Kim Philby (22 page)

At the end of December I left Section V for a job in Broadway.
¹¹
The section carried on at Ryder Street for a short time and then what little was left was merged into Section IX, or rather its successor section, under Kim. My new job, if without executive power, was a fairly central one. There was enough to do but, for the first time in over four years, not the smallest need to work late. Meanwhile, for Kim it seems that one or two clouds a good deal larger than a man’s hand had appeared on the horizon.

Notes

1
. A classical scholar and Greek papyrologist who later became director of Oxford University Press. He published
The Codex
in 1954, subsequently expanded into
The Birth of the Codex
, which examined the process by which the codex – the traditional form of the Western book – replaced the scroll as the primary vehicle for literature. (Colin H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat,
The Birth of the Codex
, Oxford University Press, 1983.)

2
. A German commando and specialist in unconventional warfare. Apart from his successful mission to free Mussolini, Skorzeny was the leader of Operation Greif in late 1944, where German soldiers fluent in English and wearing Allied uniforms infiltrated American lines. At the end of the war he was involved in the
Werwolf
stay-behind guerrilla network as well as the Odessa line, which helped fugitive Nazis escape to South America and the Middle East.

3
. W
OOD
was Fritz Kolbe, a German diplomat who became America’s most important spy against the Nazis. In 1943 he became a diplomatic courier and on a visit to Berne, he offered secret documents to the British, who rebuffed his approach. He then went to the Americans, who realised that in Kolbe they had an agent of the highest quality. He was given the code-name
GEORGE WOOD
and Allen Dulles wrote of him, ‘George Wood was not only our best source on Germany but undoubtedly one of the best secret agents any intelligence service has ever had.’ (James Srodes,
Alan Dulles: Master of Spies
, Regnery, Washington DC, 1999.) After the war, Kolbe unsuccessfully applied to rejoin the German Foreign Office.

4
. The first head of Germany’s post-war domestic intelligence agency. In 1954, he sensationally disappeared to East Berlin and was subsequently interrogated by the KGB in Moscow. Eighteen months later, he reappeared in West Berlin claiming he had been kidnapped by the Russians. He was tried for treason, found guilty and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment.

5
. Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville,
Philby: The Long Road to Moscow
, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1973.

6
. The Foreign Office official assigned as PA to the chief of SIS from 1943 to 1945. In 1994 he contributed a scholarly article to the journal
Intelligence and National Security
entitled ‘Five of Six at War: Section V of MI6’ (vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 345–53). For this article, Cecil had corresponded at some length with Felix Cowgill. Cecil makes the point that ISOS and ISK were vital sources and Cowgill, very conscious of the ‘need-to-know’ principle, was determined to restrict its circulation. When Trevor-Roper defied the restriction, Cowgill recommended to the chief that he be sacked. Cowgill’s wish to restrict circulation was neither arbitrary nor frivolous as another traitor, Anthony Blunt, then working in MI5, was one of the recipients of the ISOS and ISK material, but he went too far, restricting its availability to members of the Double Cross Committee in a way that hampered its operations. Regarding Philby, Cowgill commented that he ‘was recruited at a time when MI5 records were still in chaos. An MI5 trace was therefore of little value and Vivian may be excused for relying on his own judgement.’

7
. Phillip Knightley, Bruce Page and David Leitch,
Philby: The Spy Who Betrayed a Generation
, André Deutsch, London, 1968.

8
. Thomas Argyll Robertson, always known as ‘Tar’. After a short stint as a professional soldier, Robertson joined MI5 in 1933. During the war he ran one of the cleverest deception and disinformation operations, Operation Mincemeat, revealed for the first time in Ewen Montagu’s book
The Man Who Never Was,
Evans Brothers, London, 1953. For an account of Robertson’s remarkable life, see Geoffrey Elliott,
Gentleman Spymaster: How Lt Col. Tommy ‘Tar’ Robertson Double-crossed the Nazis
, Methuen, London, 2011.

9
. James Malcolm Mackintosh CMG. He read Russian at Glasgow University and joined SOE in 1942, later parachuting behind German lines to join the British mission with Tito’s Partisans. He subsequently transferred to Section V, where he was posted to Bulgaria (Sofia) and then to Berlin at the end of hostilities. Post war, Mackintosh achieved wide renown as an intelligence analyst, Sovietologist and adviser to successive Prime Ministers and Cabinets. Retired from the Cabinet Office in 1987.

10
. Kim Philby,
My Silent War
, MacGibbon & Kee, London, 1968.

11
. Milne’s new job was as Staff Officer to the new Assistant Chief of the Secret Service, Jack Easton.

†
Editor’s note:
The Charity Commission has since moved to 1 Drummond Gate, Pimlico.

†
Editor’s note:
SIS allocated two-digit code-numbers to each country in which it operated. Germany, for example, was 12.

†
Editor’s note:
Milne wrote this book in the 1970s but it is clear that this section was added later since Cecil’s article in the academic journal
Intelligence and National Security
did not appear until 1994.

†
Editor’s note:
An insecticide.

8

DECLINE AND FALL

A
lmost the first lesson I learnt in Section V was that spying is a mug’s game. Here were all these German agents, unmasked not through any fault of their own or of the case officers running them but simply because the German cypher was not completely secure. Towards the end of the war German agents were also, and increasingly, given away by
Abwehr
officers who defected to our side or were captured. Indeed, this eventually became an embarrassment to MI5 in their running of double agents: an
Abwehr
officer would say on arrival, ‘There’s an agent reporting on all your troop movements around Portsmouth. Here are the details – now you can pull him in.’

It was not to be supposed that the same cypher weaknesses would be found in the Soviet intelligence services, still less that we would be capturing any of their officers on the battlefield. But occasionally one of these officers would defect. Already Walter Krivitsky, who came over to the West in 1937, had told MI5 that the Russians had sent a young English journalist to Spain during the Civil War, a lead that apparently was not followed up. Now in the later months of 1945 there were two more danger signs for Kim, one minor, the other a flashing red light. The lesser case was that of Igor Guzenko, a cypher clerk in the Soviet embassy
in Ottawa, who defected and in due course gave away a number of Soviet agents in Canada. One of them, Gordon Lunan, had been a colleague of mine in Benson’s before he emigrated to Canada in 1938 or 1939, though he was then a youth of about nineteen without, as far as I knew, marked political leanings. Lunan went down for six years. The other and (for Kim) much more important case was the attempted defection of Konstantin Volkov in Istanbul. The story has been recounted at length in the Philby books, especially his own. Assuming Kim’s account is correct, Volkov, nominally a Soviet vice-consul in Istanbul, secretly approached the British consulate general there in August. He sought asylum in Britain and offered in return to give much information about the NKVD, of which he claimed to be an officer. In particular he offered to identify three Soviet agents in Britain, namely the head of a counter-espionage organisation in London and two Foreign Office men. But he stipulated that all communication between Istanbul and London on the subject should be by diplomatic bag because the Russians had broken certain British cyphers. Kim had heard nothing of the case when he was summoned to the chief’s office and shown the letter from Istanbul outlining Volkov’s offer. In front of the chief he had to read what might almost have amounted to his own death warrant, not to mention that of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. Yet it seems that he showed no sign of shock and aroused no suspicion. That evening he got word to the Russians, and the next day persuaded the chief to send him to Istanbul to investigate. The Russians must have concluded that he had nerves of steel, and they were able to spirit Volkov out of Turkey.

Neither SIS nor Volkov seem to have thought their positions through. As Kim points out, SIS observed Volkov’s stipulations
about not using cypher telegrams, but only in respect of messages about Volkov himself. Where was the logic in that? Either the cyphers were unsafe and should not have been used for any future messages at all, or they were safe and could have been used for all messages, including those about Volkov. It was also strange that Sir Stewart Menzies, on learning that a Soviet official claimed to be able to name as a Russian spy the head of a counter-espionage organisation in London (admittedly a wide expression that could have covered many people in MI5 and elsewhere), handed over investigation to … his own counter-espionage head! Volkov for his part was so concerned over cyphers – thereby causing a delay which probably helped to seal his own fate – that he does not seem to have considered the danger that the very man he was talking about might be put in charge of the case, or at least might learn about it. If for his own safety he had mentioned this one name, how different history would have been.

