One night, after a fierce game of Scrabble, we sat up late listening to the wind howl around the chimney and talked about Pa. Since R had told me that a man using his code name, Hugh Sterling, was on the catalogue of prisoners at Colditz at the end of the war, the thought of it has haunted me – images from books and films, of POWs starved and half-crazy. R offered his help in any way he can in my search for the truth about Pa. I will start looking for Colditz survivors. The half-knowing has become worse than not knowing.
Friday, 29th March
Still no sign of Philby. Bill came by my office this morning and sat me down again, before telling me that Boris had escaped custody and is thought to be on his way back to Moscow. I closed my eyes and felt myself begin to shake. Just as I’ve managed to lock him out of my nightmares, he reappears in my life, at large and presumably even less fond of me than I am of him. What does that mean for R? More bodyguards? A return to hiding? Suddenly, Moscow doesn’t feel so many miles away.
‘How did he get out?’
Bill replied that he was having trouble getting the exact details, but he suspects that the Russians made a deal with Five to ensure a blind eye was turned to their plans to spirit him out of the country. ‘They must have wanted him very badly – and were prepared to make the arrangement a sweet one. What did they get in return – that’s what I want to know? We’re bloody furious about it. It’s not that Boris has given us anything, but while we had him, he was a potential embarrassment to the Sovs. Now he’s gone, the egg’s on our faces,’ Bill said.
‘Was it anything to do with R? Does he know?’ I asked.
Bill shook his head. ‘If it was, they’re not telling. Penny, I don’t want you to fret. As long as you stay out of his backyard, you should have no cause for unease. There’s no way he could ever get back into the country.’ I could sense that he was concerned, though, and so was I. I hope R will be safe.
Then, this afternoon, an extraordinary report passed my desk. It came in letter form, plain text, from an irregular agent based in Vladivostok. The source, who I understand is a woman on the auxiliary service staff at the KGB headquarters there, claims that the KGB have a man in their custody who they are treating with extreme secrecy and caution. The source saw a zapiska – a file – that had been sent over from Moscow headquarters, marked SOVERSHENNO SEKRETNO, ‘Top Secret’. The name on the front was ‘James Bond, British Secret Agent’.
M was still at Blades, so I took the report straight to Bill. He looked at it and frowned, then picked up the phone. He came into my office a few minutes later. ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ he said. ‘Bookie’s checking it out, but he doesn’t set much store by this source. Says it’s stretching the odds too far. He’s convinced that the two events are unrelated. Just because the Russians have 007’s file knocking about, doesn’t mean that they’ve got him. We’ll do all we can to find out, of course. Please make sure M gets the report.’
Saturday, 11th May
I can’t believe that more than two months have passed since we came back from Uist, and since I last wrote in these pages. It’s madness – I feel guilty when I write and also when I don’t. The Scylla and Charybdis of the secret diarist. It’s almost a relief that R has been called away, though I do miss him. I always look forward to our weekends together, the laughter and companionship and underlying frisson of what might be. I feel wonderfully at ease with him, more so than with any man before. I know he wants our relationship to progress, but he’s being very patient with me, giving me every reason to trust him, which I’m beginning to do.
The run-up to the Prenderghast trial has put us all under pressure, especially M. We don’t know whether Prenderghast will testify and if he does, to whose benefit it will be. Throughout his interrogation, he has flatly refuted any idea that he had an accomplice within the Office. He belongs in jail, I know, but I can’t help but feel some sympathy for his plight. When They are determined to catch you and have found an appropriate hook, it is hard to resist.
Dingle arrived back from another trip to Beirut on Thursday. He’s now convinced that Philby is in Redland, probably Moscow, Janet told me this evening. He spent much of his time out there with Mrs Philby, who still won’t admit to herself her husband’s true colours. She appears to be genuinely confused as to his present whereabouts and the reason for his disappearance. She clings to the idea that he was taken against his will.
