by Adam Sisman
Zulueta, who was escorting them to the door, whirled around. ‘I understood that!’ he said.
London was abuzz with rumours of an affair between the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, and the call girl Christine Keeler. The pair had been introduced by the society osteopath Stephen Ward, with whom Keeler was living. What gave the rumours extra spice was the allegation that Keeler had simultaneously been involved with a senior naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy in London. It was an alarming possibility that a senior Soviet diplomat and the British Secretary for War had been sleeping with the same indiscreet young woman. Ward was supposed to have asked Keeler to pump Profumo about the very question that Erler had come to England to discuss: when West Germany might be granted control over American nuclear weapons stationed on German soil. In fact Ward did tell her to ask Profumo this, but only as a joke.6
Journalists had been eagerly looking forward to Keeler’s testimony at the trial of her former lover Johnny Edgecombe, accused of trying to break into Ward’s flat while Keeler was there and firing several shots. At Erler’s request, Dilhorne arranged for him to attend the opening of the trial, with David as his escort. They sat directly behind Stephen Ward, who turned round during a break and asked them, ‘How am I doing?’ David said, ‘Fine’; Erler made no reply. In parliament Profumo tried to brazen it out: in a statement to the House of Commons he avowed that ‘there was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintanceship with Miss Keeler’. In due course he would be forced to admit that he had ‘misled’ the House, and resigned.
A couple of months later David was again in London, this time to act as John Margetson’s best man. The pair arrived at the church near Chalk Farm far too early, so they drove up and down Haverstock Hill to pass the time. David diverted the groom with a rendering of the spoof sermon delivered by Alan Bennett in Beyond the Fringe. This kept Margetson laughing so hard that he had no opportunity to become anxious about the ordeal ahead.
In April there was exciting news from Peter Watt: an American publisher was willing to pay ‘a small fortune’ for the rights in The Spy who Came in from the Cold.
Jack Geoghegan had recently been appointed president and editor-in-chief of Coward-McCann, a publishing house with a lacklustre recent history. Geoghegan had been hunting for a high-profile bestseller to revive its flagging list. He would later say that he had been searching for ‘something well written that would sell’. Aware that it would be difficult to persuade American literary agents to offer their best authors to him, he reckoned that England was the most likely source of such a bestseller. His first scouting trip to London had proved a disappointment – but his hunger had impressed Watt. Geoghegan had employed Lena Wickman, a Swedish woman living in London who was close to Watt, to act as his scout. Some months later, back in New York, he received a parcel containing the typescript of The Spy who Came in from the Cold. In subsequent years he would always remember reading it with mounting excitement. This could be the bestseller for which he had been searching. His principal reaction was a churning sensation in the pit of his stomach, a fear that he had come across something really good, which would in the end, as had happened several times before, go to another publisher.7
The Spy who Came in from the Cold was under option to Walker & Co., the small American publishing house which had published David’s first two books, and had done satisfactorily but not spectacularly with both. Walker wanted the book and bid for it, but David decided to accept Coward-McCann’s slightly higher offer of $4,500* for the American rights, mainly on the strength of Geoghegan’s obvious enthusiasm.8
The ball was rolling. Not long after the deal had been concluded with Coward-McCann, Paramount Pictures made an offer for the film rights. Peter Watt presented the contract to David over lunch at the Savoy. Paramount proposed an outright purchase, giving the studio control over any future use of the characters on film. They were offering to pay £7,500, with two further top-up payments of £2,500 each linked to sales of the American edition. ‘It would be so wonderful to feel what it was like to have ten thousand pounds,’ sighed David. Watt told a colleague that though he was loath to accept such a restrictive deal, David’s excitement at the large sum of money on offer had overcome his qualms; David does not recall any reluctance from Watt. In any case the contract was signed. This mistake would cause David a great deal of trouble further down the line. Soon afterwards he replaced his small Hillman with a large Humber.
