‘Hello,’ said Cayle. ‘Hello!’
‘Ck… Ck… Ck…’ Then again a click and silence.
He returned to his coffee, marvelling at a political system where telephones were tapped as a matter of routine, when half of them failed to work.
A couple of minutes later it went again. He let it go on ringing for several seconds before lifting the receiver, and then without answering.
‘C… C… Cayle? B… Barry Cayle?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Ph-Philby here. C-c-can you m-meet me this m-morning? Got a p-pen?’
Cayle grabbed one out of his jacket. ‘Right!’ he shouted into the receiver.
‘N-number Eighteen Dimitrievskaya Street, top floor, R-room 648. Got it? F-fine! S-see you at ten-thirty this morning.’
Cayle consulted the Moscow street-map which he’d bought in London — their being unobtainable in Russia — and found Dimitrievskaya Street leading off the river south of the Kremlin, just beyond the open-air swimming-baths.
He finished his breakfast, armed himself with a notebook and Press cards, and stuffed both tins of Whiskas into the side-pockets of his anorak. Outside it was a pale dry day, with a yellow sun hanging low over the skyline, and bone-chilling cold. His face was stiff even before he reached the taxi-rank at the corner of the hotel.
The driver already had the engine running and the heater on. They started off, across Red Square with the long queue shuffling like a black centipede into the Lenin Mausoleum; past the dark-red walls of the Kremlin and the twisted baubles of St Basil’s Cathedral, down to the river where lumps of brown ice bumped together like basking whales.
Dimitrievskaya Street consisted of two rows of featureless apartment blocks, each with a few naked saplings growing out of the frozen earth at its base. Number 18 had a low open doorway with concrete steps leading up onto a dark passage where a scarred old man in a muffler and overcoat sat in a concierge’s lodge behind a window with two broken panes. Cayle walked past him to the lift, pushed the top button, and clanked slowly upwards. The door opened and he stepped up against a short square man in a long coat and a flat cloth cap that was too small for him. He gave Cayle a dull stare, then turned and nodded towards a carpetless corridor lit by low-powered bulbs in wire cages. There was about half a dozen doors along each wall. At the end stood a second man, in an identical overcoat, but this time with a low-brimmed black fedora pulled down over his eyes.
The doors were brown flush wood with the numbers stencilled in grey. 648 was about half-way down. Cayle knocked, and the door was opened at once, although he saw no-one inside. He stepped through and found himself in what appeared to be an empty room.
The walls were bare and blotched with damp. There was a small double-glazed window with the outer panes grimy with frost. The only furniture was two deal chairs and a wooden table on which stood a couple of glasses and a litre bottle of vodka.
‘G-good morning, Mr Cayle.’
Cayle swung around. As he did so the door softly closed. Philby was standing behind it, where he had remained hidden when Cayle entered.
‘Sit d-down, w-won’t you? M-make yourself at home.’ Philby stepped forward and nodded at the two chairs. ‘I apologize for the décor, but it has been r-rather short notice.’
He was wearing a dark woollen shirt without a tie and a lumpy grey suit with leather patches on the elbows. The only item that might have betrayed him as a Westerner was a pair of thick-soled shiny suede chukka boots stained white with salt from the snow. In his left hand he carried a briefcase with the flap open.
He stopped a few feet from Cayle and added: ‘I haven’t the f-faintest idea who you are. But I must w-warn you. If you t-try anything, you won’t get as far as the lift.’
Cayle stared at him, trying not to smile. ‘For Christ’s sake, Mr Philby, I’m only a poor bloody journalist trying to do a job.’
‘Are you?’ Philby gave a small deprecating smile, then he lifted the flap of his briefcase and took out an automatic which he stood holding on his outstretched palm. To Cayle’s practised eye it looked freshly oiled, but not new.
He said: ‘I don’t want to get shot reaching for my pockets, but I’ve something to give you.’
‘You g-gave me something yesterday afternoon.’
‘I know, but that was by way of introduction. These are for your pussy-cats.’ He pulled the two tins of Whiskas from his anorak pocket and put them on the table next to the vodka bottle.
Philby stared at him for a moment, then dropped the gun back into the briefcase and laid it down against the table-leg. ‘Let’s have a d-drink. It’s not too early for you, is it?’
