Civil Servants Playing Cowboys and Indians: Absurd Moments in Espionage

Espionage is a dirty business. A dangerous business. A dull business. John le Carre brilliantly captured this in his 1963 novel, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, as do the following lines from the equally remarkable 1965 screen adaptation. Spies are anything but moral philosophers.

On top of all that, espionage is frequently a spectacularly futile business. You recruit and train a spy, introduce the spy into the right circles, and then, in order to avoid detection and capture, they are hardly ever able to communicate lengthy messages back to the operational centre. If that weren't enough, the intelligence gathered is likely to be under-utilised, or even discarded.[1]

Yes, a damned, depressing business, however, there is a certain aspect of espionage that might be overlooked amidst it all- the absurdly comical. Yes, people really infiltrated Nazi-occupied Europe with evening wear under their wet-suits[2], and the CIA really did build a "cone of silence."[3]

One of the more absurd incidents in espionage history involves a curious mix of the real and the literary.

Though now obscure, William Le Queux almost single-handedly invented the romantic genre of the spy story of which Ian Fleming's James Bond is the ultimate representative. It is hard to imagine Bond without Le Queux's mix of sinister, yet exravagant, physically (or mentally) deformed villains, and outlandish plots.

"The hunchback now turned on me with a snarling expression like a tiger's. 

"Fool," he hissed, "you won't be warned," and, raising his arm, he made a sign with his hand. 

Almost instantly the crowd appeared to rise up en masse and to roll right over us, but as I stumbled backward, headlong from my foothold, I was astonished to see a man, got up to resemble me exactly in every feature, scramble on to my place on the upturned case, and in a voice that seemed my very own, to cry out to the auctioneer: "That, sir, is the most I can do. I now retire." And as a cheer broke out from the crowd he too skipped down instantly out of sight. 

"Ah, this is indeed treachery," I told myself. And, gripping my teeth hard, I let my fists go; next, with a mighty effort, I sprang forward to roll the surging human mob out of my path--to make my voice heard, to regain my old position, to take command of the situation again, for I heard the bids still mounting higher, higher, higher.

 In vain. 

Lord Fotheringay, who, I thought, loved me as a brother, was on me with a bound like a lion's, and catching me by the throat exerted all his force and hurled me backwards. 

 Next second I found myself caught up in other and even stronger arms, and, before I could utter aught save a muffled curse, I was flung head first into an empty piano case, the heavy lid of which was instantly closed on me--but not before I heard the hammer fall and the auctioneer call: "The deeds are Mr Peter Zouche's. The price is eighteen hundred pounds." I had been tricked![4]

Prior to the First World War, Germany had many agents at work in Great Britain.
One day, William Le Queux happened to be at Chatham, where he ran into Gustav Steinhauer, leader of Germany's espionage network in Britain. Years later, Steinhauer described the encounter.

 "One day while down at Chatham having a look at things in general and, as I imagined, effectively disguised with a false beard, who should I run across but William Le Queux, who had more than a nodding acquaintance with most of the spies in Europe. He at once warned the police and I had Melville on my track forthwith."[5]

Steinhauer's exploits, it seems, were later borrowed by Ian Fleming for Auric Goldfinger and his plot to steal the gold from Fort Knox.[6]

Melville was Sir William Melville, also known as "M," the first chief of Britain's MI5. Fleming adopted the initial (and much of Melville's personality) for Bond's chief[7]

So, what we have is the prototype of a character in the James Bond books pursuing the prototype of another character (a grown man wearing a patently false beard no less), after being tipped off by the pioneering author of the genre.

John le Carre (following in the footsteps of Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene) would latter shatter this genre of spy story with books like the aformentioned Spy Who Came in from the Cold, as well as The Looking Glass War, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and A Perfect Spy, but can the popularity of James Bond be denied? He is likely what immediately, almost subconsciously, comes to mind when the subject of spies is mentioned. After all, there is some truth to this image, too.



[1]For example, Abner Bennigsen AKA Goglidze- the Soviet agent who infiltrated a relatively high-ranking position in the SS- only made direct contact with his operators four or five times during the Second World War, and the valuable Messerschmidt plans that he acquired were completely ignored by the Red Army. http://berkovich-zametki.com/2006/Zametki/Nomer7/Heyfec1.htm

[2]See the excellent summary by Walker Wright of the Peter Tazelaar affair.

[3]"OTS designed a new type of “secure room” that improved the confi dence of the CIA that their operational discussions  were protected from KGB eavesdropping. The special room, including chairs and tables, was constructed entirely of clear plastic to expose any electronic listening devices, or “bugs.” In theory, it was comparable to the fictional “cone of silence” from the 1960s television show Get Smart." Robert Wallace, H. Keith Melton, Henry R. Schlesinger, Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to Al-Qaeda (Penguin Group Inc.: New York, 2008), 494.

[4]William Le Queux, The Hunchback of Westminster (Methuen & Co.: London, 1904), 17-18. http://archive.org/details/hunchbackofwestm00lequ

[5]Gustav Steinhauer, Steinhauer: The Kaiser's Master Spy (Appleton: New York, 1931), 62. See also Stella Rimington's introduction to the 2007 edition of the Greene brothers' The Spy's Bedside Book. Both it and the book in general are a treasure trove of espionage stories, fictional and real. Selections from Le Queux feature prominently.

[6]Goldfinger, of course, has other, self-evident prototypes (such as the architect Erno Goldfinger), but historian Andrew Cook has made a good case for Steinhauer.

