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- Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
Espionage fact and fiction collide in this thrilling compendium of spy writing, where some of the greatest spy stories ever told meet the genuine agent records and instructions that altered history. Ian Fleming's genre-defining genius and John le Carré's iconic George Smiley are interspersed with real-life stories of derring-do inside Bolshevik Russia. Literary classics by Graham Greene and Somerset Maugham appear next to never-before-published reports from two of the Cambridge spies. Fully updated with tales of agent-running from the first female Director-General of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington, and Andy McNab's chilling account of a top-secret mission deep inside IRA territory, this compelling anthology is proof that truth really can be stranger than fiction. With expert commentary, former intelligence officer Michael Smith takes us on a fascinating journey inside the mysterious world of British intelligence. The Secret Agent's Bedside Reader is a must-read for every espionage enthusiast and aspiring agent.
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
MICHAEL SMITH
FEW BRITISH GOVERNMENT institutions can have employed as many successful writers as the Secret Intelligence Service, the organisation now commonly known as MI6. The links between Britain’s spies and the writing profession go back to the sixteenth century when the playwright Christopher Marlowe spied in France and the Netherlands on behalf of the government of Queen Elizabeth I, and was almost certainly murdered on behalf of his former employers. Marlowe reflected his experiences of the intelligence world in his play The Massacre at Paris, where the ‘English Agent’ is called to the deathbed of King Henry III of France, who has just been stabbed by a Catholic friar. Henry tells the English Agent to send word to his mistress the Queen of England ‘whom God has blessed for hating papistry’ to let her know of the Catholic assassination attempt. Some have interpreted the English Agent as being Marlowe, although Sir Francis Walsingham, the head of Elizabeth’s secret service, who was in Paris at the time, is a more likely candidate.
Walter Christmas, one of the first agents of the Secret Service Bureau, set up ahead of the First World War, was probably the first member of the modern intelligence services to write an espionage novel, in 1911, when he was still a very active agent of the British secret service. The enemy agents in Sven Spies were Germans, as they were for Christmas in real life. Many members of MI6 followed suit, with Somerset Maugham, Compton Mackenzie, Graham Greene and John le Carré only the most famous in literary terms.
Christmas’s own life was the stuff of fiction. He was a Danish naval officer who travelled frequently into Germany to collect intelligence, and also provided Mansfield Cumming, the first ‘Chief’ of the Secret Intelligence Service, with reports on German shipping movements from the Danish Navy’s coast-watching service. The 48-year-old Christmas insisted that the courier who collected his intelligence should always be a pretty young woman who was to meet him in a hotel in Skagen in northern Denmark. A succession of prostitutes were procured to collect his reports and deliver not just his pay but an additional, more traditional exchange between the world’s two oldest professions. When the Germans became suspicious of Christmas and he had to be exfiltrated to London, he was lodged in the notorious Shepherd Market area of Mayfair, where there were plenty of pretty young women, all pursuing the same business as the go-betweens who had collected his intelligence from the Skagen hotel.
When it came to their experiences in the British secret service, Maugham, Greene and le Carré stuck to fiction, although Maugham’s Ashenden short stories, published in 1928, sailed very close to the wind, barely disguising accounts of his genuine exploits in Switzerland and Russia during the First World War. Compton Mackenzie did something similar in Extremes Meet, basing the activities of Roger Waterlow, Chief of British Intelligence in a small Balkan country during the First World War, on his own time in First World War Greece, but he followed it up with a series of memoirs which culminated in one that went too far for his former employers. The original version of Greek Memories was banned, and remains technically banned, although it appears here in its original form.
But it wasn’t just MI6. The other branches of British intelligence produced more than their own share of successful authors. William Le Queux, whose ‘invasion novels’ provoked the spy scares of the early 1900s, did so with the assistance of War Office intelligence, in a classic ‘agent of influence’ role. Ian Fleming, Charles Morgan and Angus Wilson all worked for Naval Intelligence during the Second World War. Dennis Wheatley and Peter Fleming worked on deception operations in association with MI5 and MI6. John Bingham, apparently le Carré’s inspiration for Smiley, was actually in MI5, as was his daughter Charlotte. Evelyn Waugh, Samuel Beckett, Peter Churchill and Paddy Leigh Fermor worked with the Special Operations Executive.
It is scarcely surprising that people accustomed to writing intelligence reports should be good story-tellers. As a relatively minor cog in the army’s Cold War intelligence machine, I still remember the pride I felt at my own elevation to what seemed at the time to be a small elite of intelligence reporters. The civilian intelligence officer who kept our military prejudices in check told me at the outset that a good intelligence report should be constructed in much the same way as you would tell a joke. It seemed so at odds with the importance of our work that I inevitably questioned it, but he said it was simple. We were writing reports for people very few of whom would have the same degree of knowledge of the subject area as us. It was important that we made sure that everything was in the right place and as straightforward as possible to understand, just as you would when telling a joke. Only then would our reports have the impact they needed to make. It is probably no coincidence that on my first shift on the Sunday Times foreign desk, one of the newspaper’s senior editors told me exactly the same thing about writing a news story.
Intelligence officers have to be able to tell a very good story, whether it is in an intelligence report or in the ‘legend’ they adopt for an undercover operation. It is not for nothing that this is known as the cover story, and the measure of how good it has to be is that for the author it may well mean the difference between life and death. So it is hardly surprising that, over the years, authors and journalists have made good intelligence officers, and a relatively large number of intelligence officers have gone on to become successful writers.
