Authors: Rick Gekoski
I met one of these ‘students’ – let’s call him Michael B– on my trip to Moscow in 1993 to examine Philby’s library and papers. He was, he told me, acting as
Mrs Philby’s ‘agent’ in our negotiations.
‘How delightful to meet you,’ he said, shaking my hand. ‘I do so miss London. I had the most marvellous time there. Such a delightful city!’
‘You worked in London?’
‘Yes,’ he said suavely, ‘I was a Tass correspondent for seven years.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ I said. ‘I’m new to this. You were a student of Kim’s? And then you went to London?’
He nodded.
‘So you were a KGB spy?’
‘Of course,’ he chortled. ‘Now … entrepreneur!’
In Michael’s charming but vigilant company Mrs Philby and I began to go through Kim’s library. He had thousands of volumes – he’d had plenty of time to read, and various
friends (like Greene) had been generous in sending him reading material. As I browsed, a few of the books virtually demanded a return to England. There was Kim’s heavily annotated
A
Handbook of Marxism
, from the 1930s, which was wonderful. A couple of books from Guy Burgess’s library were rather fun.
But best of all was a copy of
Spycatcher
, inscribed to the Philbys by Graham Greene: ‘For Kim and Ruffina from Graham and Yvonne.’ That sounds homey enough, as if the book
were a Christmas gift of some innocuous volume. Perhaps that is how Graham thought of it. But seen from the outside, and after a few years, it was a remarkable find: a celebrated book about spying,
presented by the finest writer about espionage to the third man himself.
I had to have it! Mrs Philby had a distinct interest in money, and was constantly anxious about inflation in post-Communist Moscow. The fare on the palatial underground system had recently
doubled to the equivalent of 1p a trip, and Ruffina was in a stew about it.
‘But Ruffina,’ I said, ‘you just sold one of Kim’s unpublished essays to an English newspaper for £600 …’
‘You don’t understand Russians,’ she said wearily, and fairly. ‘It is always a struggle here.’
‘Perhaps you’d sell me a couple of books then?’ I asked.
She would. During the afternoon, with both of us feeling a little carefree due to Michael’s uncharacteristic absence, she and I did a deal, and I gave her £1,500 pounds in cash for
four books, of which £1,000 was for the
Spycatcher
. Her eyes glowed. I considered making an offer on the one further book I craved – I forget the title, it wasn’t anything
particular – but it bore a warm inscription to Maclean’s wife: ‘For Melinda – an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away. With love from Kim.’ It is possible to press your
luck too far, and I regretfully put the book back on the shelf.
Mrs Philby was a tireless host, and during my four days in Moscow she showed me around the local parks, churches and places of interest. On several of these perambulations it was impossible not
to notice that we were being followed by a sauntering, portly, slightly florid gentleman, dressed in a cravat, spats, a bright waistcoat, and a hound’s tooth tweed jacket. He didn’t
look local. He made no attempt to conceal himself – how could he? – rather the reverse: he wanted me to know that he was there.
It was the man from Sotheby’s.
It’s no wonder he was on the chase: the Philby papers were wonderful. There were all of the notebooks containing his English Seminar material, an unfinished draft of an autobiography,
documentation concerning his status at the KGB, letters from various important Russian and English figures, diaries, unpublished articles. There were also a number of kitsch plastic trophies
– of the sort Bertie got in his under-twelve’s football league – awarded to Comrade Philby by the KGB. (He must have scored a lot of goals.) Considered together the material
provided a wonderfully clear, and hitherto unknown, picture of Philby’s Moscow years.
Ruffina, Michael and I agreed that I could offer it to the British Library at a price of £60,000. Ruffina’s eyes were wet with anticipation, Michael looked distinctly pleased. We
shook hands happily, and went out to eat at one of Moscow’s crassly ostentatious new hotels, stocked with ex-KGB men (now entrepreneurs), higher echelon government officials, international
businessmen, Russian Mafiosi, and the occasional (anxious-looking) tourist.
An enormous bowl of Beluga caviar, suspended over a bowl of ice, was placed on the table before us. Ruffina took out her handkerchief, filled it with half the contents of the bowl, folded the
corners over neatly, and replaced it gently in her bag.
‘Momma loves caviar!’ she explained cheerfully.
