Young Philby

by Robert Littell

  Respected Josef Vissarionovich waited a moment to be sure the hiccups had ceased. Then he said: “When I sign my initial ‘S’ on the upper right-hand corner of a page, Sudoplatov, it indicates I agree with the contents.” Respected Josef Vissarionovich leaned forward and tapped the bowl of his pipe on the desk to emphasize the point he was making. “Permit me to give you an example. The last thing every night Comrade Beria brings around is the list of wreckers and traitors to be shot the next morning. I occasionally draw a line through the name of someone I know has rendered exceptional service to the revolution and the motherland. When I sign an ‘S’ on the upper right-hand corner of the page, it signifies I agree with the executions.”

  Respected Josef Vissarionovich fell back into his chair and turned his attention to Comrade Beria. “For my money, they are all in this together. Which implies they must sink or swim together. If Modinskaya wants us to conclude that a valuable intelligence operative is a Western disinformation agent, one has to ask what is behind this interpretation. If Gusakov countersigns her conclusions, if Sudoplatov initials them in the upper right-hand corner…”

  Respected Josef Vissarionovich shrugged as if to say he had little choice in the matter at hand and finished his thought in what I took to be Georgian. Comrade Beria nodded carefully. “I am of the same opinion, Comrade Stalin. It has the stench of a wrecking conspiracy.”

  The trip back to town passed in the silence associated with tombs. The two security agents, who had chatted and laughed on the way out, uttered not a word. Summer darkness, which is saturated with dampness in Moscow that is thought to be excellent for the complexion of women, had settled over the city. Distant bursts of red illuminated the horizon—the Hitlerians were bombing munitions factories—but the explosions were too far away to be heard. The streets had become deserted, air raid blinds had been pulled over apartment windows by the time we reached the avenue behind the Lubyanka. The giant building, which had been home to an insurance company before the glorious revolution, so the story goes, hovered over us, blotting out the sky and its stars. The driver passed the main entrance with the ornate double doors leading to the great court by which we normally entered and left. Farther along the avenue the Zil pulled up in front of smaller metal doors and the driver Klaxoned twice. With a grinding noise the metal doors swung open and the Zil, its headlights dimmed, drove into the courtyard used to bring in prisoners. Captain Gusakov leaned forward. “You have mistaken the doors,” he said.

  The driver, who had an open peasant’s face, turned in his seat. “There has been no mistake, comrade officers,” he assured us. He looked genuinely embarrassed. “We thought you understood—you have all been arrested.”

  15: MOSCOW, JANUARY 1942

  Where Former Senior Lieutenant Y. Modinskaya Refuses a Last Cigarette

  “The trick is to turn the recording volume to five. When you speak into the microphone the needle should jump, but not into the red zone. If it jumps into the red zone, you have set the recording volume too high.”

  “When I need your help, prisoner Modinskaya, I will ask for it. [Pause] Testing one, two, three. It appears to be working now. I shall begin the interrogation.”

  “Yes, by all means do. We don’t want to keep the comrades in the crypt waiting.”

  “You need not take that tone. This is an ordeal for me, too.”

  “I understand how you must feel. I was on your side of the tape machine on one memorable occasion, in this very room as a matter of fact.”

  “There is a new regulation since your time—condemned prisoners are to be offered a last cigarette. Here, take one—”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “So that I am not reprimanded, can you confirm on tape that I offered the cigarette and you refused.”

  “You offered a cigarette. I refused.”

  “All right, let’s begin. Interrogation of state criminal number SH seven naught seven one naught eight. [Pause] Prisoner Modinskaya, do you wish to register any complaints about your treatment since your arrest?”

  “These leg irons are biting into my ankles, which are swollen and infected.”

  “Leg irons, wrist irons are obligatory for condemned prisoners. [Pause] Do you know where you are?”

