Young Philby

by Robert Littell

  “Evidence,” Comrade Beria snapped. “Proofs.”

  “I shall begin with the Englishman’s roots,” I said. “His father, Harry St John Philby, is on record, in interviews published in obscure bulletins and local newspapers, as favoring what he calls a Christian solution to the German problem, thus freeing the British and French and Germans to combat what he considers to be the principal adversary, the Soviet Union. It is extremely unlikely the son would stray so far from the paternal mold that he would work as a secret agent for this principal adversary.” I removed a recent telegram from case file no. 5581 and read it aloud: “This cable from the London Rezident to Moscow Centre is dated 24 December 1940: Sonny—” I glanced quickly at respected Josef Vissarionovich and interjected, “Sonny is the Englishman’s cryptonym.”

  Respected Josef Vissarionovich muttered, “I am not an imbecile, Senior Lieutenant Modinskaya.”

  “It was not my intention to suggest—”

  “Read the telegram.”

  “Sonny has been recruited by the British Secret Intelligence Service. He has been assigned to Section D for Destruction, a unit with the mission of identifying weak points in the German resupply system.” I looked up at respected Josef Vissarionovich. “It strains credibility to believe that our supposed agent, recruited in 1934, then had the good fortune to stumble into employment with the infamous Times of London to cover the civil war in Spain from Franco’s side, after which, in 1940, this same agent was supposedly recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service, which has a reputation for running one of the most competent intelligence operations in the world. It defies credibility that SIS is staffed with imbeciles who didn’t notice that state secrets were being leaked to Moscow. I must insist that the Englishman’s rise within the ranks of SIS—despite his Cambridge University Socialist activities, despite his marriage to a woman widely known to be a member of the Austrian Communist Party—has been implausibly rapid. If we are to swallow Philby’s most recent report, dated 18 July 1941, he has been assigned to the elite counterintelligence unit run by the Colonel Felix Cowgill and known to the few insiders who are aware of its existence as Section Five of Six, the Six standing for MI6, which is the administrative designation of the Secret Intelligence Service. According to Philby, Section Five has focused on penetrating German and Italian espionage organizations and feeding them disinformation that would reach the German High Command, even Hitler himself. I suggest that if they are able to penetrate the German and Italian espionage organizations, they have the capability to penetrate our espionage service. I suggest that Philby’s supposed recruitment by Moscow Centre in 1934 is at the heart of this penetration.”

  Comrade Beria muttered something in an undertone to respected Josef Vissarionovich, who pursed his lips and shrugged. Comrade Beria said aloud, “The business of the roots is pure conjecture.”

  Thinking back, I marvel at my audacity. “Who among us knows a son who has strayed far from his father’s roots?” I asked.

  Respected Josef Vissarionovich snorted. “I know one. Me. My father was a shoemaker who spent most of his wages on alcohol. It would surprise me to discover he knew the meaning of the word proletariat.” Respected Josef Vissarionovich waved his good hand in my direction. “You surely have more concrete points to make, Senior Lieutenant Modinskaya.”

  “I do,” I agreed.

  “She does,” Captain Gusakov said anxiously. “For God’s sake, make them,” he instructed me.

  “God’s sake has seldom been invoked in this room,” Comrade Beria said from the head of the table. Respected Josef Vissarionovich almost smiled.

  “In 1934, the London Rezident, Teodor Stepanovich Maly, cryptonym Mann, begged Moscow Centre for permission to contact the Englishman and, when this authorization was reluctantly granted, he recruited him on a bench in one of London’s great parks. Upon his recall to Moscow, Maly confessed to being a German agent. He was sentenced to the highest measure of punishment. I interviewed him moments before his execution. He said nothing to dissuade me that the Englishman was also an agent of a foreign power. It should be noted here that the London Rezidentura was a cesspool of treason. Maly’s predecessor, Ignaty Reif, cryptonym Marr, was shot as a foreign agent. Anatoly Gorsky, cryptonym Kapp, Maly’s successor who countersigned many of the Rezident’s telegrams to Moscow Centre defending the Englishman, was recalled to Moscow last year and is the object of an ongoing investigation—there is a strong suspicion that he, like the two London Rezidenti before him, is a foreign agent. Given Gorsky’s obstinate defense of the Englishman’s failure to assassinate Franco, I would not be surprised if the investigation produces criminal charges and a confession.”

