Nelegal za okeanom [The Illegal Agent Overseas] (review)

This unique memoir has two inextricably intertwined stories. One is that of a young Russian man experiencing the world outside the Soviet Union. He works as a realtor in the United States and Canada and as a successful photographer in Japan. He deals with an alcoholic business partner, arranges a photography session with geishas for Paris Match, and plays golf. The other story is that of what Leonid Dubonosov calls "a custom-made, labor-intensive and . . . fragile product"—an illegal agent of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the Soviet General Staff.

Leonid Andreevich Dubonosov spent nearly a decade (beginning in 1953) in Western Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan as an "illegal"—and was never caught. (In Russian espionage tradecraft, an "illegal," or nelegal, means an intelligence agent operating in a foreign country without the benefit of a diplomatic, a journalistic, or other cover providing him or her with some degree of protection against the host country's counterintelligence and law enforcement.) Dubonosov's mission was to establish a sleeper network in Japan that would be activated in case of war. No Soviet illegal agent who served in the field after the Second World War wrote memoirs worthy of the name. (Konon Molodoy, also known as Gordon Lonsdale, talked to a Soviet journalist, who subsequently produced a propaganda book.) Although we know some details about Soviet illegals from the trial of William Fischer (whose alias was Colonel Rudolf Abel), Dubonosov provides the first genuine look from the inside.

The book contains no sensational revelations and therefore stands out as especially trustworthy in a field in which sensation-mongering is often the norm. Nelegal za okeanom is a primer on what it takes to train and run an illegal agent. Finding a future illegal, requires studying thousands of dossiers. A good candidate should have native-quality speaking ability in the language of a target country and should know its habits, preferably from an early age. In the Soviet Union the search for candidates to become illegals began literally from their childhood. Dubonosov grew up in the family of a Soviet foreign trade and banking official and spent his childhood in Shanghai, where he attended the American School, and his teenage years in wartime England, where he attended the University of London. Dubonosov believes that the secret police probably took note of him during his university years as a promising recruit for foreign intelligence. Before Dubonosov's father worked in foreign trade, both he and his wife had served in the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). With this background (language and cultural proficiency; and the son of secret police officers), Dubonosov must have attracted the attention of GRU recruiters at an early stage.

For obvious reasons, Dubonosov could not take a Japanese identity. To overcome this obstacle, the GRU came up with a complicated plan. First, Dubonosov flew from Moscow to Brussels using a forged U.S. passport stamped by Soviet border control. He quickly shed this vulnerable identity in favor of another forged U.S. passport complete with falsified stamps of departure from Switzerland and the United States, as well as an arrival to France.

Having entered the United States via Canada in 1954 with this forged passport, Dubonosov settled in Rochester, New York, a convenient location for frequent trips across the U.S.-Canadian border. The ability to cross the border was an important factor because his liaison with the GRU was carried out via dead drops in Ottawa. He used his skills as a photographer to establish contacts with local businesses and soon became a real estate agent and also sold the children's Book of Knowledge encyclopedia door-to-door. Dubonosov spent two years learning his way around America but was unable to acquire a reliable American identity.

In accordance with the GRU's backup plan, Dubonosov moved to Canada, where he quickly became a partner in a real estate business and obtained a passport in the name of Dean Simpson, a real...