Graham Greene (5 page)

The arrangements worked out for the meeting are not satisfactory. I am informing you of new ones.

1.
Place.
In front of the British Museum in London, on Great Russell Street, at the opposite side of the street, about Museum Street, from the side of Tottenham Court Road repeat Tottenham Court Road, Alek walks from Tottenham Court Road, the contact man from the opposite side—Southampton Row.

2.
Time:
As indicated by you, however, it would be more expedient to carry out the meeting at 20 o'clock, if it should be convenient to Alek, as at 23 o'clock, it is too dark. As for the time,
agree about it with Alek and communicate the decision to me. In case the meeting should not take place in October, the time and day will be repeated in the following months.

3.
Identification signs:
Alek will have under his left arm the newspaper
Times,
the contact man will have in his left hand the magazine
Picture Post.

4.
The Password:
The contact man: “What is the shortest way to the Strand?”

Alek: “Well, come along. I am going that way.”

In the beginning of the business conversation Alek says: “Best regards from Mikel.”

Report on transmitting the conditions to Alek.

DIRECTOR

he Colonel, who was known in the Intelligence Department, as Ashenden later discovered, by the letter R., rose when he came in and shook hands with him. He was a man somewhat above the middle height, lean, with a yellow, deeply-lined face, thin grey hair and a toothbrush moustache. The thing immediately noticeable about him was the closeness with which his blue eyes were set. He only just escaped a squint. They were hard and cruel eyes, and very wary; and they gave him a cunning, shifty look. Here was a man that you could neither like nor trust at first sight. His manner was pleasant and cordial.

He asked Ashenden a good many questions and then, without further to-do, suggested that he had particular qualifications
for the Secret Service. Ashenden was acquainted with several European languages and his profession was excellent cover; on the pretext that he was writing a book he could without attracting attention visit any neutral country. It was while they were discussing this point that R. said:

“You know you ought to get material that would be very useful to you in your work.”

“I shouldn't mind that,” said Ashenden.

“I'll tell you an incident that occurred only the other day and I can vouch for its truth. I thought at the time it would make a damned good story. One of the French ministers went down to Nice to recover from a cold and he had some very important documents with him that he kept in a dispatch-case. They were very important indeed. Well, a day or two after he arrived he picked up a yellow-haired lady at some restaurant or other where there was dancing, and he got very friendly with her. To cut a long story short, he took her back to his hotel—of course it was a very imprudent thing to do—and when he came to himself in the morning the lady and the dispatch-case had disappeared. They had one or two drinks up in his room, and his theory is that when his back was turned the woman slipped a drug into his glass.”

R. finished and looked at Ashenden with a gleam in his close-set eyes.

“Dramatic, isn't it?” he asked.

“Do you mean to say that happened the other day?”

“The week before last.”

“Impossible,” cried Ashenden. “Why, we've been putting that incident on the stage for sixty years, we've written it in a thousand novels. Do you mean to say that life has only just caught up with us?”

R. was a trifle disconcerted.

“Well, if necessary, I could give you names and dates, and
believe me, the Allies have been put to no end of trouble by the loss of the documents that the dispatch-case contained.”

“Well, sir, if you can't do better than that in the Secret Service,” sighed Ashenden, “I'm afraid that as a source of inspiration to the writer of fiction it's a washout. We really
can't
write that story much longer.”

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

n a deep armchair next to one of the table lamps a man was seated, in such a way that his face was in shadow. He sat so still that he might have been sleeping …

I guessed that he was in his early fifties. He had thick black hair, brushed straight back from his forehead, which was fairly high. His dark eyes kept darting nervously from me to the door and back again. His chin was firm, his nose small and shapeless. Not an attractive face on the whole. Later, after I'd seen a great deal of him, it occurred to me to compare his face to that of a clown without his make-up on—the face of a man accustomed to disguising his true feelings.

There was a moment's silence, probably not so long as it seemed to me, while we eyed one another.

“Who on earth can he be?” I thought. “He's certainly not a member of the Diplomatic Corps.”

I sat down and motioned him to do the same. Instead he tiptoed to the door, jerked it open, shut it silently again, and came back to resume his seat in the armchair with evident relief.
At that moment he really did seem a strange sort of character.

