A Spy Among Friends (2022) s01e01 Episode Script

1
January the 8th, 1963.
Official statement of Mrs Flora Solomon
of 19 Spencer Square, Kensington.
Erm
Before I-I begin, erm
I'd like to make it
clear, I I didn't go to MI5.
You came to me.
All because of a private conversation
or at least one that I was
lead to believe was private
with a friend.
And, as unlikely as it may sound,
I have known Kim Philby
for a very long time
and, erm
I simply didn't
put two and two to
I still can't quite believe that
I very much regret that it
has taken me all these years
to realise who he really is
and the despicable,
hateful things he's done.
I'm sorry, Nick.
I know you always considered
Kim a close I'm fine.
Fine.
You should know, Mrs
Solomon's statement to MI5
is the final piece of the
puzzle that confirms everything
that Golitsyn told us when he
defected in Helsinki last year.
I read his debrief file.
He only ever mentioned an
unidentified Soviet agent.
I have a team standing by
to go to Beirut first thing.
But what you're now
telling me is that, in fact,
Golitsyn specifically identified Kim
as the traitor?
A team from MI5? That'll
never fucking work.
Kim has to be handled by SIS, not MI5.
That would be madness. And by "SIS"
- I mean me.
- Utter bloody madness.
I disagree, Sir Roger.
Philby must, for the time being,
be viewed and treated
as a potential asset.
He must be handled
with care by an SIS man
for foreign intelligence purposes,
not arrested by MI5 for
criminal prosecution.
Forgive me, but ten years
ago, when MI5 suspected Philby
of helping Burgess and
Maclean escape to Moscow,
you, as I recall
were his staunchest ally.
So, I'll say it again:
sending you to Beirut
would be a colossal mistake.
Hello, Kim.
I rather thought it would be you.
Bet you wish you were still in Beirut.
E! Zakhodim v port.
Dvadtsat' minut do stykovki.
In English, please.
Russia, huh? Russia!
We can send a man into space, but
Ah.
I wouldn't shut that all
the way again if I were you.
Oh, right. Well, is there
another room I can use ?
It's the damp. Expands the wood, see.
This is all there is, I'm afraid.
Don't forget, curtain's at eight.
What theatre?
That'd be telling. Spoil the surprise.
Nice try, though.
- Go.
- We'll get through this.
I believe in you.
Kiss me.
- Uh-oh. Don't tell me, we lost.
- What?
The cricket, Tim, the cricket.
Actually, it was a draw.
England were 223 for four.
- Thanks to Barrington, who was 134, not out.
- Hm.
Oh, give it a good, hard
Always forget about that.
You think I'd know by now.
Mr Elliott.
It's been like that as
long as I can remember.
You must be Mrs Thomas
- How do you do?
- of MI5 fame.
Hardly.
- Ah
- What?
- We need another chair.
- Hello?
- How do you do?
- Hello.
Tim Milne.
- My instructions are to debrief Mr Elliott alone.
- Ah.
Well, what you need to
understand, Mrs Thomas,
is that Mr Elliott is one of
SIS's most respected officers,
and C has asked me to sit in
and make sure that everything is, er
you know Tickety-boo.
- May I speak freely?
- In this building?
My orders are to
debrief Mr Elliott alone
with no SIS involvement or assistance,
but should you need
clarification, I'm to ask you to
call this number.
Before you go, is there someone here
who might be able to do
something about that door?
There's a good fella.
Mr Elliott, I'd like to begin
by saying how sorry I am.
I realise how painful this must
be for you and everyone else here
at the Intelligence Service who
counted Mr Philby as a friend
and trusted colleague
for such an awfully long time.
Is that Northumberland I hear?
You and Mr Philby were
friends for, what, 25 years?
Could you please explain to me how
he was able to escape from Beirut?
Smart money's on a boat.
No, thank you.
Newcastle
the accent?
Mr Elliott
I completely understand why
you might need a moment or two
to break the ice, believe me, I do.
Would you mind if we
now consider it broken?
