Young Philby

by Robert Littell

  Philby gestured with his jaw toward the thin cardboard box on the chair next to me. It was tied with rose-colored ribbon. “Is that for me, too?”

  “No, no. That’s a robe for my wife. The British designer Captain Molyneux has a shop in Biarritz. Want to hear something funny? I recognized one of the customers when I bought this—it was Théodore Alexandrovitch, the grand duke who fled Petrograd after the Bolsheviks came to power and washed up in a palatial seaside villa not far from Biarritz. The voluptuous young beauty being fitted for the robe the grand duke eventually bought was definitely not his wife.”

  I didn’t tell the Englishman how I knew this. I didn’t want to bore him with the story of the prostitutes in my employ at a local maison close and my running fight with the kopek-pinching pricks in Moscow who decided the wages I paid the girls came under the heading of personal, not professional, expenses.

  Philby grinned. “Perhaps you could blackmail the grand duke.”

  I grinned back. “You may have a future in espionage after all.”

  8: GIBRALTAR, JULY 1938

  Where Mr. Philby of The Times Regrets Not Being a Vegetarian

  The London Rezident had sent me out in the belief that nothing would be more inconspicuous than old Cambridge mates getting together for what Kim referred to as a snakebite, and the Rock Hotel, partway up the slope in Gibraltar with its amusing view of the harbor below and the Straits beyond, was a more or less convenient venue for the both of us. I’d discovered a telegram waiting for me at the reception desk. “Would you be Mr. Guy Burgess, then?” the concierge inquired. “I would be if I could be,” I shot back. He looked confused. “Is that a yes?” “Yes, it’s a yes.” He handed me a Western Union form with the message pasted in strips across it: Kim, it seemed, was running two days behind schedule, something to do with a village halfway between Valencia and Barcelona named Vinaroz falling into Franco’s hot hands, cutting the Republic in two. The Times, deciding this strategic victory merited a dispatch, ordered its special correspondent to the scene. I wasn’t about to hang around the Rock Hotel with the dowager matron saints who, at any given hour, could be found on the terrace strapped into their rigid corsets staring out at Africa hoping it might go away if they looked at it long enough. If I’d hung around, what with my being a Foreign Office minion on a secret mission (which I had declined to deny when the concierge supposed this to be the case), one of them might actually have engaged me in conversation. No, no, a preemptive strike was clearly called for. And Algeciras, across the bay, was the logical target. Been there before, couldn’t wait to rejuvenate my memories. There was a section of town the locals called The Hill, and a cabaret nicknamed Anal Canal run by two Scottish faggots. The unpaved street was teeming with bastard urchins retrieving discarded cigarette ends and if they were still alight, smoking them down to their filthy fingernails. The waiters were all beautiful Portuguese Nancy boys dressed in tight French sailor suits—striped shirts, tight-assed bell bottoms, a blue cap with a red pompadour—and reeking of delectably cheap perfume. You could have any one of them plus a bottle of watered champagne for the asking plus five pounds sterling. Two stark-naked lesbians, their lips and labia painted crimson red, were wrestling on a mat set out on the small proscenium. The general idea appeared to be to reduce your adversary to semiconsciousness and then bring her back to life with a revolting demonstration of mouth-to-labium resuscitation. I will be the first to concede I was worn to semiconsciousness when the taxi deposited me at the foot of the Rock Hotel two days later.

  “You look as if you’ve been through a war,” Kim said.

  He still had a small gauze bandage stuck with adhesive over the gash in his head—all that remained of the turbanlike dressing visible when a photograph of our English war hero appeared in the London sheets. “Clearly it’s you who has been through a war, old boy,” I remarked as we settled onto straw chairs round a table at the far end of the terrace, within eyeshot but out of earshot of the dowager brigade. Kim produced one of his foul-smelling French cigarettes that kept mosquitoes at bay, so he’d claimed when he chain-smoked at Cambridge. The book of matches slipped out of his fingers. He leaned over to recover it, inspecting the underside of the table in the process.

  “I see you have acquired a bit of tradecraft whilst in Spain,” I said.

