He was, quite literally, the spy who came in from the cold.

Not the fictional one created by John le Carré in his novel of the same name, later turned in to an award-winning film starring Richard Burton and Claire Bloom.

The one sitting huddled by the inglenook fireplace at the Merry Harriers on a chilly winter’s day was a genuine Cold War spy whose escape to the West was as daring as any espionage book plot – a Russian KGB colonel turned double agent.

And for quite some time back in the late 1980 and early 90s, Hambledon’s village pub was his local when run by Ron Beasley (pictured below) and his family.

If that in itself seems a little unlikely, it is nothing as remarkable as his defection to the UK in 1985. Facing certain death after his sudden recall to Moscow from London where he had been working as KGB Station Chief at the Soviet Embassy, Oleg Gordievsky gave his interrogators the slip and an elaborate pre-arranged escape plan was put into operation.

His Russian spymasters had been tipped off that Gordievsky was a double agent. Ordered to return home, he was drugged and quizzed in a KGB safehouse, then released under supervision while the case against him was prepared.

Gordievsky managed to get a covert message to MI6 in London to enact what was codenamed Operation Pimlico. Carrying a Safeway supermarket plastic bag as a signal, he paused on a street corner while out for a walk in Moscow. An MI6 agent walked past, carrying a Harrods bag and eating a Mars bar.

The two men made eye contact. Operation Pimlico had begun.

A short while later, on July 19^th, 1985, Gordievsky went out for his customary jog. He managed to give the slip to his KGB tails and boarded a train to Leningrad and on to the border with Finland. There he was met by British officials, who had also evaded KGB surveillance, and Gordievsky was bundled into the boot of a Ford Sierra and smuggled across to the West.

His couriers were two British diplomats and their wives, one of whom dropped a soiled baby’s nappy on the ground to foil sniffer dogs. From Finland Gordievsky was flown to the UK.

It is a widely held view that he was Britain’s most valuable agent. Having started out spying for his own country, he had become disillusioned with the KGB, and in particular the brutal putdown of the reform movement in Czechoslovakia in the 1968 “Prague Spring”. Using discreet channels, he let it be known to the West that he was willing to become a double agent.

He was first posted to London in 1982 and began providing highly-valued secrets to MI6. His most significant role was passing on information to the Margaret Thatcher government about the USSR’s paranoia at a time when the world seemed to be close to a nuclear war.

He managed to persuade Soviet leaders that a NATO exercise was not intended by the West to a be a lead-up to a nuclear strike, pulling it back from the brink of a precursive attack. Later he reassured Thatcher that the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev was genuine in his attempt to achieve reform and was someone she could do business with.

Once fully debriefed, Gordievsky was given police protection and a safe house in Busbridge on the outskirts of Godalming. Back in the USSR he was sentence to death in absentia.

Without his family he became lonely and MI6 encouraged him to write an inside story of the KGB. Under Gorbachev, tensions between the Soviet bloc and the West were easing. Gordievsky felt safe enough to venture out from his home, albeit with minders discretely present.

Which is how he happened upon the Merry Harriers. The Beasley family were tenants and then owners of the village pub and ran it for 40 years. Colin Beasley, who with his sister Sue took over from their father Ron, recalls: “I remember the first time Oleg came in the pub. It was a gloomy winter’s day and several foreigners arrived and asked my Dad if they could film an interview after lunchtime closing time. They were from a Scandinavian media channel.

“They set up their gear and interviewed Oleg in Russian. We kept hearing words like “Reagan” and “Star Wars” (the name given to Reagan’s missile defence system) and “Gorbachev”, so we knew he must be someone important.

“Afterwards, I asked for his name and was told he was Oleg Gordievsky. It meant nothing to me at the time until I discovered the connection. After that he came into the pub quite regularly, usually at lunchtime. He enjoyed a pint of bitter and sometimes had a sandwich.

“He usually sat at the small round table by the gap between the public bar (now the restaurant) and the saloon bar. He was sometimes on his own, sometimes with a lady who I thought may have been his daughter (his family were eventually allowed to join him in the UK).

“He was always polite and friendly but he never spoke much about himself”.

The visits continued for quite a while but, as Russia under Gorbachev, with perestroika and glasnost, gave way to a more hostile leadership again, they stopped.

• Author’s note: I remember chatting to Oleg on several occasions. Being a Fleet Street journalist, it would have been of interest to ask him about his new life as well as his new “local”. However, as his defection had already been told in headline news, I felt he had earned the right to enjoy his pint in peace. We talked about other things instead.
• Oleg Gordievsky died at the age of 83 on March 4^th, 2025. Despite the risks he faced, his death was not regarded as suspicious and he avoided the fate of other defectors to the West, whose assassinations have been linked to Russian agents.