Everyone knows the name Kim Philby. You all know the notorious Cambridge Five spy ring. Unlike that famous quintet you have never heard this tale before. You have never heard the name, “Jean de Langham,” unless perhaps you are a massive fifties film fan. So sit down, pour a scotch, grab a cigarette if you’re so inclined, and listen up.

The Soviet Cheka was more professional than most people realise. Often in Western capitalist made movies their agents are portrayed as brutal, inelegant thugs. Not accurate at all. Soviet spy-craft of the forties and fifties had style. They had at least as much panache as James Bond.

Beijing Hotel, August 2015

I am staring at the blinking cursor. I'm upset. Somehow we had a connection. What can I say to him? What does he know about his mother, or about his father? The email I’d received was from Jean Vampilov, her son. Svetlana is dead. 

The story you are about to hear was told to me in the summer of 1995. I will try my best to recount it accurately. A few years have passed so allow me some poetic licence. The story was delivered across a white pine table in a dreary restaurant turned bar in Kyzyl, southern Siberia. The wooden planks of the restaurant floor were dusted with cedar shavings. The whole dank place reeked of cedar and vodka. A typical Siberian shit hole.

Her name was Svetlana. We started talking by mistake--serendipity? Svetlana’s once lush brunette locks had turned grey. Her incredible account of history was rambling. The tale was recounted over more than one bottle of cheap vodka. What you choose to believe is entirely up to you. What can I say? I looked directly into Svetlana’s dark pools—bottomless black pools passing for eyes—and I believed her. Her story was so haunting I can still smell the cedar shavings and taste the vodka.

In 1995 the former Russian beauty I met in the backwaters of Siberia was sixty-three years old. The Soviet Union of her youth had undergone cataclysmic changes. Yeltsin was in charge. Relations with the USA had warmed. In 1992 the first Bush had loaned Russia $24 Billion dollars of aid. Svetlana’s original employer the Cheka had been supplanted in 1954 by the “KGB”.

In 1991 the KGB itself was disbanded. Old conflicts and suspicions were being swept up into the dustbin of history. Well that’s what we thought. Putin wasn’t even a glimmer in anyone’s eye. What was I doing in such a godforsaken place? Funny you should ask. Well it’s in my nature. I sniff around the worst shit holes of the world looking for easy money. Tuva has gold. I was mucking about looking at an old gold mine we wanted to drill and revive. Capital was flowing into Russia. Carpetbaggers like me were scrounging around every corner of the former red state.

Just my luck to run into an old lady with the story of a lifetime to tell, a kind of fool’s gold I guess. Serves me right. What was Svetlana like? Even then at sixty-three years of age subtle hints of her former beauty lingered. Enough hints of beauty to give some credence to her audacious tale. Yes there was her beauty.

Then, of course, there were the pearls. Svetlana was wearing the pearl choker that night. She told me she wore it every day of her life. I examined the choker of pearls carefully. Well I was sceptical? Aren’t you? Someone tells you a fantastic tale? Are you just going to believe them? The jeweller’s mark was from the jeweller on commission to Her Majesty the Queen. The pearls around her slender neck were the genuine article.

Lastly she remembered the exact date: October 19, 1955. She said it had rained all day. Svetlana claimed that in her youth her memory was perfect. I believed Svetlana enough to scurry back to my dingy hotel room, smoke a Java Gold Russian cigarette, and write it all down in my diary. This was serious spy novel shit.

Svetlana swore me to secrecy. I was not to speak a single word of her story until she was dead. She trusted me. I had given my word as a gentleman. She made me say the words, “as a gentleman.” If you had met her you would understand what I mean. She came from an era when women wore hats and gloves. Oh and men were “gentlemen.”

So until now I have carried this story inside. With the email from her son Jean I was free of that gentleman’s promise. So here goes.

Mayfair Apartment, London, October 19, 1955

Svetlana gazed out the window of the large Mayfair apartment. The tailored black satin Chanel dress made her feel so wonderful she almost didn’t want to take it off. Jean had bought the dress for her at Harrods on the fourth floor. The little black couture dress was a real treat for a Russian girl from the boonies.

