He smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, crimping the filter between his fingers. On the table lay a homemade cartridge-case lighter and a packet of papirosy bearing the image of a horseman against a mountain backdrop. The ashtray overflowed. But what struck George most: the man wore mismatched shoes—both black, similar, but unmistakably not a pair.

“Well, George?” Browne murmured.

“Who is he?”

“Our defector. Russian officer—Lieutenant Colonel Tokayev.”

“Not Slavic features.”

“No, Ossetian. Small republic in southern Russia. But that’s not what matters. Since ‘45, he’s been secretary to the Allied Control Council in Germany—Zhukov’s lot. Later transferred to the Military Secretariat, hunting von Braun’s rocket scientists. Recently approached our man in Berlin, asked for asylum. I approved. Brought him in today—him, his wife, and daughter. Had to scramble the RAF for extraction. Never thought I’d see the day a Lancaster flew such cargo.”

“How did he manage to evade surveillance?” Hopkins asked, surprised. “And with his family, no less! They must have been under close watch.”

“That’s precisely what we need to determine.”

“Where are his wife and daughter now?”

“Somewhere secure.”

“Do you want me to interrogate him?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I want. He doesn’t speak English. You’ll be spending quite some time with this man—days, months maybe. He knows a great deal. Do you understand the most critical question we need answered?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then get to it.”

Hopkins descended the iron staircase into the basement. A guard armed with a STEN submachine gun opened the heavy door. At Hopkins’ entrance, the defector stopped pacing and glowered up at him from under his brow.

“Sit down, Mr. Tokayev,” Hopkins said amiably. “Let’s get acquainted. My name is George Hopkins. I work in counterintelligence. Call me George. I understand you don’t speak English, so we’ll converse in Russian. What should I call you?”

“Grigori. Where is my family? Where have they been taken?”

“Don’t worry, they’re safe. Your wife and daughter are quite comfortable.” Hopkins leaned forward slightly. “Indulge my curiosity, Grigori. I couldn’t help but notice you’re wearing mismatched shoes. Why is that?”

“Have you ever had to pack in a hurry?” Tokayev countered. “When even a minute’s delay could be fatal?”

“No.”

“I have.”

“Under what circumstances?”

“You’re asking the wrong questions first, George.” Tokayev exhaled smoke. “There’s only one thing you really want to know.”

“And what’s that?”

“Whether my defection is a Soviet intelligence operation to infiltrate me into Britain. Am I right?”

“You are. How do you answer that question?”

“If I say ‘no,’ you won’t believe me.”

“I won’t,” Hopkins agreed.

“You won’t believe anything I say.”

“That’s the nature of our job.”

“Then you’ll have to find the answer yourself.”

For the next fifty-six years—until Lieutenant Colonel Grigori Tokayev’s death—British counterintelligence officer George Hopkins would never definitively answer that most critical of questions.