Confessions of an Illegal

My name is Alexei Mikhailovich Kozlov.

I am a colonel in the foreign intelligence service.

I will tell you my story without aliases. I was held in a South African prison for two years. The reason for my arrest? I was caught gathering intelligence.

I was let out of that South African prison in 1982. Well, not really “let out” – they exchanged me for someone, and after that I spent four years working here, in the Center. But over those four years I became seriously depressed. I called up Yuri Ivanovich Drozdov [then head of the Directorate S – for Illegals and Special Ops] and said I couldn’t do this anymore.

Drozdov asked me: “And just how do you see this happening? Everyone knows you, so how can we send you anywhere?” Then he pondered for a bit and said, “You know, no one is looking for you anywhere, since they returned you to us in the exchange. And what kind of fool would think that a person who has just pulled his head out of the noose would thrust it right back in? Alright, go.”

They gave me a western passport. Previously, I had a German one, but this time I got something new. And I worked for another 10 years far from home, traveling about. If you ask, “And where did you go and what did you do?” I won’t say a damn thing about that here, guys.

 

I was born in 1934 in Kirov oblast, in the village of Oparino, Oparinsky district. I lived in Vologda from 1936 until I finished 10th grade. I was raised by my grandparents, because my mother and father were very young, and already had three other kids. They both worked. In 1941 my father went into the army; in 1943 he was in the battle in the Kursk salient. He was a commissar in a tank battalion in the Fifth Army under General Rotmistrov, the future marshal of the tank corps. My mother was a bookkeeper in a kolkhoz and she had a tough time of it alone…

I started school in 1943, after the Battle for Stalingrad ended. I had an excellent German language teacher in Vologda, Zelman Shmulevich Shcherlovsky. He was famous because, in 1939, when Germany occupied Poland, he fled Poland for our side. A Jew, Zelman did not want to die in a Fascist concentration camp. Our guys didn’t scrutinize him too closely, but just sent him to live in Vologda. He finished the teachers’ institute there and taught us German – he knew the language perfectly and was very demanding. I really loved this teacher and we got along quite well.

I finished school with a silver medal and immediately entered the Moscow Institute for International Relations [MGIMO]. That was in 1953, soon after Josef Vissarionovich Stalin died.

To this day people say to me, “Aha, you entered MGIMO, which means you got in thanks to blat and all that.” What blat?! I arrived from Vologda with a padlocked wooden suitcase. I had never been in Moscow.

I arrived at the admissions committee and they gave me a questionnaire. It was quickly ascertained that I was not a spy or an enemy agent and I was allowed into the exams, all of which I passed with an “excellent,” including the German exam.

In December 1958, they sent me to Denmark for my student practicum. I got some experience in the consular department and in the embassy. When I returned, they offered me a chance to work in the organs of state security. Why? You would have to ask the cadre department at MGIMO. But graduates did not only become chekists. In the institute, I studied in the same language group as Yuly Kvitsinsky – future first deputy minister for foreign affairs. I was friends with many people who became ambassadors and who had no connection with the KGB. But there were also lots of guys who went to work in the special services. And there was nothing strange about that.

So, in 1959, I was summoned for the first and last time to the Lubyanka – then Dzherzhinsky street number 2. They asked, “Where would you like to work?” And I answered that it had to be operational work, not as some kind of scrivener. And they said: “Fine, so be it.” Yet even today I can brag about a callous – right here on this finger. I never had to write as much as I did in my operational work. But then the cadre department offered to make me into an illegal.

 

Every Illegal Has His Legend

So how was your language? Usually illegals, so far as I can imagine, are people who have almost native fluency in a foreign language.

My language was already good. At school and MGIMO, my first language was German, my second Danish. And I had already been in Denmark. I didn’t speak English then, but we’ll get to that. They immediately offered me work in illegal intelligence and that’s it.

They sent me off for training. It was actually rather short. I arrived on August 1, 1959 and by October 2, 1962, I was heading out for battle in a western country.

But before that, I was in the GDR [East Germany] for training. That was really helpful. Yet not always, since I picked up the Saxon dialect. And I will never forget how, after I had infiltrated West Germany and was talking completely by chance in a cafe with a police employee. And suddenly he asked me: “You are not from over there, from Braunschweig, are you?” “No,” I replied. “I am Austrian.” He shook his head, “Strange, I would have bet my life that you were a Saxon.” I had to convince him that my mother was a Saxon, my father an Austrian. And it worked. Luckily, this fellow at the table with me was a young guy, and really not as  interested in some Austrian as in the women sitting nearby. So the conversation ended on its own.

 

But it could have ended differently, if the policeman had not been so inclined to dancing?

