SILVER• 489should have been caught years earlier. He suggested Fuchs had been
trapped by dedicated professionalism, whereas the truth was that the
Americans had acquired enough evidence to incriminate the scientist
from cryptographic sources and had simply passed on the informa-
tion. Indeed, a dossier had been compiled on Fuchs as a likely Soviet
spy immediately after the war, and a note had been attached to the file
byMichael Serpell, an officer whose suspicions had been aroused,
drawing attention to the need for further inquiries to be made ur-
gently. However, the then director of thecounterespionagedivision
had ignored the recommendation and thus had enabled Fuchs to con-
tinue spying for a further three years.
After eight years in the Security Service, Sillitoe retired to East-
bourne, where he ran a sweetshop, but soon afterwards he was ap-
proached by the de Beers organization to investigate diamond
smuggling. Sillitoe was enthusiastic about the project and became
sufficiently expert on the subject of illicit diamond buying to be men-
tioned byIan FleminginDiamonds Are Forever, hisJames Bond
thriller of 1956.
Sillitoe was bitter that he had been corrupted by what he regarded
as an unhealthy coterie of Security Service intellectuals, and he
promised a group of senior staff gathered in the canteen of MI5’s
headquarters that he would not repeat the exercise to save their skins,
but he never alluded to the incident again. Even in his memoirs,
Cloak without Dagger, ghosted largely byRussell Lee, his personal
assistant, he gives the official version of MI5’s investigation into
Fuchs and omits any reference to the embarrassing oversight of Ser-
pell’s comments that had caused him such anguish.SILVER. D Divisioncode name for Bhagat Ram Talwar, a committed
Communist whose brother had been hanged for assassinating a Brit-
ish official before World War II. In 1941 Talwar had played a role
in the escape of Subhas Chandra Bhose to Afghanistan, and then to
Germany, but his loyalty was always to Moscow so in May 1942,
when he was caught by the British, he received permission from the
NKVDto work forMI5as adouble agent. Under D Division’s su-
pervision, Talwar communicated with his German contact in Kabul
on themarytransmitter and founded the All-India Revolutionary
Committee. Talwar made five visits to Kabul to meet his German