How adorable! In the midst of this post-Soviet mayhem, here is the fourth Mrs Philby calling herself Momma, like a parody of an old Negro plantation slave, and gobbling caviar as if it were
shortnin’ bread. I wondered if Momma’s l’il babies loved it as well?
I smiled over the table to Michael, in wry approbation.
‘Her mother is rather elderly, and lives with Ruffina,’ he explained stiffly.
Another bottle of champagne arrived, what was left of the caviar was finished and replaced. We talked cheerfully, ate, drank some vodka. I paid.
Things progressed slowly after my return. The British Library were keen, but needed governmental approval before they could proceed with such a potentially controversial acquisition. Shortly
after the proposal was sent to the Foreign Office, I received a phone call from Moscow. It was Michael.
‘Rick?’ he said in a tone lacking his customary charm. ‘We are not happy.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Those books you have purchased from Ruffina? I do not like the price you have put on them.’
This was genuinely astonishing. I had put the books on a shelf behind my desk, having jotted a provisional price in each (I wasn’t yet ready to part with them). They added up to
£5,000, with the
Spycatcher
the most expensive of the lot. No one other than myself and my working colleagues had seen them. At night we close the shop, and a very good burglar alarm
is set.
‘Those are not prices, they are insurance valuations,’ I said. ‘Anyway, how do you know?’
‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I have lost confidence in you.’
‘Listen, Michael,’ I said, unsure where this was going, ‘I flew to Moscow, I spent four nights in a hotel, I gave Ruffina a free, detailed appraisal of the papers and the books
in the library, I spent hundreds of pounds entertaining you both. And I need to make some profit. That is called capitalism, and it is how my wife and children come to eat.’
‘We do not understand this, we are just simple Russians.’
‘Simple Russians! Simple Russians? You got to be kidding! You were some sort of big shot in the KGB, and I am just a simple bookseller!’
‘The deal is off,’ he said, and put the phone down.
At the British Library Department of Manuscripts, the unfailingly genial archivist who had painstakingly negotiated the purchase of the papers, was distinctly unhappy.
‘It’s obvious, you stupid boy!’ he said testily. ‘Did you offer him a bribe?’
It was by now abundantly clear that I was out of my depth, as if I had wandered into the script of a Graham Greene story without being taught my lines. My instructions were to bribe an ex-KGB
agent on behalf of the British Library, so that the Foreign Office-sanctioned purchase of a traitor’s papers could be concluded.
I rang Michael back in Moscow. He didn’t sound pleased to hear from me.
‘Michael,’ I said, in a tone both casual and insinuating. ‘I am calling to apologize. I have been so tied up with the purchase and details of the archive that I neglected to
mention your introductory commission.’
Silence.
‘In such cases, it is customary in my trade to pay the seller’s agent a fee of 10 per cent of the price … That would come to £6,000 for you. You can have it in cash if
you want!’
‘Are you trying to bribe me?’ he asked, sounding genuinely shocked.
‘Yes!’ I said. ‘Is it working?’
He put the phone down.
Maybe the man from Sotheby’s paid him more? Who knows? Perhaps Michael simply did it for love of his old mentor, or of his younger wife.
When the Philby material came up at Sotheby’s London, in August of 1994, Ruffina had taken the decision to split up the archive into its constituent parts, presumably to increase the take,
though the final sales figure achieved was more or less what the British Library would have paid. But the individual items were purchased by a wide variety of buyers, most of them unidentified, and
Kim Philby’s papers were distributed, in bits, round the world. None of the material was lost, but the archive was broken. Anyone wishing to do research on Philby’s Moscow years would
now have to search desperately, and sometimes fruitlessly, to reassemble his papers.
There must have been something I could have done. Maybe I shouldn’t have bought the four books that caused the problem? If I hadn’t the deal might have gone through. But, after all,
I am a book dealer, and Mrs Philby was happy to take the cash. Maybe I shouldn’t have put the valuations in them? But why not? They represented a fair profit after expenses, and I don’t
think I can be faulted for failure to anticipate an infiltration of KGB agents with x-ray eyes.
