So that hell will follow us. Mikhail Lyubimov - And hell followed him: Adventures Novel and hell followed him

Ogonyok has just finished publishing Mikhail LYUBIMOV’s novel “And Hell Followed Him” (Nos. 37-50). Reader letters indicate that it aroused considerable interest. Below is a conversation between Vladimir NIKOLAEV (“Ogonyok”) and the author of the novel.

V.N. - At the beginning of the publication of your novel in Ogonyok, it was mentioned that you had been our intelligence officer abroad for many years. Agree, not every colleague of yours writes a novel after finishing his professional career. Many readers are interested in the details of your biography.

M.L. - My biography is exemplary Soviet: born in 1934, my father is from the Ryazan region, first a worker, then a security officer, repressed in 1937, then released and expelled from the organization. Throughout the war he was at the front, where he was recruited into military counterintelligence and worked there until 1950. My mother, from a doctor’s family, died early, I was 11 years old then. So it remains a mystery how the literary infection entered our family. I wrote my first novel (oddly enough, from sea life) in a school notebook after reading “Tsushima” at the age of 8 in Tashkent, where we were evacuated. Mom really liked the novel: “Everything is good there, Mishenka, but it’s not entirely respectable that the Soviet admiral eats popsicles in the subway.”

In 1952, I came from Kuibyshev to enter MGIMO, fortunately I had a medal. After graduating from college, he went through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Helsinki, where he worked in the consular department. Soon he received an offer to go into intelligence and returned to Moscow. I was always prone to romance, firmly believed in a bright future, admired the underground activities of our revolutionaries and, in addition, longed for freedom of communication with foreigners and exciting adventures, which, as I believed, work in intelligence could give me. In 1961 he was sent to England, where he stayed for four years, followed by two business trips to Denmark, the last time as a resident, that is, head of the intelligence apparatus.

Abroad powerfully stimulated in me the growth of anti-Stalinist sentiments that the 20th Congress sowed in my generation. All dogmas such as “the impoverishment of the proletariat,” etc., were destroyed before our eyes, and books such as “We” by Zamyatin, “Blinding Darkness” by Koestler, “In the First Circle” by Solzhenitsyn aroused disgust for the totalitarian regime. The Czechoslovak events of 1968 finally undermined the remnants of faith in our system, although until perestroika I still retained some illusions.

V.N. - When and how did you come to literature and start writing seriously, what prompted you to do this?

M.L. - The literary itch has plagued me all my life, I wrote stories, plays, and poems, I dreamed of leaving work and starting a new life as a freelance writer, especially since over the years I became disillusioned with my profession. Nevertheless, my career moved upward without any special zigzags and ended only in 1980. After 25 years of service, I left with a light feeling: I had a decent pension, ready-made plays and poems, a great desire to write and write... I decided to focus on drama. This was followed by tedious and fruitless visits to theaters and our cultural organs, conversations with important aunts who proudly called themselves referents and zavlits, parcels with plays to theaters (at that time I did not know that plays were rarely read here and letters were not answered), a rendezvous with directors who for some reason were more interested in Chekhov in their own brilliant interpretation. Alas, none of them called me at night and shouted excitedly: “I read your play and I can’t sleep!” Nevertheless, in 1984, the Moscow Regional Drama Theater staged my play “Murder for Export”, and soon it was broadcast on the radio. The play was from the “political” series and told about the drama of an American intelligence officer - the organizer of the murder. I didn’t wake up famous the next morning. The small victory gave rise to great hopes, and I redoubled my efforts. They almost accepted the film script and became interested in the play based on Zamyatin and Orwell. At the beginning of 1990, “Detective and Politics” published my play, a parody of the secret war between the KGB and the CIA, which has not yet found its own theater, and soon my comedy about diplomats will be published there.

Almost 10 years have passed since my resignation; a normal person in my profession would have long ago realized that he was a graphomaniac and would have gotten a job somewhere in the personnel department or as a doorman at a Hammer center. But I continued to write, although I began to suspect that people in the theater are much more insidious than in intelligence. “Infirmary of self-love!” - I repeated Chekhov’s words about the theater, but, naturally, I did not enroll myself in such an infirmary.

V.N. - Readers of the novel understand that they are not dealing with a historical chronicle or documentary prose, but with a work of fiction, but nevertheless they are interested in how real events are reflected in it.

M.L. - Undoubtedly, the novel contains a fictitious situation and characters, but all this did not fall onto the artistic soil from the sky. In any case, under most episodes, plot twists, and biographies, I can add some illustration either from the extensive Western literature on intelligence or from my own experience.

V.N. - How real are the intelligence officer’s notes from prison? What in this case is from life, and what from the writer’s fiction?

M.L. - Our illegal immigrants were in prison - Colonel Abel, arrested in the USA due to the betrayal of his assistant, Gordon Lonsdale, aka Konon Molodoy, Yuri Loginov, arrested in South Africa. They were all later exchanged. There were probably others there too; we are already familiar with memories of this kind, especially in recent years. There were also cases of betrayal.

