Pal hated Any mention of traitor

BY Political Editor NICHOLAS Elliott was proof there is such a thing as a free lunch.

I would entertain him at the Commons during molehunts when even an MI5 boss was wrongly fingered as a Soviet spy.

Nick always left well fed. I was left without the secrets I hoped to prise from him. But they were

enjoyable occasions as Nick was full of amusing anecdotes.

His face only darkened when I mentioned Philby. “Kim was my friend once,” said Nick. “He is no longer.”

Nick maintained the stony code of lifelong omertà, the hallmark of ex-MI6 officers. My mother was one – and I only found that out after her death. Nick would only discuss secret work after probing what I already knew. And use slightly different words to repeat it back!

When I asked if his trip to Beirut was to spook Philby into running to Moscow to save MI6 an embarrassing trial, he just shrugged. There was, of course, the alternative theory that Nick was a KGB agent warning Philby to skip to safety.

I put that to him at our last lunch, back in the 1980s. “No,” he said.