◆ SpookStack

The three favourite refuges for defectors are Moscow, Prague and East Berlin in that order - the three scratching existence. Yet those who have gone over will not admit disillusionment. Is their commitment WHERE THE GRASS IS ‘Suuiting, assured, master spy Kim Philby (right) denied i implication ip the Burgese- ' Maclean defection of 1955 | | | \ \ i t \ ed ~ fro » 1962, and in 1967 married Maclean's wife, Melinda, with ‘whom be is seca (left). They were photographed by John Philby (below eft), his 26-yeas-old gon by bi wife, Aileen di 957. Jobn visited him in Moscow in 1969 and Joined hiss on holiday in vorthern Siberia where be ., Photographed him (below right) * sitting alone on the bank of the Ly river Vilyay, In 1968 the A hi 5 the V4 P” -$ Order of the Red Bunner (far “fx ah + Yett) for 30 years of spying. The Tutt. iz ecrintion reads “Workers | FH ~", of the Workd, Unite!” ge 9 PC a ———e———————— © . pore aah eee ow of East Berlin recently with John Peet. In 1950, Peet, while Rewter’s West Berlin, Oe. attractive, untidy man in his early Pues he now runs an efficient and often witty Communist propaganda sheet called Democratic German Re- port from a cluttered office in Krausen- ftrasse, just on the wrong side of Checkpoint Charlie him was pot 90 much “Why?” ss “Why then?”, to defect when the Berlin blockade and the Communist coup d'état in Crzchosiovakia in 1948 ‘were stil! hot news, revealing the real | Fa having lunch in the Press Club His reply ot the Ger many { was defecting to. It was the Germany 1 was defocting from.” His 4 reply could be argued as legitimate in the context of the time, the American ‘tearming of West Germany, the fears of re-emerging Nazism, the Gestapoish Gehlen. But it is not legitimate now. ‘West Germany under Willy Brandt has perhaps the most sancly liberal regime im the wester world. Defection hax certainly not made Pect rich, His suit descript, his East German ‘Wartburg car battered ... But at least Peet replied, which t rare among the defectors. Archibald Johnstone replied, too. He was Mos- cow editor of British Ally, an English soagazine on sale in the Soviet Union afer the war, and he defected in 1949, followed leas than « year Jater by his assistant Robert Dagleish. In bis thick fees Scottish sooent be said, “Ah dinna lake the boss classes”, within whose ranks he evideotly did not include Joseph ‘Stalin, Usually, when one tracks down sy task in itself, se ig a shy, aly smile which infers, “Ab! If} told you the tru God, how surprised you would be: ‘And silence. ‘And usually one finds that there are two anrwers, sometimes more. A friend who knows Poet better then suggested that his decision to defect ‘was pot unconnected with alimony arrears. And Johnstone knew that the Soviet authorities were about to close down British Ally and was tocrified of returning t the rat race of private enterprise, and possible unemptoy- ment. He preferred security on a pittance, translating poetry by the fine een <9 Se ~ - for the Foreign Languages Publishing Hovse, complaining that Mayakovsky was out of fashion, Mayakovaky writing staccato poetry, with sowe- times only two words to a Tine. Jobn- mone dieé secure and poor, an active member of the Moscow Robert Burns Society. ‘And even when the answer is simple, 1 second one has to be invented. The reason for the defection of Burgess, Maclean, Philby snd Bruno Ponte- conve, the etom scientist, could oot have been simpler. They got out by the back door as the Fuzz was coming in by the from. But they have te written their histories. Now it all has something to do with American war- mongering, Joe MoCarthy, im perialism, peace. Indeed, in his book, British Foreign