Authors: Len Deighton
Deep down in the lower basement of the Central Register building the air is warmed and filtered. Two armed policemen in their wooden office photographed me with a Polaroid camera and filed the photo. The big grey metal cabinets hum with the vibration of the air-conditioning fans, and on the far side of the wooden swing doors is yet another security check waiting. Perhaps this is the most secret place in the world. I asked for Mr Cassel and it took a little time to find him. He greeted me, signed for me, and took me into the inner sanctum. On both sides of us the cabinets rose ten feet high, and every few paces we dodged around stepladders on wheels, or around the serious-faced W.R.A.C. officers who service the records.
The ceiling was a complex grid of piping. Some pipes had pinholes in them, some, larger punctures; the fire precautions were delicate and comprehensive. We came to a low room that looked like a typing pool. In front of each clerk was an
electric typewriter, a phone with a large number painted where the dial should be, and a machine like a typewriter-carriage.
Each document received from commercial espionage or government departments is retyped by the men in this room. When it is typed (in a type-face exclusive to these machines, on heat-and water-resistant paper), the supervising clerk compares the original with the newly typed summary, puts his stamp on the corner, and the typist feeds the original into the small machine which is a paper shredder. The destruction of the original protects the information source.
I watched as one typist stopped typing, picked up his phone and spoke into it. The supervisor walked across to him and together they compared the copy with the original. The typist explained what he had put in and why he had not bothered with other items. These ‘clerks’ are senior intelligence officials. The supervisor embossed the corner with a device like a pair of nail clippers, and they fed the original into the shredder. I noticed the care with which this was done. Both typist and supervisor held the paper above the shredder, and fed it in together. There was no feeling of hurry, it was a calm place.
Kevin Cassel’s office was a glass-walled eyrie reached by a steep wooden staircase. From it we could see perhaps two acres of files. Here and there were brick columns on which hung red buckets and soda-lime fire-extinguishers.
‘Hello, sailor,’ said Kevin.
‘Word gets around,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Kevin, ‘the Cabinet have promised us that we are the first people to be informed after the William Hickey column – you’ve put on weight, you old son of a gun.’
He motioned me into a battered green civil-service armchair. Kevin smiled expectantly; his moon-like face was much too large for his short, slim body, and was made even larger by a receding hair-line.
‘First time you’ve been down to see us since Charlie Cavendish …’ He didn’t finish the sentence. We had both liked Charlie.
Kevin looked at me for a minute without speaking before he said,
‘Somebody put a firecracker under the Volkswagen, I hear.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘someone from Rootes Group.’
‘Take care,’ said Kevin, ‘they could get spiteful.’
I said, ‘It was a metal canister they were after, not me.’
‘Famous last words,’ said Kevin. ‘I’d wear the steel Y-fronts for the time being, just the same.’
He reached inside his green tweed jacket for his notebook and an old fountain pen.
‘You wouldn’t mind telling me something and then forgetting right afterwards.’ In tacit agreement Kevin capped his pen, closed his notebook and replaced it.
‘What do you want now?’ said Kevin. ‘Are you going to put a wall mike into 12 Downing Street or a sniper’s rifle into the Press Gallery?’
‘That’s next week,’ I said. ‘I want to …’ I paused.
‘This will make you feel more comfy.’ He swung a large neon tube down from the ceiling until it rested upon the desk between us; it would jam any known micro-transmitter, which is why agents always use a public phone that is near a neon sign if they have a chance. He switched the tube on. It flickered before underlighting Kevin’s face with a blank blue glare.
It took Kevin only a few minutes to produce the documents I wanted to see. I glanced through the medical ‘flimsy’. It was a clinical description of physical being: height, weight, scars, moles, birthmarks, blood group, reflexes and a blow-by-blow description of teeth and medical treatment from the age of eleven.
I turned to the card.
SMITH, Henry J. B.
This file renewal cycle:
six months.
Birth:
Born 1900.
