After he fled to Russia, Kim Philby bombarded his wife Eleanor with letters ...

After he fled to Russia, Kim Philby bombarded his wife Eleanor with letters ...
After he fled to Russia, Kim Philby bombarded his wife Eleanor with letters ...

Facing exposure by MI6 and almost certainly the death penalty, Kim Philby had fled to Moscow — from where he wrote to his wife pleading for her to join him. It would be a comfortable life for them with all mod cons, he promised. 

In the second part of our gripping serialisation of a new book about Britain's most notorious Cold War spy, Eleanor Philby wonders: will the man she loves keep his word? 

Her husband had disappeared in mysterious circumstances and tongues were wagging among the expat community in Beirut, when at long last a letter arrived for Eleanor Philby.

It was a handwritten note from Kim, telling her he would be in touch soon, that everything was going to be all right, and that she should tell people he was off on a long tour of the Middle East for his work as a journalist.

He had failed to put a stamp on the letter, which had delayed its arrival.

The letter also contained instructions. Hidden in an old copy of The Arabian Nights, she found $300 to pay the rent. Later she found more money and a gold bracelet. And, in a typically romantic move, a note explaining that he hoped she would have some material he had brought back from a trip to Aden made into 'a sari for my adored beloved'.

She must have had her suspicions about where Philby was — that he had fled to Moscow — but the idea that this most loving and gentlest of men could willingly deceive and abandon her was hard to compute. She clung to the idea that he could not possibly have chosen to inflict such distress on her and must have been kidnapped.

'I was in total disarray,' she wrote later. 'Had he left voluntarily? Was he a free agent? Was he dead?' She was in torment. A friend recalled her being 'in disbelief, crying a lot, mourning the loss of her husband'.

Her husband had disappeared in mysterious circumstances and tongues were wagging among the expat community in Beirut, when at long last a letter arrived for Eleanor Philby

Her husband had disappeared in mysterious circumstances and tongues were wagging among the expat community in Beirut, when at long last a letter arrived for Eleanor Philby

She wrote numerous letters to him but had nowhere to send them. Then, about two weeks after his disappearance, another letter arrived. 'My darling beloved', he wrote, assuring her he had no intention of deserting her.

The tone was upbeat and slightly larky, suggesting he was unaware of the total bewilderment and distress he had caused her.

There was no explicit mention of the future or even of where he was, but he signed off with his customary outpouring of affection: 'Happiness, darling, from your Kim.'

A week later, there was another, with a Syrian postmark this time. He urged her to tell no one where he had written from. It ended: 'All love again, K.' This was followed by a telegram from Cairo with the assurance that 'arrangements for [our] reunion [are] proceeding'.

The story had now hit the newspapers back in the UK, with The Observer, Philby's employer, declaring that it had not heard from its Beirut correspondent for five weeks. 'Journalist missing in Middle East', was its headline.

Eleanor denied the story, claiming her husband had not vanished but had gone off suddenly on a story assignment. Asked if he might have gone to Moscow, she replied: 'That is a ridiculous idea. He is not behind the Iron Curtain — and he did not leave by submarine.' (Somebody had suggested this.)

But rather than quelling media interest, Eleanor's brief remarks multiplied it. Everyone pestered her on where Philby was and refused to accept that she didn't know. It defied belief that a couple so publicly and obviously in love could be separated in this way and that one should have no idea where the other had gone.

Her day-to-day life was monitored by all sorts of people, including British and American security officials. The Lebanese police moved into the block opposite her flat to spy on her.

Then, fully ten weeks after Philby vanished, a small, bedraggled man appeared at Eleanor's door early one morning, gave her an envelope and hurried away. The envelope contained a three-page typewritten letter, with detailed instructions and $2,000 in notes.

