The Pigeon Tunnel

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by John le Carré

here: ‘Under Deep Cover’ was first published in the USA in The New York Times and is used here with permission, and was first published in the UK in the Guardian in 1999.

  Chapter 27: Hunting for warlords

  here: ‘Congo Journey’ was first published in the USA in the Nation in 2006, and in the UK in the Sunday Telegraph in 2006.

  Chapter 28: Richard Burton needs me

  here: ‘The Spy Who Liked Me’ was first published in the New Yorker in 2013.

  Chapter 29: Alec Guinness

  here: ‘Mission into Enemy Territory’ was first published in the Daily Telegraph in 1994, and was reprinted as the Preface in My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor by Alec Guinness, published by Hamish Hamilton in 1996.

  Chapter 33: Son of the author’s father

  here: ‘In Ronnie’s Court’ was first published in the USA in the New Yorker in 2002, and in the UK in the Observer in 2003.

  * Acknowledgements to Christopher Andrew’s Secret Service, published in 1985 by William Heinemann.

  * Such correspondence traditionally started with a three-letter code for the MI6 station, followed by a number to denote the station member.

  * As we go to print, eighty inmates remain, of whom roughly half have been cleared for release.

  * Five Years of my Life, published by Palgrave Macmillan.

  * Published by Robert Laffont, Paris, in 1992.

  * My researches tell me there was in fact one woman, Baroness Young, in her cabinet, none in her inner cabinet.

  * A Spy Among Friends, published by Bloomsbury, 2014.

  * Founder and first monarch of Saudi Arabia.

  * Flora Solomon, who introduced Philby to Aileen in 1939.

  * John William Vassall, homosexual son of an Anglican parson and clerk to the Naval Attaché at the British Embassy in Moscow, was sentenced to eighteen years for spying for the KGB.

  * Peter Lunn, head of MI6 station, Beirut, and the first of my two heads of station in Bonn.

  * James Jesus Angleton, delusional alcoholic head of the CIA’s counter-intelligence arm, who convinced himself that the red web of the KGB had spread itself to every corner of the Western world. While stationed in Washington, Philby had counselled him, over liquid games of chess, on the art of running double agents.

  * In 1945 Konstantin Volkov, a career intelligence officer in the Soviet Consulate in Istanbul, claimed knowledge of three Soviet spies inside the British Foreign Office, one of them in counter-intelligence. Philby took charge of the case and a heavily bandaged Volkov was hustled on to a Soviet transport plane bound for Moscow. I used a version of this episode in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

  * Reinhard Gehlen, at that time Director of the BND, West Germany’s secret service. See Chapter 8 of this volume.

  * A doomed attempt by MI6 and the CIA in 1949 to subvert the Albanian government, resulting in the deaths of at least 300 agents, and uncounted arrests and executions among the populace. Kim Philby was one of the planners.

  * Elliott, like his father, was a keen alpinist.

  * Harold (Shergy) Shergold, Controller of MI6’s Soviet Bloc operations.

  * Cicero was a German secret agent named Elyesa Bazna, who worked as a valet to Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, the British Ambassador in Ankara. He is now believed to have been a British agent all along, tasked with planting fake intelligence on the Germans. Perhaps Elliott was doing the same to me.

  * The Cambridge Apostles, known also as the Conversazione Society, was founded in 1820 as a secret intellectual discussion group of the University’s chosen. They practised according to themselves ‘homoeroticism’ and ‘platonic love’. In the thirties the society was exploited by Soviet talent-spotters to recruit promising young students to the communist cause. But Kim Philby is nowhere listed as an alumnus.

  * Later filmed by Kubrick as Eyes Wide Shut, with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

  * The Gate (Le Portail), published by Harvill Press.

  * © Jean-Paul Kauffmann, 2015. Translation by Isabel Wall, 2015.

  * Written for Victim Support, 1998.

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