People smuggling

The Mars Bar defector: How MI6's greatest ever KGB mole was smuggled out of Moscow thanks to a chocolate bar, a Safeway bag and a very secret dash to Balmoral

In 1982, more than a decade after being recruited on the badminton court, Oleg Gordievsky was posted to the Russian Embassy in London where he would be made the ‘resident’ — the head of the KGB in Britain. His swift advancement was helped by the fact that MI6 arranged for his immediate superiors to be kicked put of Britain.

It meant that Gordievsky provided a valuable insight into Soviet thinking at a crucial stage of the Cold War.

Three years after settling in London, though, Gordievsky was suddenly summoned back to Moscow where he was subjected to a lengthy interrogation that involved the administration of a truth drug; someone — in the CIA, it was suspected — had betrayed him.

Gordievsky may not have cracked, but he knew the game was up. It was time to activate Operation Pimlico, the daring escape plan already formulated by MI6 in the event of such an eventuality.

But how to get him out of Russia when he was under such scrutiny? The chain of events that were set in motion proves the old adage, that truth is indeed sometimes stranger — and in this case, at least, infinitely more fascinating — than fiction.

In his flat on 103 Leninsky Prospect in Moscow, Gordievsky retrieved a hardback copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and soaked the flyleaf so he could peel it off. Inside, he found a sheet containing his escape instructions, which he committed to memory...