Spying in Peking

To hear the Chinese tell it, the caper came right out of a spy novel. "It was the evening of Jan. 15 when the streets in the Chinese capital were emptying," reported the official New China News Agency. "A gray Soviet Volga car sped out of the Soviet embassy in China. Winding through streets and lanes, it left the city and raced toward the northeastern outskirts."

What followed, according to the Chinese, was an operation that would have embarrassed the most junior spy. Caught while parked under a bridge making "secret contact with Soviet-Sent Agent Li Hung-shu and another unidentified Chinese in the outskirts of Peking" were the first and third secretaries of the Soviet embassy in Peking, their wives and a Russian interpreter.

According to Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Yu Chan, the five Russians were nabbed two weeks ago with a large cache of incriminating evidence including a radio transmitter and receiver, "counter-revolutionary documents," and code books. At first the Chinese denied knowing where the Russians were, said Moscow, but after two days, the diplomats and their wives were allowed vis its from Soviet embassy officials. Two days later the five were hustled aboard a plane bound for Moscow.

Unprecedented Charges. The Chinese claimed last week that Agent Li had "confessed" that he had dealings with the Russians and had "carried out espionage activities under [the Soviets'] direct command." Peking charged that Soviet espionage was designed to destroy the Chinese state. The charges were un precedented, even in the acrimonious climate of diplomatic dueling between the two Communist superpowers.

Moscow responded by insisting that the Russian officials and their wives were innocent victims of "a carefully planned hostile act against the Soviet Union." The Soviets charged that the first secretary, V.I. Marchenko, his wife, and the third secretary's wife had been seized while driving home from a dining and shopping excursion in Peking. They were, according to Moscow, pulled from their car by Chinese Public Security officials, bound, and taken to a street where "a big crowd had assembled and where movie cameras and klieg lights were ready." Then they were dragged out of the cars amid the jeers and hoots of the crowd, and the entire episode was filmed. The other Russians -- Third Secretary U.A. Semyonov and his interpreter, A. A. Kolosov -- were picked up else where in Peking by police, handcuffed and taken to the Public Security Department, where "they were subjected to vi olence and threats of execution."

The Soviet countermove was sur prisingly mild, which suggests that the five may actually have been involved in espionage. Last week security agents arrested an obscure Chinese attache, Kuan Heng-kuang, aboard the Chinese-operated Moscow-Peking express at the Si berian city of Irkutsk. The Soviets claimed that the attache had been at tempting "to obtain espionage information of military nature from a Soviet woman." He was promptly ordered out of Russia. Since the diplomat was heading home anyway, the expulsion amounted to no more than a diplomatic gesture.

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