Gentleman Traitor

by Alan Williams

  Next the skiff and the two oars were traced and also examined, and further traces of blood were found, particularly on the broken oar, which had also retained in its splintered edges several strands of hair. Both blood and hair again matched those of the dead woman.

  The Criminal Police decided that they had a prima facie case of murder; and the KGB did not contradict them. The discovery of the body, with its connections with Philby, Maddox and Pol, now prompted the State Security officers to order a high-level conference. All that remained now was to establish beyond doubt the identity of the decomposed body. For the murder of an Englishwoman in the Soviet Union was not a matter that could be left to routine detection; and it was decided to make an official request, through the British Embassy in Moscow, for a trace to be made of Mrs Warburton’s dental history.

  From her Social Security file in England, Scotland Yard tracked down a dentist in Exeter who had made a number of fillings in her teeth. Arrangements were made for him to be flown to Moscow, then down to Sochi, where the body was now being stored. He was a cheerful little man, who had been thoroughly enjoying his trip until he vomited twice during his examination of the body. But his files confirmed without doubt the identity of the late Mrs Joyce Eileen Warburton.

  The Soviet police had meanwhile been pursuing inquiries about the visitor who had dined with her the night she disappeared. Here they did not allow themselves to be deterred by the ubiquitous agents from Moscow. They were professional policemen, and murder is the highest crime in the Soviet penal code, except for treason. The fact that the murderer might also be a traitor did not concern them. He was a common criminal — the perpetrator of the brutal killing of a foreign woman on Soviet soil, and it was their duty to see that he was brought to justice.

  They obtained three descriptions of the man: besides the head waiter at the hotel, there was the woman in the railway buffet who told them how a man had arrived in the small hours to catch the night express to Sochi. She remembered his exhausted state, which she’d taken for drunkenness; his scuffed shoes and slovenly appearance. Then there was an elderly Georgian who had had the bunk below him on the train, and who now volunteered a detailed description to the police, following an announcement in the local newspaper. The man had talked in his sleep, he said, in a foreign language. And when each of these witnesses was shown a photograph of Philby they all identified him.

  After a second conference in Dzerzhinski Square, it was decided to pass the case back to the Central Bureau of Criminal Police, who would pursue the matter through Interpol. The KGB decided to treat the incident as a lucky break; for although Philby’s disappearance had not yet been made public by either side — no doubt for sound tactical reasons — the Committee knew that when the news finally leaked out, Moscow’s embarrassment would be greatly off-set by their being able to prove that Philby was not a master triple-agent, but merely a squalid killer who had lured his mistress out in a stolen boat, then battered her to death with an oar and left her to the fishes.

  The Criminal Police assembled the relevant documents and affidavits and presented them formally to the British Embassy, to be passed on to Interpol in Paris.

  CHAPTER 24

  Kim Philby entered Rhodesia as effortlessly as Horne had predicted. At Salisbury Airport he spent half an hour with an exquisitely polite young Immigration officer who, after granting him permission to stay three months — renewable on demand — spent most of his time detailing the pleasures and relaxations of Rhodesian life, most of which struck Philby as being of a depressingly outdoor nature.

  The officer had seen at once that Philby was a gentleman. He accordingly recommended to him the best hotels, the best clubs, the best spots for fishing and golf and sightseeing. Visitors from Britain, he explained, were normally granted honorary membership of even the most exclusive clubs, for an Englishman who ventured into the ‘rebel’ camp was treated almost as a resistance hero — living proof that the old links with Imperial loyalty still held.

  After their interview, Philby took a taxi to Meikle’s Hotel in the city centre and checked into a large old-fashioned room, ate a wholesome English dinner by himself in the hotel restaurant, then drank himself to sleep with the duty-free Scotch he had bought on the plane up from Jo’burg.

