Dick White was as polite as before, but more pointed. He invited Philby to describe once again, but in more detail, exactly when he had met Burgess, what he knew of his politics, and how they had become friends. Philby was told to take his time. ‘I’m in no particular hurry,’ said White, with a flicker of impatience. A short lie is easy. An extended lie is far harder, as earlier falsehoods overlap, constrain and contradict the lies that follow. Philby admitted that his first wife had been a communist, but insisted that he had ‘subsequently converted her’ and that ‘he himself had never been a communist’. When asked how Maclean might have discovered he was facing arrest, Philby ‘denied emphatically that he had ever discussed Maclean with Burgess’.
In the midst of a long, rambling answer, White realised, with perfect certainty, that Philby was lying.
White now switched focus, to 1936, and the first trip to Spain as a correspondent for The Times. Philby was quick to correct him: he had initially gone to Spain as a freelancer, and only later taken a staff job with the newspaper. White’s face grew redder, and his collar tighter. How, then, as an impoverished young man, had Philby found the money to travel to Spain and set himself up as a correspondent? It was, Philby later wrote, a ‘nasty little question’ because, as White plainly suspected, the order to go to Spain, and the money to do so, had been provided by Soviet intelligence. Philby blustered that he had sold his books and gramophone records to finance the trip. This was White’s opportunity to pounce, because just a little more probing would have unpicked that answer: how many books? How many records? Did he sell them for cash? Where were the bank records? Instead, White simply logged Philby’s response as another lie. After several more hours, White rose to his feet, indicating that the session was over. This time, they did not shake hands. Philby left the second interview knowing that he was now a prime suspect in White’s eyes. He remained convinced that MI5 had little hard evidence, probably not enough to prosecute, and almost certainly not enough to convict him. But there was more than enough to make him intolerable to MI5, and unemployable by MI6. White sent a memo to Stewart Menzies, laying out the grounds for suspicion against Philby, and suggesting that MI6 take action as a matter of urgency.
Philby was in deep danger. The middle-class hounds of MI5 were baying for his upper-class blood. He was cornered, compromised and running out of ammunition. But he still had allies ready to support him, and one in particular whose loyalty remained as solid and unquestioning as it had ever been.
Nicholas Elliott returned to Britain at the very moment the Philby inquisition was reaching a climax. He now leaped to his friend’s defence with ferocity, alacrity and absolute conviction.
The timing of Elliott’s recall was probably coincidental. After six successful years as station chief in Switzerland he was due for a promotion, and accepted a new post in London, liaising with the intelligence services of friendly foreign powers. It was a job that required plenty of foreign travel, and fed what Elliott called his ‘insatiable appetite for new places and faces’. But it also gave him the opportunity to devote himself to a task closer to home, and closer to his heart: defending Philby against the accusations swirling around Whitehall. Elliott was wholeheartedly, unwaveringly convinced of Philby’s innocence. They had joined MI6 together, watched cricket together, dined and drunk together. It was simply inconceivable to Elliott that Philby could be a Soviet spy. The Philby he knew never discussed politics. In more than a decade of close friendship, he had never heard Philby utter a word that might be considered left-wing, let alone communist. Philby might have made a mistake, associating with a man like Burgess; he might have dabbled in radical politics at university; he might even have married a communist, and concealed the fact. But these were errors, not crimes. The rest of the so-called evidence was mere hearsay, gossip of the most vicious sort. The anti-communist campaign led by Senator Joe McCarthy was at its height in the United States, and in Elliott’s firm opinion Philby was the victim of a McCarthyite witch-hunt, led by a cabal of lower-class, anti-communist fanatics in MI5.
The Elliotts moved into a house in Wilton Street in Belgravia, just a few minutes from where Philby was lodging in his mother’s flat in Drayton Gardens. Within MI6, Elliott swiftly emerged as Philby’s most doughty champion, defending him against all accusers and loudly declaring his innocence. Philby was his friend, his mentor, his ally, and in the world inhabited by Nicholas Elliott, that meant he simply could not be a Soviet spy. This was a friendship Elliott prized above all others; he saw MI5’s accusations not just as a test of that bond, but as an assault on the very values of the secret club they had joined in the heat of war. Elliott was standing up for an innocent man, ‘guilty only of an unwise friendship’; and in his own mind, he was also defending his tribe, his culture and his class.
But Elliott’s resolute defence, and the widespread belief within MI6 that Philby was ‘the victim of unsubstantiated conjecture’, could not save his job. With both MI5 and the Americans demanding action, Menzies was left with little choice. C summoned his former protégé. Philby knew what was coming. According to some accounts, he may have offered to quit: ‘I’m no good to you now . . . I think you’d better let me go.’ In Philby’s version of events, C told him, with ‘obvious distress’, that he would have to ask for his resignation. His friendship with Burgess, a Soviet spy, had rendered him useless for further work as an MI6 officer. The mere size of his payoff – £4,000, equivalent to more than £32,000 today – was proof that he was leaving with honour, and the support of his service. Philby could ‘not possibly be a traitor’, Menzies told White. Philby pretended to be sanguine, accepting his role as a scapegoat. But Elliott was furious, and did nothing to hide his belief that a ‘dedicated, loyal officer had been treated abominably on the basis of evidence that was no more than paranoid conspiracy theory’.
Philby’s glittering career as an MI6 officer was over. He was now unemployed, under suspicion of treason, and under a ‘great black cloud’ of uncertainty. The family crammed into a rented gatehouse in Heronsgate, deep in the Hertfordshire countryside. Philby spent most of his time in the village pub. He knew he was being watched. Every week or so, a policeman appeared in the village and stood around looking conspicuous. The telephone was bugged, and his mail intercepted, as MI5 gathered evidence and watched to see if he would break cover. The eavesdroppers could find no evidence that he was in contact with the Soviets, but plenty to indicate the continuing support of his colleagues in MI6. Knowing who was listening in, Philby carefully maintained his pose as a man forced out of a job he loved, but without bitterness. ‘He said that he had been treated very generously and did not have any recrimination against the old firm.’ Elliott tried to cheer him up by joking about the telephone intercepts: ‘Personally I would be delighted if MI5 were to bug my own telephone because that would ensure that whenever it went wrong – as from time to time it does – it would be quickly repaired.’ Philby may not have found this funny.