by Len Deighton
It was Gabby who shot the searchlight out. Afterwards Bernard said it was Max, but that was because Bernard wanted to believe it was Max. The death of Max distressed Bernard in a way that few other losses had ever done. And of course Bernard never shook off the guilt that came from his being the only survivor.
He saw the other three die. Max, Tom and Gabby. They were cut to pieces by a heavy machine gun: an old reliable 12.7mm Degtyarev. The noise of the machine gun sounded very loud in the night air. Everyone for miles around heard it. That would teach the English a lesson.
‘Where’s the other one?’ said Stinnes, still watching the radar screen.
‘He tripped and fell down. Damn! Damn! Damn! They’re putting the big jammer on now!’ As the two men watched, electronic clutter came swirling up from the bottom of the screen: major interference like a snowstorm.
‘Where is he?’ Stinnes slapped his hand upon the blinded radar and its useless screen and shouted, ‘Where?’ The men in the bunker with him jumped to their feet, stared straight ahead, standing stiff and upright as a good Russian soldier is taught to stand when a senior officer shouts at him.
Thus it was that Bernard Samson drowned in the clutter and scrambled away unhurt, running like he’d never run before, eventually to fall into the arms of Sergeant Powell.
‘Shit!’ said Powell. ‘Where did you come from, laddie?’ For one wild moment Sergeant Powell thought he’d captured a prisoner. When he realized that it was only an escaper from the East he was disappointed. ‘They said there’d be two. Where’s the other fellow?’
3
Cambridgeshire, England. February 1978.
Sir Henry Clevemore was not renowned for his hospitality, and rightly so. As the Director-General of the Secret Intelligence Service, he carefully chose the people he met and where he met them. The chosen venue was unlikely to be his own home, a magnificent old timber and stone mansion, a large part of which dated from the sixteenth century. In any case Lady Clevemore did not enjoy entertaining, she never had. If her husband wanted to entertain he could use the Cavalry Club in Piccadilly. It was more convenient in every way.
So it was a flattering exception when on a chilly February evening he invited Bret Rensselaer – a senior Departmental employee – to drive out to Cambridgeshire for dinner.
Sir Henry appeared to have overlooked the fact that Rensselaer was the sort of American who liked to wear formal clothes. Bret had agonized about whether to wear a tuxedo but had finally decided upon a charcoal suit, tailored in that waisted style so beloved of Savile Row craftsmen, lightly starched white shirt and grey silk tie. Sir Henry was wearing a blue lounge suit that had seen better days, a soft collared shirt with a missing button and highly polished scuffed black brogues that needed new laces.
‘For God’s sake, why a woman?’ said Bret Rensselaer more calmly than his choice of words suggested. ‘Why ever did you choose a woman?’ This was not the way Departmental staff usually addressed Sir Henry Clevemore, but Bret Rensselaer had ‘a special relationship’ with the Director-General. It was a relationship based to some extent upon Bret Rensselaer’s birthplace, his influential friends in the State Department, and to some extent upon the fact that Bret’s income made him financially independent of the Secret Intelligence Service, and of most other things.
‘Do smoke if you want to. Can I offer you a cigar?’
‘No thank you, Sir Henry.’
Sir Henry Clevemore sat back in his armchair and sipped his whisky. They were in the drawing room staring at a blazing log fire, having been served a grilled lobster dinner and the last bottle of a particularly good Montrachet that Sir Henry had been given by the Permanent Under-Secretary.
‘It doesn’t work like that, Bret,’ said Sir Henry. He was being very conciliatory: they both knew how the Department worked but the D-G was determined to be charming. Charm was the D-G’s style unless he was in a hurry. ‘I wasn’t looking for a female,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Of that you can be quite sure. We have a number of people…I know you wouldn’t expect to go into details…But several. Men and women we have been patiently playing to the Russians for years and years, in the hope that one day we’d be able to do something spectacular with one of them.’
