The Bedbug (40 page)

As Klop tried to adjust to retirement he developed a hankering to live in the country. Once again Sir Thomas Bazley came to his aid. He had provided Barrow Elm during the war and later a place for Nadia’s sister Olia and her husband to stay. Now he offered Klop and Nadia a large but dilapidated stone cottage, dating from Tudor times, at 49 Eastleach, a Gloucestershire village midway between Witney and Cirencester, not far from Barrow Elm. It needed renovation and they eventually moved from Egerton Gardens in October 1957. Nadia missed the colourful London scene more than Klop who, to her amazement, quickly settled into country ways once he had displayed his art works, bronzes and sculptures, musical instruments and handblown black glass bottles. He even installed an old gravestone in the fireplace of his dark and overcrowded bedroom.

He befriended the locals, gossiping with them over large whiskies
in the local pub, and took up bird-watching. But others saw a morose figure, not at ease in his tweed jackets and felt hat, more comfortable talking to his titled neighbours, Sir Thomas Bazley or Lord and Lady Howard, or Nadia’s friends from the world of art and theatre. He was a bit of a snob, keeping up with the social scene in the pages of
Tatler
and
Queen
magazines. Nadia, on the other hand, was quickly accepted: helping out with harvesting and village bazaars, at once peasant and aristocrat, in woollen dresses, cardigans and slippers, puffing on a small cheroot.
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Peter Ustinov, observing these events more remotely as he sailed majestically between Hollywood, London and Paris celebrating success on stage and screen, was possibly more perceptive of their meaning. His father had always been an urban dweller, browsing in the shops for culinary delicacies, nipping through the streets by taxi, and this sudden conversion to the rural idyll smacked of the abandonment of all life’s pleasures because what remained was the poignant echo of past excitement.
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Klop’s mood cannot have been lightened by the publication that year of Wolfgang zu Putlitz’s memoirs. The two men had kept in touch and indeed Putlitz maintained contact with Peter Ustinov even after Klop’s death. While the book contained nothing that reflected adversely on Klop, it was were an unwelcome reminder of how Communist agents had repeatedly duped British Intelligence. The English edition carried a particularly mischievous preface in which Putlitz explained that he hoped publication in London would restore old friendships damaged by his decision to make his home in East Germany. He singled out for special mention Lord and Lady Vansittart, Sir Colville Barclay, Colonel Graham Christie, Mr and Mrs Paul X and Mr Anthony Blunt, whose kindness and understanding he would never forget.
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Putlitz had been a frequent guest in the Vansittarts’ home and they had done their best to make him welcome and comfortable in Britain; Col. Christie was the leading member of Vansittart’s private intelligence service; Paul X was the pseudonym Putlitz
had used in the book to refer to Klop. His sensitivity in not naming a serving MI6 officer would have been more impressive had he not identified him clearly in the German edition. But the sentimental reference to Blunt must have been intensely irritating to the authorities, conscious that the book would have been vetted and probably orchestrated by the KGB. Although he had been under suspicion since the defection of Burgess and Maclean, Blunt did not confess until 1964, with a promise of immunity from prosecution, and was not publicly exposed until 1979.

Then there was Colville Barclay, Lord Vansittart’s stepson, who had also fallen under suspicion of spying for the Soviets. He fitted the profile provided by the defector Walter Krivitsky when he was questioned by Guy Liddell and MI5’s Russian expert Jane Archer in 1940. He told them of a mole with access to top secret government papers including the minutes of the Committee on Imperial Defence. This man, whom he was unable to name, was a Scottish aristocrat, artistic, Eton- and Oxford-educated and wealthy enough not to want payment for his betrayal, which he justified on ideological grounds. His activities within the Foreign Office had begun around 1936.

Sir Colville was fourteenth baronet of a family whose noble Scottish roots could be traced back to the fifteenth century. He had indeed been educated at Eton, and Trinity College, Oxford, and he spent his post-war career as a painter and naturalist. He had joined the Foreign Office in 1937, left to serve with a naval unit carrying out covert operations in the run-up to D-Day, and was then recruited by Kim Philby to join his new Section IX anti-Soviet department at MI6. Sir Colville’s younger brother Cecil had been their man in Moscow during the war. Jane Archer, who had interrogated Krivitsky and identified Sir Colville as a suspect, was also working for Section IX and queried his appointment. It was cleared by Philby after a trawl through MI5 files. In 1957, when the Putlitz book came out, Philby was also under suspicion but had not confessed. Sir Colville was only publicly identified as
a suspect in 2003 when he told the author that he had never been questioned and had no idea the finger had been pointed at him.
³⁷²
Nevertheless, the KGB may well have known of it from Philby.

