The Other Side of Silence

“But suppose that’s exactly what did happen,” continued Sinclair eventually. “Look here, Occam’s razor and all that. The simplest explanation is the most likely. Guy was always a fearful snob and typically dismissive of this tobacco salesman he’s just met-so dismissive that the Russians didn’t even notice that he could only have been referring to Roger Hollis. But here’s a rather more persuasive explanation, I think. We’ve always strongly suspected that the Soviet GRU and the KGB both run separate networks of spies in England but don’t keep each other in the loop about what they’re up to. We even believe they’re forbidden to consult each other without specific permission from the GKO-the State Defense Committee, in Moscow. This was a corollary of Stalin’s paranoia. It was he who decreed that ideally UK Soviet counterespionage should be covered by both a KGB agent and a GRU agent, so that they could always double-check a source. Well then. Suppose Guy Burgess was being run by the KGB and they spirit him out of England and while they’re doing it, for whatever reason, they record this tape. Suppose Hollis on the other hand is being run by the GRU-by Russian military intelligence. That would explain the oversight. The KGB don’t know anything about Hollis because he’s GRU. It was a cock-up, pure and simple. Too much security can be just as bad as not enough.”

“Yes, that might explain it.”

“Not only that: The GRU military intelligence chaps were running spies in China long before the KGB was even dreamed of. When Jim Skardon interrogated Klaus Fuchs in nineteen forty-nine for MI5, Fuchs said he’d been recruited by the GRU and that these two agencies disliked and distrusted each other even more than MI5 and MI6. Apparently when Fuchs was transferred to the KGB, the GRU made an almighty row about it in Moscow with the State Defense Committee. Their man, working for the competition.”

“Christ, when you put it like that, Sinbad, the comrades sound even more disorganized than we do.”

“Except that we don’t happen to have an agent who happens to be the deputy chairman of the Soviet Committee for State Security. I’d give a great deal to be as disorganized as that.”

“Yes. Think what it would be like to have a man like Alexander Shelepin working for MI6.”

“If Hollis is working for the GRU, he’s just as important as someone like Shelepin, Patrick. And just as big a traitor as Burgess or Maclean. Bigger. He has the power to stifle any investigation into any Soviet agent working in England right now. Klaus Fuchs or John Cairncross, perhaps. Or he might subtly encourage the belief that Kim Philby is a Soviet spy. It might just be that Philby has been fingered by Hollis all along. That all his protestations of innocence have been entirely justified.”

“So what’s our next course of action?” asked Reilly.

“Obviously we need to buy the tapes. I’ve already put in a request to the banking section in Melbury Road. The first tape’s existence is already the subject of some speculation back home. Christ knows what’s on the other ones. If indeed there are any other ones. This one tape is quite bad enough. So we have to have it, and soon.”

“Guy Burgess speaks. Yes, I can imagine. It’s sensational stuff all right. And Maugham is right. The American media would have a field day with this stuff. The FBI would never talk to us again. We’d be the pariahs of Western intelligence. If we aren’t already.”

“Patrick, I’d also like to ask my people at Broadway to get cracking with a full belt and braces investigation into Hollis. Tonight.”

“To do that you’re going to need the nod from the Joint Intelligence Committee and Sir Patrick Dean. Perhaps also the minister. What about Dick White at MI5? Are you going to tell him?”

“He’s too close to Hollis. As I said before, it was White who was supposed to have vetted Hollis. For all we know he might be a GRU agent himself. The last thing we want to do is to spook Hollis into doing a bunk like Burgess and Maclean. Which this just might.”

“No, I can’t believe it of Dick White. He wanted to resign from MI5 when Percy Sillitoe left in the wake of those defections. Sillitoe talked him into staying on and taking over the corner shop. No, I can’t see the comrades would ever have contemplated even allowing White to resign if he’d been theirs all along. Besides, he was at Oxford, not Cambridge.”

“Fair enough. But still, Hollis and White are as close as a fat lady’s thighs. I think we’d best leave him out of the loop for now. Everyone knows that Dick White always agrees with Hollis.”