Young Philby (12 page)

Perhaps a word about the Hajj would be in order: To his everlasting vexation he lived in the shadow of T. E. Lawrence—our Lawrence of Arabia, as the yellow journalists would have it. Both Philby and Lawrence had contributed to the routing of the Ottoman horde from Arabia and Palestine. Lawrence in particular had captured the popular imagination when he sweet-talked Sharif Hussain of Mecca into rebelling against the Turks, eventually driving them north through Sinai and Syria. In part because of arguments advanced by Lawrence (in some cases quite shamelessly in newspaper interviews), the Sharif’s son, Faisal, was crowned king in Damascus in 1920. Lawrence wanted to go whole hog and install princes of the House of Hashim on thrones in Iraq and Transjordan, and the FO came to see things his way. Philby thought Lawrence had got it bass-ackward (to use the polite version of one of Father’s saltier expressions). The Hajj argued that the British were betting on the wrong horse; that they should be putting their money on ibn Saud and his Wahabi nomads in the Arabian desert, who were living in tents atop an ocean of petroleum. “Factories that run on coal are switching to petroleum,” the Hajj would tell Father, his only-just-kempt beard quivering with aggravation. “Am I wrong in thinking the keels being laid down now are going to be propelled by bunker oil?”

“I am afraid that is a state secret,” Father would reply evenly. “If I were to tell you, old boy, I should have to kill you.”

At the time St John Philby had rewarded Father’s rare stab at humor with a weak smile. As I recall the scene, I seem to remember Father shrugging amiably. In the quarrel between the two rats of the desert, Philby and Lawrence,
Quex
was never quite sure his Trinity chum hadn’t gotten it right.

As concerns the meeting at hand: Once the social amenities were out of the way, Colonel Vivian, who tended the counterintelligence portfolio in Father’s shop, tapped Philby on a kneecap. “You will probably have heard,” he said.

“I caught a glimpse of the headlines coming through Victoria,” Philby replied. “Do you know more than what’s in the newspapers?”

Father said, “It is Valentine’s brief to know more than they print in the papers.”

“He makes half of it up,” Colonel Menzies interjected under his breath.

It was never difficult to get Colonel Vivian’s goat. “I shall carry on as if I hadn’t heard that,” he said, but he had heard it and the register of his voice was not quite the same. “Ten Austrian Nazis from SS Regiment 89 were behind yesterday’s assassination of Dollfuss. They talked their way into the Chancellery building and shot him dead when he rose to his feet to greet them. It was, of course, an attempt at a putsch. Herr Hitler will certainly have been behind it. The assassins were apprehended by the Austrian gendarmerie. I have it on good authority the scoundrels are to be shot. It was thanks to the Heimwehr militia units, which remained loyal to the government and attacked the Nazi formations before they could launch the coup d’état, that the plot failed.”

“Wasn’t that boy of yours prowling Vienna?” Father asked Philby.

“Dashed off to Austria to polish his German after he came down from Cambridge. Made a beeline for Britannia straightaway Dollfuss crushed those Communist riots last February.”

“What’s his name again?”

“Kim.”

“That’s it. Kim. After Kipling’s Kim, if memory serves.”

“Yes.”

“Expect him to become a spy like Kipling’s Kim, do you?”

“I can think of worse fates.”

Father opined, “I can’t.” Colonels Vivian and Menzies laughed appreciatively. Father continued, “Your boy was smart to return to England. In my view, a failed putsch or two won’t stop Hitler from seizing Austria.”

Philby said, “Great Britain is making the colossal mistake of seeing Hitler as the principal adversary.”

“Have you had occasion to read
Mein Kampf
?” Colonel Vivian inquired of Philby.

“Have you had occasion to read the terms of the Versailles treaty?” Philby retorted. “What could be more normal than the Germans wanting to rearm, to take their rightful place in Europe. Austria is their backyard, their
elbow room,
as they put it.”

“The Versailles treaty was the price the Germans had to pay for waging the war,” Colonel Vivian asserted.

“It was the price they had to pay for
losing
the war,” Philby insisted.

“More claret?” Father inquired.

“I was under the impression Muslims didn’t drink,” Colonel Vivian remarked when the Hajj accepted a refill.

“There is no prohibition in the holy Koran against consuming alcoholic beverages,” Philby said. He was not to be easily sidetracked. “I make no secret of my exasperation with British foreign policy, Hugh,” he told Father. “I consider it wrongheaded, especially insofar as we flaunt the dreadful Balfour Declaration encouraging the Zionist delusion of returning to Palestine.”

