Young Philby

by Robert Littell

  Kopek-pinching pricks!

  All of which explains what I was doing on the terrace of a seedy workers’ café outside the train station in the French resort town of Biarritz, my Panama hat with the turned-down brim shading my eyes from the midday sun, drinking cheap anisette while pretending to read a copy of the American magazine Newsweek (purchased at a papeterie in Bordeaux with my own money) in which I’d concealed new codes and cash. The Englishman was as usual maddeningly punctual. The bell in the church tower across the square was announcing the noon hour as he settled onto the chair across the table from me. He was wearing worn corduroys, a khaki desert jacket, and a threadbare silk scarf knotted loosely around his neck. A gauze field dressing protected the gash in his scalp from the fine sand dust rising off the pavement with each gust of air. His face appeared thinner, his eyes more heavy-lidded than I remembered. He looked as if he was coming off an all-night binge. He looked as if he could use a vacation, which is something spies never get to take. I made a mental note to pass on to my superiors: The agent Moscow Centre knew as Sonny was paying the piper for leading a double life.

  “Good morning to you, Alexander,” he said. He waved a palm to catch the eye of the waitress and ordered American coffee. “Or should one say g-good afternoon now that it is after noon?”

  I wasn’t comfortable with small talk. “Either, or,” I remarked.

  The Englishman pulled a small metal tin filled with tablets from a jacket pocket. He offered me one and when I wagged a finger, he carefully selected a tablet and popped it into his mouth. “Chronic indigestion,” he said. “Spanish use too much olive oil when they cook. In B-Basque country you can smell a kitchen for kilometers. Imagine the havoc that p-produces in your average British digestive tract.”

  “Imagine,” I agreed. “How is your head wound?”

  “The gash became infected. Spanish surgeons had to open it up and clean it out before drowning it in tincture of iodine and stitching it back up. The red on the gauze is iodine, not blood. I get the occasional migraine which I treat with aspirin and alcohol.”

  A thin teenage girl almost lost in an ankle-length white apron set a glass of coffee and a second glass of water on the table in front of Philby. He helped himself to two cubes of sugar, then glanced around as he absently stirred the coffee. A double line of schoolchildren, each of them dressed in identical blue smocks and clutching the shoulder of the child in front, was being led diagonally across the square by a very short priest holding a wooden crucifix high over his head. Philby regarded them so intently I wondered if it reminded him of a scene from his own childhood.

  Inspired by the sight of the crucifix, I asked, “How is Catholic Spain treating you?”

  “Like the heretic I am. The awful truth, which doesn’t endear me to my Spanish friends, is I miss the Moors—I am sorry they were hounded back to North Africa. Their poets, their architects, their scholars enlightened Catholic Spain.” He leaned toward me and, lowering his voice to a thick whisper, said, “Alexander, Franco’s newspapers are filled with stories of p-purge trials, of executions, in Moscow. They gloat that the revolution is devouring its children—Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, even B-Bukharin, the man Lenin himself called the darling of the p-party. What’s going on? How do you explain this? Can there be a grain of truth to the charges that these giants of the revolution were foreign agents?”

  I had, over time, given this matter of life or death not a little thought. The purge of the party that began in the early part of the decade had in due course reached into the ranks of our NKVD. Quite a few of my colleagues in the field had been recalled to Moscow; some had been found guilty of being foreign agents and suffered the consequences—a bullet in the nape of the neck. Others had simply disappeared. What would I do if I were to suddenly receive a telegram summoning me home for consultations? I would shit in my pants—it would be every bit as dangerous not to go as to go. The NKVD has a long arm—on more than one occasion I had been that long arm. I suppose I could always solve the dilemma by defecting to the West, but that would leave my family—my wife and daughter, my parents, my brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts—exposed to punishment. (In the eyes of the Peoples’ Prosecutor, a relative of an enemy of the people is also an enemy of the people.) If it ever came to that, I would have to come up with a scheme to protect my family. The Englishman was watching me intently, waiting for an answer to his question. “From an operational point of view,” I told him, “everyone must be seen as a potential foreign agent.”

  “What about me? Do you think I could b-be a foreign agent?”

  “I keep the possibility on file in one lobe of my brain.”

  “Why on earth do you meet with me, then?”

  I could see my answers were making him uncomfortable. This Cambridge fellow who stammered his way through a conversation was visibly pushing himself to the edge to spy for the Soviet Union. And yet … and yet one could perceive in him the faintest suggestion of deeper currents, of loyalties beyond the surface loyalty to us. To family perhaps? To friends? To his privileged class? To England? “I meet with you,” I finally told him, “because you are our principal agent in Spain. Moscow Centre trusts you. So do I.”

  “You took your sweet time replying.”

  “I take my sweet time all the time. Like a good night’s sleep, it’s a habit that contributes to longevity.”

  “Yes, well, but you avoided my questions about the p-purge trials. Were Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Bukharin agents of a foreign p-power plotting against Stalin?”

