Daniel Silva - The Unlikely Spy

The Abwehr was ecstatic. Becker was a star, a super-spy, and all it had cost the RAF was a day patching up the runway and carting off the charred skeletons of the Spitfires.

So impressed were Becker's controllers, they asked him to recruit more agents, which he did-actually, which Vicary did. By the end of 1940, Karl Becker had a ring of a dozen agents working for him, some reporting to him, some reporting directly to Hamburg. All were fictitious, products of Vicary's imagination. Vicary tended to every aspect of their lives: they fell in love, they had affairs, they complained about money, they lost houses and friends in the blitz. Vicary even allowed himself to arrest a couple of them; no network operating on enemy soil was foolproof, and the Abwehr would never believe none of their agents had been lost. It was mind-bending, tedious work, requiring attention to the most trivial detail; Vicary found it exhilarating and loved every minute of it.

The lift was on the blink again, so Vicary had to take the stairs from Boothby's lair down to Registry. Opening the door he was struck by the smell of the place: decaying paper, dust, tangy mildew from the damp creeping through the cellar walls. It reminded him of the library at the university. There were files on open shelves, files in the file cabinets, files stacked on the cold stone floor, piles of paper waiting to ripen into files. A trio of pretty girls-the shakedown night staff-moved quietly about, speaking a language of inventory Vicary could not understand. The girls-known as Registry Queens in the lexicon of the place-looked strangely out of place amid the paper and the gloom. He half expected to turn a corner and spot a pair of monks reading an ancient manuscript by candlelight.

He shivered. God, but the place was cold as a crypt. He wished he had worn a sweater or brought something warm to drink. It was all here-the entire secret history of the service. Vicary, wandering the stacks, was struck by the thought that long after he left MI5 there would be an eternal record of his every action. He wasn't certain if he found the thought comforting or sickening.

Vicary thought of Boothby's disparaging remarks about him, and a cold shiver of anger passed over him. Vicary was a damned good Double Cross officer, even Boothby couldn't deny that. He was convinced it was his training as a historian that suited him so perfectly to the work. Often, a historian must engage in conjecture-taking a series of small inconclusive clues and reaching a reasonable inference. Double Cross was very much like engaging in conjecture, only in reverse. It was the job of the Double Cross officer to provide the Germans with small inconclusive clues so they could arrive at desired conclusions. The officer had to be careful and meticulous in the clues he revealed. They had to be a careful blend of fact and fiction, of truth and painstakingly veiled lies. Vicary's bogus spies had to work very hard for their information. The intelligence had to be fed to the Germans in small, sometimes meaningless bites. It had to be consistent with the spy's cover identity. A lorry driver from Bristol, for example, could not be expected to come into possession of stolen documents in London. And no piece of intelligence could ever seem too good to be true, for information too easily obtained is easily discarded.

The files on Abwehr personnel were stored on open floor-to-ceiling shelves in a smaller room at the far end of the floor. The V 's started on a bottom shelf, then jumped to a top one. Vicary had to get down on all fours and tilt his neck sideways, as if he were looking for a lost valuable beneath a piece of furniture. Damn! The file was on the top shelf, of course. He struggled to his feet and, craning his neck, peered at the files over his half-moon reading glasses. Bloody hopeless. The files were six feet above him, too far to read the names-Boothby's revenge on all those who had not attained regulation department height.

One of the Registry Queens found him gazing upward and said she would bring him a library ladder. "Claymore tried to use a chair last week and nearly broke his neck," she sang, returning a moment later, dragging the ladder. She took another look at Vicary, smiled as if he were a daft uncle, and offered to get the file for him. Vicary assured her he could manage.

He climbed the ladder and, using his forefinger as a probe, picked through the files. He found a manila folder with a red tab: VOGEL, KURT-ABWEHR BERLIN. He pulled it down, opened it, and looked inside.

Vogel's file was empty.

A month after he arrived at MI5, Vicary had been surprised to find Nicholas Jago working there too. Jago had been head archivist at University College and was recruited by MI5 the same week as Vicary. He was assigned to Registry and ordered to impose some discipline on the sometimes fickle memory of the department. Jago, like Registry itself, was dusty and irritable and difficult to use. But once past the rough exterior he could be kind and generous, bubbling with valuable information. Jago had one other valuable skill: he knew how to lose a file as well as find one.

Despite the late hour, Vicary found Jago working at his desk in his cramped, glass-enclosed office. Unlike the file rooms it was a sanctuary of neatness and order. When Vicary rapped his knuckle against the windowed door, Jago looked up, smiled, and waved him in. Vicary noticed the smile did not extend to his eyes. He looked exhausted; Jago lived in this place. There was something else: in 1940 his wife had been killed in the blitz. Her death had left him shattered. He had taken a personal oath to defeat the Nazis-not with the gun, with organization and precision.

Vicary sat down and refused Jago's offer of tea-"real stuff I hoarded before the war," he said excitedly. Not like the atrocious wartime tobacco he was stuffing into the bowl of his pipe and setting ablaze with a match. The vile smoke smelled of burning leaves, and it hung between them in a pall while they swapped banalities about returning to the university when the job was done.

Vicary signaled he wanted to get down to business by gently clearing his throat. "I'm looking for a file on a rather obscure Abwehr officer," Vicary said. "I was surprised to find it's missing. The exterior cover is on the shelf, but the contents are gone."

"What's the name?" Jago asked.

"Kurt Vogel."

Jago's face darkened. "Christ! Let me take a look for it. Wait here, Alfred. I'll just be a moment."

"I'll come with you," Vicary said. "Maybe I can help."

"No, no," Jago insisted. "I wouldn't hear of it. I don't help you find spies, you don't help me find files." He laughed at his own joke. "Stay here. Make yourself comfortable. I'll just be a moment."

That's the second time you've said that, Vicary thought: I'll just be a moment. Vicary knew that Jago had become obsessive about his files, but one missing dossier on an Abwehr officer was not cause for a departmental emergency. Files were misplaced and mistakenly discarded all the time. Once Boothby sounded a red alert after losing an entire briefcase filled with important files. Department legend said they had been found a week later at the flat of his mistress.

Jago rushed back into the office a moment later, a cloud of the vile pipe smoke floating behind him like steam from a locomotive. He handed Vicary the file and sat down behind his desk.

"Just as I thought," Jago said, absurdly proud of himself. "It was right there on the shelf. One of the girls must have placed it in the wrong folder. Happens all the time."

Vicary listened to the dubious excuse and frowned. "Interesting-never happened to me before."

"Well, maybe you're just lucky. We handle thousands of files a week down here. We could use more staff. I've taken it up with the director-general, but he says we've used up our allotment and we can't have any more."