Dingle brought back a copy of a letter from Philby that had been hand-delivered to their apartment. Against her husband’s strictest instructions, Mrs P had kept it and, worse still, shown it to our side. I made a copy of it for M. It was three pages long and type-written and had originally included $2,000 in bills, with which Philby directed his wife to buy a return aeroplane ticket for herself to London and one-way tickets for the children. (Children? How could a man like this have children?) These tickets, however, were for show only. At the same time he instructed her to destroy them and choose a flight to Prague. When the date was set, she should write it in white chalk on the white wall in the alley beside their apartment, or, if she was having problems, mark the left-hand side of the wall with an X. A ‘friend’ would be visiting her to help with the arrangements, he added. He would produce the book token she had given Philby for his birthday as confirmation of his identity.
The letter only served to convince Mrs P more firmly that her husband had been kidnapped. The book token she had given him was still in the top drawer of his desk; it must be his way of warning her about a trap. Furthermore, his youngest son had no valid passport and so could not leave the country. Unsure what to do, she told all to Dingle, her husband’s old friend. He responded with an offer to help, but only if they all flew to London. ‘This is the only realistic avenue available to her,’ he reported. ‘I feel confident that she will be on British soil by the end of the month.’ So, when Philby’s ‘friend’ turned up on Eleanor’s doorstep with a book token and an offer of help, she was suspicious and turned him away, reporting the incident to the British Embassy.
I can’t help but feel sorry for her. I know only too well how it feels to discover that the man you love is not who you had believed him to be, but it must be so much worse for her. Philby is her husband, they lived together, but all the while, he was working for the enemy. Now she’s living in a distant country, away from her family, with no income, his children to look after and no idea what the future holds. On top of it all, she’s about to be pulled this way and that by opposing intelligence forces, to whom she is a mere pawn in the great game.
Monday, 13th May
Two days ago, in Moscow, Oleg Penkovsky6 was convicted of treason and executed. They should have fèted him. Were it not for the information he passed to the West about the relative weakness of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, the Cuban Missile Crisis might have had a more explosive conclusion.
Wednesday, 5th June
Profumo resigned today, at last. What a fool. I always thought he had a weak chin. He finally admitted having lied to Parliament about his affair with Christine Keeler.7 The Powder Vine has talked of little else for weeks. Like most of the country, I’ve found the details riveting – pillow-talk with call-girls and pool parties at Cliveden. It’s the stuff of spy fiction, though hardly what the Services need at a time like this. That Keeler can have been sleeping both with the Minister of War and a Soviet attaché – almost certainly KGB – seems extraordinary. How had the Watchers missed it? It’s some comfort for us that it’s Five this time who have been caught with their pants down. The other fortunate consequence of this monumental scandal is that it has pushed Prenderghast way down the news agenda.
Perhaps as a result of this, on the eve of his turn in the witness-box, he confessed all to X. I overheard X reporting to Bill this morning. ‘It was almost as if he couldn’t bear to be thought of as a minor spy any more. He just blurted it out. He said, “Nobody tortured me! Nobody blackmailed me! I myself approached the Soviets and offered my services to them of my own accord!” We just lis
tened in amazed silence. In those three sentences, he sealed his fate and tripled his sentence.’
No word from R for a week now. I feel his absence more than I care to admit.
Saturday, 15th June
Eleanor Philby is in London and under siege from the press. She arrived two weeks ago. I knew from the Powder Vine the minute she touched down – Janet had arranged her flight from Beirut and Dingle spoke to her the following day. Apart from a sore toe, which we arranged for a doctor to see, she was well and in hiding from the media. That lasted about ten days and once they caught scent of her, they were all over her like a pack of hounds.
Friday/Saturday morning, 21st/22nd June
Mary’s8 leaving party was meant to be a drink after work at Bully’s, but perhaps inevitably, degenerated into a bun fight. The Prenderghast judge had called an extended recess at the Old Bailey. Unusually, all the oos were in town. It was the longest day of the year. What more reason did we need to celebrate? For one evening, at least, it was like the old days, when the Office was a place of light and laughter. Events culminated with Mary being dunked in the lake at St James’s Park by three large men, with her successor, Jo Comely, dressed only in bra and pants, cheering her on from the side. James would have loved that. Luckily it was too late for passers-by, who would probably have called the police. Then we would have been in trouble. Not the sort of behaviour expected of Her Majesty’s Secret Servants.