“You would have us accept this clown Hitler as an equal in Europe?” Colonel Vivian asked. He looked at Father and raised his hands, palms upward, as if he had made the point that clinches an argument.

“Like it or not, Herr Hitler
is
an equal,” Philby said. “If the British establishment view him as a clown, it’s because the British press keelhauled the German chancellor with personal ridicule. The British government are every bit as responsible as Herr Hitler for the tension in Europe.”

“You see no solution?” Father asked. He seemed genuinely bemused by the Hajj’s orneriness. Knowing Father, I suspect he appreciated opinions that had their origins in an eccentric temperament.

“There would be a solution if the F.O. weren’t too dimwitted to explore it. What is needed is a Christian settlement to the quarrel.”

“As Christians, oughtn’t we to be concerned about Hitler’s attitude toward Jews?” Colonel Menzies inquired.

“As a militant anti-Zionist,” the Hajj replied, “I don’t give a hang how Herr Hitler treats his Jews so long he doesn’t pack them off to Palestine. They are, after all,
his
Jews, Stewart.” Philby looked directly at Father. “The great enemy of Western civilization is not Herr Hitler and Germany, it is Generalissimo Stalin and Soviet Russia.”

Father said, “I don’t quite see things the way you do, old boy. You are obsessed with Soviet Russia. Have been as far back as Trinity, where I remember your spouting off about that chap Trotsky and his Petrograd Soviet. What year would that have been, Evelyn?”

“Nineteen oh five, Father.”

“Oh five, of course. My predecessor at SIS, Smith-Cumming, was obsessed with Communism, too. Tried to overthrow the Bolsheviks after their little palace revolution—damn near succeeded. I’m talking about Bruce Lockhart’s caper, which got us nothing but bad headlines for our troubles. Smith-Cumming devoted a good part of SIS’s extremely limited resources to what he perceived to be the plausible Soviet threat of world revolution. When I took over here after Smith-Cumming met his Maker—damnation, what year would that have been, Evelyn?”

“Nineteen twenty-three, Father.”

“That’s it, twenty-three. The inability to recall dates is a symptom of premature dotage, what? I was saying—what was I saying? Ah, yes, that we kept our more or less orthodox espionage efforts directed against the Soviets until Herr Hitler appeared center stage. Given F.O. restrictions on our purse strings, not to mention F.O.’s unshakable conviction that Herr Hitler had become our principal adversary, we were obliged to shift gears.”

“Quite right,” Colonel Vivian said.

Father didn’t appreciate interruptions. “As I was saying, we were obliged to shift gears, which is to say redirect our resources from Soviet Russia in order to target Fascist Germany.”

“Quite wrong,” the Hajj said.

Philby was one of the very few who could cross Father so directly. “How so?”
Quex
asked pleasantly enough.

“The future is perceptible to those who are not fearful of gazing into the crystal ball,” the Hajj said. “Europe is heading for another Great War. Soviet Russia, with its limitless manpower, with Stalin’s ruthless thirst for conquest, will emerge from it to dominate Europe. The Soviets, keen to recover lost territories, will dress up old Tsarist appetites in Communist ideology. Revolutionary movements financed and encouraged by the Soviets, and ultimately loyal to the Soviets, will spring up in the most unlikely places. The empire will be at risk. India will be the first to go.”

Colonel Menzies had been following the exchange attentively. “What would you have us do, St John, that we are not already doing?” he asked.

“Can we suppose you have something up your sleeve?” Colonel Vivian inquired.

The Hajj: “Be a damn fool turning up here if I didn’t.”

Father: “Could you tell us about it?”

The Hajj: “I shall have to kill you all immediately if I do.”

I have a marginalia here that reads:
General laughter
.

Father: “You haven’t interrupted your exploration of Arabia’s Empty Quarter to hold back on us, old boy. Do spit it out.”

What follows in my minute of the meeting is a half page of shorthand notes that were blacked out by Father.

My minute resumes with my observation that Father was tapping the fingertips of his right hand on the knuckles of his left hand, a secret signal to me that the interview had run its course. “Excuse the interruption, Father—”

Quex turned on me in mock irritation. “What is it now, Evelyn?”

“It is almost four. You are supposed to be on the carpet of the F.O. at four forty-five sharp to discuss the proposed cutbacks in SIS funding.” I seem to recall Father’s nautical chronometer on the wall behind his desk delicately sounding eight bells as I said this.

Father turned back to the Hajj. “Can we agree that this meeting never took place?”

