No Other Choice—别无选择（乔治·布莱克）（引言）
Introduction
by
Phillip Knightley
In the history of British espionage no spy arouses such passion, such a conflict of emotions, as George Blake. Convicted of working for the KGB while serving as an officer in Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, Blake was sentenced in London in 1961 to forty-two years' imprisonment for his treachery, the longest term ever imposed under English law.
【在英国间谍史上，没有一个间谍具有乔治·布莱克这样的激情与情感冲突。布莱克在英国秘密情报局任职期间为克格勃工作，1961年因其背叛行为在伦敦被判处42年监禁，这是英国法律规定的最长刑期。】
His damage to Western intelligence was so great - he confessed to having passed to the KGB a copy of every important official document which had come into his hands - that his trial was held in camera and the British government did its best to persuade the media to conceal the fact that Blake had ever been in intelligence work.
【他对西方情报界造成的破坏巨大——他承认把他手中的每一份重要文件都交给了克格勃，对布莱克的审判在镜头前进行，英国政府尽力说服媒体隐瞒他曾经从事情报工作的事实。】
The scanty news that 'leaked' after his trial suggested that he had been a traitor of the first magnitude. It was said that he had 'undone most of the work of British intelligence since the end of the war', that he had given the KGB the name of every British agent behind the Iron Curtain, and, most damaging of all in the public view, he had been responsible for the deaths of 42 of them - hence his sentence, 'a year for each life betrayed'. One history of British intelligence tells of these events under the revealing chapter heading, 'The Blake Catastrophe'.
【在他的审判后，透露的消息表明他是一个一流的间谍。据说他自战争结束以来使英国情报部门的很多工作付之东流，他给了克格勃铁幕后面每一个英国特工的名字，并且，在公众看来破坏最大的是他造成了42人的死亡，因此在判决时——“一年刑期表明一个被背叛的间谍”。英国情报机构在“布莱克灾难”的章节标题下讲述了这些事件。】
Once he was behind bars, Blake, to the relief of the authorities,dropped out of the news. Then, when he had served barely five-and-a-half years of his forty-two, Blake made a spectacular escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison, West London, confounded the police, and vanished. He surfaced in the Soviet Union, a year later. There he settled quietly into Moscow life with a new Russian wife. (His British one, by whom he had three sons, had met someone else and had started divorce proceedings just before Blake's escape.) He avoided Western journalists and shunned any publicity.
【待布莱克进入监狱后，他让当局松了一口气，布莱克退出了新闻视野。然后，布莱克在42年刑期的监狱生涯中只服刑了5年半，他就从伦敦西部的伍姆伍德监狱越狱，让警察感到困惑是，找不到他的蛛丝马迹。一年后，他在苏联露面。在那里，他和俄罗斯的新妻子安静地进入了莫斯科的生活。（他在英国生有三个儿子，在布莱克逃跑之前，他有了外遇，并开始了离婚诉讼。）他避开了西方记者，也回避了任何宣传。】
Periodically the press would return to Blake's story because there were so many unanswered questions. When, for example, had Moscow recruited him? One version had Blake loyal to Britain until he was brainwashed as a prisoner in a Communist prisoner-of-war camp during the Korean war. Another was that he had been a Communist since a teenager and had been cunningly inserted into British intelligence as a KGB penetration agent, an act made possible by the failure of our security services to check his background thoroughly.Some said Blake had done it all for money and that his hands were stained with the blood of agents who had trusted him; others that he was an ideological spy, besotted by Marxism, who believed his work for the KGB was in the best interests of world peace. But despite the many books and articles, the real Blake remained an enigma.