‘Is it ever too early in Moscow?’ said Cayle.
Philby sat down and began unpeeling the foil from the top of the bottle. Cayle noticed that it was Osoboya vodka, which has no cork and is meant to be drunk at a sitting. He watched Philby pour both glasses to the brim, raise his in a faint gesture, and swallow it straight. Cayle did the same. There was an awkward pause, interrupted by a clanking and grinding of plumbing. When it had partially subsided, Philby nodded towards the window.
‘A b-beautiful city, d-don’t you think?’
‘Well, it’s different, certainly.’
‘It’s not your f-first visit, then?’
‘I was here once before — two years ago for one of those abortive disarmament conferences.’
‘It’s a city that takes a b-bit of getting used to,’ said Philby, and refilled their glasses. ‘Not everyone’s cup of tea, no doubt. But not all of us in life have the choice.’
‘A lot of people would say that you’d had more of a choice than most of us, Mr Philby.’
Philby took a sip of vodka and laid his glass carefully down in front of him. His face had tightened: there was a set downward expression about the jaw and the corners of his mouth that was hard, almost brutal. ‘You’re not English, are you, Cayle?’
‘Australian.’
‘Ah.’ Philby sat rubbing his broad fleshy nose. ‘At first I thought you might be one of those bloody Yanks! They’re always over here, trying to get me into a corner and screw me. It’s a funny thing,’ he added, taking a gulp of vodka, ‘but the British have never seemed to mind me so much. It’s the Yanks who’ve always hated me. You spend your life running rings round the good old British Establishment, and afterwards the blighters just don’t want to know. But take a crack at the Great Western Alliance, and you’re a marked man for life.’
‘Have you any idea why Whitehall washed their hands of you so easily?’ said Cayle.
Philby was about to speak when he was interrupted by another burst of gurgling and groaning from behind the wails. While it was still going on, Cayle said, almost in a shout: ‘I suppose this place is bugged?’
‘You suppose right, Mr Cayle. And I’ll tell you something else — I’m the man who edits the tapes.’
‘So we can talk freely?’
‘That depends what about. About you, for instance. Your background, interests, how you got into this r-racket in the first place.’
‘You mean, journalism?’
Philby gave a loose laugh. ‘Well, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that Whitehall or the CIA have used innocent newspaper men as errand boys.’
‘Hence the gun?’
Philby drained his glass. A quarter of the bottle had already disappeared. ‘Does it make you n-nervous? I should have thought a fellow like you had seen plenty of guns in his time.’
‘I’d feel happier if you didn’t have those two goons waiting outside. They look as though they’ve been seeing too many James Cagney films. You always go around with them?’
‘I’m a careful man, Cayle. As an officer in the Security Forces, it would be rather foolish if I n-neglected to look after my own security. But you haven’t answered my question. Tell me about yourself.’
Cayle took a stiff drink, glanced round the bare walls, then launched into his curriculum vitae, very much as he had done a couple of day
s ago for Hennison, though this time with more leisure and in more detail. Philby listened without interrupting, all the while chain-smoking cheap Russian cigarettes with hollow cardboard stems which he pinched into a filter.
Occasionally he smiled, even laughed, such as when Cayle described his debacle on the Solo Transatlantic race, or when he’d threatened a Red Army colonel in Prague in 1968 by telling the man that ‘if one hair of my head is touched, every Russian correspondent in London will be hanging in Hyde Park tomorrow morning!’
For the next two hours, while the level of the Osoboya sank inch by inch, Kim Philby and Barry Cayle sat up in this bare grubby room high above Moscow and got agreeably drunk together. Apart from the periodic explosions of the plumbing, there were no obstacles; and the only condition that Philby made was that Cayle took no notes, and that no mention was made of Philby’s work. From time to time the conversation foundered temporarily on matters of politics, but here Philby was quick to display all the arts of the dialectical gymnast: he was by turns bland, evasive, subtle and yielding; never dogmatic, never aggressive, but also never defensive, even when Cayle touched on such uncomfortable topics as the Soviet treatment of Jews and dissident intellectuals.
