Spy’s Honour

CAVENDISH SQUARE
37

Immediately after the State Ball at Buckingham Palace, everybody began to leave London. The King went to Goodwood, the Duke of Devonshire to Buxton for the cure, others to the Continent for more exotic cures and tours, to Cowes for the yacht racing or just to their country places.

Not quite everybody, of course. Parliament had to stay at the bedside of the Irish Home Rule Bill, and the Foreign Office was busy trying to reconvene the conference of ambassadors to re-agree the Balkan frontiers they had agreed on just before they were outdated by the new war. Seven million other Londoners also stayed throughout that clammy hot July, most of them without even being invited to the dinner given by a leading political hostess who had thoughtfully decorated her house as “A Country Garden” for the evening.

“I’ll leave you to persuade Sir Aylmer about Votes for Women,” she said to the Commander. “But do try and settle it before Leon gets just a little too tipsy to play the piano.”

It was part of her political talent not just to arrange useful “accidental” meetings but to leave on a slightly outrageous remark that broke the ice.

“Are you in favour of women’s suffrage?” Sir Aylmer Corbin asked.

The Commander put a match to his pipe. “Anything to keep ’em out of politics.”

“Ah … quite.” Corbin smiled politely. “In point of fact, I’m glad of the chance for a word – do you mind talking shop?”

“Depends on whether it’s about goods in the window or what we keep under the counter.” The Commander sat down on a rustic bench planted on the black-and-white marble of the hallway.

“It’s the Colonel Redl business.” Corbin stared suspiciously at the bench: he thought he had seen something wriggle in among its rough timbers. Then he sat anyway. “Do you think you could explain it to my simple diplomatist’s mind?”

The Commander grinned as if recalling a great meal. “Ah yes. For a start, just about everything you’ve heard about it is probably true. For ten years the Russians – Military Intelligence, not their Okhrana – had on their payroll the man who became second-in-command of Austro-Hungary’s own Military Intelligence. In fact, we believe he nearly became its chief.”

“As much as ten years?”

“So it seems. Originally it was blackmail because of Redl’s boy-friends, but over ten years it had become something much deeper than that. They built him up: gave him some unimportant secrets and codes, let him catch some of their minor agents – they made him a success. And gave him the money to go with it (he explained it as an inheritance): a place in society, a fancy flat, new motorcars, gifts for the boy-friend. Delicious! Can you imagine a more perfect relationship?”

Corbin looked as if he had detected a bad smell. “Are you saying that the Russians actually betrayed some of their own agents just to build up Redl’s reputation? I find that …” he searched for the correct Foreign Office word, “… bizarre.”

“Precisely why nobody would believe it. And with that reputation for catching agents, every counter-espionage case came across his desk, so he could head off anything that pointed to himself.”

“Then what ultimately unmasked him?”

“That came after he’d left Intelligence to become chief of staff in Prague – but we think it was a minor investigation he wouldn’t have heard of anyway. The police stumbled across the money chain and traced it to him. And even then, the High Command did their best to bugger it up; Redl himself would never have handled it so crudely. But I suppose that shows how indispensable he’d made himself.”

“They sent some brother officers to give him a pistol and tell him to shoot himself, did they not?”

“Not even his own pistol! And in a hotel room! That was their idea of keeping it all quiet.”

Corbin nodded. “Yes. We heard the resulting … silence loud and clearly. But how, would you say, Redl himself would have handled it?”

A Japanese lantern hanging awkwardly in a potted tree across the hallway burst silently into flames. A servant came, barely hurrying, and sprayed it with a soda-water siphon; a small group gathered around another bench applauded.

The Commander’s voice became a soft recitative. “Taken him off to some quiet place, not unpleasant, just neutral: you should always leave a man the hope of talking himself out of it – and talked to him. Sometimes threatening, what could happen to his family, his boy-friends, sometimes sympathetic, offering excuses, ways to make amends. But always talking, questioning, until he’s ready to sleep on his feet. But never allowing him enough sleep until he’s talked back, all ten years’ worth of names, places, times, dates – everything.”

“And then?”

The Commander shrugged indifferently. “Oh, then give him the pistol.”

“And that is how Redl himself would have handled it?”

The Commander smiled. “We can only guess.”