White Caucasian. British National of British Birth. U.N. passport. U.K. passport.
Background:
Eton/New/Horse Guards/Stockbroking. Married P.F. Hamilton (q.v.) 1 child.
Property:
Maidenhead. Albany. Ayrshire.
Assets:
(cash)
Westminster: Green Park br.=£19,004 dep., £783 current.
Shares:
(See p.k.9.)
Interests:
Horticulture.
Collects 1st editions of horticulture books, also flower prints. (A dwarf form of scarlet-flowered pomegranate named after him.)
Art:
Owns 3 Bonnards, 2 Monets, 5 Degas, 5 Bratbys.
Pressures:
rh. 139 wh. 12 gh. 190 gh. 980.
Shooting:
Grouse shooting – fair shot.
Bentley Continental/Mini Cooper. Cessna aeroplane. 320 Skyknight.
Personal:
Mistress (see gh.980).
Teetotal. Vegetarian.
Extra-curricular:
Member of,
Celebrite/Eve/Nell Gwynne under name of Murray.
Keeps small current account
in name of Murray.
Clubs:
White’s, Traveller’s.
No recorded homosexual tendency.
In Sept. 1952 the (deleted) department of (deleted) arranged for homosexual overtures to be made to him to gain evidence for (Case 1952/kebs/832). There was no response.
Travel:
Extensive (see ah.40).
Photos:
aa/1424/77671.
Kevin walked across to the
Country Life
calendar, stared at it and turned before answering my question.
‘What’s he like?’ he repeated. ‘It’s hard to say in a few words. He was made a Fellow of All Souls before he was thirty. Which means he is no fool. They say that when he was up for election,’ Kevin paused, ‘it’s probably not true but I’ll tell you anyway. Candidates are invited to stay to dinner to see if they tuck their napkin into their collar or drink from the finger bowl.’ I nodded. ‘Smith was served with a cherry tart to see how he got rid of the pips. But he fooled them by swallowing the cherries, pips and all. I don’t know if it’s true but it’s in character.
‘All Souls is C. P. Snowland. These are the boys who tell the Government what to do. At weekends all the Fellows and a crowd of the “quondams” – men who used to be Fellows – get together for a big gutbash and a cosy yarn – they’re the sort of
people who have devoted a lot of time and expensive training to detecting the difference between Russian and Iranian caviare. He has about ninety thousand a year.’ I whistled softly. Kevin repeated, ‘Ninety thousand pounds a year. He pays tax on some of it, and sits on ten or twelve boards who like to have a representative on the old-boy network. Smith’s big contribution is that he can influence affairs abroad with as much aplomb as he can move them here. He can afford to lay off every bet by backing the other side. He paid Germany and Italy for planes, tanks and guns that they were sending to Franco in 1936. He also quietly financed a Loyalist division. When Franco won, his reward was holdings in Spanish breweries and steel works. When he went to Spain in 1947 there was a Spanish Army guard of honour flashing swords around at the airport. Smith was embarrassed and told Franco never to do it again. In South America he has always been quick to put a few thousand into the hands of a discontented general. He’s persona grata with Fidel Castro. It’s gambling without risk.’
The red phone rang. ‘Cassel.’ Kevin pinched his nose. ‘Complicated diagram?’ He pinched the bridge of his nose again. ‘Just photostat it in the normal way, show the engineering people before you destroy the original.’ He listened again. ‘Well, just show them the part that hasn’t got the name on.’ He put the handpiece down. ‘ ’Struth,’ he said, ‘they’ll be asking me if they can go to the lavatory next.
‘Where was I?’
‘I wanted to ask you about shipping investment,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that how he first made his fortune?’
‘Of course, the fiscal side; I always forget that you are the money expert.’
‘Try and tell my bank manager,’ I said. Kevin lit cigarettes for us, then spent several minutes removing a shred of tobacco from his lip.
‘The wartime government insurance of shipping. You know about that?’
