A Not-So-Classy Exit

James Bond would have been mortified by the scene. At London's Tilbury Docks one afternoon last week, three mud-spattered school buses squealed to a halt and disgorged 200 Russians, including 70 of the 105 Soviet officials named as spies by the British government and ordered to leave the country (15 were out of Britain when the expulsion orders came, and 20 have since left by other means). It was hardly a classy exit. For two hours in the autumn fog, glum parents and children clutching Teddy bears waited on the Thames pier while the creaking, 35-year-old Russian cruise ship Baltika, scheduled for scrapping next year, was readied for departure. Nerves were ragged. As press cameras clicked away, one Russian shouted: "Stop those stupid things!"

Rousing Fiddler. In addition to the 70 accused KGB agents on board the Baltika were 50 non-Russians who had previously booked passage to Leningrad. But there were also 177 empty berths--reserved by the Soviet embassy in London at an average cost of $108 to make sure that no enterprising journalists suddenly decided to make the trip. As the spy ship slipped away, loaded with last-minute purchases of cigarettes, sweaters and Scotch, its loudspeaker burst forth with the rousing number If I Were a Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof.

Five nights later, the Soviet Foreign Ministry summoned the British ambassador to Moscow, Sir John Killick, who had just sat down to dinner. In fine Britannic spirit, Sir John refused to rise until he had finished his meal 30 minutes later. Only then was he informed that the Kremlin had ordered four British diplomats and a businessman to leave the country. An additional nine diplomats, three businessmen and an academician who were not in the Soviet Union at the moment were declared persona non grata; some of them, in fact, had not been there for five years. For good measure, the Kremlin declared that the visit to Moscow of British Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home, scheduled for next spring, was "impossible." Whitehall denounced the Soviet action as "arbitrary victimization," but for the moment did not strike back, as it had earlier threatened.

Other bulletins from the spy scene:

> In Beirut, Lebanese officials reacted angrily to a charge by Kim Philby, the Briton who defected to the Soviet Union in 1963, that eight Lebanese journalists and politicians had been working for British intelligence. Philby's charge was clearly part of a "disinformation" campaign designed to divert attention from the big spy case in London. One unexpected result was to disrupt a Soviet campaign to cultivate Lebanon's influential moderate and right-wing leaders. Former President Camille Chamoun, whose eldest son Dorian was named by Philby, angrily canceled a dinner he had planned to give for Soviet Ambassador Sarvar Azimov.

> The New York Times quoted U.S. "security experts" as saying that Vladimir P. Pavlichenko, 48, director of external relations in the United Nations Office of Public Information, was a veteran KGB man whose special assignment is to cultivate U.S. scientists. Pavlichenko called the story "slanderous and false." Though his $27,000-a-year job was renewed last week, there was speculation that he would eventually return to Moscow on one pretext or another.

> In Brussels, Tass Correspondent Valentine Volkov departed so suddenly that he failed to get a compulsory exit visa; he later was reported to have surfaced in Moscow. Anatole Chebotarev, a member of the Soviet trade delegation, was also missing, along with a Soviet embassy car. Chebotarev was said to have been a friend of Oleg Lyalin, whose defection to the West several weeks ago launched the massive spy case in London. At week's end the car was found near the North Sea port of Zeebrugge, and there were reports that Chebotarev had slipped away to Britain.

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