Cayle soon began to like Philby; and with his judgement dimmed by vodka, he found it preposterous to imagine this urbane, boozy, somewhat bedraggled English gent as the Spy of the Century, with a special place in the ranks of Western demonology. Even in this eccentric setting, with the guards outside and the gun in the briefcase, Kim Philby managed to seem such an ordinary fellow. He and Cayle shared many of the same interests, including cricket, cooking and classical music, as well as having a number of mutual friends who had been Philby’s colleagues in the newspaper world. They even had the same birthday — January the first — and drank a toast to the ‘stubborn and determined’ characteristics of Capricorn, while Philby lamented the woes of getting all one’s Christmas and birthday presents on the same day — not to mention hangovers.
They finally drained the last of the vodka, and Philby held up the empty bottle against the feeble light from the window. ‘I suppose you’ll go and write that I’m still up to my bad old habits? Back in the Lebanon I used to have a nickname for this stuff — any stuff, providing it was alcohol. Used to call it “snakebite”. Only difference was that back there they could mix a decent cocktail. But out here it’s rough. One day it’s going to kill me. I’ve got a dicky heart — but I suppose you know that? It’s been in the Western Press. They’re all just hanging on, waiting for me to croak!’ He started to stand up, and paused. ‘Tell me something, Barry. How do people think of me now in England?’
‘Oh, I’d say you have a certain following, Kim — with those who enjoy seeing the nobs get egg all over their faces.’
Philby stood for a long time looking at the little window; then he gave Cayle a faint, official nod and said, ‘It’s time you left. The men outside will see you as far as the street. There’s a Metro station opposite the Pushkin Museum, three blocks from here, if you turn left. You’ll find an excellent cigar counter just inside the entrance. You can pick up a Romeo y Julieta corona for thirty kopeks. It’s one of the great advantages of living in a Socialist country.’
Cayle got to his feet, feeling muddle-headed and sore-eyed from the thick black cigarette smoke. He started towards the door, when Philby added, ‘Remember, smoking’s forbidden on the Metro. However, if you feel like enjoying a cigar at the entrance, I might join you.’
They shook hands and Cayle crossed to the door.
Cayle’s Havana cigar had burnt down almost to his gloves, and he was stamping his boots to keep warm, when he saw Philby coming down the steps towards him. He was alone, dressed in the same dark bulky overcoat and black fur hat that he had been wearing yesterday at the Post Office.
He gave Cayle a nod and bought two five-kopek tickets. It was just after midday and the marble platform, with its vaulted ceiling lined with triple chandeliers, was almost empty. The train slid in a few seconds later and Philby carefully chose a seat with his back to the platform. Cayle sat opposite, a little to the left of him. Neither of them spoke until they reached the Svedlova station, where Philby got up to leave. Cayle followed at a decent distance.
There was more of a crowd here, most of them in shapeless overcoats and fur hats, and Cayle had to be careful not to lose his escort. At one moment he found himself following a fat middle-aged Muscovite who seemed to be conducting a furious argument with himself. Cayle caught up with Philby just as the latter was boarding the train bound for the Dobryninskaya Station, on the Moscow Circle Line.
At Dobryninskaya they followed the same routine. Philby had sauntered to the far end of the platform where the carriages were less full. Cayle boarded by a different door and waited until they had passed the first two stops, before taking his seat beside Philby, again with their backs to the platform. Philby yawned and stared at the ceiling; he did not seem in the least drunk. ‘Who sent you here?’
‘Officially, my editor. As you probably know, he has a particular interest in your case.’
‘And unofficially?’
‘Fellow called Hennison. Works as a literary agent in London. Said he used to know you during the war when he was on codes.’
Philby closed his eyes and nodded. ‘Donnish sort of fellow. Bit of a snob. Believe he’s married to someone called Lady Audrey.’
‘That’s more than I know,’ said Cayle. ‘But I can tell you, he doesn’t seem to like you much. Said something about you being an A-one copper-bottomed bastard.’
‘Oh but I am, old boy! I am. Though Hennison’s hardly the one to talk. Still, it was probably just a touch of depression or jealousy.’ He paused as the train drew in to the Park Kulturi Station and a massive woman trundled aboard, laden with soggy brown paper bags. Philby watched as she arranged herself on the seat opposite, then said: ‘And Hennison gave you the book?’
‘He didn’t give it to me. He told me the title and I bought it myself.’
