by Philip Kerr
I went inside the villa, through the cool hall, grabbed the wrought-iron banister, and started up the stairs two at a time. The eagle atop a ten-foot-high gilded wooden perch on the corner landing eyed my swift progress with detached interest. There was something vaguely Nazi about that eagle, and I would not have been surprised if it had once been marched triumphantly through the Brandenburg Gate, at the head of an SA troop and a military brass band, in some midnight torchlight procession. Sometimes I miss Berlin more than seems appropriate.
I reached the second floor and climbed the wooden stair onto the flat roof. On the other side of the freestanding structure that was Maugham’s study was a short pan-tiled Moorish roof, and at the far end of this, a large square chimney, about the height of a man. I stepped gingerly onto the tiles and walked as quickly as I dared to the chimney, then took hold of it.
I hadn’t expected it to be quite so easy, but Maugham had not exaggerated. The fireplace was like a large microphone and already I could hear the plummy sound of Guy Burgess speaking on tape. I didn’t know it yet, but by sending me up there Maugham had effectively saved my life.
TWENTY-FIVE
The Paris Bureau of the Comintern introduced me to all sorts of interesting people, many of them sympathetic Englishmen, such as Claud Cockburn and John Cairncross. Meanwhile, Arnold Deutsch took me out to dinner with all sorts of strange folk, not all of them obvious recruitment material. People who had no languages. People who hadn’t even been to university. Some of them were downright dull. Not to say stupid. I remember a very uninspiring young English salesman recently returned from China, where he’d been working for a tobacco company. I mean, this chap hadn’t even been to university, let alone Cambridge. All he could talk about was tobacco and the Chinese and about some awful bloody girl he’d married back in Somerset. And I remember thinking, what’s the point of trying to recruit a chap to the cause who’s going to be happily married and selling cigarettes? Are the Russians so desperate for spies that we’re willing to fund the local tobacconists? Not that he took Arnold’s ruble, so to speak. Anyway, ours not to reason why and all that rot.”
Then someone—Sinclair, I assumed—turned off the tape and walked around for a moment. His stout English shoes on the stone flags sounded almost military, which they probably were.
“Well?” said Reilly. “Why all the flap? I must say you are looking very excited about something all of a sudden.”
“I am,” said Sinclair. “I’ve had this itch after I heard that remark Burgess made about China. So I scratched it.”
“And, what?”
“I called the office and had one of my chaps telephone someone at MI5 who owes us a favor. And he did some deep checking in the personnel files at Leconfield House. Formerly the Ardath Tobacco Company, British American Tobacco’s most popular brand in China was State Express 555. In June nineteen thirty-seven, prior to his wedding in July the same year, and at Wells Cathedral no less, BAT appointed a new assistant foreign manager to sell State Express to the chinks. But almost as soon as he arrived in Shanghai, in August nineteen thirty-seven, the Japanese army invaded the city and BAT’s new assistant foreign manager was obliged to abandon his nice new villa in the Bund and skedaddle home to London, via Paris.” Sinclair paused for dramatic effect. “That man was none other than our own dear friend Roger Hollis.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Reilly. “You’re not serious.”
“Oh, but I am. And it gets worse, I’m afraid. Just a few days after he’s back in London, Roger Hollis quits his job at BAT and applies to join MI6; he’s rejected, thank God. But he does manage to join MI5 just a few months later, in January nineteen thirty-eight, as a probationer under training. Apparently he was introduced in August nineteen thirty-seven by Jane Sissmore following a game of tennis at the Ealing Tennis Club, where he also met Dick White. That’s what they used to call security vetting, I think. A game of fucking tennis. And here’s something else. In October nineteen thirty-seven, Hollis gives a lecture at the Royal Central Asian Society in London on the subject of the recent conflict in China. Guess who else is a member of the Royal Central Asian Society? Our old friend Kim Philby.”
“That is interesting, I agree. But look here, John, MI5’s Peach investigation still shows that nothing has actually been conclusively proved against Philby. He’s been cleared of being a Soviet agent.”
