Young Philby

by Robert Littell

“Three birds with one stone, Kim. We have informants on the Republican side but next to nothing on Franco’s side. As an Englishman with a reputation for being a friend of Franco’s principal sponsor, Germany, you would be ideally positioned to obtain information on Franco’s order of battle, on troop movements, on the matériel and pilots that Hitler and Mussolini are providing to the Fascists.”

  I remember we were sitting on the bench across from the new Battersea Power Station on Kirtling Street at the time of this conversation. It was lunch hour. Men with identical bowler hats planted on their heads strolled the sidewalk. A boy in knickerbockers hawked newspapers on the corner, calling out the headlines in a shrill singsong voice. Edward planning to abdicate throne to marry American divorcée Simpson. Defying League of Nations Hitler tightens grip on Rhineland. I was wearing my bowler and balancing my umbrella across my knees. I retain an indelible image of Kim shelling peanuts to feed the pigeons prowling the gutter. He concentrated on the pigeons for a long while. Finally he said, “How do you think they learn to eat the nuts and not the shells?”

  “Painful experience.”

  “That’s a coincidence—it’s my alma mater. The school of p-p-painful experience.” He nodded as if he had come to a decision. “Of course I shall have to speak with Litzi.”

  “I have already spoken with Litzi.”

  He turned to me in surprise. “When? She didn’t say a word about it to me.”

  “She is still under Centre discipline. I instructed her not to. We met last week at the tearoom in the Brook Street hotel. I explained to her what I had in mind for you. Litzi is a good soldier, a good Communist. There is a line in English poetry that describes her perfectly: They also serve who only stand and wait. When we spoke, she said she’d seen the writing on the wall when you told her you’d agreed to be recruited—she understood that you and she would eventually have to separate. She realizes she is a liability to you, a drag on your career. She realizes this has to end if you are to be of service to the anti-Fascist internationale. People would understand your marrying a Jewess to save her from persecution. People will understand your decision to leave her once she was safely in England.”

  “I shall need to think this through,” he said.

  “By all means, think it through.”

  “I do have a choice?”

  I gripped his arm. “You have a choice—you can take the leap and become an important contributor to the cause, or you can join the British Communist Party and”—here I pointed to the boy hawking newspapers on the corner—“call out Daily Worker headlines to illiterate coal miners.”

  When Sonny showed up for our meeting eleven days later, he was carrying an English-Spanish dictionary. He riffled through to a page he had dog-eared and read off what he had written in the margin: “Voy a España para informar sobre una guerra.”

  “Muchas gracias,” I replied.

  * * *

  By early 1937 I considered Sonny sufficiently proficient in tradecraft for him to depart for Spain. At our last meeting, on the Regent’s Park bench where we’d first met, I gave him a sheet of very thin rice paper. In a column down the left-hand side I had listed the things we were interested in: tanks, trucks, repair facilities, airports, bombers, fighters, artillery, mortars, machine guns, battalions, regiments, divisions, German or Italian advisors, German or Italian pilots. Down the right-hand side I had listed innocuous words: because, eventually, weather, incredible, tasty, sunset, lunch, that sort of thing. I instructed him to mail a love letter once every week to Mlle Dupont at 79 Rue de Grenelle in Paris. Every fifth word in the letter would be a code word. If he wanted to report seeing eighteen tanks at a repair facility, the fifth word in the letter would be 18, the tenth would be because, the fifteenth, weather. From time to time he would be summoned to one of the French towns just across the frontier where foreign correspondents went to avoid censorship when they filed stories. There he would meet with his field controller, Alexander Orlov, cryptonym the Swede. Orlov would be sitting at the local train station café when the church bells sounded noon. He would be wearing a Panama hat with the brim turned down to shade his eyes and reading a copy of the new American magazine called News-Week. The Swede would debrief Philby and supply him with fresh code sheets, cash, and instructions. “I can promise you that Moscow Centre considers this a high-priority assignment,” I said. “Important comrades in the Soviet capital will be watching to see how you perform.”

  “They said that?”

