Agent of Influence by Mark Hollingsworth

Author:Mark Hollingsworth
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780861545339
Publisher: Oneworld Publications

6

ALL ABOUT EVE

It appears that this Club is a sort of sub-department of the Foreign Office

Sir Laurence Dunne, Chief Metropolitan Magistrate,

Bow Street Court, 14 September 1954

IT IS 11 P.M. IN A spacious dimly-lit basement nightclub just off Regent Street, sometime in 1958. Decorated extravagantly as the first earthly paradise by being hung with vines and what looked like the foliage of a metallic banana plantation, the Eve Club’s lights are blue, red and purple but low key. The stage show takes place on an illuminated glass floor where exotic half-naked women in outlandish headdresses dance to cabaret numbers like ‘Fantasy in the Jungle’ or slow routines. In the crimson velvet-lined booths, the hostesses smile obligingly and murmur interest in the gentlemen clients’ conversation, however slurred and familiar it may be, as they drink Bollinger 66 champagne and smoke Pall Mall cigarettes.

But this is no ordinary private club. In one plush upholstered corner, you can see Earl Jellicoe, a former MI6 officer and later leader of the House of Lords, with a fellow aristocrat. At another table there is a QC in conversation with an MP or an ambassador. And in a more discreet booth you will find KGB, Czech and Romanian intelligence officers talking in hushed tones while being discreetly observed by an MI5 officer pretending to be a businessman with an expense account.

Presiding over this unique den of political, sexual and espionage intrigue is the eagle-eyed, diminutive, vivacious, blonde figure of the joint owner, Helen O’Brien. As she sits at Table One, as it was known, chain smoking a black, gold-tipped Balkan Sobranie cigarette and sipping a glass of Drappier champagne, she is not just checking that her young girls are not being harassed by the middle-aged men. She is scrutinising the faces, comments and behaviour of her members, especially the spies or ‘diplomats’ as they describe themselves on their application forms. She does not trust many people and has a cutting wit with a sharp tongue.

‘Don’t insult my intelligence’, she would remark, if a member made an unreasonable request.

The KGB officers, posing as bankers, and their fellow spies from Romania, East Germany and Czechoslovakia enjoy the company of the young hostesses, the exotic cocktails and the innovative floor shows. But they also relish the discretion and secrecy. Unlike other clubs, photographers and journalists are banned and new members are carefully vetted. For intelligence-gathering and networking it is the perfect venue for observing and perhaps even compromising leading members of the British Establishment. Three years earlier, Sir Laurence Dunne, the chief metropolitan magistrate of London, presided over a hearing in Bow Street Court to decide whether the Eve Club was serving alcohol after hours. As he read through the list of members, Sir Laurence, who had overseen a court hearing involving the infamous atomic spy Klaus Fuchs, raised his eyebrows several times. He paused and commented, ‘This [club] appears to be a sort of sub-department of the Foreign Office’ and dismissed the case.

The membership list was of great interest to the KGB.

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