Corbin sighed. “I find it all a little tawdry. But thank you for clarifying the, ah, professional aspects of it all. The repercussions on Viennese society and the Army were fully reported by our Ambassador. They were considerable.”

“So I understood.”

“Particularly with the situation in the Balkans at this time. The great Austro-Hungarian Army made to look foolish, the resultant outcry for revenge on Russia – and since then, Austria’s ally Bulgaria being trounced by Russia’s ally, Serbia, so deepening the humiliation. Disturbing, most disturbing. It was about such repercussions of espionage exposes that I wanted a quiet word with you.”

The Commander had sensed the curve of the conversation and, like the yachtsman he was, had his mental sails loosened to meet the shift of wind. He waited to see how strong it would blow.

Corbin said: “We are not often taken by surprise. A prime task of our diplomatists is to ensure this, to report changes of attitude in their host nations before they harden into action. Any change of policy usually grows from a broad base, is widely canvassed and debated, so we have timely warning of it.

“This is not so in the case of an espionage scandal. Its root cause – perhaps a single error by a single spy – is so minute as to be quite unforeseeable. Yet within days, perhaps even hours, it can be inflated into a major crisis, if only by the public.” Like most senior civil servants, Corbin had a deep horror and distrust of the frivolous and uninformed “public”, whether British or any other nation’s.

“And,” he concluded, “if it is we who have sent the spy, we are de facto in the wrong for having done so. Now, can you persuade me that I am mistaken?”

The Commander thought carefully. “Perhaps not – but let me ask: in time of war, would you say we needed secret agents as well as battleships?”

“I would say yes.”

“Yet you don’t expect the Admiralty to wait for the outbreak of war before starting to build such ships.”

Corbin nodded. “A valid point. Although the building of warships in peacetime can be extremely provocative – as we wish the German Emperor would realise. But what else can you offer me?”

“In mitigation, our current policy: that we never admit to employing agents, deny we have a Bureau to do so, claim any agent caught was acting on his own misguided initiative, and say that while we regret the misbehaviour of one of our citizens …”

“Almost invariably an officer.”

“But just as invariably – and provably – on leave from his more normal job and merely showing an excess of professional zeal in his spare time … As I say, offer that explanation and accuse the accusers of overplaying the incident.”

“But the incident will still have occurred. And will recur.”

“I can’t deny that. Perhaps the root question is whether the intelligence our agents provide is worth the embarrassment of their – very occasional – unmasking.”

“An embarrassment entirely borne by our Diplomatic and Consular Services.”

Aha, the Commander thought, the wind has steadied: it’s to blow only from the direction of the Foreign Office. Now I know, I can sail on this wind.

“Borne on behalf of the nation as a whole,” he said, “just as the secret intelligence benefits the nation as a whole.”

“But can you evaluate that risk and that benefit?”

“No,” the Commander said bluntly. “But luckily it’s been done for me, just by setting up my Bureau. That said the risk is worth it.”

“Oh, come now,” Corbin protested. “You surely wouldn’t say that the existence of a motorcar – even a Rolls-Royce – implied only a fixed amount of risk, regardless of how it was driven?”

Since the Commander’s driving of his own Rolls-Royce (which came from his second marriage, not his Naval pay) was recognised as one of the greater dangers of London life, he smiled grimly. But said blandly: “I’m sure we all believe we do our jobs as well as we can within the limits imposed by others.”

“But in the case of your Bureau,” Corbin said smoothly, “what limits? – imposed by what others?”

“Ultimately, we must be judged by results …” But the Commander was floundering, and Corbin sailed past.

“I do appreciate your problem,” he said with the reassurance of a dentist about to make his fortune. “Being officially nonexistent has its handicaps as well as its benefits. For example, there could be no public outcry should your Bureau cease to exist: disbanded or, in more typical fashion, quietly starved of funds until its nominal functions were absorbed by some larger and more stable institution.”

Such, the Commander assumed, as the Foreign Office. It didn’t really disapprove of spying – it had its own secret budget – but merely of spies it didn’t control. Meanwhile, the Army and Navy would be just as happy to regain undivided command of espionage in their own areas. And that would be the end of Lord Erith’s vision of a Secret Service as a Broad Church with secret missionaries anywhere and everywhere.