【媒体会定期回到布莱克的故事上，因为有很多未解的问题。例如，莫斯科是什么时候招募他的？有一个说法是布莱克忠于英国，直到他在朝鲜战争期间在战俘营中被感化为共产主义战士。另一个原因是，他从十几岁起就起就是共产主义者，作为克格勃的特工被巧妙地插入英国情报部门，这是由于我们的安全部门未能彻底调查他的背景。有人说布莱克做这一切都是为了钱，他的双手沾满了信任他的特工的鲜血；另一些人则认为他是一个意识形态间谍，信仰马克思主义，他相信他为克格勃所做的工作符合世界和平的最大利益。但是，尽管有很多相关书籍和文章，真正的布莱克仍旧是个谜。】
My own interest in Blake, always strong, revived in 1988 when,after an intermittent correspondence over a twenty-year period, I went to Moscow for six days of interviews with Kim Philby, the other SIS officer who had also worked for the KGB. Philby had fled to Moscow from Beirut in 1963. (He had been in Lebanon at the same time as George Blake but the two had never met. In fact, neither knew of the other's work for the KGB until they were exposed.)
【我对布莱克的兴趣一直很浓厚，1988年，在20年来断断续续的通信之后，我去莫斯科做了六天的采访，金·菲尔比，这位军官也为克格勃工作。菲尔比于1963年从贝鲁特逃到莫斯科。(他和乔治·布莱克同时工作在黎巴嫩，但两人从未见过面。事实上，在对方被曝光之前，两人都不知道对方为克格勃做工作。)】
In the course of my conversations with Philby, Blake's name often came up. The two exiles had been friends. They had visited each other's apartments, married Russian women who were themselves friends - Blake's wife, Ida, had introduced Philby to his future wife,Rufa. There had been parties at Blake's dacha and Philby had taken an avuncular interest in Blake's son by Ida, Misha. Then the two men had fallen out and drifted apart. But when Philby died in May, 1988,Blake had attended the KGB ceremonies to mark the occasion.
【在我和菲尔比谈话的中，我经常提到布莱克的名字。这两个流亡者一直是朋友。他们参观了彼此的公寓，娶了同样是朋友的俄罗斯女人——布莱克的妻子艾达把菲尔比介绍给了他未来的妻子鲁法。他们在布莱克的别墅里举行过聚会，菲尔比对布莱克的儿子米莎有极大的兴趣。然后，这两个人就渐渐不再相聚了。但当菲尔比于1988年5月去世时，布莱克参加了纪念菲尔比的仪式。】
I wrote to Blake soon afterwards, passing the letter through Novosti, the Soviet press agency. This was necessary because, unlike Philby who had a box at the main Post Office in Moscow, Blake kept his address a secret. No one knew where he lived or what he did.Whereas Philby had given an interview to the Sunday Times in 1967 and photographs of him in Moscow had appeared in the Western press, Blake had remained in the shadows. So in my letter I suggested that we meet and that I should write about him as I had written about Philby - as objectively as possible.
【不久之后，我给布莱克写了信，通过苏联新闻社转发。因为不像在莫斯科的主邮局有一个金菲尔比的信箱，布莱克的地址保密。没有人知道他住在哪里，或者他做了什么。1967年，菲尔比接受了《星期日泰晤士报》的采访，他在莫斯科的照片也出现在了西方媒体上，而布莱克则一直处在阴影中。所以在我的信中，我建议我们见面，这样我可以像写菲尔比的那样——尽可能客观。】
I had an indirect reply via Novosti saying that Blake would consider my request when he had finished writing his own book, an account of his life. As this was obviously going to take some time, I put the matter out of my mind. Then, in June this year, Blake got in touch and said he would be able to spare me a couple of days before he went on his family summer holiday the following week.
【我通过新闻社得到了一个间接的回复，说当布莱克写完自己的书，讲述他的生活后，他会考虑我的请求。因为这显然需要一些时间，所以我把这件事忘了。然后，在今年6月，布莱克联系了我，说他可以给我几天时间，然后他下一周要去和家人度假。】
It had been winter when I saw Philby, the countryside covered in snow, the Moscow streets thick with slush. The Berlin Wall was still up and the end of the Cold War was not even in sight. Now our plane flew over a Russia green with the warmth of summer, and instead of a KGB car to take me to Philby's flat, there was a Russian taxi-driver quoting the fare to the city in dollars. As we hurried down the highway past the monument that marks the limit of the German advance on Moscow, I wondered about the approaching meeting with Blake. Clearly this was going to be very different from Philby. I knew so much about Philby from his letters, from his own book, from conversations with members of his family who lived in London, and from interviews with his former colleagues in Britain and the United States, that the eventual meeting was no real surprise. He was as I expected - convivial, humorous, charming, an expansive host, and open in his defence of what he had done. How would Blake be?
