‘Well?’
‘Well, what?’ I replied.
‘What’s on?’
‘Nothing’s on.’
‘With you, something is always on.’
‘Today we simply wait to see what the day brings forth.’
‘Sod that, nothing comes of nothing. Time to get moving!’
‘No post?’ I asked.
‘No post. Online?’
‘Nothing stirs, at least nothing human!’
‘I’ve summoned Melisa, to be here by tea time.’ Announced Charlie as we were consuming our meagre lunchtime rations. ‘She can pick-up her copy of the placement report, check it over, before the other one goes in the post to her headmaster.’
‘At least she has a headmaster, that’s something. Or headmistress, I mean, rather than some other silly, ungendered title.’
‘Shut the door quickly. I think I’m being followed.’ Melisa scurried to the reception room window and peered down the street.
‘And whom do you fear is spying on you?’ I asked.
‘The family of course.’
‘Ah! Well, you’re a child, you should be used to that.’
‘Yes, but they’re all so evasive when you ask questions.’
‘Come on up to the media room, we’ll talk before tea.’
‘It would be highly unusual if anyone in your family was physically following you. Your father provided you with a top of the range mobile, he’s almost certainly set it up, so he knows your location, and if you’re here that’s no problem.’
‘What’s that?’ She asked looking at what I’d just put on the screen.
‘Your father’s mobile is on, and is in the garden shed at this very moment.’
‘Oh, my god!’
‘It’s okay, we’ve been playing this game for years. But he will know what I just did. It’s the way our network is set up. I mean there will be masses more you can do with your mobile in years to come if you care to learn how.’
‘I just keep getting an uneasy feeling everywhere I go.’
‘Well, in a sense, we’re all on tv now, cameras are everywhere. And if you’re sensitive to that, it’s not uncommon to feel you’re on stage all the time, unable to relax completely and just play as you please.’
‘But father and all his lot are expert in this stuff, then there is grandfather, mum’s dad. I don’t get straight answers from any of them.’
‘Well, just because someone knows a lot of secrets doesn’t make them a spy! It just means they have to abide by the Official Secrets Act, and keep their mouth shut.’
‘That’s kind of what they say.’
‘But anyway, we need to stop this anxiety of yours running away with you. You need to be confident about what’s fact, fantasy or simply stuff that is unknowable or uncertain.’
‘How?’
‘Wipe from your mind for a moment, any thought of spies or your German heritage. You are in grave danger of missing that which applies to absolutely anyone who looks into their family history, whoever they are, wherever they come from.’
‘What?’
‘You have four grandparents, eight great grandparents, sixteen great, great grandparents. Everyone’s family tree of descent grows massively as you go further back. Sooner or later, you come across people you dislike, or disapprove of. Some you may be able to empathise with a little, realise that had you been in their situation, you might have acted in a similar way. But all our ancestors experienced poverty and tyranny by today’s standards. Equally, if you could go back far enough, you’d find you are a direct descendant of someone, considered royal in their time.’
‘Okay.’
‘That’s your context, your starting point or baseline. So, with a little knowledge of German history, it should be obvious you’ll come across people who went along with unpleasant regimes as well as those who took a stand. Most people think and act in terms of day-to-day survival, even if you’re resisting a particular government, you’ll still have had to join a queue for the essential food or energy supplies your enemy controls, in that sense everyone ends up a kind of collaborator.’
‘But if Daddy’s family made money, ever since radios and electrics went into planes, they must have been in the arms industry, war profiteers!’
‘Sure. But you must ask what choices they had? Could they pick which side to be on? Come on, let us go in the garden, and have some of Charlie’s wonder tea.’
‘How are you, Mel?’ Asked Charlie.
‘A bit jumpy actually, you explain Tony.’
‘Melisa is a bit worried about her German family history, their involvement in the aeronautics industry, and the whole secrecy thing that comes with her father’s work.’
‘How old are you, Melisa?’ Asked Kenneth.
‘Sixteen.’
‘The only way to get over the old spying paranoia is to read about real spying throughout history. Anthony, you should lend her your ancient copy of Knightley’s, The Second Oldest Profession and Simon Singh’s, The Code Book.’
‘So, you’ve been spying around the media room then!’
‘Bad puns don’t become you.’
‘More to the point, how do you know about such things?’
‘National Service old boy, trained as a cypher clerk, down the coast from here as it happens.’
‘Is Barmy being asked to give consultation on this business in eastern Europe?’ Interceded Charlie.
‘More than likely.’
‘In that case he might be a bit anxious, Daphne would pick up on that, and so too the girls.’
‘That’s a point.’
‘Some people default to Moscow Rules when under pressure.’ Threw in Kenneth.
‘Oh, good lord!’ I exclaimed.
‘What are Moscow Rules?’ Melisa asked in all innocence.
I looked at Kenneth, he said; ‘You’re the great explainer Anthony.’