  “So: You waste your breath on silly questions. I am disillusioned but not disoriented. I recognized this room the moment they brought me here from the cellblock. I recognized its narrowness, its bareness, the high ceiling, the straight-backed wooden chair you might find in any honest Soviet kitchen. I recognized the three-legged stool on which I was instructed to sit. I recognized first light the color of ash and the weight of lead oozing through a slit of a window high in the wall. If the room reeks of an unpleasant but unidentifiable odor, I would be the last person in the world to know it, my nasal passages having been blocked when one of the jailers broke my nose the night of my arrest. To answer your question: I am on one of the lower floors of the Lubyanka prison where they interrogate state criminals. I even recognize the scream of the friction brakes when trolley cars stop below us in Dzerzhinsky Square. [Pause] Dear God, if only all the screams that reached my ears in this building came from friction brakes.”

  “Prisoner Modinskaya, the comrade guards have observed you talking to the wall of your cell. I remind you that talking in the cellblock is a grave breach of rules with serious consequences.”

  “In the Lubyanka, prisoners in need of a sympathetic ear often end up talking to a wall. If the wall were to reply I could understand your concern—that would constitute a conversation. Until now the wall in my cell, no doubt aware of your rules, has remained silent.”

  “Prisoner Modinskaya, you have been found guilty of being a British agent and condemned by a special tribunal to the highest measure of punishment. You are to be shot immediately after this interrogation terminates.”

  “The garments I was wearing the night of my arrest have been reduced to rags. I will need suitable clothing.”

  “Suitable clothing?”

  “A dress. There is a long gray one in the closet of the flat I share with my father. It has a modest velvet collar that buttons to the neck and long sleeves with lace cuffs. I will also need clean undergarments, clean stockings.”

  “I don’t understand. The dress must be suitable for what?”

  “Are you dimwitted?”

  “A prisoner in your delicate situation should be wary of insulting a Chekist.”

  “As the condemned prisoner Maly once remarked, someone minutes away from having a large-caliber bullet shot into the nape of the neck doesn’t lose sleep over the insulting of a Chekist. [Pause] The clothing must be suitable for a funeral.”

  “There will be no funeral. Executed prisoners are buried in a common grave.”

  “You cannot execute prisoners in January. Impossible to prepare common graves when the ground is frozen.”

  “This is First Secretary Stalin’s Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, not Chiang Kai-shek’s China. Our workers are equipped with earth-moving machines that are capable of excavating ditches in the fields behind Novodevichy Cemetery in the coldest of winters.”

  “I hope to God they don’t mix the men with the women in this common grave of yours. Imagine being forced to lie for eternity next to some man, one you don’t even know at that. [Pause] I was a virgin the night of my arrest but the comrade interrogators put an end to that with a vodka bottle. They punched my breasts with their fists, all the while yelling that I must come clean. ‘Only sign the confession and your troubles will be over,’ they shouted over and over. ‘Confess to what?’ I asked. I was never ordered by Trotskyists to assassinate respected Josef Vissarionovich. I was never instructed to wreck bread production by throwing glass fragments into sacks of flour. I was never recruited by the British Secret Intelligence Service to discredit the Englishman. ‘I would certainly sign your paper if I were guilty of these crimes,’ I told them. [Pause] I don’t think they heard me.”

  “Prisoner Modinskaya, do you rec
all what rank you held before your arrest?”

  “I was a senior lieutenant in the fifth department of the NKVD’s second chief directorate, reporting, like yourself, to Captain Gusakov.”

  “The late Captain Gusakov. A special tribunal convicted him of being a British agent. He was executed the day before yesterday.”

  “So it was Captain Gusakov I heard being dragged down the passageway sniveling like a child, begging for mercy between sobs.”

  “He didn’t make life easier for the comrades in the crypt.”

  “The comrades in the crypt didn’t make death easier for Captain Gusakov.”

  “Prisoner Modinskaya, do you know who I am?”

  “Everyone in the second chief directorate knows who you are. You’re Nina Petrovna, the mailroom slut who slept her way into the fifth department secretariat and wound up working as a research assistant for then senior lieutenant Gusakov when I was promoted to intelligence analyst. You were legendary for submitting summaries of interrogations that were utterly illiterate. We used to read them aloud in the corridor for entertainment when you were not there.”

  “You are absolutely determined to make things harder on yourself.”

  “As I am scheduled for execution when this interrogation terminates, I don’t see how I can make things harder on myself.”