This is a selection of their very best work: a mixture of extracts from great espionage novels, of factual accounts by former intelligence officers of real-life operations, and a number of actual intelligence reports or instructions and memos on intelligence issues. Apart from Joseph Conrad – whose brilliant The Secret Agent inspires the title of this book – all of the writers featured here served in some role with British intelligence, from Le Queux’s dubious claims about German spies rampaging across Britain to John le Carré (who worked for both MI5 and MI6) introducing us to George Smiley, the man widely seen as the ideal spy. Put simply, these are intelligence professionals writing about the world of espionage. Ian Fleming is represented not by a passage from a James Bond novel but by his defence of MI6 from his boss, the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral John Godfrey, who wanted to replace it with his own naval secret service. Fleming saved MI6 from that fate, ensuring a home for the world’s most famous spy, the fictional hero with the licence to kill who did more for the service’s reputation than even the very best of its real-life officers and agents.
Fleming is often dismissed as someone who never served in MI6 and therefore knew nothing about it. In fact, he was the chief liaison officer between MI6 and Naval Intelligence. His books are littered with elements of authentic detail garnered during his service in the Second World War, when guns actually were widely used by MI6 and ‘liquidating’ people was a real option. M’s memos to Bond are written in the same green ink on the same blue paper as those sent out by C, and even on occasion typed on a typewriter with an unusually large type, which the real wartime equivalent of Miss Moneypenny did sometimes use. Indeed so realistic were the Bond books deemed to be by some at the time they were published, that the Egyptian secret service ordered its London representative to buy a complete set for use by its training organisation.
There are plenty of other spies who have written about the world of espionage, either as fiction or in memoirs, and so could have appeared in these pages – A. E. W. Mason, Anthony Cavendish, Monty Woodhouse and Malcolm Muggeridge, to name just a few – but those included here are among the very best. They include Stella Rimington, the first female head of any of the British intelligence services and a model for Judi Dench’s female M in the Bond movies, who writes about the art of agent-running, and Andy McNab on his time in the top-secret ‘Det’ intelligence operation in Northern Ireland. The story is brought right up to date with extracts from two recent novels covering contemporary themes, Slingshot by Matthew Dunn, a former ‘deep-cover officer’ in MI6, and Uncommon Enemy by Alan Judd, who is described coyly in the author biography which appears in his books as a ‘former soldier and diplomat’.
Michael Smith May 2019
HISTORICAL NOTE
The British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) has had a number of names over the years since its creation in 1909 as the Foreign Section of the Secret Service Bureau. Its founder was Commander Mansfield Cumming RN, who was known for reasons of secrecy as ‘C’ from the initial of his surname. The secret service swiftly became known as ‘the C Organisation’; ‘C’s Organisation,’ or even ‘C’s Show’.
In early 1916, when the War Office introduced a Military Intelligence Directorate, the War Office liaison section with the secret service was designated MI1c and this title became an alternative title for ‘C’s Organisation’. By the end of the First World War, Cumming’s official title was CSS, Chief of the Secret Service, although ‘C’ was still far more commonly used, not by then as Cumming’s initial but as an abbreviation for ‘Chief’.
The current official title of Secret Intelligence Service was first used in 1919. When Cumming died in 1923, still in harness, and was replaced by Admiral Hugh Sinclair, the title of ‘C’ and Cumming’s practice of writing in green ink (a naval tradition) were retained and are still in use to this day, as is the formal title of CSS. It was not until a reorganisation of military intelligence in 1940, when the title of the War Office section liaising with the Secret Intelligence Service was changed from MI1c to MI6, that the name by which the British secret service is now most commonly known was first used.
THE SECRET AGENT
JOSEPH CONRAD
This first extract from one of the earliest and greatest of all spy novels is the only one included in this book that is written by someone who did not – so far as is known – work for or collaborate with the British intelligence services. But Conrad’s novel does provide the inspiration, as it has for so many other spy writers, and is therefore an appropriate way to open this collection. This particular passage is a worthwhile reminder that in the world of espionage some things never change. Conrad’s protagonist Adolf Verloc is called to the embassy of the country for which he works – the reader is given the clear impression it is Tsarist Russia, though this is never stated as fact. There Verloc is softened up by the Head of Chancellery Wurmt before being castigated by the mysterious Mr Vladimir, the new spymaster. Although both the narrator and Vladimir paint Verloc as indolent, we discover that he has in fact produced the designs of the latest French guns, a substantial coup in the late nineteenth century, when the story is set. But this achievement is dismissed by Vladimir, whose impatient demands bear a striking resemblance to those made by British and American politicians ahead of the 2003 Iraq War. It is immediately clear that this will not end well.
IT WAS SO early that the porter of the Embassy issued hurriedly out of his lodge still struggling with the left sleeve of his livery coat. His waistcoat was red, and he wore knee-breeches, but his aspect was flustered. Mr Verloc, aware of the rush on his flank, drove it off by simply holding out an envelope stamped with the arms of the Embassy, and passed on. He produced the same talisman also to the footman who opened the door, and stood back to let him enter the hall.
A clear fire burned in a tall fireplace, and an elderly man standing with his back to it, in evening dress and with a chain round his neck, glanced up from the newspaper he was holding spread out in both hands before his calm and severe face. He didn’t move; but another lackey, in brown trousers and clawhammer coat edged with thin yellow cord, approaching Mr Verloc listened to the murmur of his name, and turning round on his heel in silence, began to walk, without looking back once. Mr Verloc, thus led along a ground-floor passage to the left of the great carpeted staircase, was suddenly motioned to enter a quite small room furnished with a heavy writing-table and a few chairs. The servant shut the door, and Mr Verloc remained alone. He did not take a seat. With his hat and stick held in one hand he glanced about, passing his other podgy hand over his uncovered sleek head.
Another door opened noiselessly, and Mr Verloc immobilising his glance in that direction saw at first only black clothes, the bald top of a head, and a drooping dark grey whisker on each side of a pair of wrinkled hands. The person who had entered was holding a batch of papers before his eyes and walked up to the table with a rather mincing step, turning the papers over the while. Privy Councillor Wurmt, Chancelier d’Ambassade, was rather shortsighted. This meritorious official, laying the papers on the table, disclosed a face of pasty complexion and of melancholy ugliness surrounded by a lot of fine, long dark grey hairs, barred heavily by thick and bushy eyebrows. He put on a black-framed pince-nez upon a blunt and shapeless nose, and seemed struck by Mr Verloc’s appearance. Under the enormous eyebrows his weak eyes blinked pathetically through the glasses.
