The Rest Is Classified - 16.⁠ ⁠Crossing the Iron Curtain: Escaping the KGB (Ep 3)

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

How would you disguise a cyanide pill for a CIA spy in Moscow during the Cold War? What risks could Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and The Beatles pose to Adolf Tolkachev’s mission against the Soviet state? And will the CIA’s mole in Moscow be discovered by the KGB? It’s 1985, and for the past five years, Tolkachev has been providing the CIA with top secret documents detailing the intricacies of Soviet radar technology. He’s risked everything he knows and loves to help orchestrate the demise of the USSR, but is he teetering on the edge of discovery? Listen as David and Gordon share the third instalment of the story of Adolf Tolkachev as his health begins to decline and he realises a suicide pill might be his only way out.  ------------------- Pre-order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, via this link. ------------------- Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ www.nordvpn.com/restisclassified It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! Email: [e-mail] Twitter: @triclassified Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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one symbol Who you think they talking about talking about? stands for all. Captain America, you don't even know what this is. You want me? Come and get me! No new world. Captain America Brave New World in theaters February 14th. Get tickets now. The knocks, which had grown louder as the Russian reviewed the letters, now stopped.

On the monitors he saw one of the men start working on the lock. In the bathroom the Russian jimmied the collection of letters into his wife's makeup bag. In his panic he worried the letters would be discovered in the inevitable and painstaking search to come. Why had he not seen to sewing them into her clothing, perhaps a jacket, as he knew he should? But time was up. The front door squeaked open as he huffed upstairs to the spare bedroom. He sat at the old dusty desk, listened to the footfalls in the foyer, the hushed murmurs, the sounds of men padding up the stairs. For a fluttering moment he wondered how he'd been made.

He couldn't know. He doubted the Americans ever would. The Russian threw open the desk drawer, picked up the Mont Blanc suicide pen. My daughter is here, you animals, he bellowed in the direction of the stairs. For God's sake! A young heavy, his hair shaved close on the sides like a punk idiot, burst into the room. A second man followed close behind, their eyes widened at the sight of the pen. Shame on you boys, he said, slipping the pen into his mouth, the Russian bit down into the barrel, sinking his teeth into the cyanide capsule, snuggled inside.

He heard Jack's words from long ago, Bogota. Three breaths, my friend, cup your hands over your face. He did, taking the air engulfed. One, two, on the third, they were over the desk and on him, crashing into the wall, cursing, shouting, grasping, rolling him over. One of the men unfastened the Mont Blanc from his mouth. The Russian was already dead. Welcome to The Rest is Classified. I'm Gordon Carrera. And I'm David McCloskey.

And we are telling the story of Adolf Tolkachev, the CIA's most valuable spy in Moscow during the Cold War. And when we left him last time, he'd requested a suicide pill. But the Russian in that quote we just heard is not, I have to confess, Adolf Tolkachev. It is a story from your just released novel, David, The Seventh Floor. I've indulged you by agreeing to read that because I think it is actually relevant to our story before people wonder whether we're just every week going to read out quotes from your novels, but it is actually relevant because we left our last episode, didn't we, on the kind of cliffhanger of Adolf Tokachev

asking for what your character was using there, a suicide pill. And just to recap, Adolf Tokachev, an engineer, a specialist on radar systems working in Moscow, who'd repeatedly tried to volunteer himself to the CIA in the late 70s. After many attempts, many tries, they'd finally engaged with him and started running him as an agent. He'd been photographing documents in his lunch break, incredibly valuable documents, which led him to be known in the words of David Hoffman's book as the billion-dollar spy because it was so valuable, the intelligence he was providing, but under intense pressure.

Because it really is a story about the challenges, isn't it, of running an agent in the heart of Moscow, in the kind of belly of your adversary for the CIA and MI6 officers inside Russia. Gordon, don't think you're going to escape reading more from the novels over the coming weeks. We've got 10 to 15 readings ready to go for the next several months on the rest is classified, lots of material in there. So get yourself get yourself ready. I could get a fee as your kind of audio book narrator at this rate. Yeah, you did it. You did a great job. We need to figure out how to get rid of the strange accent you were reading in to be able to read the audio book. But you know, we'll get there.

