Young Philby by Robert Littell Page B

Road by another door. The entire process was not to take less than three hours.
    As for me, I employed my usual technique for avoiding surveillance. The Soviet embassy was under observation day and night. I had even spotted men with binoculars and motion picture cameras on tripods behind a venetian blind in a window diagonally across the street from our principal entrance. Along with my driver and my male secretary (who concealed himself in the boot), I got into one of our limousines in the courtyard and we set off through the gates into traffic. My driver, who was quite experienced in evasion techniques, immediately identified two automobiles following at a discreet distance. Obeying my instructions to the letter, he made no effort to lose them in the congested streets. Instead we meandered through the midmorning traffic in the general direction of Hampstead and its heath. With the heath in sight, my driver turned into a narrow one-way street going the wrong way. A British bobby a block along started to wave us down until he noticed the diplomatic license plate, at which point he contented himself with ordering us to turn off, which we did. My driver pulled into an alleyway and parked in a lot behind a Chinese restaurant long enough for my secretary to take my place in the backseat and me to retrieve from the boot an umbrella and a bowler hat. My limousine set off in one direction. With the bowler set squarely on my head, I set off on foot in the other direction. I had no difficulty blending into the late-morning crowds on the street. I went into an underground station and took the Tube, getting off and doubling back on my tracks several times until I was persuaded I was not being tailed. It was then and only then that I made my way to the Regent’s Park Tube station. Emerging from the underground, I began walking at a leisurely pace through the park in the direction of the zoo to the north. I settled onto a park bench on a little-used path and regarded my wristwatch. It was precisely eleven thirty-three. I could see the Friedman woman walking toward me from the direction of the Round House, which had been opened the previous year to accommodate a pair of gorillas. Oh, these English—if they treated their workers as well as their gorillas one could almost like them. A lean young man a head taller than Litzi Friedman walked a pace or two behind her and off to one side. When they were twenty or so paces away, I raised a forefinger—a prearranged signal asking if she was sure they had not been followed. She removed her straw hat (I noticed her hair was dyed platinum blond) and fanned her face with its brim—a prearranged signal assuring me that she had taken appropriate precautions and spotted no one behind her. She stopped to exchange a word with the young man. Smiling at him, she nodded in my direction, then started back toward the zoo. The young man approached. I stood up and offered my hand. “Hello,” I said.
    He shook it. “Hello.”
    “You will be the Harold Philby of whom Litzi Friedman has spoken in glowing terms.”
    “Whatever she told you was surely an exaggeration. She failed to mention your name.”
    “It’s Otto,” I said. I motioned toward the bench and we both sat down. “Do you mind if I call you Harold?”
    “I prefer my nickname, Kim.”
    “Kim it shall be.” I produced a pack of English cigarettes. “Smoke?”
    He selected one from the cardboard package. I held the flame of my lighter to the end of his cigarette, and then to mine. The smoke from our two cigarettes intermingled as we regarded each other. Philby said, “May I assume this has to do with my app-pplication to join the Communist P-Party?”
    The Friedman woman had not mentioned the stammer. “You are free to assume anything you want,” I said with a cheerful laugh, “though in this particular case you would be dead wrong.”
    “Ahhh, yes. I see.”
    “What do you see?”
    “I see there may b-be more to this rendezvous than