‘And for her that day has come?’ said Bret. He extended an open hand towards the fire to sample its heat. He hadn’t been really warm since getting out of his car. That was the trouble with these stately old homes, they could never be efficiently heated. Bret wished he’d taken a chance on what sort of evening it would be, and worn warmer, more casual clothes: a tweed jacket perhaps. Sir Henry probably wouldn’t have cared or even noticed.
The D-G looked at Bret to see if there was an element of sarcasm there. There wasn’t: it was just another example of the American directness of approach which made Bret the best candidate for looking after a really promising double agent. He turned on the charm. ‘You started this thing rolling, Bret. When, a few weeks back, you floated this idea I didn’t think much of it, to tell you the truth. But I began looking at possible candidates, and then other things happened that made it seem more and more possible. Let’s just say that the float has twitched and that may be a sign the other side is ready to bite. It may be, that’s all.’
Bret suppressed a temptation to say that in too many such situations the Russians had devoured the bait so that the Department had reeled in an empty hook. Everything indicated that the Russians knew more about turning agents than their enemies did about running them. ‘But a woman…’ said Bret to remind the D-G of his other reservation.
‘An extraordinary woman, a brilliant and beautiful woman,’ said the D-G.
‘Enter Miss X.’ Bret’s feelings were bruised by the D-G’s stubborn reluctance to provide more details of this candidate. He’d expected to be having a say in the final selection process.
‘Mrs X, to be precise.’
‘All the more reason that the Russkies will not want her over there. It’s a male-dominated society and the KGB is the last place we’ll ever see change.’
‘I’m not sure I agree with you there, Bret.’ The D-G permitted himself a little grin. ‘They are changing their ways. So are we all, I suppose.’ He couldn’t hide the regret in his voice. ‘But my feeling is that we’ll gain from their old-fashioned entrenched attitudes. They will never suspect that we would try to plant a woman into the Committee.’
‘No. I guess you’re right, Sir Henry.’ It was Bret’s turn to wonder. He liked the way the old man’s mind worked. There were people who said the D-G was past it – and the D-G sometimes seemed to go to great lengths to encourage that misreading – but Bret knew from first-hand experience that, for the overall strategy, the old man had an acute mind that was tortuous and sometimes devious. That was why Bret had taken his idea about ‘getting a man into the Kremlin’ to Sir Henry in person.
The old man leaned forward. The polite preliminaries, like the evening itself, were coming to an end. Now they were talking as man and master. ‘We both know the dangers and difficulties of working with doubles, Bret. The Department is littered with the dead bodies of people who have misread their minds.’
‘It goes with the job,’ said Bret. ‘As the years go by, a double agent finds it more and more difficult to be sure which side he’s committed to.’
‘They forget which side is which,’ said the D-G feelingly. He reached forward for a chocolate-covered mint and unwrapped it carefully. It was the very devil trying to do without a cigar after dinner. ‘That’s why someone has to hold their hand, and get inside their head, and keep them politically motivated. We learned that from the Russians, Bret, and I’m sure it’s right.’
‘But it was never my idea to become the case officer,’ said Bret. ‘I have no experience.’ He said it casually, without the emphasis that would have been there had he been determined not to take on this new task the D-G was giving him. That softening of attitude was not lost upon the D-G. That was the first hurdle.
‘I could give you a m
illion reasons why we don’t want an experienced case officer on this job.’
‘Yes,’ said Bret. The sight of a known case officer in regular contact with an agent would ring every alarm bell in the KGB.
But the D-G did not put that argument. He said, ‘I’m talking about an agent whose position and opportunity may be unique. So this is a job for someone very senior, Bret. Someone who knows the whole picture, someone whose judgement I can trust completely.’ He put the mint in his mouth and screwed the wrapper up very tight before placing it in the ashtray.
‘Well, I don’t know if I fit that picture, Sir Henry,’ said Bret, awkwardly adopting the role that Englishmen are expected to assume when such compliments are paid.
‘Yes, Bret. You fit it very well,’ said the old man. ‘Tell me, Bret, what do you see as our most serious shortcomings?’