【当我看到菲尔比时，已经是冬天了，乡村积雪，莫斯科的街道都是泥泞。柏林墙还在修建，冷战还有很久结束。现在，我们的飞机在温暖的夏天飞过了俄罗斯绿地，一辆不是克格勃的汽车送我去菲尔比的公寓，而是一个俄罗斯出租车司机用美元报了去这座城市的票价。当我们沿着公路匆匆经过标志着德军向莫斯科前进极限的纪念碑时，我想知道与布莱克的会面会是什么样。很明显，这和菲尔比大不一样。我对菲尔比的信件、他自己的书、他与住在伦敦的家人的谈话、对他在英国和美国的前同事的采访了解甚多，因此最终的会面并不令人惊讶。他正如我所料的那样——欢乐、幽默、迷人、一个慷慨的主人，并公开为他的所作所为辩护。那么布莱克会怎么样？】
We met at my hotel the morning after I arrived. A slight, neat man,looking younger than his sixty-eight years, dressed in a striped blue shirt, no tie, grey trousers, red socks and suede slip-on shoes, he looked very Russian, so the guard on the hotel door at first refused to allow him to enter the lobby, much to Blake's annoyance. Why is it that men of great dash and daring, men who tackle fate with two hands, appear so ordinary when you meet them?
【我到达后的第二天早上，我们在旅馆见面了。他是一个身材瘦小、整洁的人，看上去比他的年龄年轻得多，穿着蓝色条纹衬衫，没有领带，灰色裤子，红袜子和绒面革便鞋，看上去很俄国化，所以酒店门口的警卫起初拒绝让他进入大厅，这让布莱克很恼火。为什么那些勇敢的人，那些用双手对付命运的人，在你遇见他们时却显得那么平凡？】
Blake was wary of me. He did not want to start the interviews immediately. 'We need to get to know each other a bit first,' he said.I suggested a drink in the hotel's hard currency bar that evening, or a meal in one of the new Moscow restaurants that take only Western credit cards. He was appalled. 'I don't approve of those sort of places,'he said. He suggested instead a short drive to the Moscow University look-out and a walk in the nearby park.
【布莱克对我很警惕。他不想立即开始采访。他说，我们需要先了解彼此。那天晚上，我建议去酒店的酒吧喝一杯，或者去莫斯科一家只使用西方信用卡的新餐馆吃一顿饭。他感到非常震惊了。他说，我不赞成去这种地方。他建议开车去莫斯科大学观光，去附近的公园散步。】
I found him at first a retiring man, not easy to draw out, careful in the extreme. (He had, for example, parked his car a long way from the hotel because, he said, he could not be certain that there would be parking close-by, and to drive around the block again might make him late.) He wanted to know exactly what we would be doing over the next two days, how I planned to approach our talks, had I read his book, how would what I write differ from it, where and when would my material appear.
【我起初发现他是一个把自己隐藏起来的人，不容易刻画出来，非常小心。（例如，他把车停在离酒店很远的地方，因为他说，他不能确定附近是否可以停车，再次在街区开车可能会让他迟到。）他想确切地知道，在接下来的两天里，我们会做什么，我计划如何处理我们的采访，如果我读了他的书，我写的东西与它会有什么不同，我的材料会在哪里和什么时候出现。】
That first morning we steered clear of his spying career, talking instead in general terms of what was happening in the Soviet Union,of Kim Philby and of Donald Maclean, the British diplomat who defected to the USSR in 1951. He was pleased when I said that, as a result of what he had written about Maclean in his book, the West would have to reassess Maclean's life.