“Only officially and in public. And only for the benefit of Anglo-American relations. You know it. And I know it. Who else but Kim Philby could have tipped off Burgess and Maclean that they were about to go in the bag? There was no one else it could have been.” Sinclair paused. “Unless it was Hollis, of course.”
Sinclair paused again.
“It’s even possible that fingering Hollis leaves Kim Philby in the clear, retrospectively.”
“I know that this is exactly what you chaps in MI6 would like, Sinbad. Something that leaves your man Philby in the clear and points the finger at your rival service, MI5. So be careful what you wish for, eh? Because you’re suggesting that Roger Hollis, the current deputy DG of MI5—the man who’s been the head of our Soviet espionage section for the last ten years—is a Soviet agent,” said Reilly. “Is that any better than Philby being a Russian agent? I don’t know that it is, really.”
“But there’s more, I think. Perhaps you’ve forgotten it was Roger Hollis who tried to see off MI5’s investigation of John Cairncross in the wake of the Burgess defection. If you remember, it was thought that Cairncross might be the Soviet agent code-named Liszt. He’s been under suspicion ever since.”
“But he admitted it, didn’t he?” said Reilly. “Which is more than Philby ever did.”
“Yes, but it would certainly explain a lot about Hollis, don’t you think?” said Sinclair. “Come on, Patrick, I’m not the only one who has had suspicions about Roger Hollis. Ever since the Gouzenko business the Canadians have suspected he might not be quite right. Back in nineteen forty-five, when Hollis interrogated Gouzenko in Ottawa, it was a travesty, by all accounts. And it was also Roger Hollis who cleared Klaus Fuchs, the Russians’ top atomic spy in Britain. Hollis. God only knows who else he might have cleared. It might also explain how the Russians knew about Commander Crabb’s mission last month and were undoubtedly waiting for him when he got in the water to take a covert look at that Russian ship. How? Perhaps Hollis told them. Look here, Patrick, Hollis could have been recruited to the general Soviet cause while he was still selling fags in China, back in nineteen thirty-seven, and then more specifically by the Comintern, in Paris, as described so carelessly by Guy Burgess. The comrades encourage him to give up BAT and join MI6 or MI5. And because this is all starting to make perfect sense, I admit that I do think there’s a possibility that yes, this might, after all, clear Kim Philby of being the comrades’ top agent ‘Stanley.’ Why not? With Roger Hollis at MI5 the Russians would have known everything we were doing before we thought of it ourselves.”
Reilly sighed loudly. “Yes, but here’s the glaringly obvious flaw in your brilliant theory, John. If Hollis is an important agent of the Soviet Union, why would Guy mention him on the tape, even obliquely?”
“Guy always did talk too much when he’d been drinking. So, no change there. But I think he just forgot that the boring little tobacco salesman who got married in Wells Cathedral was actually Roger Hollis. That would be typical, too. Besides, Hollis is, as everyone knows, quite self-effacing and anonymous. He’s so underwhelming that people often forget all about him. He doesn’t speak any languages. Doesn’t even speak Russian. Imagine a head of the Russian counterespionage section who doesn’t speak Russian. How does that happen?”
“All right,” said Reilly, “suppose I accept that it’s just imaginable Guy overlooked that he was mentioning a man who—if you’re right—was Russia’s top spy in England. How is it possible that the Russians themselves could have overlooked this particular detail? Which they would have t
o have done if they wanted to blackmail us with this tape.”
“I take your point.”
There was a longish silence, during which I shifted to a slightly more comfortable position on the chimney. Anyone looking at me in the moonlight would have mistaken me for a burglar or perhaps an off-duty Santa Claus. Ludicrous, really. All I really wanted to do now was leave the Villa Mauresque and go see Anne French in Villefranche and climb into bed with her. Down in the garden I could hear the two English agents talking about football and I smelled their cheap cigarettes. I wouldn’t have minded one myself but for the fear that the men in the drawing room might smell my tobacco smoke coming down the chimney. I glanced around and saw Maugham now seating himself in the large square full of bluish light that was his study. He looked like an extinct species of tropical fish, most probably poisonous. But certainly he could have been no more poisonous than the relationship between MI5 and MI6, which reminded me strongly of the rivalry that had existed between the German Abwehr and the SD. I had direct experience of just how lethal a rivalry like that could become. I had no idea of who Kim Philby or John Cairncross were, but it was quite clear to me that Somerset Maugham had been entirely right when he’d suggested earlier that Burgess and Maclean might not be the only Soviet spies in Britain’s so-called intelligence agencies.