  “One lives and learns, or should that be learns and lives?”

  I set my folded copy of the Picture Post on the table. “How’s your Magyar spouse?” I asked.

  Kim casually picked it up to inspect the photojournalism, in the process pocketing the envelope with the eighty pounds sterling and the new codes typed on rice paper. “When last I saw her, which was some months back, she seemed to be muddling through,” he said.

  I must have cleared my throat, which is what I have been told I do before delivering unpleasant news. “I am afraid I am the bearer of rather distressing tidings,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Our London Rezident, Otto, has been summoned back to Moscow.”

  “P-perhaps it was for routine consultations.”

  “His wife was instructed to return with him.”

  “Ahhh.” Kim let this sink in. “What do you make of it?” he asked.

  “What with all the rumors of purge trials in Moscow…”

  “Surely these rumors are capitalist propaganda,” he said.

  I expect I shrugged. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire. The way I see it, Stalin would be a sap not to cleanse the rear of fifth columnists before the war with Germany breaks out.”

  “Otto is not a fifth columnist.”

  “I should think not, in which case no harm will come to him in Moscow. Got to know Otto fairly well when he was putting me through the paces in London. Decent chap, steadfast Communist, damn good Rezident, professional to his fingertips. Last time I saw him was in a Soho pub. He turned up sporting a bowler and carrying an umbrella—I gathered it was his disguise to stymie the MI5 twits trying to follow him. I told him he ought to have gone whole hog and shaved the triangular mustache on his upper lip—as there weren’t two like it in London, rather made him stand out in a crowd. He said his father had fought in the Bolshevik Revolution wearing a triangular mustache, it was a family tradition sort of thing. The old sod even told me his real name. It’s Teodor. Teodor Maly.”

  “He has done such a splendid job recruiting us, hard to see what Moscow Centre could p-possibly hold against him.”

  “I should think you are prosecution exhibit number one.”

  “Come again.”

  “That night in Soho, he polished off an entire bottle of vodka and let down his hair. He confided that what Moscow Centre held against him was you.”

  “You want to spell that out, Guy.”

  “You met the Swede across the border in Biarritz two months ago.”

  “It was closer to three. No matter.”

  “The Swede debriefed you on Nationalist order of battle. He debriefed you on the latest model Messerschmitt to reach Franco. He passed on to you new codes and a bit of cash. Then he brought up the business of a special assignment.”

  “Even he had to laugh when he raised the subject, it was that ridiculous.”

  “An order of that nature could only have come from Stalin,” I said.

  “The Swede told me how these things work. Stalin, who apparently stays up until all hours and drinks like a Georgian muzhik, might have said something about how the war in Spain was lost, the only hope being if we could kill off Franco. A Politburo colleague would have repeated it to one of his minions the next morning, at which point the order started down the line.”

  “Still, if it originates with Stalin…”

  “How would you assassinate Franco, Guy?”

  “I didn’t get the special assignment. You did. How is for you to figure out. Also the getaway.”

  “I can’t believe two old boys from Cambridge are having this conversation. You know I go queasy at the sight of b-b-blood. B-bloody hell, it’s o
ne thing to spy for the good guys, quite another to start knocking off the chaps they don’t fancy.”

  “Christ, don’t get pissed at me. I’m only the messenger.” Several of the matron saints glanced in our direction but I indicated with a wave of the back of my hand that they would do better contemplating Africa. “What did the Swede tell you?”

  “He said I ought to act as if I were enthusiastic. I should come on as eager to carry out orders once I figure out how. He told me I should report on Franco’s security precautions as if I had every intention of assassinating him. He said by the time they figured out I wasn’t up to the assignment, the war would be over and Franco would be beyond reach in Madrid.”

  “Did you at least file reports on Franco’s security?”

  “I did, actually. Franco is surrounded by loyal Andalusian bodyguards who have been with him since he led the Spanish contingent in the Rif Wars in Morocco. I spelled out the procedure to apply for a pass to enter a government building—one needs a p-passport along with two corroborating identity documents. When Franco leaves the palace in Burgos, there are anywhere from twelve to fifteen identical automobiles in his convoy. The cars leapfrog past each other en route. Even if you knew which car Franco started out in, you’d have no way of knowing which one he was in three minutes later.”

