The Intercom Conspiracy (4 page)

Brand stared at him.

Jost cleared his throat again. ‘ “I would never for a moment suggest that Mr X is a liar and a thief,
but
 …” ’ He pursed his lips distastefully. ‘I think that “don’t get me wrong,
but
” is a gambit of the same kind. In effect it says, “What I am going to
say will undoubtedly offend you, but, as I have denied in advance that I mean to give offence, you have no right to complain.” All the same, I
do
complain.’

Brand smiled. ‘Then you won’t get
me
wrong if I say that I hope that man is still wondering whether he persuaded us to keep our mouths shut. I would like to think of him troubled by doubts.’

‘So would I. Doubts at the very least.’ Jost glanced at the American driver in front of them and then went on in French. ‘Do you intend to lodge a protest?’

‘I had decided not to – that is, if you were in agreement with me. Now I am undecided. What is your view?’

Jost thought for a moment. They were both speaking French now.

‘I share your disgust and annoyance,’ Jost said, ‘and I think that protests would be justified. Whether or not they would serve any useful purpose is another matter. I am inclined, reluctantly, to think that they would not. Besides, one does not want to start out by being labelled difficult.’

There was a pause before Brand replied. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘I shall make a report to my ambassador, of course, but will ask that no action be taken. However,’ he went on grimly, ‘I will certainly see that in future our military attaché does
not
wear uniforms obtained cheaply from the American PX. This place has obviously demoralised him.’

Jost sighed. ‘It is all very regrettable. Last week I was briefed by our army commander. Officials from the defence and foreign ministries attended. The man from the foreign ministry saw fit to warn me of a tendency on the part of some allied representatives here to harbour anti-American sentiments and even sometimes to express them.’ He gave Brand a sidelong look. ‘He called anti-Americanism a vice of the most corrupting kind and the one in which we could least afford to indulge, as it was rooted in envy.’

‘That has an Old Testament ring.’

‘Our civil officials take themselves seriously. At the time I was offended that such a warning should have been thought necessary,
even by that old fool. I didn’t know then how soon I would be tempted.’

‘But
are
we tempted?’ Brand shrugged. ‘You know as well as I do that our friend with the whisky bottle is merely a time-serving buffoon of a type you will find in every army. If the security arrangements had been in other hands, he might have been French or British and, though possibly in different ways, just as offensive. It is not being anti-American to dislike that man.’

‘And
you
know,’ Jost retorted, ‘that that is no argument in our situation. It is the Americans who count now in the West, because only they have the real power and the will to exercise it. Whether
they
like or dislike
us
does not matter – they will value us according to our usefulness within the alliance and our readiness to comply with their wishes. What does matter is that we do not, on that account, permit ourselves to dislike and resent them –
any
of them, for
any
reason, good or bad. Such dislikes or resentments are not in our interest.’ He paused, then added blandly: ‘I am again quoting, of course, from my official instructions.’

‘So I gathered,’ Brand replied dryly. ‘I, too, have instructions from my government in which I do not wholly believe.’

They eyed each other for a moment and then smiled. The first step in their mutual understanding had been reached. They suddenly felt at ease with each other.

‘So,’ said Jost, ‘since such instructions, wholly believed in or not, must still be resolutely obeyed, let us forget the man with the whisky and remember only that good captain and his admirable major.’

Brand nodded. ‘Yes, indeed, let us do that. But –’ a faraway look came into his eyes – ‘don’t get me wrong if I remind you of the lieutenant of military police who first interrogated us this morning. Did you not find him specially interesting?’

‘Because his first thought was that we must be newspaper reporters in disguise?’

‘Yes, and because he appeared to be far more disturbed by that
possibility than the possibility of our being enemy agents. That thought did not seem even to enter his head.’

‘He has had a bad experience with reporters, remember, and no experience at all, probably, with enemy agents.’

‘Perhaps not. But I prefer a different explanation. I like to think of that man as an instinctive realist.’

Jost glanced at his companion warily. ‘You will have to explain that, I’m afraid.’

They were in the city now and the passing street lights flickered on their faces. Brand was smiling.

‘A realist in this context,’ he said, ‘being one who assumes that most of the secrets we guard so jealously are already well known to the other side, and that most of the secrets the other side guards are already well known to us. One who also understands, however, that the conventions must be observed and the pretences maintained, that outsiders may not look in on our foolishness and that both sides have a common enemy – the small boy who saw that the emperor was naked.’

‘Dangerous talk, Colonel!’

They began to laugh. Then Jost glanced out of the window and saw that they were nearing their destination. ‘I take it that you will be dining with your ambassador tonight,’ he said.

‘I’m afraid so. And you with yours?’

‘Yes. Perhaps tomorrow evening we could continue these useful bilateral discussions.’

‘The same thought was in my own mind.’

And so the friendship began.

Directors of intelligence services with secret budgets at their disposal and the ability, sometimes the obligation, to put expediency before strict legality tend to become back-room potentates. It is in the nature of their occupation that they should. As long as they and their subordinates avoid committing blunders too gross to be hidden, they are immune from public criticism. The secrecy fetish and a general acceptance of the ‘need-to-know’ principle are very powerful defences. When such defences are
reinforced, as they so often are, by politic murmurs of ‘don’t-want-to-know’ from nominal superiors, the men behind them are secure even from attacks launched by hostile factions within the establishments they serve. They acquire more authority than their responsibilities warrant. They are accountable virtually to no one; and the longer they remain in their posts the stronger they become. Inevitably they also tend to become arrogant. The arrogance will generally be concealed, of course, behind well-composed masks of professional objectivity and reserve, and the quality of it will vary; but it will be there. How it is expressed will depend on the character of the man concerned, on his hopes, conceits and circumstances, on the political environment in which he works, and on time and chance. There have been directors who have found it amusing to lend support to leaders they despise, as well as those who have followed their consciences when it would have been safer and more profitable to ignore them. There have been directors who became kingmakers, who have subverted the governments they were pledged to serve and helped plan the coups which brought them down. There have been those who have seized power for themselves, and those who have preferred to act as the
éminences grises
of puppet rulers. And there have been those whose arrogance has expressed itself in more eccentric, less familiar, ways.

