Len Deighton - The Harry Palmer Quartet

There was still much work to do at Charlotte Street. K.K., late of Wood Green, wanted to claim diplomatic immunity, but failed. I put an advertisement into France-Soir , thanking Bert for his offer of help, and telling of my cancelled tour.

Alice bought an electric coffee-mill for the office, so that we could have real coffee, and I got all my back pay and allowances. I paid the pianist at the ‘Tin-Tack’ thirty shillings and sent Alf Keating an oil heater. The dispatch office was making a book on the Open; I put five shillings on Munn & Felton’s (Footwear) Brass Band. A little note from Chico thanked me for doing his requisitions the night he went to Grantham, and Jean sewed a patch into my brown worsted trousers.

On Tuesday I had a visitor; the American brigadier from Tokwe. He brought two large cardboard boxes with him, and after lunching at the ‘Ivy’ we returned to the office to watch a demonstration.

From the cardboard boxes he brought a wooden contraption, its paint chipped and faded. When fitted together it was about six feet long; attached to each end was a red automobile light. It wasn’t until he showed me photographs of the battered motor cycle they had dragged from the ocean floor that I realized Dalby’s ingenious scheme.

This wooden plank bolted to the back of a motor cycle was what I followed across Tokwe the night I was arrested. The motor bike was too small to register on the radar screen. Dalby moved the block across the road, and connected the HT wires to kill the only witness. He used the High Speed TV, then threw it into the sea nice and near my car, knowing that it would be detected by echo sounders, and that my close proximity would implicate me. Then he drove away relying on wind, a good silencer, and confusion. He dumped the bike in the sea off another part of the island, having left the road and travelled across open country. The two men that Jay’s network had working for the USMD 1 told the British authorities that the Americans were holding on to me, and the Americans, that the British had asked for my return. After that, Jay took over, and brought me into the UK as a hospital case.

I appreciated the work that this officer had done. He felt he owed me a debt. I told him about Dalby being killed, and he didn’t look surprised or cynical, so I left it at that.

He asked, ‘This feller, Dalby; the Reds had brainwashed the guy, huh?’

I said we weren’t sure, but perhaps we looked for motivation in the wrong places these days. We tend to forget that there are people who are simply after money and power, and they have no psychological complications at all. I said I thought Dalby and Jay were both like that, and that a feud had been not so far away when it all blew up in their faces.

‘Money and power, eh?’ said the Brigadier. ‘Just a simple case of a couple of well-informed SOBs.’

‘Perhaps that’s about it,’ I said.

‘I asked Dalby for you at Tokwe,’ he told me, and I said I knew.

‘I just had a hunch, you know what I mean,’ he said.

I knew what he meant.

And he said, ‘Can I ask you just one more thing?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘How were your people so sure that Colonel Ross and Miss Bloom (that was Alice’s other name) – I mean to give no offence, you understand.’

I said I understood.

‘But how were they so sure that Ross and Miss Bloom couldn’t be … well, reached?’

I said that there were people who were very difficult to brain-wash.

‘Is that so?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘Obsessional neurotics; people who go back twice to make sure the door is locked, who walk down the street avoiding the joins in the paving, then become sure they’ve left the kettle on. They are difficult to hypnotize and difficult to brain-wash.’

‘No fooling,’ he said. ‘It’s a wonder we had so much trouble in the US then.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Don’t quote me about Alice and Ross.’

‘Not a chance,’ he said. But from a couple of things Alice said next day, I think he must have done.

The ‘Henry File’? It’s still as slim as the day I brought it from the War House. Everyone in the department has theories of course, but whoever tipped off Jay is keeping his head well down. Mind you, as Jean said the other day, when we do identify him, it’s sure to turn out to be some relation of Chico.

Another thing we never did finally work out was how Dalby got my prints on to the HS TV camera, but I think he must have screwed the handles on to something (perhaps a door) at Charlotte Street, then taken them with him to Tokwe, and fixed them to the camera before dumping it.

Jean had been back to the Japanese blockhouse the day after I was arrested, but the cathode tube, slip of information and pistol had all gone. She had then sat down with a map of the area and worked out Dalby’s motor cycle trick by sheer brain-power. When the Brigadier heard Jean’s story he had the three places she’d marked, dragged. With no result. She told me it was a terrible moment; but they hadn’t allowed for the undertow. The motor cycle was finally found quite a long way out. 2 Luckily the wooden gimmick was still attached (Dalby couldn’t risk it floating) and by now the Americans were really convinced. Skip Henderson was recalled to Tokwe (it seems the death of Barney was a bona fide accident) and Ross flew to the Pentagon. From then on the skids were under Dalby, but it wasn’t doing me a lot of good.

That’s about all of the IPCRESS story. There has been a lot of work go through Charlotte Street since; some interesting, but mostly boring. Painter has a whole medical research lab working with him, but so far they have found no way of ‘de-brain-washing’ people, and many of the original network are still under the threat of the Treason Act, while some still forward reports under the impression that they are going via Jay to some foreign power. Of course I don’t let Jay handle them, just in case he gets ideas. I see Jay at the monthly conference with Ross, when we prepare the Army Intelligence Memoranda Sheet. He seems happy enough, and he’s certainly efficient. I remember another thing about Jays – they store food for winter. ‘Moving in from opposite ends to the same conclusion,’ Dalby said once, and every time I am with Jay I think about it. But I doubt if this was what Dalby meant.

Anytime I want Jay I know I can find him at the ‘Mirabelle’, and last Saturday morning I bumped into him at Led’s. He wants Jean and me to go to dinner with him. He said he would cook it himself. I’d like to go but I don’t think I will. It’s not wise to make too many close friends in this business.

1 United States Medical Department.

2 (It’s my theory that Dalby had it going at high speed towards the water to take it as far as possible, but Jean says it’s the undertow.)

It’s a dead sure way of getting into trouble putting too much information down on paper, but I suppose having got this far I had better tell you the true end of the IPCRESS fiasco.

The Minister just wanted to know how to evade questions, as all Ministers do. He asked me a few searching questions like, ‘Any good fishin’ in the Lebanon?’ and ‘Have another?’ and ‘D’you know young Chillcott-Oakes?’ After leaving the Minister I drove down to a house near Staines. I knocked on the door in a rather strange series of rhythms, and a woman with a moustache opened it. In the back room there was an old man standing amid three partly packed suitcases. I gave him sixty crumpled five-pound notes, which were genuine, and two medium-quality forged UK passports.

The man said, ‘Thank you,’ and the woman said the same thing, twice more. As I turned to leave, he said, ‘I’ll be at number 19 1 if you ever need me.’