  “I read somewhere that Stalin does the same.” I lowered my voice lest the matron saints conclude we were more interesting than Africa. “Teodor told me he sent a dozen telegrams to Moscow about your situation. If he has landed in hot water, he got there defending you. He told them you were a talented young British aristocrat who considers himself a Marxist and works for the international Communist movement out of conscience, not money or fear. Moscow Centre apparently replied along the lines of Only the proletariat has a conscience. Teodor insisted you were doing great work reporting from Franco’s side of the front. He argued that for all your loyalty and willingness to serve the cause, you weren’t trained for wet jobs and couldn’t be expected to carry out an assassination order. I fear he is having to explain all this in person in the Lubyanka even as we sit here amid the creature comforts of the Rock Hotel. The new Rezident, when he was Teodor’s deputy, countersigned many of his boss’s telegrams about you, which he bitterly regrets. He fears his good opinion of you will be held against him.”

  “How do you know these details?”

  “I discovered Teodor had been recalled when I turned up for a meeting in Regent’s Park—it was a stone’s throw from the zoo—and I found another man sitting in his place. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he said. ‘I am your new Rezident. My predecessor has been recalled to Moscow.’ He introduced himself as Gorsky. I have no idea if that’s a Christian name or a family name, or for that matter a real name. The subject quickly came around to you. He knows we are old pals from Cambridge. He told me I was to come out to Gibraltar to explain the changing of the guard to you—”

  “By the by, Guy, why am I meeting you in Gibraltar instead of the Swede in Biarritz as usual?”

  It is quite likely I sighed at this point. “In my experience, the other shoe inevitably drops.”

  “What b-bloody shoe are we talking about? Has the Swede been caught? Is he dead?”

  “I’m afraid it’s much worse. It’s right up there with a dog’s breakfast. He has defected to the West.”

  I remember Kim gazing out at the wakes persisting in the Straits long after the passage of ships, as if to mark the channels of access and egress to the Mediterranean Sea. “I’m relieved to see you’re taking this so calmly,” I observed.

  He turned back to me. “It’s all part of the Great Game,” he said. “We understood there would be occasional hard cheese when we signed on.”

  “Gorsky figured you’d hear about the Swede eventually so he sent me around to tell you. He thought it better if you heard it from us. There’s a positive side to the bad news. According to Gorsky, the Swede sent a letter to Joe Stalin before he defected. He left behind a wife and child on the French Riviera; he left behind an assortment of parents and brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts in Soviet Russia. In his letter, the Swede reminded Stalin that he knew the identity of every single Soviet agent in Europe. He had personally worked in the field with most of them. He told Stalin that if nothing happened to his family, he would never reveal the names of the Soviet agents to Western intelligence.”

  Kim accepted this with a nod. “When did the Swede turn his coat?”

  “Around the twelfth of this month, near as we can figure. One day he was in his rooming house in Cannes, next day he wasn’t. Anybody’s guess how he went over.”

  Kim, as always, quickly came to the heart of the problem. “How can we be certain the Swede will live up to his end of this devil’s deal?” he asked.

  “Well, for one thing, we’re sitting here on the terrace of the Rock Hotel. Neither you nor I have been arrested.”

  “What if they decide to torture him?”

  I thought about this. “I have never encountered the Swede. You have. I saw him once on a nearby bench feeding peanuts to pigeons when I met Otto—muscular chap with close-cropped hair. Nobody you’d want to tangle with in a dark alleyway. Or a lighted alleyway, for that matter. Otto pointed him out in case the Swede and I ever needed to meet. Looking back, I can see the Swede amused Otto. He said the Swede was what the old Bolsheviks called a red-meat eater. Which seemed to mean he was ready to kill, ready to be killed sort of thing.”

  “They say nobody can withstand torture.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “They are the authors of espionage novels.”

  “What do they know, sitting at desks with a view over a countryscape where the greatest threat to life and limb is a ha-ha?”

