Declare

Soviet ser vice? I gather you’re still an active player, not just selling your memoirs.”
    “My f-father is d-d-dead.” Our Hajji which art in Hell, now, he thought again. “He died here t-two years ago, and he was my … recruiter, in a, in an unspecific but v-very real sense, into the G-Great Game. He wasn’t a t- traitor —in spite of being j-jailed during the war for making pro-Hitler talk, ‘activities prejudicial to the safety of the Realm’!—and he never p-pushed me toward the S-S-Soviet services per se , but in the twenties and thirties he was studying under one of the S-Soviet illegals who were all eventually p-purged by Stalin in ’37 and ’38—a p-para-do- dox ical old Soviet Moslem called Hassim Hakimoff Khan, in J-Jidda, which is the port city for Mecca.”
    “I—I met one of the great old illegals,” said Elena quietly. “In France, when I was quite young. What was your father studying?”
    Philby barked out one syllable of a mirthless laugh. “Oh—what was he not. Did you know that a g-god called al-Lah was worshipped in the Ka’bah in Mecca a thousand years before Mohammed? According to the Koran, the Thamud tribes refused to w-worship him, and were annihilated by something remembered as both a thu-thunderbolt and an earthquake. My father f-found and deciphered more than ten thousand Thamudic inscriptions, and he didn’t t-turn over all of them to the scholars. And he studied the Gilgamesh v-version of the Biblical flood story in the Chaldean cuneiform tablets at the B-British Museum, supplemented by others that he had f-found for h-himself in Baghdad.” More slowly, he went on, “In 1921 he was appointed Chief B-British Representative in Jordan, ruh-ruh-replacing T. E. Lawrence, who w-was being p-posted to Iraq; my father—s-s-s- stole Lawrence’s old files, and from reading them c-carefully one c-could deduce quite a lot about the files that were m-missing, the ones Lawrence had apparently dd destroyed: the tr-translations of some ancient d-documents he had found in one of the Qumran Wadi caves by the Dead Sea in 1918.”
    Elena yawned, clearly from tension rather than tiredness. “You’re talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls, right?—that were found—found again—in 1947! Do you know what the documents were?”
    “Yes, I—I read the L-Lawrence files myself in 1934.” After breaking into my father’s safe, he thought, and photographing his papers. “According to h-his inventory files, there were a n-number of Semitic j-jars in the cave, but he took away an anomalous one that h-had an ankh-type c-cross for a h-h- handle. In it were s-several brittle old Hebrew scr-scrolls—apparently one was what is c-called a brontologion , which means ‘what the thunder said’; these were usually di-di-divination and astrological t-texts, derived from 1-listening to thu-thunder; but Lawrence’s references to it s-seemed to indicate a—more specific and deliberate m-message from the thunder. Another of the s-s-s-scrolls seems to have been a variant v-version of either the Book of Genesis or the apocryphal Book of Enoch—the story of Noah and the great f-flood, in any case. My f-father never obtained the ack-ack-actual transcriptions Lawrence made of these, so I n-never saw them either. Lawrence became unreliable, after he t-translated them.” Philby yawned too, creaking his jaw, and he clenched his hands into fists to stop them trembling. “I photographed what there was, and gave the foe-foe-photographs to Guy Burgess, who was always my m-main Soviet handler in those d-days.”
    “And Lawrence died in a motorcycle crash the following year. How does all this relate to your decision to—quit the ‘Great Game,’ leave the Soviet service, and seek the protection of the SDECE?”
    “My f-f- father —initiated, t-tried to initiate me—into—” He let the sentence trail away.
    Elena clicked her tongue impatiently. “If you’re going to be evasive about the supernatural element of your story, the SDECE is not buying.”
    “Evasive.” Philby laughed shortly, aware of the weight of chunky steel on his ankle and wondering if he might ever be faced with the necessity—and have the courage—to turn the gun on himself. “It is v-vaguely shameful , though, isn’t it? Didn’t you feel that, in B-Berlin?”
    “And if you’re not willing to face shame , we’re not going to get anywhere.”
    “ ‘O valiant wheel! O most courageous heaven!’ You g-give me back the