Read A Spy Among Friends Online
Authors: Ben Macintyre
In Beirut, Eleanor Philby watched in despair as her once-charming husband fell apart in a miasma of drink and depression. Philby was ‘vertically intoxicated, horizontally intoxicated’, and often intoxicated in solitude. ‘It was as if our flat was the only place he felt safe.’ When he did venture out for social events, he invariably ended up insensible. To her deep embarrassment he had to be bodily carried out of an embassy party. ‘He only had to smell a drink to set him off. His depression never seemed to lift,’ wrote Eleanor, who ‘groped to understand his tension and remoteness’. ‘What is the matter?’ she asked him repeatedly. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’
‘Oh nothing, nothing,’ he would reply.
Looking back, she realised that Philby’s desperate drinking, his search for alcoholic oblivion, was the mark of a man living in dread.
Philby’s journalism dried to a trickle. Peter Lunn noticed that Philby’s hands shook when they met for the first time. Philby insisted that if they should ever encounter each other at a social event, they should pretend to be strangers – a precaution that Lunn considered bizarre and unnecessary. After Elliott’s warmth, Eleanor found Lunn a ‘very cold fish indeed’.
On New Year’s Eve, Philby refused to go to any of the numerous Beirut parties on offer, and instead sat drinking champagne with Eleanor on the balcony of the flat, in gloomy silence. The next day was his fifty-first birthday, and Eleanor had planned a small midday drinks party. By 2.30, the guests had left. The Philbys intended to spend the day quietly at home, but then Miles Copeland appeared: ‘He dragged us protesting to an all-day New Year party given by some Americans.’ Philby had ‘already had a good deal to drink’, and became steadily drunker. As night fell, they staggered home to the Rue Kantari. Eleanor was preparing for bed, when she heard a loud crash from the bathroom, a cry of pain, and then another crash. Philby had fallen over, smashed his head on the radiator, lurched to his feet, and fallen again. ‘He was bleeding profusely from two great gashes on the crown of his head. The whole bathroom was spattered with blood.’ Eleanor wrapped his head in a towel, and rushed frantically to the telephone. Philby, dazed and still drunk, refused to leave the flat. Finally, a Lebanese doctor arrived and declared: ‘If we don’t get your husband to the hospital I will not be responsible for his life.’ Philby was coaxed into the lift and driven to the American University hospital, where he was stitched up and sedated. A doctor took Eleanor aside and told her gravely that with ‘one more ounce of alcohol in his blood, he would have been dead’.
Philby insisted on returning home that night. He cut a pathetic figure, in a blood-stained dressing gown, with two livid black eyes and a turban of bandages around his head. ‘I was a bloody fool,’ he muttered. ‘I’m going on the wagon – forever.’
A week later, Nick Elliott broke the journey to Beirut in Athens, where he met Halsey Colchester, the MI6 station chief, and his wife Rozanne, valued friends from Istanbul days. Elliott had already ‘prepared himself for a battle of wits he was determined to win’, but he needed to unburden himself before heading on to Beirut. ‘I’ve got an awful task,’ he told Halsey and Rozanne. ‘I’ve got to beard him.’ Like Elliott, the Colchesters had long admired and defended Philby, and they were stunned by the proof of his guilt. ‘It was a terrible shock to hear he was this awful spy. He was always so nice, so affable and intelligent.’
Rozanne had known Elliott as a carefree spirit – ‘he always laughed about things’ – but over dinner in Athens, he was deadly serious, anxious and anguished. Rozanne’s account of that night is a picture of a man facing the worst moment of his life.
Nicholas knew he had blood on his hands. He knew Philby so well, and he was horrified by the whole thing. He said he wouldn’t mind shooting him. He didn’t know what he was going to say, and I remember him coaching himself: ‘There’s no pretending now. We know who you are.’ Nick was usually a very funny man. Like an actor or entertainer, you never felt he was quite real. One never
really
felt one knew him. Nicholas had that English way of not getting too involved, a sort of façade with endless jokes. But that night he was very highly strung. He was dreading it, and it was quite dangerous. He thought he might have been shot by Philby, or the Soviets. ‘I hope he doesn’t take a pot shot,’ he said. He talked obsessively about Philby, about how he had known him so well. He didn’t have to go through the ordeal, but he wanted to. It was really quite brave. He wanted to make sure for himself.