‘You’re a good trusting fellow, aren’t you, Barry?’
‘I’m after a story.’
‘What sort of story?’
Cayle leant dose to Philby, conscious of the old woman’s beady-eyed stare from the seat opposite, and lowered his voice just enough for Philby to hear him above the roar of the wheels. ‘Tell me, Kim — was there ever a Fourth Man?’
For several seconds Philby sat motionless; then he turned and gave Cayle a slow bleary smile, his eyelids beginning to droop. ‘You don’t think that Guy and Donald and I were the only ones, do you?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘And you’re certainly not green enough to think that I’d take a total stranger into my confidence, just on the casual introduction of an old war-time colleague?’
‘I don’t know what to think,’ said Cayle. ‘But there’s something you want to tell me.’
They passed through Krasnopresnenskaya and Komsomolskaya stations before Philby spoke again. ‘What the Great Western Public really wants to know is how Colonel Philby of the KGB is making out after thirteen years in Moscow. Well, let me start, Barry, by making a few random observations on the Russian people. They’re a fine people, you know. In some ways, the finest in the world. It’s just that they’re so bloody difficult to live with. Sometimes I really feel almost sorry for them. Wherever they go, they always seem to make themselves so damned unpopular. And I don’t mean politically — that’s another story. It’s the character of the race. For instance, you invite a Russian for lunch at one, and he’s quite likely to turn up at nine, drunk.’
‘I should have thought that would have been rather your style, Kim. Bloody sight livelier than British suburbia, with the doorbell going ding-dong on the dot, and everybody standing around with gin-and-tonics, talking about their hotted-up Ford Cortinas.’
Philby smiled. ‘I suppose you’re right. God knows, I should be the last to complain! The trouble is, Barry, it seems to work the other way for me. I mean, if
I’m invited for lunch, and turn up for dinner pissed, people here take the most ghastly offence. It’s not so much that they’re hypocrites — it’s just that they seem to expect me to behave differently. And you know why? Because in their eyes I’m still a bloody English gentleman, and they bloody well demand that I behave like one!’
He paused. They were back at the Dobryninskaya Station, and waited while the passengers shunted on and off. As the train moved off again, Philby turned to Cayle and began to speak rapidly, excitedly. It was like the out-pouring of a man who has been marooned many months on a desert island.
‘What I really can’t stand is the way these Russians get drunk — in restaurants, public places — and start fights with the waiters and puke under the tables. I suppose you think I sound squeamish? Well, perhaps I am. But in the capital of the second most powerful country in the world, one wishes people were just a little more civilized!’
Cayle laughed. ‘Kim, I’m beginning to think you’re hankering after the old easy life in the West.’
Philby looked at him. His expression was grave. ‘We’re all what we were born to be, Barry. I was born a spoilt English upper-middle-class youth with a taste for adventure. Oh, I can do without the luxuries of life — the fast cars and big houses and strings of race-horses and beautiful girls. I’ve never had the least interest in all that. What I miss here is civilized company.’
‘And the Russians aren’t civilized?’ said Cayle.
‘Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I like the Russians. In some ways I think I even love them. I’ve done enough, God knows, to prove it! The trouble is, they’re the people you can never really get used to — you’re either in tune with them or you’re not. It’s taken me a long time to realize it, but I just don’t fit in with them. It’s my loss, not theirs.’
He stretched his legs and stared mournfully at the ceiling of the carriage.
‘Hark to the confessions of an old man! Well, I’m certainly not as young as in the old SIS days, though I’m still a long way from the wheelchair. And whenever I get round to thinking about it, I suppose I’ve got damn little to complain about. Of course, it’s not quite the same as when I first got here. They even made me a Hero of the Soviet Union, literally. Actually, it was all a bit of a fraud. My arrival happened to coincide with the craze in the early Sixties for miniskirts and the Beatles and other wicked Western influences. And I, as an upright Britisher of the old school — a gentleman and a Communist to boot — was set up as the antidote. Not that the magic could ever have lasted. Still, I’m treated pretty well. I’ve got a decent flat. I’ve got my music and my books. Guy left me his whole library when he died, you know. And I’ve got a responsible job. Nine-thirty to five-thirty. I’m also bored.’ His face sagged and Cayle could see the red linings of his eyes.
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