Graham Greene may have stayed friends with Kim Philby for 1 reason | History | News

As the clock ticked towards D-Day, the atmosphere at the London head office of MI6, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, reached one of feverish anticipation. Years of carefully orchestrated deception, casting a spell on the German generals defending the landing areas earmarked for Operation Overlord, would finally be tested in the largest amphibious invasion ever undertaken.

For the men and women of British intelligence, this was the culmination of everything they had worked for. Failure was unimaginable. If the Germans discovered the Allied fleet’s destination, tens of thousands of British, US and Commonwealth soldiers would be massacred on the beaches of Normandy and the war would drag on for years. The difference between defeat and victory depended on Hitler’s belief that the Allies’ real target was the Pas de Calais, 200 miles down the coast.

Given such high stakes and such high drama, it seems incredible that a British intelligence officer involved in the deception campaign vital to Operation Overlord was withdrawn from service before a single ship could sail for France. Before even a single bullet was fired. And before victory is assured.

But on June 2, 1944, three MI6 counterintelligence officers agreed to have lunch at the Café Royal in central London. Two of them were old friends of the Westminster School: Kim Philby, who ran MI6’s counter-intelligence division, and Tim Milne, nephew of Christopher Robin author AA Milne and Philby’s loyal number two. The third officer was Graham Greene, who was in charge of MI6’s Portugal desk.

The three spies made a good team. Philby and Milne were proud and protective of their most famous member, the famous writer Greene. Greene, in turn, was grateful for Philby’s staunch support during his troubled tour of duty in Sierra Leone and his damaging dispute with MI5 over an intelligence operation in the Portuguese-held Azores.

When three British intelligence officers gathered in the bar at the Cafe Royal, Greene told his MI6 colleagues that lunch had been offered to him. Perhaps he hoped that his act of generosity would help alleviate the sad news he was about to deliver.

While they were eating, Greene told his friends that he planned to leave the service immediately. He made it clear that he had made up his mind and that he could not give up on it. Philby and Milne were stunned and tried to persuade Greene to postpone his decision until after D-Day. Greene refused to change his mind.

His explanation for leaving MI6 on the eve of its greatest victory, and for many agents led by Greene still on duty in Portugal and the Azores, is less than convincing. He claimed Philby offered him a promotion he did not want to accept and told him he was unhappy with his new responsibilities. Although he did not hesitate to “indulge the Portuguese with orders from above”… he personally had no intention of doing so.

Greene’s decision to leave the service at this critical juncture has baffled Greene’s biographers for decades. Did the author suspect Kim Philby of working for the Russians and confront Philby with his suspicions? So did he resign rather than betray his friend?

Graham Greene and Kim Philby had met two years earlier in 1942 as MI6 officers in London. Books such as Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Minister of Fear meant that Greene was already a household name. After the war, his films The Heart of The Matter, Our Man in Havana and The Quiet American established him as the greatest storyteller of his generation, while his cinematic prose in films such as The Third Man brought him a worldwide audience.

Philby, meanwhile, was the most successful Soviet agent of the 20th century and the first man in the Cambridge spy ring, working as head of British counterintelligence before defecting to Moscow in January 1963. Greene had extraordinary intuition and his keen analysis of character meant he could read people and countries better than other writers. Had he read Philby in June 1944? Had Philby given himself away?

After Philby’s defection, Greene controversially remained loyal to Philby, saying she preferred loyalty to friends to loyalty to countries. But Greene remained on MI6’s unofficial books, secretly passing on useful information gleaned from his travels to the world’s political hot spots. All these years he kept in touch with his former boss, who now lives in Russia, writing dozens of letters to Philby and forwarding his replies to the head of MI6. In 1986, she traveled to Moscow to secretly visit Philby at his apartment in Pushkin Square.

They remained close until Philby’s death in 1988, weeks after Greene saw him for the last time in Moscow. Both never disclosed the content of their private post-war conversations. The espionage they had acquired by then was instinctive and deeply ingrained. Greene used this to great effect to keep biographers off his scent.

Philby used it in the service of the KGB at the height of the Cold War and the thaw of the Glasnost era.

In his books, Greene constantly grappled with the twin themes of loyalty and betrayal. Whether she was writing about religion, relationships, or espionage, it was always possible to feel Kim Philby’s presence. In response, during his exile in Russia, Philby wrote a letter to Greene, his only connection to his espionage past, seeking information about the old country he was forced to leave.

It seems the two men could never escape each other. Perhaps they were impressed by the other’s incomprehensible nature. Yuri Modin, Philby’s KGB handler after the war, believed that no one (British intelligence, the Soviets, or the women he loved) had “managed to pierce the armor” protecting Philby’s innermost self.

The same can be said for Greene. In fact, he himself said: “If someone tries to write my biography, how complicated he will find it and how wrong he will be.”

In their efforts to protect, preserve and enhance their heritage, the past has become even more hidden. Greene’s girlfriend, Yvonne Cloetta, said his real secret was his “passion for secrecy”. But now, with the discovery of correspondence and files from the cases they worked on, it will be possible to shed light on the espionage lives of these two MI6 officers – the traitor and the writer.

Greene had been recruited to MI6 in August 1941 through his sister Elisabeth’s MI6 contacts. He was initially sent to Sierra Leone but did so well that he was brought back to the ‘office’ in March 1943 where he began working in the Iberia division under Philby.

Greene was already a well-known man of letters; Philby, on the other hand, achieved legendary status as a foreign correspondent during the Spanish Civil War; He was personally awarded a medal by General Franco after his jeep was blown up while reporting on the front line.

The two men were successful and ran undercover agents and operations that contributed significantly to the Allied war effort, including Operation Torch (the invasion of North Africa), the British invasion of the Azores, and the disruption of the Abwehr spy machine on the Iberian peninsula.

Greene was immensely proud of his service to his country as an MI6 officer but rarely spoke or wrote about it. He strictly complied with the Secret Intelligence Service’s highest principle, mandated by the Official Secrets Act, that an intelligence officer should never talk about his job. But did he really believe that his loyalty to his friend, the traitor Philby, trumped his loyalty to Britain and MI6?

In the 1970s and 80s, MI6 would have loved to bring Philby back from the cold and stage a major propaganda coup against the KGB. Moscow has often considered the possibility that Russia’s most successful infiltration agent, Kim Philby, was a factory working for SIS all along.

As Greene approached his own death in 1991, the author wondered the same thing, questioning whether Philby had committed Greene’s ultimate betrayal, secretly working for British Intelligence and portraying Greene as an innocent dupe.

This makes Philby a triple agent.

Greene was reportedly so disturbed by the idea that he spent the last days of his life re-reading his correspondence with Philby, looking for clues as to where his friend’s true loyalties lay.

But typically for a man whose secrecy was so entrenched, the man who died in April 1991 at the age of 86 went to his grave without revealing his final outcome.

• Robert Verkaik’s The Writer and the Traitor (Headline, £22) is out now