He made no sign of greeting; neither did Mr Verloc who certainly knew his place; but a subtle change about the general outlines of his shoulders and back suggested a slight bending of Mr Verloc’s spine under the vast surface of his overcoat. The effect was of unobtrusive deference.
‘I have here some of your reports,’ said the bureaucrat in an unexpectedly soft and weary voice, and pressing the tip of his forefinger on the papers with force. He paused; and Mr Verloc, who had recognised his own handwriting very well, waited in an almost breathless silence. ‘We are not very satisfied with the attitude of the police here,’ the other continued, with every appearance of mental fatigue.
The shoulders of Mr Verloc, without actually moving, suggested a shrug. And for the first time since he left his home that morning his lips opened.
‘Every country has its police,’ he said, philosophically. But as the official of the Embassy went on blinking at him steadily he felt constrained to add: ‘Allow me to observe that I have no means of action upon the police here.’
‘What is desired,’ said the man of papers, ‘is the occurrence of something definite which should stimulate their vigilance. That is within your province – is it not so?’
Mr Verloc made no answer except by a sigh, which escaped him involuntarily, for instantly he tried to give his face a cheerful expression. The official blinked doubtfully, as if affected by the dim light of the room. He repeated vaguely:
‘The vigilance of the police – and the severity of the magistrates. The general leniency of the judicial procedure here, and the utter absence of all repressive measures, are a scandal to Europe. What is wished for just now is the accentuation of the unrest – of the fermentation which undoubtedly exists…’
‘Undoubtedly, undoubtedly,’ broke in Mr Verloc in a deep, deferential bass of an oratorical quality, so utterly different from the tone in which he had spoken before that his interlocutor remained profoundly surprised. ‘It exists to a dangerous degree. My reports for the last twelve months make it sufficiently clear.’
‘Your reports for the last twelve months,’ State Councillor Wurmt began in his gentle and dispassionate tone, ‘have been read by me. I failed to discover why you wrote them at all.’
A sad silence reigned for a time. Mr Verloc seemed to have swallowed his tongue, and the other gazed at the papers on the table fixedly. At last he gave them a slight push.
‘The state of affairs you expose there is assumed to exist as the first condition of your employment. What is required at present is not writing, but the bringing to light of a distinct, significant fact – I would almost say of an alarming fact.’
‘I need not say that all my endeavours shall be directed to that end,’ Mr Verloc said, with convinced modulations in his conversational husky tone. But the sense of being blinked at watchfully behind the blind glitter of these eyeglasses on the other side of the table disconcerted him. He stopped short with a gesture of absolute devotion. The useful hard-working, if obscure member of the Embassy had an air of being impressed by some newly-born thought.
‘You are very corpulent,’ he said.
This observation, really of a psychological nature, and advanced with the modest hesitation of an office-man more familiar with ink and paper than with the requirements of active life, stung Mr Verloc in the manner of a rude personal remark. He stepped back a pace.
‘Eh? What were you pleased to say?’ he exclaimed, with husky resentment.
The Chancelier d’Ambassade, entrusted with the conduct of this interview, seemed to find it too much for him.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘that you had better see Mr Vladimir. Yes, decidedly I think you ought to see Mr Vladimir. Be good enough to wait here,’ he added, and went out with mincing steps.
At once Mr Verloc passed his hand over his hair. A slight perspiration had broken out on his forehead. He let the air escape from his pursed-up lips like a man blowing at a spoonful of hot soup. But when the servant in brown appeared at the door silently, Mr Verloc had not moved an inch from the place he had occupied throughout the interview. He had remained motionless, as if feeling himself surrounded by pitfalls.
He walked along a passage lighted by a lonely gas-jet, then up a flight of winding stairs, and through a glazed and cheerful corridor on the first floor. The footman threw open a door, and stood aside. The feet of Mr Verloc felt a thick carpet. The room was large, with three windows; and a young man with a shaven, big face, sitting in a roomy armchair before a vast mahogany writing-table, said in French to the Chancelier d’Ambassade, who was going out with the papers in his hand:
‘You are quite right, mon cher. He’s fat – the animal.’
Mr Vladimir, First Secretary, had a drawing-room reputation as an agreeable and entertaining man. He was something of a favourite in society. His wit consisted in discovering droll connections between incongruous ideas; and when talking in that strain he sat well forward on his seat, with his left hand raised, as if exhibiting his funny demonstrations between the thumb and forefinger, while his round and clean-shaven face wore an expression of merry perplexity.
But there was no trace of merriment or perplexity in the way he looked at Mr Verloc. Lying far back in the deep armchair, with squarely spread elbows, and throwing one leg over a thick knee, he had with his smooth and rosy countenance the air of a preternaturally thriving baby that will not stand nonsense from anybody.
‘You understand French, I suppose?’ he said.
Mr Verloc stated huskily that he did. His whole vast bulk had a forward inclination. He stood on the carpet in the middle of the room, clutching his hat and stick in one hand; the other hung lifelessly by his side. He muttered unobtrusively somewhere deep down in his throat something about having done his military service in the French artillery. At once, with contemptuous perversity, Mr Vladimir changed the language, and began to speak idiomatic English without the slightest trace of a foreign accent.
‘Ah! Yes. Of course. Let’s see. How much did you get for obtaining the design of the improved breech-block of their new field-gun?’
‘Five years’ rigorous confinement in a fortress,’ Mr Verloc answered, unexpectedly, but without any sign of feeling.