Hidden in an old copy of The Arabian Nights, she found $300 to pay the rent. Later she found more money and a gold bracelet. And, in a typically romantic move, a note explaining that he hoped she would have some material he had brought back from a trip to Aden made into 'a sari for my adored beloved'

Hidden in an old copy of The Arabian Nights, she found $300 to pay the rent. Later she found more money and a gold bracelet. And, in a typically romantic move, a note explaining that he hoped she would have some material he had brought back from a trip to Aden made into 'a sari for my adored beloved'

She was to buy herself a return ticket to London, plus two one-way tickets for Harry and Miranda, Philby's children. A day or two later, she was to amend the tickets to ones that involved changing in Soviet-controlled Prague.

As a signal that she had done this, she was then to write the date on a wall near their flat, and she would meet Kim in the Czechoslovakian capital. If there was a problem, she was to draw a large 'X' on the wall instead.

Eleanor was worried. The Prague plan smelled odd, quite apart from the red-tape problems it presented. How much autonomy did Philby have? Even if he was free to decide, what would happen once the three of them landed in Prague?

She decided not to play ball: she would be helped by British officials to go with the children to London, omitting to mention the Prague plan to them. She scrawled an X on the wall as instructed.

Later, another mysterious Russian appeared on her doorstep to assure her that Philby was well and was dying to see her. He offered her money to help get her out but she refused.

Word of this approach got back to Whitehall. Up until that point, the Government had said as little as possible, not being sure where Philby was and deciding to 'play it long'. But now an internal MI6 memo declared there was every reason to suppose Philby was behind the Iron Curtain and trying to persuade his wife to join him.

What worried them was that his escape would be seen as bungling on their part — that he had run after being invited to confess in return for amnesty.

In London, Eleanor met Philby's old friend and fellow MI6 official Nicholas Elliott, who told her that he and his colleagues believed Philby was an active communist agent and that she should on no account try to join him in Moscow.

Once there, he said, she would find the Russians extremely reluctant to let her leave and she might never see her daughter (who had gone to the U.S. to live with her father, Eleanor's ex-husband Sam Brewer) again.

Elliott tried to bring her round to this view by putting the fear of God into her about demonic Soviet behaviour, but without success. She continued to doubt that Kim could just abandon her and insist that if he was in Russian hands, he must have been kidnapped.

To convince her, Elliott sent for MI6 boss Sir Dick White, who told her in person that 'we have definitely known for the last seven years that Kim has been working for the Russians'. It wasn't strictly true but it did the trick. Eleanor was in tears. 

'Much against my will, I had to begin to think along the same lines,' she wrote.

Four-and-a-half months after Kim had vanished and all the other possibilities had been eliminated, she had run out of alternatives.

Shortly afterwards, the House of Commons was told that Philby was indeed the 'Third Man' whose treachery had allowed Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess to escape — and that it was now assumed he, too, was behind the Iron Curtain.

An internal MI6 memo declared there was every reason to suppose Philby (pictured) was behind the Iron Curtain and trying to persuade his wife to join him

An internal MI6 memo declared there was every reason to suppose Philby (pictured) was behind the Iron Curtain and trying to persuade his wife to join him

Four weeks later, the Soviet state newspaper Isvestia reported that Philby had applied for and been granted political asylum. Eleanor could kid herself no longer. 

'Now I had to believe he was a Russian agent,' she recalled. 'But I still wondered whether he was in Moscow of his own free will.'

She was not letting go of her faith in him.

So what precisely had happened to Philby to make him run?

Back in Beirut, he had been confronted by Elliott, who told him the game was up. He was a spy for the Soviet Union and he would now face the consequences. Philby protested his innocence but Elliott told him there was now certain proof of his guilt.

If he didn't confess and co-operate, his life would be made a misery. His passport would not be renewed, banks would turn him away, his jobs would come to an end. On the other hand, in exchange for a full confession and the names of his fellow conspirators, he would be offered immunity from prosecution.

'I'm offering you a lifeline, Kim,' Elliott told him. And Philby duly confessed. Over the next few meetings with Elliott, he even handed over typewritten pages about his early contacts. Only later would it emerge that much of the information was either redundant or outright lies.

Job seemingly done, Elliott went back to London in triumph. At MI6, Dick White, who had been convinced of Philby's guilt for more than a decade, was delighted. The traitor had been broken. He believed Philby would stay and

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