The word "escape" would suggest that
Philby was in some sort of
custody, which he was not.
But I do understand the
drive of your question,
and the answer is this: I
simply didn't think he'd run.
I was offering him complete
immunity and secrecy,
with a nice little retirement in the
country with his wife and children,
for a full confession of
everything he ever did for the KGB.
I didn't for a moment think
he'd choose Russia over that.
Durham. My accent.
- Ah.
- Mr Elliott, you are aware that we have all the
34 hours of recordings of
you and Philby in that flat?
Hello, Kim.
I rather thought it would be you.
What did he mean by that, "I
rather thought it would be you"?
I don't know. If you were to guess?
Well, that would be playing his game,
- and I'd sooner not do that at this juncture.
- Game?
Come on in.
Can I offer you some tea?
You look a little
peaky. How's your health?
Oh, it's perfectly tolerable,
despite recent bouts
of flu AND bronchitis.
- Oh, nasty.
- Yes, they were both against me.
Ah, little did they know.
I must say, I'd rather hoped "tea"
was code for something
a little stronger.
Kim, I don't have time
to postpone this and
we've known each other forever, so
if you don't mind, I'll
get right to the point.
Oh, bloody hell.
Would you believe it?
I've left my pipe at home.
Ah
Ah, good man.
I came to tell you that your
past has caught up with you.
Oh?
We found additional
information about you
that puts everything in place.
And now even I'm convinced,
absolutely convinced
that you worked for the
Soviet intelligence service
right up until the end of the war.
Within the first few
minutes of the tape,
you state loud and clear,
as if for the record
and anybody else who might be listening,
that he stopped spying for the
Soviets at the end of the war.
- Yes.
- Did he?
So, that was a lie.
- A nuance
- A nuance.
to protect the relationship
with our American cousins
who, I assumed, had to be listening
- Not as far as I know.
- or would get hold of the tape.
Again, to my knowledge
Because if they ever discovered
that he had been active for the KGB
all the way up to now,
especially during his stint in
Washington from '49 to '51
- They'd be out for blood.
- Not just HIS blood.
So, am I right in saying
that you were letting him know
from the beginning you were willing
to protect him from the Americans?
I'd rather like to think of
it as protecting the service
- And the country.
- whilst, at the same time
trying to offer him every
incentive to tell the truth.
By the way, why wasn't he
in some sort of custody?
Well, that's not how we
I was trying to appeal
to his better nature.
- As an Englishman.
- And husband.
And father.
How did you and he first meet?
Not sure what that has to do
with what happened in Beirut.
Oh, er, wh-what happened in Beirut
erm, is that the most
dangerous Soviet penetration agent
this country's ever known
legged it on your watch.
Odds are to the Soviet Union,
who, just a few months ago,
aimed missiles at America from Cuba.
So we - you and I -
are gonna look into every
single nook and cranny
of yours and Philby's friendship.
How do you do, Comrade Philby?
Or I should say Agent Stanley?
I'm Sergei.
May I ?
- I'd like to begin with an apology.
- Is not necessary.
Even so
You are sorry that your
hand was forced in Beirut
and that you had to
escape to Soviet Union.
Actually, what I'd like to apologise
I say apology is not necessary.
First you are KGB hero
for work as penetration agent
into British and American
intelligence since '34.
'33.
Second we keep you active too long.
In all honesty, I would've
liked to have gone on forever.
And to never leave England.
To never underestimating
the English again.
I first met him in 1940.
At my club.
My closest childhood chum had
just been shot down and killed
by the Luftwaffe.
The first thing I noticed about Kim
was that he had this
capacity to draw people in
and sort of appeared, just
in how he carried himself,
to know things no-one else knew
Thank you, sir.
exuding what I can only describe
as this very British confidence
that everything would
be all right in the end.
They were not in any
That was, as it happens,
the first night of the Blitz.
All right there, old bean?
Your hand.
Ups-a-daisy! Arms, legs,
all present and correct.
You couldn't scare us up a
couple of pink gins, could you?
- Are you a member, sir?
- What?
