The moment the two Soviet officials arrived at their offices at the United Nations Secretariat building in New York City, they knew something was very, very wrong. The inner office was closed off. The lock on the door had been changed, and a printed notice said that the office had been sealed by U.N. security forces. The date was Friday, April 6, 1978.
The distraught Soviets summoned building guards and demanded an explanation. What had happened to their countryman and boss, Arkady Shevchenko? He was a ranking Soviet diplomat, a former top adviser to Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and, for the past five years Under Secretary-General of the U.N., one of Kurt Waldheim's senior deputies. The two Soviets were told that the office had in fact been sealed at Shevchenko's own request the night before. More alarmed than ever, Shevchenko's assistants hurried to their real headquarters, the Soviet mission on East 67th Street in Manhattan.
Five days later the world learned what the Soviets had immediately suspected. SOVIET CITIZEN, WALDHEIM AIDE, DEFECTS AT U.N., read the headline over the front-page story in the New York Times. Shevchenko was his country's highest-ranking diplomatic defector since World War II. At 47 he was already a 22-year veteran of the Soviet foreign service, and he had risen quickly in its ranks. Far more important than his highly visible assignment in New York was the one that occupied him from late 1970 until early 1973 when, as an adviser to Gromyko, he was able to observe at first hand the inner workings of the Politburo, the U.S.S.R.'s ruling body.
Says a former American intelligence officer: "Shevchenko was a very big catch indeed. He had been in a lot of key places deep inside the Soviet apparatus at key times--places where we rarely get any kind of glimpse at all. He had a lot to tell us." Now, seven years later, he is telling the world. His memoir, Breaking with Moscow, is to be published this month (Knopf; 378 pages; $18.95). A resident of Washington, Shevchenko lives comfortably off lecture fees ($6,000 to $12,000 a speech). His American wife Elaine, whom he married in late 1978, helped him write his book.
The most sensational revelation in Shevchenko's memoir is that he had been working as an agent-in-place for the CIA for 2 1/2 years before his defection. But the book is far more than a true-life spy story. It is rich in insights into the life of the Soviet elite, the personal rivalries and bureaucratic infighting, the sycophancy and nepotism, and the workings of Kremlin policymaking. Examples:
-- En route to the U.S. in 1960 as part of the entourage accompanying Nikita Khrushchev, Shevchenko hears the bumptious Premier mutter threats against the life of then U.N. Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold, who died mysteriously in a plane crash in the Congo a year later.
-- Chatting with a colleague, he learns of a heated Politburo debate over launching a nuclear strike against China.
-- He describes Moscow's campaign to conclude a treaty liquidating all chemical and biological weapons as a propaganda sham and notes, "There is no question that the U.S.S.R. is much better prepared than the U.S. for this type of warfare."
-- Friends with KGB and Central Committee sources tell him of a growing move to get rid of Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, "one way or another."