V.N. - We have already heard about betrayals in the world...

M.L. - Yes, here is the military intelligence coder Guzenko, who left for Canada after the war and failed a whole group of agents who obtained atomic secrets, and specialists in terror and sabotage Khokhlov and Lyalin, in recent years - Levchenko, Kuzichkin, Gordievsky ...

V.N. - But you have Alex imitating betrayal, but in fact this is a way of infiltrating enemy intelligence. How realistic is this?

M.L. - Quite realistic. In any case, almost all defectors are very carefully checked as possible setups of hostile intelligence. For example, in 1964, a major KGB counterintelligence worker, Yu. Nosenko, fled to the West, revealing many secrets of the KGB’s work within the country and especially in Moscow. The Americans not only tested him with a lie detector, but also kept him in prison for a long time: their suspicions were so strong. By the way, in Beria’s times, Kim Philby and our other assistant agents of the NKVD were also suspected of playing a double game. In general, there are incredible stories in intelligence. Remember, a few years ago, the Soviet intelligence officer Yurchenko was kidnapped in Italy by the CIA, who later left the Americans and told us about it on television? The Americans still claim that he crossed over on his own and betrayed a number of our agents. Intriguing plot, right?

V.N. - Your novel belongs to the genre of political detective story. Unfortunately, this epithet - “political” - has been largely discredited and devalued in our literature in recent years. In your novel, fortunately, there is no such tendency.

We are talking about morality and ethics, about biblical commandments, and it is not without reason that the very title of the novel is a quote from the Bible; it is not without reason that it is preceded by a quote from A.K. Tolstoy:

Two stans is not a fighter, but only a random guest, For the truth I would be glad to raise my good sword. But the dispute with both is hitherto my secret lot, And no one could bring me to the oath...

M.L. - The definition of “political detective” terrifies me. Indeed, I used some detective techniques, and the plot itself with the search for the Rat came from the same source. But I wanted, first of all, to show a person in the System, if you will, a good person, distorted by the System and profession, deprived of some moral foundations, but not completely lost and eager to find himself, the Truth, and his unconscious, confused God. My Alex has long gone crazy from the struggle of ideologies, the Cold War and whiskey, and realized the futility of his life. Oddly enough, I started writing something adventure, because my anti-hero is cheerful and resourceful, he does not belong to the unfortunate breed. And I understand the epigraph from A.K. Tolstoy unambiguously: this whole competition of “two world systems”, two camps, which fell on us by the will of History, is a tragedy that brought grief primarily to our Russian camp. There are no camps, but there is one humanity, one civilization.

Unfortunately, our reader is not sufficiently prepared to perceive books about espionage, and this is not his fault, but those who for decades have been cultivating literature glorifying the false stereotypes of security officers. We didn’t even tell the truth about our real heroes: only now materials are being published about the trial of Colonel Abel, Blake’s memoirs are being published, written about Lonsdale, although there are still no truthful books about Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean... The list is long, ours intelligence can be proud of its employees who worked with conviction to “build a new world.” This is both a feat and a drama. In general, this topic is an unplowed field. In the West, mountains of paper are written about our intelligence officers and agents; scientific studies about the CIA, KGB, SIS, memoirs of intelligence officers regularly appear, not to mention the spy fiction of Le Carré, Forsythe and many others.

V.N. - The absolute secrecy of our intelligence activities involuntarily imposed a ban on works about it. In this regard, in the detective story about our intelligence officers, you are a kind of pioneer. Were you able to say what you wanted, or did our traditional prohibitions prevent us from revealing the topic to the end?

M.L. - Our censorship has almost knocked the spy thriller genre out of literature. And the former intelligence officers actually did not have the opportunity to write the truth. Meanwhile, in the West, Somerset Maugham, who collaborated with English intelligence, wrote a series of brilliant stories about the secret service, and the novel “Ashenden” about his secret mission to Russia, English intelligence officers Compton Mackenzie, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming grew into famous writers. I had the opportunity to read the manuscripts of our intelligence officers, often talented people. You can’t imagine how poor their imagination was under the iron roller of self-censorship, how diligently they cleared their texts of grains of truth, fitting into the stereotype of a hero-chekist devoted to the party. When I wrote something about our work even after resignation, I felt such self-censorship in myself that Glavlit was like a kindergarten in comparison. So you ask, did traditional prohibitions interfere with me? And this question reflects the whole myth about some supposedly unknown forms and methods of work of the special services, and in particular the KGB. But in fact, the only secrets are names, positions, addresses, transactions and other specific facts.

The cult of secrecy and, accordingly, the KGB has reached unprecedented proportions in our country. We will never put things in order with secrecy in our country, and only because there are a lot of people who receive good money for protecting non-existent secrets, and not only money, but also prestige and a mysterious aura that covers up the appearance of activity. The only secrets I tried to reveal in the novel concerned the human soul. It is difficult for me to judge to what extent I was able to describe the life and work of the intelligence officers; I wrote about Alex, most of all I was interested in his human fate. It’s probably better to write epic documentary novels about the life and work of intelligence officers.