The story and I think we left on that cliffhanger of these L pills, right? Lethal pills, suicide pills, cyanide pills that Adolf Tolkachev had requested from CIA. And, you know, despite its inclusion in my book, The Seventh Floor, and despite its inclusion in our story today, the central role that this pill is going to play in running the Tolkachev case, we should say that they're actually quite rare in the real work of spy agencies, aren't they? Because it is an exceptional thing. I mean, no spy agency wants to give an asset the means to kill themselves, right? And so they're very rarely approved and frankly, very rarely asked for, I think, by agents. And yet they're so dramatic, of course, that they make, you know, for great inclusion in spy novels, and it will be a dramatic centerpiece in the story

that we're telling today. Yeah, that's right. I mean, in spy movies, they're often hidden in someone's tooth and they bite down, don't they, on their tooth. Now, I understand that is not actually how they really work, because they're actually slightly too big to fit in a fake tooth, but they were real pills. They were given to special operations executive agents from Britain in World War II who were sent behind enemy lines because the idea was if they were caught by the Gestapo, they'd be tortured and they might give away names of other agents and so better to die in that situation. The Germans had them as well. Himmler, I think famously, was captured using using a false name when they work out that it is actually him he suddenly bites down on one of the suicide pills he's had in his in his mouth to kill himself so they are real thing but they are pretty rare because you know neither the agent nor the person handling them. wants them to die, I guess. Well, and it's probably worth a little exploration of,

I mean, why would somebody want one of these, or is it even reasonable? And I think the agency had actually given one very recently to another asset, a Russian asset, who had been recruited, as the fictional scene you just read, you know, it mentions Bogota. There was an actual CIA asset

who had been recruited in Bogota, and then sent back into Moscow to report inside the Foreign Ministry. And we mentioned it in last week's episodes that that asset had actually been rolled up the year that Tolkachev was actually reaching out to CIA. And it came out later that while he was writing his confession, had bit down into a pen that had the cyanide capsule in it and had killed himself. And Tolkachev, I think, of course, doesn't know that this has happened. But Tolkachev, more than anybody, more than his CIA

handlers, understands the tremendous risks that he is under. And he understands the system he's operating in. And I think it's an interesting facet of his psychology that he is so dedicated to his work and so dedicated to the destruction of the Soviet system that he wants the ability to actually kill himself rather than submit to it or stop spying. So yeah, it goes to that motivation question, which we explored in the previous episodes, doesn't it? This is an intense driven man who partly because of what happened to his wife's family hates

the system. He knows the fate is going to be death if he's caught, but I guess he also doesn't want to be put on trial. He doesn't want the kind of humiliation of it. And that's why an L pill, a suicide pill, offers him that way out. But if you're the CIA, how do you feel about it? Because he's asking for it, isn't it? He keeps pressing them to give him the pill.

Well, and of course the standard operating procedure here is to say no and to delay. Right. And Tokachev is asking for the very mundane reason that the way he is spying is by taking documents out of the research institute where he works, bringing them home at lunch and photographing them from his apartment. And now those procedures have changed. And so he's having to hand in a building pass when he takes the documents out. And so his ability to get the stuff out to really produce is now more complicated.

And so I think, in part, him asking for this pill is linked to his sense that the risks that he's taking have gone up. And so in January of 1980, there's been this back and forth between Tolkachev and his case officer over this. And Moscow station asks headquarters to agree to give him the pill.

And their logic is that Tokachev's risk is already so high that giving him the pill won't necessarily encourage him to take more because this is the other dynamic is if we give him the pill, is he gonna be more reckless? And will that lead to his demise? Moscow station feels like they can't really stall any longer, but the director of central intelligence admiral stands for turner. Who we talked about last time is kind of a skeptic of human intelligence operations kind of a technologist he's also got a kind of moral opposition i think.

Providing the pill to talk to chev and they rejected so is nineteen eighty starts the most outstation case officer officer running to basically says why don't you write. Stand turner a letter explaining why you want the LPL and would you give him the pill i mean you know it's sort of a fascinating question because by this point agency has really stalled and delayed and kind of deferred and talk to have again and his sort of relentless spirit. and delayed and kind of deferred and Tokachev again, in his sort of relentless spirit, keeps bringing it up. I think it's a really interesting question because it goes to understanding the psychology of the agent that they're running. And I also think this goes to a bigger question in the case because he is driven. We know he's intense, but that also borders almost on the reckless. And I think you can sense in the CIA cable traffic and what's being discussed

that they are trying to work out. We want him to keep going. We want him to take some risks. We want him to keep producing these documents, but we don't want him to take too many risks and get caught. It's this sense of they're constantly seem to be managing his psychology and trying to work out if we don't give him this, will it turn him off? If we don't give him the suicide pill, will he break with us? Or if we do give it, will he take too many risks? And it's all about this kind of the management of the agent. And to some extent, I know you talked about morality in Stansfield Turner, but it's also

quite kind of clinical calculation that they're making, which is how can we both keep him alive and get the most that we possibly can out of him? What's going to be most productive for them as well as worrying about his safety? Maybe that's a cynical view, but I think there's something to that in the way they talk about it and the way they think about the Elpil. It's not about the morality of a suicide, it's about effectiveness. That's exactly where I would come down and say they should give it to him. Here's why. Because you need to avoid creating a sufficiently attractive out for Tolkachev.

