Young Philby (25 page)

“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 slandering 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?”

In truth, I was only too relieved to submit to Colonel Menzies’ entreaties. Mind, I still didn’t receive an honorarium, but thanks to my father’s flag-rank pension I was able to make ends meet without too much difficulty. And I didn’t fancy myself living out the days Providence left me preparing tea and crumpets for Temperance Society spinsters in Camden Town. “I shall be only too pleased to keep my nose to the grindstone,” I’d informed the Colonel. And I had, through the chaotic weeks of the blitz when SIS was expanding exponentially and we were issued sidearms to repel German paratroopers who might land on the roof of Caxton House; through the exhilarating months following the Normandy invasion when the red arrows on the giant war map marking the progress of our armies inched closer to Berlin; through these last several days when blood, sweat, and tears gave way to the exuberance of church bells ringing in every borough and shire.

Colonel Menzies’ prickly voice broke into my remembrance of things past. “Miss Sinclair,” he growled, his cherubic face in the doorway of my cubical, “I shall be requiring your services this afternoon. That chap your father called the Hajj seems to be coming by at four.”

My institutional memory rose to the occasion. “You must mean the Arabist St John Philby,” I said.

“That’s the one. Let’s hope he has combed the lice out of his beard, what? Could you fetch the minute of the meeting we had with him in ’34 so I can stir my memory.”

It didn’t take me long to locate the minute in the steel filing cabinet the security people had insisted on installing in my cubical. I brought it up to the colonel’s topside parlor straightaway. He had changed the décor since Father’s day. The thick curtain the admiral favored had been replaced by venetian blinds, albeit closed day and night; a mixed bag of kings and queens eavesdropped from the walls in the place of Wellington’s generals; a large electricity-powered wall clock thunderously ticked off the seconds where once Father’s nautical chronometer had delicately chimed watches at sea. “I expect this is what you are looking for,” I said, giving the typescript of the minute in question to the colonel.

He read it on the diagonal, as we say in the espionage trade. “Seems to be a gap near the end,” he announced. I handed him my original shorthand notes of the minute. Half a page had been blacked out.

“Who did that?” he demanded.

“Father.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, really. I suppose he didn’t want to leave a paper trail.”

He plucked the telephone off its hook. “Mrs. Mortimer, kindly ask Captain Knox downstairs in science to drop what he’s doing and come by.”

Moments later there was a rap on the door. “Come,” Colonel Menzies called.

“Sir?”

“What do you make of this, Knox?” Colonel Menzies asked, holding out my shorthand notes of the minute.

“Why, it’s been blacked out by a thick marker, hasn’t it?”

“I can see that, man. Are you able to make out what’s under the black marker?”

“I should think so.”

“How will you do it?”

“I expect I shall hold the paper up to a very bright light and photograph it, then work on the printing of the negative to bring out the writing a bit more on each positive.”

“How long will it take?”

“I should have it ready for Miss Sinclair to type up by the time you return from lunch.”

“By the by, what is your clearance, Knox?”

“I am cleared to read anything the prime minister can read, sir.”

“I am not convinced that he is cleared to read this bit.”

“I take your meaning, Colonel. I shall make no effort to decipher the shorthand under the black marker.”

“Good man, Knox.”

Knox was true to his word. Here is the last part of the minute. I’ve italicized the half page that father had blacked out:

The Hajj: The future is perceptible to those who are not fearful of gazing into the crystal ball. 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: What would you have us do, St John, that we are not already doing?

Colonel Vivian: Can we suppose you have something up your sleeve?

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.

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.