  “They didn’t have to. Sending Orlov, who is one of our most experienced field agents, to be your controller tells the whole story. I know Orlov personally. He was a war hero—he distinguished himself fighting with the Twelfth Red Army on the Polish front after the Bolshevik Revolution. Don’t be put off by his manner. He is a gruff, no-nonsense fellow but a loyal party member and a steadfast comrade. You can trust him with your life.”

  I remember Sonny running his thumb down the list on the left-hand side of the thin sheet of rice paper. “It appears as if I shall have to.”

  6: SALAMANCA, SPAIN, DECEMBER 1937

  English Discovers There Is No Way Out Except Up

  There is a downside to being a celebrated film and theater actress, which is my professional description—gentlemen simply assume you’re playing a role offstage as well as on. English, as I christened him the moment I heard his posh British stammer, must have thought this to be the case. I became aware of him across the luncheon table at the Grand Hotel in Salamanca, Franco’s military H.Q., saying little, eating less, sucking on tablets he retrieved from a small tin, all the while smoking one of those vile French cigarettes favored by the working classes. He appeared to be mesmerized by the German military advisors decked out in a mixed bag of Gilbert and Sullivan frippery, eating at the long table reserved for them in the middle of the dining room. The Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, a cousin of the legendary German ace from the Great War Manfred von Richthofen, was entertaining a cluster of young Condor Legion Messerschmitt pilots, using his hands to conjure up two planes locked in a deadly dogfight. Every now and then one of the Italian Fiat pilots at a nearby table would leap to his feet to toast his German comrades. Shrugging off the greatcoat draped over his shoulders, Richthofen, the Condor Legion’s chief of staff, would half rise out of his chair to acknowledge the salutation. It was only when we came to coffee and brandy that English seemed to notice my presence at all. He raised his marvelously robin’s-egg-blue eyes and fixed them on me as if there were already a connivance between us; as if it was written that we would become intimate. When we finally found ourselves alone after the meal—our host, Randy Churchill, counting on the pound sterling to trump the Spanish peseta, had gone off to renegotiate the bill—English called to me over the clamor of the restaurant, “So what role were you p-playing today?”

  “Sorry?”

  “What role? Whom were you trying to b-b-be?”

  “That’s a goddamn arrogant question to put to someone you don’t know.”

  Detecting the mischievous glint in his eyes, I tossed a shoulder in vexation. “I was trying to be the Canadian actress who keeps men at arm’s distance by a wisp of wintriness in her voice, an ironic curl to her lips when she smiles.”

  “Have you actually rehearsed in front of a m-mirror?”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “You do it very well, the wintry voice, the ironic curl deforming an otherwise delicious smile. I got the uncomfortable feeling even arm’s d-distance might be too close to the flame for comfort. Well, ta. I must be off.”

  “Who was he?” I asked my luncheon host when he came back. “The Englishman diagonally across from me?”

  “Dear girl, that’s Philby. He’s the Times correspondent in Spain. Has he gone and put his foot in his mouth again? The Orientals are said to say a closed mouth gathers no feet, but our man Philby lives by another creed. He is afflicted with the absolutely revolting habit of saying what he thinks.”

  Several days afterward I ran
into English again. I remember I was wearing a form-hugging ribbed turtleneck sweater and a pair of high-waisted hopsack trousers of the kind Marlene Dietrich had modeled in Edna Chase’s Vogue. He was dressed in a casual corduroy suit and tie and was banging out Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” on the upright piano in the Grand Hotel basement bar. A gaggle of foreign correspondents and their lady friends had gathered round him. Those who knew the song were singing snatches. “Moths in your rugs do it, What’s the use of moth balls?” Somehow the seawall of bodies parted and he caught sight of me. The playing stopped abruptly. English threaded his way through the crowd until he was standing before me. “I have been known to give a p-passable imp-personation of our lord and monarch, George Six. We b-both of us stammer. Would you care to hear it?”

  “No.”

  “Ahhh, beware of actresses bearing grudges. You didn’t appreciate arm’s d-distance might be too close to the flame for comfort.”

  “Didn’t.”