Svetlana took a draw on her cigarette. She held the cigarette in a long elegant slender cigarette holder made from black Bakelite and Sterling silver. She ran her gloved hand over the soft silky satin of her dress. The attractive young Russian’s left hand reached up to touch the single-strand pearl choker around her neck. Such luxury still felt new.

Setting her cigarette down Svetlana carefully removed her long matching black satin gloves by tugging on the fingers. A lady always wore gloves. Now with her hand bare she touched the smooth pearls again, fingering them thoughtfully. She sighed. Only with her naked skin could she appreciate the perfection of each large pearl.

Jean had purchased the choker for Svetlana in a rash fit of passion. There had been a wild night of fucking. He had insisted they memorialise the occasion with something special. Jean was like that: a romantic at heart. The spectacular choker was comprised of thirty-four perfectly matched twelve-millimetre South Sea pearls. Each pearl was identical with no imperfections. The clasp was platinum with the jeweller’s mark embossed. When the payment was made Jean had been the complete gentleman. Svetlana had no idea how much they cost.

Beyond the windowpane London was dark, cold and rainy. It was Wednesday October 19, 1955. It rained almost all day in London that day. For eighteen hours it was raining and for the other six it was dark, cloudy and cold. Inside the apartment all the lights were out. The tip of Svetlana’s cigarette glowed bright red when she inhaled. An ambient yellow glow from the street lamps outside illuminated a cut out profile of the young Russian’s feminine curves.

From the other side of the bed Jean gazed at her intently. She was beautiful even in the dark. He took a deep draw on his own cigarette contemplating his existence as a human being. Who was he? Why did he exist? Was there any purpose? Or was there just fucking? Was there just rutting in Mayfair apartments with the planet hurtling through the universe randomly? Would it all end right now? Would an asteroid strike the earth like four thousand atom bombs and end it all right now? It would be fine he supposed. Ending things here and now, at this very instant, in a room with Svetlana? Well things could be worse.

The dark haired Russian beauty, Langham’s “handler,” was the wildest fuck Jean had ever had in his life. Beyond the intense sex though there was something intangible. Something he couldn’t put his finger on. There was something he couldn’t explain or articulate. Yes, even Cambridge educations leave gaps.

Human relationships transcend book learning. Jean had found a kindred spirit in young Svetlana. Somehow, in some way, when they lay together naked and sweaty Jean finally felt “whole”. With this enigmatic intellectual Russian with no formal education he felt complete. Was that strange? He could only explain it via serendipity. Why would he feel whole with her? Why feel complete with a handler?

The gorgeous sultry Russian’s “cover” was as a student of English literature and part-time fashion model. To establish credibility the pseudo university student went everywhere carrying a paperback novel. Last month it was “Tess of the d’Urbervilles”. The current prop was J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”. The red-jacketed book lay cover face down on the bedside table. Jean could well agree with the model part of her cover story. The dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty originally from the southern province of Buryatia was beyond gorgeous.

One can only speculate at how incredibly brilliant and brave Svetlana must have been. How does a young girl, now matter how good looking, no matter how perfect her figure, no matter how firm her C tits, make her way out of a tiny town on the shores of Lake Baikal? It can’t have been easy. It must have required both courage and a high concentration of brain cells that worked rather well. The calculations of the odds against her are mind-boggling. I suspect it might be easier to win the lottery.

The distant south Siberian region of Buryatia is known for producing gold and tungsten, not femme fatale super-spies. How would young hick-town bred Svetlana end up in the festering political cesspool of Moscow? How would she fall into the clutches of the Cheka? And from Moscow to thence advance onward to the political cocktail circuit in London? Only serendipity can imagine her perilous route into the arms of Jean de Langham, a man who was a dilettante of all things except sex and avant-garde poetry.

When Jean first met her in 1953 Svetlana was so perfect the only reason a man wouldn’t want to fuck her was that he was gay. About to turn twenty-one the attractive Russian could have any man she wanted. All she needed was to crook her finger and wink. Married, single, engaged, they all frankly wanted to possess Svetlana. Now at twenty-three her beauty was maturing, becoming deeper, blooming into a more profound perfection. Jean could only speculate on how incredible she would be at thirty. He hummed nervously.

