'I'm in great danger - you have to get me out immediately!' The dramatic escape of Russian superspy turned defector 'Redwood' from under the noses of the KGB

Vladimir Kuzichkin – codename Redwood – was a Russian superspy operating in Iran who secretly switched to the West in the hope that doctors there would find a cure for his sexual impotence. In yesterday’s Mail on Sunday, best-selling author Ben Macintyre described the astonishing insights into the KGB he handed over. In this final extract from his book, he tells the gripping story of his escape to the UK under the noses of the KGB and the Ayatollah’s Revolutionary Guard.

After six months, the Redwood files were bulging, with intelligence flooding in so fast the translators and analysts in MI6’s Soviet Section struggled to keep up. Vladimir Kuzichkin’s material exposing the innermost secrets of the KGB was of the highest quality – so good that much of it was unusable without blowing the source.

To run a spy inside the adversary’s lair is the ultimate aim of every intelligence service. Kuzichkin’s posting to Iran by the KGB was due to end in the summer of 1982, when he would probably be given a desk job back in Moscow. The promise made to him when he switched sides and became an MI6 double agent was that he would be exfiltrated from Iran to the UK but now there were moves to persuade him to postpone defection and continue working for MI6 after leaving Iran.

Ian McCredie, the agent running Redwood in Iran and who had personally made the deal with him, agreed to try to convince him to carry on: ‘KGB agents are very, very rare so any chance to get one into KGB headquarters had to be taken.’ He broached the subject. Would he return to Moscow and continue his valuable work for MI6? If he agreed, his pay would be doubled; he could choose when to quit; and an escape plan would be formulated to get him out of Moscow. ‘When the time comes to defect, your resettlement terms in the UK will be huge.’

Kuzichkin shrugged. McCredie cajoled and wheedled. Kuzichkin demurred and baulked. ‘Okay, I will do it,’ Kuzichkin said finally. ‘I will go back to Moscow when my posting ends, and I will do as you ask.’

Immediately, McCredie sensed his reluctance. This was almost certainly a deal too far, Kuzichkin looked terrible, his eyes lividly bloodshot, hands shaking. McCredie ‘could see with the effect of the extra stress, the increased drinking, the breaking of his nerve. We had not been able to help him with his sexual impotence, the reason why he was defecting. He was getting closer to the edge.’

Kuzichkin couldn’t eat, only drink, and was tormented by a recurrent nightmare of a man dressed in black, with an axe raised over his head. This seemed too real when a cipher clerk at the Russian embassy let slip that an investigative team from Moscow would soon be arriving to tighten embassy security. That sounded ominous.

Vladimir Kuzichkin was a Russian superspy operating in Iran who secretly switched to the West

Vladimir Kuzichkin’s (seen with dog Archie) material exposing the secrets of the KGB was of the highest quality – so good that much of it was unusable without blowing the source

McCredie was at home when the telephone rang. ‘Hello,’ said Kuzichkin, voice wobbling. ‘I am going to drop off books at your house.’ McCredie froze. This was a code calling for an emergency meeting in one hour. At the rendezvous the Russian was almost hysterical. ‘I am in great danger. I have no option but to ask you to exfiltrate me immediately from Iran to the UK.’ Sweat poured down his face, soaking his shirt. ‘I have an awful feeling they are going to get me. You MUST take me out!’

McCredie concluded: ‘His nerves had snapped. The double stress of being a Russian spy in a hostile land and the danger of spying for us against the KGB had got to him.'

McCredie had already investigated how he would get Redwood out if it came to it, knowing that if the KGB cottoned on to Kuzichkin’s betrayal, there might be only hours, or even minutes, for him to put an emergency escape plan into action.

McCredie saw there was a flaw in the set-up at the border – foot passengers who arrived by bus simply entered the customs and immigration building and then, once their papers had been inspected and stamped, passed into Turkey through the doors dividing the building in two. They then boarded another bus for Ankara. With Kuzichkin posing as a British diplomat, a crossing like this on foot might just work, he decided, though it carried huge risk. At their next meeting, McCredie outlined the escape plan to Kuzichkin.

