“The trouble is,” Reilly continued, “these two—Burgess and Maclean—can now make any amount of mischief with impunity. Guy Burgess can repeat more or less whatever he likes and even if it isn’t true, the Americans are going to believe him. He and Maclean look like better and more effective spies than they were, perhaps, merely by virtue of the fact that they got away with it so long.”

“Isn’t that the definition of a perfect spy,” I said. “Getting away with it—in their case for almost two decades?”

“Walter’s right,” observed Maugham. “It’s hard to imagine how they could have been more successful than they were.”

“The net was closing in on them when they defected,” argued Reilly. “I can’t say too much about that but I’m quite certain we’d have caught them before very much longer.”

“I’m sure that’s of enormous relief to Mr. Hoover,” Maugham said pointedly. “He’ll sleep more soundly knowing that they were about to be caught. Before they managed to do some real damage to Britain’s relationship with America.”

I lit a cigarette and grinned. I liked the old man’s sense of humor. In many ways it was a lot like mine—sharp and bitter and sometimes hardly funny at all. The kind of black humor that nearly always got you a big laugh in Berlin.

“Of course,” he added, “one does wonder if these two were the only spies at the heart of the British establishment. When I was listening to Guy Burgess describe going up to Cambridge in nineteen twenty-nine to find that most of his friends had either joined the Communist Party or were at least very close to it in that febrile atmosphere of anti-Fascism, I asked myself if there were not others who, like Burgess, betrayed their country. Perhaps several others. In which case Burgess and Maclean are merely a sample of what you can expect from now on.”

“I went to Oxford myself,” said Reilly. “New College. Came down the same year as Burgess. Never a sniff of any Bolshiness there. Funny thing about people who went to Cambridge University. Hard to like any of them, really. I think it must have something to do with the inclement weather in that part of England. Very cold in Cambridge, you know.”

“Even now,” persisted Maugham, “there may be other Cambridge men like Burgess and Maclean who are handing over the family silver to the Russkies. Have you considered that possibility? I hope so, Patrick. I hate to sound like the witchfinder general, but one would hate to think that there is more that could be done to find out just how deep this treason goes.”