Still gazing across the room at his lover, Langham slowly let out a cloud of grey-blue smoke, playfully forming grey-white circles expanding in the darkness. He had done this at Cambridge for his friends. Smoke circles was one of his party tricks. Jean had many tricks: cards, dice, making things disappear, making coins come out of women’s ears, reciting Latin and Greek verses. Svetlana turned and looked towards her subject. She giggled softly.

The gorgeous Russian found Jean amusing. She particularly adored his smoke rings. In some things the Russian sophisticate was still the childish girl from the shores of Lake Baikal. Her father Anatoly had blown smoke rings for his giggling eight-year old daughter. She had giggled for her father too. That was before he was dragged away on trumped up charges. Anatoly had been sent to the Gulag as one of fourteen million Russians sent to labour camps between 1929 and 1953. Svetlana had never seen her father after that day.

The white-grey smoke rings rising slowly towards the ceiling resonated deeply inside her. She felt an ache in her soul.

“You have such a talent,” she paused, “so many talents Jean.”

He smiled in the dark. Her voice was so husky and soft.

“You make a woman feel truly amazing,” she puffed on her cigarette holder again, “and men in Moscow just don’t make a woman orgasm like you do.”

Jean couldn’t see her face clearly in the darkness.

“It will be hard to return to Moscow,” she was examining him he could tell, “so hard to leave you.”

Why was Svetlana saying this? Jean could tell she was thinking about something, but what. These handlers never revealed much. This heartfelt admission was something unusual. He watched the woman he increasingly wanted. His cock was hard. He always looked forward to their meetings. Still she considered him. Svetlana was examining him like a lab specimen. She had something on her mind.

Jean looked rather more “well to do” than a Cambridge PhD dropout ever deserved to look. The dubiously titled handsome rake took another deep draw on his cigarette. He was looking about the elegant Mayfair room they used for meetings. Well for meetings and for fucking. Langham had fucked her three times on their last visit. Twice in the pussy and once in the ass: Svetlana loved anal sex as long as he teased her clit and made her cum.

Looking at Langham and considering his life even the most fanciful espionage author probably had never imagined Jean William de Langham the Third. Who else had brought their own manservant to college to take care of his wardrobe? Yes Jean de Langham lived nicely off family money from the estates and holdings his ancestors had amassed. War, speculation, usury, various historical phases of family endeavours had resulted in a big pile of holdings that spun off a nice annual stipend.

So far Jean had led a colourful and rather serendipitous life replete with adventures and few responsibilities. Unless one considered fox hunting a “responsibility” Jean’s life was very much carefree. In college the curious minded intellectual had joined the communist party. Well actually the bon vivant had joined the party to fuck Lord Readding’s daughter Catherine. Yes the blonde daughter of a lord with a rather willowy figure had been the true motivation for his political “enlightenment”. But then the bug had taken. The motley crowd of wannabe intellectuals was just Jean’s cup of tea.

Jean had fallen in with a beret-wearing crowd smoking foreign cigarettes and reading “progressive” literature. W.H. Auden poems were a favourite. The collection of phonies from the finest colleges in Britain were all reading books like “The Plains of Cement,” and Sylvia Townsend Warner’s “Summer Will Show,” and “After the Death of Don Juan.” They would get together to smoke cigarettes, drink cheap wine and discuss the dominant characteristics of Dostoevsky’s politics. The “discussions” easily became arguments. Being young men blows could be exchanged.

Jean liked this crowd. They were alive. They were curious. In particular Langham appreciated the fact that communist party women tended to be rather good-looking. Oh and very good in bed. In order to be “liberated” the communist girls all wanted to spread their legs and have orgasms. Orgasms seemed to imply female liberation. In 1941 Jean launched a student communist newspaper at college. The handsome raconteur found he could snare even more succulent pussy as the “editor in chief” of his own left wing rag.

He was the one who would approve their poetic penmanship. The pretty aspiring red-journalists would all fuck him just to tell their friends they had.