The Russian nodded. He had once visited the Bazargan border post. ‘This can be done,’ he said. McCredie was not so sure. Success depended on several highly unpredictable variables: Kuzichkin convincingly playing the part of a British diplomatic courier; his forged documents holding up to scrutiny; crossing the border before anyone back in Tehran noticed he was missing.

McCredie broached another tricky issue. ‘I can only bring you out. We cannot exfiltrate your wife.’ McCredie had thought hard about Galina. It was for her sake that he had turned traitor, in the hope that in the West there would be a cure for his sexual impotence. That she would escape with him had been part of the deal for his defection. But Galina spoke barely a word of English and would never pass as the spouse of a British diplomat. Perhaps there might be a way to smuggle her out in the future, but for now she would have to stay.

‘I am fine with that,’ Kuzichkin snapped. ‘I don’t care. She despises me anyway and she has made my life a misery, so good riddance. F*** her.’ For the first time, McCredie began to suspect what had really caused Kuzichkin’s panic – that Galina had discovered he was working for the British and had threatened to shop him.

McCredie gripped the Russian’s shoulder. ‘I’ll get you across.’

That evening McCredie sent a message to head office relaying Kuzichkin’s demand for emergency exfiltration. ‘He was going to defect. I had just three weeks to set it up.’

Kuzichkin (left) with Ian McCredie and his family

McCredie prepared carefully for this next meeting with Kuzichkin.

‘I’m going to document you as a British diplomatic courier who arrived by air but has decided to return overland because you’re very keen to visit archaeological sites on the other side of the Iran-Turkey border.’ Kuzichkin said nothing.

‘Look – this is going to work. You will drive to the border in your BMW, using your own Soviet diplomatic documents to get through any checkpoints. Once you reach the border, you park the car and board a bus that will arrive from the nearby town. Then you will join the queue of foot passengers. From this point you’ll be a British diplomatic courier wanting to visit the tourist sites of eastern Turkey.’

An MI6 team would be waiting on the other side, McCredie assured him, who would spirit him to the UK before the Turkish government found out he was in the country, the Iranians discovered he was gone and raised diplomatic hell, or the KGB tried to grab him back.

Kuzichkin would need documents and McCredie slipped into his own embassy to carry out several highly illegal acts of forgery. Two fake documents had arrived in the diplomatic bag, courtesy of MI6: a British passport with Kuzichkin’s photo and a diplomatic courier’s authorisation.

Fake passport number 433686 and a courier pass were issued to ‘Michael Guy Road’, born 1949. The name was chosen at random, having first checked to ensure there was nobody of that name holding a real British passport. Under ‘occupation’ was written ‘diplomat’.

On an elderly typewriter, McCredie typed out a travel form with Kuzichkin’s full name, date of birth, reason for journey, car registration, proposed route and dates. Then he stamped the document with the forged stamp and scribbled a few lines to look like some sort of Persian signature.

As he worked, McCredie reflected that ‘the whole plan hung on a series of slender threads.’ Kuzichkin’s English was adequate for the purposes of espionage, but was it up to playing the part of a British diplomat? The whole operation felt ‘pretty shambolic’, cobbled together from ‘string and sealing wax’.

Every element at the receiving end was in place, with one important gap: MI6 was still looking for a circumcision doctor. Convinced this minor operation would cure his erectile dysfunction, Kuzichkin had insisted he wanted the procedure performed as soon as possible after he reached British shores.

Over the decades, defecting Russian spies had made all sorts of bizarre requests in return for cooperation but Kuzichkin was the first spy in history to demand, as the price of defection, the removal of his foreskin. MI6 was making discreet inquiries.

Success depended on highly unpredictable variables: Kuzichkin convincingly playing the part of a British diplomatic courier; his forged documents holding up to scrutiny; and crossing the border before anyone back in Tehran noticed he was missing... (Bazargan border pictured)

On a Tehran street, Kuzichkin’s blue BMW pulled up behind McCredie’s parked Land Rover. The Russian slowly emerged and climbed into the passenger seat. Something was badly amiss. His hands trembled. ‘I’m okay,’ he mumbled. McCredie wondered if he was hungover. McCredie gave him his forged papers and went over the plan again but Kuzichkin’s eyes were glazed. When asked to sign his phoney passport the pen slipped from his fingers.