  He had arrived in the southern continent by a route of his own choosing, despite the fact that Pol had provided him with a first-class ticket on South African Airways direct to Johannesburg. Philby had allowed Pol to see him off at Geneva Airport; then at the last moment had cancelled his reservation and transferred to a Swissair flight for Rome. There he had picked up a British Airways VC 10 on to Nairobi, where he had waited five hours for an Air France flight to Johannesburg.

  Throughout the journey he had carefully avoided even the most casual conversation, while handsomely exploiting the free drinks served on the first-class decks and at the duty-free bars during stop-overs. But never once did the old skills and instincts desert him, and by the time he was being checked, rumpled and rheumy-eyed, through South African Immigration at Jan Smuts Airport, where they seemed only interested to know if he were carrying a copy of Playboy, he was certain he was not being followed.

  For over the past few months Philby had come to face an unpleasant truth. He did not trust Pol. He admired him, he was amused by him, he even liked him; yet behind that grotesque, giggling, clowning exterior, the Frenchman was one of the few people whom Kim Philby had found to be totally, unashamedly wicked.

  In his long and varied career, Philby had worked for many odious masters. He had served them all faithfully, stealing, betraying, killing, while always fearful of being betrayed or killed himself. At the same time he had connived to save his own skin, as well as enjoying the spurious hope that someday he might be called to the aid of Mankind. So far he had survived, and now the part of Mankind that he had been chosen to help was the Black Man in White Africa. Help the old porter who had carried up his bags and bowed without a word as he accepted Philby’s enormous tip. Help the half-naked children who romped in the dust round the shacks along the road from the airport; the placid workers he’d seen riding on their rusty bicycles from the tobacco fields, while the Europeans drank long drinks on long chairs in the setting sun and talked about adultery, bankruptcies, bridge, their children’s schooling and the price of liquor.

  Philby had convinced himself that he’d come to Rhodesia to help change all that. He also knew that it would take time. London had made it clear they weren’t going to rush him. But it wasn’t London who worried him. It was Pol. Philby knew that without Pol, London could never have arranged his escape from Russia. But now, mortgaged to the Frenchman and his gang of mercenaries, Philby felt far less at ease than he had done under any of his former masters in Soviet Intelligence; for the Russians had always represented a professional, impersonal elite; while Pol was something else altogether. Pol was an amateur, a freebooter who hired his services to the highest bidder. And Philby was uncomfortably aware that in his own case Pol had received a substantial payment from the funds of the British Secret Service — which meant the luckless British tax-payer.

  The real problem was, just where did Pol’s responsibility to London end? Pol was a man who liked to play the field; and from various incidents during their stay together in Switzerland, Philby was now convinced that the Frenchman was having dealings with certain Arabs. Arabs who had the same motives as London, only stronger? International Arab revolutionaries with limitless petro-dollars to finance whatever operation they had hired Pol to execute? And in this new scheme of things, where did Philby fit in? For Philby was still officially London’s man. He had been sent into Rhodesia as a low-profile, long-term agent. A sleeper. While Pol and his new paymasters — in Tripoli, or Algiers, or Baghdad — might have no use for sleepers. After all, the anti-White struggle in Southern Africa was very much a thing of the moment.

  At the same time, Pol might easily decide that Philby, like the miserable Maddox before him, had become an embarrassment; a
nd Philby had no illusions about how Pol would react.

  Philby had always been careful not to inquire too closely into the Frenchman’s immediate or long-range plans. Both discipline and experience had taught him never to question the tactics of a superior, though there were moments when he bitterly resented not being consulted. But what troubled him most was a detail which, during the dramatic, furtive planning with Pol in those last weeks in Moscow, he had foolishly, even wantonly, neglected. Before fleeing from Beirut, he had left implicit instructions that if he — Harold Adrian Russell Philby, only son of the great St John Philby — should ever be arrested or meet with a violent death, his final testimony, lodged in a vault in Berne, should be offered to every newspaper in the Western hemisphere, together with the Director of Public Prosecutions in London. But H. A. R. Philby was no longer H. A. R. Philby. He was now an ageing rake called Duncan Henry Saunders, and he had papers to prove it. Those lawyers in Berne knew of his redefection, of which he’d informed them on his first day after leaving Sweden; they were even aware of his new identity. But would this second affidavit invalidate the first? Those honest Swiss burghers had taken their instructions many years ago, and this sudden change of plan could so easily be a ruse, a forgery — by London, even Moscow. Both London and Moscow now hated him, and would smirk at the irony of his fate; and above all else, lawyers hated confusion.

