Last of the Cold War Spies (11 page)

Straight saw the brilliance of this strategy but hated the timing. He was enjoying his life at Cambridge. To break off now would mean he would have to give up the presidency of the union that his recent appointment as secretary guaranteed. He would have to abandon his friends, family, and Dartington. Straight later claimed he felt violated by this directive, partly because it was emotional blackmail after the demise of Cornford. But he supposed the approach to him touched another nerve. He needed to show he could make a significant sacrifice for what he saw as a great cause—communism. He also believed he was strong enough to cope with whatever his recruitment meant, unlike his friend Leslie Humphrey, who fell unconscious with shock when Blunt approached him.

Yet the feeling of being used and abused was unlikely at the time and certainly not immediate. He was compliant, even helpful with a strategy. Straight suggested that to make such a break convincing—especially from open work as a committed, zealous communist—he would have to stage a nervous breakdown, some crisis of belief.

Blunt agreed. Straight thought he could carry off this grand deception, which would go beyond anything he had attempted before. This did not bother him. But he was troubled by the sacrifices required.

Blunt appeared compassionate and understanding. He pointed out that everyone had to give some things for the cause. Cornford was the classic example. He had died for it.

This argument swayed Straight, who remained uncertain about the immediate sacrifices. By the end of the meeting he had agreed to the plan.
Overnight and during the next day he thought about the proposition and returned to Blunt’s rooms the next evening to ask him to reconsider. He reiterated that he did not want to become a banker and suggested that it would look phony to anyone who knew him.

Blunt, as ever, was sympathetic and promised to speak to their mutual friend, who was giving the instructions. Straight guessed that this mystery acquaintance was Burgess, who had the cunning to hatch such a bizarre but potentially effective scheme to go into international banking. Straight, though, wasn’t stimulated by economics and finance, despite his exam results.

Straight’s mentor and hero Keynes may have been obsessed with the machinations of capitalism, yet the student was less concerned. His lack of appreciation of the workings of free markets was due to his certitude, and that of those around him, that capitalism’s days were numbered.

A week after being told he was still required to be a banker, Straight was again summoned to Blunt’s rooms and was told that Moscow had rejected his appeal. Blunt kept his friendly but authoritative demeanor. He told Straight he would have to return to the United States. Straight again complained about the directive to become a banker. He could not see himself as a smart-suited businessman attending endless boardroom meetings in New York to decide how money was moved around. He seemed to find the concept of being a banker anathema, as did Rothschild at about Straight’s age when he was employed in the family bank in 1931. Rothschild summed up banking as “consisting essentially of facilitating the movement of money from point A, where it is, to point B, where it is needed.”
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Rothschild hated his six months at New Court in the City of London. “It was stuffy, anti-intellectual, moribund, boring, and rather painful,” he told anyone else who would listen. The prospect of even a month in such an atmosphere mortified Straight. He told Blunt it ran contrary to everything he had achieved at Cambridge and to which he aspired. Blunt compromised by saying that he would have to go underground in the United States, even if he refused to become a banker. Straight still hoped to put off or stall a move at least until he had completed his studies and activities at Cambridge.

Blunt agreed to make another plea beyond the alleged mutual acquaintance.
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Blunt then implied that his appeal would reach Stalin himself.
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Yuri Modin, who later was personally assigned to send key information supplied by the Cambridge ring direct to Stalin, Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, and Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov, supports this version of events. “The Moscow Center [of the KGB] would have considered the request,” he confirmed, “and it would have been sent on to Stalin. He took a strong interest in the key agents we were recruiting in England. Straight was viewed as very important. Apart from the long term plans we had for him, his links right into the White House [via Straight’s parents] even at that time assured Stalin’s interest in him.”
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Blunt, and therefore the KGB and Stalin, were aware that Dorothy was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, and that Leonard was in contact with President Roosevelt. The two couples often corresponded.
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Blunt remained firm that whatever the outcome of Stalin’s decision about Straight becoming a banker, he would have to stage his “breakdown” right away and cut his ties with the communist movement. The moment to take advantage of the opportunity presented by Cornford’s death was now. If he waited another week, it would be a month since he had heard the sad news from Spain. Blunt again reminded Straight that this was his chance to do great deeds for the cause. Cornford, he reiterated, had shown the way. If he were dedicated to the cause, he should follow that unselfish lead.

Straight made a firm commitment this time to take the assignment. It was February 11, 1937. His first act in his new role was to write family and friends that night. He informed them about the harrowing aftermath of Cornford’s death when he told the family.

Straight then deepened his deception of the family by feigning a break with communism. His desire for the cause had, he alleged, been killed off with the death of Cornford.

Straight and Blunt devised the breakdown plan, which would entail demonstration of Straight’s emotional crisis. He had regarded himself as an actor ever since his roles in Margaret Barr’s dance theater productions at Dartington, and now he had a great challenge. He created quarrels with fellow communists and members of the Socialist Club, and did not turn up for meetings of the Trinity cell. He alienated his supporters in the union by advising them to vote for John Simonds (who had just recently joined the socialist society after starting out as a conservative) the
following autumn—the time he himself was set to take over as president. Straight ridiculed the immaturity of union debates. Even photographs of him taken at the time of his fraud are different from those taken in the years before and after the fabricated crisis. They show him looking downcast and surly.
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Straight continued his act of depression.
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The performances were daily, long-running, and multifaceted. His close communist friends came to K5 and tried to give him solace, but he remained listless, angry, and uncommunicative. Only one of his friends and a recruit to the Apostles, John H. Humphrey, guessed what was happening. He confided to Straight that Blunt had tried to set him a mission as well. Humphrey refused to go underground. He wasn’t as dedicated as Straight. He finished by telling him he knew what was going on.
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Straight responded by saying he didn’t know what he was talking about.