‘Shortcomings? Of the British? Of the Department?’ Bret didn’t want to answer any questions of that sort and his face showed it.
‘You’re too damned polite to say, of course. But a fellow less inhibited than you, speaking recently of British shortcomings, told me that we British worship amateurism without having intuitive Yankee know-how; result disaster.’
Bret said nothing.
Sir Henry went on, ‘Whatever the truth of that assessment, I am determined that this operation is going to be one hundred per cent professional, and it’s going to have the benefit of that “can do” improvisation for which your countrymen are noted.’ He raised his hand in caution. ‘I will still need to go through the details of your plan. There are a number of points you raise that are somewhat contentious. But you realize that, of course.’
‘It’s a ten-year plan,’ said Bret. ‘They are in a bad way over there. A well-planned attack on their economy and the whole damned communist house of cards will collapse.’
‘Collapse? What does that mean?’
‘I think we could force the East German government into allowing opposition parties and free emigration.’
‘Do you?’ The idea seemed preposterous to the old man, but he was too experienced in the strategies of Whitehall to go on record as a disbeliever. ‘The Wall comes down in 1988? Is that what you are saying?’ The old man smiled grimly.
‘I don’t want to be too specific but look at it this way. In World War Two RAF Bomber Command went out at night and dropped bombs on big cities. Subsequent research discovered that few of the bombers had found their way to the assigned targets, and the few that did bombed lakes, parks, churches and wasteland so that only one bomb in ten was likely to hit anything worthwhile.’
Sir Henry was fingering the coloured cards upon which there were graphs and charts showing various statistics mostly concerned with the skilled and unskilled working population of the German Democratic Republic. ‘Go on, Bret.’
‘When Spaatz and Jimmy Doolittle took the US Eighth Air Force into the bombing campaign they went in daylight with the Norden bombsight. Precision bombing and they had a plan. They bombed only synthetic-oil plants and aircraft factories. No wasted effort and the effect was mortal.’
‘Weren’t they called panacea targets?’
‘Only by the ones who were proved wrong,’ said Bret sharply.
‘I seem to remember some other aspects of the strategic bombing campaign,’ pondered the old man, who hadn’t missed the point that the RAF got it wrong and the Americans got it right. Neither did he miss the implication that the efforts of the SIS had up till now been ninety per cent futile.
‘I wouldn’t want to labour the comparison,’ said Bret, who belatedly saw that this example of the RAF’s wartime inferiority to US bombing performance might be less compelling to an English audience. He tried another approach. ‘That “Health and Hospitalization” chart you are holding shows how many physicians between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five are holding their health scheme together. I estimate that the loss of twenty-five per cent of that labour force – that’s the red sector on the chart – would make the regime start closing hospitals, or hospital departments, at a rate that would be politically unacceptable. Or take civil engineering: look at the chart I see on the table there…’
‘I’ve looked at the charts,’ said Sir Henry, who had never liked visual presentations.
‘We must target the highly skilled labour force. It will put acute strain upon the communist society because the regime tells its people that they endure low wages and a drab life to get job security and good social services: health care, urban transportation and so on. And a brain-drain is something they can’t counter. It takes seven years to train a physician, an engineer or a chemist: even then you need a bright kid to start with.’
‘You mentioned political opposition,’ said the D-G, and put Bret’s charts aside.
Bret said, ‘Yes. We also have to change our disdainful attitude to these small East German opposition groups. We must show a little sympathy: help and advise the Church groups and political reformers. Help them get together. Did you see my figures for Church denominations? The encouraging thing the figures demonstrate is that we can forget the rural areas: Protestants in the large cities will give us enough of the sort of people we want and we can reach townspeople more easily.’
‘Strategic bombing. Ummm,’ said the D-G. Even the Cabinet Secretary might see the logic of that approach when he was being told about all the extra money that would be needed.
