Document Z (34 page)

Bialoguski was surprised when John Rodgers, director of Australia-Soviet House, rang him at the surgery and wanted to meet. They had lunch at Ling Nam's, a Chinese restaurant in King Street, and discussed strategies that the Communist Party might use at the commission. Rodgers was certain that, due to his friendship with Petrov, Bialoguski would be called. The doctor pretended to be unsure.

‘Petrov was a drinker,' said Rodgers.

‘Oh?'

‘And a womaniser. A bad one. A shameless, womanising drunk.'

‘I believe you.'

‘What's most important is the destruction of this bloke's credit. This is the biggest battle for the Party since Menzies tried to ban it. Petrov will name names. But we all know what he was like. If the question of his drunkenness comes up, if his unwelcome attentions to women come up . . . We're just suggesting that you cast doubt by testifying to his habits.'

‘Petrov is a traitor,' said Bialoguski. ‘Of course I want to help in any way I can.'

The commission hearings in Sydney were swamped by protesters. Some waved placards and a few wore papier-mâché masks. Bialoguski, a hat pulled tightly over his head, watched with subdued amusement as a huge, drunken incarnation of Menzies walked bellowing up the steps of the High Court to be threatened at its doors by a constable with a cudgel.

Vladimir gave his initial evidence over four days. It was revealed that the author of Document H was Fergan O'Sullivan, Doctor Evatt's young press secretary, who, though repentant, was very quickly sacked.

When Evdokia took the stand the press remarked upon how educated and attractive she was. Asked who had written Document J, she stepped from the witness box, paced the front row of the gallery and pointed a finger at Rupert Lockwood, announcing his name.

Bialoguski eagerly awaited his own appearance. It had been revealed now that he was no ordinary, left-leaning doctor but instead a careful and deliberate agent working for the Security service. He practised for his turn, anticipating how the communists would go after him. But before he could appear, events turned strange. Doctor Evatt demanded that Document J be subjected to expert analysis. He was concerned about the way the document was organised, and seemed to be suggesting that certain elements had been inserted.

Bialoguski watched in disbelief as Evatt's theory emerged. It seemed the Labor leader believed that a conspiracy had taken place. At best, Document J had been altered by unnamed forces for the purposes of smearing his staffers and, by extension, Evatt himself. At worst, the whole document was a fabrication, the cruel work of an expert forger, brought into existence for debased political ends. A plot existed, but Evatt was cautious, never fully revealing its shape. Indeed, as the commission progressed, the plot seemed capable of instant transformation, huge twists and turns around the evidence. Empirical facts were in one breath relied upon and in the next breath questioned. The central issue became: was Document J a forgery or was it not? If it was a forgery, who had done the forging and why?

Bialoguski was not amused. Evatt was putting Lockwood, his staffers and himself at the heart of the story. From what Bialoguski could glean, Document J was a pissy little rant, nothing to do with anything. Now it was stealing the show.

He finally entered the witness box. He testified about his double life, the sacrifices and the deceptions. He spoke about his relations with Petrov, the final steps that had led to his defection. Ted Hill, the de-facto solicitor for Australian communists, tried to paint him as a mercenary, a man for hire, paid according to the value of the information he could unearth. Bialoguski denied it. Hill suggested that the doctor was duplicitous. An interesting charge, said Bialoguski, given that that had been his job.

‘You have shown interest in the Soviet Union, support for the Soviet Union, have you not?' Hill said.

‘Yes.'

‘But you were never a member of the Communist Party?'

‘No.'

‘However, you did belong to the Russian Social Club?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you belonged to various peace movements?'

‘I did.'

‘And in each of these bodies to which you belonged, to whose aims you
pretended
to subscribe, you made some close friends, did you not?'

‘I made some acquaintances.'

‘You made some friends?'

‘Not in my mind.'

Hill paused. ‘Why did you join Security's service?' he asked.

‘Why?'

‘Yes.'

‘Duty, I suppose.'

‘It's a strange occupation, is it not?'

‘I don't see how.'

‘I take it you dislike communism?'

‘I think it is bad for Australia, yes.'

‘But why spy? You say it has cost you a lot personally. Why did you involve yourself to such extremes?'

‘I wouldn't say extremes.'

‘Other people might think so. Devoting your life, as you tell us you have, in this way.'

‘Somebody has to. Somebody needs to stand at the cold edge.'

‘But why you? That is what I am asking.'

It made Bialoguski uncomfortable that he had no answer. Not, at least, an answer that he was happy with. He would have liked some event in his life to summon, to point at as explanation. The death of his father, perhaps, or of a beloved brother, or a young wife; a motivating tragedy for which communism's bastardry was to blame.

‘I don't understand your question, Mr Hill,' he eventually said. ‘I would say that it was irrelevant.'

Hill had a last assertion. ‘Isn't it true that you, Doctor Bialo-guski, conspired with the Petrovs to manufacture Document J?'

Bialoguski groaned. It was exasperating how the commission had been hijacked. It suited the Communist Party, he supposed, to so muddle the evidence with doubts, perceived contradictions and lunacies, thus affording any real proof of espionage the cover of a general circus.

He wrote on. He spoke to Clean at the
Sydney Morning
Herald
, who said the paper would carry extracts. He met with a representative from William Heinemann. The publisher was interested, offered him a small sum that afternoon to have first option on the final product. Bialoguski explained that a secret second version was in the pipeline—one dealing in detail with Security's foolish ways.

‘That's fine,' said the publisher. ‘Whatever you want to write.'

One morning, in his flat, he accidentally shot a wall. The gun went off at his desk and the bullet travelled through and into the corridor outside. He retrieved it, returned to the armchair and sat, prepared to concede it was perhaps time to ditch the revolver. Ostensibly it was for safety, but, reluctantly, he knew it was for more. The gun was a way of living. Not in a dying-by-the-sword sense, but in the way it was a secret, a hidden thing, a sort of power over those who could not suspect it.