‘You got off easily,’ was Mr Vladimir’s comment. ‘And, anyhow, it served you right for letting yourself get caught. What made you go in for that sort of thing – eh?’
Mr Verloc’s husky conversational voice was heard speaking of youth, of a fatal infatuation for an unworthy…
‘Aha! Cherchez la femme,’ Mr Vladimir deigned to interrupt, unbending, but without affability; there was, on the contrary, a touch of grimness in his condescension. ‘How long have you been employed by the Embassy here?’ he asked.
‘Ever since the time of the late Baron Stott-Wartenheim,’ Mr Verloc answered in subdued tones, and protruding his lips sadly, in sign of sorrow for the deceased diplomat. The First Secretary observed this play of physiognomy steadily.
‘Ah! ever since … Well! What have you got to say for yourself?’ he asked, sharply.
Mr Verloc answered with some surprise that he was not aware of having anything special to say. He had been summoned by a letter – and he plunged his hand busily into the side pocket of his overcoat, but before the mocking, cynical watchfulness of Mr Vladimir, concluded to leave it there.
‘Bah!’ said the latter. ‘What do you mean by getting out of condition like this? You haven’t got even the physique of your profession. You – a member of a starving proletariat – never! You – a desperate socialist or anarchist – which is it?’
‘Anarchist,’ stated Mr Verloc in a deadened tone.
‘Bosh!’ went on Mr Vladimir, without raising his voice. ‘You startled old Wurmt himself. You wouldn’t deceive an idiot. They all are that by-the-by, but you seem to me simply impossible. So you began your connection with us by stealing the French gun designs. And you got yourself caught. That must have been very disagreeable to our government. You don’t seem to be very smart.’
Mr Verloc tried to exculpate himself huskily.
‘As I’ve had occasion to observe before, a fatal infatuation for an unworthy…’
Mr Vladimir raised a large, white, plump hand.
‘Ah, yes. The unlucky attachment – of your youth. She got hold of the money, and then sold you to the police – eh?’
The doleful change in Mr Verloc’s physiognomy, the momentary drooping of his whole person, confessed that such was the regrettable case. Mr Vladimir’s hand clasped the ankle reposing on his knee. The sock was of dark blue silk.
‘You see, that was not very clever of you. Perhaps you are too susceptible.’
Mr Verloc intimated in a throaty, veiled murmur that he was no longer young.
‘Oh! That’s a failing which age does not cure,’ Mr Vladimir remarked, with sinister familiarity. ‘But no! You are too fat for that. You could not have come to look like this if you had been at all susceptible. I’ll tell you what I think is the matter: you are a lazy fellow. How long have you been drawing pay from this Embassy?’
‘Eleven years,’ was the answer, after a moment of sulky hesitation. ‘I’ve been charged with several missions to London while His Excellency Baron Stott-Wartenheim was still ambassador in Paris. Then by his Excellency’s instructions I settled down in London. I am English.’
‘You are! Are you? Eh?’
‘A natural-born British subject,’ Mr Verloc said, stolidly. ‘But my father was French, and so…’
‘Never mind explaining,’ interrupted the other. ‘I daresay you could have been legally a Marshal of France and a Member of Parliament in England – and then, indeed, you would have been of some use to our Embassy.’
This flight of fancy provoked something like a faint smile on Mr Verloc’s face. Mr Vladimir retained an imperturbable gravity.
‘But, as I’ve said, you are a lazy fellow; you don’t use your opportunities. In the time of Baron Stott-Wartenheim we had a lot of soft-headed people running this Embassy. They caused fellows of your sort to form a false conception of the nature of a secret service fund. It is my business to correct this misapprehension by telling you what the secret service is not. It is not a philanthropic institution. I’ve had you called here on purpose to tell you this.’
Mr Vladimir observed the forced expression of bewilderment on Verloc’s face, and smiled sarcastically.
‘I see that you understand me perfectly. I daresay you are intelligent enough for your work. What we want now is activity – activity.’
On repeating this last word Mr Vladimir laid a long white forefinger on the edge of the desk. Every trace of huskiness disappeared from Verloc’s voice. The nape of his gross neck became crimson above the velvet collar of his overcoat. His lips quivered before they came widely open.
‘If you’ll only be good enough to look up my record,’ he boomed out in his great, clear, oratorical bass, ‘you’ll see I gave a warning only three months ago on the occasion of the Grand Duke Romuald’s visit to Paris, which was telegraphed from here to the French police, and…’
‘Tut, tut!’ broke out Mr Vladimir, with a frowning grimace. ‘The French police had no use for your warning. Don’t roar like this. What the devil do you mean?’
With a note of proud humility Mr Verloc apologised for forgetting himself. His voice, famous for years at open-air meetings and at workmen’s assemblies in large halls, had contributed, he said, to his reputation of a good and trustworthy comrade. It was, therefore, a part of his usefulness. It had inspired confidence in his principles. He was always put up to speak by the leaders at a critical moment, Mr Verloc declared, with obvious satisfaction. There was no uproar above which he could not make himself heard, he added; and suddenly he made a demonstration.
‘Allow me,’ he said. With lowered forehead, without looking up, swiftly and ponderously, he crossed the room to one of the French windows. As if giving way to an uncontrollable impulse, he opened it a little. Mr Vladimir, jumping up amazed from the depths of the armchair, looked over his shoulder; and below, across the courtyard of the Embassy, well beyond the open gate, could be seen the broad back of a policeman watching idly the gorgeous perambulator of a wealthy baby being wheeled in state across the Square.
‘Constable!’ said Mr Verloc, with no more effort than if he were whispering; and Mr Vladimir burst into a laugh on seeing the policeman spin round as if prodded by a sharp instrument. Mr Verloc shut the window quietly, and returned to the middle of the room.
‘With a voice like that,’ he said, putting on the husky conversational pedal, ‘I was naturally trusted. And I knew what to say, too.’
