The MiG photographs had been taken during the summer-the lake would be frozen now, in late January.

Mount Ararat was of primordial volcanic origin, and its slopes were littered with “pillow lava,” smooth igneous stones formed when the magma had flowed out under sea water. And although the mountain had sunk, so that it was now surrounded by a moat-like caldera of snake-infested marshes, its nearly 17,000-foot height was imposing because it stood virtually alone on the Kars-Van plain, the northernmost sentinel of the Zagros mountain range.

Until the death of the fox in September of last year, Kim Philby had lived for the day when he should finally climb up to the structure that folklore had mis-identified as Noah’s Ark, and take at last his destined role as human emissary to the djinn-rafiq to the spirits of the air.

Now that his father was irretrievably lost, though, his only hope was that Hale’s Declare operation would ignobly succeed and that the djinn would all be killed before he could be subjected to the devastating recognition of the inhuman powers that inhabited the high glaciers.

Standing now on the broad face of the Cehennem Dere glacier above the Ahora Gorge, Philby looked back at the two white nylon tents, and at the two motionless Spetsnaz commandos in their white parkas, holding their white-painted automatic rifles; and he leaned his weight against the bitter wind and tried to comprehend the fact that the rest of his life lay north of this point-and east.

He shuffled around in the snow to peer through his goggles in that direction, the heels of his boots squeaking on the compacted dry powder; mists in the middle distance blurred the cliffs of the Ahora Gorge below him, and against the white blur of the winter sun he could not see the Aras River, twenty miles away to the northeast. But if today’s climb were successful, he would be crossing that river, that Rubicon, tomorrow, never again to recross it. He would be greeted as a hero in Moscow, no doubt-he had been honorarily awarded the Soviet Order of the Red Banner after his assistance in placing the drogue-stone in Berlin in 1945, and had even been shown a photograph of the medal, with its red-and-white striped ribbon, gold-wreathed medallion, and enameled banner. He would be able to take physical possession of it, soon, and wear it to…state dinners at the Kremlin. Evenings at the Bolshoi.

He had never even bothered to try to learn Russian.

Truly he had always imagined that he would live undercover-know, not think it-for the rest of his life; that he would one day return to England with Eleanor, and there attend cricket matches, write for the Times, send his sons to Winchester and Cambridge. He had won his Commander of the British Empire in ’46, and that was only two ranks below being knighted! And he would always have been warmed, as he watched the Derby from the Members’ Stand at Epsom or drank malt whiskey with the lawyers and journalists in the Garrick Club, by the secret knowledge that he had done more to undermine this capitalist decadence than any other Soviet spy in history.

He had to tilt his head now, to see down the gorge past the fluttering fur fringe of his parka. The action reminded him of trying to see with the bandage on his head, back in Beirut.

Nicholas Elliott, who had been Head of the SIS Beirut Station until Peter Lunn had taken over in October of last year, had returned to Lebanon thirteen days ago. He had telephoned Philby the next day, a Friday, and proposed a meeting at the flat of Lunn’s secretary. Philby’s head had still been taped up with gauze then, and when he arrived at the flat the first thing he had said to Elliott had been, “You owe me a drink. I haven’t had one since I did this to my skull on my birthday, ten days ago.” Not strictly true, any of it-his skull had been cracked by Miss Ceniza-Bendiga’s.30-caliber bullet, and he had been drinking like a champion ever since-but Philby had been smiling confidently as he spoke, holding out his right hand. Only three days had passed since Andrew Hale had frightened and insulted him on Weygand Street, and he’d been eager to numb the smart of that humiliation in reminiscences of braver, grander days.

Philby and Elliott had become friends at War Station XB in St. Albans during the war, and later in Broadway the two SIS men had worked together at trying to design a non-Communist postwar Germany -though, unknown to Elliott, Philby had seen to it that all the proposed agents were safely killed before the war ended. In 1948 it had been Elliott who had found a Swiss nerve specialist for Philby’s second wife, after her incautious curiosity about Philby’s work with Burgess had begun to cause her to lose her mind; and later, in the dark winter of ’51, after Burgess and Maclean defected and Philby was suspected of complicity, Elliott had been Philby’s staunchest defender in Broadway. Eventually Elliott had helped Philby get journalism work with The Observer and The Economist, and had steered a lot of under-the-table SIS work his way, mainly so that Philby wouldn’t starve.

But on that Friday afternoon in Beirut nearly two weeks ago, Elliott’s eyes had been cold behind his horn-rimmed glasses, and he’d said, “Stop it, Kim. We know what you’ve done. You took me in for years-and now I’ll get the truth out of you, even if I have to drag you to Ham Common myself. I once looked up to you-my God, how I despise you now. I hope you’ve enough decency left to understand why.”

Well, it had been the SIS confronting him at last, hadn’t it-and, as Hale had said, they were offering immunity in exchange for Philby’s full confession. You will pretend to cooperate, Hale had told Philby, but you will not tell him about the Ararat operation, and you will not return to England. And so Philby had flippantly conceded his guilt and typed out a rubbishy confession, admitting only to having spied for the Comintern and claiming to have quit in ’49, when the Attlee government’s reforms had “disproved Marxism.” God!

But it had all gone down well enough with Elliott.

Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga had sidled up to Philby at the Khayats Bookshop in Avenue Bliss the next day, and over the stacks of Life and Paris Match she had told him that the SDECE was prepared to exfiltrate him to France right then, from the bookstore; a news delivery lorry was in the alley behind the shop, its engine idling. He had put her off, said he needed to clock in with Mammalian first, and had got her to agree to meet him again by the Pigeon Grotto on the cliffs at Chouron Street, that evening-and then he had gone back to the Normandy Hotel and told Mammalian that the French SDECE agent Ceniza-Bendiga was in Beirut, and that she had approached him with a defection proposal; he told Mammalian when and where he had agreed to meet her, and he had then gone upstairs and got drunk alone in his room.

Philby had not seen Elena since then. Perhaps Mammalian had killed her-Philby hadn’t asked.

Nicholas Elliott had taken Philby and Eleanor to dinner that night at Le Temporel, and both men had tried to talk and laugh as if their old friendship had not been a betrayal from the start. Poor Eleanor had sipped her wine nervously, glancing from her husband to Elliott and back, clearly aware of the forced tone. In the men’s room Philby had passed Elliott two more typewritten pages of chicken-feed confession.

Two days later Elliott had flown back to London, telling Philby that Peter Lunn would take over the interrogation and make arrangements for Philby’s return to England. Lunn had clearly been embarrassed by the spectacle of a Cambridge-and-Athenaeum-Club man confessing to having been a Soviet spy, and Philby had no difficulty in postponing their first meeting for a week-and then on the night of the twenty-third, the Rabkrin expedition had left Beirut.