‘And the second time?’
‘About a week later. We were all being flown on a chartered plane to Aden, then up to Sa’ana in the Yemen. Kim had had a pretty heavy night and in the morning he wasn’t on the bus to the airport. We were sitting in the plane with the engines revving up, when a figure came running across the tarmac with a battered old briefcase and just managed to scramble aboard before the steps were taken away. It was Kim. He hadn’t shaved and he looked terrible. He took his seat to a standing ovation from the whole Press corps.’
‘A popular chap?’
‘Sure. Everybody’s favourite drunk.’
‘Do you remember anything else about him?’
‘Only that he kept coming up to us and saying, “I’ve just found a little place where they do excellent Abyssinian goat.”’
‘How did he get on in the Yemen — it being “dry”?’
‘Didn’t seem to worry him at all. That was what struck me most about him. Not only could he turn his drinking on and off like a tap, but he was amazingly adaptable. He took to the Arab way of life as though he’d always lived there. It was probably hereditary. After all, his father, St John Philby, had been a great Arabist.’
‘That mad bastard,’ Hennison muttered, with surprising venom. ‘He had a lot to answer for. Like father, like son. Rebels and misfits, both of them. That was the real trouble with Philby — he wanted to fit in and couldn’t. But going back to those final months in Beirut, there’s one thing you haven’t explained. From all I’ve heard, Philby was obviously cracking up. You said yourself he was drunk most of the time. So if — as you claim — he wasn’t frightened of being arrested by the British, what was worrying him? Why didn’t he pack his bags and go straight to his beloved Moscow, instead of hanging around risking the vengeance of the Americans, or anyone else who didn’t particularly approve of what he’d been doing?’
‘My own hunch,’ said Cayle, ‘is that once he knew the game was up and realized he’d have to take the jump, he drew back at the last moment. He’d given his whole life to Moscow, but when it came to the point of having to go and live in the bloody place, with no options and no escape, perhaps the prospect wasn’t quite so appetizing.’
‘It’s a possibility, knowing Philby’s lifestyle. Even if his ideology affected to despise material wellbeing, he certainly enjoyed his creature comforts. He wasn’t a member of the Athenaeum for nothing. And I know that he was very bucked at getting his CBE.’
‘Sounds as though you knew him?’ said Cayle.
‘I did — quite well, for a time, in a rather humble capacity during the war. He was stationed with Section Five of SIS near St Albans, and I had a job co-ordinating codes from the Resistance movements. Philby was the man I dealt with.’
‘How did he strike you?’
‘Amiable enough. Lot of charm. Rather schoolboyish sense of humour. Hard drinker and hard worker. And damned conscientious. A good man to work with.’ He paused. ‘He was also an A-one copper-bottomed bastard.’
‘Was that the opinion you formed at the time?’ said Cayle. ‘Or with hindsight?’
‘I formed it pretty early on. I’ve always been on my guard against people with charm, and Philby was very charming. But underneath, there was also something very coarse about him — something that showed in his humour, particularly when he got drunk. He got drunk like an upper-class lout. He was a great suspender-snapper and bottom-pincher, and quite often used to strip down to his underpants and dance on the table — that is, when he wasn’t under the table.’
‘Sounds a pretty harmless war-time pursuit,’ Cayle murmured.
‘He was also a thief,’ said Hennison. ‘He’d steal anything — reputations, jobs, State Secrets, wives, people’s affection, trust, loyalty. About the only thing he didn’t steal was money. Because Kim Philby was no cheap spy in a dirty mackintosh, selling his country’s secrets for a few bundles of fivers. Oh no! He was an idealist — he had a cause. You might even say a calling. Which perhaps explains that sanctimonious guff that Graham Greene wrote about his having a “higher loyalty”. Kim Philby had about as much higher loyalty as a black mamba.’
‘So what attracted him to Communism?’
‘Power, and mischief.’ Hennison leant forward, his pale eyes showing a slow flicker of enthusiasm. ‘Look, if you’re going to get anywhere trying to understand Philby’s true motives, you’ve got to realize that he wasn’t fired by any passion for the working class, which he’d never had anything to do with, or by any real love for Mother Russia, which he’d never been to until he fled there, or even by a belief in Marx, whom I happen to know he found too boring to read. With Philby it was a game. He was like a child at a birthday party who goes round bursting the other children’s balloons. He was accepted by
