The spy village

[shkrobius]

Back in the early 1950s, the KGB sent two of their most skillful spies to the UK. The spies were supposed to lie low for a couple of years and then set up their nets. They were waiting for the signal from their contact. Their orders were very strict: to wait for this contact and only this contact. Only their spymaster knew who was that contact in the KGB. The only problem was that their contact was arrested by the British, and then their spymaster was shot in Russia after Stalin's death. Unbelievable as it may sound, the KGB lost their track. That is, you would not believe it, right? Nor did the British, who somehow figured out their identities. After a few years of waiting in the cold, the spies decided to live normal lives in the UK. They kept in touch and moved to the same village in the south of England. They got regular jobs and were doing quite well. The British were bewildered. MI-5 suspected the plot of particularly diabolical canniness and began one of their most secret operations. One by one, they slowly replaced the villagers by their own secret agents, to keep close eye on the Russian spies and their mysterious activities. In a few years, the Russians married and had children. Both of their wives were British agents who spied on their husbands. In time, their children grew up and three of them were recruited to spy on their fathers. After years of all this spying, the MI-5 still failed to crack this unprecedented Russian operation, despite their best effort. But that is not all. The CIA also learned the identity of these two spies and, furthermore, they've learned that the British were spying on the Russian spies. The Americans, however, decided against the cooperation with the British, because they did not want to reveal their source. And so the Americans set their own spynet in the same village, to spy on the Russians and to spy on the British spying on the Russians. And still, this is not all. The British managed to learn that the Americans were spying both on the Russians and on the British, and so they started to spy on the Americans; they did not want them to learn first what the Russian spies were up to. By the 1970s, everyone living in that lovely village was a spy, and its population quadrupled. The operation already lasted 20 years, children grew up, and the kids of the Russian spies intermarried with the kids of the British and American spies. By the 1980s nobody was quite sure who was spying on whom, because the majority of the families had spies on both sides. The only two people in that village who were not spying on anyone were the two Russian spies. In the early 1990s these Russians decided that the statutes of limitations have probably expired and went to the MI-5 to confess their sins. It was the time of perestroika in Russia and they wanted to go back for a visit; both were elderly by that time. They were pardoned by Her Majesty's government.

This was the longest covert operation by the British during the cold war.

True or false?