A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy (56 page)

It is possible that Moura was one of the Russians who tried to steer him towards Soviet service. On one occasion in 1950 she asked him to come and see her on an urgent and personal matter. MacGibbon, expecting a private meeting, was not happy to find a party in full swing rather than his expected solitary tête-à-tête. The guests included the ‘curious chap from the FO’ called Burgess, whom MacGibbon didn’t like. Later that night the MI5 operatives who were bugging his house heard him complain to his wife that ‘Moura was an absolute devil’ for deceiving him.
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MacGibbon’s telephone was also tapped, and his watchers recorded Moura telling his wife that the Russians would ‘rather James did it than somebody else’.
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Exactly what ‘it’ was couldn’t be discerned.

MacGibbon was taken in and questioned by Jim Skardon, MI5’s star interrogator. Skardon had become legendary for his soft-spoken, gentle-mannered but inexhaustible and irresistible probes into suspects’ minds. It was Skardon who had broken Klaus Fuchs, the ‘atomic spy’ who had passed inside information from the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. Those who were subjected to Skardon’s interrogations were simultaneously seduced by his warm, flattering manner and terrified by his reputation. His technique was to exhaust the subject with his patient persistence, disorient them with rapid changes of subject, and lay subtle traps.

Eventually Skardon cleared MacGibbon, and he was taken off the list of suspected Soviet agents. He wasn’t the only man to survive Skardon’s probing. MI6 operative Kim Philby, who had also come under suspicion, sweated through a long series of interrogations at his hands; he too was taken off the list. Skardon failed to break him, and concluded that he was probably innocent, but MI5 disagreed and kept Philby under surveillance.
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James MacGibbon was luckier; off the hook for the time being, he continued his career in publishing and his friendship with Moura.

One of Jim Skardon’s contacts suggested that Moura could be useful to MI5 as an informant. With her access to Soviet diplomats, she could be a valuable source. Section B2a, running the investigation, added the opinion that Moura was an extremely intelligent woman who was very self-centred and had little integrity and no loyalty other than to herself. Also, as a result of a recent breast cancer diagnosis she had become frightened of falling ill and losing her income. It was noted by B2a that she was a brilliant literary critic and a very good conversationalist; men found her entrancing to listen to.
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MI5 could not decide what to do – recruit her for their use or keep going after her as a spy? One report ended by saying, ‘As to Moura – I am no further than before – somewhere between doubt and benefit of the doubt.’
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Shortly after this report, fresh testimony about Baroness Budberg arrived on the desk of an MI5 official. The novelist Rebecca West, H. G. Wells’ former lover, had recently seen Moura at a party given by their mutual friend, the American journalist Dorothy Thompson. Like Moura she had an interest in publishing foreign literature and had worked in Berlin in the 1930s. Other guests at the party, according to Rebecca, included ‘a most unsavoury crowd of Communist sympathisers judging by their adulation of Baroness Budberg’.
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She added that H. G. Wells’ family had always considered Budberg to be a Soviet agent.

Retrospective jealousy or patriotic concern? It could have been a little of both. H. G. had confided to his and Rebecca’s son Anthony that Moura had confessed to being a Soviet spy, and Anthony had believed the claim, and presumably passed it on to his mother. Rebecca had cause to be jealous on that count too, as Anthony was almost as smitten by Moura as his father had been.
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Evidence like Rebecca West’s had trickled into MI5’s files regularly over the thirty-year course of their inquiries. Sometimes it would prompt another Home Office warrant and Moura’s phone would be tapped, her house bugged, her mail opened and her whereabouts checked. Moura knew she was the subject of an investigation and mentioned it to Klop Ustinov, saying that she was being followed. She might even have been aware that he was one of the agents watching her.

