Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

“Jesus Christ,” said Reilly. “You’re not serious.”

“Oh, but I am. And it gets worse, I’m afraid. Just a few days after he’s back in London, Roger Hollis quits his job at BAT and applies to join MI6; he’s rejected, thank God. But he does manage to join MI5 just a few months later, in January nineteen thirty-eight, as a probationer under training. Apparently he was introduced in August nineteen thirty-seven by Jane Sissmore following a game of tennis at the Ealing Tennis Club, where he also met Dick White. That’s what they used to call security vetting, I think. A game of fucking tennis. And here’s something else. In October nineteen thirty-seven, Hollis gives a lecture at the Royal Central Asian Society in London on the subject of the recent conflict in China. Guess who else is a member of the Royal Central Asian Society? Our old friend Kim Philby.”

“That is interesting, I agree. But look here, John, MI5’s Peach investigation still shows that nothing has actually been conclusively proved against Philby. He’s been cleared of being a Soviet agent.”

“Only officially and in public. And only for the benefit of Anglo-American relations. You know it. And I know it. Who else but Kim Philby could have tipped off Burgess and Maclean that they were about to go in the bag? There was no one else it could have been.” Sinclair paused. “Unless it was Hollis, of course.”

Sinclair paused again.

“It’s even possible that fingering Hollis leaves Kim Philby in the clear, retrospectively.”

“I know that this is exactly what you chaps in MI6 would like, Sinbad. Something that leaves your man Philby in the clear and points the finger at your rival service, MI5. So be careful what you wish for, eh? Because you’re suggesting that Roger Hollis, the current deputy DG of MI5-the man who’s been the head of our Soviet espionage section for the last ten years-is a Soviet agent,” said Reilly. “Is that any better than Philby being a Russian agent? I don’t know that it is, really.”

“But there’s more, I think. Perhaps you’ve forgotten it was Roger Hollis who tried to see off MI5’s investigation of John Cairncross in the wake of the Burgess defection. If you remember, it was thought that Cairncross might be the Soviet agent code-named Liszt. He’s been under suspicion ever since.”

“But he admitted it, didn’t he?” said Reilly. “Which is more than Philby ever did.”

“Yes, but it would certainly explain a lot about Hollis, don’t you think?” said Sinclair. “Come on, Patrick, I’m not the only one who has had suspicions about Roger Hollis. Ever since the Gouzenko business the Canadians have suspected he might not be quite right. Back in nineteen forty-five, when Hollis interrogated Gouzenko in Ottawa, it was a travesty, by all accounts. And it was also Roger Hollis who cleared Klaus Fuchs, the Russians’ top atomic spy in Britain. Hollis. God only knows who else he might have cleared. It might also explain how the Russians knew about Commander Crabb’s mission last month and were undoubtedly waiting for him when he got in the water to take a covert look at that Russian ship. How? Perhaps Hollis told them. Look here, Patrick, Hollis could have been recruited to the general Soviet cause while he was still selling fags in China, back in nineteen thirty-seven, and then more specifically by the Comintern, in Paris, as described so carelessly by Guy Burgess. The comrades encourage him to give up BAT and join MI6 or MI5. And because this is all starting to make perfect sense, I admit that I do think there’s a possibility that yes, this might, after all, clear Kim Philby of being the comrades’ top agent ‘Stanley.’ Why not? With Roger Hollis at MI5 the Russians would have known everything we were doing before we thought of it ourselves.”

Reilly sighed loudly. “Yes, but here’s the glaringly obvious flaw in your brilliant theory, John. If Hollis is an important agent of the Soviet Union, why would Guy mention him on the tape, even obliquely?”

“Guy always did talk too much when he’d been drinking. So, no change there. But I think he just forgot that the boring little tobacco salesman who got married in Wells Cathedral was actually Roger Hollis. That would be typical, too. Besides, Hollis is, as everyone knows, quite self-effacing and anonymous. He’s so underwhelming that people often forget all about him. He doesn’t speak any languages. Doesn’t even speak Russian. Imagine a head of the Russian counterespionage section who doesn’t speak Russian. How does that happen?”

“All right,” said Reilly, “suppose I accept that it’s just imaginable Guy overlooked that he was mentioning a man who-if you’re right-was Russia’s top spy in England. How is it possible that the Russians themselves could have overlooked this particular detail? Which they would have to have done if they wanted to blackmail us with this tape.”

“I take your point.”

There was a longish silence, during which I shifted to a slightly more comfortable position on the chimney. Anyone looking at me in the moonlight would have mistaken me for a burglar or perhaps an off-duty Santa Claus. Ludicrous, really. All I really wanted to do now was leave the Villa Mauresque and go see Anne French in Villefranche and climb into bed with her. Down in the garden I could hear the two English agents talking about football and I smelled their cheap cigarettes. I wouldn’t have minded one myself but for the fear that the men in the drawing room might smell my tobacco smoke coming down the chimney. I glanced around and saw Maugham now seating himself in the large square full of bluish light that was his study. He looked like an extinct species of tropical fish, most probably poisonous. But certainly he could have been no more poisonous than the relationship between MI5 and MI6, which reminded me strongly of the rivalry that had existed between the German Abwehr and the SD. I had direct experience of just how lethal a rivalry like that could become. I had no idea of who Kim Philby or John Cairncross were, but it was quite clear to me that Somerset Maugham had been entirely right when he’d suggested earlier that Burgess and Maclean might not be the only Soviet spies in Britain’s so-called intelligence agencies.

“But suppose that’s exactly what did happen,” continued Sinclair eventually. “Look here, Occam’s razor and all that. The simplest explanation is the most likely. Guy was always a fearful snob and typically dismissive of this tobacco salesman he’s just met-so dismissive that the Russians didn’t even notice that he could only have been referring to Roger Hollis. But here’s a rather more persuasive explanation, I think. We’ve always strongly suspected that the Soviet GRU and the KGB both run separate networks of spies in England but don’t keep each other in the loop about what they’re up to. We even believe they’re forbidden to consult each other without specific permission from the GKO-the State Defense Committee, in Moscow. This was a corollary of Stalin’s paranoia. It was he who decreed that ideally UK Soviet counterespionage should be covered by both a KGB agent and a GRU agent, so that they could always double-check a source. Well then. Suppose Guy Burgess was being run by the KGB and they spirit him out of England and while they’re doing it, for whatever reason, they record this tape. Suppose Hollis on the other hand is being run by the GRU-by Russian military intelligence. That would explain the oversight. The KGB don’t know anything about Hollis because he’s GRU. It was a cock-up, pure and simple. Too much security can be just as bad as not enough.”

“Yes, that might explain it.”

“Not only that: The GRU military intelligence chaps were running spies in China long before the KGB was even dreamed of. When Jim Skardon interrogated Klaus Fuchs in nineteen forty-nine for MI5, Fuchs said he’d been recruited by the GRU and that these two agencies disliked and distrusted each other even more than MI5 and MI6. Apparently when Fuchs was transferred to the KGB, the GRU made an almighty row about it in Moscow with the State Defense Committee. Their man, working for the competition.”