Mr Vladimir, arranging his cravat, observed him in the glass over the mantelpiece.
‘I daresay you have the social revolutionary jargon by heart well enough,’ he said, contemptuously. ‘Vox et … You haven’t ever studied Latin, have you?’
‘No,’ growled Mr Verloc. ‘You did not expect me to know it. I belong to the million. Who knows Latin? Only a few hundred imbeciles who aren’t fit to take care of themselves.’
For some thirty seconds longer Mr Vladimir studied in the mirror the fleshy profile, the gross bulk, of the man behind him. And at the same time he had the advantage of seeing his own face, clean-shaved and round, rosy about the gills, and with the thin, sensitive lips formed exactly for the utterance of those delicate witticisms which had made him such a favourite in the very highest society. Then he turned, and advanced into the room with such determination that the very ends of his quaintly old-fashioned bow necktie seemed to bristle with unspeakable menaces. The movement was so swift and fierce that Mr Verloc, casting an oblique glance, quailed inwardly.
‘Aha! You dare be impudent,’ Mr Vladimir began, with an amazingly guttural intonation not only utterly un-English, but absolutely un-European, and startling even to Mr Verloc’s experience of cosmopolitan slums. ‘You dare! Well, I am going to speak plain English to you. Voice won’t do. We have no use for your voice. We don’t want a voice. We want facts – startling facts – damn you.’
Extracted from The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad (first published by Methuen in 1907)
SPIES OF THE KAISER
WILLIAM LE QUEUX
The first decade of the twentieth century saw a series of books based on the threat of a war with Germany of which Spies of the Kaiser was one of the most influential. It resulted from extensive briefing of the author William Le Queux by his friend Colonel James Edmonds, the head of the War Office’s Secret Service. Le Queux was what is known in the espionage world as an ‘agent of influence’, a role in which he was very effective. ‘I think I can claim to be the first person to warn Great Britain that the Kaiser was plotting war against us,’ Le Queux said. ‘I discovered, as far back as 1905, a great network of espionage spread over the United Kingdom.’
The Daily Mail serialised Le Queux’s novel, The Invasion of 1910, carefully rerouting the invading German troops through towns and villages where its circulation was at its highest. Le Queux’s books sparked a series of spy scares, as Edmonds had hoped they would. The Prime Minister Herbert Asquith ordered an inquiry into ‘the dangers from German espionage’ at which Edmonds forced home his point but left a poor impression on some of those present.
He told them that a secret service’s motto should be to ‘trust no one’ and quoted from Rudyard Kipling’s Kim that one should ‘trust a snake before a harlot and a harlot before a Pathan’. Despite being dismissed by one member of the inquiry as ‘a silly witness’ with ‘espionage on the brain’, his arguments won the day and led to the creation of a Secret Service Bureau with a Home Section to catch German spies coming to Britain and a Foreign Section to collect intelligence on Germany. The Home Section was run by an army officer Colonel Vernon Kell, codenamed K, and became what we now know as MI5. The Foreign Section, was run by a naval officer Commander Mansfield Cumming, codenamed C, and would eventually become MI6. Le Queux’s dubious influence was therefore critical in the creation of today’s British intelligence and security services.
‘WELL, THAT’S RATHER curious,’ I remarked, closing the door of the old oak-panelled smoking-room at Metfield Park, and returning to where my friend Ray Raymond was seated.
‘Was anyone outside the door?’ he asked, quickly on the alert.
‘Mrs Hill-Mason’s German maid. You remember, Vera pointed her out yesterday.’
‘Hm! And she was listening – after every one else has gone to bed!’ he remarked. ‘Yes, Jack, it’s curious.’
It was past one o’clock in the morning. Two months had passed since the affair down at Portsmouth, but we had not been inactive. We were sitting before the great open fireplace where the logs were blazing, after the rest of the men had taken their candles and retired, and had been exchanging confidences in ignorance of the fact that the door remained ajar. I had, however, detected the frou-frou of a woman’s skirt, and creeping across to the door had seen the maid of one of the guests disappearing down the stone passage which led to the great hall now in darkness.
Metfield Park, 3 miles from Melton Constable, in Norfolk, the seat of the Jocelyns, was a fine old Tudor place in the centre of a splendid park, where the pheasant shooting was always excellent. Harry Jocelyn, the heir, had been with us at Balliol, hence Ray and I usually received invitations to the shooting parties. On this occasion, however, Vera Vallance with her aunt, Mrs Mortimer, had been invited, much to Ray’s satisfaction.
Among the party was a well-known naval officer, captain of a first-class cruiser, two military officers, and several smart women, for both Sir Herbert and Lady Jocelyn moved in a very smart set. Several of the ladies had joined us in the smoking-room for cigarettes, and the conversation around the fire had been mainly the usual society chatter, until at one o’clock everyone had left for bed except our two selves.
Over the great fireplace were the arms of the Jocelyns carved in stone, with the date 1573, and in the corner near the window was a stand of armour upon which the dancing flames glinted ever and anon. Through the long uncurtained window shone the bright moon from over the park, and just as I reseated myself the stable clock chimed the half-hour.
We had been there four days, and the sport had been excellent. On the previous day Ray had excused himself on account of the bad weather, and had spent the hours mostly with Vera.
It was of how he had employed his time that he had been telling me when I had discovered the eavesdropper.
‘I wonder why our conversation should prove so interesting to that maid?’ he remarked thoughtfully, gazing into the fire. ‘She’s rather good-looking for a German, isn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But who is this Mrs Hill-Mason? She seems a rather loud and buxom person, fond of the display of jewellery, dark, somewhat oleaginous, and devoted to bridge.’
‘Harry says his mother met her in Cairo last winter. She’s one of the Somerset Masons – half-sister to the Countess of Thanet.’
‘Oh, she is known, then?’