McCredie tried to steady him, but realised Kuzichkin could not control his fear. ‘I think we need to call it off,’ McCredie told him. Kuzichkin nodded miserably. They agreed to try again the following evening.

The next night Kuzichkin again climbed into the Land Rover and McCredie could tell immediately he was ‘calmer, composed – fatalistic. This was it, his destiny was sealed, and whatever might come, his mind was made up. He was going.’ He signed the passport with a flourish, and a small smile. ‘His hands had stopped shaking.’

It was time to part. ‘Good luck,’ said McCredie. ‘See you in London.’

It is possible he was being tailed by the Iranians from the moment he left the Soviet Embassy. A lone surveillance car followed him for 200 miles before he gave them the slip and finally reached the metal barrier marking the perimeter of the Bazargan crossing. The ‘sleepy civilian’ on duty barely glanced at his travel permit before waving the BMW through.

Kuzichkin parked, stuffed his Soviet documents and Iranian travel pass into the glovebox and put on his jacket and tie. With the British passport, he was now ‘Michael Road’. But then he saw the actual border post he had to pass through was still almost a mile away, up a steep tarmac road – down which was coming a pickup truck carrying four bearded Revolutionary Guards.

The driver braked, surprised to see a large, well-dressed civilian clambering out of the car park. The Guards clustered around him, each armed with a Heckler & Koch rifle and a handgun. ‘Who are you?’ one barked in Persian. Kuzichkin shook his head. ‘Ingilis,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand.’

Another of the Guards stepped forward and in good English asked: ‘Who are you? What are you doing?’ Kuzichkin proffered the blue passport with the royal crest and launched into his cover story. He was a British diplomat, he explained, on important business in Iran, now returning to the UK through Turkey because he had heard that Noah’s Ark might have been discovered on the other side of the border.

The Guards were gaping at him, ‘increasingly wide-eyed in astonishment’. Kuzichkin was fluently speaking a language which, a few moments earlier, he had professed not to understand. ‘Because of my nervousness, I had begun to explain myself in pure Persian,’ he recalled. ‘Ah, so you do speak Persian?’ said the first Guard in Persian. ‘Yes, but very little,’ stammered Kuzichkin, reverting to English.

The English-speaking Guard was now highly suspicious. ‘How did you get here?’ ‘I was brought by a friend. He dropped me at the gate and has gone back.’ ‘Let’s go and ask the duty orderly,’ said the Guard. ‘Get in the pickup. We will go and check at the gate if your story is true.’ Kuzichkin felt a knot of pure fear. ‘This is it,’ he thought. ‘This is the end.’

Back at the first barrier the civilian orderly, no longer drowsy, snapped to attention. ‘Do you remember this bloke?’ the leader demanded. The orderly nodded vigorously. ‘How did he get here?’ ‘By car,’ the quaking man stuttered.

Kuzichkin knew he had to take control of the conversation, otherwise it really was the end. ‘You remember,’ he urged the orderly. ‘A car dropped me off at the gate and then departed.’ ‘There were two in the car,’ the gate orderly parroted obediently. ‘And the car has already gone back.’

In a second, the atmosphere switched from menace to perfect cordiality. ‘Ah, that means you told the truth,’ said the English-speaking Guard, now the soul of courtesy. ‘May I offer our apologies for detaining you? It’s rather a long walk to the checkpoint. We’ll give you a lift.’

Moments later, Kuzichkin found himself squeezed between two Revolutionary Guards with guns balanced across their knees, in the back of a battered pickup heading towards the Turkish border. He could barely breathe from fear; he uttered not a word. The Guards dropped him at the door and left with a jovial wave.

Inside the customs and immigration building Kuzichkin walked to the large steel door, secured with a padlock, the gateway to Turkey. He showed his British passport to the guard and was ushered into a side room. His pulse spiked once again. A security service officer idly flicked through the British passport. ‘What were you doing in Iran?’ he asked. ‘Business,’ Kuzichkin said curtly with an air of authority. The officer stared hard. And then chose to back off, the urge to pick a fight with a Westerner wilting.