Once Klop and Nadia were ensconced in their rural retreat guests began to come from London, among them one of Klop’s old flames, an air hostess named Conchita who arrived one weekend with caviar from Moscow, vodka from Warsaw and chocolate from Madrid, supplemented by champagne and crumpets. Klop wrote euphorically to another of his girlfriends, Elizabeth Brousson, describing their gourmet weekend that had also included pheasant supplied by Lady Carmen Bazley, their landlord’s wife. Nadia wrote to Elizabeth separately, telling her that Conchita was a very sweet girl and that Elizabeth must not be jealous.

Elizabeth, whom Klop had befriended during time in Switzerland, also visited along with Moura Budberg whose unchanging lifestyle meant that she rose at lunchtime, having spent the morning in bed making phone calls, writing and receiving visitors. The three women got on famously but Elizabeth Brousson recalls that life was not easy for Nadia and Klop:

I used to go and spend weekends with them – they were sort of surrogate parents for me. They were the kindest people in the world. They made their life in the village and got to know all the villagers. I don’t know how they managed to live. Klop used to find things in antique markets and have good luck through his sense of discernment. They never spent any money on themselves and when there was nobody about they lived on pretty much bread and cheese and saved everything for the weekends. Klop did cook beautifully and it was quite rich but it was only when he was entertaining. I think they were pretty short and the Bazleys were very good to them.

He used to tell these amazing stories. He was a terrific raconteur. People were very happy to sit and listen to him. Nadia had heard them endlessly. She really was an example of someone who really just loved him and smiled benignly at his little peccadilloes. He used to parade his girls around and make it very obvious. People didn’t approve but Nadia was not a jealous woman. She knew in the end of it Klop would always come back to her even if he did have little flirtations on the side. They had been through a lot together coming back from Russia and they were totally necessary to each other. She didn’t have to worry because there was no threat to their relationship. He probably needed a bit extra.
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There were still friends locally from their days at Barrow Elm, among them David and Tamara Talbot-Rice and Phyllis Sorel-Taylour who, since Klop and Nadia did not have a car, often acted as chauffeurs for trips to the theatre or Klop’s frequent forays to local antique shops and country house sales. Mrs Sorel-Taylour had been secretary to the eccentric archaeologist Alexander Keiller, who owned Avebury Manor and the ancient stone circle nearby.
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Tamara, a Russian exile like Nadia, and her husband has worked during the war for the Ministry of Information and military intelligence respectively. Two old friends from MI6 maintained their connection. Dick White, by now head of the Service, and Nicholas Elliott would visit with their wives and children.

The country idyll had lasted only a few months when Klop’s previously hedonistic lifestyle caught up with him. As a clap of thunder broke over the cottage he implored Nadia to run to the nearest phone box and summon the doctor. He liked to boast that he had not consulted a physician in more than forty years but at the age of sixty-five he needed one urgently. The diagnosis was not good: a serious heart condition, high blood pressure and liver problems. The remedy: a low-fat diet, complete rest and medication. To Nadia’s surprise Klop submitted meekly to the regime and the benefits were soon apparent. On 17 July he got out of bed for the first time in weeks to celebrate their thirty-eighth wedding anniversary. With Peter’s help new home comforts were added to the cottage – a fridge, a television and, more vitally, a telephone.

By the following year life had returned to normality, with Nadia trying to enforce a more sedate pace. It was enlivened by a visit from the art historian Peter Ward-Jackson, who had been Klop’s driver during his post-war investigations in Germany. His old friend arrived with a case of champagne and a new bride, Joan Schellenberg (no relation to Walther of the German intelligence services). Klop and Nadia had introduced them.

It was followed by an excursion to Paris to see Peter, recently returned from America after eighteen months away, and to meet for the first time their latest grandchild, Andrea, who was four months old. It was an opportunity for Nadia to visit her uncle Alexandre, now aged eighty-nine and in failing health. He died the following February, shortly after publication of his memoirs, which Moura Budberg had translated into English.