In a letter to Vivian Green, David described The Spy who Came in from the Cold as ‘a sort of Quiet American story set in Berlin’.† It had already ‘made a fortune’, he continued, ‘but of course I don’t know how we can keep at least enough of the money to justify my getting out of the F.O. I would very much like to talk to you about all this.’ The rates of tax then prevailing penalised high earners. ‘We want to get out of the F.O. but daren’t quite take the plunge – I think they may chuck me out after this book which would simplify things.’ He urged Green to make haste if he had any intention of visiting them in Germany, ‘as we may well abandon the F.O. for the lusher pastures of the Perfecto-Zissbaum Corporation’.9*
During another official trip to London David stole away from his duties to meet Martin Ritt, the director who would be making the film for Paramount. He was in town escorting another set of German dignitaries, which explained why, when he arrived at the Connaught Hotel to have lunch with Ritt, he was wearing the then standard diplomat’s livery of a tight black jacket, black waistcoat, silver tie and striped grey-and-black trousers. Fortunately he had left his bowler hat in the cloakroom. As they shook hands, Ritt enquired of him cordially, ‘What the hell possessed you to dress like a maître d’?’
Ritt himself was wearing a black shirt buttoned to the neck and a pair of baggy trousers held up by elastic and nipped at the ankles, unusual dress in the Connaught’s Grill Room; and – to David’s astonishment – an artisan’s flat cap with the peak turned up where it should have been turned down, worn indoors. He had the bearish frame of an old footballer run to fat, with a broad, bronzed, mid-European face etched with the pain of ages, thick, swept-back greying hair and pitch-dark, watchful eyes framed by black-rimmed spectacles.
‘Didn’t I tell you he was going to be young?’ Ritt demanded proudly of his four associates.
Originally an actor, Ritt had been a member of the radical Group Theater in the 1930s, a disciple of Elia Kazan’s. After serving in the American armed forces during the war, he had worked in television as a director, but had been blacklisted in the early 1950s because of his strong left-wing sympathies. Over lunch in the Connaught Grill, it quickly became clear to David that Ritt saw in The Spy who Came in from the Cold some kind of crossing point from his earlier convictions to his present state of impotent disgust at McCarthyism, at the cowardice of many of his peers and comrades in the witness box, at the failure of Communism and at the sickening sterility of the Cold War.
Ritt admitted to David that Paramount’s purchase of the rights had been ‘a steal’. The script was being written by Guy Trosper, the writer and producer of Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), who had been nominated for an Oscar for his 1952 film The Pride of St Louis. Ritt asked David who he thought should play Leamas. David felt strongly that this was a British story, which required a British actor to play the leading part. He suggested Trevor Howard – or perhaps Peter Finch, who, though Australian, could play an Englishman convincingly. Ritt said that he took the point, liked both actors, but feared neither was big enough to carry the budget.
A few weeks later David again flew to London, this time at Paramount’s expense, to take part in a tour of locations with Ritt, who told him that the role of Leamas had been offered to Burt Lancaster. ‘Burt will play it Canadian,’ he explained.10
Towards the end of June President Kennedy came to Berlin. Together with Chancellor Adenauer and Mayor Brandt he rode in an open-top car, cheered by waving Berliners who lined the route into the city centre from the airport. The President paid a visit to
Checkpoint Charlie, where he stood facing a group of East Berliners too cowed to acknowledge his presence. Later he was photographed on a raised platform gazing across the Wall into East Berlin. Afterwards, in front of the City Hall, he spoke to a huge crowd, estimated at several hundred thousand strong. His impassioned speech, which was punctuated throughout by rapturous cheers of approval, declared the solidarity of the people of the United States with the citizens of West Berlin. Again and again he challenged those who defended the actions of Communist regimes: ‘Let them come to Berlin.’ He ended with a stirring peroration: ‘All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, Ich bin ein Berliner.’