V.N. - When you read the novel, you involuntarily remember those crumbs of information about our intelligence that at different times became known to us from the Soviet and foreign press. Dry protocol facts and only facts, without any background: someone suddenly asked for political asylum abroad, someone was expelled as an undesirable person (or even several dozen people at once, as, for example, from England), etc. And What lies behind such events? Corruption of individual immoral individuals? Or is their selection wrong? Bad training? Or their ideological differences with the System they were obliged to serve? There are such reflections or hints of them in the novel. How do you look at these problems today?

M. L. Mass expulsions do not mean that the scouts were caught on something. During the warming of relations with the West, all our external organizations, including intelligence, began to grow at a frantic pace, embassies and other foreign institutions increased according to Parkinson's laws. Our leaders have completely forgotten that intelligence does not work in the Kursk region and its apparatus cannot be expanded indefinitely. In England, for example, at first they delicately warned about this, and in 1971 they took and expelled more than 100 people, and introduced quotas. Other countries have taken similar actions. If the West had not introduced quotas, I am sure that in England and in most countries with good living conditions, entire divisions of intelligence officers and diplomats would already be working, because the bureaucracy (and not only it) is eager to break out abroad by any means. And not at all for ideological or professional reasons.

If we take routine expulsions, then, as a rule, this is retribution for the intelligence officer’s mistakes. I myself once paid for my excessive activity and was expelled from England without any newspaper fuss. As for betrayals in intelligence, they largely reflect the crisis of society and are explained by disbelief in the declared ideals and the spread of corruption. The fish rots from the head, and intelligence is very close to it. There are probably ideological opponents among the traitors, why shouldn’t there be them? But somehow I don’t believe statements about espionage in our time purely for ideological reasons; I always suspect that there was some other secret. We must not forget the simple biblical truth: man is a sinner. Some people love money that does not smell; there are human passions that can be used if desired. In my opinion, during the era of stagnation in our colonies abroad, there was such fear of the prospect of the end of a foreign career that even with minor sins a person could succumb to blackmail by foreign intelligence. Despite all the costs of perestroika, it is joyful to see the emergence of a sense of human dignity, people are no longer afraid of the System, and this is wonderful.

V.N. - You said that you were disappointed in the intelligence profession. Why?

M.L. - Probably, I was too romantic, I expected too much from her... I gradually realized that in a totalitarian system, intelligence plays a small role. Stalin believed in Hitler's loyalty - and what about reports from Richard Sorge or Red Chapel agents about the approach of war! Stalin even conveyed Churchill’s warnings to Hitler about the impending aggression - that’s how he valued his trust. What intelligence chief would dare to report to his boss information that could cost him his head? Well, under Khrushchev or Brezhnev - positions. How many messages in my life have I seen with negative assessments of our policies, and almost all of them went to the trash bin and were not reported to the Politburo. But the information was always perfectly assessed, in which they sang hallelujah to Brezhnev’s speeches, referring to the “exceptionally positive reaction” in Western circles! In general, it seems to me that in a totalitarian system, intelligence information can always be used the way the owner of the information wants it - in this case, the chairman of the KGB. In addition, I have great doubts that our leadership, given its workload, is able to read even a small fraction of the huge information flows that flow towards it from various departments, including the KGB. However, the problem of the “information boom” concerns not only our state.

I am increasingly inclined to think that one smart book or official report from a group of independent-minded experts provides much more insight into the political situation in the country than reports from secret agents or secret reports, which, despite the stamp, are amazingly banal and empty.

V.N. - Your novel, the very fact of its publication indicate that perestroika has invaded the sphere of our intelligence, the sphere of the KGB as a whole. It is clear that, like the whole country, this secret agency needs new ideas and reform. Could you say what the perestroika in the KGB should primarily consist of? For example, the recently approved chairman of the KGB of Belarus, E. Shirkovsky, told in detail to the deputies of the Supreme Council of the BSSR how he was going to restructure the work of the security agencies. Following the Constitution, the KGB will report on its activities to the Supreme Council, its commissions and to the government of the republic. The focus will be on the struggle for a person, and not against him... Also recently, a letter from employees of the USSR KGB Directorate for the Sverdlovsk Region was published, which critically assessed its activities during perestroika and proposed specific measures for the reorganization of state security agencies.

M.L. - Let's see how these ideas will be brought to life. Turning the KGB face to face with a person is a big deal! In 1825, Nicholas I, at the founding of the Third Department, presented its chief Benckendorff with a scarf with the words: “Here are all my directives. The more tears you wipe from your face with it, the more faithfully you will serve my purposes.” The Third Section, so torn apart by our democratic revolutionaries, then numbered only 16 people, however, by the end of Nicholas’s reign it had grown to 40. By the way, the Moscow News newspaper, having made an analysis based on comparison with the special services of the GDR, came to the conclusion that the number was only The number of KGB personnel is no less than 1.5 million.

