Retreating to Britain, he modified his title to Blake, joined the Royal Navy, educated in submarines and was recruited by Britain’s wartime Secret Service as a novice agent. Fluent in Dutch, German, Arabic and Hebrew in addition to English, he translated German paperwork and interrogated German prisoners.
After the battle he studied Russian at Cambridge — by then, Philby, Burgess and Maclean had graduated into spy tradecraft — and his instructor, a local of pre-Revolutionary Petersburg, impressed in him a love of Russian language and tradition, a step in his conversion. He was then despatched to Germany to construct a community of British spies in Berlin and Hamburg. Utilizing the duvet of a naval attaché, he recruited scores of brokers.
Simply earlier than the Korean Struggle started in 1950, Blake was despatched to Seoul, South Korea’s capital, underneath diplomatic cowl to prepare one other spy community. However he was captured by invading North Korean forces. Held for 3 years in North Korea, he was subjected to communist indoctrination.
Blake later denied that it influenced his conversion to communism, insisting that the American bombing of North Korea had been the prime issue. “The relentless bombing of small Korean villages by huge American flying fortresses” killing “girls and kids and previous individuals” horrified him, he stated. “It made me really feel ashamed” he added. “I felt I used to be dedicated to the unsuitable facet.”
Blake stated he met with a Okay.G.B. officer in North Korea, agreed to grow to be a Soviet agent and instantly started disclosing secrets and techniques. He needed no pay, and to keep away from suspicion insisted on being given no privileges and launched with different captive diplomats. Because the Korean Struggle wound down in 1953, he was repatriated to Britain and obtained as a nationwide hero.
In 1955, he was despatched to Berlin to recruit Soviet officers as double brokers. As a substitute, he started passing British and American secrets and techniques to the Soviets, together with the identities of some 400 spies and particulars of many Western espionage operations, together with two of the best intelligence sources of the Chilly Struggle — tunnels in Berlin and Vienna that had been used to faucet Okay.G.B. and Soviet army telephones.
Blake’s double life was uncovered in 1961 by a Polish intelligence defector, Michael Goleniewski. Tried in closed court docket, he was given three consecutive 14-year phrases. However in 1966, with outdoors assist from three males he had met in jail, he escaped with a rope ladder thrown over the wall. A ready automobile sped him to a hide-out, and he was smuggled in a foreign country and fled to Moscow.