That could be exfiltration. That could be a massive pile of cash sitting in an escrow account abroad that this guy leaves and sort of stops producing, right? So you don't want there to be that kind of golden parachute that is easy to grasp and attainable right away, right? That you don't want to create that. But the L-Pill, and this is where Tolkachev's psychology is so important and why I think it makes sense to give him one. For him, I think the L-Pill creates a psychological out. He can keep producing,

he can stay in Moscow, he can continue to take reasonable risks. And in his head, he's got the out, right? He's got the exfiltration plan for him is death, right? And I think that's where the L-Pill would sort of deal with the very intimate psychology of the man, which is And I think that's where the L-Pill would sort of deal with the very intimate psychology of the man, which is why I think as kind of went through some of these cables and the Hoffman book that recounts all the operational notes, I'm on the side of Moscow station and giving Tolkachev the pill. It's interesting the way you describe it though, is you don't want to give him an attractive enough out that he will take it. You want to keep him producing. I mean, that is the

hard, arguably slightly amoral business of running an agent. I know you care about the agent's welfare if you're a case officer or handler, but actually not enough to want them to get out. You want them to keep going. You want them to keep producing because this intelligence, as we've heard, is so valuable. There's a slight issue of the morality and ethics of running agents, which I think comes through in this case, which is you actually want him to keep going and not get out, even though it's risky. You want them to keep producing insofar as you can mitigate the risks, right, or manage the risks.

And you would like, as CIA or as his handling officer, to be able to run the case to its kind of full term. You don't have an interest in suicide in your agent or putting them in so much risk that the odds of them being rolled up go, you know, they skyrocket, you don't wanna do that. But you do want to keep them producing as long as you can and not exfiltrate them too soon because then you've lost these documents that he would photograph and this tremendous value that

he's delivering. So, but it is, it is, it is kind of a crux of the agent handling here is this interesting blend of trust, intimacy, but also, you know, manipulation in many respects. And so by basically late 1980, Stan Turner, the director of central intelligence finally agrees and says, you know, basically, and this is where I think the case had gotten to was Moscow station said, Look, we're not going to have a case if we don't give this to him. So Turner agrees. And in December of 1980, in a case about the size of a cigar box through the diplomatic pouch, so sort of the official mail, a fountain pen in a foam insert

shaped like a pistol. So I guess sort of off the rack cases with foam inserts made specifically for suicide pens did not exist. But in this foam case, in this pen, there is a cyanide capsule that gets sent to Moscow. And with it are instructions in Russian In this foam case, in this pen, there is a cyanide capsule that gets sent to Moscow. With it are instructions in Russian on how to extract the capsule and bite down on it.

Tokachev gets his wish. He gets his suicide pill. He's got the pill and he's still going at this point. He's going to move to producing more and more intelligence. He's feeling positive, I guess, having got the suicide pill. We're at a point now where there's going to be a change though, in terms of the who's handling him and how it's being done. Yeah, that's right.

I mean, by late 1980, John Gilscher, who is the case officer who's been running Tolkachev for the whole case at this point, his tour in Moscow is over. It's time for him to leave and that and the suicide pill, we're at this critical milestone in the case, which is in the sounds, I guess a little mundane, but it's critical in the business of handling human assets is they're going to try to transition Tolkachev from Gilshir to another case officer who will manage the case from Moscow. And

this is a guy named David Rolfe. And he is a former Army intelligence officer who'd served in Berlin. He'd studied Russian at the University of Kentucky. He's 31 when he takes over the Tolkachev case. It is his first tour in CIA. He's a kind of deeply committed cold warrior, anti-communist, thrilled to be on the front lines in Moscow where he is at a relatively young age

and without too much experience in CIA at that point, handling the most valuable CIA asset in the entire world. It's interesting, I think, just to kind of step back for a second. I mean, CIA manages these transitions of case officers. You'd think Tolgachev would have preferred to just continue having Gilsher have a familiar face continue to run you. But I think CIA for a couple reasons chooses to do these transitions. One is that the tours,

the State Department tours that all of these officers are presumably in Moscow under are two to three year rotational things. You don't have State Department officers stay in Moscow for 10, 15 years, you know, in most cases. So there's a natural rotation that's part of the cover. The other piece of this, a little bit maybe below the waterline, is that it is a good way to demonstrate control in some respects over the asset and to, I guess, create almost a process to the agent handling to show that you are serving not

the case officer, you are serving an institution that will choose who handles you. There's a transition here in late 1980 in the case from John Gilcher to David Rolfe. Yeah, it effectively lets the agent know that it's the institution that's in charge and decides who gets to handle them, not them. Even if they say, I'd rather stay with you, that's not possible because it's being managed by them. It makes clear the power dynamic, I guess, inside these relationships to say, here's your new person. You're going to have to deal with them even if you had a great relationship with the previous person.