But it wouldn’t happen yet, not unless he made some terrible mistake. He might be new to political dinner parties but he had learnt a lot about political timing. Erith and others who had sponsored the Bureau were still at large, still with influence. Their successors might decide it had all been a mistake, but not they.

Did Corbin know that he knew that? He struck another match, breathed smoke, and said mildly: “Aren’t we looking rather far ahead?”

“Then let me suggest what one might call ‘spheres of influence’. That your agents concern themselves solely with the engines of war – the Zeppelin airship, Krupp’s cannon and the like – and, at the very most, such matters as mobilisation timetables and the order of battle. And leave all political and diplomatic issues severely alone – this to apply with the utmost particularity to the Balkans. If we are to persuade the other Powers that we are disinterestedly seeking a peaceful outcome there, the very last thing we can risk is the revelation that we are conducting a spying campaign in parallel.”

The Commander was feeling rather Balkan himself, so recently liberated, so beset by hungry empires. Well, well, he thought: first he threatens to annex me, now he merely wants a treaty. Now there’s a true diplomatist at work. He said: “And you see military matters as less sensitive?”

“Oh, the public gets inflamed about somebody stealing the plans of a new warship – the concept’s so easy to understand – but it passes, it passes. And they accept muddy morals along with muddy boots as natural consequences of military life. But while our ambassadors may have to live with the risks inherent in that form of espionage, it is quite unthinkable that an ambassador should know a spy may be reporting on the same matters as himself, behind his back and beyond his control. Quite unthinkable.”

The Commander chewed this over and found the unswallowable bit. “But what about journalists?” he asked politely. “If a report in, say, The Times contradicts what an ambassador has been saying?”

“That happens far less often than you might think. An experienced ambassador cultivates any serious journalist who appears on his doorstep. Invites him to embassy functions, passes him titbits of information, flatters him by asking his advice. That way, the journalist winds up reporting to the ambassador before his own editor and his articles reinforce the ambassador’s own views. Diplomacy can be applied to any misguided person, not just foreign-born ones.”

The Commander grinned widely, delighted at any deviousness. He also saw, in this “treaty” the very faint hope of something he had long wanted. Putting on a worried frown and hoping it showed in that light, he said: “It may be that an agent will stumble across something of political or diplomatic significance. Would it then be his duty to tell the nearest ambassador or consul-general?”

“It would be his duty,” Corbin said firmly, “to have no contact whatsoever with our people. He should report as usual to you, and I assume you would pass the information on to … to an informed and sympathetic ear in the Foreign Office for proper assessment.”

It was a grandiose way of saying “me”, but Corbin clearly believed that particular me deserved it. He went on: “You are, one might almost say, in trade. A very poor way of putting it, I fear,” but he wasn’t withdrawing the slur. “You collect intelligence and you pass it on, it has no intrinsic value to you since your Bureau cannot act on it. That’s for others to do – the Navy, Army, our humble selves at The Office.”

“Perhaps we should be negotiating a trade treaty. You do have such things, don’t you?”

“I believe so,” Corbin said coolly. “Do you feel we have reached an understanding?”

Distantly, someone was tactlessly checking that the piano had been tuned by playing a series of scales. Their hostess came zigzagging down the hallway collecting her guests with a smile and a gesture.

The Commander said: “It may also happen that one of my agents needs to send a very urgent and secret message. In such very rare circumstances, in the interest of the nation as a whole, would you agree …”

Corbin understood perfectly and disagreed totally: the Commander wanted to use embassies as postboxes, since the only truly secret codes accepted by the cable companies, or the governments that licensed them, were the diplomatic codes. But from there it would be but a step to embassies becoming, or being assumed to have become, which was worse, nests of espionage. Not in my time, he thought, nor in the time of any successor – unless the Foreign Office controls that espionage.

But he was too much of a diplomatist to say “No”. “An ambassador is in the same position as the captain of a warship: he accepts total responsibility for each and every message sent from his embassy. It follows that any such decision would be entirely up to the individual ambassador.”

“But you want me to forbid my agents from going anywhere near your ambassadors.”

“We think that would be most advisable.” Corbin stood up. “I repeat: do we have an understanding?”

“Oh, I understand all right.” The Commander banged his pipe on the pot of a flowering shrub, sprinkling it with hot ash. “I suppose now we’d better go and listen to this Leon. Who is he?”

The diplomatist shrugged. “Just some dago.”