  “Comrade Beria himself initiated this interview in the hope that you would do what you have refused to do during the five months of your formal interrogation—confess to being an agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service, explain why they are so intent on discrediting the Englishman. Your immediate superior, the Captain Gusakov, confessed. His immediate superior, the late Colonel Sudoplatov—”

  “Late! Has he been executed, too?”

  “The Colonel Sudoplatov went to the crypt, it must be said, with a measure of dignity, walking on his own two feet, refusing, like you, a last cigarette on the grounds that inhaling tobacco fumes could damage his lungs.”

  “Who would have suspected Senior Colonel Sudoplatov of having a sense of humor?”

  “I have his signed confession if you care to see it. He named you and Gusakov as agents of the British SIS. He said all three of you had been instructed by your control, a second secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow, to leave no stone unturned in your efforts to discredit the Englishman.”

  “There is no point to showing me the colonel’s confession. I am no longer able to read. My right eye cannot focus, my left eye is so bruised I see black spots when I open it.”

  “If you had confessed, your interrogators would not have been obliged to treat you as a hostile witness. You can still confess, prisoner Modinskaya. I can promise you your sentence will be reviewed at the highest level, taking your years of party work and your confession into account. [Pause] Please be so kind as to explain why you refuse to confess.”

  “I don’t confess because I am not guilty of being a British agent. I don’t confess because I refuse to stain Communism by giving false evidence against myself. I don’t confess because I am convinced the Englishman is an SIS disinformation agent. As a Communist, as a party member since my graduation from the NKVD academy, as a dedicated Stalinist, I have an obligation to expose the Englishman so that our state organs will not be infected by the manure he disseminates.”

  “Can you put forward a single instance of disinformation that the Englishman passed on to Moscow Centre?”

  “We asked him for the names of British agents working for Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service in the Soviet Union. He responded there were none. Not one. He said the SIS was underfunded by its parent organization, the Foreign Office. He said in any case SIS was focused on Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, and not the Soviet Union.”

  “How can you be sure this is false?”

  “How can I be sure this is false? Surely you and I are living on different planets. Both Captain Gusakov and Senior Colonel Sudoplatov have been executed, and I have been condemned to death, all of us guilty of being British spies. As our Soviet system of justice is infallible, it means the Englishman was lying when he claimed the British ran no agents in the Soviet Union.”

  “Do you admit, then, to being a British agent? Be careful how you answer. You are in an awkward position. If you claim your condemnation as a British spy was a mistake, if you convince us that you and Captain Gusakov and Senior Colonel Sudoplatov are not British agents, the Englishman will have been telling the truth. Which means your effort to discredit him is tantamount to wrecking, and every Soviet child knows the punishment for wrecking. On the other hand if you admit to being a British agent, it would mean you were right all along when you said the Englishman was lying to us when he claimed the SIS had no spy network in the Soviet Union. But being right about the Englishman cannot help you once you admit to being a British agent.”

  “I am lost no matter which way I turn.”

  “Your only hope of salvation is to put your trust in Comrade Stalin and his organ of state security, for which you recently worked. Neither Comrade Stalin nor his Peoples’ Commissariat for Internal Affairs are capable of making mistakes. You must trust our judgment, which is inspired by Comrade Stalin’s perception of reality. We have come to the conclusion, after meticulous examination of the Englishman’s bona fides—I believe you are familiar with the contents of case file number 5581—that the agent known by the cryptonym Sonny is true in his allegiance to international Communism and the Soviet Union; that he has been since his recruitment by our London Rezident in 1934; that the secrets he has conveyed to his various handlers are genuine, most recently the date of the dastardly Nazi attack on our motherland.”

  “I need time to think…”

  “I tell you frankly, prisoner Modinskaya, one woman speaking to another, in your shoes I would be terrorized at the prospect of imminent execution.”

  “I am beyond terror, comrade interrogator. I remember when the comrade guards, thickset men wearing stained leather aprons over their NKVD uniforms, came up from the crypt to collect the prisoner I had interrogated. They were smoking fat cigarettes and laughing nervously. These same men have made guest appearances in my nightmares ever since.”

  “The tape is reaching the end of the reel. My time with you is almost up.”

  “Don’t go, for God’s sake.”

  “The interview can only continue if I obtain a confession.”

  “What good would the confession of an innocent comrade do you?”