With a new handler in place, David Rolfe, and with Adolf Tolkachev still taking these enormous risks, stealing and photographing these documents from his institute, the tension is actually about to rise geopolitically and on the streets of Moscow. Let's take a break and find out why afterwards. Okay, we're back and Adolf Tolkochev is there taking the risks. He's got his suicide pill, his L pill, he's photographing the documents and he's got a new handler. But David, tension is certainly rising. It's getting harder, this operation, isn't it? Well, it's 1980, which we should point out, I think here and do a little geopolitical zoom out to explain why some of the heat is being turned up on the streets of Moscow, because 1980,

it is immediately post the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The United States is boycotting the summer Olympics that are going to be held that year in Moscow, which has dramatically increased tension between Washington and the Russians. And in the run up to the Olympics, the streets of Moscow are absolutely crawling with Soviet militia for, I mean, not to watch CIA, but to just kind of lock Moscow down. And the result of that is that it's getting a lot harder

to meet assets on the ground. And so, you know, we had talked last week about this kind of dance over time. On the streets of moscow between. The americans and the russians and how over time there had been this kind of slugging contest over the trade craft as it gets more and more complicated you know every advance in. Every advance in CIA tradecraft has a reaction on the Russian side. And so it's gotten more complex. And that is a dance that has gone forward until today. It is at this point in the case where the agency's tradecraft, which

had been sort of building and maturing over time, is starting to get more complicated. So we start to have more and more cases of what are called identity transfer, which is basically a case officer in disguise as someone else in the embassy, like a worker cashier, leaves the embassy in disguise to go conduct a surveillance detection route and to meet with Tolkachev. Another way that the agency starts to innovate is by having case officers fly out of the Soviet Union on a pre-planned itinerary that would have been communicated to the Russians in advance, you know, to get permission. And then they come back early.

And it's very interesting here, Gordon, the idea is like, let's say you're going to go to, you know, you're a second secretary in the US Embassy in Moscow, you're actually a CIA officer, you would say, hey, you know, I'm going to fly for a conference going to Vienna for four days. Here are the dates, here's the itinerary gets passed to the Soviets, you come back two days early. And what you're exploiting there are not the two days. Because of course, as soon as your passport gets checked in at the airport, that information is going straight from sort of passport control to the KGB.

But what you're exploiting is this bureaucratic gap of the amount of time it's gonna take from passport control at the airport, communicating that you, an American, are back in country, it goes to the KGB, there is hours of time that that message is gonna take to work through the bureaucracy so that the KGB knows that this American is back and we need to put surveillance back on them.

And in that time, a case officer would have, you know, a few hours to be black, essentially, which is what CIA officers would call free of surveillance, right? Thanks to this, the normal sort of rumblings of a massive bureaucracy. So unlike the identity transfer, you're trying to pretend to be someone else. You're effectively using a disguise to make you look like someone else for the surveillance, not to realize who you are. But with that returning in the country, that you're coming back as yourself, as it were, you're just trying to create a tiny gap or a tiny, tiny space where

you can move operationally. So you're looking for that just tiny, tiny opportunity that you could exploit. The phrase here is operating in the gap. So it's finding a small, usually pretty small amount of time in which you as the case officer can conduct an operational act, meet with an asset, service a dead drop, lay down a signal site, a signal site, etc. Like, and it doesn't have to be long, it could be just a minute, it could be seconds, it could be hours. But the idea is to use these techniques, identity transfer, surveillance detection routes, flying in and out on a different itinerary to create that gap. And I think it's worth here, Gordon actually going kind of

deep into one of these surveillance detection routes to get an idea of how complex the choreography is. Because this isn't like the kind of thing where you go out and you walk a few blocks and you're looking over your shoulder and you are looking in a store window in your reflection to see if anyone's following you. These operations were intimately choreographed inside Moscow station and designed with sort of excruciating levels of detail. So let's go into one of them.