【第一天早上，我们避开了他的间谍生涯，转而笼统地谈论了苏联发生的事情，金·菲尔比和1951年叛逃到苏联的英国外交官唐纳德·麦克莱恩。当我说时，他很高兴，由于他在书中写的关于麦克林的东西，西方将不得不重新评价麦克林。】
Then we spoke about his ninety-five-year-old mother who lives in Holland. She is obviously an important influence in his life and his face became animated when he talked of her. It causes him some pain that they can never again meet - she is too old to make the long trip to Moscow and he cannot go to Holland. 'The British might kidnap me,'he said, 'and the Dutch police would turn a blind eye.' I said that I thought this unlikely. 'You don't understand,' he said. 'The risk is much greater for me than it was for Philby or Maclean. They were never convicted of anything. But if the British authorities got hold of me, all they would have to do would be to put me back in my cell at Wormwood Scrubs.' He did not say it, but I got the feeling that this was the last thing Blake was going to allow to happen.
【然后我们谈论了他住在荷兰的95岁的母亲。她显然对他的生活产生了重要的影响，当他谈到她时，他的脸变得活跃起来。这给他带来了一些他们再也无法不到的痛苦——她太老了，不能去莫斯科长途旅行，他也不能去荷兰。他说，英国人可能会绑架我，而荷兰警方也会视而不见。我说过，我认为这是不太可能。“你不明白，”他说。“我的风险比菲尔比或麦克林大得多。他们从未被判有罪。但如果英国当局抓住了我，他们所要做的就是把我放回伍姆伍德监狱里。”他没有说，但我觉得这是布莱克最不允许发生的事。】
We met the next morning and drove to his apartment, bigger and better than most in Moscow, but very modest by Western standards.(It had once been a KGB 'safe house'.) There we talked for hours. Slowly he unbent and there emerged a man I was completely unprepared for. Unless Blake was playing some deep KGB game-and in the light of current world events what would be the point? -then we have to cast aside all our preconceptions about George Blake and think again.
【第二天早上我们见面，开车去了他的公寓，这比莫斯科的大多数人都更大更好，但以西方的标准来看，公寓非常简陋。（它曾经是克格勃的“安全屋”。）我们在那里谈了好几个小时。他慢慢地弯腰，表现出我是一个完全没有防备的人。除非布莱克在玩一些深度的克格勃游戏——鉴于当前世界的情况，这有什么意义呢？我们要抛弃所有成见，坦率的交流。】
As we went through his life together I realised that it was not just that of one of the most successful spies in history. It was not just an account of deceit, treachery and betrayal. It was the story of a man who risked his life from the time he was a teenager for what he believed in. He did not always win - he lost his liberty four times to four different regimes and has spent nearly nine years locked up. But, looking back on this, he does not complain. In fact he says that his times in prison have been among the most interesting and rewarding in his life. 'You cannot imagine the fascinating people I met in Wormwood Scrubs,' he says.
【当我们重新经历他的生活时，我意识到这不仅仅是历史上最成功的间谍之一。这不仅仅是对欺骗、背叛的描述。它讲述的是一个男人从十几岁时起就冒着生命危险的故事。他并不总是赢——他因为四个不同的政权失去四次自由，并且被关押了将近9年。但是，回顾这一点，他并没有抱怨。事实上，他说，他在狱中的时光是他一生中最有趣、最有回报的时光之一。他说：“你无法想象我在伍姆伍德监狱中遇到的那些迷人的人。”】
I know that this will infuriate the many people who revile George Blake, but I decided that I was dealing with a very sincere man who is in the process of coming to terms with the fact that the side he chose forty years ago has lost the ideological battle. He is not bitter or unhappy about this; he accepts it. But it does not mean that his love affair with Russia is over - far from it. He says he has linked his fate with his adopted country 'and I will stay, come what may, for better or for worse, till death do us part.'