  Respected Josef Vissarionovich regarded Comrade Beria. “Who ordered the Englishman to assassinate Franco?”

  “It wasn’t so much an order as a suggestion,” Comrade Beria explained. “I heard you mention one night that the only thing that could save the situation in Spain was the death of Franco. I took it upon myself to pass along your comment—”

  “How could a journalist trained to gather intelligence be expected to execute a wet job?” respected Josef Vissarionovich demanded.

  Comrade Beria looked flustered. “I can say he was not expected to assassinate Franco himself, only identify breaches in his security so that more skilled operatives might organize the thing.”

  I felt the ground move under my feet. The Englishman’s failure to make the slightest effort to eliminate Franco was a pillar of my case against him. “There is still more evidence, respected Josef Vissarionovich,” I said. I am afraid my voice was unsteady. I kept myself from trembling by placing both palms on the flat of the table.

  Respected Josef Vissarionovich frowned. “You appear nervous,” he observed.

  “I am only exhausted,” I said. “I have been up most of the night going over my report.”

  Was it my imagination or did respected Josef Vissarionovich’s mustache twitch like that of a cat toying with a mouse? “Go on,” he said.

  “When the Englishman first claimed to have been recruited by SIS seven months ago, we put one question to him: ‘Give us the names of the SIS agents in the Soviet Union.’ Soon thereafter he responded”—I glanced around the table for the first time; several of the participants averted their eyes from mine—“that there were no SIS agents operating in the Soviet Union. No British agents? No British networks? What can we make of this reply in light of the thousands who have confessed to being British agents and suffered the highest measure of punishment for their treachery?”

  I turned back to respected Josef Vissarionovich. He was uncapping a sealed bottle of Borjomi and carefully filling a glass with mineral water. He raised his mustache with a finger of his left hand and took a sip, then delicately patting dry his lips on the back of a cuff, looked over at Comrade Beria and inclined his head to one side. Apparently it was a gesture Comrade Beria recognized. “Is that it, Senior Lieutenant Modinskaya?” he called across the table.

  “There is also the revealing matter of the Englishman’s lifestyle,” I said. “According to the London Rezident, Sonny is drinking heavily. He seems to have an endless supply of black market whiskey at £4 a bottle, which, given his consumption, comes to roughly £20 a week, all this on a supposed salary of £50 a month. On top of that he spends heavily at a public house, The Duke of York in Jermyn Street. And he keeps up his membership in the gentlemen’s club called the Athenaeum, where he is said to dine occasionally. The question must be posed: Where does the money come from? I suggest the possibility—I would go so far as to say the probability—that the Englishman is being paid twice or three times the £50 he claimed because he is an SIS disinformation agent. Living several lives and several lies would also account for the heavy drinking.”

  Stalin waved his crippled arm in the air, as if to say he was not bowled over by the points I was making.

  I took a deep breath. “Which brings me to Alexander Orlov—”

  “Cryptonym the Swede,” re
spected Josef Vissarionovich interjected. Clearly he was familiar with the contents of case file no. 5581.

  “The Swede, who was the Englishman’s field controller when Sonny was able to cross the Spanish border into France for debriefings, defected to the Americans three years ago this month. Despite this, the Englishman has not been arrested. Nor have his two close friends from Cambridge, cryptonyms Maiden and Orphan, who were, on the Englishman’s suggestion, recruited by our service. Which leads one to suspect that all three could be British moles feeding us disinformation.”

  Respected Josef Vissarionovich asked, “Did you know the Swede personally?”