It's October of 1980. David Rolfe is now running the Tolkachev case. Rolfe wants to meet Tolkachev. So what does he do? Rolfe goes home after leaving the embassy, leaving the station for his day of work, and then returns to the embassy that evening in October of 1980 with his wife, as if he's going to a dinner party, because there are apartments like on the embassy compound, and there is a dinner party in one of those that night. Now, he and his wife go

into one of those apartments on the compound, and it is the apartment of the deputy kind of technical operations officer in the station. He actually lives in one of these kind of on-campus apartments. And this technical operations officer knows that maybe about three quarters of the time he's free of surveillance. So they go into the apartment, no one's speaking. And by the way, we have the wonderful details in the story, thanks to David Hoffman's wonderful book, The Billion Dollar Spy, which has laid all of this out. So the deputy technical operations officer and Rolf are about the same height and weight.

Rolf puts on a long-haired wig that's matched to the hair of the tech, and then he puts on a fake beard that's matched to the tech. The tech then helps Rolf with what's called an SRR100. This is a radio scanner and an antenna and an earpiece that will help Rolf monitor KGB transmissions on the street. Now, it's an earpiece that's made by a Swiss company, and it's so elaborate that it actually has a CI developed color matched silicon

to replicate the inner ears, contours and shadows. So he's got an earpiece in, but anybody looking at him will think it's just his ear. So the chief technical operations officer arrives. And again, Rolf has said nothing at this point. The chief tech officer in sort of this massive booming voice asked the deputy if they're going to visit a machine shop. The deputy says, yeah, let's go.

But the real deputy stays in the apartment deputy if they're going to visit a machine shop, the deputy says, yeah, let's go. But the real deputy stays in the apartment and Rolf goes out disguised as that deputy technical operations officer with the chief. So they get into a beige and green VW van and they start in a vehicle here, Gordon, because at the beginning of an SDR surveillance detection route, you sort of, I think would prefer a vehicle because you can cover more ground, you have more control, you can see more of the street, you've got more agility. And so you can kind of do things like you can quickly accelerate, you can

conduct U-turns and all of that is going to be designed not to lose surveillance. I think this is a critical point, but to identify it, to spot it. To see if you've got anyone on you, because if you know you have, then you can't do a meeting or an operational act. Exactly. And so they're looking for panel vans, they're looking for repeat pedestrians, they're looking for the same pair of shoes on somebody who has been following them. They're looking for cars with a telltale triangle

of dirt on the grill. And interestingly enough, the KGB is motor pool at Ljubljanka, their headquarters, the brushes on the car wash there don't reach a certain spot on the grill of their surveillance cars. And so this little dirty triangle is kind of a telltale sign that the vehicle following you is KGB. That's a giveaway. Rolf and the chief tech officer, they start out kind of cautiously and over the course of the night, they're going to become more provocative to try to draw the KGB out. Now, the entire route mentioned the sort of the extent

to which it had been precisely choreographed. That route has been planned and really, I mean, what the agents would call murder boarded inside the station of the extent to which it had been precisely choreographed. That route has been planned and really, I mean, what the agents would call murder boarded inside the station in these kind of what if sessions that the chief would run and the other case officers will kind of gather around and they will put any number of questions or scenarios

to Rolf to see if he has thought through all of the eventualities, all of the different, you know, sort of potential scenarios for what might happen on his surveillance detection route. Now, the first cover stop is a flower shop. The chief tech officer goes in, Rolf is in the van watching for surveillance, and they want to see if somebody's going to follow that chief technical officer in, right? And the first stop is really a chance to abort, right? Because if they're covered or they're obviously covered,

you can go to the flower shop, you can go home. And from here though, it's gonna be harder for the CI officers because if the KGB is suspicious and you don't spot them, they can start to throw more and more resources at the surveillance operation, which will make it harder for you to spot them. So they leave the flower shop, they drive around for another hour and a half

kind of visiting different shops, ostensibly on a supply run for the embassy, which by the way is what the sort of technical officer team, like they do a lot of this, right? So it's in pattern. Now the next move is pretty risky, and this is for Rolf to get out and get on foot. And here he's much more vulnerable, right?

Because he doesn't have as much freedom of movement. He's losing his partner, his other set of eyes, right? And this is a point where a lot of, you know, you read stories about this time in Moscow, and you have a lot of officers who wouldn't be able to get across this threshold because they will feel surveillance on them even if it's not there. And in agency parlance, this is called seeing ghosts. You know, you're so worked up, you're so nervous about the operation. The last thing you want to do is bring surveillance to the asset, to Tolkachev. And so a lot of officers here will just abort.

Because someone's life is at stake. But if you're too nervous, then you're not going to do anything, I guess. Right. And so it is very psychologically for a case officer, you have to be prepared for this, right, to be an effective one, because you sort of have to be able to balance, I think, running the play, the tradecraft, which is designed to help you spot surveillance and also manage the kind of biological state, you know, of your your emotions in your gut, right? And there's this very complex dance between all of this. So Rolf doesn't think he has surveillance though, and the chief tech officer agrees.