Paris in the summertime revived Klop’s spirits and his interest in cooking and pretty girls. But the euphoria did not last. He was becoming unsteady on his feet, self-conscious about his infirmity and less willing to be seen in public. There were interludes of enjoyment, when friends came to visit, but Klop and Nadia increasingly had only each other for company and though they were drawn closer by the experience it was a period of forlorn sadness. Peter was leading a hectic show business lifestyle. He arranged visits for them to the film studios and put them up in hotels while he was in London, even had them chauffeured from Eastleach to Montreux in 1961, to spend Christmas with him in his suite at a grand hotel. They seem to have found the surroundings uncomfortable. Klop fell several times in the bathroom and needed Nadia constantly within calling distance. An introduction to Suzanne’s parents was not a success. Yet Klop couldn’t resist the old lure of the showman. He dressed up as Santa Claus for the grandchildren. Igor, only five years old, remembers it well. He shyly presented this strange bearded figure with a little handkerchief which he had embroidered at school. About a week later he saw Klop blowing his nose on the handkerchief and that
was how he came to realise that Father Christmas did not really exist.
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Klop and Nadia were driven back to Eastleach in March but very soon Klop’s condition deteriorated and he became increasingly bedridden and feeble. Towards the end of November Nadia summoned Peter from Paris and he spent a night at Klop’s bedside. The following evening at 8 p.m., while Peter was briefly away from the cottage, Klop died with Nadia at his side. He had always abhorred the thought of old age. It was 1 December 1962, the eve of his seventieth birthday.

He had eventually received a pension, but he left no will and an estate, which passed to Nadia, of only £1,124 seven shillings and five pence – less than £20,000 at current prices. Nadia lived on at their cottage until her death on 8 February 1975. She left £21,691, after tax, all of which, apart from some small personal bequests, went to her son.

Klop’s death was announced in the Personal Column of
The Times
, curiously with the old German spelling of Jona Ustinow, but the funeral was private, followed by cremation and interment of his ashes in the local churchyard at Eastleach, unmarked by any kind of memorial. The limelight in which he had played his finest roles had long ceased to glow but one of those who remained – probably Dick White – at least paid him this generous tribute:

He served the cause of freedom with devotion and courage and this country owes him a considerable debt of gratitude.
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Nadia included it in a personal memoir that she began writing in the summer of 1963. As she cast her mind back over their lives together she wrote to Elizabeth Brousson:

Sometimes it seems to me that I have been put into this world for this particular job. I am doing it with love and pleasure – it is like being with him. Mind you, our life together has not always been as harmonious as all that. We had many squabbles and we’ve been miserable at times, even hating the sight of each other! But when he left me I had the definite feeling, no more than that, – an absolute knowledge – that I’ve lost the very best friend I’ve ever had or am likely to have again.

She attributed their happiness together to an inner faith, that they shared, and to the circumstances that ensured they were far away from interfering relatives.
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It had been a period of film and theatre success for Peter Ustinov. His play
Photo Finish
ran for seven months in the West End and his film
Billy Budd
was acclaimed as a flawed masterpiece. His show business career continued to blossom; he became the ideal raconteur on television chat shows, with his gift for mimicry; and he began to take a new, more political direction. In 1968 he became a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, devoting a great deal of time and energy travelling the world to promote their causes. That led in 1999 to the inauguration of the Ustinov Foundation, devoted to worldwide improvements in the lives of children through better education, medical care and social environment. He became the president of the World Federalist Movement and a globetrotting acquaintance of world leaders, among them Mikhail Gorbachev. Shortly before Gorbachev assumed control of the Soviet Union in 1985 as general secretary of the Communist Party, Peter published his book
My Russia
, which celebrated his own ethnic origins but also contained an almost total disavowal of British espionage in the Cold War, and by implication part of his father’s career. He more or less exonerated the Cambridge Five, on grounds of their emotional attachment to Communism in the face of the ‘crippling ineffectiveness’ of Chamberlain’s appeasement policy and blindness to the obvious menace of fascism, describing the Soviet Union at that time as the last bastion of hope. He described the allegations of espionage against Anthony Blunt as ‘tiny scraps of dirt’ redolent of the constant suspicion of Russia
which ‘retained its freshness at all times in the refrigerator of Western consciousness’ and added: