The Other Side of Silence

“You know, this might even get you your knighthood,” Reilly told Maugham.

“Do you really think so?”

“Why not? I shall certainly say as much to Selwyn Lloyd when next I see him.”

“The British foreign secretary,” said Maugham, in my direction. “And, as it happens, a bit of a fan of mine.”

“The trouble is,” Reilly continued, “these two-Burgess and Maclean-can now make any amount of mischief with impunity. Guy Burgess can repeat more or less whatever he likes and even if it isn’t true, the Americans are going to believe him. He and Maclean look like better and more effective spies than they were, perhaps, merely by virtue of the fact that they got away with it so long.”

“Isn’t that the definition of a perfect spy,” I said. “Getting away with it-in their case for almost two decades?”

“Walter’s right,” observed Maugham. “It’s hard to imagine how they could have been more successful than they were.”

“The net was closing in on them when they defected,” argued Reilly. “I can’t say too much about that but I’m quite certain we’d have caught them before very much longer.”

“I’m sure that’s of enormous relief to Mr. Hoover,” Maugham said pointedly. “He’ll sleep more soundly knowing that they were about to be caught. Before they managed to do some real damage to Britain’s relationship with America.”

I lit a cigarette and grinned. I liked the old man’s sense of humor. In many ways it was a lot like mine-sharp and bitter and sometimes hardly funny at all. The kind of black humor that nearly always got you a big laugh in Berlin.

“Of course,” he added, “one does wonder if these two were the only spies at the heart of the British establishment. When I was listening to Guy Burgess describe going up to Cambridge in nineteen twenty-nine to find that most of his friends had either joined the Communist Party or were at least very close to it in that febrile atmosphere of anti-Fascism, I asked myself if there were not others who, like Burgess, betrayed their country. Perhaps several others. In which case Burgess and Maclean are merely a sample of what you can expect from now on.”

“I went to Oxford myself,” said Reilly. “New College. Came down the same year as Burgess. Never a sniff of any Bolshiness there. Funny thing about people who went to Cambridge University. Hard to like any of them, really. I think it must have something to do with the inclement weather in that part of England. Very cold in Cambridge, you know.”

“Even now,” persisted Maugham, “there may be other Cambridge men like Burgess and Maclean who are handing over the family silver to the Russkies. Have you considered that possibility? I hope so, Patrick. I hate to sound like the witchfinder general, but one would hate to think that there is more that could be done to find out just how deep this treason goes.”

Reilly smiled thinly as if such a thing were inconceivable-which only served to make the rest of us think that it was-and changed the subject with undiplomatic dexterity. “Tell me about yourself, Mr. Wolf,” he said. “You interest me more and more.”

“There’s not a lot to tell. Less of a novel and more of a short story, you might say. And not a very interesting one at that.” I gave Reilly the blue-penciled, redacted version of the kind he was probably used to sending in triplicate to his political masters. Just about every bit of it was untrue, apart from the fact that I’d once been a cop in Berlin, and every time I repeated it I was almost convinced I had as much talent for fiction as Somerset Maugham himself. Maybe I did, too; being a writer always looks like a good job to have when you’re as dishonest as I am.

“You’re not a Communist, I trust?” said Reilly. He said the word as if such a thing would have been impossible among civilized men.

“No, I always hated the Communists. Especially after nineteen seventeen.”

“Still, I expect you were probably quite left-wing when you were a young man back in Germany.”

“I was a Social Democrat when the Nazis came to power, if that’s what you mean. They thought that was left wing. Then again they were Nazis. Interestingly the Communists thought Social Democrats were as bad as Nazis. Being a Social Democrat in nineteen thirty-three wasn’t a political choice so much as a predicament.”

“Where are you now, politically?”

“Same place. Middle of the road. Neither fish nor fowl. As far as that goes in a country like France. Given the French love of empire, I’m not sure there can be any center ground in a country like this.” I shrugged. “Mind you, the same could be said of England.”

Reilly nodded patiently. “What do you usually do when you’re not working?”

“Play bridge. Drink too much. Stay out of the sun during the day. Read a lot. I’m more suited to the night, I think.”

“Been back to Berlin lately?”

“No, and I can’t see myself going, either. Not since they surrounded it with the GDR, a lot of barbed wire, and a tissue of lies.”

“Pardon me for asking this in your presence, Willie. Have you ever been queer, by any chance, Mr. Wolf?”

“No.”