‘I’ll report exactly what you say, Sir Roger. But that won’t rule out what other people will be saying. For instance, your link with Kim Philby.’
Sir Roger Jameson-Clarke steepled his fingers together and stared at the ceiling. When he spoke he sounded tired and bored. ‘Philby seems to have become a nuisance to everyone. I wish to God we could forget him.’
‘Where is he now?’
Sir Roger glanced at the Russian, and paused. ‘We don’t know,’ he said. ‘He left Moscow yesterday morning. He hasn’t been seen since.’
‘Can’t you keep a check on him?’ said Cayle.
It was the Russian who answered: ‘Colonel Philby is a senior officer in the Committee of State Security. His present activities do not concern us.’ As he spoke a green light began winking on Sir Roger’s desk. The Russian crossed to it in one stride and snapped down a switch. A voice crackled at him and he said ‘Harasho!’ and flicked the switch up again. At the same moment there was a tap at the door and a tall thin man in spectacles drifted across the carpet and laid a roll of telex messages on the desk. The Russian read them standing, while the man waited behind him. Sir Roger didn’t move.
The Russian gave an order and the thin man nodded and withdrew. For several seconds the room was quiet. Then the Russian spoke, addressing himself formally to Sir Roger: ‘There has been a serious incident over Finland. The Troika-Caravelle, on its demonstration flight from Leningrad this afternoon, has been forced to land near Helsinki. A Soviet member of the crew was killed, but there are no reports of any further casualties. However, an English journalist, who has so far not been positively identified, was taken off the plane by the hijackers. The hijackers have since escaped, without making any ransom demands.’ He looked straight at Cayle: ‘You still say you know nothing of why Colonel Philby arranged for you to travel to Leningrad last night?’
‘Nothing, beyond what I’ve told you.’ And before the Russian could answer, Cayle added: ‘Would I be out of line if I thought Kim Philby and that English journalist are one and the same?’
The Russian said woodenly: ‘The man was equipped with what seem to have been valid documents, including a Press card issued, apparently, by the English newspaper, the Observer.’
Cayle began to laugh: ‘You’ve got to hand it to old Kim! He does have a sense of humour.’ He turned to Sir Roger. ‘Does this change things? For me, I mean? Do I still have your word that when our interview is over, I’m free to leave?’
‘You have my word,’ said Sir Roger Jameson-Clarke. Unlike the Russian, his expression was genial and relaxed: at least he would now be spared a long and bitter investigation into Philby’s true loyalties over this last decade.
‘Vladimir, I think we might now have some refreshments,’ he added.
The Russian walked stiffly over to the buhl cabinet and offered a choice of Western drinks. Cayle asked for Scotch and soda, and Sir Roger Jameson-Clarke had a gin and lime. The Russian drank nothing.
Cayle’s interview with Sir Roger lasted three-quarters of an hour.
Roger Laval Pugh Jameson-Clarke had been recruited into the Soviet Intelligence Service, the GPU, in 1931 while he was reading Greats at New College, Oxford. He had never been a member of the British Communist Party, but had remained, throughout his career in the British Diplomatic Service, an unflinching supporter of the new social and ideological order which had found its roots in Soviet Russia. He agreed with Lenin that Russia had been ill-equipped to pioneer the Marxist Revolutionary experiment, but the accidents of history had to be accepted, and their results shaped accordingly.
Sir Roger was a great believer in history. He explained the excesses of Stalinism as a historical lapse; but Stalin had had to be ruthless or the Soviet experiment would have failed as surely as the Chilean fiasco under Dr Allende. Liberal democracy was a luxury which only a tiny percentage of the world could afford, or were indeed interested in. The Nazi-Soviet Pact had not worried him: Stalin had been merely buying time, just as Chamberlain had, only Stalin had used his time more cleverly. Not only had he rearmed, but he had annexed the Baltic States as a vital buffer between himself and Hitler. Sir Roger had wanted Stalin to absorb Finland too. Force had to be met with force, and Hitler had had to be beaten, and it had been the valour of the Russian fighting man — with more than seven million dead in combat — that had beaten him.
The only emotion that Sir Roger showed throughout the interview was when he recalled those English officers and diplomats in their London clubs during the war, who had talked as though Britain were defeating Germany single-handed. ‘In comparison with Moscow and Stalingrad, the Battle of Britain and El Alamein were pillow-fights!’ he cried. Otherwise his discourse, delivered in a precise level tone, reminded Cayle of a bizarre mixture of muddled Utopianism and cold-blooded sophistry, of a fanatical old don and a rambling leader from the New Statesman of the Thirties, with every so often the gleam of the Cromwellian axe — Sir Jolly Roger, stripped of his starched collar and chalk-stripes, in his oil-skins and pixie hat, the rogue sailor turned pirate, helping to command a ship he despised, sailing under the secret colours of a nation that wielded the brute power of the new