I'm sorry, sir, only
members are allowed to
Put it on my bill, Sam.
He didn't seem at all
rattled by the near miss.
Which I have to say at the time
was really rather reassuring.
Kim Philby.
Do you think Philby was playing you
from the very first moment that you met?
No.
I don't know.
You didn't ask him that in Beirut?
That would've been the first
thing I'd have asked him
if I hadn't killed him first.
So
why it was so easy for
you to escape SIS in Beirut?
I wouldn't exactly call it "easy".
Mr Philby?
Mr Philby? Sir?
Breakfast.
From a friend.
After I received the warning
in Beirut from Moscow Centre,
I first had to see if there
was a way to weather the storm.
After all, ten years ago,
I managed to survive a
full-force hurricane
brought on by Donald
Maclean and Guy fucking Burgess.
Philby.
Oh, hello, Peter.
No, no, no, wide awake.
The next morning, Peter Lunne,
our Beirut station chief,
he rang to invite me to tea that
afternoon at his secretary's flat,
which, as I'm sure you know, is
code for one of the safe houses.
But when Nicholas
Elliott opened the door,
I'll admit, I was caught
more than a little off-guard.
I rather thought it would be you.
Come on in.
He looked like he wanted to kill me.
And four days later, you confess?
That's not exactly how I'd put it, no.
A typed, signed confession, no?
After four days of denying everything
and getting nowhere, I felt
my time was running out.
I needed to give him something
to get him to drop his guard.
So, yes, I signed, which you would
know, if you'd actually seen it,
what amounted to a few
pages of chicken feed.
No more.
To give myself an opening,
a chance to make a move
before this whole bloody
nightmare got any worse.
Why did they send Elliott to Beirut?
Knowing him, he talked them into it.
Hello?
Speak.
Elliott met a Russian in a cemetery.
Handed him a newspaper.
Now I'm watching that same
Russian sitting in a coffee shop.
Well, stay on him.
And do not fucking lose him.
How long were you and
Nicholas Elliott friends?
Since 1940.
When you were both already in SIS?
Different sections.
I ran operations in
the Iberian Peninsular,
he covered Holland.
Friends for over 20 years.
Not easy.
Requires a certain attention
to detail, I suppose.
Hard to believe he never suspected.
You must understand
A friendship within the
British ruling class
it's built on an ingrained belief
that victory over one's enemy
is preordained, God given.
When you think about it,
it's really remarkable,
the the level of sentimentality
and arrogance that it must take
in order to be so wilfully blind
to the possibility that one of your
own might see things differently.
Tony's the only one who knows the words!
Happy new year, darling.
- Happy new year.
- Happy new year, old socks.
- To peace, at last.
- To us.
And to getting away with it.
Why did you let him go?
I didn't. He ran.
At night.
He waited until after
dark. That's all it took?
Do you not think that in hindsight,
perhaps MI5 should've
gone to Beirut, not you?
Kim gave me an eight-page,
signed confession,
that he never would've
given anyone from MI5.
Ooh, right, yeah. Sorry, you mean this?
Yeah.
Er Yeah.
Isn't this what you SIS chaps
call, er "chicken feed"?
Or is there something
you're not telling me?
When I grasped the
scope of his betrayal
I realised that our friendship
had led, over the years, to
the deaths of hundreds
possibly thousands of people
at the hands of the Soviets.
Try to imagine for a
moment, if you will
how that might feel, and
give me one good reason
why I'd deliberately let him go.
I can give you several. Firstly,
you were friends for years.
Second, there's his wife and
children, not to mention SIS,
all of whom I'm sure you wanted
to protect from a public scandal.
So I have to ask if the two of you
came to some sort of quid pro quo
out there in Beirut?
I'm sorry, I need
Fucking thing!
It's all right. I can manage.
There's one pet I like to pet ♪
And every evening, we get set ♪
I stroke it every chance I get ♪
It's my girl's pussy ♪
Seldom plays and never purrs ♪
And I love the thoughts it stirs ♪
But I don't mind
because it's hers ♪
Elizabeth Holberton, one of
my gals on the Iberia desk.