“But suppose that’s exactly what did happen,” continued Sinclair eventually. “Look here, Occam’s razor and all that. The simplest explanation is the most likely. Guy was always a fearful snob and typically dismissive of this tobacco salesman he’s just met—so dismissive that the Russians didn’t even notice that he could only have been referring to Roger Hollis. But here’s a rather more persuasive explanation, I think. We’ve always strongly suspected that the Soviet GRU and the KGB both run separate networks of spies in England but don’t keep each other in the loop about what they’re up to. We even believe they’re forbidden to consult each other without specific permission from the GKO—the State Defense Committee, in Moscow. This was a corollary of Stalin’s paranoia. It was he who decreed that ideally UK Soviet counterespionage should be covered by both a KGB agent and a GRU agent, so that they could always double-check a source. Well then. Suppose Guy Burgess was being run by the KGB and they spirit him out of England and while they’re doing it, for whatever reason, they record this tape. Suppose Hollis on the other hand is being run by the GRU—by Russian military intelligence. That would explain the oversight. The KGB don’t know anything about Hollis because he’s GRU. It was a cock-up, pure and simple. Too much security can be just as bad as not enough.”
“Yes, that might explain it.”
“Not only that: The GRU military intelligence chaps were running spies in China long before the KGB was even dreamed of. When Jim Skardon interrogated Klaus Fuchs in nineteen forty-nine for MI5, Fuchs said he’d been recruited by the GRU and that these two agencies disliked and distrusted each other even more than MI5 and MI6. Apparently when Fuchs was transferred to the KGB, the GRU made an almighty row about it in Moscow with the State Defense Committee. Their man, working for the competition.”
“Christ, when you put it like that, Sinbad, the comrades sound even more disorganized than we do.”
“Except that we don’t happen to have an agent who happens to be the deputy chairman of the Soviet Committee for State Security. I’d give a great deal to be as disorganized as that.”
“Yes. Think what it would be like to have a man like Alexander Shelepin working for MI6.”
“If Hollis is working for the GRU, he’s just as important as someone like Shelepin, Patrick. And just as big a traitor as Burgess or Maclean. Bigger. He has the power to stifle any investigation into any Soviet agent working in England right now. Klaus Fuchs or John Cairncross, perhaps. Or he might subtly encourage the belief that Kim Philby is a Soviet spy. It might just be that Philby has been fingered by Hollis all along. That all his protestations of innocence have been entirely justified.”
“So what’s our next course of action?” asked Reilly.
“Obviously we need to buy the tapes. I’ve already put in a request to the banking section in Melbury Road. The first tape’s existence is already the subject of some speculation back home. Christ knows what’s on the other ones. If indeed there are any other ones. This one tape is quite bad enough. So we have to have it, and soon.”
“Guy Burgess speaks. Yes, I can imagine. It’s sensational stuff all right. And Maugham is right. The American media would have a field day with this stuff. The FBI would never talk to us again. We’d be the pariahs of Western intelligence. If we aren’t already.”
“Patrick, I’d also like to ask my people at Broadway to get cracking with a full belt and braces investigation into Hollis. Tonight.”
“To do that you’re going to need the nod from the Joint Intelligence Committee and Sir Patrick Dean. Perhaps also the minister. What about Dick White at MI5? Are you going to tell him?”
“He’s too close to Hollis. As I said before, it was White who was supposed to have vetted Hollis. For all we know he might be a GRU agent himself. The last thing we want to do is to spook Hollis into doing a bunk like Burgess and Maclean. Which this just might.”