I said, ‘The British Government insured all ships carrying cargoes to U.K. during the war, didn’t they?’
‘Yes,’ said Kevin. ‘Overseas suppliers wanted money before the goods left the wharfside at Sydney or Halifax; what happened after that was purely a private arrangement between us and the Germans.’
He smiled, ‘Like your insurance policies and mine the insurances for shipping in 1939 were carrying six-point type saying “except for Acts of War”. It was
possible
to get insured against U-boat attack in the North Atlantic, but the actuaries had little experience and the assessors were apt to be pessimistic. So H.M.G. decided to do their own insurance. Shipowners bringing goods to the U.K. would be insured against sinking. It didn’t take long for the wide boys of the shipping industry to see the opportunity, and there are some really fly boys in the shipping industry between here and Piraeus. To get rich all you had to do was to buy
some rusty, derelict old ruin, register it in Panama where anything goes as far as crew, pay, seaworthiness and experience are concerned, then trundle it off to hobble a North Atlantic convoy to six knots and make enough smoke to alert every U-boat in the vicinity.
‘If it got to Liverpool you were rich, if it sank you were richer.’ Kevin smiled. ‘That’s how Smith got richer.’
The phone rang. ‘Phone me back, I’m busy,’ said Kevin and hung up immediately. He turned back to the card, asking: ‘You understand the pressure column?’
‘Well, I’m no expert,’ I said, ‘but I gather they’re filed items of human weaknesses like drink, women, or membership of the Tory Party Central Committee.’
‘That’s right,’ said Kevin.
‘I know, for example, that references commencing “mh” are sex things.’
‘Feminine complications,’ said Kevin.
‘What a nice way of putting it,’ I said.
‘Makes you cynical though,’ said Kevin, ‘if you work here.’ He smiled.
I read from the card I held: ‘There’s a “gh.”’
‘Accessory after an illegal act,’ said Kevin quick as a shot.
‘Does that mean something he has been prosecuted for?’ I said.
‘Good lord no,’ said Kevin, in an astounded voice. ‘He’s never been in a law court. No, for any
thing about which the Mets
*
know anything it’s another sort of card altogether – it’s a “j” card.’
‘Spare me the details,’ I said, ‘What about a “wh”?’
‘Bribery of a public servant,’ said Kevin.
‘Again not prosecuted?’
‘No, I told you,’ said Kevin, ‘it has a “j” suffix if it’s been made public. It would be a “wj” card if he had been
accused
of bribing a public servant.’
‘And “rh”?’ I said.
‘Illegal selling,’ said Kevin. Now I was beginning to understand the system and I’d found the item I wanted.
After I’d had Jean show me the revised notes of the Strutton Plan and I had torn them into small, bitesized pieces and scattered them into the wastepaper basket like pantomime snow, and after we’d been all through it again, and she’d typed it, I thought some more about Smith. Two items about him were still fuzzy. I phoned Kevin, scrambled, and said, ‘That matter I spoke of this morning.’
‘Yes?’ said Kevin.
‘War service?’ I asked.
‘Ah,’ said Kevin, ‘his mother did very well. Too young for Number 1 and too old for Number 2.’
‘O.K.,’ I said, ‘second question: why did you have his file card so handy on your desk?’
‘Simple, old bean,’ said Kevin, ‘he’d sent for your card only that morning.’
‘That’s just great,’ I said, and I heard Kevin chuckle as he hung up. He could just be kidding, I thought. No one in W.O.O.C.(P) had a card on file at Central Register; but I didn’t chuckle.
The butler led me along soft corridors, men in red coats and tight trousers looked quietly down from the dark paintings lost in a penumbra of coach varnish. Mr Smith was seated behind a table polished like a guardsman’s boot.
A slim eighteenth-century clock with frail marquetry panels paced out the silence, and from the Adam fireplace a coal fire ran pink fingers across the moulded ceiling. On Smith’s table a lampshade marshalled the light on to heaps of papers and newspaper clippings. Only the crown of his head was visible. He spared me the embarrassment of interrupting his private study. The butler motioned me to a hostile Sheraton chair.