Nah, I don’t think so. My German was actually quite good. I was only just passing through Germany, for all of three weeks. Then it was on to Denmark.

 

Why did you end up there?

The fact is, every illegal has to have some kind of professional cover. In Moscow they also gave us our professional cover – auto mechanic, refrigerator or TV repairman, stuff like that. They made me a technical draftsman. I hated this profession with every fibre of my being, because my mind is that of a humanist. But I had to agree. And it was a clean profession – at least I didn’t have to go crawling about under cars. And when I arrived in Copenhagen at the end of October 1962, I entered a technical institute where, among other things, they trained draftsmen. They told me I would have to study there for three years. But I told the director I did not have two – to say nothing of three – years, and that I had to finish the institute in three months. He looked at me as if I were crazy, but I calmly explained, that yes, I knew how to draft. In addition to training in Moscow, I also had training in the GDR. I insisted that I simply needed the diploma. I had no money. I was alone in the world. How was I to waste two or three years studying? He invited in some kind of teacher, the three of us talked and they decided it like this: “OK, you pay for all three years of study and, if you succeed, if you pass the exams, then we will give you your diploma in three months.” I went to the institute every day. I completed all the tasks and in three months finished the institute, becoming a technical draftsman with a Danish diploma.

 

And what was the nationality in your passport?

I was a German. The passport was West German. Then the Center proposed that I travel through several countries, since my passport was a fake. I needed to pick some state or other in which I could have lived for many years and where I could have, according to my legend, have earned a good deal of money as a foreigner. First they proposed I go to Lebanon, an Arab country. I traveled there on a ship out of Naples, and happened to meet a girl on the way who knew English quite well. I arrived in Lebanon and discovered that Lebanese Arabs quite liked Germans. As far as Denmark, where I was from, well, not a soul in Lebanon had any idea that the King of Denmark even existed.

I reconnected with the girl from the boat, so that she could somehow teach me English. She taught me for six months, and not badly at that.

Then the Center had a job: go to Algeria, without going through Europe, and set yourself up for long-term residency there. I was there within four weeks. As it turned out, they were celebrating the first anniversary of Algeria’s independence. French troops and legionnaires were still in the country, but the president was already one of theirs – Ahmed Ben Bella.

But it so happened that no one in this country knew English or German, to say nothing of Danish, and I didn’t know what to do. I searched for a long time and finally found one connection: a Frenchman who spoke German. Through his acquaintances I found work as a technical draftsman. This was lucky, because all of the engineers and architects in this firm were Swiss, which meant they spoke English, German, French and Italian. So I began speaking with them in English. All of the draftsmen and the rest of the staff in the firm were Arabs. But they didn’t know any language other than French, not even their native language. Things often played out like a comedy. Once, when Ben Bella decided to rename all the streets, posting their names in Arabic, it led to staggering confusion: in Algeria many Arabs did not even know Arabic – they all spoke only in French. So I had to learn French as well.

I use all of my languages in my work. I speak them just fine to this day. Later, I also added Italian, but that was much later. And my wife came to live with me in Algeria.

 

But how did you manage to explain her arrival to the locals?

We got married in Moscow, before my departure. She stayed in the Soviet Union for intelligence training. And when she arrived, we created a proper legend for her. I had some older French citizens as friends. One of them left, another died. So we had an address where we could say my wife had lived. She arrived, of course, as a German, and studied French in Algeria. And again I was quite lucky: two years after the country’s independence, Algerians started destroying all the documents of all foreigners who had lived there before independence. So it was quite easy for me to say in other states that I had lived for 20 years in Algeria, earning lots of money there. That’s how I constructed a legend about my wealth.

Then my wife got pregnant, and it was proposed we go to Germany, and there definitively document our story with a marriage. After all, both our passports were fake. We first went to Tunisia, then to Holland, then France. After that, I went to Stuttgart. And my wife stayed over the border in French Strasbourg.

 

Why did you enter West Germany alone?

I could not take her, since I did not know how everything would play out. My wife was pregnant, and the devil only knows what might happen to me.

As you recall, I was a technical draftsman, and I had to find work in order to settle in somewhere in West Germany. Stuttgart is a big city with dozens of organizations. But the fact is, I ended up there in August. In most countries, this is the month of summer vacations, and no one offered any sort of work. I took a job as an unskilled laborer in a dry cleaner’s – it was the only place that would hire me. But they promised to pay me like a skilled worker and, if I worked conscientiously, they would change my status to that of a skilled worker. That is what in fact happened.

There were rather simple procedures in the city at that time. So we received our internal identification papers without difficulty and were officially married.

My wife was in the final weeks of her pregnancy when we moved to Munich, where I again found work in a dry cleaner’s. Our son was born there, and then a daughter, all within the space of two years.