It has been suggested by some writers that Kim deliberately dragged his feet over the Volkov case so as to give the Russians more time to get Volkov away. A close reading of Kim’s own account suggests that while he rejoiced inwardly over the fortuitous delays that arose, he did not cause them. It is highly unlikely that at this extremely dangerous moment he would have taken any positive delaying step which could later be remembered against him. At the same time, two aspects of his behaviour could have aroused suspicion and may have done so later: first, that with all his experience of ISOS matters he did not immediately question the validity of obeying Volkov’s stipulation about cyphers (in fact he privately spotted the fallacy at once, as he makes clear); and second, that he appears to have accepted with equanimity the delays he encountered in Istanbul, instead of
urging utmost speed as most SIS officers would have done. The exact timetable of events in the Volkov case is a little difficult to follow from Kim’s account and others, but on one calculation it is possible that Volkov’s original approach took place while Kim and I were still on our European travels; in other words, had Volkov not imposed his cypher veto, a telegram might have arrived in London before Kim was available to deal with it.

Kim must have wondered when and where the next blow would fall. A defector might turn up anywhere. He might not defect to the British: it could be to the Americans or any of the large number of other countries. He might spill the beans at once, before there was a chance of Russian counter-action. Kim would have realised more than ever that his future safety depended on events outside his own control and, to a large extent, outside that of his Russian masters. I wonder how he felt on hearing that even the remote Guzenko had put the finger on someone he had happened to know.

Many people have commented on Kim’s drinking. I scarcely ever saw him much the worse for drink before 1945. Somewhere around this time there was a perceptible change. I cannot date it exactly, except that it was after he and Aileen and the three children moved to Carlyle Square in, I think, early 1945. One reason for the change could have been that the German war was over, the Russians were no longer (for practical purposes) our allies, and Kim was now nakedly having to work against his own country. But this was a situation he must have long foreseen; a greater factor may have been the Volkov case and all that it implied for his future.

While I knew him, Kim was never an alcoholic, never someone who had to drink, whatever was happening. Both his drinking
and his reaction to drink depended on the occasion and the company. He could be sober after a dozen drinks or almost incoherent after two. At this time, 1945–46, he was more likely to get drunk on private, relaxed occasions than in wider company. He was not usually aggressive or unpleasant: just drunk. If his life had ended soon after the war, people would not have remembered him for his drinking.

Number 18 Carlyle Square was much larger than The Spinney or the Grove Court flat. ‘They’re overhoused,’ Dora Philby said to me at the house-warming party. With five in the family plus Nannie Tucker, the health problems of the youngest child, Tommy, and a large house to keep up, Kim could not possibly have managed on his salary. I have no idea whether he received money from the Russians; but if it had been more than pocket money Aileen would surely have known there was another source of income, and others might have wondered. Aileen’s mother, Mrs Alleyne, who was very well off, provided the money for the lease and I believe made many other subventions over the years; Kim’s parents may possibly also have helped. Wherever the money came from, Carlyle Square was a hospitable place. I remember several informal parties and gatherings and one large and formal cocktail party to which Guy Burgess was going to bring his boss, Hector McNeil,
¹
Ernest Bevin’s number two at the Foreign Office. In the end McNeil could not come, but his wife did, escorted by Guy, who for once was on his best behaviour. Other friends who were often around included Evelyn Montague of the
Manchester Guardian
, who had been a fellow correspondent of Kim’s in the BEF.
²
Kim was very fond of Evelyn. When he fell ill with TB, Kim and Aileen took him in as a lodger for several months. Another likeable friend was John Hackett, the advertising
man who had got the SOE job I was interviewed for in 1941. Senior SIS officers, on the other hand, were not often seen at Carlyle Square. Outside office hours Kim preferred to mix with humbler colleagues, with whom he could relax. But his standing in SIS was high – rather higher than one might deduce from the OBE which he, like many others, was awarded at the beginning of 1946. I was given one myself six months later, and received a little note from Kim: ‘The Order of the British Empire is to be congratulated on acquiring so distinguished an Officer.’ I was also given a medal by the Americans,
³
which under the rules was denied to Kim because he was a civilian. It would have made an interesting addition to his Spanish, British and Russian trio.