  “I am not in a position to know if they actually plotted against Comrade Stalin or simply intended to,” I said. “But I believe they would have if they could have—the struggle for power in the Kremlin that began with Lenin’s death in 1924 is unfortunately still going on. Comrade Stalin anticipates there will be a war with the German Fascists by 1943 at the latest. He is wisely securing his rear to avoid being stabbed in the back when war comes.”

  “Ahhh, I’m beginning to see why you always sit facing the café window—you’re afraid of being stabbed in the back, you’re keeping track of what’s going on b-behind you without appearing to.”

  I grunted in agreement. “It’s a bit of tradecraft that doesn’t cost Moscow Centre a kopek,” I said.

  “I’m not quite sure I understand.”

  I decided not to explain. “What route did you take getting here?” I asked.

  “Train to San Sebastián, then caught a ride in a Red Cross truck to Bayonne and took that new tramway to Biarritz. I was obliged to spend a night in Bilbao on the way—the rail line after Bilbao had been cut by a mudslide. I chatted up a German military attaché in the bar of my hotel. Nice chap. Heinrich von something.” Philby rummaged in the breast pockets of his desert jacket with his fingertips but couldn’t find what he was looking for. “B-bloody hell, he gave me his calling card but I seem to have mislaid it. Heinrich was so impressed to come across someone who had spoken with Ambassador Ribbentrop, he invited me to supper in the officers’ mess at an aerodrome near the city. Whilst driving past an enormous hangar, I could see airmen assembling several fighter planes that seemed to have been shipped in large crates. The attaché told me they were Willy Messerschmitt’s latest model—Bf 109 F’s, with 1100 horsepower engines. He boasted about their being able to fly rings around the Russian fighters the Republicans managed to put into the air.”

  “Did he mention the 109’s armaments?”

  “No. And I didn’t ask. Should I have?”

  I shook my head. “You were smart not to. You want to be careful not to appear overly curious.” I took my sweet time sipping my anisette. “In any case, with or without the new 109s, the war against Franco is lost.”

  “Is that what Moscow Centre thinks?”

  “That’s what the world thinks. The forces Franco gathered under the Nationalist banner—monarchists, Fascists, priests, career army officers—control the Basque country and the heavy industry in Bilbao. You yourself reported that Fran
co could muster five armies supported by some four hundred aircraft.”

  “The Republicans still have Barcelona and its port,” Philby said. “Comrade Stalin could send in masses of armaments…”

  Knowing me, I would have smiled one of my knowing smiles. I said, “Comrade Stalin will need those masses of armaments to defend Soviet Russia when war breaks out with Germany. The Republicans’ only hope is to stay put in their trenches and try to hang on until the European war erupts, at which point the weights on the scales might conceivably shift.”

  I was struck by the expression on Philby’s face. He looked genuinely distressed. Clearly the moment had come to raise the delicate matter of the special assignment from Moscow Centre. “There is one other hope for our Republican friends and their Communist allies…”

  “Yes?”

  Philby ran a finger under his scarf, as if it were chafing his neck. I thought silk didn’t chafe but then what did I know? I only owned itchy woolen scarves. I said, “Generalissimo Franco is the Republicans’ only other hope.”

  “I beg your p-pardon?”

  I couldn’t contain a laugh. The special assignment Moscow had instructed me to pass along to Sonny was manifestly ridiculous. Still, I had little choice but to do what I was told. “If he were to die suddenly—”

  “Why would Franco die suddenly?” I noticed the heavy lids on Philby’s eyes blinking open as he grasped where this was going. He leaned half across the table. “How would Franco die suddenly?” he whispered.

  “Someone might assassinate him.”

  “You’re surely not suggesting that that someone might be me?” He stared at me incredulously. “You are, aren’t you? What a pisser. You’re actually asking me to kill Franco!”

  His lack of sophistication was getting on my nerves. “I’m not asking you anything. Special assignments don’t originate with controllers in the field. I’m the fucking middleman, passing along an order from Moscow Centre. Wise up, Kim. A special assignment of this nature could only come from Comrade Stalin himself.”

  “Do I have this right? Joe Stalin wants Kim Philby to assassinate Francisco Franco?”

  “The moment has come to educate you on how things like this work,” I said. And I did. At some length. The tale usually begins with Comrade Stalin watching late-night motion pictures with his Politburo cronies in the Near Dacha outside of Moscow. Along about the second or third reel, he might make a casual remark, which then works its way down the chain of command, gaining authority and urgency with each retelling.

  Nodding as if he were punctuating my sentences, the Englishman heard me out. “How can you be sure of this?” he demanded. “Have you encountered Comrade Stalin? Do you know him personally?”

  “I worked for him during our civil war in the city we now call Stalingrad. He was a tough biscuit, as the Americans say.”

  “I believe the expression is tough cookie.”