  Philby no longer had his old Soviet passport. His only means of identity had been through Cayle.

  The lawyers would ponder the situation, and probably decide to adhere to their original brief. The death or disappearance of Duncan Henry Saunders would be of no interest to them. The second affidavit would be filed away and forgotten — like Philby himself.

  But Kim Philby was no coward. On his first morning in Salisbury he decided on a course of ‘business as usual’. He called first at the head office of the largest bank in Rhodesia, where he met with the same genial welcome that he’d received at the airport. As Horne had said, a true Britisher with a blocked sterling account was a man to be respected in this landlocked citadel of the Imperial dream. And Philby was dismayed to find how easily he was accepted as one of the dreamers. All chums together — the better class of White Man holding his own against the menacing hordes of disorder and darkness.

  The manager was a large fleshy man with a powerful handshake and dissipated good looks beneath an over-fresh tan. He invited Philby into his inner office and offered him South African gin and tonic. His name was Freddie Frobisher and he was president of a club called ‘The Abominable Snowmen’, whose members were all expatriates with frozen assets in Rhodesia. On their second drink Kim Philby was invited to a party next evening.

  ‘You’ll find a lot of the old troopers there,’ said Frobisher. ‘And we’ve got a special consignment of Haig — brought over from Beira by a very fly chappie. Can’t breathe his name, though — damned strict on security round here.’ Then quite casually, he turned to the matter of Philby’s account. He called in a young clerk and told him to look up Saunders’ file. ‘Seem to remember that we’ve been sitting on your lot for some time,’ he added. ‘Must be quite a bit of interest that’s built up.’

  The file was brought with surprising speed. ‘Perishing bore, this Sanctions business,’ Frobisher said, passing the folder to Philby. ‘But what I maintain is, there’s a lot worse places to spend your money in than Rhodesia. A friend of mine reckons that the post-UDI crop of girls are about the best-looking you’ll find anywhere in the civilized world.’ He raised his glass. ‘Splash your money around and enjoy y’self while there’s still time, that’s my motto.’

  They parted finally, pumping hands and promising to meet next evening at the party, which was being given by a certain Randolph Grant — ‘known to everyone as “Randy”,’ Frobisher added. ‘Frightfully good mucker. He’s run through four wives — all absolute stunners, except for the current one, and she’s stinking rich. He now screws about everything that moves. He’s also a great chum of P. K. — y’know, van der Byl, our illustrious Minister of Information and Immigration.’

  Philby left him with a sense of achievement: P. K. van der Byl was one of the Old Guard of hard-liners who’d been in the Smith Government since UDI. But unlike most of his stiff-lipped colleagues, he had a sense of humour, and was known to be sometimes outrageously indiscreet. Philby decided there might be a useful opening there.

  The next thing he did, after leaving the bank, was to buy himself a gun. He chose a .32 Beretta pistol, which he obtained simply on production of his passport. He had been a fair shot back in his SIS days in the war, and he planned to keep himself up to the mark with plenty of practice. Then, following a hearty lunch, he went to a leading estate agents and consulted a list of houses to rent. There seemed to be no shortage. He wanted something neither too central nor too secluded: a bachelor house where he would be allowed his privacy, yet not be too exposed to interlopers. The agent recommended an address on Cambridge Drive, in a quiet residential area seven minutes by car from the city centre. It had a garden and swimming-pool, and separate staff-quarters for an African couple whom the agent assured him were thoroughly reliable. The rent seemed to Philby absurdly low.