“No, I can’t believe it of Dick White. He wanted to resign from MI5 when Percy Sillitoe left in the wake of those defections. Sillitoe talked him into staying on and taking over the corner shop. No, I can’t see the comrades would ever have contemplated even allowing White to resign if he’d been theirs all along. Besides, he was at Oxford, not Cambridge.”
“Fair enough. But still, Hollis and White are as close as a fat lady’s thighs. I think we’d best leave him out of the loop for now. Everyone knows that Dick White always agrees with Hollis.”
“All right. I’ll call Patrick Dean tonight. And you call your people in MI6. But not here, eh? We’ll do it back at the hotel. Much as I admire Somerset Maugham as a writer I just don’t trust the old bugger. Or any of these awful queers he surrounds himself with. Least of all that fucking German, Walter Wolf. He may not be queer but he’s got the look of a Nazi. And let’s not forget that Maugham is an old Russia hand. He was running agents in Russia when you and I were in short trousers. Not just in Russia. But in Washington, too. Perhaps it’s no accident that Guy Burgess was here, in this house, back in nineteen thirty-seven.”
“So was Anthony Blunt.”
“That doesn’t fill me with optimism, either. The GRU-run Comintern was based in Paris. But they were almost as active down here on the Riviera, recruiting Communist refugees from the Spanish Civil War in Marseilles. Anyone shopping for suitable agents in the South of France would certainly have been interested in some of the men who were guests of Somerset Maugham in nineteen thirty-seven. After all, most of them were already leading very secret lives because of their sexual predilections. That’s always been something attractive to the Russians.”
“Blunt again.”
“He’s been interviewed by MI5, hasn’t he? As a possible suspect.”
“Several times. The FBI has had him in their sights for a while. But Courtney Young—who interrogated him—insists Anthony Blunt is innocent. That it’s just guilt by association. Still, we’ve only Anthony’s word for it that the photograph was stolen from his flat at the Courtauld in London.”
“Perhaps one of the queers who were here in nineteen thirty-seven was already a Red. I think we should ask Maugham if we can see this picture, don’t you?”
“If he’ll let you. He’s a cagey old sod.”
“Do you think he could be a Russian agent? He wouldn’t be the first Communist to own a fucking Picasso.”
“Including Picasso.”
TWENTY-SIX
Maugham was seated at the table in his brightly lit office. He tossed me a towel with which to wipe the soot off my hands, which had been clinging on to the chimney for the best part of twenty minutes.
“You were right
about the chimney,” I said. “I heard every word. They’re going to pay you the money. There’s no question of that. But I wouldn’t believe a word they say about anything else. Those two are properly rattled by that tape.”
Maugham nodded grimly.
“Sometimes I think I’ll probably die at this desk,” he said quietly. “Like a spavined horse in harness. With a half-finished novel or play on the go. I often think of starting a new book just so I can make that possible, like Dickens. At other times I look at the painted bedstead in my bedroom and imagine what I’ll look like when at last I’m lying there dead, laid out like Miss Havisham’s wedding breakfast. Not good, I think. Not good at all, I’m afraid.”
“Is there a good way to look when you’re dead?”
“The embalmers would have you believe that the best way to look when you’re dead is alive. Healthy pallor, red cheeks, pink lips. Which I must say seems rather creepy to me. You’d think it wouldn’t bother me. But every morning when I awaken I look in the mirror and I can’t believe how much like a corpse I already am.”
“I’ve seen a lot of dead people in my time. More than is good for me, frankly. On the whole, the dead don’t mind what they look like. And I’d have thought having a face like shit is the best guarantee that you’ve had a full life. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.”
“By that standard I’ve lived at least two lives, both of them like Dorian Gray’s picture. Then again, all bodies are imperfect, aren’t they? Even those that we mistakenly idealize. Take that picture on the wall there. Eve by Paul Gauguin. You know why I bought her? To remind me how ugly I find women. That and because she has seven toes on her left foot. It’s almost as if Gauguin wants to remind us just how imperfect we all are. How fundamentally none of us is ever to be trusted. Imagine if she was wearing a nice pair of court shoes. You might never know she’s not all that she seems.”