【我知道这将激怒许多嘲笑乔治·布莱克的人，但我觉得我面对的是一个非常真诚的人，他正在接受他四十年前选择的一方已经输掉了意识形态的战斗。他对此并不痛苦或不高兴；他接受了它。但这并不意味着他与苏联的恋情已经甚远。他说，他把自己的命运和他的养国联系在一起，“无论如何，我都将留下来，直到死亡把我们分开。”】
Blake is given to dramatic statements like this. But it is impossible to predict what path they will take. He is a man of complex and sometimes bewildering views. Among the people who helped him escape from Wormwood Scrubs were two members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Yet Blake himself is a firm believer in the bomb and the nuclear deterrent. And just when I thought I had him catalogued as a typical Dutch Calvinist, he announced that he no longer considered himself a Christian. We then spent hours trying to fathom exactly what he is, and failed.
【布莱克喜欢像这样的戏剧性的陈述。但我们不可能预测他们会走哪条路。他是一个观点复杂，有时甚至令人困惑的人。在帮助他逃离伍姆伍德监狱的人中，有两名核裁军运动的成员。然而，布莱克本人是炸弹和核威慑的信徒。就在我以为我把他归类为典型的荷兰加尔文主义者时，他宣布他不再认为自己是基督徒。然后我花了几个小时试图了解他到底是什么样的人，但失败了。】
When I ventured that he must have hated Britain to have betrayed it so, he said that, on the contrary, he loves Britain and the British people and has the highest regard for them. He then embarked on a long and detailed criticism of the British class system and expressed bitterness that he had been treated differently from the other British KGB spies.
【当我大胆地说，他一定讨厌英国这样背叛它时，他说，相反，他爱英国和英国人民，对他们报以最大的尊重。随后，他开始对英国的阶级制度进行了详尽的批评，并对自己与其他英国克格勃间谍受到的不同的对待表示不满。】
I was just absorbing this when he announced that he admires some of his ex-colleagues in SIS, and was reluctant to name them in his book, partly because of his SIS training in secrecy, and partly because the KGB is concerned lest he upset the new good relations between Britain and the Soviet Union. I expected him to be evasive about the agents he betrayed, or, like Philby, say it was war and people die in wars. But Blake freely admitted passing to the KGB the names of Communist bloc agents recruited by SIS. In fact, he said, he did not betray 42 agents but 'more likely four hundred'. But he feels fully justified in doing this because 'they were working against Communism'. And then, most astounding of all, he insisted that the KGB killed none of them and that some of them are not only alive and well today but working in the new democratic regimes in liberated Eastern Europe.
【当他宣布他钦佩他在军情六处中的一些前同事时，我只是在听了这一点，并且不愿在他的书中说出他们的名字，部分原因是他在军情六处中接受过保密培训，部分原因是克格勃担心他会扰乱英国和苏联之间新的良好关系。我以为他会对他背叛的特工闪烁回避，或者像菲尔比一样，说这是战争，人们死于战争。但布莱克自由地承认，他将被军情六处招募的共产主义阵营特工的名字传给了克格勃。事实上，他说，他并没有背叛42名特工，而是“更有可能背叛400人”。但他觉得这样做完全有理由，因为“他们是在反对共产主义”。然后，最令人震惊的是，他坚持说克格勃没有杀死他们，他们中的一些人不仅活着，并且活得很好，而且在现在东欧的新政权中工作。】
We returned to this subject when, on the second day, we drove down to his dacha in the countryside east of Moscow. Blake planned our outing carefully. We stopped on the outskirts of the city at a Georgian co-operative store that he knew and bought some suckling pig. (The butcher was mysteriously absent so Blake persuaded a helpful shop assistant to allow him into the butcher's section at the back of the store where he cut the meat himself.) We stopped again at a country market and bought some strawberries and plums.
