RASTVOROV, YURI• 437Cope, reported that Major Yuri A. Rastvorov had indicated his wish
todefect, but once theresettlementpackage had been negotiated
and agreed in London, Rastvorov suddenly changed his mind and
went to theCentral Intelligence Agency(CIA) instead in January
- Rastvorov claimed to his delighted CIA handlers to have heard
on theNKVDgrapevine that SIS had been severely penetrated and
therefore could not guarantee his safety. As evidence, he cited the
example of LieutenantIvan Skripkin, an NKVD subordinate who
he said had approached SIS somewhere in the Far East in 1947, but
had been arrested in Moscow soon afterward.
According to his CIA dossier, Rastvorov was born in July 1921 in
Dimitriyevsk in the Kursk province of central Russia. His father was
an officer in the Red Army and his mother a physician. His paternal
grandfather was accused in the 1930s of being a kulak—a land-
owner—and was dispossessed, dying of starvation in the famine that
followed collectivization. During World War II, Rastvorov had been
conscripted into the Red Army and was assigned to a Japanese lan-
guage training school and then to a foreign intelligence unit of the
KGB. He married a ballerina, Galina Andreevna Godova, who in
1945 gave birth to a daughter, Tatyana. He was posted to Tokyo in
1946, then recalled for a security check, and in 1950 reassigned in
Tokyo. His mission was to cultivate agents at a Tokyo tennis club,
so he became a proficient player. He had been recalled to Moscow
following the arrest of Lavrenti Beria, and fear of the reception he
was likely to receive prompted his approach to the British. His Rus-
sian daughter and wife, from whom he was later divorced, remained
in the Soviet Union.
After he was resettled in the United States by the CIA, Rastvorov
lived in the Washington, D.C., area and adopted the identity of Mar-
tin F. Simons, knocking three years off his age. Rastvorov had mar-
ried his CIA case officer, Hope Macartney, who bore him two
children, but it was not until Jennifer was 11 and her sister, Alexan-
dra, was 13, that they learned their father’s real identity—and his real
name. Their mother told them on a family outing in Minnesota.
‘‘Your father has two birthdays,’’ she began, as the sisters exchanged
incredulous looks. ‘‘He is not who you think he is. He is a Soviet
defector.’’
Rastvorov’s alias was that of Martin Simons, born in September