Betrayal. Jonathan Ancer
if you so wish’,34 South Africa cancelled the test, but the nuclear explosive programme continued.35
In the meantime, the country’s counter-intelligence unit began to search for the leak within its own ranks. Gerhardt was on the list of possible suspects but he was crossed off because it was believed he wouldn’t have had access to the material that had been divulged.36 Nevertheless, the counter-intelligence search for a mole gave Gerhardt a severe case of ‘spotty underpants’ for months on end.37
In the 1970s South Africa and Israel collaborated over nuclear development. Half a century later, the extent and details of this relationship remain murky. Gerhardt had knowledge of the military ties between Israel and South Africa and provided the Soviets with a comprehensive list of Israel’s clandestine weapons development programmes38 and other information in the form of hard technical data – photographs, films, instruction manuals, research papers – which he thought would be particularly useful to Moscow.39
In 1975 Israel’s Minister of Defence, Shimon Peres, met his South African counterpart, PW Botha, in Switzerland. The two signed the first Israel-South Africa (ISSA) agreement, which was circulated throughout the South African military establishment. It landed on Gerhardt’s desk, and of course made its way to Moscow.40
The more senior Gerhardt became in the navy, the more information his Soviet handlers demanded. His list of essential material got longer and longer. The Russians were mostly interested in information about Britain, America and Israel, his target countries, but he also provided information on other countries. Gerhardt was valuable because, as a spy in place, he had access to technical data.
The Soviets supplied him with specially manufactured mini-cameras, which were easy to handle, took good-quality photos in low lighting conditions, and could store more material on a film. Most importantly they were very easily concealed: in a keyholder, a cigarette lighter or a hip flask, all of which were discovered when Gerhardt was finally arrested. These mini-cameras could be carried into the most sensitive places and it would only take seconds to film a country’s ‘most secret’ secrets and relay them to the enemy. There were times when even these extra measurements were not enough. Gerhardt then used a Super 8 movie camera, allowing him to take 2,000 exposures on one film. ‘The Moscow Centre proved to be responsive and ingenious when supplying his photographic needs,’ wrote General Stadler in his investigation notes.41
Moscow preferred to communicate with its operatives by broadcasting radio messages to them because even if the message was intercepted, the agent could not be identified. The messages to Gerhardt were delivered in Morse code. A communication schedule was set up between Gerhardt and Moscow. At 1.30 am on scheduled dates Gerhardt would wait by a radio with a tape recorder. He would tune in to a specific high frequency and wait for his call sign, which would be followed by a burst of beeps, which he would record. There were two phases of unravelling the burst of beeps. The first – the deciphering phase – was to transform the beeps, which were a series of five numbers, into letters. The second phase was to decode the letters, which Gerhardt would do using his personal code to match the letters and reveal the message that was being sent. The code could easily be broken without these two phases. The complex process would take Gerhardt about five hours to complete. The message received was either a task for him to complete or a question for him to answer or a schedule of some kind.
Gerhardt was reluctant to send messages back because radio transmissions could be traced directly to their source. As a result he wrote letters – this was in the days when South Africa’s postal service was more reliable. Messages in the letters were written in special chemicals so they would be invisible. To indicate to the recipient that there was a secret message behind the letter, Gerhardt would sign the letter with a specific code name, or write the date in a particular way or in a specific position.
In addition to invisible messages he also sent cryptic messages, which were made up of prearranged code words that only made sense to the recipient. A last technical form of communication used by the Soviets was the microdot, which Gerhardt would read using a miniature microdot reader hidden in a pencil.
His equipment would sometimes be collected directly from a handler using prearranged personal meetings, brush meetings, or dead letter boxes (DLBs) or drops. At other times it wasn’t possible for Gerhardt to send the volume of information he had acquired, and so Ruth became his courier. She didn’t know the details of what he was doing but she was by his side and was aware that the situation was dangerous. They were a two-person cell. She was given the code name Lyn. On the pretext of visiting her family she would travel to Switzerland with photographs, films and documents, and drop them off at a dead letter box in Zürich. Ruth’s clandestine missions could have come straight out of a James Bond novel. She wore a red scarf and the documents had to be in a red folder and, when meeting the agent at a prearranged venue, she had to use code words to confirm her identity.42
They would make their way to Switzerland, go to Heimplatz in Zürich and, on the last day of the month at 2.30 pm, wait for a GRU agent by the Gates of Hell, Auguste Rodin’s renowned sculpture that depicts a scene from Dante’s Inferno. The sculpture was a common place for Soviets to meet their agents, which seems oddly symbolic. In Dante’s Inferno the ninth circle of hell is reserved for ‘traitors, betrayers and oath-breakers’. The instruction was for Gerhardt or Ruth to carry a rolled-up newspaper with a red cover, and wear a tie or scarf that had at least one red stripe. The Russian agent would ask in English: ‘Seems we have met in Addis Ababa in 1970?’ And they would have to respond: ‘I am sorry. You must be mistaken. I was in Plymouth in 1970.’43 Only then would the exchange take place by simply swapping bags.
A similar password was used by Geoffrey Prime, the British intelligence officer turned double agent who passed secrets to the Soviets from 1968 to 1981. In his trial, it emerged that when he had a rendezvous with his contact, the agent would say: ‘I believe we met in Pittsburgh in 1968.’ Prime’s response was, ‘No, at that time I was in Berlin.’44
On 12 March 1977 Gregory Felix Gerhardt was born. He was named in honour of his father’s handler, Gregorii Shirobokov, and was given the code name Sea Breeze. Shirobokov became his secret godfather. On his birth Moscow Centre sent congratulations to Sea Breeze’s parents, Ruth Johr and Dieter Gerhardt.
Gerhardt was careful to separate his spying activities from his daily routine and job in the navy. His time for espionage work was between 1 am and 6 am; and he devoted 45 hours a week to it.45 He would have a shower and then head off to his day job. A senior officer in the South African Navy, a Russian spy, and a husband and father: he was, as the judge in his treason trial would later remark, riding three horses simultaneously, which is not easy to do when you are also constantly looking over your shoulder.
Gerhardt’s life had been on the line from the moment he entered the Soviet Embassy in London in 1963. From the very beginning he was dancing along on a tightrope and hoping he would survive. The death toll of Cold War spies was extremely high. Gerhardt once explained to a friend that leading a double life was a lot like driving on South Africa’s roads. ‘You just have to do it. You have to make second-by-second decisions because your only option is to survive. You drive, you take risks, but you keep going.’
One risk nearly got him caught. Gerhardt duplicated his colleagues’ keys to their safes and cracked the combinations on their locks, which were usually the person’s birthdate. This was before the advent of sophisticated passwords that demanded all sorts of variables. One evening he removed some documents he had taken from an officer’s safe, photographed them, and placed them back in the safe. As he was putting his miniature camera away, he looked up and saw a guard standing in the doorway.
‘You’re working late tonight, sir,’ the guard said.
Gerhardt froze. He didn’t know how much the guard had seen. Not much as it turned out. The guard offered to make Gerhardt a cup of tea. Gerhardt always kept good relationships with the guards. He knew that if he gave them a smile in the morning and asked, ‘How’s your wife and kids?’ and remembered their names, it helped create a trusting environment. So he drank a cup of tea with the guard.
All