【第二天，我们开车回到莫斯科东部的乡间别墅，回到了这个地方。布莱克仔细地计划了我们的郊游。我们在城市郊区一家他认识的格鲁吉亚合作商店停了下来，买了一些乳猪。（屠夫不在，所以布莱克说服了一个店员允许他进入商店后面的屠区，他自己在那里切肉。）我们又在一个乡村市场停下来，买了一些草莓和李子。】
After lunch we came back to the agents he had betrayed. Either he had blood on his hands, I said, or he did not. Why should we believe that the KGB had not executed as traitors the agents Blake had betrayed? 'Because I asked the KGB not to do so,' Blake said. 'I said that I would give them the names only on the guarantee that they would not be killed. They gave me that guarantee and I believe them.' Would he accept that other people might find this naive, or would not believe his story at all? 'Of course,' he said. 'But nevertheless it is true.' And to support his claim he pointed out - quite correctly - that it was not part of the Crown case against him at his trial that he had been responsible for the deaths of any agents, and, he said, nor had anyone ever been able to prove since that he had.
【午饭后，我们继续谈了他背叛的特工。我说，他手上有血，要么没有。为什么我们要相信克格勃没有将布莱克特工背叛的叛徒处决呢？布莱克说，因为我要求克格勃不要这样做。“我说过，我只会给他们的名字，以保证他们不会被杀。他们给了我这个保证，我也相信他们。”他会接受其他人可能会觉得这很幼稚，还是根本不相信他的故事？“当然了，”他说。“但这仍然是真的。”为了支持他的主张，他指出在审判中，针对他的刑事案件中，他没有对任何特工的死亡负责，而且，他说，也没有人能够证明他有。】
Our conversations were not all so serious. Blake has a keen sense of humour, particularly about the ironies of the intelligence world, and some of the stories he tells in his book could not have been invented by either John le Carre or Len Deighton at their best. Neither would have challenged their readers to believe what happened to Blake after he confessed to his SIS interrogators that he was indeed a KGB spy - they took him off for a weekend in the country! In a lovely house (surrounded by Special Branch officers) they chatted and took long walks (followed by police cars) and when it was time for tea on Sunday, George Blake, a good cook, made the pancakes.
【我们的谈话并不是都那么严肃。布莱克有敏锐的幽默感，尤其是对情报界的讽刺，他在书中讲述的一些故事不可能是由约翰·勒·卡尔或莱恩·戴顿编造出来的。在布莱克向他的审讯人员承认，他确实是克格勃的间谍——他们带他去这个国家度过了一个周末！在一所可爱的房子里（周围有专门的警察），他们聊天，散步（后面跟着警车），周日喝茶的时候，乔治·布莱克做了煎饼。】
Then there is his escape from Wormwood Scrubs. Blake says that far from being carried out with military precision - which led to rumours that it must have been organised by the KGB - it was marked by cock-ups and confusion and that the whole project was saved from disaster only by the loyalty and goodwill of his fellow prisoners.
【然后是他从伍姆伍德监狱逃脱的过程。布莱克说，这远不是军事上的精确执行——这导致了有谣言说它一定是由克格勃组织的，但是它的特点是搞砸与混乱，整个越狱计划是由于他的狱友的忠诚和善意才得以成功实施。】
Blake has not shirked the personal aspects of his life. He writes of the shock the revelation of his treachery caused his wife - she was eight months pregnant when he was arrested. He describes meeting this son in Moscow for the first time eighteen years later. But I leave the readers to decide whether they find something strange in Blake's writing when he is dealing with his relations with people close to him. Is it, as I believe, that Blake is ashamed at the personal betrayals that his greater treachery involved? Or is it possible, as someone who knows him says, 'There is a great chasm in George Blake's heart?'