  “Once we have your confession in hand, innocence or guilt is beside the point.”

  “My innocence is the point.”

  “What can I say to convince you otherwise, to overcome your pigheadedness? Listen … [Pause] Do you hear footsteps in the corridor? It can only be the comrades coming up from the crypt to collect you.”

  “Ohhh, I am frightened. [Pause] I must talk to you as long as possible.”

  “Prisoner Modinskaya, it was Comrade Stalin himself who exposed the diabolical scheme to discredit Sonny. It was Comrade Stalin himself who unmasked the traitors. Surely you don’t give the same weight to your delusions of innocence as Comrade Stalin’s unshakable belief in your guilt.”

  “I [inaudible].”

  “You must speak louder.”

  “I [inaudible].”

  “Someone has inserted a key in the door.”

  “Oh God, yes. You are surely right. I must be guilty if respected Josef Vissarionovich believes I am guilty. How could it be otherwise? To think we shot Teodor Stepanovich Maly without giving him a last cigarette and he was telling the truth about the Englishman’s being a genuine Soviet agent. I confess. I confess to not being a virgin. I confess the Trotskyists ordered me to assassinate respected Josef Vissarionovich. I confess to wrecking bread production by throwing glass fragments into sacks of flour.”

  “And the Englishman?”

  “Yes, yes, most of all the Englishman. I confess to being in the employ of the British Secret Intelligence Service. I confess to sl
andering the Englishman in order to discredit a genuine Soviet agent reporting to us from the heart of British darkness—”

  16: LONDON, JULY 1945

  Where the Hajj Writes the Third Act of an Espionage Drama

  Dear Colonel Menzies provided the shoulder I leaned on when my father, the Admiral Sinclair, passed on in December of ’39. Oh, if only he had lived to see this day: Hitler and Mussolini dead, the Nazis delivering their unconditional surrender, the world war that ravaged Europe over and done. Here in London, some four weeks after the German capitulation, groups of young gentlemen and ladies still wander the streets singing “Kiss Me Goodnight, Sergeant Major,” which father often hummed to himself as he shaved.

  It was Colonel Stewart Menzies, Old Etonian, Royal Horse Guard with a DSO in his lapel for gallantry at Ypres, who became chief of His Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service upon Father’s untimely demise. I am persuaded it was an appointment universally cheered (with the possible exception of Colonel Vivian, a belt-and-braces veteran of the Indian Police Service and Father’s second deputy, who had to settle for the counterintelligence portfolio). In those first difficult months, poor Colonel Menzies was treated as an irksome stepchild by his masters in the Foreign Office who were, in the Admiral’s words, prisoners of a nineteenth-century mind-set that considered espionage (as opposed to diplomacy) to be an inconsequential tool in the Great Game, that age-old rivalry between Russia and Britain and France for control of the Hindu Kush. Espionage can be said to have come into its own after Munich, when even the Philistines in the F.O. thought it could be useful in predicting and containing Hitler’s ambitions in Europe.

  Like the Admiral before him, Colonel Menzies took the F.O.’s hostility in stride. He was the soul of kindness as he and I scurried around Hampstead and Kensington so I could identify the dead letterboxes that Father had serviced himself the day before his death. Back at Caxton House, I’d deciphered the index cards Father had carried around in his breast pocket (I am the only one able to make heads or tails of his handwriting) listing his espionage agents, one agent to a card: There was a hodgepodge of foreign embassy cipher and mailroom clerks, two South American ambassadors, a Norwegian freighter captain, a Brazilian matinee idol, a handful of Swedish and Spanish businessmen, a Lebanese money changer, an Indian pretending to be a maharajah, the madam of what we English call a bawdyhouse, a Jewish diamond merchant with associates in South Africa, Bechuanaland, and Holland. Oh, I mustn’t overlook the Liechtenstein princess who claimed to be in touch with her royal cousins in the various Slavic kingdoms of Europe, God knows how. As I recall it, Colonel Menzies, whose straightforward gaze betrayed a certain innocence of spirit, looked up from his note-taking soon after Father’s death. “It goes without saying, Miss Sinclair, you will stay on—you are, after all, our institutional memory. Who can be trusted to take minutes of top-secret meetings if not you?”