A few days after Kennedy’s speech, Kim Philby surfaced in Moscow. It turned out that he had been the ‘Third Man’ after all. Six months earlier he had gone missing: a message had been sent out from London to all SIS stations abroad, announcing that a former member of the Service had disappeared and was suspected of being a Soviet spy. Though the name of the suspect was encoded, Dickie Franks realised immediately that it must be Philby, who had been living in Beirut since 1956. Ostensibly Philby had been working as a stringer for the Observer and the Economist, but this was cover for his work as an intelligence agent, arranged by his old chum Nicholas Elliott, who served a term as head of the local MI6 station, until succeeded by Peter Lunn.*
Dick White had long suspected Philby. When he had taken over as Chief, he had been shocked to find him back on the books. As more intelligence implicating Philby had accumulated, White had decided to act: he had ordered Elliott back to Beirut, to see if he could extract a confession from his old friend. For years Elliott had defended Philby, but even he had come to recognise that the evidence against him had become undeniable. In Beirut, Elliott had confronted Philby, offering him immunity from prosecution in return for a full confession. Philby had agreed in principle but asked for more time, and Elliott had returned to London without him. Later this would be seen as a blunder, though perhaps it had been a ploy. ‘My dear boy, nobody wanted him back here,’ he would tell David long afterwards. Lunn had then telephoned Philby and ordered him to report to the British Embassy in Beirut. For the next few days Philby continued to stall, until two o’clock one morning, when Philby’s wife Eleanor had telephoned Lunn to tell him that her husband had failed to return home from a party. Lunn had hurried round to the Philbys’ flat, fearing the worst.11
The revelation that Philby had indeed been a traitor renewed public interest in spies. That he had been publicly exonerated seven years before by no less a person than the Prime Minister suggested a lack of security bordering on incompetence.
Always a clever publicist, Victor Gollancz skilfully exploited the topical nature of the book. The advance publicity for The Spy who Came in from the Cold quoted from a recent review by Julian Maclaren-Ross of Len Deighton’s The Ipcress File in the Times Literary Supplement that had argued for spy fiction to be more true to life: ‘How peculiar … at this time of the Vassall Tribunal, with so many real-life parallels from which to draw, that our spy fiction should be at such a low ebb … the really realistic spy novel, as prefigured by Ashenden and Mr Ambler, does not as yet exist.’12
Gollancz put a red jacket on The Spy who Came in from the Cold, to distinguish it from the yellow jackets usual on his books. He wanted to convey to readers and reviewers that this was a work of literary merit, far above the general run of spy stories. To support this message he solicited endorsements from prominent literary figures, sending each a set of proofs. ‘It is very far from being an ordinary “spy story”, even if of a superior kind,’ he wrote in his covering letter. ‘I think you will find in it an unmistakable (and quite terrible) authenticity. For that reason, and quite apart from its thrilling quality, it seems to me of great social and political importance in the present situation.’ Puffs came in from Alec Waugh – ‘I was held spellbound by it’ – from J. B. Priestley – ‘A superbly constructed story with an atmosphere of chilly hell’ – and from Graham Greene – ‘The best spy story I have ever read’. This last was perhaps the ideal publisher’s quote, from the ideal source.
Advance copies were due on 9 August; publication was set for 12 September 1963. Towards the end of July Gollancz sold the paperback rights to Pan for £1,750, ten times as much as he had been bullied into paying for the book overall. The Pan royalties were split equally between the author and hardback publisher, ensuring a handsome dividend for Gollancz. Soon afterwards a book club, the Book Society, made it one of their choices for September. Though the royalties per copy from book-club editions were much smaller, their print runs were larger. By this time it was clear that Gollancz’s efforts had been successful. Advance orders were such that the book was reprinted three times before publication. Sales were boosted by some excellent reviews. For the Daily Telegraph’s literary editor, David Holloway, it was ‘a brilliant, bitter novel’; for the Time and Tide reviewer, it was ‘a masterpiece’; for Phyllis Bentley, writing in the Yorkshire Post, it was ‘the spy story to end all spy stories’. Anthony Price, reviewing the book for the Oxford Mail, judged that the book set ‘a new standard by which to judge spy thrillers’. The sole discordant note in this chorus of praise was heard in the pages of the Times Literary Supplement; the anonymous reviewer complained that ‘the author … overstresses the thriller element in his story … It is to be feared that we still have to wait for the genuine unromanticised article foreshadowed by Mr Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden stories …’ The reviewer was Julian Maclaren-Ross.
