A World of My Own (3 page)

I met Solzhenitsyn one day in 1976, with another man who was speaking of a new magazine he was planning, and I suggested he should ask Solzhenitsyn to contribute to the first six numbers. He replied
very insultingly that he couldn’t bear Solzhenitsyn’s small eyes and his high hypocritical moral tone.

On another occasion I was giving a party for Solzhenitsyn, who seemed to be known more as a painter than as a novelist, in my apartment in Moscow, which was crowded with pictures even along the passages. He was late and I had my doubts whether he would be allowed to come. I had left the door ajar to show that we were not afraid. I wondered whether he would enjoy his visit because there were so many twittering ladies around.

A stocky man in a beard whom I recognized as a KGB type arrived at the door and I thought we were in for trouble, but then I saw that Solzhenitsyn was with him, very badly dressed. The bearded man had some children with him and, having delivered the painter, he turned to go downstairs. I ran after him, thinking it was politic, and asked him if he would like a cup of tea. He said no, but if his children could have some caramels.… I took them from a bag which I had bought a few days earlier for my grandchildren. Suddenly he began to show an interest in the pictures. ‘They are so lovely,’ he said, and for a moment I thought he was going to weep with longing and nostalgia. I took him along the passage and showed him more. I was looking for a large painting of Solzhenitsyn’s to show him what a great painter
his prisoner was, but it had mysteriously vanished—I could find only a small one. I deliberately did not take him into a room which contained only Art Nouveau.

I met Edgar Wallace only once, at a party, and he told me he preferred his Australian stories but they were not a success because they offended English readers. I asked him about his hardback rights and he said that his publisher, Collins, was putting them up to auction. As we left the party together he asked me jokingly if I was responsible for the story going around that he had had sexual relations with E.M. Forster. I denied it and said I thought the true story concerned his relations with Hamish Hamilton.

My experiences in M.I.6 in My Own World were far more interesting than the desk work which I performed during three years in the Common World. Curiously enough, of the dozen or so characters I knew then only a couple found their way into the world I am writing of now. So perhaps the Official Secrets Act did cast its shadow even there. Of my experiences perhaps the most adventurous, and more in the spirit of the CIA than of M.I.6, was a certain mission to Germany.

I remember entering a richly furnished drawing-room where Goebbels was sitting in a gilt armchair. There were several other people in the room and I stood by a marble mantel waiting my opportunity, for I had with me a secret weapon for killing Goebbels—a cigarette of which the fumes would be quickly fatal if inhaled.

I tried to stand close to my victim, holding my cigarette where the fumes would reach him, but I grew impatient and thrust the end of the cigarette up his nostril, then fled from the room. I hoped that the poison would act quickly, and that there would be a confusion which would delay pursuit.

The street was empty and I turned right—then, realizing that I might be seen from the windows, I came back, keeping too close to the wall to be visible, and turned left. I took several side streets, but I had to return to the main street because I had been instructed to go to the North Station and take a train. There were no soldiers or police in sight, but of course they might now be waiting ahead of me.

I was tempted to turn into a park where there were long empty vistas, but I obeyed orders and almost at once the station came in view—a small local station. Here I found my contact, and a train was already coming in. I took two tickets to the end of the line and realized too late that I had made a bad mistake, for the end of the line proved to be Wapping, and surely to take a ticket to Wapping betrayed me as a foreign agent. The frontier station was the station before Wapping, and I was certain that there we would be intercepted. However we must have passed safely through or I would not be alive now to tell the story.

Somehow I learnt of some new material concerning Kim Philby. Apparently he had recruited Ernest Hemingway to report on refugees from Hong Kong. Hemingway was very short of money and he earned in this way about five pounds a week, which he badly needed for his family.

In 1980 I met the Russian ambassador at a large party. I spoke to him just before leaving and asked him if he would like to read a critical piece which I had written about M.I.6. He said he would. I had no sense of being a traitor—it seemed to me a good thing for both sides that he should read it.

On one occasion I was catching a plane to Dakar, but there was some confusion at the airport when I had to send a telegram to the M.I.6 representative
there announcing my arrival next morning. From Dakar I would be going on to Freetown in Sierra Leone, where Trevor Wilson, whom I had known in the last world war and also in Vietnam, was our representative. I happened to overhear a crossed line on the telephone. Some official was asking for a photo of me—apparently the Chinese Press Bureau could supply one. ‘They’ll make me look like a Chinaman,’ I thought to reassure myself.

In London I had been working with others in a large room resembling my old sub-editors’ room at
The Times
. I was investigating a double agent who seemed to be connected with a German spy called Serge. I was told that the head of M.I.6 was particularly interested in the case and I felt a certain pride in telephoning him directly in front of my colleagues.

My immediate superior, who much resembled George Anderson, the chief home sub-editor on
The Times
in my days there in the twenties, told me, ‘I doubt whether he’ll speak to you. He’s just ordered his glass of port.’ But speak to me C did, beginning the conversation by exclaiming at what libellous articles had appeared in two weeklies, the
Spectator
and the
New Statesman
, the week before. ‘We’ll sue unless they can prove their facts,’ I said, ‘and this week too.’

C then came down to see me—a trim, amiable little man with a monocle. One of my colleagues—who closely resembled Colonel Maude, who had been assistant chief sub-editor when I was on
The Times
—joined in our talk. I recounted how this week the
New Statesman
had printed that the former C had left top secret information addressed to the head of the Foreign Office lying on his desk for anyone to read.

In June 1965 I found myself back in West Africa for the Secret Service. At a railway station my bags were stolen by an African whom I had mistaken for a porter. I went to see the English Stationmaster—a typical colonial type—in his office. ‘Can I speak to you?’ I asked and he replied rudely, ‘Not now.’

I became angry and insisted. I knew he disliked me because of my undefined position in the colony. An African was brought before me, dressed in a long white robe, and I said he was certainly not the thief. The man had been travelling by the same train and
I asked him if he had seen anything. At that moment I saw out of the corner of my eye someone with the same striped shirt that the thief had worn.

‘This is the man,’ I said, but when he turned his face I saw that he was a wizened white man.

Later that year I was working in Turkey for M.I.6 and I found myself in serious trouble. I had asked for an increase in salary and this had led to a long inquisition. It had begun discreetly enough when they wanted to know how much a year I spent on drinks. As I got all my drinks duty free at airports I couldn’t produce a figure higher than two hundred pounds, which, I think, they regarded with suspicion.

A new man, a General Gates, arrived in uniform from London and started going the rounds of the big lounge in which we sat, introducing himself. My mistress was with me, looking very pretty, wearing an expensive fur jacket. I said, ‘It’s not a question of wasting money—I could earn much more if I got out of the Service and went home.’