  The agent drove him out to the house and he found it to be exactly what he wanted. It was between two larger houses, which were both occupied; there was a high fence between the gardens, and the back of the house looked on to a long lawn that offered no obvious cover. The African couple were middle-aged, with a well-drilled servility that Philby found a relief, as well as mildly repulsive. In Moscow, private servants had been almost impossible to find, and equally difficult to keep.

  The house was also fitted with the most modern locks, on windows as well as doors, and an alarm system connected to the nearby police station.

  He drove back with the agent, signed the papers, paid a deposit and six months’ rent with his virgin cheque-book and walked out into the clear autumn sunshine with that familiar feeling that once again he was a stranger come home.

  It was already dark when he arrived next evening in a hired Datsun at the address which Frobisher had given him, in the smart suburb of Highlands.

  A pair of Africans in gold-braided tunics and red tarbouches stood inside the door and bowed him through, without even asking his name. The party was already well under way. A crowd of at least two hundred stretched from a large patio, with buffet-table and barbecue, across the lawn to the swimming-pool which was garlanded with coloured lights. Another African in braided tunic handed him a whisky and he began to move cautiously round the edge of the throng. Some of the men wore dinner-jackets, but most were either in tropical suits or blazers and grey flannels. There were also many RAF moustaches, and from the snatches of conversation he heard, Philby concluded that most of them were as common as dirt. A cut above second-hand car-dealers and scrap-merchants, but only just. What he used to call the Saloon-Bar Road-Hog types — appearing now like ageing ghosts from the England of the Thirties.

  The women, in unseemly contrast, were very up-to-date: a lot of long-legged girls in miniskirts and kaftans, the older women in trouser-suits or dresses that were too young for them, their complexions taut and leathery from too much sun and dieting.

  Philby at last found Freddie Frobisher among a group by the swimming-pool. The bank manager greeted him like an old friend, hailing him as ‘Our latest Abominable — Duncan Saunders — and he’s loaded!’ Frobisher’s face was dark and moist, as he pulled Philby towards him and introduced him to their host.

  Randolph Grant was an enormous man with rough handsome features, in a dinner-jacket that could only have been cut by the best of London tailors. Philby sensed at once the raffish nonchalance of the well-bred bounder: now holding forth with the ease of a seasoned socialite. Grant turned from his audience, which included several very pretty girls, and looked at Philby.

  ‘Another Abominable come in from the cold?’ he roared; and biting into a cigar, he wrung Philby’s hand. ‘What’s your line? Coppe
r? Tobacco?’

  Suddenly Philby was stopped by his stammer. Despite Grant’s boisterous exterior, his eyes were small and shrewd; he didn’t look like a man who missed much. Philby covered his embarrassment with a gulp of whisky, then began answering the question just as Horne had instructed him. Grant asked a few questions, but they were mostly laconic, tossed at him as though to keep the conversation going. Philby replied to all of them with Horne’s meticulous catechism; and Grant soon seemed to lose interest.

  Philby’s ordeal ended when a girl in a see-through blouse cried: ‘Tell Mr Saunders how you came to Africa, Randy! About the boat trip when you were skint!’

  ‘No jumbo-jets in those days,’ said Grant, draining his glass. ‘I got a French tub out of Marseilles to Mombasa — steerage, with about four hundred stinking wogs with their prayer-mats, all locked below decks like cattle. I was the only White man there. But on the second day the skipper took pity on me and gave me a third-class cabin, sharing with three Benedictine monks. When they weren’t saying their breviaries or being seasick, we all played gin-rummy, and because they were skint, like me, we played for Benedictine. They had a whole crate of the stuff, and they were damned bad players. I was soon drinking two bottles a day.’ He broke off, looking round him. ‘Where are those bloody munts? I need a refuel.’ A man at the back hurried off towards the patio.

  Philby found himself next to a middle-aged man in a well-worn dinner-jacket, standing with his feet apart, like a sailor on a heaving deck.