In February 1951, two weeks after their interview with Rebecca West, MI5 reviewed Moura’s status once more, and came to a critical decision. Commenting that it was a shame that she had not been thoroughly interrogated at the time of her application for naturalisation, they decided to make good the omission now, partly to justify the huge cost of keeping her under surveillance. ‘As she is in contact with so many of our major suspects,’ her minute sheet noted, ‘there seems no other choice for us but to interrogate her in the hope of getting further information.’
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Rather than bringing her in for a formal interrogation it was decided to make use of Klop Ustinov again. His wartime service as a secret agent had made him even more highly valued by the intelligence services. The rationale was the same as in 1940 – as Moura knew both him and his wife it would be easy for him to investigate her without her becoming suspicious (or so they assumed). Klop was briefed to gain access to Moura’s inner circle of friends, obtain her trust, and discover once and for all exactly where her loyalties lay. On top of this, if it should prove viable, he was authorised to recruit her as a double agent. He arranged meetings and meals, ensuring that he was regularly invited to her parties, at which he would often come face to face with Burgess and her other crypto-Communist friends. Some of them were coming close to exposure.

Suddenly, in May 1951, a crisis occurred which took everyone by surprise and pushed Moura’s case to a turning point.

Donald Maclean was under investigation by MI5, and the KGB believed that if he were put under heavy interrogation he would crack and reveal his fellow spies. The KGB, guessing what was about to happen, decided to yank the iron out of the fire, and recalled Maclean to Moscow; at the last minute it was decided that Burgess should leave with him. On 25 May 1951, three days before the date MI5 had set to begin Maclean’s interrogation, Burgess collected him from his home and drove him to Southampton. They took a ferry to Saint-Malo in Brittany, then travelled on false passports to Moscow. Their ‘disappearance’ sparked an international panic. No one in the West knew where they had gone, and the media speculated wildly.

Moura was immediately put back on a Home Office warrant. The bugs in her flat picked up conversations among her guests speculating about where the missing men could have gone. In June Moura gave a party to which she invited Klop. The other guests included a couple of publishers, a woman from the British Council and Vera Traill, a Russian who was also under MI5 investigation. The conversation turned to the subject of Guy Burgess. Everyone there had known and loved him despite his alcohol problem and self-centredness. One of the publishers believed that he must have defected. Moura suggested that he might have been kidnapped or had an accident while on the Continent. Whatever the case, everyone was convinced he must have been a spy of some sort rather than merely a Foreign Office functionary.

Moura was aware that she was being watched and probably guessed that the situation was about to get extremely uncomfortable for Soviet agents and sympathisers in England. And with her long experience of detecting changes in the wind and bending with them, she had an ulterior purpose in throwing that party.

When the other guests left, Moura asked Klop to stay behind. She explained that she had invited the others especially for his benefit – she thought it would interest him to hear what people who were friends of Burgess thought about the affair. One of the publishers, she said, had a Communist sister who had been in touch with MacGibbon; he had told her that he had only met Burgess at Moura’s parties. The lady did not believe him.

In his report on the evening, Klop expressed his surprise at how helpful Moura had been, and thought it was now up to MI5 to exploit the situation.
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He fixed another appointment with her. Her next soirée was on 28 June. The guests included George Weidenfeld, who speculated that Burgess and Maclean might be in Germany. He had known Burgess for seven years, he said, and didn’t think he was in any position to be able to obtain secrets from the Foreign Office that the Russians would find of interest.
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A few days later Klop and Moura dined at the Sherry Bar in Pelham Street. When it closed at nine they went back to his flat, where they talked until the early hours. They discussed James MacGibbon, Burgess and Maclean and another of Moura’s visitors – Alexander Halpern and his wife Salomea. Halpern was an associate from the old days – a lawyer who had served as private secretary to Kerensky in 1917. Migrating to Britain, he had joined the SIS and during the Second World War had worked for British Security Coordination in New York – the same organisation with which Alexander Korda had liaised.
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Salomea, a former
Vogue
model, had openly expressed Communist sympathies.

