Len Deighton - Horse Under Water

In creating cover designs for the new publication of Len Deighton’s quartet of spy novels, I came up with the metaphor of the chess game as it relates to the spy game. Three enamel U-boat sub-mariners’ cap badges became pawns on the chessboard.

A constant feature of Deighton’s nameless protagonist’s Charlotte Street WOOC(P) office was the ubiquitous pack of Gauloises cigarettes and the ever-present tin of Nescafé. (This very same street was used as the location for the HQ of the nest of spies in Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent .) The Swiss had invented instant coffee prior to World War II, but it only became available in the UK in the 1950s, so when freeze-dried soluble grains were introduced a while later they became the beverage of choice for the Swinging London set. My search for a UK Nescafé tin of that period ended when I located one in far-off Australia!

Finding a contemporary, key-opened Portuguese sardine tin became virtually impossible. Discovering the illustration of a sardine on a cigarette card and a crested souvenir spoon from Lisbon became much easier, thanks to eBay!

My wife, Isolde, who produces all of my art work, and is a dab-hand at Photoshop, reproduced the period British European Airways ticket, incorporating the exact flight number described in the book.

One obsession of Deighton’s nameless protagonist is solving crossword puzzles. Since I have kept copies of the illustrations I produced for the London Sunday Times during the 1960s, I was able to find among the pages of the newspaper a crossword puzzle of the period.

The 1943 German postage stamp on the spine of the book depicts a German U-boat. The group of cigarette cards on the back of the cover spells out in semaphore K.U.Z.I.G. and Y. The nautical interpretation of these letters is referred to in the book as ‘Permission granted to lay alongside’.

Some years ago, given the possibility of producing a feature film on the subject of the Nazi plan to flood the Allied economy with counterfeit money, I purchased a fake £20 note.

On meeting a survivor of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where, as an engraver, he was forced to produce the counterfeit bank notes, I showed him my note, which he held to the light and proudly proclaimed, ‘Yes, it’s one of ours!’

I photographed the jacket set-up using natural daylight, with my Canon OS 5D digital camera.

Arnold Schwartzman OBE RDI

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape 1963

Copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 1963

Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2009

Cover designer’s note © Arnold Schwartzman 2009

C over design and photography © Arnold Schwartzman 2009

Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebook

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780586044315

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780007343010

Version: 2017-05-22

I cannot tell how the truth may be;

I say the tale as ’twas told to me.

SCOTT

Perhaps the worst plight of a vessel is to be caught in a gale on a lee shore. In this connection the following … rules should be observed:

1. Never allow your vessel to be found in such a predicament …

CALLINGHAM, Seamanship: Jottings for the Young Sailor

Contents

Cover

Cover designer’s note

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Introduction

Solution

Horse Under Water: Secret File No. 2

1. Sweet talk

2. Old solution

3. Undersea need

4. Man with a tail

5. No toy

6. Ugly rock

7. Short talk

8. I hit it

9. I sit on it

10. Sort of boat

11. Help

12. Sort of man

13. More to do

14. Portuguese O.K.

15. Reaction in the market

16. One too many

17. Da Cunha lays it down

18. Sad song

19. Never say this

20. Enemy

21. Are the wages of this, that?

22. Charly raises its head

23. In the same one

24. Threads of a story

25. Ready to jump?

26. The point of a pen

27. Gain this or lose it

28. The boat gets one

29. Entreaty

30. Grave trouble

31. From a friend

32. For this game

33. Jean when I find her

34. Awakening

35. At the door

36. Sort of Secrets

37. Two readings

38. Chin wag

39. Inside a cabinet

40. H without an H

41. It’s moving

42. Hidden within treason

43. Friday on a Portuguese calendar

44. W.H.O. is part of this not me

45. Man and boy are this

46. Little else to give

47. Relinquish

48. Ivor Butcher entertains

49. And again

50. One named OSTRA has no number

51. Where I shine

52. I see better with this

53. Long arm

54. Ossie moves like double this

55. In me for a change

56. Deep signal

57. Lost letter in the mail

58. To put it together hastily

Last Word

Appendixes

Footnotes

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Len Deighton

About the Publisher

The Ipcress File , my first book, was written in two separate sessions. It was started when I was on vacation in the South of France. Porquerolles is an island off Toulon. In those days there was very little to do there other than sit and look at the Mediterranean, and eat and drink at regular intervals. So I whiled away the sunny days writing a story.

I have always enjoyed being in France. As a moderately successful illustrator, I decided to live there. I had an energetic and encouraging artist’s agent in London and she sent work to me. My overheads were small, for the isolated cottage I lived in was Spartan accommodation for hunters. It was high on a windy hillside in the Dordogne and the forest that provided game for the hunters started within inches of the door. It had no heating other than a wood stove and drinking water was drawn from an ancient well about three hundred yards away. Day began with getting the stove started and going for water. Until the wood was burning bright, there could be no hot tea.