‘And the people we want are the people in demand in the West. We don’t have to invent any fancy high-paid jobs for the people we entice away. The jobs are here already.’ Bret pulled out another sheet. ‘And see how the birth-rate figures help us?’ Bret held up the graph and pointed to the curving years of the early Eighties.
‘How do we get them here?’
Bret grabbed another chart. ‘These are people leaving East Germany for vacations abroad. I have broken them down according to the country they vacation in. Under the West German constitution every one of those East Germans is entitled to a West German passport on demand.’
The D-G stopped Bret’s flow with a gesture of his hand. ‘You are proposing to offer a crowd of East German holidaymakers getting off a bus in Morocco a chance to swap their passports? What will the Moroccan immigration authorities say about that?’
Bret gave a fixed smile. It was typical of the old man that he should take a country at random and then start nitpicking. ‘At this stage it would be better not to get bogged down in detail,’ he replied. ‘There are many ways for East German citizens to get permission to travel, and the numbers have been going up each year. The West German government press for a little more freedom every time they fork out donations to that lousy regime over there. And remember we are after the middle classes – respectable family men and college-educated working wives – not blue denim, longhaired hippy Wall-jumpers. And this is exactly why we need Mrs X over there looking at the secret police files and telling us where the effective opposition is; who to see, where to go and how to apply the pressure.’
‘Tell me again. She’s to…?’
‘She must get access to the KGB files on opposition groups – who they are and how they operate – Church groups, democrats, liberals, fascists, even communist reformers. That’s the best way that we can evaluate who we should team up with and prepare them for real opposition. And we need to know how the Russian army would react to widespread political dissent.’
‘You are the right man for Mrs X,’ said Sir Henry. He remembered the PM saying that every Russian is at heart a chess-player, and every American at heart a public-relations man. Well, Bret Rensselaer’s zeal did nothing to disprove that one. The sheer audacity of the scheme plus Bret’s enthusiasm was enough to persuade him that it was worth a try.
Bret nodded to acknowledge the compliment. He knew there were other things that had influenced the old man’s decision. Bret was American. And if Sir Henry was persuaded by Bret’s projections for the East German economy then Bret must be the prime choice to run the agent too. He had
a roomful of experts in statistics, banking, economics, and even an expert in ‘group and permutation theory’ he’d raided from the cryptanalysts. Bret’s economic analysis department was a success story. It would make perfect deep cover for a case officer. And since a woman was involved there was another advantage: now that he was separated from his wife, Bret could be seen in the company of a ‘brilliant and beautiful woman’ without anyone thinking they were discussing their work.
‘I take it that Mrs X has managed without a case officer for a long time,’ said Bret.
‘Yes, because Silas Gaunt was involved. You know what Gaunt is like. He squeezed a promise from me that nothing would be on paper and that he would be the only contact.’
‘Literally the only contact?’ said Bret, without dreaming for a moment that the answer would be in the affirmative.
‘Literally.’
‘Good God! So why…?’
‘Bring someone else in now? Well, I’ll tell you. Gaunt only comes up to town once a month and I’m not sure that even that isn’t too much for him.’
And of course Silas Gaunt was a dedicated exponent of the sort of public school amateurism that the D-G apparently had rejected. ‘Has something happened?’
Bret’s reaction confirmed the D-G’s belief that this was the right man for the job: Bret had instinct. ‘Yes, Bret. Something has happened. Some wretched Russian wants to defect.’
‘And?’
The D-G sipped some whisky before saying, ‘And he’s made the approach to Mrs X. He took her aside at one of those unacknowledged meetings those Foreign Office fellows like to arrange with our Russian friends. I have never known anything good to come from them yet.’
‘A KGB man wants to defect.’ Bret laughed.
‘Yes, it is a good joke,’ said the D-G bitterly. ‘I wish I were in a position to join in the merriment.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Bret. ‘Was this a high-grade Russian?’
‘Pretty good,’ said the D-G guardedly. ‘His name is Blum: described as third secretary: working in the service attaché’s office: almost certainly KGB. The contact was made in watertight circumstances,’ he added.