She's fluent in French,
Spanish, German, Italian
110 words a minute.
Don't pretend you weren't ogling.
Elizabeth? Over here!
In giving thrills, never mean! ♪
- What are you doing?
- Deep breath, old bean.
I'm pretty sure she doesn't bite.
Elizabeth, may I introduce to you
my dearest and most eligible friend,
Nicholas Elliott.
- Nick!
- All right, old chap?
Are you all right? Nick!
Somebody get a bloody doctor!
In 1951
you helped Comrades Burgess
and Maclean escape from the West
to the Soviet Union.
In a manner of speaking.
At great personal risk.
When I found out the
codebreakers were onto Maclean,
there was no indication
Burgess was also blown.
Maclean had no choice.
He was blown. He had to
run, no question about it.
Burgess, on the other hand, he was safe.
But he panicked and
decided to run anyway.
And because he'd just been
my house guest in America,
drying out for a couple of months
The British suspected you
were also a traitor?
You don't like that word.
Mr Harold Philby, on the right,
holds a press conference to
deny charges that he was involved
in the disappearance
of Burgess and Maclean.
The 43-year-old former
Foreign Office diplomat
has challenged his accuser, an MP,
to repeat the charges
outside the Commons.
Mr Philby. Mr MacMillan,
the Foreign Secretary,
said there was no evidence that
you were the so-called "Third Man"
who allegedly tipped
off Burgess and Maclean.
Are you satisfied with that
clearance that he gave you?
Yes, I am.
Well, if there WAS a third man,
were you, in fact, the third man?
- No, I was not.
- Do you think there was one?
No comment.
Mr Philby, the disappearance
of Burgess and Maclean
is almost as much of a mystery
today as it was when they went away -
about four years ago or more.
Can you shed any light on it at all?
No, I can't.
In the first place, I'm debarred
by the Official Secrets Act
from saying anything
that might disclose
information derived from my position
as a former government official.
In the second place, the
Burgess-Maclean affair
has raised issues of great delicacy
in the sphere of international affairs.
And the Foreign Secretary
has said that in the past,
you had communist associations.
Is that why you were asked to resign?
I was asked to resign because
of an imprudent association.
- That was your association with Burgess.
- Correct.
What about these alleged
communist associations?
Can you say anything about them?
The last time I spoke to a communist,
knowing him to be a communist,
was sometime in 1934.
That rather implies that you've
also spoken to communists unknowingly
and you now know about it.
Well, I spoke to Burgess
last in April or May of 1951.
Would you still regard Burgess, who
lived with you for a
while in Washington,
would you still regard
him as a friend of yours?
How do you feel about him now?
I consider his action deplorable.
On the subject of friendship,
I prefer to say as little as possible,
because it's very complicated.
A virtuoso performance.
Good God.
Are you suggesting what I think you are?
What really happened in Beirut
between you and Nicholas Elliott?
You are. You're calling me a liar.
Who will go down in history.
Eternal Father
whose son Jesus Christ was
sent to the throne of Heaven
that he might rule over all things
as Lord and King
keep the church in
the unity of the spirit
and in the bond of peace
and bring the whole created
order to worship at his feet,
who is alive and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit.
One God, now and forever.
- Amen.
- Amen.
And now will you join
me in the Lord's Prayer?
Our Father
Which art in heaven
Hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
On Earth as it is in heaven
- Thought you might like a cuppa.
- Thank you.
Mm, just a drop.
Sorry. Thank you.
I'm diabetic.
Sometimes, I forget
to take my medicine -
don't tell my wife
- and gets the better of me.
- We were talking about
- I know what we were talking about.
Squashed fly?
Thank you.
There was no quid pro quo.
No final act of friendship.
No.
What made you go into intelligence?
We were on the brink of war,
and I wanted to do my bit
without doing all that
marching and square-bashing,
if at all possible.
I won't have time to
get to the shops today
and my husband always forgets.
When I was seven, my parents
sent me off to boarding school.
