Declare

indulgence of t-temper and intemperance th-this morning may have caused this operation to be can-can- canceled,” he said, and Hale thought there was a note of suppressed satisfaction in his voice. “You had better h-hope otherwise, because I don’t m-mind telling you that Mammalian will simply v-v-verify you if he does abort it, casually as swatting a fly. You were always a blundering f-f-fool, Hale, but this—”
    Hale was suddenly very tired, and the prospect of walking a mile or so with Philby in this hectoring mode was beyond bearing. Brace him now, Hale thought, if only to change his tone.
    “O Fish,” Hale interrupted, “are you constant to the old covenant?”
    Philby stopped walking, and Hale had to halt and turn around to face him. “I want to buy a couple of guns,” Hale added. “Where’s the nearest shop for guns?”
    “Return, and we return,” said Philby hollowly, staring at Hale in evident puzzlement. “Keep faith, and so will we. What do you m-mean?” he added in a cautious tone.
    “It’s the Rabkrin exchange, Kim. You answered it correctly. We proceed.”
    Philby stirred and began walking again. “B-But that’s—that’s old. How l-l-long have you been—? You? And it’s very high; not many p-people know that challenge. I don’t think Mammalian knows the exchange.” Hoarsely he said, “Who— are you?”
    “It’s higher than you suppose, Kim. I’m not Rabkrin. Have you forgotten the bargain you made with Theodora in ’52, at the Turkish–Soviet border? I’ve been sent to remind you of it. An SIS representative will shortly be contacting you here, offering you immunity in exchange for your total memoirs. You will pretend to cooperate, but you will not tell him anything about Rabkrin or the Ararat operation, and you will not return to England.”
    Philby had stopped again. “You can get g-guns at one of the import shops on Allenby,” he said absently. “Jimmie’s anachronistic SOE… that was t-t- ten years ago. And now you—has there truly b-been a British secret s-service that I was not aware of, all along? Was L-Lawrence one of you? How far in—” Philby’s pale face had lost all expression, but Hale could recognize baffled rage. “Are you with the fabled D-D- Declare? You?” He held out his hands and slowly closed them into fists. “Cassagnac’s murder!— your old c-crimes—your flight from England last week—this has all been c- cover?”
    They were on the Weygand Street sidewalk now, and the wind from the north carried the salt smell of the Mediterranean, and Hale stared at Kim Philby in the late-morning sunight and didn’t bother to keep scorn out of his voice. “I was recruited by Captain Sir Mansfield Cummings in 1929, when the SIS headquarters was in Whitehall Court. I’ve been a Declare agent since the age of seven.” He held up one hand. “And you have been one, since the SOE doubled you in 1952. You agreed to participate in any operation the Soviets might want you for, as a covert British operative; the alternative offered then was that you would be killed, and that is still the only alternative. Are we clear on that? You won’t fly back to England—you won’t defect to France—Mammalian won’t cancel the Ararat operation—and you and I will go up the mountain with him. And immediately that’s done, you will defect to the U.S.S.R.—cross at the Aras River—and live out the rest of your life behind the Iron Curtain.” Hale’s lip quivered as he resisted an impulse to spit. “There won’t be any pay; you won’t need it in Utopia.”
    Philby had recovered himself and begun chuckling while Hale spoke, and now he laughed out loud. “ ‘O Bre’r Fox!’ ” he said, “ ‘just don’ throw me into yonder briar patch!’ Defect to France! My dear f-fellow, as I understand this, you’re ordering me—on pain of d-death, no less!—to go to Ararat and become something akin to a g-g- god , and then retire to the c-country that has been my motherland since I was a b-boy!”
    But Hale had noticed the beads of sweat on Philby’s hairline. “A half-wit god,” Hale said, not without sympathy, “Pa Fox being dead.”
    Philby’s smile was gone, though his mouth was still open. “True,” he snapped finally. “And frankly Moscow d-does sound like ‘the house whence no one issues, whose inhabitants live in darkness, dust their bread and clay their meat, where over the bolted gate lie dust and silence.’ ” He gave Hale a squinting