After the children were born, we received, instead of our previous internal ID, West German foreign passports, and with deep regret we burned our fake passports in the stove.

 

Why with regret?

Because they were really quite good. But real ones are better.

 

Dry Cleaner Intel

After that, they summoned us back to Russia. We spent a few months at home. And they sent me off for a long residence in a NATO country. I settled in the capital and looked for work as either a draftsman or in a dry cleaner. It took six months and was very difficult to arrange. In the end, I ended up in the Hilton Hotel in the dry cleaning and laundry department. I was a skilled worker and soon became the head of this department. I found an apartment and my wife and two kids joined me.

 

Didn’t your children guess which country they were really from?

No. My son went to kindergarten, my daughter to daycare. They spoke to each other only in French, and with us, only in German.

 

They didn’t know Russian?

How?

 

The two months at home in Russia?

We didn’t let them learn Russian. They didn’t know it at all. And my wife got a job in the capital as a German teacher in a NATO accredited school, where they taught the children of NATO employees. At first, she just tutored them privately, then began to teach German in the school.

I was, as I already explained, a skilled specialist, and I was offered a position as general director of one of the city’s largest dry cleaners.

NATO... Surely you obtained information about the military alliance?

The only specifics I can share are that operational information was dispatched.

 

Did it help, that your spouse was teaching in a NATO school?

Naturally.

 

The children talked amongst themselves.

Ah, kids helped very little. They were mainly a cover.

 

You became acquainted with their parents?

We didn’t have any special acquaintances with the parents, because the parents of kids in kindergartens and preschools  were not highly placed. They were mainly middle class.

I would perhaps put the stress on something else: you can obtain useful information even working in a dry cleaner.

 

Did you have your own agents?

No, I did not have any agents. I was alone. And in 1970 my wife got very sick and had to return home. Then my wife died. And I was offered work in a hotspot.

 

Hotspot Agent

What does that mean?

Hot spots were basically countries with which we did not have diplomatic relations and where crisis situations had developed. In the 1970s, which regions were in crisis? Basically the Near and Middle East: Israel and the Arab countries. So that is where I ended up working quite a bit. I was in Israel quite often, as well as in all sorts of Arab states.

And I legalized my residence in Italy. I had established good contacts with firms that produced things for dry cleaners: chemicals, equipment… And they offered me a position as their worldwide representative, excluding Italy itself. That satisfied me. I was registered in Rome, but went there only every two to three months. I had to travel to all these other countries – Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon – all full of fires. Then Saudi Arabia and lots of others.

 

You had no trouble getting into any of these places? But what about visas?

Here’s how it worked back then: if someone had an Israeli stamp in their passport, noting their entry into that country, then he would not be allowed into a single Arab country. And so I had to go to the West German embassy: “What am I to do, friends?” They said, “Fine, you will get a new passport, a duplicate.” And I traveled on this duplicate passport to all the Arab countries. In other words, one passport for Israel, another for the countries of the Arab world. When the term of my passport expired, I went to the West German embassy in Rome and they extended it. That’s how I got around.

Interestingly, I had lots of connections. They were relatives of ministers, including in Lebanon. They were officers of the Israeli army and their politicians. And there were several politicians in Egypt. On a rather high level. For example, a minister’s nephew! And I knew ministers, who were, for example… leaders of various political parties, which is very important in Israel.

There were curious incidents in Israel, for example in Jerusalem. The workday was over, it was 11 o’clock at night and I was going back to the hotel to sleep. But I needed something to drink, in order to sleep soundly. So I went into a cafe. I ordered 50 grams of vodka – actually, more like 40, as their double is not 50, but 40 grams. And a mug of beer. I looked around and saw that all the seats were taken, except for one at a table with three old men.

I went up to them and asked in German: “May I sit with you?” Most Jews know German. They say, “Sure, please.” They ask me: “Are you German?” I answer, “Yes.” So then one of them tells me this story. “You know, during the war, I served in Soviet military intelligence, and I was once dropped behind German lines. And I,” he said, “really gave it to you guys.” He said this with such pride, with such nostalgia, with such respect for Soviet intelligence. And also with such spite for me, a German, with such malice, that he had done so much damage to the enemy. I sat there and thought, ‘My colleague is sitting right next to me. My comrade.’

 

What did you manage to achieve?

I achieved quite a lot, but exactly what, I am not at liberty to say. My time there was far from useless. I received an Order of the Red Star for this business.

Starting in 1974, I was also in Iran. I had to visit there during the time of the Shah and gathered quite a lot of information. In November-December 1975, there was an international trade fair there. And we were very interested in Iran. I traveled around Iran without any worries whatsoever and had lots of friends there – among the police and what have you.

