‘As for Kim, he’d have known that if this Pole could put the finger on Blake, he’d be able to do the same to him. So by the end of ’62 Kim was in mortal danger. Yet what does he do? Or more important, what do the British do? Well, they let him sit in Beirut more or less permanently pissed for the next couple of months, while MI6 send out one of his old mates to visit him, and spend hours with him in his favourite bar at the Normandy Hotel, trying to soft-talk him into making a nice helpful confession — the official theory being that he’d be more amenable in a bar in Beirut than in a cell in Brixton. And if people believe that, they’ll believe the Pope’s a Jew.’
‘If I remember rightly,’ Hennison said, ‘the details of that Beirut episode are very hazy. You’ll pardon my saying so, Barry, but you’re in danger of confusing fact with hypothesis.’
‘One fact I’m damn certain of, Mr Hennison. Kim Philby stuck around in Beirut for those two months because he was bloody certain that the British didn’t dare touch him. Christ! — he even made a couple of trips to the Yemen during that period, and each time his plane had to land in Aden, which was still a Crown colony, where the British could have picked him up as easily as if he’d been in Piccadilly Circus.’
‘So what made him finally leave?’
‘As I heard it, the Yanks had decided to move in on the job. I know for a fact that the day after Kim disappeared, on the night of January 23rd 1963, the whole of Beirut was swarming with CIA boys who weren’t making any secret of the fact that they’d come to settle his hash once and for all. They had a pretty big score to pay off, remember. Kim had been the chief British liaison officer with the CIA during the height of the Cold War, when he probably did his greatest damage to the Western cause. Washington had clearly rumbled him themselves, and Kim knew it — perhaps through his old MI6 friend, or perhaps through someone even higher up. Anyway, he skipped out in such a hurry that he didn’t even pack or kiss his wife goodbye.’
Hennison sat for a moment in silence. When he spoke, it was with a tone of benign patronage: ‘It might make a good yarn, Barry. But it’s an awfully long way from proving your grand conspiracy theory. The truth, I suspect, is much simpler and much duller. When the authorities knew for certain that Philby was a spy, they probably weighed up the pros and cons of the case, and decided on balance that since the damage had already been done, no good could come of a messy trial, even in camera. Nobody benefits from a spy scandal — except the newspapers.’
‘That’s right,’ said Cayle, ‘and keep the skeletons hidden under the dress-shirts. The fact that a few more spies and traitors are still at large in high places doesn’t matter, of course?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know a lot about the details of Intelligence work, but I do know that an important part of it is the debriefing of enemy agents. And when that agent turns out to be one of your own boys, it becomes doubly important. In Kim’s case, he’d not only have been an invaluable source of information to the British and Americans — able to give them all kinds of insight into how Soviet Intelligence had worked during his thirty years with them. But he was equally invaluable to the Russkies. For them he must have been a walking encyclopaedia on how MI6 and the CIA operate — giving them all kinds of details that he could never have got out to them while he was working undercover in the West. So by letting him go, the British chalked up a double minus. They lost their chance to debrief him themselves, and at the same time handed him to Moscow on a plate.’
Hennison finished his smoked salmon and wiped his fingers on a napkin. ‘You must remember that nothing in Intelligence work is ever straightforward. For all you or I know, there may have been quite a number of good reasons why MI6 allowed Philby to leave when he did.’
‘Sure there were. They wanted to avoid the biggest bleeding scandal in the history of the British Empire!’
‘All right. I see no point in arguing about it.’ There was a tetchiness in Hennison’s voice now, while his eyes still held that uncomfortable shifting expression. ‘I’ve asked you this already,’ he added, ‘and you didn’t give me an answer. Do you know the names of any of these so-called fellow-conspirators of Philby’s? Or shall I put it another way. Have you ever heard any names mentioned?’
‘Without wanting to be rude,’ said Cayle, ‘I’d say that question’s rather out of court, coming from a literary agent. Particularly as I’m not even your client yet.’
Hennison blinked, then lowered his eyes again. ‘Very well, I understand how you feel. What you journalists call “confidential sources”? But let me ask you something else. Have you ever had any direct — or even indirect — dealings with Philby?’
‘Yeah. I met him.’
‘Not recently, surely?’
‘No, about thirteen years ago, when I was cutting my teeth doing freelance work in the Middle East. It was in Beirut, just about the time the heat was being turned on him, and he was getting ready to do a bunk — although I had no idea, of course. I only bumped into him a couple of times. The first was at eleven in the morning in the St George’s Hotel, and he was sprawled out in his customary fashion, asleep on the bar. I remember the incident