So in the van, Rolf takes his disguise off, puts it in a sack, and takes out the shopping bag that they have prepared for Tolkachev. The van stops, Rolf gets out, because, puts it in a sack, and takes out the shopping bag that they have prepared for Tolkochets. The van stops, Rolf gets out, because they don't think there's surveillance, he's going to take the van somewhere else, park, and just kind of take a walk. So Rolf is out, he's in the Moscow night, and he's starting to move through crowds of different sizes to kind of test for repeat. Pedestrians around him, get in thick crowd, you know, a thin

crowd kind of see who carries over if anyone does. He's got that scanner his SRR 100. It's scanning multiple KGB bands simultaneously. He's listening to them while they talk to each other. Now that sounds like a sort of silver bullet for spotting surveillance. It's absolutely not. It's so sensitive that he's gonna be picking up

surveillance teams talking like a kilometer away. So people who have nothing to do with him. The radio can provide warning of surveillance, but it provides absolutely no proof that Rolf is free from it. So you think about how that could mess with your head too as a case officer on the streets of Moscow, he gets on an electric trolley bus, and then immediately jumps off at the

first stop. So you can kind of see how he's starting to get more provocative as the night goes on to try to draw that surveillance out. Now, we should also say he's on foot here. He's getting tired. He's pretty mentally exhausted because he has been cataloging the world around him for hours at this point, paying attention to every little detail. So his lungs ache, his mouth is dry. The KGB could be waiting anywhere.

Rolf goes into a small theater. This is the second cover stop. Kind of looking up at the play board. This stop is again, more provocative. It is very out of pattern. Rolf, who's not in a disguise anymore, he doesn't come here ever. So it's odd, right?

This is a point where they want to force the KGB to act. If they're going to act, they want it to be here. He buys tickets to a play. He's not going to watch. He leaves. There's absolutely no sign of surveillance. So he walks toward an antique store. Now he's even further from his usual routines.

He's been to this antique store once before with his family, but never alone on a weekday night. He doesn't see any surveillance at the antique store. This is the bit I find fascinating is being deliberately provocative because I think this is what people would find surprising because I think they would think you want to do stuff which is completely normal. And yet here he's actually doing things more and more out of character in order just to try and absolutely be sure that there's no one on his tail. Case officers who had served in Moscow or former Soviet Union called this point like the PZ,

the provocative zone of a surveillance detection route and some of the other stories from, you know, these guys are like jumping into a dumpster, right? Like you think you're free of surveillance, jump into a dumpster, do something insane that will absolutely force surveillance because you cannot be 70% sure that you're free of surveillance. You cannot lead them to Tokachev at all costs. Let me just do one story about an MI6 officer I know who worked in Moscow. He was an athlete, so he used to run on the streets and that would be his normal behavior. He used to be able to, by running, outrun his surveillance. Then they put an Olympic Soviet athlete in the KGB to run

alongside him and follow him. Then his final trick was he dived into the Moscow River and swam across. The only point of it was, I think, to wind up his surveillance was to go, if you can follow me, this is slightly after Tokachev, only a few years after. If you want to follow me, follow me now. There's the game of these people trying to evade it, but that is slightly different because I think that was a deliberately provocative act to kind of go to say, screw you, rather than actually lose your surveillance or be sure you haven't got it. That's the kind of provocative thing that would get your refrigerator unplugged or your dog killed or the Russians breaking in to poop in your toilet and leave it there. That's the playing with the surveillance rather than what we're talking about here with

David Rolfe, which is kind of trying to test it and be sure you haven't got it, isn't it? That's right. Back into Rolfe's surveillance detection route. So he leaves the antique shop, he goes into a nearby apartment building and climbs the stairs and Rolfe doesn't live here. He's never been to this apartment building. He has gone up into like sort of the dark stairwell. And this is the ultimate sort of provocative move, right? Like he has disappeared from sight. The KGB, if they're following him cannot let this happen. Ralph doesn't know anyone there. He's got no reason to be there. He literally great piece of detail. He literally sits down in the landing and waits for the KGB. No one comes running up the

stairs. He is almost four hours in he's exhausted, but there's no sign of the KGB. So he walks to a small bench, he leaves go down the stairs, walks to a small bench near the apartment building. There's tall buildings all around. He's far from the embassy is far from his home. He's 12 minutes from the meeting site. KGB doesn't jump him on the bench. You can get a sense of just how many checks there are here to make sure that he's black. Then he hears a loud squelch in his earpiece. Rolf stands up. He's very tense. But again, the sound could be coming from a KGB team kilometer away. There's nothing

else. He is black. He's free of surveillance. And that feeling, it's interesting now, you know, in preparation for the books, you know, I've interviewed a lot of these case officers who have experienced this feeling. And many of them will describe that feeling of being black as almost godlike, like that you can do anything. You are the only person in the world who knows what you're about to do, right? You have bested surveillance, this whole machine that is set up around you

to be able to prevent you from doing what you're about to do, you are going to do. And so Moscow belongs to David Rolfe, and that night is going to be Tolkachev's eighth meeting with the CIA. Amazing. I mean, it's amazing the amount of work that goes into this one meeting.