Jost and Brand came to power in the early nineteen-fifties and established themselves in the NATO intelligence community dining the bitter cold-war years of that decade.

By the end of it they knew beyond doubt that they had made the mistake that so many other ambitious men have made, that of specialising too early. Posts that had seemed desirable when they were younger men had, now that they were entering middle age, become dead ends. In the modest hierarchies of the defence establishments to which they belonged they could rise no higher.

It would be easy to see their disenchantment simply as a product of professional frustration and financial disappointment, to paint a picture of disgruntled colonels, barred from further promotion by their own undoubted abilities, underpaid and
denied redress, finally becoming sufficiently embittered to take their futures and their fates into their own hands. Such a picture, however, would be out of drawing.

Grievances they certainly had. Their formal responsibilities – and, consequently, their informal powers – had increased substantially over the years without any commensurate advance in rank or pay. Most of their foreign colleagues – not all, but most – held the rank of major-general or its equivalent. Attempts by both to have the establishments of their directorates upgraded had invariably failed. These men had not endeared themselves to higher authority; and higher authority, ever wary, was not disposed to make them more influential than they already were. Understandably, they came to prefer civilian dress to their army uniforms. But to conclude that they were driven by their grievances alone and that what they eventually did was merely a bloodyminded expression of accumulated resentments would be to oversimplify their case. Their disenchantment, and the aberration that grew out of it, had deeper origins.

Although Jost and Brand were both professional soldiers, their thinking about war and men had been conditioned not by active service in conventional armies but by what they had learned in resistance movements. The idea that great force can be successfully opposed only by equal or greater force had no meaning for them. To their way of thinking, the way to oppose great force was to find out how to destroy its cohesion and then, when it was fragmented, deal separately with the pieces. They thought, as they had always fought, as guerrillas. They could accept the necessity for the alliance to which their countries were committed. They could accept with resignation the knowledge that their countries meant no more to NATO than Romania or Bulgaria meant to the Warsaw Pact and that they were pygmies involved in a struggle between giants. What they could not do was change their ways of thinking about giants.

They had known the German giant, so omnipotent in his day, and had helped to bring him down. Now, they were able to
observe and appraise from peculiar vantage points the American and Russian giants.

The appraisals they made were not flattering. What impressed them most about these giants, they ultimately decided, was not their strength, still less the loud and threatening noises they made, but their inherent clumsiness.

As Brand remarked to Jost one night in Brussels, ‘They make one think wistfully of dark nights and trip wires.’

Their friendship was seven years old when that remark was made and it more or less sums up their attitudes at that stage. They are anti-American as well as anti-Russian. Their talk is subversive, but still only talk. They are dissident, but able to relieve their feelings by indulging in fantasy.

They were meeting officially quite often at that time. Regional intelligence committees had been established, and there were planning conferences in connection with NATO exercises to attend besides.

They looked forward to these occasions, but they were discreet. Both had made other friends among their NATO colleagues and both took care to cultivate them; but with the other friends the professional views they expressed were always carefully orthodox. Their dissidence was a private joke which they had no intention of sharing, even with those who might have proved sympathetic. Their agreement on this point was unspoken, but neither of them ever questioned it. Even at that stage they must have known instinctively that a time would come when they would be glad of their discretion.

From harbouring vague thoughts about the efficacy of trip wires to wondering what they could be made of and where they might be strung is a short step. Jost and Brand began to take that step in 1964.

The meeting place was London and the circumstances were unusual. Tension between the United States and the Soviet Union had eased considerably; the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty had been signed; the hot line between Washington and Moscow had been
installed; the reorganisation of NATO was being discussed; the position of France was in doubt; there was change in the air.

Obliged now to examine a new future, Jost and Brand did not much like what they saw. Not that they feared for their posts; they were all too well entrenched in those and could expect to remain so until they reached retirement age; but it was becoming increasingly evident that their importance in the NATO scheme of things, already diminished, was likely soon to become little more than parochial. In a gloomy moment they saw themselves reduced to the role of passive onlookers, of village policemen stationed at minor crossroads on a secret war battlefield where the only effective forces engaged were the big battalions of the CIA and the KGB.

This view of the situation was not altogether fanciful. The CIA and the KGB already operated clandestinely in both their countries. Jost and Brand knew this. They also knew that, beyond keeping themselves informed of their uninvited guests’ activities, there was little they could do but register displeasure. They found the CIA’s self-righteous assumption that it was not only a welcome guest but also a specially privileged one almost as annoying as the KGB
residenturas’
bland insistence that they did not exist, and just as insulting to the intelligence.

Jost was an overseas member of a London club and it was in the coffee room there that the first of two critical conversations took place.

There had been an unsuccessful attempt early that day to hijack a gold-bullion shipment at London airport, and the evening papers had made it a front-page story. Three of the robbers had already been captured, four others in a second getaway car were being sought, as was the driver of a power-lift truck found abandoned near the scene. Over their brandy, Jost and Brand began idly to discuss the attempt.