Smith ran a finger across the open book and scribbled in the margin of one of the typewritten sheets with a gold fountain pen. He turned up a corner of the page, ran a finger-nail along the crease and closed the leather cover.
‘Smoke.’ There was no trace of query in his voice. He pushed the box across the table with the back of his hand, recapped the pen and clipped it into his waistcoat pocket. He picked up his cigarette, put it into his mouth, drew on it without releasing his grasp on its battered tarnished shape, mashed it into the ashtray with controlled violence, disembowelling the shreds of tobacco from the lacerated paper with his long pink nails. He thumped the ash from his waistcoat.
‘You wanted to see me?’ he said.
I produced a bent blue packet of Gauloises. I lit one with a flick of the thumb-nail against a Swan match. I tossed the dead match towards the ashtray, allowing the trajectory to carry it on to Smith’s pristine paperwork. He carefully picked it up and placed it in the ashtray. I drew on the harsh tobacco. ‘No,’ I said, denuding my voice of interest, ‘not much.’
‘You are discreet – that’s good.’ He picked up a battered filing card, held it under the light and quietly read from it a potted description of my career in Intelligence.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said.
‘Good, good,’ said Smith, not at all discouraged. ‘The report goes on, “inclined to pursue developments beyond requirements out of curiosity. He must be made to understand that curiosity is a dangerous failing in an agent.”’
‘Is that what you wanted to do,’ I asked, ‘to tell me about curiosity being dangerous?’
‘Not “dangerous”,’ said Smith. He leaned forward to select a new victim from his ivory cigarette box. The light fell momentarily across his face. It was a hard bony face, and it shone in the electric light like the expressionless busts of Roman emperors in the British Museum. Lips, eyebrows, and the hair on his temples were all colourless. He looked up. ‘Fatal.’ He took a white cigarette and put it into his white face. He lit the cigarette.
‘In wartime soldiers are shot for refusing to obey even the smallest commands,’ said Smith in his most gritty voice.
‘They shouldn’t be.’
‘Why not?’ His drawl had gone.
‘Oppenheim’s
International Law,
sixth edition: only lawful commands need be obeyed.’
It was not the reply that Smith was expecting and he flushed with anger. ‘You are demanding that an investigation in Portugal be continued. The Cabinet have instructed that it be closed. We should never have sanctioned such an operation in the first place. Your refusal is impertinence and unless you change your attitude I shall recommend that severe measures be taken against you.’
He pronounced the personal pronoun with discreet reverence.
‘No one owns a spy, mister,’ I told him, ‘they just pay his salary. I work for the government because I think this is a good place to live, but that doesn’t mean that I’ll be used as a serf by a self-centred millionaire. What’s more,’ I said,
‘don’t give me that “fatal” stuff because I’ve taken a postgraduate course in fatality.’
Smith blinked and leaned back into the Louis Quatorze chair. ‘So,’ he said, finally, ‘that’s it, is it? The truth is that you think
you
should be as powerful as a Cabinet Minister?’ He rearranged his pen set.
‘Power is like a fried egg,’ I told him, ‘no matter how equally you try to divide it someone is sure to get most.’
Smith leaned forward and said, ‘You think that because I hold a controlling interest in companies that make jet engines and automatic weapons it precludes me from having a say in the control of my country.’ He held up a hand in an admonishing attitude. ‘No, it is now
my
turn to lecture
you.
You are a spy; I do not impugn your motives as a spy but you feel free to impugn mine as a manufacturer. You say that you work for the government. What
is
the government you speak of? You mean as each political party is elected to power all the intelligence groups are disbanded and new ones formed? No, you don’t mean that, you mean that you work for the country, for its prosperity, for its power, for its prestige, for its standard of living, for its health scheme, for its high rate of employment. You work for all those things, to keep them and to improve them, just as the motor-car manufacturer does. If there is a way for me to sell, for instance, an extra fifteen thousand vehicles next year, my duty is to do so.