The KGB has long been ripe for reorganization, and I do not understand those of its leaders who claim that the entire system “has developed historically” and therefore, they say, there is no need to change structures. This is precisely why we need to change, because historically we have developed a tough police system that protects the totalitarian regime from non-communist ideas and the “pernicious influence of the West.” Since the time of Stalin, spy mania has been placed at the forefront of propaganda, counterintelligence agencies have grown enormously (Beria never dreamed of such proportions!) and put all contacts of our citizens with foreigners under control. Even we, intelligence officers (and not only us!), working abroad, when coming home, were afraid of accidentally coming into contact with some foreigner, we did not give them home telephone numbers or addresses - what if?! Getting into the same company with a citizen of a NATO country (not to mention a close acquaintance or, God forbid, friendship) even seemed risky even for people who did not work at sensitive facilities and did not have access to secrets.

It is now clear what a citizen of our state should be protected from. First of all, from rampant crime, including organized crime, which visibly and invisibly robs him like a stick, from terrorism, national extremism, and attempted coups. Only this is followed by the protection of state secrets; at least such priorities in internal security exist in all civilized countries. The current KGB no longer fits well into the new foreign and domestic policy; it is strange that the country’s leadership does not notice this. We need a new concept of national security, its wide discussion not only by practitioners from the KGB, but also by politicians, scientists, representatives of other departments, a systematic study of goals and objectives, and clarification of what “reasonable sufficiency” is for security agencies. It is clearly time to downsize the organization; it is necessary to separate intelligence from counterintelligence, eliminate parallelism in the work of departments, close down some sinecures altogether, eliminate a number of areas of work that arose during the years of bureaucratization of our entire life; of course, we need departitionization or at least introduction to leadership KGB non-party members and representatives of other parties. The KGB is not medicine or geology, its restructuring cannot be left only in the hands of professionals: they can drag the cart into such wilds that society will gasp from innovations.

V.N. - By the end of the novel, your Alex, in fact, turns into a terrorist... Is the KGB involved in terrorism?

M.L. - Alex becomes a terrorist thanks to the intrigues of a traitor - his boss; the “Monastery” does not assign him such tasks. During Stalinism, the security agencies actively removed unwanted people behind the cordon, mainly their former employees and figures such as Petliura, Kutepov, Trotsky, and after the war - a number of NTS leaders. I believed that this practice continued until 1959, when Stepan Bandera was assassinated in Munich by KGB agent Stashinsky. The killer went over to the West in 1961, repented and testified at the trial in Karlsruhe. I must say that during my work I never heard of terrorist attacks; on the contrary, Andropov always emphasized that there is no return to the past. However, new information is now emerging. For example, an attempt to poison Amin and his guests, the shelling of his palace, during which he was killed. After the collapse of a number of Eastern European intelligence services, it became known that terrorists who committed many crimes found shelter on their territory. It is alleged that Honecker allegedly knew about an impending explosion in a West Berlin disco, during which people died. Newspapers write that terrorists were hiding in the USSR. At the same time, the KGB leadership declares cooperation with the CIA in the fight against international terrorism. It is unlikely that there are naive people who believe that the KGB did not have close contacts with Eastern European intelligence services, but the KGB remains silent on this matter, and this gives rise to a lot of rumors and speculation.

Quite recently, LG published an article with a clear hint that Sakharov could have been exposed to harmful influences during his treatment in Gorky, which hastened his death. I remember that at one time American diplomats in Moscow expressed protests in connection with the discovery of sensors with harmful radiation in their clothes - they were used for surveillance. To stop speculation and rumors, it would be worthwhile to pass a law on criminal liability for the use by intelligence services of means harmful to human health.

V.I. - Your hero, an intelligence officer, ended up in prison for 30 years. Well! These are the rules of the game. Intelligence agencies and their agents have existed in the past and will continue to exist. But still, now, during the period of formation of new thinking in international relations, their fate, in my opinion, should also somehow change. How? It’s hard for me to say, I’m not an expert in this field, but I think that for a start we could remember those who, like your hero, are doomed to spend many years in prison for espionage. Relations between their countries (and between the leaders of these countries) have changed for the better, but they are still victims of the past. What do you think about it?

M.L. - The main thing, in my opinion, during the period of perestroika is the end of the Cold War and, accordingly, the intelligence struggle. Here it is not easy for either the East or the West to change their attitude towards each other, but it is quite obvious that it is necessary on a mutual basis to reduce intelligence activities, to move away from acute forms of work that undermine mutual trust. How to do it? I’m afraid that the intelligence services themselves will always find a reason to put a spoke in the wheels of such cooperation; it is unprofitable for them, because it resembles cutting off the branch on which you are sitting. But during the war there was an exchange of information between us and the COE - the then intelligence and sabotage unit of England and the Office of Strategic Services - the future CIA! Of course, these relationships were far from ideal, but the time was different! It seems to me that parliamentarians and public organizations should be more actively involved in organizing cooperation between intelligence services, including in the field of combating terrorism and exchanging information about hot spots. And as a kind, humane gesture, both the West and the East should grant amnesty to all those convicted of espionage - after all, these people were victims of the Cold War, and prisoners are usually exchanged after the war.