  “I never met him, respected—”

  He cut me off. “I have. I know him from the revolution. He is a Jew—Feldbin, if my memory is correct—but I never held that against him. There are also good Jews. Feliks Dzerzhinsky recruited the Swede as a Chekist and brought him around to meet me. When I went down to Stalingrad to stiffen our resistance against the Whites, the Swede was one of the Chekists I relied on. We rounded up the weak-kneed commanders who had retreated and bound them hand and foot and pushed them into the Volga from a barge. Our commanders stopped retreating after that. To mark the occasion, the Swede and some of his Chekist friends gave me a fine-looking Italian Beretta. I still have it—I keep it in a drawer next to my bed. The Swede and I crossed paths from time to time over the years. If they cross again, I will have him shot for treason. But it can be said he was a man of iron, a man of honor. When he went over to the Americans he sent me a letter through Beria saying if I didn’t touch his family he wouldn’t touch mine, my family being our agents he handled in Europe. I haven’t touched a hair on the heads of his people. Which explains why the Englishman—your Sonny, along with the two others, Maiden and Orphan—are still at liberty.”

  N. Khrushchev raised a finger, as a child will in a classroom. “I remember the Swede from the period of the suppression of the Kulaks in the Ukraine,” he said. “Broad shoulders. Military-style haircut. A Bolshevik through and through. Nobody dreamt he would one day go over to the enemy.”

  “Respected Josef Vissarionovich, even if the Swede did not betray to the West the identity of the Englishman and our other agents, he would have passed on to them the product, which is to say the details that the Englishman provided to Moscow Centre. I myself have studied the product as if I didn’t know where it came from—intelligence reports on German armaments reaching Franco, on German instructors teaching Franco’s pilots to fly the newest Messerschmitt 209s, on the installation in the Heinkel 111 of a new bomb sight. Even a child could have narrowed the source down to a dozen or so British journalists covering the war from the Nationalist side, then narrowed it further to which cities, at which point you would be able to identify the supposed Soviet agent. Harold Philby in Salamanca. If I can do this in Moscow, it is unthinkable that the vaunted British Secret Intelligence Service could not reach the same conclusion in London. There is only one plausible explanation for their failure to arrest Sonny: He is an SIS disinformation agent.”

  I noticed respected Josef Vissarionovich glancing surreptitiously at the palm of his right hand as he packed tobacco into the bowl of a pipe. It occurred to me that he was employing an old ruse that bureaucrats used when they wanted you to think they were talking extemporaneously and not from notes. “The Englishman informed us that the Hitlerian invasion of the motherland would take place at dawn on the twenty-second of June,” he said. “He furthermore told us that 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers, 600,000 motorized vehicles, and 750,000 horses would invade along a 2,900-kilometer front. His information was precise.”

  “Respected Josef Vissarionovich, it is clearly in England’s interest to pass on to us the date of the Hitlerian invasion so that we are better able to resist the invaders, so that we and the loathsome Germans exhaust each other in endless battles, which has been the eternal British dream since the Soviet state was created.”

  “Respected Senior Lieutenant Yelena Modinskaya,” Josef Vissarionovich said, his voice reduced to a gruff whisper and dripping with what can only be described as sarcasm, “I was informed you were an intelligence analyst. I was not informed you were an authority on international affairs as well, and specialize in the motivation of capitalist governments.” He jammed the pipe between his teeth and leaned toward Comrade Beria, who held a lighted match over the bowl. Respected Josef Vissarionovich’s head disappeared behind a cloud of tobacco smoke as he told the others at the table, “Contrary to the naïve view of Senior Lieutenant Modinskaya, it was in the British interest to have the Hitlerian war machine crush the Soviet Union the way it crushed Belgium and Holland and France. It is well known that the English upper class, which is the governing class, is secretly pro-German and not so secretly anti-Jewish. With the Soviet Union crushed, Hitler would have his hands full managing the conquered countries of Europe and extracting their resources—petrol from the Caucasus, grain from the Ukraine. There would be no reason for him to invade England. He and the English upper class would quickly reach an understanding. The British Fascist Mosley would become prime minister. King Edward, who honeymooned in Germany after he abdicated in order to marry that American divorcée Simpson, would be recalled to the throne. Senior Lieutenant Modinskaya completely misreads the value of the warning we received from the Englishman. There can be only one explanation for misreading it to that extent: She is determined to discredit the agent Sonny. Which raises the suspicion that she herself could be a foreign agent.” Respected Josef Vissarionovich turned back to me. “Tell us frankly: For whom do you work? The Germans or the English?”