‘You might say: it’s my duty to increase the prosperity of every Englishman living. That is why
it is your duty to do as I say in these matters. Your orders come to you through the legitimate line of command because all your superiors understand these things. If, in order to sell my fifteen thousand vehicles I need your help, you will provide it …’ He paused for a moment before adding, ‘without questions.
‘Your job is an extension of mine. Your job is to provide success at
any
price. By means of bribes, by means of theft or by means of murder itself. Men like you are in the dark, subconscious recesses of the nation’s brain. You do things that are done and forgotten quickly. The things I’ve mentioned are the realities of this world. No one deliberately chooses that this should be so. No historian is asked to account for the evil of the world. No man who writes a medical encyclopedia is responsible for the diseases he catalogues. And so it is with you. You are a cipher – you are no more than the ink with which History is written.’
‘I’m a stoker in the ship of state?’ I asked humbly.
Smith gave a cold smile. ‘You are worth less than a substantial foreign contract for Clydeside. You sit here talking of ethics as though you were employed to make ethical decisions. You are
nothing
in the scheme. You will complete your tasks as ordered: no more, no less. You will be paid a just amount. There is nothing to discuss.’ He leaned back in his chair again. It creaked with the shift of weight. His bony hand clamped around the red silk rope that hung beside the curtain.
In my pocket with my keys and some parking-meter sixpences I could feel a smooth polished surface. My fingers closed around it as the butler opened the big panelled doors.
‘Show the gentleman out, Laker,’ said Smith. I made no move except to put the gleaming silver-coloured metal on his mahogany table. Smith watched it, puzzled and fascinated. I bunched my fingers and flipped it. It scampered across the mahogany surface, clattering against its own bright reflection.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ said Smith.
‘It’s a gift for the man who has everything,’ I said. I watched Smith’s face. ‘It’s a die for making gold sovereigns.’ I watched the butler out of the corner of my eye; he was hanging on to every word. Perhaps he was planning his memoirs for the Sunday papers.
Smith flicked a tongue across his drying lips like a hungry python. ‘Wait downstairs, Laker,’ he said, ‘I’ll ring again.’ The butler had withdrawn to his notebook before Smith spoke again. ‘What has this to do with me?’ he said.
‘I’ll tell you,’ I said, and lit another Gauloise while Smith fidgeted with his guilt feelings. This time he left the dead match where it had landed.
‘I know of some gear for wolfram-mining that goes to India in regular consignments. I’ll tell you, those people in India must be inefficient because they have received tons of it and yet
there is no wolfram in the whole Indian subcontinent
! You
can hardly blame them when they try to resell to – someone just a few miles north.’
Smith’s cigarette lay inert in the ashtray and quietly turned to ash.
‘There are people in Chungking who will take as much as the Indians send. Of course, it wouldn’t be kosher if an English company sold strategic goods to Red China, and the Americans would blacklist them, but what with all this muddle in India everyone ends up happy.’ I paused. The clock ticked on like a mechanical heart.
‘As a way of moving gold there’s nothing to beat …’
‘You are just guessing,’ said Smith.
I thought of the diary that Smith’s confidant Butcher had made available to me and how easy it had made my subsequent guesses, ‘I am just guessing,’ I agreed.
‘Very well,’ said Smith in a resigned but businesslike voice, ‘how much?’
‘I’ve not come to blackmail you,’ I said, ‘I just want to press on with my job of stoking without interference from the bridge. I’m not pursuing you. I’m not interested in doing anything beyond my job. But I want you to remember this:
I
am the responsible person in this investigation, not my boss or anyone else in the department.
I’ll
be responsible for what happens to you, whether it’s good or bad. Now ring your bell for Laker, I’m leaving before I vomit over your beautiful Kashan carpet.’