In 1981, as Iran’s new government persecuted its political opponents, a KGB officer sneaked into a bathroom at the British embassy compound in Tehran. Vladimir Kuzichkin, 6-foot-4 and broad-shouldered, sat on a wicker laundry basket that rustled beneath him. Across from him, MI6 officer Ian McCredie sat on the toilet. McCredie poured the Russian another vodka. He left the taps running and turned on a radio to drown out the conversation. If the Revolutionary Guards heard them, “both would be arrested, interrogated, imprisoned and possibly executed, once the torture was complete,” writes British journalist Ben Macintyre in his new book, “Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War’s Most Extraordinary Spy” (Crown), which is available now. Kuzichkin had arrived with Soviet secrets. He also had a very personal and strange question for McCredie, although he was in no rush to ask it. Vladimir Kuzichkin and his first wife Galina pose with a palm tree in the early 1970s. Archives of Galina Kokosova Kuzichkin, a KGB major who handled contacts with Iran’s Soviet-aligned Tudeh Party, described weapons caches, communist agents within the Iranian army and a possible coup that could push Soviet troops across the border. “The coup could happen tomorrow, next month or never,” Macintyre writes. Kuzichkin knew about the preparations because “he was the lynchpin of the conspiracy.” To prove his worth, Kuzichkin brought a directory from the Soviet embassy and identified the spies hidden among its officials. “An hour and a half had passed and Kuzichkin barely stopped to breathe,” Macintyre writes. “Gallons of water had gone down the drains.” Kuzichkin took another drink, leaned forward, and put a hand on McCredie’s knee. “I have a big problem,” he said. “Will you help me?” “I don’t have electricity in the bedroom,” Kuzichkin explained. He believed that Western medicine could cure his impotence. “Nothing in McCredie’s life or his MI6 training had prepared him for the challenge of handling a spy with erectile dysfunction,” Macintyre writes. McCredie promised to help, and Kuzichkin “nearly crushed him with ‘a tremendous bear hug.'” At their next meeting, McCredie handed him a letter from MI6’s medical director, wrapped around the ink cartridge inside a pen, and a bottle of red pills. Kuzichkin read the letter and swallowed two pills. They were vitamins with iron, which MI6 hoped could work as a placebo. Kuzichkin’s strange story is the subject of a new book. McCredie also handed over a camera to photograph KGB documents. Instead of a James Bond device, the technical branch had supplied “a miniature elderly Minox”, writes Macintyre. Kuzichkin snorted. “We have them in the museum!” In one week he photographed 180 documents inside the Soviet embassy. The British called it REDWOOD because of its height. Macintyre notes that no one initially realized the name’s other possible meanings: “‘RED’ (communist) and ‘WOOD’ (slang for an erection).” In the spring of 1982, the tension was evident. McCredie concluded that Kuzichkin had told his wife about MI6 and panicked when she refused to defect with him. He demanded an immediate escape. Kuzichkin had another request. He wanted to be circumcised as soon as he arrived in Britain, certain it would solve his erectile dysfunction. MI6 had heard some strange questions from Soviet defectors over the years, but this one was new. “Kuzichkin was the first spy in history to demand, as the price of desertion, the removal of his foreskin,” Macintyre writes. Kuzichkin turned to MI6 officer Ian McCredie (above) for help with his impotence and offered him Russian intelligence in exchange for treatment. Courtesy of Ian McCredie MI6 kept that promise and arranged for him to be circumcised by an army doctor at a military hospital in Aldershot in July 1982. The UK intelligence agency also forged a British passport for one “Michael Guy Road”, a supposed diplomatic courier. McCredie packed British clothing to support the costume, although one suit “would have split in half if Kuzichkin had attempted to wear it,” Macintyre writes. Kuzichkin drove through the night toward Türkiye, unaware that Iranian agents were following him. Exhausted, he drove off the road and fell asleep among the trees. His pursuers passed him by. When he woke up, the border was still 180 miles away. He stepped on the accelerator. At the intersection he abandoned his BMW, put on a jacket and tie and introduced himself as a British diplomat. Four armed revolutionary guards detained him. He claimed not to understand Persian, then nervously began to explain himself in fluent Persian. Kuzichkin’s problems in the bedroom were eventually cured, although it is unclear how. Courtesy Elena Alexandrovna Macintyre calls the exchange an “absurd and terrifying confrontation.” Somehow, Kuzichkin managed to overcome it. The guards even took him to the checkpoint. While Iranian agents searched for his car, “Michael Road” crossed into Türkiye. Kuzichkin’s escape gave MI6 a wealth of Soviet secrets. British intelligence proposed sharing the names of Tudeh leaders, military contacts and KGB agents with Iran. CIA Director William Casey backed the plan. That meant cooperating with the government whose militants had recently held 52 Americans hostage. The CIA publicly condemned Iran while secretly providing intelligence to its government. If that agreement were made public, Macintyre writes, “the scandal would be explosive.” It is still unclear whether President Ronald Reagan knew this. In September 1982, Kuzichkin flew to Pakistan and briefed Iranian intelligence officers. Mass arrests, torture and televised confessions followed. Senior members of the Tudeh military network were executed and Iran expelled 18 Soviet officials. The operation damaged Moscow’s intelligence network in Iran, but also helped Khomeini consolidate power by crushing an organized opposition party. In early 1983, Kuzichkin took a much-needed vacation to Gazelle d’Or, a resort in Morocco. During his stay he met Chantal van Santen, a 37-year-old French secretary, and they soon became intimate. His erectile dysfunction had somehow been cured. “Maybe it was the stress-free environment on the Gazelle d’Or, or the nightingales, or the surgery, or his first full inhalation of freedom,” Macintyre writes.