  I had difficulty finding my voice. “I work for the Communist dream,” I finally managed. “I work for the Soviet Union. I work for you, respected Josef Vissarionovich.”

  Respected Josef Vissarionovich expressed amusement as if at a private joke. Comrade Beria and N. Khrushchev laughed along with him as if privy to the joke. The others around the table joined in, though I doubt they understood what they were laughing at.

  “The Englishman passed on other secrets that attest to his being a legitimate Soviet agent,” respected Josef Vissarionovich continued. “He informed us that the Americans, with the collaboration of British physicists, are attempting to split the atom in the expectation of building an atomic bomb by 1944 or ’45. He told us the British had broken Germany’s top-secret Ultra code, which is how they knew the details of Hitler’s plans to invade the Soviet motherland. He told us about a secret British device installed along their coast called radar—it looks like a giant bedspring and emits radio waves that can provide warning of German bomber attacks in time to scramble fighter squadrons and defend the targets. He passed on to us what the British knew of the German order of battle, of their losses in men and matériel in the Polish and French campaigns, of the flawed armor on their Panzerkampfwagen One, of the heavier armor that limits the mobility and autonomy of the Panzerkampfwagen Two.”

  “Respected Josef Vissarionovich,” I said, my trembling voice rising to no more than a murmur, “it is self-serving for Britain to provide us with information on German military deficiencies. After the defeat of the British Expeditionary Force in Flanders, after the humiliating retreat from Dunkirk, London’s nightmare is that we will make a separate peace with the Hitlerians if you, respected Josef Vissarionovich, conclude the English are too weak to defend their island against a German invasion.”

  Respected Josef Vissarionovich said, “Comrades, we are fortunate to have in our midst someone who is not only an authority on international affairs but one of the world’s leading experts on strategic military theory.”

  N. Khrushchev snickered. “We should count our blessings.”

  Respected Josef Vissarionovich looked at Captain Gusakov, sitting to my left. “You, Gusakov, signed off on Modinskaya’s conclusions.”

  With an effort Captain Gusakov pushed himself to his feet. “Comrade Stalin, it is an exaggeration to say I signed off on her conclusions. My counters
ignature means I verified that her report accurately quoted telegrams and conversations and events presented in case file 5581. Her conclusions are her own affair.”

  “You accuse me of exaggerating?” respected Josef Vissarionovich demanded.

  “I chose my words without thinking—”

  “Perhaps you signed off on Modinskaya’s conclusions without thinking.” Respected Josef Vissarionovich turned to Senior Colonel Sudoplatov, who likewise rose stiffly to his feet. The room was so quiet I could hear respected Josef Vissarionovich sucking on the stem of his pipe. “You, Sudoplatov, signed off on Gusakov’s work, putting your initial ‘S’ on the upper right-hand corner of each page of Modinskaya’s conclusions.”

  Senior Colonel Sudoplatov cleared his noticeably dry throat. “I initialed Modinskaya’s reports that bore Captain Gusakov’s countersignature. I can state that it was one of hundreds of documents that crossed my desk on any given day. My initial in no way indicates support for her actual conclusions, only that the techniques of examining case file no. 5581 were authenticated by the countersignature of an experienced NKVD officer.”

  “And my desk,” respected Josef Vissarionovich said with a snarl. “Does it occur to you that thousands of documents pass across it each and every day?”

  Senior Colonel Sudoplatov bowed his head. “With all respect, Comrade Stalin, it was not my intention to suggest otherwise.”

  And then something curious occurred that I cannot explain, I can only recount. To Senior Colonel Sudoplatov’s mortification, he began hiccupping—stifled gasps that made it sound as if he were choking on a bone in his throat. Stalin stared at the comrade colonel almost sympathetically. “Stop that,” he said in a voice that was not devoid of benevolence. And Senior Colonel Sudoplatov did. He stopped hiccupping on the spot.