World Notes ESPIONAGE

For many years, John Cairncross, 76, has lived quietly in Italy and France. But his retirement was rudely interrupted last week when he was named the mysterious "fifth man" in Britain's most famous spy case.

Cairncross's accuser is Oleg Gordievsky, who defected from the Soviet KGB in 1985 and is co-author of the new book KGB: The Inside Story. In addition to revealing in a TIME excerpt last week that President Franklin Roosevelt's key aide, Harry Hopkins, was an unwitting accomplice of the KGB, Gordievsky contends that Cairncross was a member of a spy ring that included Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt. Though Cairncross was ousted from a sensitive government post in 1951 for allegedly passing documents to the Soviets, his spy connection was never proved. Last week he continued to deny that he is the missing link. But British intelligence sources back up Gordievsky's story.