Konon Molody

Beginnings in intelligence work: the GRU In October 1940, Molody became a Red Army conscript and soldier. Later, he evinced a strong capacity to learn quickly and to master new tasks and assignments prodigiously. He also proved adept at mastering foreign languages in a short period of time. Therefore, he was quickly re-assigned as a reconnaissance and military intelligence officer by autumn 1940. As a military intelligence officer, he served in the GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence). In Molody's biography of himself as the KGB illegal, Gordon Lonsdale (Spy: Twenty Years of Secret Service), he narrates the "legend" that he was from a Polish family from Lvov (Lviv) and two years younger than he really was (that is, Lonsdale was two years younger than Molody in the "legend" or backstory). Lonsdale in the "legend" had first arrived in Warsaw in the summer of 1939. He begins to work with a Polish underground resistance group and obtains papers as a Volksdeutscher. Lonsdale continues to describe the situation in Warsaw which after September 1939 was conquered and divided between the Soviets and Nazi Germany. Germany held Warsaw. All the while, Lonsdale (Molody) was learning and practicing his Polish and German from summer 1939 to summer 1940. Ostensibly he was part of the Polish underground movement (the backstory), but in reality this time period and training was part of his language training as a GRU intelligence officer. Molody (as Lonsdale) was also receiving training using passwords, dead drops, safehouses and learned how to escape a surveillance tail from enemy intelligence agents. Sometime in late 1940 or early 1941, Molody (as Lonsdale) began his work as a Volksdeutscher inside a German Organization Todt. Todt was in charge of building civil infrastructure (bridges, roads, railways) in Lvov.

The next part of his GRU work during WWII was spent with the renowned William Fisher (the famous illegal better known by his U.S. identity of Colonel Abel). In late 1939, Molody found himself in a hospital in Moscow where he began a short course in intelligence work. He was also given a course in radio communication that is, how to work as a radio operator, coding and decoding radio messages. In January 1940, Molody was parachuted surreptitiously in Belarus near Minsk. In 1943, he was unexpectedly picked up by the Abwehr (German intelligence) for having some discrepancy with his papers. He was soon interrogated by an Abwehr intelligence officer who turned out to be William Fisher. Fisher incredibly was a Soviet intelligence agent who managed to infiltrate German intelligence, that is, the Abwehr. Fisher's cover was named Alec. Alec selected Molody for an Abwehr operation behind Soviet lines. During the medical examination of Molody, Alec (Fisher) found a medical problem with Molody, noted it in the file and then released Molody. Thereafter, Molody served as Fisher's radio operator for Soviet intelligence. Fisher continued to serve in the Abwehr and through Molody sent information back to the Soviets about the Abwehr's agents behind Soviet lines. Molody noted that Fisher's coordinates for the Abwehr agents dropped behind Soviet lines were quite precise. Soviet forces were able to capture the German agents quickly. Molody wrote of Fisher (in the Lonsdale memoir), "This was my first introduction to one of the most remarkable men I have ever met in my life, who is also indeed one of the most astute intelligence officers of all time." Sometime in early 1944, Molody and Fisher's assignment in Minsk ended.

After the end of the war, from 1946 Molody enrolled as a war veteran into the Trade Law Department of the prestigious Institute of Foreign Trade, where he mastered the Chinese language.

In 1954, Konon Molody moved to London, where as a Canadian citizen he enrolled at the London University School of Oriental and African Studies and again studied Chinese. He had numerous female friends in London and Europe. Using business as a cover, Molody headed a London KGB front company manufacturing and trading in jukeboxes, bubble-gum and gambling machines. He may have recruited other agents and set up dead letter boxes while on his business trips to West Europe. Once a year he would spend time in Prague or Warsaw with his Russian wife Galina. She was led by the KGB to believe Konon was posted in Beijing as a member of the Soviet trade mission. The Krogers acted as his technical support; he communicated with Moscow via their hidden radio transmitter.

UK conviction for espionage

Molody came under suspicion from MI5 in 1959 after a meeting with Houghton. At the request of MI5, the Treasury gave permission to search a private safe box at the Midland Bank on Great Portland Street. Concealed within a lighter was a London map for places to conceal or collect information. He was to start his sentence at Winson Green Prison, Birmingham. From his single cell, he fraternised with some of the Great Train Robbers. he was exchanged in a spy-swap for Greville Wynne, a British businessman apprehended and convicted in Moscow for his contacts with Oleg Penkovsky. The prisoners were swapped at the Heerstraße Checkpoint in Berlin.

Later life in Russia A year after his return to the Soviet Union he published a book Spy: Memoirs of Gordon Lonsdale with the author still maintaining he was born in Canada. at the age of 48. Konon's youth friend and retired KGB intelligence agent Leonid Kolosov co-wrote The Dead Season: End of the Legend. He maintained that Konon was healthy upon his return from the UK but began complaining about KGB doctors giving him injections against high blood pressure. Konon had headaches he never had before but the doctors said he should expect to "feel worse before he felt better".

He is buried at the Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow next to Vilyam Genrikovich Fisher (aka Colonel Rudolf Abel).

Popular culture A 1968 film Dead Season was based on Molody's mission in the UK. Molody advised Donatas Banionis who played him, and believed that resemblance between him and the actor was significant.