[7]Andrew Cook, M: MI5's First Spymaster (Tempus Publishing: Stroud, 2004). See also http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7163329.stm

Melissa Annetta: Vladimir Nabokov at the Little Cottonwood

I have a delightful Russian-language anthology of Vladimir Nabokov miscellania, which I acquired in Utah, of all places. For me, that makes a fun little Nabokov connection with Utah even funner.

The following is taken entirely from Will South's book, Andy Warhol Slept Here? (there are lots of other fun stories in the book) which Signature Books has generally posted free, in its entirety, on their website.
http://signaturebookslibrary.org/?p=21175

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Vladimir Nabokov was a twice-exiled writer and scientist; first from his native Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution, then from Paris in advance of the Nazi invasion of Western Europe. He arrived in America in 1940, and over the next two decades established himself as one of the most brilliant authors of the twentieth century.

Nabokov struggled financially in America for years, supporting his wife, his young son, and himself on his wages from teaching Russian literature at Wellesley College and later at Cornell. Then, in 1955, he achieved stunning success, artistically and financially, with the publication of the sumptuous and sinister novel Lolita. A classic story saturated with derangement, romance, and fate, Lolita remains a literary force that reverberates through the American cultural consciousness.

Long before the publication of Lolita, Nabokov’s word magic caught the attention of University of Utah professor Brewster Ghiselin, who invited Nabokov to the University’s Annual Writers Conference. Nabokov accepted. His only serious concern about attending, he expressed to Ghiselin, was hygienic: “Last but not least—will I have a private bath or shower?” He and his son, Dmitri, also managed to find time during the conference to play some tennis with a member of the local literati, Wallace Stegner.

Nabokov’s first and perhaps more meaningful visit to Utah, however, came very early in his American career. His publisher, James Laughlin, owned the Alta Lodge in the Wasatch mountains. Nabokov asked Laughlin if he could stay at the hotel, which was largely empty due to the war.

Vladimir Nabokov with University of Utah students in 1949.
Photograph courtesy Special Collections, University of Utah Marriott Library.

In June 1943 Vladimir was able to indulge the passion that occupied him as much as writing: butterfly collecting. Nabokov was a serious lepidopterist and worked during this period at the Harvard Entomological Museum. At Alta he roamed what he called “the tapering lines of firs on the slopes amid a grayish green haze of aspens” in search of rare winged species. According to biographer Brian Boyd:

For Nabokov, Utah was a fortunate choice: one of the few states in which little butterfly collecting had been done, and with mountain ranges isolated by deserts and therefore likely to have evolved new species. Despite a severe climate with icy winds and noisy thunderstorms, he would walk along the valleys and mountain slopes, whenever the sun came out, from twelve to eighteen miles a day, clad only in shorts and tennis shoes, offering a generous target for gadflies. He wanted to rediscover the haunts of Melissa Annetta, a long-lost subspecies of the Lycaeides genus that he had been working on the previous winter, and with the help of nine-year-old Dmitri, he found it on lupine among firs on both sides of the Little Cottonwood River, not far from Alta.

Vladimir Nabokov in Salt Lake City with son, Dimitri, and wife, Véra.

A Gun For Sale: Mormons and Mohammedans

 I am LDS, so it is rather fun to come across unexpected references to Mormons in unrelated books.

One of the pivotal scenes in A Gun For Sale, Graham Greene's 1936 novel of political assassination and revenge, is the gas practice in the streets of Nottwich.

Raven, the hare-lipped hired killer, tracks down those who double-crossed him to the town of Nottwich. Since Europe has been brought to the brink of war by his assassination of the minister of an unnamed country, military drills are taking place throughout England. This particular one allows him to evade police pursuit and take his revenge.

In the 1942 film noir classic, This Gun For Hire, the story is transposed to wartime San Francisco. The gas-mask sequence begins at 1:12:42.
 
In the book, several medical students decide to rag conchies- conscientious objectors- and everyone not wearing a gas-mask. "What they wanted were people who cared so little about their country that they wouldn't even take the trouble to put on a gas-mask."[1] After a particularly violent episode where they trash the room of a bookish colleague, the students come across a senile old woman.

Almost immediately they picked up an old woman. She didn't in the least know what it was all about. She thought it was a street collection and offered them a penny. They told her she had to come along to the hospital; they were very courteous and one offered to carry her basket; they reacted from violence to a more than usual gentility. She laughed at them. She said, 'Well I never, what you boys will think up next!' and when one took her arm and began to lead her gently up the street, she said, 'Which of you's Father Christmas?' Buddy didn't like that: it hurt his dignity: he had suddenly been feeling rather noble: 'women and children first': 'although bombs were falling all round he brought the woman safely...' He stood still and let the others go on up the street with the old woman; she was having the time of her life; she cackled and dug them in the ribs: her voice carried a long distance in the cold air. She kept on telling them to ' take off them things and play fair', and just before they turned a corner out of sight she was calling them Mormons. She meant Mohammedans, because she had an idea that Mohammedans went about with their faces covered up and had a lot of wives. An aeroplane zoomed overhead and Buddy was alone in the street with the dead and dying until Mike appeared. Mike said he had a good idea. Why not pinch the mummy in the Castle and take it to the hospital for not wearing a gas-mask?[2]

 Buddy, the medical students' ringleader, then chases after another man without a gas-mask, but this time it is Raven...




[1]Graham Greene, A Gun For Sale: An Entertainment, 1936, p. 142.

 [2]Greene, Gun For Sale, p. 146.