And also exhausting mentally and physically to be able to get there. But I absolutely get the sense of elation you must have when you are so confident that you can meet that agent. And when you are operating in Moscow in the kind of belly of the beast of your adversary, and that allows you then to meet someone like Tolkochev and know that you're not leading the KGB to him. Well, and here at this meeting, they start back into, you know, many of the kind of thematic

topics we've been talking about, Rolf and Tolkachev get right into it. So they talk about, you know, security measures for Tolkachev to smuggle documents out of the Institute. They're sort of getting into this rhythm. But another interesting thread in the case starts to pop up here, which is, again, in late 1980, Tolkachev throws out this kind of interesting request for non-monetary compensation. The agency in Tolkachev had spent a lot of time

in the preceding years negotiating over his actual payment in dollars or rubles for his services. And what's fascinating, I think about sort of the Soviet system in this period is that for Tolkachev, he could have all the money in the world, but money can't buy things that don't exist in the Soviet Union. And he has a list, and he's a family man, and he's interested in acquiring some kind of unusual things. And so at this meeting, interested in acquiring some kind of unusual things. And so at this meeting, he hands David Rolfe a list of 12 names printed in big block letters

written in English. And the first one, Gordon is of course, number one, Led Zeppelin. And it is a list of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Alan Parsons project, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Uriah Heap, The Who, The Beatles, The Yes, Rich Wakeman, Nazareth and Alice Cooper. So what you take from that is he is a prog rock fan a little bit, seventies prog rock, quite likes his British music. I mean, that is quite a list.

It's disturbingly English. This list, Gordon, it's disturbingly English. Now, Nazareth, I believe, are they Scots? Is that right? I'm not a big Nazareth fan, I'm afraid. Okay. Alice Cooper's a red-blooded American. Yeah. Yeah. But this list is disturbingly English, I think. I like him already. I mean, this, I mean, anyone who's got Led Zeppelin at at number one I mean, this would have been my my list but probably aged about 14

You know to me when I was playing in a band and playing a guitar. I quite like to know which Led Zeppelin album You know, there's no Metallica there's no Aerosmith there's no guns. There's no sort of American heavy metal No, no, no, but it's kind of 70s isn't it? 70s prog rock. You know, this is the kind of stuff you would zone out to. This is yeah, it's a pretty cool list. I mean, it's a cool list. It's a kind of list as I say for a kind of teenager with long hair rather than a 50 year old, you know, radio engineer.

But I guess that's part of the point because it's not for him, is it? It is not for him. You know, we should be clear that this isn't actually his taste in music, because that would be a bit surprising. I mean, this is for his son. Again, he is, you know, he's a family man. He loves and is very devoted to his wife and his teenage son. And there is a black market, you know, for this kind of music, audio cassettes in Moscow,

but Tolgachev doesn't want to go there, which kind of makes sense. And this seems, I guess, from the face of it, like the easiest possible request for the CIA to comply with, right, Gordon? I mean, you can get this very, very quickly, very easily. But no, it's fascinating, again, to kind of look at the cable traffic back and forth. The CIA agonizes over this request because you think, okay, well, how do you explain if the KGB ends up in your apartment? How do you explain the rich Wakeman,

you know, audio cassette that you have? Where did it come from? How did you get it? So it's a security problem for the CIA right away. Because even for his son, I mean, if his son suddenly gets these, if his son says to his friends and shows off and go, hey, do you want to come around and listen to my Led Zeppelin records or my Nazareth records, whatever it would be, they'd be like, wow, you've got a good collection. Where did you get that from? And then he'd go, well, my dad gave it to me. And then you're like, you're already into a problem, aren't you? You can see the risk to it. I mean, even if you,

as you said, you could maybe get some of them on the black market, perhaps in Moscow, it's quite a lot. Well, and you know, Tokachev basically says, look, I could get all of this here, right? I can explain it that way. He's already got a cassette player at home. So he's got a way to play it. That was one of the questions the CIA asked him, how are you going to play this? You know, do you already have one?

