A Spy Among Friends (47 page)

Erich and Elisabeth Vermehren. The Vermehrens’ defection, organised by Elliott, plunged the German intelligence service into crisis.

Guy Burgess, Philby’s problematic lodger: frequently drunk, faintly malodorous and always supremely entertaining.

Kim Philby (
left
) was appointed the MI6 station chief in Washington in September 1949.
Above
, the RMS
Caronia
, the luxury Cunard liner nicknamed the ‘Green Goddess’ on which he sailed to New York. ‘Philby was a great charmer. He came to us with an enormous reputation,’ said one CIA colleague.

James Angleton, poet, orchidenthusiast, CIA chief of counterintelligence and America’s most powerful mole-hunter.

Bill Harvey of CIA counter-intelligence, the former FBI agent and Philby’s most dangerous opponent in the US.

Harvey’s Oyster Salon, the smart Washington restaurant where Philby and Angleton lunched together: ‘Philby picked him clean.’

Enver Hoxha, Albania’s hardline communist ruler.

David de Crespigny Smiley, an aristocratic British Army officer with a legendary taste for derring-do, seen here with Yemeni resistance fighters.

En route to the Albanian coast for the start of ‘Operation Valuable’, one of the most catastrophic secret operations of the Cold War.

The ‘pixies’ prepare for action: three of the four men in this photograph were killed within hours of landing on the Karaburun peninsula.

The
Stormie Seas
, a forty-three-ton schooner disguised as a pleasure boat, carrying enough munitions to start a small war.