Elliott arrived in Beirut on 10 January 1963, and checked into a small, discreet hotel, far from the usual haunts of the spies and journalists. Only Peter Lunn knew he was in the city. Together they prepared the ground for the confrontation. Lunn’s secretary had an apartment in the Christian quarter, near the sea. The sitting room was carefully bugged by an MI6 technician with a hidden microphone under the sofa, and a wire running to a tape-recorder in the next-door room. Elliott bought a bottle of brandy. When everything was ready, Lunn telephoned Philby and ‘in a casual voice’ suggested ‘a meeting between himself and Philby to discuss future plans’. He gave no hint that anything was amiss. Since Philby had himself stressed the need for security, Lunn suggested meeting over tea at his secretary’s flat, where they could chat in private. Philby had barely left the Rue Kantari since his drunken fall on New Year’s Day, but he agreed to meet Lunn at the appointed address the following afternoon. He later told Eleanor: ‘The minute that call came through, I knew the balloon was up.’
At four o’clock on 12 January, Philby, his head still swathed in bandages, and a little unsteady on his feet, climbed the stairs and knocked on the apartment door.
When it was opened by Nicholas Elliott, Philby seemed strangely unsurprised. ‘I rather thought it would be you,’ he said.
18
Philby’s reaction to Elliott’s unannounced arrival in Beirut was interpreted, in the more paranoia-prone parts of MI5, as evidence that he had been tipped off in advance. It sparked a hunt for another Soviet spy within British intelligence that lasted two decades, and a conspiracy theory that still smoulders today. In reality, when Philby said he was not surprised to find Elliott waiting for him at the flat, he was stating a fact. He had feared exposure for years, and expected it imminently; he knew how Elliott’s mind worked, and he knew that if the truth about his spying had finally emerged, then Elliott would want to confront him with it.
The two men shook hands. Elliott inquired about the bandage on Philby’s head. Philby explained that he had fallen over after a party. The embassy secretary poured tea, and then discreetly left the apartment. The two men sat down, for all the world as if they were meeting in the club. In the next room, Peter Lunn and a stenographer, both wearing headphones, hunched over a turning tape-recorder.
The full transcript of the ensuing dialogue has never been released by MI5. Indeed, parts of the recording are almost inaudible; Elliott was no technical expert. Shortly before Philby’s arrival, he had opened the apartment windows and as a result, much of their dialogue is obscured by the sounds wafting up from the busy Beirut street below. One of the most important conversations in the history of the Cold War takes place to the accompaniment of car horns, grinding engines, Arabic voices and the faint clink of china teacups. But enough could be heard to reconstruct what followed: a display of brutal English politeness, civilised and lethal.
Elliott asked after Philby’s health.
‘Perfectly tolerable,’ said Philby, adding that he was recovering from a double bout of flu and bronchitis. ‘They were both against me.’
Philby asked after Elliott’s family. All well, said Elliott. Mark was starting the new term at Eton.
‘Wonderful tea,’ he said.
A pause.
‘Don’t tell me you flew all the way here to see me?’ said Philby.
Elliott took out his Mont Blanc pen, placed it on the table, and began to roll it back and forth under his palm. It was an act of nervous tension, but also an old interrogation trick, a distraction.
‘Sorry for getting right on with it. Kim, I don’t have time to postpone this. And we’ve known each other for ever, so, if you don’t mind, I’ll get right to the point,’ said Elliott, not getting to the point. ‘Unfortunately it’s not very pleasant.’ Another pause. ‘I came to tell you that your past has caught up with you.’
Philby immediately counter-attacked. ‘Have you all gone mad once again? You want to start all that? After all these years? You’ve lost your sense of humour. You’ll be a laughing stock!’
‘No, we haven’t lost anything. On the contrary we’ve found additional information about you. It puts everything in place.’
‘What information? And what is there to put in place?’
Elliott stood, walked to the window, and stared down into the street.