  Kim had to laugh. “What does any of us know sitting here on the terrace of the Rock Hotel?”

  I asked Kim the question that had been on my mind since I learned about the Swede’s defection. “What would you do if you thought you’d been uncovered?”

  “I’d run for it.”

  “You’d go live in Soviet Russia?”

  “Otto seemed to think it was the nearest thing to a Shangri-La on earth. Russia would suit me if I could be sure I would be able to order books from Bowes and Bowes of Cambridge and tins of Arm and Hammer indigestion tablets from Harrods. In any case, exile in the coldest steppe of Siberia would be preferable to twenty years behind bars in Wormwood Scrubs.”

  “Will you go back to England once the Spanish war is over?”

  “My masters at The Times want me to cover the war that looks to be sure to break out in Europe.”

  Horror of horrors, one of the matron saints materialized at my elbow. She was clutching a copy of The Vegetarian News open to the page with a photograph of Kim being decorated by Franco. “Please do forgive the intrusion,” she said, “but I recognized you from your picture. Actually it was my friend Mrs. Crowlwithers who recognized you. In point of fact Mrs. Crowlwithers wasn’t sure you were you until she noticed the head wound. You are the gentleman from The Times in this photo, are you not?”

  “He is,” I declared, thinking to put Kim in a sticky wicket. “Perhaps you could get him to autograph your copy.”

  “But that’s exactly why I came over!” She turned to Kim. “Might you?”

  “To whom shall I mark it?”

  “‘To Mrs. Bayshore’ would do nicely. My neighbors back in Leigh-on-Sea will accuse me of having let my imagination run riot when I tell them I actually spoke to you in person on the terrace of the Rock Hotel.”

  Kim fetched a fountain pen from the inside pocket of his desert jacket and wrote, in a bold hand: “To the charming Mrs. Bayshore from Essex, with high regard, H. A. R. Philby, The Rock Hotel, Gibraltar, July something or other, 1938.”

  “Might I be permitted a personal question, Mr. Philby?”

  Kim favored his interlocutor with a weak smile of the kind Church of England vicars regularly bestow on nonbelievers. “Be, be,” he said.

&
nbsp; Mrs. Bayshore was more or less breathing down his neck. “Are you by any chance a vegetarian?”

  Kim winced, as if she had stirred a memory. “I was for a time when I lived in Vienna. I am sorry to have to confess to being a lapsed vegetarian, which surely aggravated my chronic indigestion.”

  Mrs. Bayshore lightly brushed his wrist with the tips of her fingers. The gesture was an equatorial degree of longitude short of sensual. “It is never too late to start down the straight and narrow,” she confided. She threw back her head, exposing a very starched collar where her neck ought to have been, and announced in a voice that was meant to be heard across the Straits in Africa, “Vegetarian or not, you have made my day, Mr. Philby.”

  “And you, dear lady, have made mine,” he replied.

  9: LONDON, NOVEMBER 1939

  Where the Hajj Outfits His Boy for Phony War

  Mr. Rupert Herrick-Howe

  Customer Service Unit

  Harrods Emporium

  Brompton Road

  Borough of Kensington

  London

  The third of November, 1939

  Sir,

  Kindly debit my account for the items enumerated below and dispatch them posthaste to my boy Harold Philby, Hotel du Commerce, Arras, France:

  One standard issue Home Guard sewing kit

  One standard issue Home Guard first aid kit

  Two tubes of Daggett & Ramsdell Herbal Sun-Oil

  Two large-sized tubes of Johnson & Johnson Unguentine burn ointment

  Earplugs of the kind employed by Royal Naval officers during gunnery practice at sea

  One general issue British Infantry helmet with the words “WAR” and “REPORTER” printed in white majuscule across the front

  One general issue British Infantry gas mask along with a spare Cellucotton filter

  Two packets each containing twelve tins of Arm & Hammer indigestion tablets. I count on you to bill me at the reduced charge for multiple purchases of Arm & Hammer tins as advertised on the flanks of busses crossing Piccadilly Circus as recently as yesterday.