A brutal place that reeked
of floor polish and custard.
Sometimes, at night,
when everyone was asleep,
I'd climb out on the roofs,
where I'd imagine that I was
the Count of Monte Cristo
and plot my enemies'
downfall by means of surveillance,
disinformation, sabotage.
Why did Philby spy for the Russians?
Espionage can at times
be intoxicating.
But where the thrill
of fooling your enemy
might be enough for most of us,
it is not, it appears,
sufficient for Kim.
Double-crossing your friends,
lying to your fellow spies
must have been
Ah, Elliott, oh, hold on.
Oh, Elliott, oh, just the fellow.
Please, have a seat. I would
like a frank word with you.
Certainly, sir.
- Does your wife know what you do?
- Yes.
Er, how did that come about?
Well, she was my
secretary for two years,
and I think the penny must have dropped.
Yes, quite so, quite, quite.
And what about your mother?
She thinks I work for
something called SIS,
which she believes stands for
Secret Intelligence Service.
Good God! How did she come to know that?
A war cabinet A member
A war cabinet fell on
her at a cocktail party.
Oh, goodness! That must've
caused all sorts of damage.
A member of the war cabinet
told her at a cocktail party.
It's true. It's actually true.
- But he IS a communist?
- Oh. Chicken, egg
Please.
That does not look like enemies to me.
The reason, by the way, I
don't like the word "traitor"
is because I'm not a fucking traitor.
I've been loyal to Marxism and to
the Soviet Union my entire adult life.
- What were you talking about here?
- I don't know.
All I remember is it was getting
rather stuffy in that flat.
It was seven days ago.
We were drinking every day, and
Nicholas is nothing if not witty.
Witty?
He obviously knew the KGB were watching
and wanted to plant exactly
these seeds of doubt in your mind.
And there?
I don't remember.
You know what it looks like to me?
I think you say "partners in crime".
For God's sake, man, I have not
been turned by British intelligence.
I had to run, otherwise,
they would've killed me.
I had no other option.
Do you seriously think
I wanted to come here?
I'm sorry.
Slip of the tongue.
I don't believe you've ever had
a slip of the tongue, comrade.
- By "quid pro quo", what I mean is
- I'm familiar with the term.
maybe you let him go
in exchange for something?
Some important piece of information
that might resurrect your career?
- Wouldn't that be nice?
- Or, God forbid, protect England.
I didn't let him go.
On the last day, you both
go out onto the balcony.
For four consecutive
days, you meet in that flat
for roughly eight hours a day.
Only once do you go
out onto the balcony,
for a sum total of about three minutes.
Who is it?
Come to look at the door for you, miss.
Oh, right. Erm
Yeah, hold on a minute, please.
I wanted Kim's Russian
friends, if they were out there,
to see him and me together.
Hm.
Were you aware that the bug in the flat
couldn't hear you out on the balcony?
- Can't say I gave it much thought.
- In other words, you didn't care.
What I cared about was
getting Kim to tell the truth.
Hold on, Ted!
- Am I under arrest?
- No.
Good.
Cos my wife's arranged tickets
for the theatre tonight.
Oh
- What are you gonna see?
- She's surprising me.
Apparently, I need cheering up.
Kensington Palace Gardens,
please. Russian Embassy.
Your typical SIS man, as we all know,
concurrent with his upbringing,
considers himself to be
part of a secret, elite club,
which, by design, has no rules.
Because rules by design,
are strictly for commoners
like us here at MI5.
In many ways, SIS's real enemy
is a change to the status quo
that might, erm threaten
the existence of their club.
So for them, Philby's worst crime
is that he broke their
one unwritten rule,
which is that no member
should ever do anything
that might expose them all to
the scrutiny of the peasants
Or, God forbid, a woman.
So I wonder if Mr Elliott insisted
he be the one to go to Beirut
so that he and Philby could find or
Thank you.
create some sort
of last-minute save.
For example
what if he went
out there to initiate
an operation to run
Philby back at the KGB?
Bloody hell, you actually mean that.
