A Spy Among Friends (44 page)

_*

Elliott on Sir Claude Dansey, also known as Colonel Z, deputy chief of MI6 during World War II:

‘Utter shit. Stupid too. But tough and rude. Wrote these awful short minutes to people. Carried on feuds. I mean a real shit. I took over his networks when I became head of station in Berne after the war. Well he did have these high level business sources.
They
were good. He had a knack of getting these businessmen to do things for him. He was good at that.’

On Sir George Young, vice chief to Sir Dick White during the Cold War:

‘Flawed. Brilliant, coarse, always had to be out on his own. He went to Hambro’s after the Service. I asked them later: how did you make out with George? Were you up or down? They said they reckoned, about even. He got them some of the Shah’s money, but he made perfectly awful balls-ups that cost them about as much as he got for them.’

On Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, historian and wartime member of SIS:

‘Brilliant scholar, all that, but wet and useless. Something perverse inside him. Laughed my head off when he took a dive on those Hitler diaries. The whole Service knew they were fake. But Hugh walked straight in. How
could
Hitler have written them? I wouldn’t have the chap near me in the war. When I was head man in Cyprus I told my sentry at the door that if a Captain Trevor-Roper showed up, he should shove his bayonet up his arse. He showed up, the sentry told him what I’d said. Hugh was puzzled. Belly-laughs. That’s what I liked about the Service. Marvellous belly-laughs.’

On providing a prostitute for a potential SIS asset from the Middle East:

‘St Ermin’s Hotel. She wouldn’t go. Too near the House of Commons. “My father’s an MP.” She had to have 4 June off so that she could take her nephew out from Eton. “Well perhaps you’d rather we got someone else?” I said. Didn’t hesitate. “All I want to know is, how much?”

On Graham Greene:

‘I met him in Sierra Leone in the war. Greene was waiting for me at the harbour. “Have you brought any French letters?” he yelled at me soon as I came within earshot. He had this fixation about eunuchs. He’d been reading the station code book and found that the Service actually had a code group for eunuch. Must have been from the days when we were running eunuchs in the harems, as agents. He was dying to make a signal with eunuch in it. Then one day he found a way. Head Office wanted him to attend a conference somewhere. Cape Town I think. He had some operation fixed or something. Not an operation, knowing him, he never mounted one. Anyway he signalled back “Like the eunuch I can’t come.”’

A wartime reminiscence of life in Turkey under diplomatic cover:

‘Dinner at the ambassador’s. Middle of the war. Ambassadress lets out a yell because I’ve cut off the nose. “Nose of what?” “The cheese.” “The valet
handed
me the bloody cheese,” I tell her. “And you cut the nose off it,” she says. Hell did they get it from? Middle of the bloody war. Cheddar. And the chap who’d handed it to me was Cicero, the fellow who sold all our secrets to the
Abwehr
. The D-Day landing. The lot. And the Huns didn’t believe him. Typical. No faith.’

I am describing to Elliott how, while I was in MI5, Graham Greene’s
Our Man in Havana
was published and the Service’s legal adviser wanted to prosecute him under the Official Secrets Act for revealing the relationship between a head of station and his head agent.

‘Yes, and he jolly nearly got done for it. Would have served him bloody right.’

What for? But I didn’t ask.

_*

And most memorable of all, perhaps, Elliott recalling a passage, real or imagined, from what he insisted were his early soundings of Philby concerning his Cambridge days:

‘They seem to think you’re a bit
tarnished
somehow.’

‘By?’

‘Oh, you know, early passions, membership – ’

‘Of?’

‘Jolly interesting group, actually, by the sounds of it. Exactly what university is for. Lefties all getting together. The Apostles, wasn’t it?’

_*

In 1987, two years before the Berlin Wall came down, I was visiting Moscow. At a reception given by the Union of Soviet Writers, a part-time journalist with KGB connections named Genrikh Borovik invited me to his house to meet an old friend and admirer of my work. The name of the friend, when I enquired, was Kim Philby. I now have it on pretty good authority that Philby knew he was dying and was hoping I would collaborate with him on another volume of memoirs.

I refused to meet him. Elliott was pleased with me. At least I think he was. But perhaps he secretly hoped I might bring him news of his old friend.

Harold Adrian Russell ‘Kim’ Philby at the age of eighteen: the secret Cambridge communist.

Philby as a boy of about eight years old.

The young Philby: ‘He was the sort of man who won worshippers.’

St John Philby, noted Arab scholar, explorer, writer, troublemaker and demanding father.

Elliott, the Eton schoolboy, born to rule, who hid his shyness behind a barrage of jokes.

Claude Elliott, father of Nicholas, celebrated mountaineer and provost of Eton, accompanies a young Queen Elizabeth II on a tour of the school.

Basil Fisher (
left
) and Nicholas Elliott: their close friendship came to a tragic end when Fisher was shot down in the Battle of Britain.

The Cambridge spies

Donald Maclean: a talented linguist destined for the Foreign Office.