And this kind of request is going to continue for the foreseeable future in the case, because Tolkachev, you know, he'll write in an operational note to Rolf, Unfortunately, our personal life consists of all types of small things, which sometimes exert an influence on the general mood. This is a I think, commentary on the nature of the Soviet system at this point in time, which is a lot of these kind of consumer comforts that were being mass produced in the West are just completely unavailable or very, very hard to get. And I actually remember my dad traveling to the Soviet Union at this point in time. And he was on the streets of Moscow.

This is probably a few years after the Tolkachev case on the streets of Moscow. This is probably a few years after the Tolkochev case, on the streets of Moscow with his minder. And there's a group of people kind of running toward a department store, like a big group. And the group is trying to figure out, where are they going? And the minder eventually talks to a few people in Russian and then turns to my dad and says, there's been a rumor of shoes.

So these small things were front and center, I think, in the sort of average Muscovites conscience in, you know, in that period is that the whole day was kind of spent thinking about how do I get these things? And you there was no easy way to do it, you kind of had to work the system. And so, talk which I think is taking advantage of his end run around the system, and asking, Tchaikovsky, I think, is taking advantage of his end run around the system and asking the Americans to provide him with this stuff.

But I find it quite sweet that what he wants to do is get records for his son. You know, he's not after some kind of fancy consumer goods or something, you know, diamonds or something, I don't know, that he'd want, but he just wants to give his son some records to play. I don't know, it's just something quite nice about him. Well, and the gifts for the son will continue because the son is, I think, a naturally gifted sort of artist and wants to train as an architect. Tokachev will ask for, you know, pencils of various hardness

for his son's mechanical drawing. He's going to ask later for erasers that don't leave greasy marks. So I guess the Soviet-made erasers were shoddy. And by that point, his son had entered a kind of architecture training institute. So he wants these higher quality erasers. And eventually Togachev will ask for some non-ruble compensation, right? So could he have something that's a little bit easier to store?

And maybe he could explain. And so at some point, the CIA is going to send officers to an antique store in New York. It's been there for at that point for a very long time. It's called Gordon. I'll try to read the maybe you should read the French here of how this how the story you read the French. I love the a who see and they buy a fabric a pin and a heavy gold necklace. And the idea here is tolkochev can say, you know, if they're discovered, their heirlooms

from his mother. Interestingly, Tolkachev also puts in some requests for books. He asked for the Bible. He asked for the memoirs of gold in my hair. He asked for a copy of one of Reagan's speeches from the 1980s. And he asked for a copy of mine comp. Wow. Hitler's book. Not a fascist by any stretch, of course. Despite being called Adolf. Despite being called Adolf.

Well, I would so talk to Jeff about this. So he's known to his friends and family as, as addict. He's born in like 27, I think. So, so I think, but you know, pre Hitler said, I'm sure the name Adolf has sort of gone out of vogue, but yes, Adolf. And so he's got plenty of money. But again, you can't buy things that don't exist in the Soviet Union. And so this kind of drive to get, I mean, even things like ink and pencils and erasers,

you know, are all coming from, I think, his desire to provide for his family in many ways. So we've got to the point where. Adolf talk to his god is l.pill is suicide bill is god is let's get the albums were into the kind of early nineteen eighties now but also i think the pressure is kind of blood pressure is flaring up and the CIA is still desperate for more of his information and his intelligence, but this is also getting harder, isn't it, for him to actually produce that. And you do sense, you know, as you get to this point around 83, as if the kind of, not the walls are closing in, but the tension is growing around this operation. There is a sense it just can't go on forever like this.

So maybe there Gordon with stress and time taking a toll on Tokhachev, the man is blood pressure through the roof. When we come back for our fourth and final episode on Adolf Tokhachev, we'll see does he need that suicide pill? Is he going to need exfiltration from the Soviet Union? Or is the net going to finally close around him? Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. See you next time. There's a double agent, a mole, working for Moscow inside the upper reaches of CIA.

Hi, I'm David McCloskey, co-host of The Rest Is Classified. And in my latest novel, The Seventh Floor, and Operation Gone Wrong has CIA officer Artemis Proctor convinced there is a mole working for the Russians. But who is it? To find the answer, she will have to dredge up her checkered past in service of CIA, investigating a short list of her dearest friends

and most cherished enemies. This is a story of modern day espionage tradecraft, peak at the actual spy war between Washington and Moscow, and most of all, it's a story of modern-day espionage tradecraft, a peek at the actual spy war between Washington and Moscow, and most of all it's a story about what friendship means in a faithless business. The book is available now in hard copy in all good bookshops and also online in e-book and audio formats.