‘Of course. But we must get Vera to make some inquiry tomorrow as to where she obtained her maid,’ declared Ray. ‘The woman is interested in us, and we must discover the cause.’
‘Yes, I somehow mistrust her,’ I said. ‘I met her crossing the hall just before dinner, and I detected a curious look in her eyes as she glanced at me.’
‘Merely your fancy, Jack, old chap – because she’s German,’ he laughed, stretching his long legs.
‘Well, what you were telling me about Vera and her discovery has alarmed me,’ I said, tossing away the end of my cigar.
‘Yes, she only returned last week from Emden, where she’s been visiting her old German governess, who, it seems, is now married to an official in the construction department of the German Admiralty. From her friend she was able to learn a lot, which will, no doubt, cause our Lords of the Admiralty a bad quarter of an hour. What would the British public think if they were told the truth – that Germany is rapidly building a secret fleet?’ I said.
‘Why, my dear fellow, the public would simply say you were a liar,’ he laughed. ‘Every Englishman fancies himself top-dog, even though British diplomacy – apart from that of our excellent King – is the laughing-stock of the Powers. No,’ he added, ‘the truth is out. All yesterday I spent with Vera, preparing the information which she forwarded to the Admiralty to-night. I registered the letter for her at the village post office. The authorities owe her a very deep debt for succeeding in obtaining the information which our secret service has always failed to get. She, an admiral’s daughter, is now able to furnish actual details of the ships now building in secret and where they are being constructed.’
‘A matter which will, no doubt, be considered very seriously by the government,’ I said.
‘Oh, I suppose they treat the whole thing lightly, as they always do. We invite invasion,’ he sighed as he rose, adding: ‘Let’s turn in now. Tomorrow we’ll keep an eye upon that unusually inquisitive maid.’
That night the eyes of the German maid haunted me. I could not rid myself of their recollection. Was it that this hunting down of German spies was getting on my nerves?
Next day we were shooting Starlings Wood, about 5 miles distant, but Ray having cried off one day, could not do so again. Therefore, at his suggestion, I made an excuse and remained at home with the ladies.
The morning I spent walking through the park with Vera, a smart, sweet-faced little figure in her short tweed skirt and furs, with her bright and vivacious chatter. From her I learnt some further details concerning her visit to Emden.
‘Ray is most excited about it, Mr Jacox,’ she was saying. ‘Of course, I had to make my inquiries with great caution and discretion, but I managed to find out what I wanted, and I sent all the details to the Admiralty yesterday.’
Then as we went along the wide beech avenue I told her of the curious incident in the smoking-room on the previous evening.
‘Ray was telling me about it just before breakfast,’ she said, turning her splendid eyes to mine. ‘I have already made some inquiries of Mrs Hill-Mason, and it appears that the maid Erna Stolberg was recommended to her by a friend when she was in Dresden last year. She’s a most exemplary person, and has a number of friends in England. She was previously with a French baronne.’
‘Mrs Hill-Mason often moves in a military set, doesn’t she?’ I remarked. ‘Somebody last night stated that she’s the widow of a general, and is well known down at Aldershot.’
‘I believe so.’
‘If Mrs Hill-Mason visits at the houses of military officers, as it seems she does, then this inquisitive maid would be afforded many opportunities for gathering information. I intend to watch her,’ I said.
‘And so will I, Mr Jacox,’ replied the admiral’s daughter, drawing her Astrakhan collar tighter about her throat.
Half an hour later, we drove in the wagonette out to the shooting-party in the woods, where a merry luncheon was served in a marquee. I, however, returned to the house before the rest of the party and haunted the servants’ hall. With Williams the butler I was on friendly terms, and finding him in the great hall, began to make inquiries regarding the guests’ servants.
‘You’ve got a German woman among them, haven’t you?’ I remarked.
‘Yes, sir,’ was his reply. ‘A rather funny one she is, I fancy. She goes out alone for walks after she’s dressed her mistress for dinner, and is out sometimes till quite late. What she does wandering about in the dark nobody knows. But it ain’t for me to say a word, sir; she’s a visitor’s maid.’
I held my own counsel, but resolved to watch.
Tea in the great hall, over which Lady Jocelyn presided, proved the usual irresponsible function, but when I went to my room to dress for dinner I became convinced that certain papers in my suitcase had been turned over and investigated.
That night I did not go in to dinner. I heard the gong sound, and when the company had gone in, I put on thick boots, overcoat, and cap, and passed through the back way along the old wing of the house, through the smoking-room, and out upon the drive.
Behind some holly bushes where I could see any one leave by the great paved courtyard where the servants’ entrance was situated, I concealed myself and waited in patience. The night was dark and overcast.
The stable chimes had rung out half past eight, but I still remained until, about twenty minutes later, footfalls sounded, and from out the arched entrance to the courtyard came a female figure in a close-fitting hat and long dark Ulster.
She passed close by me, under the light of the lamp, and I saw it was the fair-haired woman for whom I was waiting.
Instead of walking straight down the avenue to the lodge-gates, she struck along a footpath which led for a mile across the park, first skirting the lake – the fishpond of the monks who lived there before the Dissolution; then, passing under the dark shadow of a spinney, led to a stile by which the high park wall could be negotiated and the main road to East Dereham reached.
As she went forward so I followed. I knew the path well. I watched her ascend the stile and cross the wall into the road. Then I crept up and peered over into the darkness. She had turned to the right, and I could discern her waiting at the roadside about 30 yards away.
From my place of concealment I could hear her slow footsteps as she idled up and down in the darkness, evidently waiting for someone.
I think about ten minutes passed when I heard the whir of a motor-car approaching, its big glaring headlamps shedding a stream of white brilliance over the muddy road. As it approached her it slowed down and stopped. Then I distinguished it to be a big limousine, the occupant of which opened the door, and she entered with a word of greeting.
