Free A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre

his passage. Philby ‘handles our money very carefully’, Deutsch told his bosses. In Spain, Philby quickly ingratiated himself with Franco’s press officers, and began sending well-informed articles to British newspapers, notably The Times . On a return trip to Britain, he persuaded Britain’s most influential paper to appoint him special correspondent in Spain: ‘We have great difficulty getting any information at all from the Franco side,’ Ralph Deakin, The Times ’s foreign editor, told Philby.
    Meanwhile Philby assiduously gathered intelligence for his Soviet spymasters, on ‘unit strengths and locations, gun calibres, tank performance’ and other military information. This he sent in code to ‘Mademoiselle Dupont’ in Paris (to an address which he later learned was the Soviet embassy itself). He began an affair with Frances Doble, Lady Lindsay-Hogg, an aristocratic former actress ten years his senior, a supporter of Franco and ‘a royalist of the most right-wing kind’ who gave him access to Franco’s inner circle. ‘I would be lying if I said I started the affair only for the sake of my work,’ he later observed. Philby was untroubled about making love to someone whose opinions he despised.
    Philby’s controller in Paris, a Latvian named Ozolin-Haskins, was full of praise: ‘He works with great willingness [and] always knows what might be of interest to us. He never asks for money. He lives modestly.’ Nor did Philby neglect his role as a recruiter for the cause. During a return trip to London, he lunched with Flora Solomon, the Marks and Spencer executive who would later introduce him to Aileen. Despite her inherited wealth, and marriage to a general-turned-stockbroker, Flora Solomon was firmly on the left. According to one MI5 officer, she had ‘obviously been in the thick of things in mid-1930s, part inspiration, part fellow accomplice, and part courier’. During the conversation, Philby remarked, in an intense undertone, that he was ‘doing a very dangerous job for peace and that he needed help. Would she help him in his task? It would be a great thing if she would join the cause.’ He did not specify what his ‘important work for peace’ entailed, but insisted ‘You should be doing it too, Flora.’ Solomon, surprised at what was unmistakably an invitation to take on covert and dangerous work for communism, turned down the offer but told Philby ‘he could always come to her if he was desperate’. She would not forget that strange exchange.
    In Moscow a still more radical plan was being hatched for Agent Sonny. Philby had already been asked to report on General Franco’s security arrangements. Now Moscow Centre wondered whether he might be able to get close enough to the Caudillo to kill him, and deliver a devastating blow to the Nazi-backed Nationalists. The officer with the unenviable task of passing on this idea was Theodore Maly, who knew that it was virtually impossible to achieve and, even if possible, suicidal. Maly discussed the proposal with Philby, but then sent a message to the Centre quashing the idea, fully aware that in doing so he was inviting Moscow’s mortal displeasure. ‘Even if he had been able to get close to Franco . . . then he, despite his willingness, would not be able to do what is expected of him. For all his loyalty and willingness to sacrifice himself, he does not have the physical courage and other qualities necessary.’ The plan was quietly dropped, but it was another mark of Philby’s growing status in Soviet eyes: in just four years he had gone from a raw recruit to a potential assassin. The Times was also impressed with his performance: ‘They are very pleased with Kim, they have the highest opinion of him,’ the diarist Harold Nicolson told Guy Burgess. ‘He has made a name for himself very quickly.’ That reputation expanded hugely when, the day before his twenty-sixth birthday, New Year’s Eve 1937, Philby narrowly avoided being killed by a