Iain Pears - Stone's Fall

'Maybe. But before I met you I was a banker with a fine career in prospect, and a few months later I was spending my life in miscellaneous disbursements.'

'A little bored, are you?'

'Very.'

'Good. Why don't you come and work for me?'

'You must be joking.'

'I mean it. Your friend in Paris spoke highly of your skills, if not of your character.'

'I would rather starve in the gutter,' I said disgustedly. 'Besides, I was not impressed by the play-acting of M. Lefevre, or whatever his name is.'

'Mr Drennan.'

'Pardon?'

'Mr Arnsley Drennan. That's his name. He doesn't use it much any more, but there is no reason why you shouldn't know it. He is an American. He came to Europe when his side lost in their war. You were saying?'

'Play-acting,' I repeated crossly. 'Hanging around in bars, listening to tittle-tattle. A waste of time.'

'You could do better?'

'Easily. Not that I'm going to. I won't have anything to do with Lefevre. Or Drennan.'

'You wouldn't have to. Mr Drennan, ah, found a more lucrative post elsewhere.'

'Really? Isn't that . . .'

'Difficult, yes. I'm afraid he was most awkward about it. He knows so very much about things, you see. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to find him to talk things over.'

'I can't imagine he ever found anything very useful for you anyway. I thought his antics were quite ridiculous.'

'Did you?'

'Yes.'

'So what would you do differently?'

And this was the moment that changed my life forever, for with a few words I then took the first steps which made the imperial intelligence system a little more coherent – I would say professional, although that would be considered an insult. I should have kept my mouth shut and walked out. I should have decided that Wilkinson was someone with whom I would not associate. But I wanted to give in. Ever since I had seen Lefevre – or Drennan – deal with Virginie I knew I could do better, and I had found the whole business exhilarating.

Besides, I had realised that Henry Wilkinson did not preside like a spider in the middle of a vast web of intelligence officers spread out across the Empire, constantly alert for dangers and opportunities, as I had assumed. Far from being all-seeing and all competent, he was virtually blind. He had no department, no budget, no authority whatsoever. The safety of the greatest empire the world had ever known depended on a bunch of friends and acquaintances, crooks and misfits. The flow of intelligence depended on favours and requests. There was no policy, little direction and no obvious aims. It was amateurish and all but useless. They needed me, I decided with all the arrogance that a twenty-seven-year-old could muster. Far more than I needed them.

So I summarised my understanding of imperial intelligence. Wilkinson seemed quite pleased with the description.

'Yes, yes,' he said cheerfully, 'I think that sums up the current situation quite nicely. And if I did not inform you of all this, I'm sure you understand the reasons why perfectly well. If I cannot have the substance of proper organisation, then the appearance of one is the next best thing.'

'So how does all this work?'

'As best it can,' he replied. 'The Government does not believe such activities to be necessary, and in any case couldn't persuade Parliament to provide money for them. Some sort of body might be set up using funds voted to the army or navy, but neither sees the need. For the last fifteen years I have been operating without any legal basis or funding whatsoever. We have people collecting information throughout the Empire, in India and Africa and in Europe, but there is no co-ordination at all. I have to ask to see anything they have. I cannot order them to comply or even say what they should be looking for. At the moment, for example, the Indian Army is not on speaking terms with us. I'm still not certain why. They won't answer my letters.'

'So you know as well as I do that all this running around in France, collecting gossip in bars is useless.'

'Not useless, no,' he said judiciously. 'We do the best we can, but we work despite our masters, not because of them. There is nothing unusual about that. Many Government departments feel the same. I think it might be a common condition of the civil servant. You find it all unsatisfactory?'

'I find it pathetic.'

'You could do better? Considering that Government policy is unlikely to change?'

'Listen,' I said. 'I work for a bank. It is a commercial operation which, in effect, buys and sells money. It is all I know, it has its weaknesses, but it works. If you want information – real information, not tittle-tattle – I am convinced you have to buy it. My arrangement with Virginie was organised on a purely commercial basis, for mutual profit. That is why it worked. Information is a commodity; it is traded like any other, and there is a market for it.'

'How would you go about it?'

'I would set up as a broker. Find people who wish to sell, and buy at a good price. And sell it on at a price as well.'

'And that is all?'

'In essence. The difference is that such an operation would need a substantial amount of money to get it going. You get what you pay for.'

'You speak like a businessman.'

'And you, I'm afraid, need to think like one. I'm not thinking about the cost of a battleship, you know.'

'Even small sums of money have to be accounted for. You would be surprised how well the Government likes to look after public funds. Still, perhaps something could be done. Would you do me the great favour of writing down – confidentially, of course – what your proposal is, and how you would proceed? I can then, perhaps, present it to some friends to ask their opinion.'

And so I became a writer of memoranda for governments. Do I bother to draw a contrast with the flights of fancy which illuminate the pages of our novelists? Do these heroes stay up at night penning budget proposals? Laying out routes for transferring money from one bank to another? Describing methods of accounting for sums disbursed?

That is what I did. I began by describing the problem – which was to ascertain the intentions of France (although any country could have been inserted at this point), and then pointed out that we lived in an age of industry. Governments could not order armies into the field on a whim. They have to be amassed, and equipped. This takes time. I estimated that between deciding to go to war and actually doing so at least nine months was required, and that this could be monitored by watching the order books of armaments companies, the schedules of the train companies, requisitions of horses and so on. Was the government putting in place new loan facilities with banks? Was it taking on increased powers to raise supplementary taxation? Which war was to be fought could also be estimated – was money going disproportionately to naval yards, or to the manufacturers of cannon? Technical details of how weapons worked (should such information be required) might also be better acquired by the commercial route rather than by trying to suborn officers in the armed forces. And what were the stockpiles of the opposing military forces? If they went to war, how long could they stay in the field?

Much of this information, I argued, could be bought at the right price. In addition, I realised that many politicians were susceptible to a certain amount of coercion through exposure of their finances; I also proposed that money and time should be spent on obtaining detailed information about the bribes and other inducements politicians were known to accept. This could then be used to constrain unfriendly action, or to obtain any more specific information that was required. Finally, I recommended that all the money involved be channelled through German banking houses to make it seem that it was they, not we, who were indulging in this activity.