Then, haltingly at first, and in his poor French, he began to speak:

“I have an offer to make you, a proposition or whatever you call it, a proposition for the Germans. But before I tell you what it is I ask your word that whether you accept it or not you won't ever mention it to anyone except your chief. Any indiscretion on your part would make your life as worthless as mine. I'd see to that if it was the last thing I did.”

As he said this he made an unpleasant but unmistakable gesture, passing his hand across his throat.

“Do you give me your word?”

“Of course I do. If I didn't know how to keep a secret I wouldn't be here now. Please be so good as to tell me what it is you want.”

I made a show of looking at my wrist watch with some ostentation. He reacted at once.

“You'll have plenty of time for me once you know why I'm here. My proposition is of the utmost importance to your Government. I am …” He hesitated, and I wondered if it was due to his difficulty in expressing himself in French or whether he wished to test my reaction. “…  I can give you extremely secret papers, the most secret that exist.”

He paused again for a moment, and then added:

“They come straight from the British Embassy. Well? That would interest you, wouldn't it?”

I did my best to keep a poker face. My first thought was that he was a petty crook out for some easy money. I would have to be careful. He seemed to have guessed what I was thinking, for he said:

“But I'll want money for them, a lot of money. My work, you know, is dangerous, and if I were caught …”

He repeated the unpleasant gesture with his hand across his throat, though this time, at any rate, it was not meant for me.

“You've got funds for that sort of thing, haven't you? Or your Ambassador has? Your Government would provide it. I want twenty thousand pounds, English pounds sterling.”

I offered him a cigarette which he accepted gratefully, taking a few deep pulls and then stubbing it out. He rose and went to the door once more to make sure that there was no one listening. Then he turned back and planted himself squarely in front of me. I got up too.

“You'd like to know who I am, wouldn't you? My name is quite unimportant and has no bearing. Perhaps I'll tell you what I do, but first listen to me. I'll give you three days to consider my proposition. You'll have to see your chief, and he'll probably have to get in touch with Berlin. On the 30th of October, at three in the afternoon, I'll telephone you at your office and ask you if you've received a letter for me. I'll call myself Pierre. If you say no, you'll never see me again. If you say yes, it'll mean that you've accepted my offer. In that case I'll come to see you again at ten o'clock on the evening of the same day. Not here though. We'll have to arrange some other meeting place. You'll then receive from me two rolls of film, containing photographs of British secret documents. I'll receive from you the sum of twenty thousand pounds in banknotes. You'll be risking twenty thousand pounds, but I'll have risked my life. Should you approve of my first delivery you can have more. For each subsequent roll of film I'll want fifteen thousand pounds. Well?”

I was inclined to think that the offer might be genuine, but I was convinced that, in view of the exorbitant price he was asking, nothing could come of it, particularly since he seemed to expect us to buy the papers sight unseen. I made a mental note to stress the inordinate risk in the memo that I would have to write about all this. I was certain the offer would be turned down.

Nevertheless we agreed that he should telephone me at my office on the 30th day of October at three o'clock. We also agreed that in the event of his offer being accepted we would meet near the toolshed at the end of the Embassy garden.

After these details had been arranged he asked me to switch out all the lights in the hall and on the stairs. He wished to leave the house under cover of complete darkness.

I complied with his request. When I came back to the drawing-room he had put on his overcoat and his hat, which was pulled down low over his eyes. It was past midnight by now.

I stood at the door to let him pass. He suddenly gripped my arm, and hissed in my ear:

“You'd like to know who I am? I'm the British Ambassador's valet.”

Without awaiting my reaction to this he stepped out into the darkness.

Thus ended my first meeting with the man who, a few days later, was given the code name of Cicero.

L. C. MOYZISCH

he game of hide-and-seek is really one of the best games for a boy, and can be elaborated until it becomes scouting in the field. It teaches you a lot.

I was strongly addicted to it as a child, and the craft learned in that innocent field of sport has stood me in good stead in many a critical time since. To lie flat in a furrow among the currant bushes when I had not time to reach the neighbouring box
bushes before the pursuer came in sight taught me the value of not using the most obvious cover, since it would at once be searched. The hunters went at once to the box bushes as the likely spot, while I could watch their doings from among the stems of the currant bushes.

Often I have seen hostile scouts searching the obvious bits of cover, but they did not find
me
there; and, like the elephant hunter among the fern trees, or a boar in a cotton crop, so a boy in the currant bushes is invisible to the enemy, while he can watch every move of the enemy's legs.