During their conversation Moura said that as she had so many left-wing friends she was surprised that she had never been interrogated. Klop suggested that the reason was probably her friendship with him. ‘Ever since the war started,’ he told her, ‘there has been a lively interest in your activities. Every time I’ve been asked about you my answer was: This woman is much too intelligent to do anything foolish.’

Moura played innocent. ‘Even if I’d wanted to divulge information to the Soviets,’ she said, ‘what information do I have that would be of interest to them?’

‘In this field there are tasks that you would be admirably suited to perform,’ he told her. ‘Talent-spotting, for one.’

It had come to the moment of truth – the moment Klop’s superiors had authorised him to take advantage of. But it had to be handled correctly – it wasn’t done to put ideas in a potential agent’s head.

Moura told him that she liked left-wingers because they seemed more intelligent than other people. Anyway, in her opinion the whole world would eventually be Communist – even though it would not happen for a long time.

It was as if she were giving her flag one last loyal wave before submitting.

MacGibbon, she told Klop, had not so far confessed anything of interest to her, other than crying on her shoulder about his business partner Kee’s attempted suicides, but if she heard anything of interest she would certainly let Klop know.

It was two o’clock in the morning when Moura said goodnight. In parting, she invited Klop to help her mix the drinks for two large parties she had coming up. She was planning to invite fifty guests to each. With this invitation hanging in the air, she set out through the London night towards Ennismore Gardens.
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Over the following weeks and months, while the newspapers continued to speculate over the ‘missing diplomatists’ Burgess and Maclean (traitors? kidnap victims?), Moura edged her way out of the searchlight and closer to Klop. She told him that she was out of favour with the Soviets – none of her letters to Gorky’s family were being delivered, and none sent back to her. Klop came to her parties, at which she offered up her guests as a buffet of suspects – ‘Here are people who may be of interest to you, help yourself,’ as Klop expressed it in his report.
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Most of Moura’s offerings were British. There were few Russian émigrés in her circle. Many of them had never trusted her, and shunned her. One who did come to her parties was Kyril Zinovieff, a writer and translator who went by the pen-name FitzLyon (taken from his wife, the author April FitzLyon). He had known Moura since the 1920s in Berlin, when he was a teenage student; as an acquaintance of the former Hetman Skoropadskyi, he knew about her spying in the Ukraine in 1918. He remained in her circle because he was fascinated by her, but felt that he ‘could never respect or trust her’; he believed that her covert activities had ‘led to the deaths of several people’.
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If some of the more outlandish rumours had any truth in them, Moura was implicated in the deaths of considerably more than ‘several’.

Moura went on meeting regularly with Klop Ustinov. She passed on the latest gossip about Burgess and Maclean. Some people were saying that they were lovers and had gone to the Mediterranean on a yachting trip together. No ‘iron curtain’ was involved, she said.

If Moura was mistaken about Burgess and Maclean (or deliberately feeding Klop misinformation), her next revelation was the real thing. Anthony Blunt, she said, to whom Guy Burgess had been ‘most devoted’ and who had been an occasional guest at her soirées, was a member of the Communist Party.

Klop was astonished. ‘All I know about him is that he looks after the King’s pictures,’ he said.

Moura said sourly, ‘Such things happen only in England.’
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Klop probably knew more about Blunt than he admitted; they had both served in the counter-intelligence section of MI5 during the war. At the end of the war Blunt had returned to his first love – art history. By 1947 he held a professorship at the University of London, was Director of the Courtauld Institute, and had been appointed Surveyor of the King’s Pictures. When Moura spoke to Klop, Blunt was already under suspicion because of his closeness to Burgess. Between 1951 and 1952 he was interrogated eleven times by Jim Skardon, but like Philby, he couldn’t be broken. Baroness Budberg’s information was deemed ‘insufficiently reliable’ and was never added to his file. Although he was never entirely free from MI5’s suspicions, Blunt went on with his life, and a few years later was knighted for his services to the Crown.