Spy game over.
The gaggle of Russian spies carted back to their homeland after years of living phony American existences in an elaborate intelligence gathering operation landed in Moscow yesterday.
But what happens next for model mole Anna Chapman and her comrades remains an international mystery.
The climax of what seemed like a cloak-and-dagger thriller played out on a tarmac in Vienna as 10 Russian agents nabbed in the United States and four Western spies were freed from their bonds in the biggest exchange of agents since the Cold War.
The Russian spies flew to Vienna on a charter flight from La Guardia accompanied by US marshals.
The American plane parked side-by-side with a Russian jet carrying the Western moles at 2 p.m. Canopies covered the jets’ stairs so the spies could stay out of sight as they switched aircraft.
Less than 90 minutes later, the Russian Yak-42 aircraft left for Moscow carrying the 10 booted from the United States, and a maroon-and-white Boeing 767-200 that brought those agents in from New York whisked away the Western spies.
As the Russians returned home, the American plane made a pit stop in Britain to drop off two of the foursome.
Those men, scientist Igor Sutyagin and former Russian colonel Sergei Skripal, will be staying in England, The Times of London reported. They were being debriefed last night.
The others, ex-colonel Alexander Zaporozhsky — who may have exposed information leading to the capture of American double agents Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames — and former KGB officer Gennady Vasilenko continued on to the United States, landing at Dulles Airport last night.
The newly deported Kremlin agents went on to Domodedovo Airport, where they landed at 5:45 p.m. Moscow time.
Chapman, the 28-year-old bombshell redhead, stepped out on the runway to call her sister.
“Everything’s fine, we’ve landed,” she said, according to Russian media.
Then she and the rest of the ring were whisked away in a motorcade, with their final destinations unknown.
Chapman’s American lawyer had said she wanted to move back to London after seeing her family in Moscow.
Not so fast, the Brits replied.
The British home secretary could strip her citizenship, which she received after marrying an Englishman, British media reported yesterday.
Her case is “under urgent consideration,” given her plea to the espionage-related charge. One report said UK officials are trying to see if her marriage to Alex Chapman was a sham.
“The home secretary has the right to deprive dual nationals of their British citizenship where she considers that to do so would be conducive to the public good,” BBC News quoted a spokesman.
Mother Russia didn’t appear be preparing any parades for their busted spies.
“[They] will not be received here as heroes because they don’t deserve it,” one Russian official told The Los Angeles Times. “On the other hand, we don’t want to portray them as clowns or idiots. I think we need to just leave them in peace and make everybody forget about them as soon as possible.”
The embarrassment of the spies’ incompetence was compounded by the fact that Russia had only four captured spies valuable enough to trade, sources told The Times of London.
Apparently some of the Russian agents are still deluded. One of the spies, Andrey Bezrukov, who lived in Cambridge, Mass., under the name Donald Howard Heathfield with a wife and children, wants to continue his consulting business, his lawyer told the Boston Globe.
His wife, Elena Vavilova, wants to be a teacher, the paper reported.
Last night all of the spies’ children were in the process of heading back to Russia.
The 17-year-old son of former Yonkers residents Vicky Pelaez and the spy known as Juan Lazaro was awaiting word from his parents.
One convicted couple, Mikhail Kutsik and Natalia Pereverzeva, had been making arrangements even before the plea deal to send their two young children to Russia from Arlington, Va.
Vladimir and Lydia Guryev, living in Montclair, NJ, under the names Richard and Cynthia Murphy, have two daughters, ages 7 and 11.
The Obama administration began kicking around a possible spy swap as early as June 11, more than two weeks ahead of the arrests of the agents on June 27.
The plan for the swap was first proposed by the president himself and the OK was given to send them back to Russia because they had never penetrated the US government. They were simply more valuable to trade than for any intelligence they might have provided.
The plan was already in place when Obama met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev three days before the arrests. But it was put into action shortly after the visit because at least two of the spies were planning to leave the United States.
After the busts, CIA Director Leon Panetta approached the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service with a proposed deal, a US official said. There were no dragged-out negotiations, and the United States got all it wanted in the spy swap, sources said.
American officials said some of those freed by Russia were ailing, and cited humanitarian concerns for arranging the swap in such a hurry.
“This sends a powerful signal to people who cooperate with us that we will stay loyal to you,” said former CIA officer Peter Earnest.
Zaporozhsky, a former colonel in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, was sentenced in 2003 to 18 years in prison for espionage on behalf of the United States.
Sutyagin, a think-tank analyst, says he didn’t pass along any information that wasn’t available through open sources.
Skripal, a former colonel in the Russian military intelligence, was found guilty of passing state secrets to Britain and sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2006. Vasilenko was sentenced in 2006 to three years in prison for illegal weapons possession and resistance to authorities.