Perhaps, after my phone call from Michael, I should have caught the night flight to Moscow, my pockets stuffed with cash? At least, in person, I could have put the case: not for my sake, or
theirs, but for the integrity of the archive. After all, it is through such combinations of pieces of paper that a society defines and records itself. And it is in our libraries that such paper is
best protected, made available and studied.
By the time the Philby archive was dispersed, it wasn’t only Michael who had lost confidence in me. But at least I still had my
Spycatcher
, and a chance to recoup some of my
expenses. Yet it proved curiously less attractive to my customers than it was to me. For months I had it on my shelves, where it was more admired than purchased.
‘If they don’t buy it when they’re still smiling, they won’t buy it at all,’ said my colleague Peter Grogan helpfully.
I’m a sucker for books with great stories behind them. It’s a rarefied sort of taste, but you have to believe that your sensibility isn’t so arcane that no one else will share
it. Whether they also have the money to buy is a separate question. My late literary agent and friend Giles Gordon had both. Every so often, after one of his famously indulgent lunches at the
Garrick, he would roll merrily into my office, in search of some gossip and a book or two for his collection, his primary-coloured Paul Smith tie signalling his arrival from across the courtyard.
Normally genial, with a few drinks in him he became manically sociable, burbling and giggling, breaking off into accents and impersonations (he gave good Tom Maschler, Anthony Cheetham, Tom
Rosenthal), his voice dropping into an exaggerated – rather loud – whisper when he had a particularly juicy bit of gossip to relate.
He was, of course, not merely the source but the subject of good stories. With an eye for a pretty girl, he was often to be found at literary parties chatting up some attractive young copy
editor or personal assistant. At such a party some years ago, when he was between marriages, Giles was interrupted in a promising tête-à-tête by the boisterous figures of Bernice
Rubens and Beryl Bainbridge, the Abbott and Costello of the literary world.
‘Giles, dear,’ said Bernice, pushing her way past the promising young thing at his side, ‘Beryl and I are having an argument, and we want you to settle it.’
‘One’s memory,’ said Beryl in her best fey manner. ‘It plays such tricks when you get to our age’ – she put her arm round Giles to include him in this
superannuated category – ‘doesn’t it, darling?’
‘Happy to be of service,’ said Giles. ‘What is the problem?’
‘Can you remind us,’ said Beryl earnestly, ‘which of us it was you had the affair with?’
Giles loved tricky moments.
‘Both of you, darlings, both of you,’ he chortled. ‘And if you don’t remember it, I
certainly
do!’
Beryl and Bernice toddled off, obscurely satisfied, and Giles returned his attentions to the new object of desire, his attractiveness undoubtedly enhanced by this example of both urbanity and
sexual desirability.
The fun thing about Giles as a book collector was that although he had his tastes – David Jones, illustrated books,Wilde and Beardsley – he would buy anything that seemed
interesting. He once purchased one of Ted Hughes’ cancelled passports, and another time a book by D.H. Lawrence (whom he didn’t admire) inscribed to E.M. Forster (whom he did).
So, his resistances already lowered, and certain, at least, that I had something to amuse him, I put the
Spycatcher
on the table.
‘Have a look at this,’ I said.
He did, and his eyebrows lifted a good inch.
‘Well, you know I
have
to have this!’ he said.
‘For the Greene connection or the Philby?’
‘Neither really, though it is marvellous. I agented this book, you know.’
I didn’t. Giles put the book into his briefcase, wrote me a cheque for £4,000, and went home distinctly happy.
Happier than me.
Spycatche
r joined the relatively short list of books that I have regretted selling – not, like the inscribed first editions of
Ulysses
and
The Waste
Land
, because it had overweening literary importance (certainly not!) – but because of what it reminded me of. Of Graham Greene, Ruffina Philby and Michael B., my trip to Moscow,
Sotheby’s, the British Library, and the loss of the Philby archive.
It would be wrong to say that the book haunted me after Giles bought it, but it nagged and niggled. I tried to buy it back from Giles, at a good profit to him, but he loved it, and had just as
intimate a connection with it as I did. After his sad and unexpected death a few years later, I approached his wife to ask if I might borrow it, to use to illustrate a talk I was giving at the
London Review of Books
bookshop?
Reunited with the book, I found reason after reason to delay returning it. Some months later, offering to give it back at last, I suggested as an alternative that she might sell it to me
instead.