‘Well, the term has taken on a life of it’s own these days, some people even produce lists. What they don’t usually explain is that the expression comes from fiction, from the John le Carre spy novels.’
‘Or the late David Cornwell to give him his real name, one time MI6 officer.’
‘Thank you, Ken! In le Carre’s fiction, Moscow Rules should be followed by spies when in enemy territory, rules about being hyper vigilant. But it has a very specific context, the situation in the Cold War period when the Soviet Union existed. So, anyway, a western spy finds himself in say, Moscow, now the foundational rule, so to speak, is you must assume in all your day-to-day behaviour that your real identity and purpose is already known to the KGB and that you are always being followed. Therefore, every communication with your informer, or contact must appear innocent, unplanned. Now there is no list in the novels, just odd examples of procedure, I’m trying to remember examples?’
‘Oh, carry on old chap, you’re doing very well.’
‘Well, take being followed, we have this sense of the danger being behind us, but the real situation is likely to be very different. It’s almost certainly a team, men and women. All dressed differently, possibly with a couple of cars as back-up. The real danger is very likely in front of us... Makes one think of Nemesis.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Greek goddess of retribution.’ Offered Kenneth.
‘But that’s just where people go wrong. The goddess Nemesis, in her winged chariot, is inevitable retribution, something everyone faces eventually. She is way out in front of you, over many horizons, sets off at your birth, she is coming straight at you from the future... Anyway, that’s a bit of a diversion, what you really want to know about are dead letter boxes, crash meetings, and their relevance in a digital world.’
Talking of the KGB, the Cold War and espionage, whether you’re a le Carré connoisseur, a Deighton disciple, a Fleming fanatic, a Herron hireling or a Macintyre marauder you will love this anecdote. If you don't love all such things you might learn something so read on!
ReplyDeleteThere is one category of secret agent that is often overlooked … namely those who don’t know they have been recruited. For more on that topic we suggest you read Beyond Enkription (explained below) and this very current article on that topic by the ex-spook Bill Fairclough. The article can be found at TheBurlingtonFiles.org website in the News Section. The article (dated July 21, 2021) is about “Russian Interference”; it’s been read over 20,000 times. Anyway, since you seem to be interested in all things espionage we guess you’re interested in Oleg Gordievsky, so this anecdote should make for compulsory reading.
John le Carré described Ben Macintyre’s fact based novel, The Spy and The Traitor, as “the best true spy story I have ever read”. It was about Kim Philby’s Russian counterpart, a KGB Colonel named Oleg Gordievsky, codename Sunbeam. In 1974 Gordievsky became a double agent working for MI6 in Copenhagen which was when Bill Fairclough aka Edward Burlington unwittingly launched his career as a secret agent for MI6. Fairclough and le Carré knew of each other: le Carré had even rejected Fairclough’s suggestion in 2014 that they collaborate on a book. As le Carré said at the time, “Why should I? I’ve got by so far without collaboration so why bother now?” A realistic response from a famous expert in fiction in his eighties!
Gordievsky never met Fairclough, but he did know Fairclough’s handler, Colonel Alan McKenzie aka Colonel Alan Pemberton. It is little wonder therefore that in Beyond Enkription, the first fact based novel in The Burlington Files espionage series, genuine double agents, disinformation and deception weave wondrously within the relentless twists and turns of evolving events. Beyond Enkription is set in 1974 in London, Nassau and Port au Prince. Edward Burlington, a far from boring accountant, unwittingly started working for Alan McKenzie in MI6 and later worked eyes wide open for the CIA.
What happens is so exhilarating and bone chilling it makes one wonder why bother reading espionage fiction when facts are so much more breathtaking. The fact based novel begs the question, were his covert activities in Haiti a prelude to the abortion of a CIA sponsored Haitian equivalent to the Cuban Bay of Pigs? Why was his father Dr Richard Fairclough, ex MI1, involved? Richard was of course a confidant of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who became chief adviser to JFK during the Cuban missile crisis.
Len Deighton and Mick Herron could be forgiven for thinking they co-wrote the raw noir anti-Bond narrative, Beyond Enkription. Atmospherically it’s reminiscent of Ted Lewis’ Get Carter of Michael Caine fame. If anyone ever makes a film based on Beyond Enkription they’ll only have themselves to blame if it doesn’t go down in history as a classic espionage thriller.
By the way, the maverick Bill Fairclough had quite a lot in common with Greville Wynne (famous for his part in helping to reveal Russian missile deployment in Cuba in 1962) and has also even been called “a posh Harry Palmer”. As already noted, Bill Fairclough and John le Carré (aka David Cornwell) knew of each other but only long after Cornwell’s MI6 career ended thanks to Kim Philby. Coincidentally, the novelist Graham Greene used to work in MI6 reporting to Philby and Bill Fairclough actually stayed in Hôtel Oloffson during a covert op in Haiti (explained in Beyond Enkription) which was at the heart of Graham Greene’s spy novel The Comedians. Funny it’s such a small world!