I stood peering into the darkness, in surprise and disappointment at not catching sight of the person with whom she was keeping these nightly appointments. As soon as the door had banged the driver drove across the road, backed, and turning, sped away in the direction he had come.
But while he was turning I had gained the road, advancing beneath the hedgerow in an endeavour to see the number of the car. But I was baffled. It was covered with mud.
Afterwards, much disappointed, and certainly hungry, I made my way back across the park to the Hall, where, after managing to get a snack from Williams, I joined the party at bridge.
That night the woman Stolberg returned at five minutes to eleven, and later, when Ray went upstairs with me, I described what I had seen.
Next night, instead of following her out, I waited at the spot at half past ten, when, sure enough, the car returned ten minutes later and deposited her. The number plates, however, were obliterated by the mud both front and back – purposely it seemed to me. The man within shook her hand as she alighted, but I could not see his face. Was he some secret lover? Apparently she went no great distance each evening, going and coming from the direction of Holt.
On the following day I took several opportunities of watching the woman at close quarters. Her eyes were peculiarly set, very close together, her lips were thin, and her cheek-bones rather high. Otherwise she was not bad-looking. Mrs Hill-Mason had, of course, no idea of her maid’s nocturnal motor-rides.
Whether the woman had any suspicion that she was being watched I know not; but on the next night when Ray took a turn at keeping an eye upon her, she did not go out, but on the next she went, and Ray followed her to the park wall, but saw nothing more than I had done.
All this time, of course, Vera was greatly interested in the result of our observations. Through her own maid, Batson, she discovered the room occupied by the German, and to this I made my way, at considerable risk, one morning while the maid was busy attending upon her mistress. I had a good look through her belongings, finding in her trunk a small, flat tin box, japanned dark green, strong, and secured by a lock of well-known make. What, I wondered, did it contain?
Could I have but seen the number of the mysterious car I could have discovered the identity of her nocturnal visitor.
The same day that I discovered the tin box in her trunk, Mrs Hill-Mason, however, returned to London, taking with her the mysterious Fräulein.
Extracted from Spies of the Kaiser: Plotting the Downfall of England by William Le Queux (first published by Hurst and Blackett in 1909)
THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS
ERSKINE CHILDERS
The Riddle of the Sands, the story of how Charles Carruthers and his friend Arthur Davies uncover German preparations for an invasion of Britain while sailing in northern Germany, inspired a whole generation of young men to dream of spying on the Hun, and led in 1910 to the first major spy scandal to be suffered by the organisation we now know as MI6. Two young naval officers, Captain Bernard Trench and Lieutenant Vivian Brandon, were sent to northern Germany to collect intelligence on German coastal defences. They were swiftly spotted, arrested and put on trial. Reporting on the case, the German press managed to make the Daily Mail’s attitude to enemy spies look almost liberal. A German spy recently arrested in Portsmouth was merely collecting information he could ‘have learned more cheaply and with less trouble by buying picture postcards’, but Brandon and Trench were ‘very dangerous men’ who should have medical treatment to erase their memories.
By comparison, the trial was a relatively sedate affair. The general mood back home was that Trench and Brandon were innocent officers and gentlemen fitted up by the Germans. The evidence demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were guilty as charged. Nevertheless, they were treated not as criminals but as officers simply doing their job. The atmosphere in the court room was remarkably relaxed. At one point, their barrister held up a copy of The Riddle of the Sands and asked them in turn if they were familiar with it. Trench simply said that he knew of it. Brandon confirmed that he had read it and then said, to raucous laughter from the court, that he liked it so much that he had read it three times.
Childers had not served in intelligence before he wrote The Riddle of the Sands, but he went on to work for Cumming running agents into Turkish-occupied territory in the Near East. His was a far better book than anything Le Queux could have produced, but he also included the obligatory mysterious Fräulein, the femme fatale for whom Arthur Davies has already fallen when the novel begins.
THE INCONGRUITY OF the whole business was striking me. Why should anyone want to kill Davies, and why should Davies, the soul of modesty and simplicity, imagine that anyone wanted to kill him? He must have cogent reasons, for he was the last man to give way to a morbid fancy.
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘What was his motive? A German finds an Englishman exploring a bit of German coast, determines to stop him, and even to get rid of him. It looks so far as if you were thought to be the spy.’
Davies winced. ‘But he’s not a German,’ he said, hotly. ‘He’s an Englishman.’
‘An Englishman?’
‘Yes, I’m sure of it. Not that I’ve much to go on. He professed to know very little English, and never spoke it, except a word or two now and then to help me out of a sentence; and as to his German, he seemed to me to speak it like a native; but, of course, I’m no judge.’ Davies sighed. ‘That’s where I wanted someone like you. You would have spotted him at once, if he wasn’t German. I go more by a … What do you call it? A…?’
‘General impression,’ I suggested.
‘Yes, that’s what I mean. It was something in his looks and manner; you know how different we are from foreigners. And it wasn’t only himself, it was the way he talked – I mean about cruising and the sea, especially. It’s true he let me do most of the talking; but, all the same – how can I explain it? I felt we understood one another, in a way that two foreigners wouldn’t.
‘He pretended to think me a bit crazy for coming so far in a small boat, but I could swear he knew as much about the game as I did; for lots of little questions he asked had the right ring in them. Mind you, all this is an afterthought. I should never have bothered about it – I’m not cut out for a Sherlock Holmes – if it hadn’t been for what followed.’
‘It’s rather vague,’ I said. ‘Have you no more definite reason for thinking him English?’