For our old friend.
- I'm sorry, I just don't believe
- That SIS are that devious?
If they were running Philby back
into the USSR, they'd have told us.
Well, that's sweet,
Arthur. Quite unlike you.
Or at the very least,
one would think they'd
have asked us to back off.
Leave Elliott alone.
What if he didn't even
tell SIS what he was up to?
Taxi's here.
You look stunning.
You lost him? How?
He's a pro, for sure.
He gave me the slip in the
church. Switched hat and coat.
Now he's in the fucking wind. Long gone.
Which means he almost certainly is not.
Hello?
Were you aware that the bug in the flat
couldn't hear you out on the balcony?
Can't say I gave it too much thought.
- In other words, you didn't care.
- What I
- Oh!
- cared about
- How long have you been there?
- No. Don't let me interrupt you.
Don't be daft. Come here.
- Mm.
- Uh-uh, more, please.
Yeah, boy. That was what I needed.
Look at you!
What's the time? I totally lost track.
I'm so sorry, you must be starving.
Do you wanna light a fire and
I'll rustle us up some supper?
Do you want a beer, love?
Thanks, John.
Here we are.
He's at some Russian
port on the Black Sea.
How was work?
Flu season, you know?
And with all the long waits these days,
which can be up to ten times
as long for my patients,
it's all I can do to stop them
from catching pneumonia, you know?
I believe in you, love.
Hm!
This is delicious. Very tasty.
Stew left over from the other day.
Are you lonesome tonight? ♪
Do you miss me tonight? ♪
Oh! Are you sorry ♪
We we drifted apart? ♪
- What you doing?
- Well, I I'm singing, aren't I?
Are you ♪
Boom!
Give 'em an "ooh", Sid.
Ooh!
Didn't wanna part with that, did you?
I'll give you a two-in,
here we go. A one two
- A boom. Ooh!
- Ya-ta-ta-tah.
- Are you lonesome tonight? ♪
- Ya-ta-ta-tah.
A boom. Ooh!
Do you miss me tonight? ♪
- A boom. Ooh!
- Ya-ta-ta-tah.
- Are you sorry we drifted ♪
- Just Just No, stop!
Boom!
A boom
A boom. Just a little.
I'm ya-ta-ta-tah-ing, you see.
Oh, of course. No, you shouldn't be.
No, I should be singing
Are You Lonesome Tonight?
'Cos you've got the
sideboards. You're the star.
I go right down to here.
There's something gone
wrong with the star.
Oh, I know!
Sid - you start us off. Give
us the one-two, will you?
- Then you'll be all right.
- A one, two
- A boom. Ooh.
- Ya-ta-ta-tah!
- Are you lonesome tonight? ♪
- A boom. Ooh.
Ya-ta-ta-tah!
- A boom. Ooh.
- Ya-ta-ta-tah!
- Do you miss me tonight? ♪
- A boom. Ooh.
Ya-ta-ta-tah!
- Are you sorry we drifted apart? ♪
- A boom. Ooh.
- A boom. Ooh.
- Ya-ta-ta-tah!
Does your memory stray ♪
To a bright, sunny day ♪
When I kissed you ♪
And called you sweetheart? ♪
Do the chairs in your parlour ♪
Seem empty and bare? ♪
Do you gaze at your doorstep ♪
And picture me there? ♪
Is your heart filled with pain? ♪
Shall I come back again? ♪
Tell me, dear ♪
Are you lonesome tonight? ♪
I interviewed this man today
It's OK, my love. I know you're
not allowed to talk about your work.
who's just found out that his
best friend of over 20 years
has been betraying him all along.
How long?
23 years.
And he only just found out?
You were spot on. CIA.
- Angleton?
- James Jesus in the flesh.
Let's keep that under our hats for now.
Are you trying to get me killed?
Now, there's a thought.
You don't really mean that.
Give me one good reason why not, Kim.
And it better be a fucking good one.
You know, Nick
we're all wondering
what happened in Beirut.
And I for one find it hard to
believe you came back empty-handed.