◆ SpookStack

normal, We discussed the : “pe with him, and he ventured a rew theories in his solid earnest way which suggested that he was still far from the truth. 1 left the build- ing much relieved. It was possible that both Boyd and Lamphere were condumuate actors who had fooled me. Bur it was no good jumping at shiuvos. 2 had to act as if the FBI It was possible that at any mo- ment MI-8 might ask the FBI to put me unuer surveillance. They could easi;, have done so without my know.:ige by using the FBI represe:.‘; vive in London as a direct ‘link with Wasaington. But here again I yvelt that I had a few days’ grace. It was most unlikely that MI-5 wouid put a foreign security service c:. to me without the agree- ment of MI-6, and I thought that the latter would hesitate before compounding an implied slur on one of their senior officers. I should em- phasise that this was pure guess- work on my part, and remains guesswork to this day. It is sup- ported, however, by the fact that for several days I was left in peace. When Paterson and ] got back to the Embassy, it was already past noon, and I could plausibly tel} him that I was going home for a stiff drink. In my garage-cum-potting- shed, I slipped a trowel into my brief-case, and then went down to the basement. ] wrapped camera, tripod and accessories into water- proof containers, and bundled them in after the trowel. I had often re- hearsed the necessary action in the mind's eye, and had lain the basis for it. It had become my frequent habit to drive out to Great Falls to spend a peaceful half-hour between bouts of CIA-FBI liaison, and on the way I had marked down a spot suitable for the action that had now become necessary. I parked the car on a deserted stretch of road with the Potomac on the left and a wood on the right where the undergrowth was high and dense enough for con- cealment. I doubled back a couple of hundred yards through the bushes and got to work with the trowel. 4 “ew minutes later I re-emerged 4hn wrsd doing on mig flu, wie WOOG GdIng up My ny- f 4 vm SAI nee buttons and drove back home, where I fiddled around in the garden with the trowel! before going in to lunch. As far as inanimate objects were concerned, I was clean as a whistle. ’ I was now in a position to give attention to the escape problem. As it had never been far from my mind in the previous weeks, I was able to make up my mind before the erd of the day, My decision was to atay put. I was guided by the considera- tion that, unless my chances of sur- vival were minimal, my clear duty wag to fight it out. There was little doubt that I would have to lie low for a time, and that the time might be prolonged and would surely be- trying. But, at the end of it there might well be opportunity of fur- AL a ten we thar caesHan want urae weary GED BEDVItt, Lhe event Was tO Prove — Me right. , The problem resolved itself into assessment of my chances of sur- vival,wnd 1 judged them to be con- .Biderably better than even. it must be borne in mind that J enjoyed an enormous advantage over people like Fuchs who had little or no knowledge of intelligence work. For my part, I had worked for eleven years in the Secret Service. For seven of them J had been in fairly senior position, and for eight I had worked in closest collaboration with MI-5. For nkarly two years I had been intimately linked to the Amer- ican services, and had been in des- ultory relationship with them for another eight. I felt that I knew the enemy well enough to foresee in general terms the moves he was likely to make. I knew his files—his basic armament—and, above all, the limitations imposed on his proce- dures by law and convention. It was also evident that there must be Many people in high positions in London who would wish very much to sea my innocence established. They would be inclined to give me the benefit of any doubt going, and it was my business to see that the room for doubt was spacious. What evidence, to my knowledge, could be brought against me? There were the early left-wing associa- tions in Cambridge. They were widely known, so there was no point in aaweaonling them Pit T hed never afl CUILEE Ag bbibilk, Sek 2 oe BY ; ined the Communist Party in England, and it would surely be dif- ficult to prove, eighteen years after the event, that I had worked ille- gally in Austria, especially in view of the sickening fact that most of my Vienna friends were undoubted- ly dead. There was the nasty little sentence in Krivitsky’s evidence that the Soviet secret service had gent a young English journalist te Spain during the civil war. But there were no further identifying particulars, and many young men from Fleet Street had gone to Spain. There was the awkward fact that Burgess had got me into the Secret Service in the first place. I had already decided to circumvent that one by giving the name of a well-known lady who might have been responsible for my recruit- ment. If she admitted responsibil- ity, all would be well. If she denied it, I could argue that I would scarce- ly have named her if I had not really believed that she was responsible. It would have been desperately difficult, of course, if the Security Service had been able to check the files I had drawn during my service at headquarters, since that would have proved that my interests had roamed far and wide beyond my legitimate duties. My only possible defence, that I was passionately in- terested in the Service for its own sake, would have carried little con- viction. But I knew that the tallies were periodically destroyed, and thought it very unlikely that they would have survived the holocaust of unwanted paper that took place after the war. There were also the num- ber of cases which I had handled, such as the Volkov case, which had gone wrong for reasons which had never been established with cer- tainty. But everyone was suscepti- ble to explanation without reference to myself; and there were two im- portant cases, those of May and Fuchs, which, despite my best ef- forts, had gone right. The cases which went right would not clear me, but they would help me to throw the essential doubt on my responsibility for the others. The really difficult problem w:-. On aewlnin auras my walatiagna with 0 EXPiaIn AWAY My Peiativis weil