I'm afraid that my ideas will not arouse enthusiasm either in the KGB or the CIA. It may seem paradoxical, but being in a state of secret war, inflating spy mania and the power of the enemy, the opposing intelligence services seem to feed each other and fall into interdependence. The enemy's machinations are constantly exaggerated, bureaucracies grow, and all this is paid for by the taxpayer, who is unable to understand what is happening due to the fog of secrecy.

But let's hope for the best; the Charter of Paris to end the Cold War should change a lot.

First Secretary of the British Embassy in the USA Donald Maclean (half-sitting on the table) in the ambassador's office (Washington, 1947). In 1951, Maclean was exposed as a Soviet intelligence agent and fled to the USSR. Died in 1983 in Moscow.

First Secretary of the USSR Embassy in Denmark, KGB intelligence officer Oleg Gordievsky at the apartment of his boss, Advisor to the USSR Embassy M. Lyubimov (Copenhagen, 1977). In 1985, Gordievsky was exposed as an agent of British intelligence, who organized his escape from the USSR.

Collages by A. KOVALEV

From vowels coming from the throat,

Choose “Y”, invented by the Mongol,

Make it a noun, make it a verb

Adverb and interjection. “Y” – general inhalation and exhalation!

“Y” we wheeze, vomiting from losses and gains,

or rushing to the door with the “exit” sign.

But you’re standing there, drunk, your eyes bulging.

Joseph Brodsky

Professor Henry Lewis

7 Stanhope Terrace, London W2, UK

Dear sir!

A lot of water has flowed under the bridges since our fairly close contacts; the world has changed before our eyes and continues to change, despite our perplexed faces, which at the same time are twisted very mercilessly and sometimes in the most undignified way.

How we both rejoiced when the so-called perestroika broke out! It seemed that a world revolution had occurred (of course, not in the style of the thunderer Leon Trotsky!), general pacification had swept over the peoples, and the symbol of this - the formidable Berlin Wall - had turned into a pile of rubbish, painted by wandering artists for the joy of all free people of the planet.

I remember that we even dared to dream that prosperity would fall even on the most irreconcilable enemies - the intelligence services, and the hands of the opponents would close in friendly handshakes. Hmmm, the secret agents turned out to be no less capable than their masters, they even surpassed loving presidents and prime ministers crying with emotion: calls were heard for cooperation in the fight against terrorism, for the exchange of information about other threats that have become familiar to our everyday life.

I feel that an unruly pen is taking me on a long journey, and so I return to the original reason for my letter: Alex Wilkie. Fortunately, he is alive, moreover, he continues to delight us with his new masterpieces, which, in my non-literary opinion, provide more and more food for psychiatrists. I admit that I did not have the honor of meeting him, and I have no desire to do so. However, Wilkie asks for help with the publication of his book, in particular, to revive it with a decent preface. And here, of course, my first thought is addressed to you: who else can better decorate the work of a poor spy?

However, I signed, apparently, sclerosis also affects the sense of proportion.

Sincerely yours, Mikhail Lyubimov

Mikhail Lyubimov

Tverskoy Boulevard, 23, Moscow, Russia

Dear sir!

I thought that only the British were so helpful and scrupulous in their requests, but it turns out that the Russians are quite competitive with us and even superior. Well, of course, I won’t refuse either you or my dear Alex Wilkie!

The vicissitudes of perestroika upset me at first, but then the euphoria was replaced by a philosophical approach: what, exactly, has changed? It only seemed to us that the end of communism would lead to unity and the elimination of borders. But no! Geopolitics has not disappeared anywhere, and even in the arms of France, Germany will never forget the shame of both the Versailles Peace and the Nuremberg Trials.

So let’s calm down and drink our tea, especially since, according to rumors, our magnificent Earl Gray is now popular in Russia, for which, by God, it was worth destroying the Iron Curtain.

I must admit that London is becoming increasingly disgusting: it has become disastrously blackened and yellowed, the best restaurants like the Ritz or Browne (on Albemarle) are run by Italians who are inclined to replace an undercooked steak with pasta, and even my favorite open-air theater in Holland Park is functioning irregularly. But what to do? Apparently, this is the law of life, causing you and me to be indignant, but in no way preventing our descendants from creating, copulating, drinking beer and going to the races at Ascot.

Happy to hear from you.

Sincerely yours Henry Lewis

Professor Henry Lewis

7 Stanhope Terrace, London, W2, UK

Dear Professor!

