Word: macleans
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...middle-drawer British foreign-service men disappeared during a trip to the continent last month, the usually stolid British Foreign Office acted in a way the British call "hysterical" if displayed by Americans. Police on two continents, including Scotland Yard, launched a gigantic man hunt for Donald Duart MacLean and Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess. Everyone recalled the case of Atom Spy Klaus Fuchs and the flight of Britain's Atom Scientist Bruno Pontecorvo behind the Iron Curtain last year. The general fear last week: that the two men had gone over to the Russians, taking secret information with...
...MacLean and Burgess did not come back. When the steamer returned to England, two of its 168 passengers were missing. In the cabins booked by the diplomats, ship's officers found two packed suitcases and a litter of towels and shaving gear. The pair, police later found, walked off the ship and hired a taxi; one of them asked the driver in flawless French to drive to Rennes at top speed. During the 90-minute ride, the two sat in taut silence; they gave the driver a 5,000-franc note, waited for 500 francs' change, rushed...
...week's end only three clues had turned up. Burgess' mother got a telegram from Rome ostensibly sent by Burgess; MacLean's wife and mother received similar telegrams from Paris. MacLean's message to his wife read: "Had to leave unexpectedly. Terribly sorry. Am quite well now. Don't worry darling. I love you. Please don't stop loving me. Donald." Handwriting experts examined the original forms, found they were written by neither Burgess nor MacLean, and "probably not by an Englishman...
Crackup. There the trail ended. But police and newsmen were also following another trail, into the two men's past. On the surface, tall, erudite Donald MacLean looked the very model of the modern British diplomat. He won honors at Cambridge, was a member of a respectable Scots family. His father, Sir Donald, was a leader of the Liberal Party, made such repetitious speeches that he inspired a parliamentary ditty: "Sir Donald MacLean, he says it over & over again." No stuffy diplomat, young MacLean loved gay parties; he and his attractive American wife often entertained in their Georgetown house...
...when MacLean was promoted to a post as Counselor in Cairo, his polished calm cracked. One night he burst into the apartment of a friend, smashed every stick of furniture in the place. The Foreign Office considered him too valuable to let him go. He was recalled to London, given psychiatric treatment. His new job after the crackup: boss of the Foreign Office's American section...