Iran had a rather terrifying secret service: SAVAK.

Terrifying, yes, but what can you do? It was best not to run into SAVAK. And I was, of course, not traveling on a Soviet passport. And there were lots of Russians there. I mean at the Soviet Union’s pavilion at the exhibition.

 

And did you ever enter Soviet embassies?

Never in my life. It was forbidden. Never under any circumstances. Why would I?

 

Did you really never want, even ever so rarely, to talk to someone in Russian?

If I sought that out, I would have been immediately kicked out of the Service.

 

And how did you manage to communicate with the Center?

How do you think? Mainly I passed things through secret drops. But no specifics. Of course, I cannot describe the secret drops. But the hottest information I sent in letters, in secret code to a certain address that the Center had given me. In three to four days the letter would be where I had sent it – letters went quickly, all things considered. But bigger volumes of information I transferred through secret drop sites... in the form of exposed film. But then I came up with another way: little tablets, about the size of a ceramic tile, which had about 50 pages of text and which I sent across very nicely. So I was able to send quite a lot.

 

And all of this time you were alone?

Naturally. But I had tons of friends among both the Arabs and the Jews. How can one live without people? And these were real friends, who did not know what I really was, but they trusted me, and I them.

 

And they had no suspicions or hints?

Never.

I was talking to you about crisis situations. Prior to 1974, when they had a revolution in Portugal, we did not have diplomatic relations with that country. But I had to be there, even under the Fascist regime of [Marcello] Caetano, and gathered interesting information. When the “red carnation” revolution began, I also immediately went there to live for a few months. And I was not just in Lisbon, but I traveled the whole country.

 

But did you never meet with your compatriots?

We only rarely had meetings in person. For example, I was registered in Italy for 10 years and had just two meetings. They came from the Center. There were face-to-face meetings only when I traveled to some other, neutral country. But in states with a difficult operational environment, there were no meetings. Maybe once every two years, I came back on vacation. The children lived in a children’s home. And during my vacations I spent all my time with them.

Ah well, I’ll tell you a little something. As it turns out, I had to return to the Motherland once, just before New Year’s, since my vacation began in January. I flew from Teheran to Copenhagen and met there with the resident. We exchanged my passports. I gave him my “iron” passport, which I traveled with all the time, and I received from him another, which could later be destroyed. The resident congratulated me on the New Year and on my receiving the award “Badge of an Honored Chekist.” And he added that another mutual acquaintance was there and also extended his congratulations. I asked him, “And who is this mutual acquaintance?” He said: “Oleg Gordiyevsky.” I asked him: “How does Oleg Gordiyevsky know that I am here? Did you tell him? Or did you show him this new passport of mine?” Oleg Gordiyevsky was his deputy at the time. I mention this because it was forbidden for an illegal, unless there was some extreme necessity, to converse with his colleagues in the residency.

 

Did you have a radio?

Of course.

 

Was it a broadcast radio?

A typical radio receiver, and once a week I would listen to news from the Center. I fulfilled their requests and then sent letters in code to an address in Europe or transferred the information through a drop site.

 

But you did not transmit information by radio? It was only a receiver?

I could not transmit anything by radio. But when I sent letters in code, they arrived, as I said, in three to four days.

 

And never once during your work under this cover did your acquaintances ever suspect anything?

What kind of suspicions?

 

That you were constantly traveling, always knocking about the world.

Well I had a legend: I sold dry cleaning equipment.

 

And if someone got it into their heads to check you out?

If they wanted to, they could have checked me out. And they would have gathered that I had lots of business connections with the companies that I represented. And even somewhere in Hong Kong, and in Taiwan. I visited all of the dry cleaners.

 

Who made sure you had money?

The Center, which is completely natural. My nights and days were taken up by different kinds of work – work for the Center.

 

And your bosses in Rome didn’t nag you? “C’mon sell more, be more active…”

Here is what they said: “If you sell something, you will receive your commission; if you don’t sell anything, you won’t receive anything.” That’s it. What bosses? I had no bosses. I was a free agent.

 

Still, all of these trips didn’t alert anyone? When a person travels so much, he accumulates lots of stamps in his passport. And you yourself said you had two passports.

Never in my life have I heard that people draw attention to themselves because they travel. I had a friend who traveled even more than I did, as a tourist, and in the end got married in the Phillipines. And at that time I was not a Russian: I was a European, a German, for whom doors were open everywhere.

 

South Africa Needed Eyes

I was first ordered to enter South Africa in 1977 – when the country was under total apartheid. A true Fascist state. Every bench in a  park or on the street had a sign on it: “Only for whites.” Stores were only for whites; for blacks there was nothing. At six o’clock, the blacks would get on buses and leave for their townships. That was it. Only whites remained in the cities. To me, this was barbaric.

