• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2924 0

Philby, the head of station, who had arranged co-operation from members of the local security services and the local émigré Georgian community. The original plan had been for the Climber party, who were provided with Turkish army uniforms, to establish themselves close to the frontier. Here Philby and the SIS case-officer for the operation, ‘disguised as Turkish sentries with fixed bayonets’, were ‘to carry out a normal frontier patrol and thereby observe the best route for the Climbers to take’. Once over the border, the Georgians, who had local contacts on the Soviet side, were to ‘abandon and bury their Turkish kit and appear as ordinary local Russians’. For this operation their task was then ‘to proceed to watch for contacts, safe-houses, letter-boxes and generally start to build up the nucleus of an organisation which can be used in the future’. It was estimated that this might take up to six months, after which one of the Georgians would return to report on the organisation which had been formed and ‘also pass over, we hope, a massive weight of frontier intelligence, local living conditions, and possibly industrial intelligence, etc.’. Despite the very detailed scheme which had been prepared, the planners recognised that the arrangements for the frontier operation itself were ‘naturally very fluid and Philby must be left to make ad hoc decisions according to the information available at the time’.

In the event, the Climbers refused to fall in with the SIS plan and at a very late stage proposed a more modest scheme whereby they would cross the frontier with local guides and remain in the USSR for only five weeks or so, during which they ‘would establish contacts and obtain information on living conditions for the following summer when they would return and carry on the work of building up an organisation and obtaining intelligence’. This was something of a fait accompli and, ‘although surprised’, Philby agreed to the revised plan. While he remained in Istanbul, the Climbers, accompanied by their case-officer, headed for Erzerum in eastern Turkey. From there the party took three days, by car, jeep and eventually an eight-hour horseback ride over 8,000-foot mountain passes, to reach a base camp two hours’ walk or so from the frontier. During the final approach the older Georgian, who was badly affected by the altitude, collapsed and could go no further. Afterwards it was reckoned that he was nearer sixty years old than the forty-seven he had claimed to be. But, escorted by two guides, the younger man went on and crossed the frontier without further mishap. Just over two weeks later the Georgian reappeared in Turkey and with his older colleague was flown back to Britain where they were thoroughly debriefed during the autumn. All seemed to have gone well, until on his way back to the border the Georgian had encountered a Soviet patrol, from which he escaped after (he claimed) shooting two soldiers. In Georgia he had made contact with anti-Russian resistance groups. He reported extensively on frontier defences and living conditions in the region. There were also descriptions of naval installations along the Black Sea coast and sightings of several Soviet submarines. Although details of some hydroelectric power stations were taken to be broadly accurate, output figures from aircraft factories in Georgia were dismissed as ‘nonsense’, as was a reported tank factory in Tiflis.

While the actual intelligence product was relatively modest, Climber II was adjudged to have been a success, and a useful basis for further such ventures to penetrate the Soviet Union. But aspects of the operation were dangerously insecure. Even if (as was assumed long afterwards) Kim Philby had passed on details of Climber to his masters in Moscow, the fact that the operation was staged jointly with Turkish security personnel, that the village from where the actual penetration was launched (and where five local guides were engaged) was a regular base for border crossings, and that the presence of both Climbers in Turkey was well known among gossipy