Having acquired more than a passing knowledge of the Russian language at Cambridge Jean translated some Russian literature, poetry and autobiographies of leading Russian communist intellectuals on the side. However the Second World War was now devouring the world. His stint at Cambridge was no longer idyllic. Langham felt useless studying Latin poets and translating Russian novels when his compatriots were dying.

In June of 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Russia was now Britain’s ally. It seemed copasetic at the time to be red and British. Of course history would alter course, but let’s give Jean the benefit of the doubt. He lived in a different time. Even Churchill proclaimed that any enemy of Nazi Germany was a friend of Britain’s. Jean had started out on the same side as those we later came to call “the good guys”. Black hat, white hat, you know how stories and “history” tend to be written. People are labelled and given convenient hats to wear.

Continuing to play the role of “PhD student” during the cataclysmic events of the war seemed rather too pedestrian for adventurous young Jean. The student flexed his father’s high political connections. With his Russian language skills Langham was soon offered a sensitive post in MI6. At the stroke of a bureaucratic pen Jean became the personal assistant and right-hand man to William Gordon Stevenson. If you had security clearance at the highest levels you would know who Stevenson was. He was the head of British Security Co-ordination Eastern Front/Russia. This dapper official in tweed was the most secret and most senior British intelligence officer responsible for Russia.

Jean was still rather naïve. Unknown to the horny young intellectual, his new high-level classified appointment had made him a target. Langham had become a most prized quarry for the Soviet intelligence apparatus Cheka. With seemingly little effort the well-pedigreed Jean began to swim in the most ethereal strata of Britain’s wartime society. Coming from the “right family” and well heeled, the handsome young spy-helper began attending glittering cocktail parties and very private orgies. He fucked alongside this lord and that earl. The young communist’s prowess with his prodigious cock was soon renown among the London glitterati, especially the women.

The Soviets were not stupid people. They may not have known how to run a complex industrial economy, but they did know how to turn the screws on people. The commie’s understood human motivation. If it wasn’t money and greed then usually it was something else. Generally that something “else” was sex, or a twist having to do with sex. Sex and money, get it? For the Cheka operatives who had targeted him it wasn’t difficult to recruit Langham at all. Piece of cake actually: the guy was a horny beast with an insatiable nine-inch cock.

Jean’s first “handler” in 1942 was Valeriya. Her Anglicized name was “Valerie”. Valerie’s Soviet cryptonym was appropriately “Honey”. Okay no jokes about “honey traps.” That really was her cover name. Jean at this time was a twenty-two year old hoping to complete his Phd dissertation after the war. Valerie was almost the same age.

In selecting the dark complexioned sylphlike twenty-one year old Valeriya the Cheka team in charge of Britain had found the perfect bait to tempt Langham. The arrival of Valeriya on the scene was the precursor to a series of handlers in her archetype. The Cheka team would choose women for the role thereafter who were a virtual Valeriya clone.

The Cheka kept a detailed file on Langham. Each year the file got thicker. Secret photos, reports, financial checks, background checks, his friends, his interests, it was all in the file. Each new woman the Cheka selected to be Jean’s handler would need to read the file. They needed to know everything about him. Who his former handlers were, what they looked like and what kind of sex and activities he liked.

Svetlana had a photographic memory. Even in 1995 she could still recite entries from Jean’s file word for word: “Subject currently loves oral sex. He likes to stick his tongue up my ass. Langham likes me to cry out. Apparently British girls do not scream during orgasm. He likes girls to scream.” Svetlana knew Langham liked Cuban cigars, exceptional Sauternes after dinner and full moons. The last file entry always struck her as notable. She also loved full moons.

After the war Jean’s government position ended. It seemed an occupation was required. Americans call this a “job”. Jean took on the personae of an about-town journalist. His best-known pieces were film reviews and left-wing jabs at right-wing buffoons. The moneyed son of an aristocrat had no need of a salary, but he did require a cover for his philandering and political machinations.