  “Biscuit. Cookie. He is as tough as the stunted trees in the arctic steppe. In Stalingrad several of us pooled our resources and bought him a beautiful 9 millimeter Beretta to mark a particular occasion, the details of which I won’t go into. Comrade Stalin was extremely proud of his Italian pistol—he showed the bare-breasted goddess engraved on its barrel to everyone. In Stalingrad he carried the pistol wedged into the wide belt of his tunic. I remember him once saying he slept with it on the table next to his bed.”

  “The only thing I’m armed with,” Philby told me, “is humor and trepidation. I don’t even own a handgun. I wouldn’t know how to use one if I did.”

  “You point it and pull the trigger.”

  “If I ever pointed a handgun at another human, even someone as god-evil as Franco, I’d shut my eyes so as not to see blood spilled. If I shut my eyes I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, forget about the chest of a man.” He shrugged the way English people shrug, which is to say he lazily raised a shoulder as if he were dispensing energy frugally. “I saw my father bleeding from a cut on his hand once when I was a child. We were exploring the souk in Damascus. Know what I did? I p-puked over a p-posh djellabah at a tailor’s stall. The only way my sainted father could quiet the bugger was to buy it. For years he would tease me about his having wasted good Syrian piastres on an article of clothing that was far too big for me. I suspect my chronic indigestion, perhaps even my stammer, date back to Damascus. I took the story about the djellabah being too big as metaphor.”

  “You didn’t fit the image your father had of what a son should be.”

  “Something along those lines.”

  I remember thinking, I need to soothe the Englishman’s ruffled feathers. I remember saying, “You don’t have to actually kill Franco, Kim. You only have to appear to go through the motions of organizing an assassination. Send me reports on his security precautions as if you are taking the special assignment seriously. By the time Moscow figures out you’re not going to assassinate Franco, the Republican armies will have collapsed, putting an end to the civil war. Franco, Spain’s dictator in residence, will be beyond reach in a palace in Madrid and Moscow will turn its attention to the threat closer to home: Adolf Hitler.”

  Philby sat there shaking his head in bewilderment. My words obviously hadn’t registered. “I haven’t the foggiest idea how one goes about killing someone, Alexander. Otto never educated me along these lines in London. I did simple codes, I did secret writing, I learned how to spot when someone was following you, I was quite good at getting lost in a crowd even in the absence of a crowd. Nothing about assassinations. How do they expect me to do it? With a knife? A p-pistol perhaps? Ahhh, p-poison. Surely p-poison. Spies are supposed to be skilled at p-poisoning p-people. Or perhaps they would like me to strangle him. He is quite short, you know, though come to think of it quite brawny. Don’t know if I could pull it off. Assuming I was up to it, what am I supposed to do—strangle the bloke with one of my shoelaces, which is about the only p-personal item the bloody bodyguards left me when I’ve been in the same room with Franco?”

  I reached across the table to grasp his wrist. “Get ahold of yourself, Kim.”

  Two particularly attractive girls, French judging by their mouthwateringly bare shoulders, were strolling past the fountain at the center of the square, their arms linked, their laughter drifting across the cobblestones. With the sun’s rays slanting in between the wind-bitten sandstone apostles atop the church cornice, their long dresses had turned transparent. Philby noticed me staring at something in the café window and followed my gaze. He snickered admiringly. I heard him say, “I suppose you’ve killed people in your day.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was intended as a statement or a question. Thinking an episode that might have come from one of those twenty-franc pocket detective novels, but didn’t, would distract him, I said, “I was in a cheap hotel in Nice a month ago when two French detectives burst into my room.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I was sleeping in my underwear when the overhead bulb snapped on. I sat up, blinking hard to be sure I wasn’t dreaming. I wasn’t dreaming. They were both standing at the foot of the bed, their feet planted wide apart in the orthodox firing position, pointing pistols at my solar plexus. I recognized their pistols—each had his fist around a 6.35 millimeter blowback, what the fucking French call Le Français. I held up my hands, palms out, and looked over at my own pistol—a lovely little P8 Luger Parabellum—in the holster hanging on the back of a chair out of arm’s reach. They followed my eyes. That was their fatal blunder. I slept with a double-barreled American Mossberg under the blanket. I had sawed off the barrels myself so the shot pattern would spread and it would be hard to miss at close range. I shot them dead, one barrel each.” I threaded my fingers through my hair, which I kept cropped in the style popular with Red Army noncommissioned officers. “It wasn’t a pretty sight, I will be the first to concede. There was a fair amount of blood spattered over the wallpaper depicting sheep grazing in a meadow. For sure, you would have thrown up. I dressed and climbed ou
t the window and made my way to the street on one of those newfangled steel fire escapes they install on public buildings nowadays.”

  “How does it feel? To shoot someone to death?”

  “It feels a damn sight better than being shot to death.”

  Philby polished off the last of his American coffee, which must have been cold by now, though that didn’t seem to faze him. He reached for my copy of Newsweek. “I take it this is for me.”

  “You’ll find a new code sheet stuck in the pages, along with what hard cash I could squeeze out of the pricks on the fifth floor. Keep addressing your picture postcards to Mademoiselle Dupont at 79 Rue de Grenelle in Paris.”