Several of the reviewers suggested that the book provided an insight into the normally hidden world of espionage. ‘Here is no bogus superman stuff, but what must be something like the real thing,’ wrote the reviewer in the Sunday Times. ‘This is really it,’ proclaimed the Scotsman. ‘The truth about the spy sub-world, the secret war between East and West that is always hot, may be revealed in a book out today,’ speculated Kenneth Allsop in the Daily Mail, under the headline, ‘Is this the Private Nightmare of a Master Spy?’ The Glasgow Herald reviewer thought the book ‘probably as convincing as any spy story ever written’. The bleakness of The Spy who Came in from the Cold helped to persuade the media that it must be authentic.
There was a further boost when it was taken by the Reprint Society, in an edition of 55,000 copies. The book continued to gather momentum in the period leading up to Christmas, entering the British bestseller lists some months after publication, when sales of novels usually flagged. Its sales were boosted further when the Sunday Express began to publish extracts, having bought serial rights for £500. The press baron Lord Beaverbrook, then in the last year of his life but still hungry for the latest new thing, had instructed the newspaper’s editor, John Junor, to serialise the novel in full. These factors had helped to make The Spy who Came in from the Cold the most talked-about book of the season. By early October it was into its fifth impression, with 17,500 copies in print. It would continue to sell throughout the following year. By the middle of February 1964, some 30,000 had been sold, with 40,000 in print.13 By the end of the year the book had reached its twentieth impression.
David consulted an accountant, Horace Hale Crosse (always known as ‘Hale’), who advised him to stay out of England until at least 6 April 1965. He would be allowed brief visits, but he should continue to live abroad if he wanted to avoid paying a very large tax bill. Among the objectives which David outlined to his new accountant was his desire to resign from the Foreign Service ‘as soon as possible’.14
At some point after the film deal had been announced Ronnie arrived in Berlin, introducing himself as his younger son’s ‘professional adviser’. He graciously accepted a VIP tour of West Berlin’s largest film studio, enjoyed a great deal of the studio’s hospitality, and no doubt a starlet or two, and listened to a lot of earnest talk about tax breaks and subsidies available to foreign filmmakers. Neither his son nor anyone at Paramount had the least idea of what he was up to.15
<
br /> Ronnie’s movements in this period are hard to trace. He had once again separated from his second wife Jean, this time permanently. David believed that he was on the run from the police at this time. Perhaps too he was on the run from violent ‘business associates’: there is anecdotal evidence that he had become embroiled with the slum landlord Peter Rachman, whose property dealings were at root not wholly dissimilar from his own. Rachman had entrusted a West End nightclub to Reggie Kray, one of the Kray twins who would later become notorious as gangsters, though in the early 1960s they were often seen in the company of showbusiness and sporting celebrities, sexually adventurous politicians and raffish members of the aristocracy. It seems possible that Ronnie had had some dealings with the Krays which frightened him. There was certainly some connection. In the late 1980s, David’s half-sister Charlotte, by then a well-known actress, was given a leading part in a film about the Kray twins, for which their brother Charlie was retained as a consultant. In an idle moment during the shooting, Charlotte allowed Charlie to show her an album of family photographs. Only half her mind was engaged as he leafed through the album – until she spotted a snap of her father, an arm around each twin.
For whatever reason, Ronnie left England, and would not return for several years. For a while he based himself in New York. The city’s estate agents and their clients were offering a month’s free accommodation to first-time tenants in new developments; Ronnie took a free month here, a free month there, using different names for each rental contract.