Jean was flamboyant and an adept self-publicist. He became rather well known, especially in Hollywood and among the West End theatre crowd. This was a perfect camouflage to access high society and government bureaucrats who imagined their station in life was higher than it really was.

Initially Jean’s journalism career went splendidly. Then Langham’s scalding review of “Strictly Dishonorable,” and the male lead Ezio Pinza earned him the personal loathing of the powerful film mogul Sam Goldwyn. The mogul, a penniless son of a Warsaw peddler who made good, had a thin skin it seemed. The frittering not-too serious journalist had effectively ended Pinza’s film career. Reverberations and rumblings were heard in Hollywood among the Goldwyn crowd.

Jean’s ill-considered review had wiped out the studio’s investment in a star hand picked from the Metropolitan Opera. Notwithstanding Jean had heaped praise on the female lead whom he knew rather too personally, Goldwyn’s anger had been provoked. The MGM lion that could roar had been poked in the eye. Perhaps the powerful entertainment mogul used a fixer to “fix” Jean? Perhaps he was the one who informed to John Wood and directed the House Un-American Activities Committee to sic him? No one knows for sure, well at least not the Russians.

During this period when Langham was fond of writing film reviews a change was necessary. Russians could not travel to America. So Jean’s handler needed to be non-Russian. This was risky, but necessary. Yvonne was a twenty-year old blonde French communist recruit. She was the one handler who broke the mould. It was Yvonne who had introduced Jean to Chanel dresses on the fourth floor of Harrods. It was Yvonne who had first tied Jean to the bed with pink satin cords and teased his cock in ways he had never imagined. It was Yvonne who was the first women to insert a dildo up his ass while she rode his cock cowgirl.

And all the while young Yvonne was bedding Jean the vivacious slender blonde was methodically sucking information and new leads from her pliant subject. Oh yes she sucked his cock, but there was a purpose to her wildness. Who could they compromise? Who wanted to have an affair? Who liked young men? Wasn’t the assistant to the secretary of defence a single woman? Was she lonely? Jean was an incredible source of information both classified and valuable gossip.

By the early fifties Elizabeth Bentley had thrown the anxious Americans, a nation on the cusp of a new empire, into a frenzy. “Commies” were skulking around and hiding everywhere it seemed. Was it the film mogul or someone else? No one on the Russian side ever found out who had ratted out Jean. Anyways it wasn’t hard. Langham had openly been a communist party member in university. He’d been the editor of the red-rag school paper. It wasn’t rocket science to have the guy declared personae non grata in the USA.

When it all came down Jean and Yvonne were in a bungalow at the Hotel Bel-Air. They were on the bed sharing several body orifices with an up and coming eighteen-year old bisexual actress. It was the third bungalow down from the pool. The spacious bungalow was private and secluded, but not too far from room service. Jean never liked to be too far from room service. He hated waiting for anything.

That’s where Langham was when the FBI came to throw him out of the country. The order was personally signed by Wood him self. The young blonde actress had Jean’s massive nine-inch weapon half way down her throat when the door burst open. Yvonne was impaling the pretty actress with a strap-on dildo. The young teenage beauty was close to her third orgasm.

The stern-looking dark suited agents wearing sunglasses had not even smiled.

“Down on the floor everyone.”

The poor nubile and naïve young actress from Paris, Idaho, had shrieked a wild high-pitched shriek. She promptly fainted. Yvonne had pulled out her strap-on and glared at the robotic security agents like a feline tiger about to strike. Jean had chuckled. Imagine invading the serenely landscaped twelve acres of the Hotel Bel-Air just to nab him? What in the world could he have done? The aristocrat actually found the entire scene quite funny. He loved the Hotel Bel-Air, especially the swans. Jean would regret not being able to return to his favourite haunt on the edge of Hollywood. Writing film reviews was fun too. C’est la vie he thought.

The US agents were on to Langham for his past, but what did they know about his present? Jean’s Soviet handlers were nervous. The whole file needed to be reviewed. Yvonne needed to be replaced. Calculations needed to be made. The interests of the nation were paramount. America was building more and more nuclear bombs. Every Russian was in danger. The revolution was in danger. Individuals were of no consequence. Communism was engaged in a violent death struggle with capitalism.