In those initial staged weeks, he tried to have a real nervous breakdown, which would have taken method acting to new depths, but didn’t succeed. Part of the strategy was to break some of his old friendships with communists and make new friends with people regardless of their political ties. One was John Simonds, by then middle of the road politically and heading hard-left. Another was left-winger Bernard Knox, who had been wounded fighting in Spain. A hint of his big lie came in his organized pursuit of Bin Crompton, which needed confidence and finesse. But as she was at school and not on the Cambridge campus, Straight could be himself while alone with her, without fear of being detected for his duplicity. (He also took time during this period of depression to flirt with 14-year-old Margot Fonteyn after a Royal Ballet performance in Cambridge.)

On March 18, 1937, Blunt, accompanied by a friend (Michael Eden), visited Dartington and had a long, private chat with Dorothy about Straight’s condition. He reassured her that he was recovering well and would pull through. Dorothy spoke of her son’s emptiness and grief. Blunt sympathized and promised to watch over him.
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By the end of the Easter term, Straight was talking about missing the finals because of his breakdown. He was so far behind in his work that there didn’t seem much point in attending, he told his parents. He also announced that he wanted to return to the United States to live.

Dorothy and Leonard surprised him by agreeing with the latter. But they were unhappy with his decision not to take his finals and cited
examples of relatives who had squandered opportunities.
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Straight was taken aback by the vehemence of their response, but his parents were expressing normal concerns for a distracted son. If anything, Leonard and Dorothy were being both understanding and encouraging, given that they had been very concerned about his condition. Their response shook Straight, not because they were cold-hearted, but more because he may have thought that they had not been convinced by his histrionics. Yet he was not about to tell them the real reason behind his wish to leave Cambridge early. It left him cornered. He gave in and agreed to return to the university to take his final exams.

Burgess and Brian Simon (who was Blunt’s lover, according to Straight) joined Blunt at Dartington for a drunken night a few days after he had arrived. Dorothy took Blunt aside and told him about her concern for her son. She wanted Blunt to look after him. Straight took the visitors to a rehearsal of the resident Jooss Ballet, which was too much for Burgess. On previous visits he had kept himself in check. The sight of the male dancers caused him to leer and make suggestive comments. Straight and Blunt were horrified should Dorothy get an inkling of his lascivious side. Burgess imbibed too much whisky and had to be removed from the rehearsal.
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When the three visitors had departed, Straight spoke more about his plans to live in the United States and to carve out a career in politics. Dorothy responded by saying that if that’s what he wanted, why not start from the top and get some advice? Leonard suggested he would write to President Roosevelt and make an appointment to see him, while Dorothy wrote to his wife, Eleanor.

When the appointments were made, Straight accompanied Leonard on the trip to New York and Washington in late March 1937. Straight wanted to assess the home he had not seen for more than a decade and attempt to set up a job that would please his new, secret masters in Moscow. If Roosevelt, the most powerful man in the United States, could assist, all the better.

Leonard showed his humility in a March 31 letter to Dorothy:

Leonard, in keeping with his unselfish nature, was putting himself out for his stepson as he always had done. He had been content to correspond over a range of subjects with Roosevelt, particularly agricultural matters. He and Dorothy had dined with the Roosevelts at the White House in 1933, but this was the first time he had taken advantage of this most important of contacts.

Dorothy’s old retainers were waiting at the New York docks for them, and they were hurried through customs and chauffeured to Old Westbury. The staff lined up to greet them. Straight received a special wave from Jimmy Lee, the head gardener’s second son, his old playmate. They were now men, but education, privilege, and money had separated them even further since those early days. Straight was like an English gentleman now to Jimmy, with a cultured accent and nearly a Cambridge degree behind him. And Jimmy? He was content to wear his overalls and work in the garden. But he had plans. He had been inspired by the news film about J. Edgar Hoover’s “G-Men” at the FBI. Jimmy dreamt of one day working for that glamorized institution.

Leonard and Straight had tea at the White House with the Roosevelts. Leonard raised Straight’s plans to live in the United States and to look for a job. Straight mentioned that he had studied under Keynes and that they were close friends. The president was impressed, for his New Deal programs had been influenced by the economist’s theories. Keynes’s name would open every door in government. Mindful of Leonard’s interests, Eleanor Roosevelt suggested that Straight should have an agricultural post. Straight didn’t respond to this. It was useless to him and his new KGB masters. Straight wondered if it were possible for him to have a job as one of the president’s personal secretaries. Roosevelt, perhaps uncomfortable with this brash proposal, came up with something else—at a distance from the Oval Office. In his forthright, avuncular manner, he looked over his spectacles and told Straight that the National Resources Planning Board (NRPB)—a central planning group—was the place for him.