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Cambridge Five Spy Ring — Part 30
Page 51
51 / 69
Macleans are very keen to eel you
and have ‘invited .us ee |
looked forward 10 th 2 with
enormous curivsity, as Tha. slready
begun to grasp how restricted our
life was going to be: in 10 days [
-had spoken to no one other than
Kim, Sergei and-—with a few myers
and sign fanguage—to Zena the
housekeeper. Ai last I was to meet
the couple whose situation mest
closely resembled our own.
The Macleans—another Anglc-
American couple—had defected to
Russia in dramatic circumstances,
but they had a
Naturally, ] was extremely curious
to know how they lived and how they
Russian society. They surely. knew
the ropes and [ was eager to learn
-all T could from them.
strict control that he had met the
Macleans only a couple of weeks
before my arrival. He had known
Donald as a young man but had seen
little of him during his later Foreign
Office career. There was no comrade-
ship between them, such as had
bound Kim to Burgess:
human sympathy of attraction. What
they had in common was theic dedi-
cated work for the Russians. Kim
had not met Melinda before arriving
Hao MOL Me, wacuinaa OoLore armiving
lo Moscow,
That evening they gave mea warm
welcome. Apart ‘from occasional
visits from relatives, I was the first
rson from the Western world they
ad met in a Jong while with whom
they could speak freely. I faced a
barrage of questions: they wanted
to know what was happening in
London and New York, where I had
so otrecently been, which of our
mutual friends I had seen, what
' everyone was doing and thinking out
there in the West.
Touch of envy
greatly liked to take a look for them-
selves. Unlike myself, Melinda had
allowed her American passport to
expire many years before and she
without taking a risk. Already, on
. our first meeting, I detected a touch
4 of
: expatriates regarded me:
was still valid. Most of all, I was
still an American.
- ' After dinner we setiled down to a
hand of bridge. and this was the
pattern of many future meetings.
Twice or three times a week, we
would dine. play bridge and gossip.
If the building in which we lived was
plain and sombre, dating from before
the Revolution, the Macleans’ apart-
ment was high up in one of tha
massive, heavily-ornamented piles, .
had a fine view Over the i) xcow
Fiver from their —
aoa
af ere ae wo =
1OQ-years start. .
had adjusted to the complexities of |
Kim had been kept under such -
and Wittle |
~ may have shared
Undoybtedly, they would have .
the envy with which these ‘
; I could’
* come and go as I chose; my passport -
ayant _-- characteristic of Stalin's Teign. They .
weyoleud ot. ede, ledine ABD Ublbe
mistakable fiavour of London S¥‘1.
But the chint-cs wefe rather
and foreign furnishings were
to replace.
Apart from the drawing-room.
which was larger and more ambitious
than ours, the family was crammed
into two small bedrooms: one for
their daughter who was then 12;
another for the two boys Fergie and
Donald, 18 and 20; while Donald
and Melinda slept on sofas in the
drawing-room.
The girl, Mimsey, was born after
inr father defected. and went to
Russia as an- infant; she spoke
Russian like a native and struck Kim
and me as being unusually spoiled
and terribly rude to her mother. Th
older boy attended Moscof
University, and his brother
technical institute, None of af
children looked Russian, perhaps be-
cause they dressed themselves from
parcels of clothes which Melinda's
mother’ and sister constantly sent
from Arnerica and England.
So conceited
Altogether it was not a very happy
household, and’ I sometimes
wondered why Melinda, who had
clearly been close to divorcing
Donald a number of times, had
m in Moscow, She
is convictions and
-been an accomplice of nis espionage,
but she seemed to yearn for the
luxuries of Western capitalism—
from which she was not wholly cut off,
thanks to her mother's packages.
Donald was an enormous man,
almost six foot six, in his middle
chosen to join
cnostn to pon mr
‘fifties, undoubtedly intelligent, but
with an unappealing conceit. From
our first meeting, I did not feel we
would ever become close friends. His
wife was a short, plumpish brunetic,
not unattractive, extremely nervous
and highly strung, with an annoying |
habit of repeating herself. On that
first evening it was quite obvious that
no love was lost between therm. She
was amtising in her way and some-
one new to talk to.
We left their house late that even-
-~ ing feeling quite sorry for her, but
could go no farther west than Prague ;:.
they seemed to know 2 good many
people, were both working, and their
social life seemed relatively glamor-
ous to me. I wondered when we, too,
would be allowed the freedom to.
make friends. 1
In a sense the Macleans had long |
ago served their period of exile. I
. learned that before being allowed to
come to Moscow, they had been
kept on ice for .two ‘yeats al
Kuybyshey, a fast-growing indus-
trial city on the Volga. Burgess and
Maclean arrived in the Soviet Union
in 195}, when Stalin was preparing -
his final purge. "They were lucky to '
" gurvive, and the fact that they were
a considerable distance from Moscow |
“may havejhad something to do with..
iv 4 ” oo
Like.
DeLoagn 2
Mohr
Bishop
Casper
Callahan
Conrad
Felt
Gale
Rosen
Sullivan
Tavel
Trotter
Tele, Room
Holmes
Gandy
The Washington Post
Times Herald
The Washington Daily News
The Evening Star (Washingtom —__
The Sunday Star (Washington) ____
Daily News (New York)
Sunday News (New York) y
New York Post —2———_________ ae
The New York Times
The Sun (Baltimore)
The Worker 0
The New Leader
The Wall Seree1 Journal
The National Observer ——___
People’s World -
“es 67
Dae
The Cb: ne rvew
‘eer ee
foge af
t¢
(pen den /
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