  “Can I make it up to you? Stand you a snakeb-bite?”

  “Snakebite?”

  “A drink. From a glass. With a straw if you p-prefer.” He offered a paw. “Philby. Kim Philby.”

  I looked down at his hand thinking it might be the snake that could bite, then, laughingly, gave in and accepted it. “Randy Churchill told me who you were. You cover Spain for Geoffrey Dawson’s rag. Remember reading your notice in The Times when Franco took Gijón—I supposed from our special correspondent in Spain meant you. Something about towels draped from windows as tokens of surrender, something about empty shops, a silent population. Sounded almost as if you’d been there.”

  “I was there. I was describing what I saw.” He realized he was still clinging to my hand and abruptly let it go. “I know who you are, too,” he announced somewhat awkwardly. “Frances Doble, Bunny to her mates, pushing thirty-five but nobody is quite sure from which side, spoilt daughter of a Canadian banker, spoilt ex-wife of a minor b-baronet, spoilt film and theater actress who played the lead opposite the matinee idol Ivor Novello in Nöel Coward’s Sirocco. According to Picture Show you are said to have an exquisite figure.” He treated himself to a long cheeky inspection of my body. “I’d say P-Picture Show was spot-on.”

  “You have done your homework.”

  He produced a smile. Of the two of us, it was English who possessed the more delicious smile—it could thaw out the iciest grudge. “Home work is what I do for a living” is what he said.

  Eager to hold up my end of the conversation, I’m afraid I began to babble. “In Sirocco, Ivor Novello chased me round a table till he tackled me to the floor and stretched out on top of me, his hips moving in passion. Dear God in heaven, they told me Ivor preferred boys but onstage he could have fooled me. I could feel his panhandle in my groin.”

  “You must tell me more about Ivor Novello’s p-panhandle,” English said, taking a grip on my elbow and steering me toward an empty table at the rear of the bar.

  A man I’d never seen before accosted English, blocking his path, putting a trembling palm on his shirtfront. “You are a lout, Philby,” he said quite loudly, his words slurred, his breath reeking of alcohol. “I have read your dispatches suggesting that Republican mines and not Fascist incendiary bombs destroyed Guernica. You have betrayed your Cambridge friends who died defending Republican trenches, you have betrayed the great Democratic cause of this century. You are on the wrong side of history.”

  I saw the fingers on English’s right hand clench into a fist and I thought he was going to strike the man. “You are drunk,” he said, dominating his emotions, shouldering past him and pulling me along behind him. He turned back for an instant. “I am exactly what I have always b-been,” he said.

  “And what would that be?” the man called after us.

  “My sainted father’s boy,” English said so softly I am sure I was the only one who heard him.

  “Sorry b-bout that,” he said as we settled into a booth facing each other.

  “Happen often?”

  “P-people feel strongly about civil wars. That’s why otherwise sane men wind up murdering each other for a few square yards of dirt.”

  “Do you feel strongly about this war?”

  “I have no opinion one way or the other. I am p-paid to describe what I see. What about you?”

  “I am not a Nationalist. I am a Royalist. I favor Franco winning in the expectation that he will restore the Bourbon monarchy.”

  “Codswallop. If el Caudillo de la Última Cruzada, as Franco styles himself, restores the monarchy, he will seat his own ass on the throne.”

  “I can only hope you are misreading his intentions.”

  “What brought you to Spain?”

  “A random wind. I chanced to meet King Alfonso in London, it will have been shortly after he went into exile in 1931. He turned up at one of my after-theater champagne bashes. He had the face of an animal but the heart of a Spaniard. He talked nonstop of Spanish bulls, of Spanish music, of Spanish women. My fascination with Spain dates to my friendship with Alfonso. When the subject came up again last year he suggested I come see for myself. I reminded him there was a civil war raging, but he also laughed and said violence was also characteristically Spanish. To make a long story shorter, I did come to see for myself. Been here since. What ’bout you? How did you wash up on this shore?”