‘Listen Kim, you know I was on your side all the time from the moment there were suspicions about you. But now there is new information. They’ve shown it to me. And now even I am convinced, absolutely convinced that you worked for the Soviet intelligence services. You worked for them right up until ’49.’
Philby later expressed bafflement as to why Elliott should identify 1949 as the date he stopped spying for the Russians. The answer was simple: 1949 was the year Philby went to Washington; if he admitted to spying while in America then James Angleton, the CIA and the FBI would all want to know what intelligence secrets he had given away, and could well demand his extradition to face charges under US law. The offer of immunity would be meaningless. For the purposes of the deal, Elliott needed Philby to admit spying up to, but no later than, 1949. That way, the problem could be dealt with ‘in-house’ by MI6, without American involvement.
But Philby was not ready to admit anything.
‘Who told you that nonsense? It’s totally absurd’ – and, appealing to Elliott’s sense of fair play – ‘You know yourself that it’s absurd.’
But Elliott pressed on: ‘We have new information that you were indeed working with the Soviet intelligence service . . .’
‘Do you want me to go into all this again?’
‘Kim, the game’s up. We know what you did. We’ve penetrated the KGB, Kim. There’s no doubt in my mind any more that you were a KGB agent.’
Decades of friendship were fracturing around them. But still the atmosphere remained calm – though taut – the words polite. More tea was poured. Elliott rolled his pen back and forth. Philby broke the silence.
‘Look how stupid this seems. Astonishing! A man is suspected for a long time of mortal sin, they can’t prove a thing, they’re embarrassed in front of the whole world. They apologise. Then ten years later, some chief is struck by the old idea again. They decide to send an old friend, a wise and decent man, with only one goal, to persuade an innocent man to confess that he’s a Russian spy . . . Is that why you’re here?’
‘Kim, if you were in my place, if you knew what I know . . .’
‘I wouldn’t talk to you the way you’re talking to me.’
‘And how would you talk to me?
‘I would offer you a drink instead of this lousy tea.’ It was meant to be a joke, but Elliott did not laugh. And he did not offer him a drink.
‘Do you want me to give you my version of your work for the Russians? Do you want me to tell you what you were thinking?’
‘Nicholas, are you serious?’
‘I am.’
Elliott had spent years believing he knew what was in Philby’s mind, only to discover that he had been completely wrong. The speech he now delivered was that of a man struggling to understand the incomprehensible.
I understand you. I’ve been in love with two women at the same time. I’m certain that you were in the same situation in politics: you loved England and the Soviet Union at the same time. But you’ve worked for the Soviet Union long enough, you’ve helped it enough. Now you must help us . . . You stopped working for them in 1949. I’m absolutely certain of that. Now it’s January 1963. Fourteen years have gone by. In that time your ideas and views have changed. They had to change. I can understand people who worked for the Soviet Union, say, before or during the war. But by 1949, a man of your intellect and spirit had to see that all the rumours about Stalin’s monstrous behaviour were not rumours, they were the truth. You decided to break with the USSR.
Philby shrugged, and shook his head. ‘You came here to interrogate me. And I keep thinking I’m talking to a friend.’
It was the second time Philby had invoked their friendship. Something snapped: Elliott suddenly exploded.
‘You took me in for years. Now I’ll get the truth out of you even if I have to drag it out. You had to choose between Marxism and your family, and you chose Marxism. I once looked up to you, Kim. My God, how I despise you now. I hope you’ve enough decency left to understand why.’
These were the first angry words he had ever spoken to Philby. The pretence of politeness was gone. Neither man moved, or spoke.
Elliott slowly regained his composure, and eventually broke the crackling silence. ‘I’m sure we can work something out.’
Elliott laid out the deal. If Philby confessed everything, back in London or, if he preferred, in Beirut, then he would not be prosecuted. But he would need to reveal all: every contact with Soviet intelligence, every other mole in Britain, every secret he had passed to Moscow over a lifetime of spying. ‘I can give you my word, and that of Dick White, that you will get full immunity, you will be pardoned, but only if you tell it yourself. We need your collaboration, your help.’