At that time, the Soviet Union aided the African National Congress (ANC). Intelligence was more interested in something else: South Africa’s ties with the West. When I first visited Namibia, it was sort of a German South Africa, a colony of South Africa. I was in lots of places and traveled all over the country. The most important thing was not limiting oneself to a single city or region. You needed to have contacts everywhere.

They extracted uranium there that was already 80 percent enriched. And all of this uranium went to America. Yet, officially, the U.S., England and other western countries at that time had declared an economic boycott of South Africa, and supposedly there should not have been any sort of relations.

I spoke only German in Namibia. Because even the blacks there spoke German, and no worse than the Germans themselves. There were lots of Germans there. The hotels were all German. The hotels’ names were German. And German farmers were everywhere.

In 1978, I travelled to the front-line border states of Zambia, Botswana and Malawi. These states were allegedly providing aid to the ANC, yet white South Africans still controlled their economies. For example, in Botswana all of the diamond mines were in the hands of De Beers.

 

Alexei Mikhailovich, what else interested us in South Africa?

We were also interested to know whether they had an atomic bomb or not. At one point in the 1970s, specifically in 1978, a nuclear-like explosion was identified in the southern hemisphere, somewhere not far from Cape Town. Both we and the Americans were interested in this. That is why I included Malawi in my travels in 1978, because it was the only African state which had established diplomatic relations with South Africa.

So I arrived in the city of Blantyre. And all the whites living in these states were very quick to gather together, organizing themselves as if into clubs of whites. If a new person arrived – a fresh face, someone who might have lots to tell about Europe – then he would be accepted and taken in by absolutely everyone. No one in that community held back, all their secrets were yours. If you were white, better yet German, and had just arrived from Germany, they would tell you absolutely anything.

 

C’mon, absolutely anything? Surely you are exaggerating?

We sat around and talked about the atomic bomb. And I sort of casually led the conversation along, by saying that everyone thought that South Africa had the bomb, but it turns out not to be the case. And suddenly one elderly woman opened her eyes and said: “Hold on, why not? In December 1976 in fact we toasted its completion with champagne.” It turned out that they had a nuclear research laboratory named Pelindaba. And we and the Americans both suspected that they had created an atomic bomb there.

 

This was officially established?

I immediately informed the Center, right then, instantly. And they told me later that they even woke the head of the department in the middle of the night to tell him about it. But there was no way to document it. The woman told me her full name and said that she worked as a secretary to the general director at Pelindaba, but had since retired and moved to Malawi.

 

And this was later corroborated?

Yes.

 

The Colonel Disappeared Without a Trace

In the 1980s they suddenly sent me to South Africa again. I flew down there and then went to Namibia. Then, in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, I noticed that I was being followed.

 

What? For the first time ever?

Yes. For the first time ever. I noticed I was being followed, but could not doing anything about it. Where was I going to go from Namibia? You couldn’t fly anywhere except South Africa – nowhere else. And when I landed in Johannesburg, I saw that a black car was coming toward our airplane.

 

You saw this from the airplane?

The plane stopped. They drove up to the exit stairs. They showed me documents from South African counterintelligence, put me in handcuffs and took me into the airport, into a special room, and made me strip to my underwear. Thank God just down to my underwear, because that helped me later. Then they brought my things, I got dressed, and they took me to Pretoria. And a month after that I was in an internal prison of the security police – South African counterintelligence.

Interrogations went on day and night. The first week, they didn’t let me sleep for a second. I would nod off standing up and sometimes even fall to the ground. My interrogator, I kid you not, had a wonderful portrait of Hitler hanging in his office. He was himself an admirer of Ernst Kaltenbrunner [A top Nazi SS officer in WWII; the highest ranking SS officer to stand trial; executed for war crimes and crimes against humanity in 1946. – Ed.]. Colonel Gloy was a true Nazi. And he interrogated me. Interrogations were mainly held in the basement, and they did whatever they liked. There was no objecting. It was a pretty lousy situation.

 

Did they torture you?

And how. It’s completely natural, but what can you do? A week passed and suddenly they decided to let me have a proper sleep. But how you gonna sleep? I slept in my cell, and the entire week it was filled with the sounds of voices. As if someone was being tortured right next to me. People called out, gnashed their teeth, cried, as if they were getting a terrible beating right next to me. But it was all done with a tape recorder. There was no way I could not hear this cacophony. Every half hour the guard came in and looked me over. I had to stand up in front of him. In short, I still didn’t get a good sleep.

Once, I arrived for interrogation and there were two people sitting there. One from the Department for the Defense of the West German Constitution, the other from the West German intelligence services – BND.

