◆ SpookStack

a “Toy: in Moscow fu Philsy on his E So, after seven years, | left Beirut and turned up in the Soviet Union. Why? Maybe | was tipped off by a Fourth Man, Maybe someone had blundered. It is even possible that J was just tired. Thirty years in the underground is a long stretch, and | cannot pretend that they !eft no mark. The question, as far as 1 am concerned, can be left to history, or rather, since history is unlikely to be inter- ested, it can be buried right now. Fantasies pursued me, of course, into the Soviet Union. Reports of my whereabouts have been bewilderingly various. | am living in Prague: | am living on the Black Sea riviera: 1 am in @ sanatorium suffering from a ner- CYR mon Rerun SY ‘af those who published such nonsense could really have 32 to Re Issie vous breakdown; | am living in a dacha outside Moscow; ! am in a big government house outside Moscow; | am hidden away in a provincial town; | accompanied the Soviet delegation to the abortive Afro-Asian conference in 1955: | am working in a Soviet cultural institute at Bloudane, not far fram Damascus. It is obvious that none believed it. But, if they were guessing, why such stupid guesses? The overwhelming balance of probability was always that | was living in Moscow and, tike all the other millions of Muscovites, in a flat. Anyone who had haz- arded such a trite guess would have guessed quite right. Marie Claire/Parls Match