It was then in 1953 that Svetlana came into Jean’s life. She was only just turning twenty-one. Langham was twelve years her senior at thirty-three. Imagine how well the young Russian must have done in training to be given this responsibility at such an impressionable age. She had learned English amazingly fast. She had out performed seasoned agents in small arms fire and sniper training. The claims she made to me that night I still find hard to believe.

The gorgeous Russian may have been young, but in addition to all her other skills she had a serious knack for seduction. A bisexual beauty, Svetlana led a trail of gorgeous young women to share her bed with Jean. Most were students she met in cafes or at university. Some were serious sources of information inside government who needed to be compromised.

The finest woman they shared was surely the half-Japanese student studying German and philosophy at Girton College, Cambridge. Her father was a diplomat. Aya was a very bi-curious eighteen, both coltish and coquettish. So reluctant and unsure she was, but between them and some Champagne, Svetlana and Jean had taken her virginity and more.

All this was in the past. Tonight in Mayfair it was just the two of them.

Svetlana took a final glance outside the window. It was still pouring rain. No one had followed them. No British agents anyways. She turned in the darkness towards her lover.

“Unzip my dress.”

Jean smelled her rich perfume. He lifted her hair and found the zipper. Slowly he pulled. In the room’s silence you could only hear the zipper. There was something different tonight. The mood was quiet and soft. The dress dropped. Svetlana shimmied and Langham pulled it over her hips. The dress became a black heap at her heels. She turned in her elegant black lace lingerie.

They kissed. The lovemaking was also different tonight. Jean felt different too. The night felt strange and eerie. Everything he had done. His entire life—he regretted it all except for this moment right now. Jean felt sad and yet happy. Could he change? Could he be someone else? Svetlana murmured in his ear. There was no scratching, no clawing, no frenzy, it was simply romantic; Jean scooped up her slender frame and carried her to the bed.

Stripped of his clothes Jean was inside her. He filled her completely. Svetlana held on as if he were her husband. She clung to him tenderly in a way she never had before. The young Russian tucked her face into his shoulder. There were unseen tears in her eyes. It seemed endless.

They built a gentle rocking cadence. Neither of them wanted it to end. She didn’t. But finally she squeezed her pussy walls. Jean bit down on her shoulder. His body shuddered. Langham’s balls contracted and he let go. She whimpered and stroked his head gently. Svetlana wanted to use the world “love,” but bit her tongue. Not permitted.

Langham had drunk too much. Jean often did that. It was one of his many weaknesses. Did they talk? What did he say? Svetlana choose not to recall. He slept. Svetlana lay beside him for a long time. She felt his body rise and fall with his breathing. Jean looked so handsome sleeping, so innocent. Finally knowing she needed to go she kissed his cheek. Lastly she whispered in his ear.

“If you had a million years to do it in Jean, you couldn’t rub out even half the ‘fuck you’ signs in the world. It’s impossible.”

Did she do it with her own hands? She wouldn’t say. I like to imagine some huge brute snuck in the door as she snuck out. Well that’s what I pretend anyways. It’s how I like to think of Svetlana. Two days later she was on a boat on her way back to Russia. Cheka was gone. The KGB was in charge now. The woman who’d hand picked her to serve her nation had been executed by firing squad.

Days later the British began their search. No body was ever found. Given his past security clearance MI6 became involved. Enquiries were made that went nowhere. News reports finally appeared weeks later.

“Jean de Langham, son of a prominent aristocratic family, has disappeared. The family patriarch and former minister in the government of Stanley Baldwin, Jean de Langham II, is apparently ill. The family has issued no comment.”

Svetlana found that her mother Russia had changed. She returned to her hometown. Nine months later she gave birth to a little baby boy. She named him Jean. Surely it was an unusual name for a Russian boy. If it had been a girl she had planned to name her Phoebe. Yes J.D. Salinger of course.

So now you know Svetlana’s story? You’re still sceptical aren’t you? Well I finally checked with the Met Office of weather. On that day in October 1955 it rained for eighteen hours.