 

Did they interrogate you in German or in English?

In English. They opened, I recall, my suitcase. And they took from it my radio receiver, which was like the radio you could buy in any store. Yet suddenly there were happy exclamations: Aha! They took out a pad which had sheets of carbon paper in it. But of course I said nothing; they had to check it out and, wound up finding impressions on one of the sheets. But the impression was in Russian.

But that’s not the point. Look, these two West Germans are sitting there and they ask: “Why haven’t you demanded to see someone from the West German consulate?”

I said, “I have been demanding this; I don’t know why they haven’t brought anyone in.”

And they asked me, “But do you know why you have been arrested?”

I answered: “To this day I do not know. I have not done anything.”

And they gave me a photo of my wife: “Take a look at this, are you familiar with this photograph?”

Then they gave me my photo. I turned the photo over and on the back was written, “A.M. Kozlov.” After that, there was no more use playing dumb. I said that, yes, I was a Soviet intelligence officer, and that’s all. And I didn’t say another thing for the next two years, despite what they did to me. This, by the way, has been completely verified.

They kept me in this security police prison, and then transferred me to Pretoria’s central prison. They stuck me in death row. And this is interesting: there were several sectors there. And in each of them there were 13 cells. But in the sector where I was kept, I was the only prisoner. All the other cells were empty. And right next door was the gallows.

Each Friday, at five in the morning they carried out the executions. These were people with a medieval mindset. Several times they took me to the executions, to show me how it was done. The gallows was located on the second floor.

The most curious thing is that apartheid even existed in the prison: there was a prison for whites and a prison for blacks. Yet they hung the whites and blacks together. But there was one difference. They gave each prisoner a last breakfast before their execution. The blacks received half a roasted chicken, while the whites got a whole chicken. In 20 minutes they would be hanging together, but for now the white could haughtily look at his black colleague and think: ‘You received just a half, but I got an entire chicken.’ That’s the kind of nonsense that went on there.

A priest attended the executions. The execution took place on the second floor, then a hatch opened up and the condemned fell through. And below waited the worst scum: Doctor Malkheba, who gave the prisoners a final injection into their hearts, to be certain they died. Then they took them down.

The worst thing was that the Center did not have any idea where I was. It turns out they continued sending me radio messages for three months. They had no idea where I had gotten to. I had disappeared, completely disappeared.

And I sat in this death row cell for six months. I did not get any exercise outside. The only thing they brought me was food.  In the security police jail there was a toilet in the cell. Here there was only a slop bucket. A bucket, bed and table. Not even a stool. The cell was three paces by four. Engraved into the wall with nails were the last words of those they had locked up and hung here long before me. A lot was carved there, and I read every last bit of it. There were no newspapers, radio, nothing. And I hadn’t a clue what was going on in the world outside.

Breakfast was at 5:30 in the morning. It was a mug of some fluid that resembled not so much coffee or tea, but dishwater. They would also deliver two chunks of bread and a bowl of gruel.

Lunch was at 11 and dinner at three in the afternoon. That was the worst of all: four chunks of bread, a slab of margarine, jam and a bowl of soup. Why the worst? Because I ate at three and they didn’t turn the lights out until 10 pm. So from three until 10 at night there wasn’t a damn thing to wait for. I was to the point of having visions. For some reason I constantly thought not of salmon or caviar, but of boiled potatoes, with steam coming off of them… of tomatoes… of cucumbers. When they let me go and weighed me, I was 58 or 59 kilos. But at the time of my capture I was the same as now  –  around 90. And I lost all that weight in just six months, without any exercise.

 

The interrogations were over?

No, they occasionally brought me in for interrogations.

 

And what did they accuse you of, exactly?

They didn’t make any accusations at all. They said I was imprisoned under the 9th Article of the Law on Terrorism. And this meant that they were not required to tell me why I was arrested. I had no right to have a lawyer, to have any contact with the outside world, with my family, or with anyone at all. There was only the 9th Article of the Law on Terrorism. Nothing else.

Yet I was not arrested with any weapons or anything of that sort. Absolutely nothing. But I sat there for six months, without ever going outside.

Finally, on December 1, 1981, after six months, the head of the prison came to see me and said that Prime Minister Botha had officially declared on television and radio that I had been arrested.

 

And how did they describe you, as a Russian spy?

Yes.

 

With what rank?

It was very simple: Alexei Kozlov, a simple Soviet spy. Nothing more.

 

You were a colonel then?

Yes, a colonel. I got the rank in 1976.

 

Didn’t they know this?