  “Same way I washed up in Vienna few years b-back—several of my Cambridge mates dared me to go. Sold my books and records to p-pay my way, came as a freelance for a few months, wrote one piece that caught the eye of my masters at The Times. They offered me the situation. Which is how I came to be hanging about Franco’s military headquarters in Salamanca.” English looked at me the way I’d seldom been looked at before. “Which is how I came to share a table with the most beautiful woman in Spain.”

  I heard myself murmur, “I’ll wager you say that to all the girls.”

  He smiled innocently. “I say it to some of them. In your case it happens to be true.”

  Daiquiris appeared as if by magic on the table. It dawned on me that English had ordered them before I’d actually agreed to join him for his snakebite. Behind the shy smile he was a smug piece of work. I remember asking, “Can I presume you no longer fear singeing yourself on my flame?”

  “I still fear your flame, but I like to live d-dangerously.”

  “Randy told me about your living dangerously,” I remarked. “He said you were nearly stood against a wall and shot in Córdoba.”

  “Randolph was embroidering, as always.”

  “What did happen in Córdoba?”

  “I went there on a whim when I saw a p-poster advertising a bullfight. I made the mistake of not bothering to get a pass to a restricted area. Late that night two Guardia Civil types armed with rifles and bayonets b-busted into my room. They searched my valise and the room whilst I dressed. Then they marched me off to the local lockup. An officer, who clearly had it in for the English because we have declined the honor of establishing diplomatic relations with Franco’s Nationalists, ordered me to empty my p-pockets. That’s when I remembered the sheet of rice paper filled with codes folded into a tin of Arm and Hammer indigestion tablets in my pocket. If they had found that I would have been in a real jam.”

  “What on earth did you do?”

  “I pulled my wallet from my hip p-pocket and tossed it onto the table. The two soldiers and their officer pounced on it. Whilst they were going through my press credentials I managed to roll the folded rice into a ball with my finger-tips. Then I popped it into my mouth as if it were an indigestion tablet and sucked on it until it dissolved.”

  I sipped my daiquiri. “Of course I don’t believe a word about your sucking on the code.”

  English smiled. “I was trying to impress the p-pants off you.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  The smile vanished. “In the hope of impressing the p-pants off you.”

  I will admit to a weakness for men
who don’t beat about the bush. “Let’s do it,” I said, pilfering a bit of Cole Porter’s lyrics.

  “Lovely. Let’s.”

  “My room or yours?”

  “Mine is right under the German contingent. Elevators don’t run at night. The ones who pilot the Heinkel 45s tramp off at four in the morning to bomb the Republicans’ lines.”

  “Mine is next to the Italian pilots, but they don’t leave until six.”

  English said, “By six we ought to be just drifting off to sleep.”

  He was not far from the mark. By six I had lost count of how many times we’d made love. We were sitting up in bed smoking (my Old Golds; I couldn’t support the odor of his Gauloises Bleues) when we heard the Italian pilots padding along the corridor toward the stairwell on their stockinged feet. The sound of them whispering in Italian made us both giggle. “You’re a good storyteller,” I said. “The business about the code in Córdoba—the more I think about it, the more it rings true.”

  “I can be convincing when I try.”

  “It wasn’t your being convincing so much as everyone assumes Times correspondents work for the British Secret Intelligence Service. Randy Churchill is persuaded you’re SIS. Are you a spy, English?”

  “No.”

  “If you were, would you tell me?”

  “No.”

  “That puts us right back where we started.”

  “We can never go b-back to where we started, Frances.”

  It was as close as he would ever come to a declaration of love.

  His story of sucking on the code as if it were an indigestion tablet haunted me. As our life lines intertwined with the passage of time—we each kept our rooms in the Grand Hotel but he spent most nights in mine when he wasn’t on the road—I began to understand that English did have a secret life. It’s the sort of thing a woman knows intuitively about a man. Oh, he was drinking heavily, although he held his liquor with the best of them—you had to be sharing a bed with English to know he was inebriated. No, no, it was much more than his reliance on alcohol. Instead of my keeping him at arm’s distance, he was keeping me at arm’s distance. I could get only so close to him before I hit what I came to think of as his invisible wall.