“Will?”
I turned to find Kim Philby standing behind me.
“Fancy that. I was just talking about you, Will.”
“Be my guest. I’m fully insured.”
“He’s a friend of Victor’s,” Harris told Philby, moving away to greet yet another guest.
“Listen,” said Philby, “thanks awfully for not dropping me in it this afternoon. For not mentioning exactly what we got up to in Vienna.”
“I couldn’t very well have done that. Not without dropping myself in it, too. Besides”-I flicked a match against my thumbnail and lit a cigarette-“Vienna was more than ten years ago. Things are different now. Russia is our ally, for a start.”
“True,” said Philby. “Although there are times when you wouldn’t think so, the way we run this war.”
“Speak for yourself. I’m not running anything except the length and breadth of the odd tennis court. Pretty much I do what I’m told.”
“What I meant was that sometimes, when you look at the Red Army’s casualties, it seems as if the Soviet Union is the only country fighting Germany. But for the existence of the eastern front, the very idea of the British and the Americans being able to mount a landing in Europe would seem preposterous.”
“I was speaking to some guy in my hotel who told me that there were just five people killed in Britain during the whole of September. Can that really be true? Or was he just trying to convince me that I could leave my umbrella at home?”
“Oh, yes,” said Philby, “that’s perfectly true. And meanwhile the Russians are dying at a rate of something like seventy thousand a month. I’ve seen intelligence reports that estimate total Russian casualties at over two million. So you can see why they’re so worried that we’ll negotiate a separate peace and they’ll end up fighting Hitler on their own. It’s a fear that will hardly be assuaged by the knowledge that your president is now scrutinizing those murders in the Katyn Forest.”
“I believe it’s still common practice for murder to be scrutinized,” I said. “It’s one of the things that helps to give us the illusion that we’re living in a civilized world.”
“Oh, surely. But Stalin could hardly be blamed if he suspects that the Western allies might use Katyn as an excuse to postpone an invasion of Europe, at least until the Wehrmacht and the Red Army have destroyed each other.”
“You seem to know a lot about what Stalin suspects, Kim.”
Philby shook his head. “Intelligent guesswork. That’s what this lark is all about. Thing about the Russians is, they’re not hard to second-guess. Unlike Churchill. There’s no telling what’s going on in that man’s devious mind.”
“From what I gather, Churchill hasn’t paid much attention to Katyn. He doesn’t behave like a man who’s preparing to use it as an excuse to postpone a second front.”
“Perhaps not,” admitted Blunt. “But there are plenty of others who would, you know? The Jew-hating brigade who think we’re at war with the wrong enemy.” He grabbed a glass off a passing tray and swallowed the contents in one greedy parabola. “What about Roosevelt? Do you think he would countenance it?”
Blunt smiled warmly, but I still didn’t like his mouth.
Catching my frown, Philby said, “It’s all right, Willard. Anthony is one of us.”
“And what might that be?” I said, bristling. The proposition that Anthony Blunt was “one of us” seemed almost as offensive to me as its corollary, that I might be one of them.
“MI5. In fact, Anthony might be just the man you need to speak to about your Polish thing. The Allied governments in exile, neutral countries with diplomatic missions in London, Anthony keeps an eye on all of them, don’t you, Tony?”
“If you say so, Kim,” smiled Blunt.
“Well, it’s no great secret,” grumbled Philby.
“I can tell you this,” said Blunt. “The Poles would dearly like to get their hands on a Russian who’s an attache at the Soviet embassy in Washington. Fellow named Vasily Zubilin. In 1940 he was a major in the People’s Commissariat on Internal Affairs and commanded one of the execution battalions at Katyn. It seems that the Russians sent him to Washington as a reward for a good job. And to get him out of the neighborhood. And because they know he’s never likely to defect. If he did, they’d simply tell your government what he did at Katyn. And then some Pole would very likely want to have him charged as a war criminal. Whatever that is.
“So, how do you know Victor?” Blunt asked abruptly, changing the subject.
“We share a similarly perfunctory attitude to our Jewishness,” I said. “Or, in my case, and to be more accurate, my half-Jewishness. I went to his wedding to Barbara. And you?”
“Oh. Cambridge,” said Blunt. “And Rosamond. You came with her, didn’t you? How do you know Rosie?”
“Do stop interrogating him, Anthony,” said Philby.
“It’s all right,” I said, although I didn’t answer Blunt’s question and, hearing Rosamond’s distinctive laugh, I glanced around and saw her listening with much amusement as a disheveled figure held forth loudly about some boy he was trying to seduce. I was beginning to suspect that almost everyone invited to the party had been to Cambridge and was either a spy, a Communist, or a homosexual-in Anthony Blunt’s case very probably all three.
Rothschild came back into the room carrying a saxophone triumphantly aloft.
“Victor.” I laughed. “I think you’re very probably the only man I know who could track down a spare saxophone at eleven o’clock at night.” I took the sax from my old friend, who sat down at the piano, lit a cigarette, then lifted the lid.
We played for more than half an hour. Rothschild was the better musician, but it was late and people were too drunk to notice my technical shortcomings. After we had finished, Philby drew me aside.
“Very good,” he said. “Very good indeed. That was quite a duo.”
I shrugged and drank a glass of champagne to moisten my mouth.
“You remember Otto Deutsch, of course?” he said.
“Otto? Yes. What ever happened to him? He came to London, didn’t he? After Austria went Fascist.”
“He was on a ship that was sunk in the mid-Atlantic by a German submarine.” Philby paused and lit a cigarette.
“Poor Otto. I didn’t know.”
“He tried to recruit me, you know. To the NKVD, back in Vienna.”
“Really?”
“I couldn’t see the point, quite frankly. I think I would have worked for them if I’d stayed on in Austria. But for Litzi’s sake I had to leave. So I came back here, got a job on the Times. But I saw Otto again, in 1937, when he was on his way to Russia. I think he was rather lucky not to get shot in the Great Purge. Anyway, he tried to recruit me here in London, would you believe? God knows why. I mean, any information a journalist gets, he tends to pass on to his readers. I was a Communist, of course. Still am, if the truth be known, which, if it was, I’d be out of the service on my ear.”
“Why are you telling me this, Kim?”
“Because I think I can trust you, old boy. And what you were saying earlier. About the idea of our side in this war negotiating a peace with Jerry.”
I didn’t recall saying anything much about that, but I let it go.
“I think if I ever did find out something like that, then secrecy be damned. I’d march straight round to the Soviet embassy and shove a note through the bloody letterbox. Dear Comrade Stalin, The British and Americans are selling you down the Volga. Yours sincerely, Kim Philby, MI5.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“No? Ever hear of a chap called George Earle?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact he’s one of the reasons I’m here. Earle’s the president’s special representative in the Balkans. He wrote an unsolicited report for FDR about the Katyn Forest massacre. He’s a pal of Roosevelt’s. Rich. Very rich. Like the rest of Roosevelt’s pals.”
“You included,” chuckled Philby.
“That’s my family you’re talking about, Kim. Not me.”
“Lord, now you sound just like Victor.” He laughed. “The epicurean ascetic.” Philby grabbed another glass of champagne.