Norman Moss - Klaus Fuchs - The Man Who Stole the Atom Bomb

Skardon saw him again soon after his return to Harwell, on 30 December, the day after his thirty-eighth birthday, and again two weeks later. As an interrogator, he was skilful at playing on his subject’s feelings. If Fuchs needed to unburden himself, he would relieve him of his burden. He would be Fuchs’s friend. And Fuchs turned to him, as he had turned to Arnold. Like Arnold, Skardon represented the authority he had been deceiving and evading, and more so, for Skardon had accused him. In a strange way, he was drawn to his accuser.

He was vulnerable now. Once, he had his belief in Communism, the answer to the problems of the world that he had arrived at by his own reasoning process, and he could hold firm to that. But he no longer had this belief, nor his old confidence in his reasoning. If he had still believed firmly in Communism, he would have been unyielding.

At both of these meetings, they talked about Fuchs’s family and his background. Skardon asked for one or two more details: could he remember the address of his apartment in New York? Fuchs could not recall it exactly. They were on friendly terms now, addressing one another as ‘Klaus’ and ‘Jim’, and in those days Englishmen did not proceed to first-name terms as readily as they do today.

At both meetings, Skardon again dropped into the conversation at some point the statement that he knew Fuchs had given information to the Russians in New York, or else someone very close to him had done so. ‘It was either you or your twin brother,’ was the way he put it on one of those occasions. Both times Fuchs denied it again. But he did not break off the conversation, as someone else might have done.

Skardon conveyed the impression that this act of Fuchs in New York had been merely a mistake, a minor matter that had to be cleared up so that the record could be put straight. Then Fuchs could get back to work without any more interruptions. He stressed the value of Fuchs’s work to Harwell. And indeed, Skardon thought it probably was a minor matter.

Skardon’s suggestion was lodged firmly in Fuchs’s mind. When he finally confessed, he said of this period: ‘I was then confronted with the fact that there was evidence that I had given away information in New York. I was given the chance of admitting it and staying at Harwell, or of clearing out.’ (This confession was dictated. The written version says ‘given the chance’, but it seems likely that he either said or meant to say ‘given a choice’.) Evidently, he imagined that if he really confessed to everything, he could go back to work and nothing more would be done. The self-censorship mechanism was still working.

In between these meetings with Skardon, Cockcroft told Fuchs that as his father had gone to the Soviet zone — for Emil Fuchs was by now in Leipzig — it would be better if he resigned and took a university post. He said he could still do work for Harwell as a consultant. This may have pushed Fuchs further in the direction of confessing. Because he had used his father’s move to East Germany as a cover for his anxieties about his own activities, the two seem to have been confused in his mind. He seemed to think that if he confessed to what he had done, there would no longer be a problem about his father.

He was so beset with anxieties during this period that he seriously considered suicide. He wondered at one point whether he had the courage to go through with it, and at another whether this would not be a cowardly escape. Yet he continued his outer life as if nothing was wrong. His self-control was remarkable. Harwell held its first open day for the Press and invited members of the public, and, as one of the senior figures, Fuchs was a host. He played the role well. He helped show visitors around the laboratories and chatted with them over tea and cakes served in one of the hangars, apparently relaxed and at his ease.

One of the visitors was Nicholas Kurd, his friend from Tube Alloys days and New York, who was now at Oxford, and he brought his wife along. She had met Fuchs before, and she said to him, ‘We were sorry to hear that you’ve had some trouble lately.’ She meant his brief stay in hospital, but he looked surprised at her remark. She referred to this again when they parted, and said, ‘Now that you’re over your troubles, I hope you’ll come to Oxford and see us sometime.’

‘I don’t think I’ll be doing much travelling for a while,’ he said, which they did not understand.

John Scott took a post at Cambridge, and Fuchs gave a farewell party for him in his house; this was the first time he had given a party there. He was a generous host, and whisky flowed freely. The Third Man zither tune was played often on the record player. Looking back on that evening in the light of what they learned subsequently, some of those who attended thought they detected an extra edge, a forced note, in Fuchs’s gaiety, but this was said with hindsight. A few days later, Fuchs rescued the Scotts from the chaos of moving house and took the whole family, including three children, out to lunch at a hotel.

Another move was impending which touched Fuchs closely. Herbert Skinner had decided that he was not going to succeed Cockcroft as director, and he took the chair in physics at Liverpool University.

On Sunday, 22 January, Fuchs telephoned Arnold and told him he wanted to have a private talk. They arranged to meet for lunch the following day, at a pub restaurant near Harwell. Over lunch, Fuchs talked about politics, which was rare. He said he disagreed with Communism as it was practised in the Soviet Union. Arnold noted the qualification.

Then Fuchs said he had something else to tell Skardon, and he wanted to see him again. Now, for the first time, Arnold came right out and asked him: had he passed some information to a foreign agent? Fuchs admitted that he had.

Skardon arranged to come to Fuchs’s house at eleven o’clock the following morning. He found Fuchs in a state of nervous agitation, and looking haggard. He had never seen him like this before. ‘You asked to see me, and here I am,’ he said.

‘Yes. It’s rather up to me now,’ said Fuchs.

But still he could not bring himself to come out and say it. His emotions were swinging about wildly, and he was not thinking clearly. He went over everything he had said before, about his youthful political activities, his family, his career. This went on for two hours. It was a cold day, and towards the end of this time the fire in the coal stove was dying. Skardon, who knew what Fuchs had told Arnold, said, ‘You’ve told me a long story providing motives for actions, but not the actions themselves.’ He suggested that Fuchs stop torturing himself and confess and have done with it. Then he might be able to help him.

Fuchs jumped up from his chair and said, I know what you want. All you want from me is a confession. You’re no friend!’ This was an astonishing statement. It was as if Skardon was not a member of MI5, but had been masquerading as an old friend. Evidently, Fuchs needed Skardon to be a friend and confidant so badly that he thought of him as one. Fuchs added: ‘I will never be persuaded by you to talk.’

Skardon wanted a break in the mood, so he suggested that they have some lunch. A van went around Harwell with fish and chips and other snack lunches, but Fuchs said he would like to go out for lunch, and they decided to go to the Crown and Thistle, a hotel by the river in Abingdon.

They got into Fuchs’s MG and he drove the six miles to Abingdon at high speed and with a reckless and dangerous disregard of other traffic. They said little over their lunch at the Crown and Thistle. Afterwards, they had coffee in the lounge, in front of a log fire.

Skardon mentioned Skinner’s impending departure from Harwell, and said, ‘Tell me, Klaus, if it weren’t for all this nonsense, would you be in line for the job of deputy under Cockcroft?’