“What meeting?” the Hajj said with what can only be described as a conspiratorial smirk, which, come to think of it, made him look nearly human. One caught a glimpse of what a woman might see in this unconventional figure of a man.

Father rose stiffly to his feet. “Jolly decent of you to drop by and share your views with us, St John. Always fascinating to hear what the world might look to be from Jiddah.”

“Hear, hear,” Colonel Menzies said.

“My sentiments precisely,” Colonel Vivian agreed.

St John Philby reached down to tie up the laces of his runners. “Yes, so you’re turning me out to the mercies of your asphalt jungle, are you?”

Father said, “Quite.”

At this point my minute replicates the words that appear on the silver screen moments before the last reel of a film runs free:
The End.

5: LONDON, AUTUMN 1936

Where Three Birds Are Killed with One Stone

If the recruitment phase can be said to come under the heading of art—seduction, whether of a prospective lover or a prospective espionage agent, is certainly an art—what followed can be best described as craft. Or more precisely, tradecraft, to use the term we professionals employ. Setting up meetings was the first order of business. The tradecraft involved was fairly straightforward. Harold Adrian Philby, nickname Kim, cryptonym
Sonny
, and yours truly, Teodor Stepanovich Maly, the London
Rezident
Sonny knew only as Otto, would meet at nine- and eleven-day intervals (the irregularity was a precaution) at alternating locations, with fallback locations if for any reason one of us failed to turn up; with telephone numbers where seemingly innocuous messages could be left on new Swiss magnetic-tape answering machines, which I had to justify before Moscow Centre would permit them to be included in the
Rezidentura
’s budget. As I recall, the first several meetings were devoted to the creation of a persona, which is defined by the august
Oxford English Dictionary,
second edition, 1934 (a copy of which was, thanks to me, in the Soviet Embassy library), as the role one assumes in public, as distinguished from the inner self. The role Sonny would henceforth assume in public was that of an upper-class educated English gentleman who, like many of his schoolmates, had flirted with Socialism during his Cambridge years; had gone so far as to motorcycle to Vienna to help refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany; had married a Jewish girl in order to qualify her for a British passport and bring her to safety in England. With the passage of time, this same young man had come to his senses with respect to politics, which is to say he had matured into a right-of-center conservative who wanted nothing more than to settle down to career and family and get on with life. We worked out the general lines in our first sessions and the details in subsequent sessions. I found Sonny to be a quick learner—it often happened that I started a sentence and he saw where it was going and finished it for me.

He kept me up to date on the progress he was making in the construction of his persona. He sorted through his books and got rid of the ones that would identify its owner as someone with leftist sympathies. He cancelled his subscription to the
Daily Worker
and subscribed instead to
The Times
of London, with its vaguely pro-German orientation. To give credibility to his new conservative persona, Sonny joined the Anglo-German Fellowship, a group organized to improve relations between England and Germany, going so far (with my encouragement) as to frequent the German Embassy in London; making use of his press credentials as a subeditor of the
Review of Reviews,
he had several conversations with the German ambassador, Herr Ribbentrop, during which Sonny was careful to repeat his father’s mantra about the need for a Christian settlement to British-German differences. Most importantly, Sonny began cutting his links with his leftist Cambridge friends.

I instructed Sonny to make the effort to get on better terms with the man he invariably referred to as his
sainted father
, St John Philby, who was less than pleased when his son turned up in London married to a Hungarian Jewess-cum-Communist. Kim wrote his father a rambling letter in which he explained away his leftist sympathies as misplaced youthful idealism and described his conversations with Ribbentrop. This worked out so well that Kim and his wife were invited to lodge in his father’s London flat. It was at this point that I gave Sonny his first espionage assignment: I instructed him to go through his father’s papers to see if there was any connection between St John and the chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service, the mysterious Admiral Sinclair. Sonny passed this initial test with what the English refer to as
airborne colors
: He brought me duplicates of three letters, copied off by Sonny in miniscule handwriting, each signed by someone named
Hugh
, which I knew to be the Christian name of Admiral Sinclair. Apparently he and St John were acquainted with each other from Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge. In one of the letters, Hugh brought St John up-to-date on mutual friends from those days. Regrettably, the letters revealed no state secrets. In the last of the three, bearing a quite recent date, Admiral Sinclair invited St John to come by Caxton House for a drink the next time he found himself in London. From the way the invitation was worded, I gathered that St John Philby was not an actual member of the British Secret Intelligence Service but, given his close relationship with the Saudi ruler ibn Saud, more like an occasional consultant.