After busting a Russian spy who was on his way to start an internship in The Hague, the Netherlands’ intelligence agency has published the truly epic cover story the secret agent had been using.
Reading like a roller-coaster coming-of-age narrative, the confected story is full of heartbreak, restaurant recommendations, and truly needless sexual fantasies about a possibly fictitious geography teacher.
The Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) on Wednesday shared news that it had stopped Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, a Russian GRU intelligence officer, from gaining access to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Pretending to be a Brazilian citizen named Viktor Muller Ferreira, Cherkasov was refused entry into the Netherlands when he landed in April and was sent back to Brazil on the next flight out of the country.
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The AIVD described Cherkasov as an “illegal,” which is an “intelligence officer who received a long and extensive training.” The ICC is currently investigating possible war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine and in Georgia in 2008. “For those reasons, covert access to International Criminal Court information would be highly valuable to the Russian intelligence services,” the AIVD said in a statement. “The illegal was supposed to commence an internship with the ICC, which would mean he would have access to the ICC's building and systems.”
But as well as news of their success in stopping Cherkasov from doing the internship, the AIVD published an amazing four-page letter they believe was written by the Russian spy “in order to memorize the details of his cover.” It’s not clear how Dutch intelligence obtained the document—but it is clear that Cherkasov had an extremely vivid imagination. (You can read the full letter below.)
The partially redacted account of the fictional life of Viktor lurches from florid descriptions of the creaking floorboards in a nonexistent family home to Breaking Bad-esque plots of being forced to make devastating sacrifices to pay for medical bills.
In the voice of Viktor, Cherkasov describes being raised by a sickly single mother in Brazil. He also says he was raised in part by his kind aunt, a seamstress. “I loved the sewing machine the most, even though aunt [sic] would not let me touch it, ever; when I did she’d say that it was the only thing in her life that was still functioning properly,” the highly embellished cover story, or “legend,” reads.
His made-up school years are also punctuated by odd salacious details. “At secondary school I was particularly fond of the geography teacher, Mrs [redacted]. She was so beautiful and all the boys in the class had a crush on her,” the letter reads. “Many came with stories, which all began the same—the teacher told them to stay behind after class—but they all ended differently: one had her do a striptease, others had had sex with her. I do not like these stories, I felt my crush on [redacted] was real and honest.”
Elsewhere, the spy thinks it’s super important to remember which pin-up models adorned the walls of a car garage he worked in. “On the door of the supply cabinet hung a poster of a young Veronica Castro,” the spy says of the garage, “later to be replaced by one of Pamela Anderson.”
Of course the main lady is Viktor’s poor mother. “Falling in love and being disappointed by people came easy to her, as in the case of my father,” the letter says. “Mother collected butterflies, but the collection had to be sold off to pay for medical treatments.”
The wild cover story even has a freaking redemption arc. After leaving his mother as a child, Viktor’s absent father reunites with his son in Rio in 2010. “My farther [sic] came across as a very friendly and open person, but to my surprise I discovered that I blamed him for the deaths of my mother and my aunt and all the difficulties and humiliations I had to suffer in my life,” the letter says of the tense reunion. The letter then shares Viktor’s favorite restaurant in Brasilia, which serves “the best brown bean stew in town,” and a club that he frequented, possibly because it’s “the only club that plays trance music.” But the last line really gives our hero the ending he deserves: “I remain in touch with my father through the internet.”
All’s well that ends well, eh?