Mary looked radiant. She told me in the Vine as we were getting ready to go that she was relieved to be leaving the pressure-cooker of the oo section. ‘After James went (still nobody can refer to him as dead) I couldn’t bear any of them going on a mission,’ she said. ‘I found I was alternating between clucking over them and pushing them away so that they didn’t have the power to hurt me. It was affecting my work. Do you think I should warn Jo?’ I shook my head; she’ll find out soon enough by herself.
On Sunday, while I’m – belatedly – spring-cleaning the flat, Mary will be flying to Kingston, Jamaica, to become Commander Ross’s new number two. On Monday, Joanna will be installed at her desk, dressed to suit her name. Perhaps I’ll go out to Jamaica to visit Mary one day? I know James would have loved to. I still miss him, every day. We all do.
Monday, 1st July
Philby has officially been revealed as ‘The Third Man’. After our dam-stopping operations with the British press, American Newsweek finally broke the story, forcing Ted Heath [then Lord Privy Seal] to make a statement to Parliament today. Heath admitted that it was now known that ‘former Foreign Office official’ Philby had warned Maclean, through Burgess, that the intelligence services were on their trail, and advised him to flee. No one expected Burgess to go with him. This was twelve years ago. ‘Since Mr Philby resigned from the Foreign Service in July 1951, he has not had any access to any kind of official information,’ Heath said. ‘For the past seven years he has been living outside British legal jurisdiction.’ I hope that doesn’t come back to haunt him.
Heath confessed that it was now apparent that ‘Mr Philby was a double agent working for the Soviet authorities during his time with the Foreign Office. This information, coupled with the latest message received by Mrs Philby, suggests that when he left Beirut he may have gone to one of the countries of the Soviet Bloc.’ It’s out there now, as M had feared. Our intelligence stock must be at an all-time low. The Americans must despise us, the Russians mock us.
Surprisingly, M looks relieved. He had an almost devil-may-care attitude when he swept out of the office for lunch at Blades. I hope that doesn’t mean he has decided to go.
This evening’s papers had a quote from Burgess in Moscow, to the effect that it was ‘ridiculous’ that Philby was the Third Man. I suppose he would say that.
Friday, 12th July
The day of James’s memorial service began, ironically, with another strange sighting, this time in Leningrad. A doctor who has been working at the Institute of Experimental Medicine on Nevsky Prospekt, and who has secretly approached our consulate expressing a desire to defect, reported that the KGB had a top secret patient in there. The doctor himself had not seen him, but had overheard his colleagues who had, talking about the ‘Angliski spion’. The patient was being accorded the privileges of a VIP and received regular visitors from KGB top brass.
The report was sent overnight in the diplomatic bag from our Moscow station, along with a note from our section head out there, suggesting that the patient could be Philby or Burgess – who is known to be desperately ill with lung disease. Scrawled in royal-blue ink at the bottom, as if an afterthought, he had added, ‘007???’ It’s another long shot, but it still gave me a tingle of hope, especially in advance of the afternoon’s events. I don’t think I’ll ever believe he’s dead – not until we have definite proof anyway. What is it about the men in my life? They have a tendency to disappear without trace.
James’s memorial service, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, was a dignified and moving occasion. Apart from May, his elderly Scottish housekeeper, and an obtrusive cluster of glamorous women with expensive hats and large diamonds weighing down their wedding-ring fingers, most people were from our world. The Minister was there, as was C, James’s first boss. M delivered a moving address, talking of Commander Bond’s bravery and patriotism. ‘He didn’t always obey orders, but he certainly got results, as some of you know only too well,’ he said, with the briefest of glances at the expensive hats. That raised a titter. ‘The Commander’s actions will pass into Foreign Office legend,’ he concluded. ‘He will always be missed by his colleagues and many friends, but never forgotten.’ I felt unbidden tears roll down my cheeks, and beside me, Lil9 let out a stifled whimper and blew her nose.
