◆ SpookStack

the Mili 83 on hi the extensive ties between the English spy and the rul- ing circels Hitler's Ger- many, the fgct that Philby regularly visithd Berlin before the war, ere he quite simply met von Ribben- trop. He was an outstanding Apectatist and the C.LA, knew ‘It Was a Catastrophe’ One of the most significant operations of the C.LA., care- fully concealed throughout the subsequent 17 years of the cold war, ended in an un- expected fgilure. The team of dropped men was greeted in a proper way. It was @ catas- trophe, and mounring was observed in C.LA. headquar- TS. All the services were turned upside down. All the Possible hypotheses jinked with the failure of the opera- tion that had been so pains- takingly prepared were pains- takingly analyzed. All but one, Dulles, a man with imagination, could imagine everything that suited him. But even in,a nightmare he could not céni that a staff worker of the Soviet intelligence had sat opposite him at the table in his office that August morning. Soviet spy Kim Philby had fulfilled his latest assignment from the center. And now it became our turn to sit at the same table with Kim Philby, The table was & small one, the polish does not shine. An English table, covered with old work papers. The rest of the furni- ture, which seemed to have arrived in this Moscow apart- ment straight form the novels of Dickens, also suited him— the darkened wood of the bookshelves, the armchair that seems almost preten- tious to our modern taste and the fireplace, an electric one though. The apartment is filled with books, of all Kinds for the most part Eng- ish, The host of the apartment fits harmoniously in this en- vironment, He €. very calm, unhurried, his $ig gray head with a straight part is seated on strong shoulders and his weathered, masculine face is ‘softened by bright eyes with a slight squint. When he smiles, wrinkles run from the cn even qarmer. KinPhihy, @ man Of great destiny, is re- ceiving us, two Soviet jour- nalists, for the first time. There are millions of ques- tions in our heads, but where should we begin? Comrade Philby quite obviously catches the confusion on our faces. “Let us start with the be- ginning,” he proposed softly, from the stove, as the Rus- sians say.” . His English reveals him as. a man of high culture. He was born in the In- dian town of Ambala and spent the first four years of his Jife in India. “Qn Jan. 1 1 will be 56,” Comrade Philby says. “M: father’ served® as. da OTe of the—Engligh colgaial ad, ministration in India. He was a man of great erudi- tion and varied knowledge; he distinguished himself by his conservative views and was desperately fascinated by Arabic studies. This certainly explains that his second wife was of Arabic origin. The Hindi and Arabic languages entered my life very early, and then later-— German, French, Spanish, Turkish and then Russian.” “But what kind of a strange name, Kim, did they give you?” “Strictly speaking my full Name sounds more pompous —Harold Adrian Russell Phil- by. But my father named me Kim after one of Kip- ling's characters. And so the name stuck all my life.” “What happened then?” | “Then my family moved to, London, and in 1929 I en- tered Cambridge, Trinity, one of the biggest and mast aristocratic colleges, I; studied well, and read a lot.” This is where my story be- gins. England, like the other capitalist countries, was ‘liv-! ing through a devastating; economic crisis in ‘those, years. The country was Scourged by unemployment, ' the labor market was broken by lines of hungry, desperate people. But the funereal cold of Fascism was alread; blowing through the world. Repercussions of all: this reached even our very prop- er college. “We argued a good deal, sought out the answers Yo: our problems in packs apd’ strove to understand what cogners of, his eyes ta hi: felted het ie Ce could give pI pine kind of le Satiod” font -tie wien that were overcoming them. - “Trips that my friends and I made on summer vacations to certain Western European countries—primarily Germany and Austria~became decisive for my subsequent life. All this helped me to broaden my idea of the world. Meet- ings with new people, from whom I had been cut off at Cambridge, opened the truth of life. Austria was coveréd with the blood of the workers, it was going through @ particu- larly difficult time: +I under- stood on which side of the barricades my place was. felt every minute that my ideals and convictions, my sympathies and desires, were on the side of those who fight for a better future for mankind. In my native Eng- land, in my own homeland, T also saw people seeking the truth and fighting for it. “I painfully sought out the aneans of being useful to the great movement of modern times, the name of which i: Communism. The personi! cation of these ideas is the Soviet Union and its heroic people, who have taid the foundation for the construc- tion of a new world. And I found the form for this strug- gle in my work in Soviet espionage. I felt, and I still feel, that by doing this work I also. served my English people.” “Can you still recall, Com- rade Kim, what your first as- signment from Soviet intelli- gence was?” —_— “Of, t-oasso disenchanted that first time,” &2—lavgbs. “L imaginec tall much more romantically, But the assign- ments during that period nwere, as. it seemed to me, insignificant, although they, were a real school for the big work. I had much more enthusiams at that time than experience, and of course they could not entrust seri- ‘ous operations to me.’ Comrade Philby takes out a package of Pamir cigar- ettes, and we all start to smoke. am used to the strong ki he explains to us, ant then, vafter a mormen— silenc€,_contMues: __ “I ddyhatI could at the time and I was learn one day that I had been the stafé. of enrolled on Soviet intelligence.” ‘A Rather Long Story’ “How, comrade Kim, did ju happen to get into the glish intelligent service?” *That’s 2 sather jong story,” he says’ “After finish- ing Cambridge, I for a while as an editor and then set Out as @ war correspond- ent to Spain for The es, It was February, 1937. That bdattle against Fascism that {was developing on the fields (of Spain wag in the heart of yevery honest person. For me, a8 a py, it was a university cof practical experience. 1 learned the knack of hiding my thoughts, of passing my- self off as something other than what I was. In public statements I passed myself off as as upporter of Franco. This naturally found reflec- tion in my correspendence. They were very pleased with me in the press department of Franco's staff.” Kim Philby” thotightfully looks out the window—he is continually frowning slight- ly—and them takes from a box on the table a cross on an ornamenta} ribbon, holds it out to us and continues his narrative. . . ‘ET lived at the time in Bilbao. One day an officer on Franco's staff came to me, sat,me in a car and drove me off to the Fascist head- quarters in Burgos. They led me into a hail where a group ‘of ridiculously pompous gen- erals was standing. “in the center was the “Generalissimo” himself, 1 noticed that all of them, in- eluding Franco, were‘ very sohrt, I was introduced. After a@ few minutes the Cau- dillo with extreme ceremony handed be this very cross. He then showed great pleasure in my work—of all the West- em journalists I was one of the few to be given this exotic award. The cross also layed its role in my entry into the intelligence service. “I returned to England, and after some time I went ‘out again’ as Times corre- spondent who had been scorched by the winds of war to Alluminate the military ac- tions Britise—spodi- tiondy~serps_ in Fra