MYSTERY OF SALESMAN TRADED BY RUSSIANS
logical game made them easier to handle during interrogations.”
In court in Moscow in 1963 there were cheers and applause as the death penalty was demanded for Penkovsky as punishment for “treason”.
“There is no place on Earth for a traitor and spy who has sold his motherland,” barked the Soviet prosecutor.
Wynne did no more than blink his eyes as his embassy interpreter told him he was to be jailed for eight years. The first three in prison followed by the rest in a “harshregime correctional labour colony”.
He had several periods of solitary confinement and inedible food.
After his release he told reporters: “They treated me as they thought I should be treated”.
In his autobiography, The Man From Moscow, published in 1967, Wynne wrote
“More than my training, more than love of my country, even more than thoughts of my home, it was this fury of contempt which in the end saved me.
“Day and night for the next 18 months I was to generate such loathing for these caricatures of humanity, such unbelief that they could impose their will on the people of Russia, still less on the world, and least of all on myself, that at last, though I was still their prisoner, their power over me was totally destroyed.”
After his release from prison, Wynne prospered as a property developer. He was married twice. His first wife, Sheila, was present throughout his Moscow trial but divorced him after his release. They had one son.
His second wife, whom he married in 1970, was Herma van Buren, his constant companion, secretary and interpreter who spoke eight languages. They separated several years before his death in 1990.
Last week espionage historian and author Gennady Sokolov said: “Wynne has never been a man regarded with interest in the USSR or Russia by the expert community.
“He was a businessman used by MI6, caught by the KGB and exchanged – no great story.
“The focal point was Wynne’s contact – Penkovsky – the Russian superspy that MI6 failed to control long enough.”
This, says Sokolov, was simply “because his final controller was a nonprofessional, a rookie –
Greville Wynne”.