He had thought he was adapting to his new, open life, the life lived whole, but was it just that he'd found his old habits again in this gun?

It was not something he could readily explain to himself, but in truth he had been feeling, since Petrov's defection, somehow rejected. It was a foolish emotion, not unlike the feeling he'd had when he'd been booted from the orchestra. He knew it was a preposterous sentiment when nothing of the sort had occurred, but there it was: he felt wilfully discarded. Somehow excluded by the world.

Three months later, he'd finished
The Petrov Story
. He particularly liked its concluding chapter, a piece of political analysis in which he called Doctor Evatt an opportunist and accused him of using the commission to divert attention from his own electoral failings.

There was also his final word on the Petrovs. Their future would depend on themselves, he declared. Whether they had the moral courage to know in their hearts that they had done the right thing. Whether they had sincerity of purpose in accepting what their new life would offer.

Sincerity of purpose. He didn't quite know what he meant by it, how precisely it applied to the Petrovs, but he liked the sound.

When extracts of the book appeared in the
Herald
, he expected business at the surgery to pick up. If anything, it dropped off. It was frustrating. All he'd given these people, this nation, and now they could read about it and still he was out of favour.

For a month or two, he turned inward. He rehearsed his violin intently, an element of himself he'd been neglecting.

In December 1955, he found himself in the Spring Street offices of the Orient Line. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Get out of Australia. Temporarily. Permanently. What was keeping him here, really? A dying medical practice, a measure of notoriety, a licence to carry a weapon?

He spoke with the director of entertainments.

‘I want passage to London as a professional passenger. I can give lectures. I can be charming at dinner. I can even play as a guest in your band, should you like.'

The director looked up from flipping through the pages of Bialoguski's book.

‘The Petrov spy,' he said.

‘And I want only passage, not payment. It's a good deal for you since the ship will sail anyway.'

Michael Howley wished his former agent luck. He said Bialoguski had played an essential part in securing the defections of the Petrovs and he thanked him for it. He said also that it was perhaps best not to say goodbye to Vladimir and Evdokia. Difficult times at the safe house, he explained.

Instead, Bialoguski wrote a short farewell note to Vladimir, signed but undated, to be handed to the man whenever Security saw fit. He had intended to finish it with a joke, a parting piece of wit between friends, but as he stood with his hand over the paper, waiting for inspiration, he drew a complete blank. Try as he did for several minutes, absolutely nothing came to mind.

1961-1996

25

The New TRUTH

The Independent Newspaper

Melbourne, January 21, 1961

WE FIND PETROVS!

‘I WISH I WERE DEAD.'

The secret is out; the Petrovs are found. For the first time their
story of six fear-filled years is told. And TRUTH tells it!

‘NOBODY COULD DREAM OF OUR MISERY'
By Bill Wannan and Norma Ferris

THIS WEEK we tracked down Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov, the
Russian diplomats who made world headlines when they defected
and won political asylum in Australia in 1954.

For six years their hiding places have been known only to the
Prime Minister (Mr Menzies) and a few top security guards.

What are they like now, the Petrovs?

How have the years of hiding and subterfuge affected them?

We can tell you.

The Petrovs are lonely, scared people, still dreading an attack
from Russian agents.

‘No one could dream of our misery . . . I wish I were dead,' said
Mrs Petrov . . . Mr Petrov shuffled up looking grey, older than his
age and tired . . . ‘Quiet, please, somebody is near . . . I don't trust
them,' said Mrs Petrov . . . Mr Petrov walked quietly away.

Tears welled in Mrs Petrov's eyes.

‘I am frightened,' she said. ‘How? How? How did you find us?'
she kept asking.

We couldn't tell Mrs Petrov that. We wouldn't tell anyone.
But it was along a trail to a holiday resort that we are satisfied no
one else will be able to follow.

We found Mrs Petrov an intelligent, ambitious woman, WITH
NOWHERE TO GO.

She was trained by one of the greatest political machines on
earth to think, act, talk and absorb.

But what is there ahead? Only the humble existence of looking
after her husband.

From what we learned of their story from 1954 the Petrovs have
had little peace of mind because of what might have happened to
their relatives in Russia.

But what is the alternative? Go back to Russia?

Mrs Petrov has lost weight. Her figure is slim and petite. She
looks younger, healthier than she appeared during the commission
hearings.

Petrov has become greyer. The years have dealt more hardly
with his appearance than with his wife's.

‘His nerves are very bad,' Mrs Petrov told us. ‘He has suffered
too much already because of the publicity.'

As she told her story we could see that she had suffered—it
was the tragedy of the frail human being caught in the meshes of
mankind's political caperings.

When we first approached Mrs Petrov this week, she stood
frozen with fear.

‘Can you not leave us alone, we have had enough, we cannot
bear any more,' she said.

She looked like any other housewife.

Trying To Go On

She was simply dressed in a tasteful cotton frock no one would
look at, except perhaps to say, ‘What an attractive little woman.'

‘Can you imagine what a hell on earth we have been through?'
she asked.

‘We do not want anything. We are trying to go on but it is
incredibly hard.'

With an intolerably sad look in her beautiful china blue eyes,
she said: ‘No one could imagine what it has been like, no one!'

We assured Mrs Petrov we would never reveal the locality to
which we had traced her.

Then Petrov, the man who was once world headlines, joined us.

A stocky grey-haired man in sports clothes and dark glasses, he
came in saying, ‘What is going on here, what is it?'

He looked pale and nervous.

‘I will manage this,' Mrs Petrov said, springing like a tiger cat
protecting her young.