Quite unexpectedly, your letter excited me to the extreme: I remembered the time when only dark-skinned Jamaicans attracted attention, the whole center of London was swarming with gray bowlers, and sometimes even top hats. In the famous “Simpson” you were supposed to give a shilling (then there were still beans, and 20 beans made up one guinea) for cutting up roast beef (the incarnation of Orpheus, a master with a Solingen knife, performed sacred acts on meat), there was no Barbicon in the City yet, and one thought about the eerie Ferris wheel near the Palace of Westminster would make the faint of heart faint.

And I thought: what do we need all these debates about the importance or uselessness of espionage, if there are green meadows, lovely ladies and red wine that smells of Bordeaux, the most relict vine?

Intelligence is enough for our age, although in the age of television, radio, fax, Internet, nanotechnology, etc., etc., this type of human activity more satisfies the vanity (and pocket) of officials, rather than serving the interests of society. How funny it is to run across the rooftops with a pistol in your hand, fussing with a hiding place in the entrance (forgive me, but the dear entrances smelled through and through of smoke and urine, being the constant refuge of homeless people). How absurd it is to meet a secret agent at midnight in the Bois de Boulogne or in a Turkish bath near Hagia Sophia. How wonderful it is to sit in front of the TV, watch spy nonsense, smoke the usual “Orlik” and wash down the aroma of the “English Leather” tobacco mixture with the no less refined “Earl Gray” given to us by perestroika...

You, of course, understand that I am trying to easily parody my own position. In fact, my mood is by no means so complacent, even gloomy. Under the fanfare of perestroika, not only did the destruction of the Soviet Union occur, which led to an escalation of conflicts, but also the quiet advance of NATO to the East, which no one expected at the time of German reunification. While stroking Gorbachev and Yeltsin's liberal fur, the West slowly and skillfully infiltrated the spheres of influence of the Soviet Union and cleverly settled there. Your rulers, Henry, are intensively setting up Ukraine and Georgia (they also have other former socialist republics in mind) for confrontation with Russia. Well, in the intelligence sector there is a complete mess. On the surface, everything is quiet, or there are assurances of peace and cooperation (this happened during the Cold War), at the same time, secret archives are constantly published in the West, sometimes Russian ex-intelligence officers bring them quite calmly, receiving a substantial jackpot for it . CIA and SIS pensioners consider it their duty to delve into Moscow archives and discover new secrets. An entire Western literature has already grown up, built on Soviet secrets, yet the West is not going to reveal secrets even fifty years ago...

And hell followed him

Mikhail Petrovich Lyubimov is a former intelligence officer who worked abroad for many years, a candidate of historical sciences, and the author of several plays.

All names, places, images and events in this book are purely fictional and any resemblance to actual situations or persons dead or alive is purely coincidental.

“Two stans is not a fighter, but only a random guest,
For the truth I would be glad to raise my good sword,
But the dispute with both is hitherto my secret lot,
And no one could bring me to the oath..."

The soul of the spy is somehow the model of us all.

Instead of a preface

USSR, Moscow, Tverskoy Boulevard, 23, to Mikhail LYUBIMOV, Esq.

Dear Sir!

Bearing in mind our fruitful discussions on reducing the intelligence activities of the opposing blocs, I risked resorting to your help on one very sensitive issue. A month ago, as I was leaving Scott's seafood restaurant, a man came up to me, said that he knew me from television appearances (he spoke in good Irish), thrust a package into his hands and walked away, saying goodbye: “Wilkie asked for this to be published.” !

Do you remember the noisy trial of Australian Alex Wilkie, accused not only of espionage, but also of murder? In naming this surname, I admit it’s a stretch, because Wilkie also lived on false passports, using a lot of different surnames.

Returning to my place at Stanope Terrace, where, if you remember, we had many pleasant conversations over a cup of tea, I took out a selection of old issues of The Times from the library and carefully re-read the whole process.

Alex Wilkie was accused of working for Soviet intelligence, which he categorically denied, as well as his alleged Russian origin. He behaved calmly, boldly, even boldly. The testimony was not convincing enough, moreover, I got the impression that the British intelligence services were not interested in exaggerating the whole case, and even tried to hush it up. Most of the process took place behind closed doors. According to rumors, a significant portion of the accusations were based on very dramatic materials provided by American intelligence.

As for the mysterious murder of an unidentified person, Alex Wilkie himself admitted his guilt, which, however, could not be denied, since the police caught him at the crime scene. As a result, by court decision he received thirty years in prison.

Contacting my Secret Service friends, I learned that the stranger who had ambushed me at Scott's was a criminal recently released from prison through whom Wilkie had conveyed the package containing the manuscript, fearing its expropriation. His fears were in vain, since prison authorities, according to a strong British tradition, strongly encourage literary exercises, given their exceptionally healing therapeutic effect on prisoners.

I recently read another article in Time about Willkie's life in prison. He behaves exemplary in prison, enjoys authority among the prisoners and still denies his Russian origin. My friends added that he reads a lot, takes notes (the prison libraries of England are the envy of many cultural oases in Europe) and considers his literary work a fun game that will complete his stormy life.