【布莱克并没有逃避他个人生活方面。他写道，他的背叛行为的揭露给他的妻子带来了震惊——他被捕时她已经怀孕八个月。他描述了18年后在莫斯科第一次见到这个儿子。但我让读者自己决定，当布莱克在处理与他亲近的人的关系时，他们是否会在他的作品中发现一些奇怪的地方。正如我所相信的那样，布莱克是否为他更大的背叛所涉及的个人背叛感到羞耻？还是有可能，就像一个认识他的人说的那样，“在乔治·布莱克的心中有一个巨大的鸿沟？”】
Early on in our talks I asked George Blake why he had written this book. He said that he had at first been reluctant to do so. He had become used to a quiet, modest existence in Moscow with his family, his cocker spaniel Danny, his books, his record collection, and his not-too-demanding job at the Institute for World Economic and International Affairs. This is understandable. There must come a time when even the most daring adventurer grows tired of the risks and longs for a little of normal life. But in the early 1970s, the KGB urged him to write his story - no doubt for use as propaganda. Blake made a half-hearted attempt and produced a poor manuscript. The KGB put a very high price on it and when no Western publisher would meet it, the project lapsed. After glasnost, there were renewed offers for Blake's 'real story' and, after a lot of thought, Blake said, he wrote his autobiography again, this time with enthusiasm and without inhibition. In fact, he said, he delivered his second manuscript to his Western publisher before he showed a copy to his friends in the KGB.
【在我们谈话的早期，我问乔治·布莱克他为什么要写这本书。他说，他起初一直不愿意这样做。他已经习惯了在莫斯科安静、谦虚的生活，他的猎犬丹尼、他的书、他的唱片收藏，以及他在世界经济和国际事务研究所的要求不太高的工作。这是可以理解的。总有一天，即使是最大胆的冒险家也会厌倦这些风险，渴望过上一点正常的生活。但在20世纪70年代早期，克格勃敦促他写自己的故事——无疑是为了用作宣传。布莱克三心半意地尝试了一下，写出了一份糟糕的手稿。克格勃付出了非常高的价格，当没有西方出版商能满足它时，这个项目就失效了。布莱克说，布莱克的“真实故事”又重新提出。经过很多思考，他又写了自传，这次是带着热情，没有抑制。事实上，他说，他在把一份手稿寄给克格勃的朋友之前，就把他的第二份手稿交给了他的西方出版商。】
But even in the new manuscript, the first drafts had a peculiar,detached tone. Blake recognised this. It was due, he told me, to a feeling that 'it all seemed as if it had happened to another person' and that he often had difficulty in relating the George Blake of today to, say, the teenage courier in the Dutch underground.
【但即使是在新手稿中，初稿也有一种奇特的、超然的语气。布莱克认识到这一点。他告诉我，这是因为一种感觉，“这一切似乎都发生在了另一个人身上”，他经常很难把今天的乔治·布莱克和荷兰地下组织的少年信使联系起来。】
I sensed that it was not always a pleasant experience for George Blake to relive his life through his typewriter. But he has done it. I believe it is a frank and fair account - but without access to the archives of SIS and the KGB it is impossible to be sure - and that whether you hate him for the traitor to Britain that he is, whether you admire him as a man who had a revelation and whose principles forced him to act the way he did, or even if you believe, as Blake himself does, that fate ordained his path and he could as little change it as Canute could the tide, you will find this story compelling reading.
【我感觉到，对乔治·布莱克来说，通过打字机重温他的生活并不总是一次愉快的经历。但他已经做到了。我相信这是一个坦率和公平的说法——但如果无法访问 军情六处和克格勃的档案，就无法确定——你是否因为他是英国的叛徒而恨他，你是否钦佩他作为一个男人，即使你相信，布莱克自己，命运任命他的路径，他可以改变潮流，你会发现这个故事的引人注目。】
There is, as well, the book's political importance. As the Soviet Union is shaken by events as momentous as the Bolshevik Revolution itself, one man's account of why he attached himself to Communism, even when it meant betraying his country, his colleagues, his family and his friends, gives us valuable insight into a dangerous period of our history, one that, thankfully, now seems to be over.
【还有，这本书的政治重要性。 当苏联被布尔什维克革命本身这样重大的事件所震撼时，一个人对他为何信仰共产主义，即使这意味着背叛他的国家、他的同事、他的家人和他的朋友，让我们面对一个我们历史上最危险时期。但是谢天谢地，现在似乎已经结束了。】
Moscow
July, 1990