Then Felix Leiter10 limped up to the pedestal. It was the first time I had seen him since he was half eaten alive by sharks in Florida at The Robber’s aquarium. He looked better than I expected. Apart from the missing limbs, there was only the slightest visible scar evidence above his right eye, and this was mostly hidden by a lock of blond hair, far longer than the regulation American cut. He drew a piece of paper out of his pocket with his right hand, then anchored it on the stand in front with the steel hook projecting from his left sleeve. ‘I would have given my life for James,’ he began, in an attractive drawl. ‘Come to think of it, I nearly did. On several occasions.’ Over the next ten minutes, he had most of the congregation if not actively rolling in the aisles, then laughing openly. At times, I feared he was swimming rather too close to Official Secrets, but as an American, I doubt that worried him unduly and I can’t believe that the assembled congregation had many illusions as to what it was James did for the MOD. Suspecting, I imagine, that the speeches might not have been going to be marked by discretion, Bill had taken precautions to ensure that the gathering was unsullied by press. He had put Paymaster Captain Troop11 in charge of enforcing this – one time when his over-developed sense of duty served us well.
There was tea afterwards in the crypt, with egg-and-cucumber sandwiches lovingly prepared by Joanna and a team of Registry girls. We stood around, swapping anecdotes about James – some spicy, all affectionate – until Bill struck his teaspoon on his cup to silence us. ‘This is all very well and proper,’ he said. ‘However, I’m not sure it’s exactly up our friend’s street, so to speak. Everyone is therefore not so cordially invited to the American Bar at the Savoy at six. There’s a case of champagne behind the bar, a side of smoked salmon, and for those who want something stronger, Joe12 will be on hand with the Martini shaker.’ There was clapping and some cheering.
As I turned to go back to the Office to tidy up before the evening’s revelry, a hand touched my arm. I turned to see an extraordinarily beautiful tall woman, with ash-blonde hair, golden skin and wide-set blue eyes. ‘Are you Jane Moneypenny? I thought so. James spoke about you with such fondness.’ When I looked a little puzzled, she smiled. ‘I’m sorry, I’m Honey Levin – Honey Rider that was. I met James in Jamaica, on Crab Key. He changed my life.’ She brie
fly touched her perfect nose. I told her that James had always enjoyed receiving her Christmas cards. She beamed with delight and I warmed to her. ‘Would it be all right if I came along to the wake?’ she asked. ‘I fly back to Philadelphia tomorrow. I know I don’t exactly fit in, but I don’t feel I’ve said goodbye to James properly yet.’
I urged her to join us and the last I saw of her, well past midnight, she was sitting on a stool by the mirrored bar, crooning ballads to an admiring audience comprised of some of the most senior members of British intelligence. How James would have laughed.
Tuesday, 30th July
From our Moscow station: it was reported in today’s Isvestia that Kim Philby had been granted political asylum in Moscow and full Soviet citizenship. Further fuel to the Opposition, who are intent on exploiting the Government’s embarrassment. The debate has been hot and fierce since Heath’s announcement and looks set to continue for many weeks.
It is a horrible blow to the Office, to M, and to the country.
Wednesday, 31st July
I had just delivered the morning signals to M, when he asked me to sit down in the high-backed chair opposite him. Although it was a beautiful day outside, he had drawn the curtains and switched on the green-shaded desk-lamp, which lit his face with a ghostly glow. He had a file open in front of him. For the first minute he just flicked through the pages without once looking up at me. I waited quietly.
‘Miss Moneypenny, I know this is highly irregular, but I have a small mission for you,’ he said at last. ‘It’s a sensitive project.’ He reached for his tobacco and slowly filled his pipe and tamped it down before lighting it.
Moneypenny Diaries: Secret Servant Page 3