208 • GIDEON
Gibson succeeded in his assignment and in mid-1917 was back in
London, ready for a new mission. He traveled to Finland and was
then smuggled over the frontier into Russia to reestablish contact
with Rudniev, who had retained his post in the secret police under
the new regime headed by the Social Democrats. The colonel sup-
plied Gibson with papers identifying him as a police commissar,
which allowed him the freedom to travel, but when Rudniev was him-
self arrested by theCheka, Gibson fled to Finland. Once back in
London, Gibson received a commission from the Air Ministry and
was posted as an intelligence officer to Taranto, Italy. Gibson com-
plained about his new job and was sent to another backwater, Malta.
Finally, in November 1918, he was transferred to Sir Hugh Tren-
chard’sair intelligencestaff in Paris.
In February 1919, following the armistice, Gibson was demobi-
lized and obtained a job as the Mond Nickel Company’s representa-
tive in the Black Sea region, selling copper sulfate. This took Gibson
across Asia Minor, and in 1920 he was back in London, ready to
undertake another mission to Russia, buying gold in Moscow and
smuggling it to Sweden. Gibson was to have adventures in the south-
ern Soviet republics, where he continued to trade in valuable com-
modities, experience suspicion and hostility, and on one occasion
endure arrest and interrogation at the hands of the Cheka.
In his autobiography,Wild Career: My Crowded Years of Adven-
ture in Russia and the Near East, published in 1935, Gibson recalled
his commercial activities, which left him nearly bankrupt in Istanbul
following the collapse of one of his partners.GIDEON.Adouble agentrecruited by theRoyal Canadian Mounted
Police(RCMP) Security Service,gideonwas Yevgeni Vladimiro-
vich Brik, a Soviet illegal using the alias David Soboloff who sur-
rendered in Ottawa in November 1953. He was assigned a case
officer, Charles Sweeney, and for the duration of the operation, code-
namedkeystone, he was supplied by his Soviet contacts with three
sources to service. One, codenamedgreen, who was connected to
the Canadian Communist party, worked for the Avro Aircraft Com-
pany and passed him blueprints of the advanced Avro Arrow jet
fighter. The fact that the Soviets usedgideonas a conduit to such an
important asset demonstrated that, despite his laziness and his poor