The Other Side of Silence

I went inside the villa, through the cool hall, grabbed the wrought-iron banister, and started up the stairs two at a time. The eagle atop a ten-foot-high gilded wooden perch on the corner landing eyed my swift progress with detached interest. There was something vaguely Nazi about that eagle, and I would not have been surprised if it had once been marched triumphantly through the Brandenburg Gate, at the head of an SA troop and a military brass band, in some midnight torchlight procession. Sometimes I miss Berlin more than seems appropriate.

I reached the second floor and climbed the wooden stair onto the flat roof. On the other side of the freestanding structure that was Maugham’s study was a short pan-tiled Moorish roof, and at the far end of this, a large square chimney, about the height of a man. I stepped gingerly onto the tiles and walked as quickly as I dared to the chimney, then took hold of it.

I hadn’t expected it to be quite so easy, but Maugham had not exaggerated. The fireplace was like a large microphone and already I could hear the plummy sound of Guy Burgess speaking on tape. I didn’t know it yet, but by sending me up there Maugham had effectively saved my life.

TWENTY-FIVE

The Paris Bureau of the Comintern introduced me to all sorts of interesting people, many of them sympathetic Englishmen, such as Claud Cockburn and John Cairncross. Meanwhile, Arnold Deutsch took me out to dinner with all sorts of strange folk, not all of them obvious recruitment material. People who had no languages. People who hadn’t even been to university. Some of them were downright dull. Not to say stupid. I remember a very uninspiring young English salesman recently returned from China, where he’d been working for a tobacco company. I mean, this chap hadn’t even been to university, let alone Cambridge. All he could talk about was tobacco and the Chinese and about some awful bloody girl he’d married back in Somerset. And I remember thinking, what’s the point of trying to recruit a chap to the cause who’s going to be happily married and selling cigarettes? Are the Russians so desperate for spies that we’re willing to fund the local tobacconists? Not that he took Arnold’s ruble, so to speak. Anyway, ours not to reason why and all that rot.”

Then someone-Sinclair, I assumed-turned off the tape and walked around for a moment. His stout English shoes on the stone flags sounded almost military, which they probably were.

“Well?” said Reilly. “Why all the flap? I must say you are looking very excited about something all of a sudden.”

“I am,” said Sinclair. “I’ve had this itch after I heard that remark Burgess made about China. So I scratched it.”

“And, what?”

“I called the office and had one of my chaps telephone someone at MI5 who owes us a favor. And he did some deep checking in the personnel files at Leconfield House. Formerly the Ardath Tobacco Company, British American Tobacco’s most popular brand in China was State Express 555. In June nineteen thirty-seven, prior to his wedding in July the same year, and at Wells Cathedral no less, BAT appointed a new assistant foreign manager to sell State Express to the chinks. But almost as soon as he arrived in Shanghai, in August nineteen thirty-seven, the Japanese army invaded the city and BAT’s new assistant foreign manager was obliged to abandon his nice new villa in the Bund and skedaddle home to London, via Paris.” Sinclair paused for dramatic effect. “That man was none other than our own dear friend Roger Hollis.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Reilly. “You’re not serious.”

“Oh, but I am. And it gets worse, I’m afraid. Just a few days after he’s back in London, Roger Hollis quits his job at BAT and applies to join MI6; he’s rejected, thank God. But he does manage to join MI5 just a few months later, in January nineteen thirty-eight, as a probationer under training. Apparently he was introduced in August nineteen thirty-seven by Jane Sissmore following a game of tennis at the Ealing Tennis Club, where he also met Dick White. That’s what they used to call security vetting, I think. A game of fucking tennis. And here’s something else. In October nineteen thirty-seven, Hollis gives a lecture at the Royal Central Asian Society in London on the subject of the recent conflict in China. Guess who else is a member of the Royal Central Asian Society? Our old friend Kim Philby.”

“That is interesting, I agree. But look here, John, MI5’s Peach investigation still shows that nothing has actually been conclusively proved against Philby. He’s been cleared of being a Soviet agent.”

“Only officially and in public. And only for the benefit of Anglo-American relations. You know it. And I know it. Who else but Kim Philby could have tipped off Burgess and Maclean that they were about to go in the bag? There was no one else it could have been.” Sinclair paused. “Unless it was Hollis, of course.”

Sinclair paused again.

“It’s even possible that fingering Hollis leaves Kim Philby in the clear, retrospectively.”