Little Lost Lambs

A hastily abandoned car, a vaguely phrased intention to visit a friend, a reassuring but phony telegram from out of the void--these were the nebulous clues left behind by British Diplomat Donald MacLean and his Foreign Office colleague, Guy Burgess, when they disappeared off the face of the free world more than two years ago. Last week, leaving behind an almost identical set of clues, still more MacLeans disappeared: Donald's attractive, Chicago-born wife Melinda and the three MacLean children.

They vanished from Geneva, Switzerland, as suddenly and as mysteriously as Donald MacLean and Guy Burgess had vanished from their posts in the inner sanctum of the British Foreign Office. Where had they gone? Why?

Two weeks ago Melinda MacLean and her children, Fergus, 9, Donald, 7, and Melinda, 2, returned from a vacation in the Balearic Islands to their apartment in Geneva, where they had been living for a year with her mother, wealthy Mrs. Melinda Dunbar of Boston and New York. Next day Mrs. MacLean packed two suitcases, loaded the children into the family's black Chevrolet, and set off to weekend at the home of a friend near Montreux, some 50 miles away. She told her mother she would be back on Sunday. The friend? Mrs. Dunbar was not sure. A "Mr. Robin," she thought her daughter had said. Sunday passed, then Monday, with no sign of the MacLeans. Mrs. Dunbar notified the British Foreign Office. Two Scotland Yard detectives sped to the scene, but they found no trace of the MacLeans.

Love from All. On Wednesday Mrs. Dunbar received a telegram from a suburb of Montreux. "Unforeseen circumstances have arisen," it read. "Am staying here longer. Please advise school boys returning about a week's time. All extremely well. Pink Rose in marvelous form. Love from all, Melinda." Pink Rose was once the pet name for little Melinda (who was born after her father faded away). Detectives found that the wire, written in a hand completely unlike Mrs. MacLean's, had been filed by a large, heavily rouged woman. A few days later the MacLean Chevrolet was found in Lausanne, at a garage close to the railroad station. A lady calling herself "Mrs. Dunbar" had left it in a great hurry, said the garage attendant. Abandoned on the seat was a child's book--Little Lost Lamb.

Anything Is Possible. Urged to the chase by a suddenly jittery British Foreign Office, the police of five nations were as hard put to find an answer as they were to determine the whereabouts of MacLean himself. No certain information has ever come out concerning the two diplomats, both known to be Communist sympathizers. They have been variously reported as shot by British counter-espionage agents, in a Communist prison, or living in luxury behind the Iron Curtain. Had Mrs. MacLean been kidnaped by the Russians in order to pry secrets out of her husband?* Had her way to his side been smoothed by Russian officialdom in return for services rendered? All Britain and much of the Western world wondered about the answers. Two leading London newspapers, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail, posted rewards for information. But there were no takers, only theories.

Like that of Burgess and her husband, Mrs. MacLean's trail seemed to lead in the direction of the Iron Curtain and then grow cold. The MacLeans could have gone by train to Vienna and there slipped over into Russian territory. A passenger on a train from Lausanne was certain he had seen them. A ticket taker was equally sure he had not. "Anything," said Geneva's police chief, "is possible."

* "I wish," a high U.S. official told a reporter last week, "that I could tell you about the information Burgess and MacLean had access to. It would make your hair curl."

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