He handed the passport back to the immigration official, who wrote ‘Michael Road, 433686, diplomat’ on his list, stamped it with an exit stamp, scribbled something over it in Persian and handed it back. Kuzichkin stood waiting while the guard with the key to the padlocked door smoked a cigarette. The seconds ticked down. Kuzichkin experienced the sort of out-of-body experience that comes with exhaustion and extreme fear.

Finally, the man with a bunch of keys turned up and removed the padlock and chain with a rattle. Kuzichkin entered a wide customs hall. In the middle was a circular table: one side Iranian, the other Turkish. An Iranian customs official lazily explored the suitcase – which had been carefully packed by McCredie for its Englishness with M&S underpants, British toothpaste and an out-of-date copy of The Spectator – and waved him on.

A Turkish immigration officer sat behind a small desk. The final hurdle. He stared ‘long and hard’ at the photograph in the passport, before stamping it and returning the document with a smile. Kuzichkin walked out on to Turkish soil in bright morning sunlight. Two MI6 officers were standing by a car with the doors open. ‘This way, please.’

After debriefing, he would be resettled in Britain under a different name, somewhere the KGB could never find him. ‘I experienced spiritual freedom for the first time,’ he later wrote. ‘Now I could live a life that was not a lie.’

MI6 finally found someone willing to carry out a secret circumcision: an army doctor at a military hospital. Kuzichkin had long blamed his impotence on his body, and it is possible that he was afflicted with phimosis, an over-tight foreskin. After the operation, the doctor told him to abstain from sexual activity for a month, redundant advice for the time being.

'George Smiley' actor Alec Guinness had a bad back while living in Hampshire, and decided to try acupuncture - he never realised the acupuncturist with the foreign accent was a real spy

Until, that is, he was holidaying with an MI6 minder at the Gazelle d’Or, an exclusive hotel in Morocco. He went to a bank to cash a traveller's cheque and spotted a tall woman with a blonde ponytail. Chantal van Santen was French. He asked her out. For Kuzichkin, Chantal was a catharsis. He was cured of his impotence. Not only that, but she was soon pregnant. Redwood’s erectile dysfunction had gone and never returned.

The actor Sir Alec Guinness had a bad back while living in Steep Marsh in Hampshire, and decided to try acupuncture. At a clinic he lay face down as a tall man in a surgical gown with large but gentle hands inserted needles into his neck and shoulders. After a year of treatment, his back was no longer painful.

‘George Smiley’, Guinness’s alter ego and the most famous British screen spy after James Bond, never realised that the huge man with the foreign accent sticking needles into him was a real spy. Vladimir Kuzichkin, KGB double agent, was now Alexander Larkin, rural acupuncturist.

The afterlives of defectors are often troubled. The excitement and notoriety swiftly fade, followed by the weird experience of starting life again. But Kuzichkin was adept at self-reinvention. And he was contented, for a time. Four months later he married Chantal in the Dominican Republic (where the authorities were relaxed about his pre-existing marriage). Their daughter was christened Elena. He doted on the child. MI6 supplied a house in a quiet village in Hampshire, from which he operated his acupuncture clinic.

MI6 was gratified: Redwood was invisibly and successfully planted into a new community, with a settled job and family. But, the black-clad axeman returned to Kuzichkin’s nightmares. He suffered recurrent bouts of ‘surveillance fever’, the sensation of being constantly watched. The marriage collapsed, and Chantal returned to France.

It was not the homesickness or the memories that got Redwood in the end nor the vengeful KGB. It was the alcohol. He could not resist it. When he fell off the wagon, he did so spectacularly. After one extreme bender he was picked up by police in a motorway service station, stark naked and raving about the hitmen on his trail. One evening in 2009, he settled in front of the television with a bottle of vodka. In the morning the bottle was empty and Kuzichkin was dead in his armchair from a heart attack at the age of 62.

The KGB wrote off this flawed, complex and brave man as an embittered, alcoholic traitor. They refused to admit the truth – that he had challenged the most ruthless spy agency in history and helped destroy it.

Adapted from Redwood by Ben Macintyre (Viking, £25). © Ben Macintyre 2026. To order a copy for £22.50 (offer valid to 27/09/26; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.