Now about the manuscript itself.

My impression is that Willkie ventured into biography and perhaps even confession, cloaking it all in the fig leaf of literary form.

I do not pretend to be a literary expert, but I do not like excessive naturalism, mannerism, spy slang, or constant self-irony, reaching the point of absurdity, which prevent the reader from immersing himself entirely in the story.

I am sure that you, sir, being a fan of Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy, will largely agree with my, perhaps not entirely mature, judgments.

I was especially struck, sir, by Aesop’s style of narration, all these white-stitched “Mecklenburg”, “Monastery”, “Mania” and other inventions of a mind poisoned by conspiracy. Why is this necessary? Did Willkie seriously believe that his fiction could be used against him to re-examine the case or to open a new espionage case? If he believed so, then this does not honor his special training: in the practice of the courts of the United Kingdom there have not yet been cases built on evidence taken from the fiction of the accused.

I am sending you the manuscript and I hope you will find a worthy use for it.

Hoping to see you again in London,

Sincerely yours, Professor Henry Lewis.

Professor Henry Lewis,

7 Stanope Terrace, London.

Dear Sir!

I deeply thank you for the manuscript and especially for your warm letter. I, too, often and with pleasure remember our fireside chats and especially your speech at the conference on the destructive impact of espionage on the morale of society - a topic so close to my heart. I am absolutely convinced - and here, if you remember, you and I agreed on the same opinion - that restructuring in international relations is impossible if espionage and spy mania exist.

Now about the manuscript. As you understand, I did not fail to immediately contact the relevant competent authorities and received the following answer: “There was and is no Alex Wilkie associated with Soviet intelligence, and the entire espionage process was inspired by certain circles interested in escalating international tension. As for the persons and events described in Wilkie’s so-called novel, they are entirely the fruit of the clearly sick imagination of the author, who has read the thrillers of Forsyth, Clancy and Le Carré.”

Nevertheless, taking into account the happy era of glasnost, I decided to publish this work, which is interesting primarily as a human document and, if we use your thesis, as evidence of the disintegration of personality, because - alas! - the secret war left its mark on the psyche and behavior of all of us.

Mikhail Petrovich Lyubimov

And Hell Followed Him: Adventures

Two stans is not a fighter, but only a random guest,
For the truth I would be glad to raise my good sword,
But the dispute with both is hitherto my secret lot,
And no one could bring me to the oath.

A.K. Tolstoy

Dedication

Since childhood, I have scribbled poems and even created a novel about sea life, which I zealously and unsuccessfully pushed into “Pionerskaya Pravda.” Work in foreign intelligence until 1980 did not imply the compatibility of recruitment and chorea, but leaving the trenches of the invisible front happily coincided with an alliance with the beautiful Tatyana Lyubimova, whose fire of the soul inspired me to a new life and threw me into literature. Not without struggle and suffering. I sat down to write a novel, writing passionately and with inspiration. “And Hell Followed Him”, by the will of the stars, appeared in 1990 in the then super-popular “Ogonyok” and brought the author out of deep secrecy into relative fame. Tanya courageously supported me, inspired me and, most importantly, did not interfere, honor and praise to her for that! The chirping of a typewriter still rings in my ears, the smells of cabbage soup and fried zucchini caress my nostrils, and the white flowers of the apple trees outside the window delight my eyes. So I lived two lives: one in intelligence (without Tanya), the other in writing (with Tanya). Therefore, I lovingly dedicate this work to Tanya-Tanya-Tanyusha and only to her.

Adventures

The soul of a spy is in some way a cast of all of us.

J. Bartsan

The people of Vaga Kolesa, having caught the informant, cut open his stomach and pour pepper into his insides. And drunken soldiers put the informant in a bag and drown him in the outhouse.

A. and B. Strugatsky

Instead of a preface

Moscow, Tverskoy Boulevard, 23,

To Mikhail LYUBIMOV, Esq.

Dear Sir,

Bearing in mind our fruitful discussions about reducing the intelligence activities of the opposing blocs, I risked resorting to your help on one very sensitive issue. A month ago, when I was leaving the Skote fish restaurant, a man approached me, saying that he knew me from television appearances (he said in good Irish), put the package in his hands and left, saying goodbye “Wilkie asked for this to be published.”

Do you remember the noisy trial of Australian Alex Wilkie, accused not only of espionage, but also of murder? In naming this surname, I admit it’s a stretch, because Wilkie also lived on false passports, using a lot of different surnames.

Returning to my place on Stanhope Terrace, where, if you remember, we had many pleasant conversations over a cup of tea, I took out a selection of old issues of The Times from the library and carefully re-read the whole process.

