LYALL, ARCHIE• 313driving in the Tottenham Court Road and forced to contact MI5. As
a result of Lyalin’sdefection, Operationfootwas advanced and 105
Soviet intelligence officers were either expelled or refused reentry to
the United Kingdom; Lyalin’s former colleagues in Montreal, Paris,
Bonn, and Mexico were also hurriedly withdrawn. Lasting damage
was inflicted on the KGB’s First Chief Directorate.
After his defection Lyalin was resettled in the north of England
and married Teplyakova. He died at home, after a long illness, in Feb-
ruary 1995.LYALL, ARCHIE.Archie Lyall was a traveler, expert linguist, and the
author ofThe Languages of Europewhen he was recruited intoSec-
tion Din 1938. Lyall’s prewar books include the novelEnvoy Ex-
traordinary,The Balkan Road, andIt Isn’t Done, and he enjoyed an
unparalleled reputation as abon viveurand raconteur quite apart
from his skills as a professional intelligence officer who remained in
theSecret Intelligence Service(SIS) long after the war.David
Walker, a fellow recruit in Section D who worked alongside him in
prewar Belgrade recalls him as an ‘‘admirable character’’ who ‘‘car-
ried a revolver in case of accidents and a monocle in case of serious
trouble.’’ Like many others in Section D, Lyall was absorbed into
Special Operations Executiveand he was for a time based in the
Yugoslav Sectionin Bari. He married a Yugoslav, but the relation-
ship was short lived and he returned to SIS.
During themole-hunting era of the late 1960s, he came under sus-
picion as a Soviet sympathizer and a possible traitor. Years after his
death in 1964 thecounterintelligenceferrets pursued several clues
that suggested he might have betrayed information to theKGB. One
item of purely circumstantial evidence were his remarks, published
in 1933, regarding the Soviet system. In that year he visited Moscow
with a group of committed Communists in order, as he put it, to ex-
perience the pilgrimage-like effect of religious zealots reaching their
particular Mecca. The result wasRussian Roundabout: A Non-Politi-
cal Journey, in which can be found some revealing observations
about the attraction of Leninism.
One of those who investigated Lyall wasMI5’sPeter Wright,
who discovered that at one point in his careerRoger Hollishad been
Lyall’s next-door neighbor. When confronted with this fact during an