No, this they didn’t know. Then the head of the prison said that Botha had been officially informed of my case and that now I was to be allowed a half-hour stroll in the prison yard every day, under guard. Nothing more. They finally let me smoke. I hadn’t smoked a thing for two months. And I normally smoke two and a half packs a day, sometimes three. But it had been cold turkey. I survived.

 

What about the German consul? Did they come to visit?

At first the Germans came for interrogations once every three months. Then once a year. They would show up, mumble something, look perplexed and then leave. What else could they do?

When I got my first stroll outside, there was a wonderful clear sky and a bright sun. I thought, ‘Hell, I don’t need anything else. So be it, I’ll just serve my time. Everything is fine.’ There were even flowerbeds that the prisoners had made, and a barracks – the prison hospital. Prisoners swept up the yard.

They continued to hold me in the same cell. Then, sometime around the end of 1981, the skin on my hands began to fall off. They called in this Doctor Malkheba. He began by listening to my lungs: “Breathe.” I inhaled.

“Breathe again, deeper.” I took another breath.

And he said, “Your lungs are fine.”

“And how can you say my lungs are fine, exactly,” I said, “if you are not listening?” His stethoscope hung loose around his neck and he had not even put the earpieces in...

But they did give me some faux leather gloves, made in Vietnam…

Then the head of the prison hospital came in, one Major Van Roen. He looked at me and said my condition was caused by a chlorophyll deficiency. The fact was that the only window in my cell was a tiny one at ceiling level. Light never entered it, not a single ray of sunshine, nothing. He said, if there were sun, there would be chlorophyll and then everything would sort itself out. And so, a year and a half after my sentence began, they moved me to the punishment section of the Pretoria prison.

 

Why the punishment section?

They were also single cells. But at least I was not alone there. The other cells held people who cursed, laughed, used foul language and every other sort of thing. And I always had sun in my cell. And that very same slop bucket, that same cot and table. But there was constant sun. And my skin started to heal. Why was it a punishment section? Because this was mainly where they put prisoners who had broken prison rules. Someone stole something from someone, another fought with someone, yet another smoked marijuana that had been obtained through the guards. Someone killed someone. Well, actually, those guys were hung right away.

The most interesting punishment was a hunger diet for 5 to 30 days. During the day, they gave you only a half-glass of protein bouillon. True enough, I was never put on that regime. But those who were would lose weight catastrophically, such that on the fifth day the guards had to drag them out into the corridor. And those who were sentenced to 30 days of this could not stand it. They wrote petitions to the minister of justice, Jimmy Kruger, asking him to change their hunger diet to corporal punishment. Even though there were animals there. Like this huge, thick-necked guy – Sergeant Phillips, who carried a massive, two-meter stick.

 

Phillips was white?

It was all whites in there – prisoners and guards alike. There were absolutely no blacks. And the corporal punishment was six blows in an hour. But these were some blows. They would remove the fellow’s pants. They would put a pillow under his liver and then deliver the first blow. And immediately there was a red and blue stripe and the blood began to ooze. After that, they took him away. Gave him water to drink. Checked his heart, brought him back, second blow. Every ten minutes another blow. In the end, he had six stripes like that, and they were supposed to be visible to all. The blacks they were allowed to hit over and over again in the same place.

Basically, it was all bandits, thieves and murderers. But when they took me out past them all to interrogation or some other place, they would quietly say to me, “Don’t worry, they’ll soon exchange you for someone,” and stuff like that. How would they know whether they were going to exchange me or not? These guys were simply offering me moral support.

 

But they knew who you were?

Naturally. They knew how to wag their tongues.

I served in there until May of 1982. In May, the head of the prison came and brought me a suit. Prior to that, someone had come to measure me and I had no idea why. It was a rather decent suit, just my size, plus a tie and a shirt. And they took me to the deputy head of counterespionage, Major General Broderick. A rather impressive and interesting fellow he was, sitting before me. By the way, the counterintelligence agents turned out to be more honest than their comrades in South African espionage. They treated me with contempt, but they were, on the other hand, straight-shooters.

Broderick immediately said to me: “You are being handed over in an exchange; you are being taken home and will be exchanged there.” And then he said: “Our espionage service will be transferring you. Don’t tell them that I have forewarned you of the exchange. If you say anything, they won’t exchange you. Be silent, ” he said, “I don’t know what they are going to do with you, but you have to keep silent, as if you are completely in the dark. Thank you.” And then my investigator, Colonel Gloy, who I told you about, shook my hand firmly and said, “Pardon me for all that has happened here. We simply did not know who we were dealing with. But now we see that you are a normal guy and a real solid fellow.” He shook my hand and I felt him put something in my palm. I looked at it when I was in the airplane… It was a pin for the South African Security Forces, which gave one the power to arrest someone. But of course I could not arrest anyone in the airplane…

When they transferred me to the spies, those guys took me to the top of a huge cliff. It was a colossal precipice above Pretoria, with a monument to the first residents of South Africa – the Boars. Nearby there had been a bloody battle between the Zulus and the whites. And they told me, “This is where we are going to shoot you. C’mon, go stand over there.” So I stood there, and then they grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and drove me to the airport and put me on a Boeing-747 jumbo jet. There were just eight passengers on board – me and my seven guards. We landed in Frankfurt-am-Main.