‘There were one or two things rather more definite,’ said Davies, slowly. ‘You know when he hove to and hailed me, proposing the short cut, I told you roughly what he said. I forget the exact words, but “abschneiden” came in – “durch Watten” and “abschneiden’”(they call the banks Watts, you know); they were simple words, and he shouted them loud, so as to carry through the wind. I understood what he meant, but, as I told you, I hesitated before consenting. I suppose he thought I didn’t understand, for just as he was drawing ahead again he pointed to the suth’ard, and then shouted through his hands as a trumpet “Verstehen Sie? Shortcut through sands; follow me!” the last two sentences in downright English. I can hear those words now, and I’ll swear they were in his native tongue. Of course I thought nothing of it at the time. I was quite aware that he knew a few English words, though he had always mispronounced them; an easy trick when your hearer suspects nothing. But I needn’t say that just then I was observant of trifles. I don’t pretend to be able to unravel a plot and steer a small boat before a heavy sea at the same moment.’
‘And if he was piloting you into the next world he could afford to commit himself before you parted! Was there anything else? By the way, how did the daughter strike you? Did she look English too?’
Two men cannot discuss a woman freely without a deep foundation of intimacy, and, until this day, the subject had never arisen between us in any form. It was the last that was likely to, for I could have divined that Davies would have met it with an armour of reserve. He was busy putting on this armour now; yet I could not help feeling a little brutal as I saw how badly he jointed his clumsy suit of mail. Our ages were the same, but I laugh now to think how old and blasé I felt as the flush warmed his brown skin, and he slowly propounded the verdict, ‘Yes, I think she did.’
‘She talked nothing but German, I suppose?’
‘Oh, of course.’
‘Did you see much of her?’
‘A good deal.’
‘Was she…?’ (How to frame it?) ‘Did she want you to sail to the Elbe with them?’
‘She seemed to,’ admitted Davies, reluctantly, clutching at his ally, the match-box. ‘But, hang it, don’t dream that she knew what was coming,’ he added, with sudden fire.
I pondered and wondered, shrinking from further inquisition, easy as it would have been with so truthful a victim, and banishing all thought of ill-timed chaff. There was a cross-current in this strange affair, whose depth and strength I was beginning to gauge with increasing seriousness. I did not know my man yet, and I did not know myself. A conviction that events in the near future would force us into complete mutual confidence withheld me from pressing him too far. I returned to the main question; who was Dollmann, and what was his motive? Davies struggled out of his armour.
‘I’m convinced,’ he said, ‘that he’s an Englishman in German service. He must be in German service, for he had evidently been in those waters a long time, and knew every inch of them; of course, it’s a very lonely part of the world, but he has a house on Norderney Island; and he, and all about him, must be well known to a certain number of people. One of his friends I happened to meet; what do you think he was? A naval officer. It was on the afternoon of the third day, and we were having coffee on the deck of the Medusa, and talking about next day’s trip, when a little launch came buzzing up from seaward, drew alongside, and this chap I’m speaking of came on board, shook hands with Dollmann, and stared hard at me. Dollmann introduced us, calling him Commander von Brüning, in command of the torpedo gunboat Blitz. He pointed towards Norderney, and I saw her – a low, grey rat of a vessel – anchored in the Roads about 2 miles away. It turned out that she was doing the work of fishery guardship on that part of the coast.
‘I must say I took to him at once. He looked a real good sort, and a splendid officer, too – just the sort of chap I should have liked to be. You know I always wanted – but that’s an old story, and can wait. I had some talk with him, and we got on capitally as far as we went, but that wasn’t far, for I left pretty soon, guessing that they wanted to be alone.’
‘Were they alone then?’ I asked, innocently.
‘Oh, Fräulein Dollmann was there, of course,’ explained Davies, feeling for his armour again.
‘Did he seem to know them well?’ I pursued, inconsequently.
‘Oh, yes, very well.’
Scenting a faint clue, I felt the need of feminine weapons for my sensitive antagonist. But the opportunity passed.
‘That was the last I saw of him,’ he said. ‘We sailed, as I told you, at daybreak next morning. Now, have you got any idea what I’m driving at?’
‘A rough idea,’ I answered. ‘Go ahead.’
Davies sat up to the table, unrolled the chart with a vigorous sweep of his two hands, and took up his parable with new zest.
‘I start with two certainties,’ he said. ‘One is that I was “moved on” from that coast, because I was too inquisitive. The other is that Dollmann is at some devil’s work there which is worth finding out. Now’ – he paused in a gasping effort to be logical and articulate. ‘Now – well, look at the chart. No, better still, look first at this map of Germany. It’s on a small scale, and you can see the whole thing.’ He snatched down a pocket-map from the shelf and unfolded it.
‘Here’s this huge empire, stretching half over central Europe – an empire growing like wildfire, I believe, in people, and wealth, and everything. They’ve licked the French, and the Austrians, and are the greatest military power in Europe. I wish I knew more about all that, but what I’m concerned with is their sea-power. It’s a new thing with them, but it’s going strong, and that Emperor of theirs is running it for all it’s worth. He’s a splendid chap, and anyone can see he’s right.
They’ve got no colonies to speak of, and must have them, like us. They can’t get them and keep them, and they can’t protect their huge commerce without naval strength. The command of the sea is the thing nowadays, isn’t it? I say, don’t think these are my ideas,’ he added, naively. ‘It’s all out of Mahan and those fellows. Well, the Germans have got a small fleet at present, but it’s a thundering good one, and they’re building hard. There’s the … And the…’ He broke off into a digression on armaments and speeds in which I could not follow him. He seemed to know every ship by heart. I had to recall him to the point. ‘Well, think of Germany as a new sea-power,’ he resumed. ‘The next thing is, what is her coast-line? It’s a very queer one, as you know, split clean in two by Denmark, most of it lying east of that and looking on the Baltic, which is practically an inland sea, with its entrance blocked by Danish islands. It was to evade that block that William built the ship canal from Kiel to the Elbe, but that could be easily smashed in wartime. Far the most important bit of coast-line is that which lies west of Denmark and looks on the North Sea. It’s there that Germany gets her head out into the open, so to speak. It’s there that she fronts us and France, the two great sea-powers of Western Europe, and it’s there that her greatest ports are and her richest commerce.
