6 • AGABEKOV, GEORGES
South America was enhanced by the deployment of three Canberra
PR-9s from 18 Group, No. 1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit from
RAF Wyton, and two signals intelligence–modified Hercules to
Punta Arenas, Chile, in Chilean Air Force livery (but NATO standard
camouflage).AGABEKOV, GEORGES. An OGPU officer based in Turkey,
Georges Agabekov fell in love with his English teacher, Isabel
Streater, anddefectedto Paris in 1930, where the following year he
published his memoirs,OGPU: The Russian Secret Terror. His true
name was Arutyanov but he adopted the new identity when he was
assigned to Constantinople as the illegalrezident, a task he had ful-
filled previously in Tehran. After they were married, the couple set-
tled in Brussels, but in July 1937 he was lured to the Franco-Spanish
frontier in a scheme involving smuggled artworks looted during the
Spanish Civil War. He was never seen again and it is presumed that
he was assassinated by theNKVD. His wife returned to England and
died in New York in November 1971 while working for the British
Mission to the United Nations.
AGAR, AUGUSTUS.In the early summer of 1918, Lieutenant Au-
gustus Agar was given command of a flotilla of fast 40-foot coastal
motor boats (CMBs) and sent to the remote island of Osea in Essex.
He assumed that his role would be one of coastal protection until he
was invited to London to meet Admiral Mansfield Smith-Cumming,
who asked him to take two of his high-speed craft to Finland. Their
purpose was to ferry British agents across the Baltic, and in particu-
lar give a means of escape to ‘‘ST 25,’’ theSecret Intelligence Ser-
vice’s star agent in Russia,Paul Dukes. Agar’s clandestine missions
proved so successful that the admiral requested him to mount a sur-
prise night raid on Krondstadt, across the Gulf of Finland, where the
menacing Soviet fleet was anchored. Operating from an abandoned
yacht club at Terrioki, Agar’s CMBs sped over the water at speeds of
up to 40 knots and launched their torpedoes against the Russian
cruiserOleg, which sank soon afterward, a feat for which Agar was
decorated with the Victoria Cross and the Distinguished Service
Order.
Agar remained in the Royal Navy until his retirement in 1943,