They put me in a West German border patrol helicopter. We flew 300 kilometers and landed near KPP Herleshausen. That is where the exchange took place.

First they brought out the people for whom I was being exchanged. There were 11 of them: 10 Germans and one South African army officer, who had ended up in prison in Angola after a raid by the South African army. These 11 sat in the bus with their suitcases. I had not been given my things. So I just had this little bag with a small piece of green soap.

After this, an officer from the East German Ministry of State Security arrived and he took me across the border.

They took me to some sort of hangar or large garage. I looked inside and saw two figures: Victor Mikhailovich Nagayev, now a retired Major General, and Boris Alekseyevich Solovyev, our former head of the security division. Well, we greeted each other with kisses, of course. They put me into a car and we drove off to Berlin. It was another 400 kilometers.

We drove the first 30 kilometers in a tomblike silence. Driving into the city of Eisenach, it was all quiet. I said, “Victor Mikhailovich I have returned home.”

He agreed, “Yes, and?”

I said, “What do you mean, ‘yes, and’? I have to report on my case.”

He slapped himself on his bald head: “And I could not understand, what was missing, why we were all quiet.” Then, to the driver, “Hey, pull over at the first place to eat and let’s have 100 grams and a mug of beer.” Once we had raised our glasses together, there was no silence the rest of the way to Berlin.

In Berlin, they had laid out quite a feast. There was caviar and salmon, but I wolfed down all the boiled potatoes and herring. Then our representative, Vasily Timofeyevich Shumilov, may he rest in peace, a good guy and then a Lieutenant General, said: “Lyoshka, you have gobbled up the entire representational reserve of our herring.” And I responded, “What are you gonna do?”

When they brought me to Berlin after the exchange, I was given some cash so I could buy something for my kids. Man, it had been a long time since I had been home. I bought them some presents. I arrived home, waited a few months, and then started working again. But of course no one will give me permission to talk about that. As I said at the beginning, in 1987, I a called up Yuri Ivanovich Drozdov and worked abroad until 1997. And in 1997 I returned home for good. But I work to this day. I meet with youth. I have been in 30 regions across Russia: Vladivostok and Nakhodka, Murmansk and Omsk, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Blagoveshchensk, Khabarovsk… I usually take 5-6 business trips a year.

 

Why don’t we try to answer what will be the reader’s natural question: why did the UAR special services come after you? I know the answer, but you should explain it for the readers.

Well, it’s as I told you: they came after me for espionage and that’s it. I studied alongside Oleg Gordiyevsky in the institute, in MGIMO. He was two years younger than I. We worked together in the Komsomol. But I finished before him and he had no idea where I had gone. Then he worked in our documentary division – that’s simply the way it turned out. For a long time I simply could not understand why I had been arrested. They let me out, after all – or, more accurately, exchanged me – in 1982. But Gordiyevsky defected in 1985. And he was acting resident in London. It is a rather general sphere of duty, I must say. 

 

And this entire story with the passport, which you had to exchange in Denmark, and the greeting from Gordiyevsky was not accidental?

Yeah, if only they had taken me earlier, but I was hard to find. Either I was in Taiwan or after that in Lisbon, or in Madrid or somewhere else or in Oslo. But they found me in South Africa, so that things turned out to be pretty tough on me.  And I asked those Germans who interrogated me, by the way: “Listen, did you intentionally set it up so that I would be arrested here, in South Africa?” They answered me directly: “Of course. It would have been nice for you, if you had been arrested somewhere in England, or Denmark or Germany.”

 

And the photograph with the inscription,
‘A. Kozlov.’ How did they get that?

I have no idea. If only I knew. They didn’t tell me, and if I knew, I would tell you.

 

It was never later explained?

Dunno. How you gonna explain it now?

 

And when did they honor you as a hero?

That was in 2000.

 

For what? How was it worded?

It was written like this: “For bravery and heroism in the fulfillment of special tasks.” Yes, I received it, but I don’t carry this around in my ID card. Why? Just because. Enough. The last ten years have been entirely operational, and that’s enough. And in 2004 I received the awar, For Service to the Fatherland.

 

Alexei Mikhailovich, so, as to the last ten years, you’ll never talk of this?

Yes, never is the word.