Alex Wilkie was accused of working for Soviet intelligence, which he categorically denied, as well as his alleged Russian origin. He behaved calmly, boldly, even boldly. The testimony was not convincing enough, moreover, I got the impression that the British intelligence services were not interested in exaggerating the whole case, and even tried to hush it up. Most of the process took place behind closed doors. According to rumors, a significant portion of the accusations were based on very dramatic materials provided by American intelligence.

As for the mysterious murder of an unidentified person, Alex Wilkie himself admitted his guilt, which, however, could not be denied, since the police caught him at the crime scene. As a result, by court decision he received thirty years in prison.

Contacting my Secret Service friends, I learned that the stranger who had ambushed me at Scott's was a criminal recently released from prison through whom Wilkie had conveyed the package containing the manuscript, fearing its expropriation. His fears were in vain, since prison authorities, according to a strong British tradition, strongly encourage literary exercises, given their exceptionally healing therapeutic effect on prisoners.

I recently read another article in The Times about Willkie's life in prison. He behaves exemplarily, enjoys authority among the prisoners and still denies his Russian origin. My friends added that he reads a lot, takes notes (the prison libraries of England are the envy of many cultural oases in Europe) and considers his literary work a fun game that will complete his stormy life.

Now about the manuscript itself.

My impression is that Willkie ventured into biography and perhaps even confession, cloaking it all in the fig leaf of literary form. I do not pretend to be a literary expert, but I do not like excessive naturalism, mannerism, spy slang, or constant self-irony, reaching the point of absurdity, which prevent the reader from immersing himself entirely in the story.

I am sure that you, sir, being a fan of Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy, will largely agree with my, perhaps not entirely mature, judgments.

I was especially struck, sir, by Aesop’s style of narration, all these white-stitched “Mecklenburg”, “Monastery”, “Manya” and other inventions of a mind poisoned by conspiracy. Why is this necessary? Did Willkie seriously believe that his fiction could be used against him to re-examine the case or to open a new espionage case? If he believed so, then this does not honor his special training: in the practice of the courts of the United Kingdom there have not yet been cases built on evidence taken from the fiction of the accused.

I am sending you the manuscript and I hope you will find a worthy use for it.

Hoping to see you again in London,

Yours sincerely,

Professor Henry Lewis.

Professor Henry Lewis,

7 Stanhope Terrace, London.

Dear Sir!

I deeply thank you for the manuscript and especially for your warm letter. I, too, often and with pleasure remember our fireside chats and especially your speech at the conference on the destructive impact of espionage on the morale of society - a topic so close to my heart. I am absolutely convinced - and here, if you remember, you and I agreed on the same opinion, – that restructuring in international relations is impossible if espionage and spy mania exist.

Now about the manuscript. As you understand, I did not fail to immediately contact the relevant competent authorities and received the following answer: “There was and is no Alex Wilkie associated with Soviet intelligence, and the entire espionage process was inspired by certain circles interested in escalating international tension. As for the persons and events described in Wilkie’s so-called novel, they are entirely the fruit of the clearly sick imagination of the author, who has read the thrillers of Forsyth, Clancy and Le Carré.”

Nevertheless, taking into account the happy era of glasnost, I decided to publish this work, which is interesting, first of all, as a human document and, if we use your thesis, as evidence of the disintegration of personality, because, alas! The secret war left its mark on the psyche and behavior of all of us.

It may seem strange to you, sir, but Wilkie evokes a feeling of compassion in me, despite the excellent conditions provided to him in an English prison. It is difficult for me to judge prison life, because until now fate has been merciful to me and has protected me from close acquaintance with the penitentiary systems.

But they say that in our country, prison libraries are perhaps not inferior to English ones. Judging by the memoirs of Robert Bruce Lockhart, in the prison where he was sent for participating in a conspiracy against the Soviet regime, there was an excellent selection of literature: Thucydides, “Memoirs of Childhood and Youth” by Renan, “History of the Papacy” by Ranke, “Travels with a Donkey” by Stevenson and many other excellent works.

Not without intention, having touched upon the respected person of Sir Robert, I would like to remind you of the words spoken to him at parting by the then deputy chairman of the Cheka, Peters. “Mr. Lockhart, you deserve to be punished, and we are releasing you only because we need Litvinov, who was arrested by the English authorities, in exchange. Best wishes. And I have a personal request to you: my sister lives in London, is it not difficult for you to give her a letter?”

Lockhart claims that he exactly fulfilled the deputy chairman's request.

Why am I weaving these threads? Believe me, sir, I do not at all dream of the time when the KGB chief begins to transfer letters to his sister, who lives next door to the family of the CIA director, through a detained American resident. It’s just that this episode suggests the existence of a code of honor even between the most irreconcilable opponents. Why not bring something from the times of noble chivalry into our world demoralized by suspicion? And in more down-to-earth language, why not abandon espionage methods that degrade human dignity? These are not reflections by the fireplace, which I miss so much here. And the last bead in this necklace, which I so clumsily strung: how successfully, according to your data, are contacts between the CIA and the KGB developing? Can we hope that we will have representatives from all the world's major secret services at the next conference?