Peter, however, is incurably careless. His love of pain and violence gets in the way of caution, and as a result of some incident yet to be worked out, Jim is caught by the Mexican police, while the others escape.
Schreiber could hardly have complained of rough treatment. Nor does Jim complain. He has no memory of his crimes, but he accepts the fact that he has committed them. The police force him to sit through a film of Buchenwald, and he watches with horror and shame the lean naked victims of Schreiber. He has no longer any wish to escape. He is content to die.
He is sent north to the American authorities, and the preliminary proceedings against him start. The new bearded Schreiber face becomes a feature of the press. His family among others see the picture, but never for a moment does it occur to any of them that this is Jim.
Among the spectators at the trial, however, is the little spectacled pseudopsychologist who was on the plane with Jim. He doesn’t recognize Jim, but he is puzzled by Schreiber (Schreiber is not acting true to character), and he remembers what he said to the man in the plane, that likeness is not a matter of skull measurements but of expression. The expression of horror and remorse is not one he would have expected to see in Schreiber’s eyes. This man claims to have lost his memory, and yet he denies nothing. Suppose after all they have got a man who is simply similar in bone structure…
Meanwhile Peter and Lauren, who escaped from the police trap which had closed on Jim, travel north. They plan a rescue. What their plan is I don’t know myself yet. Violent and desperate, it offers one chance in a hundred. But it comes off. Jim is whipped away from the court itself, and the hunt is on again. But this is not Mexico, and the hunt is a very short one. They are trapped in a suburban villa.
But Peter has taken hostages: a woman and her child who were in the house when they broke in. Jim has been obeying his companions like an automaton: there hasn’t even been time to take off his handcuffs, but at this last example of Fascist mentality his mind seems to wake. He turns on his friends and the woman he has loved. He knocks out Peter with the handcuffs and gets his gun. The woman too has a gun. They face each other across the length of the room like duellists. She says, “My dear, you won’t shoot me.” But he shoots and her shot comes a second after his, but it isn’t aimed at him: it hits her brother, who has regained his feet and is on the point of attacking. Her last words are, “You aren’t Schreiber. You can’t be. You’re decent. Who the hell are you?”
Braddon gives himself up, and the truth of the psychologist’s theory is glaringly exhibited. The likeness to Schreiber has proved to be physical only. I imagine the little man remembers at this point the man he talked to on the plane, he gives evidence, produces Braddon’s family. The happy ending needs to be worked out, but the strange case of Jim Braddon really comes to an end with the shots in the suburban villa. After that there’s just the reaching for the coats under the seats. Anyone in the stalls could tell you what happens now.
2
THE SECOND SKETCH FOR A FILM, ENTITLED NOBODY TO Blame, was written about the same time for my friend Cavalcanti. He liked the idea, but our work on it never began, for when he submitted it to the Board of Film Censors, he was told that they could not grant a certificate to a film making fun of the Secret Service. So this story too joined the others for a while in the unconscious, to emerge some ten years later as a novel-simplified but not, I think, necessarily improved-called Our Man in Havana.
There is no censorship for novels, but I learned later that MI5 suggested to MI6 that they should bring an action against the book for a breach of official secrets. What secret had I betrayed? Was it the possibility of using bird shit as a secret ink? But luckily C, the head of MI6, had a better sense of humour than his colleague in MI5, and he discouraged him from taking action.
Nobody to Blame
1
RICHARD TRIP IS THE AGENT OF SINGER SEWING MACHINES in some Baltic capital similar to Tallinn. He is a small inoffensive man of a rather timid disposition with a passionate love for postage stamps, Gilbert and Sullivan’s works and his wife, and a passionate loyalty to Singer Sewing Machines. Unofficially he is Agent B720 of the British Secret Service. The year is 1938/39.
Mrs. Tripp-Gloria-is much younger than Tripp and it is to give her a good life that he has allowed himself to be enlisted in the Secret Service. He feels he must spend more money on her than Singer provides in order to keep her, although she has a genuine fondness for her dim husband. She knows nothing, of course, of his activities.
At HQ in London Tripp is regarded as one of their soundest agents-unimaginative, accurate, not easily ruffled. He is believed to have a network of subagents throughout Germany and he keeps in touch with HQ through the medium of his business reports written to his firm. What HQ does not know is that in fact Tripp has no agents at all. He invents all his reports and when London expresses dissatisfaction with an agent he simply dismisses one notional source and engages another equally notional. Naturally he draws salaries and expenses for all the imaginary agents.
His active imagination, from which he has drawn the details of a large underground factory near Leipzig for the construction of a secret explosive, does on one occasion lead to a little trouble with the local police. From an independent source London learns that B720 is being shadowed, and they send him an urgent warning, but the warning arrives too late.
At the end of a program of Gilbert and Sullivan opera by the Anglo-Latesthian Society in which Tripp takes a leading part, the Chief of Police, who is sitting in the front row, hands up a bouquet with a card attached and the request that he may have a drink with Tripp immediately in his dressing room. There he tells Tripp that the German Embassy have complained of his activities. Tripp confesses to his deception.
The Chief of Police is amused and pleased that Tripp’s presence will keep out any serious agents, and he accepts the gift of a sewing machine for his wife. He will ensure that Tripp’s messages go safely out of the country-and to keep the German Embassy quiet, he decides, they can have a look at them on the way. London’s warning comes on the heels of the interview, and Tripp sends back a message announcing that he has appointed the Chief of Police himself as one of his agents, enclosing that officer’s first report on the chief political characters of Latesthia and requesting that as first payment and bonus the Chief, who he says is an ardent stamp collector, should receive a rare Triangular Cape, and when the stamp arrives of course he sticks it in his own album. This gives him an idea, and soon the Chief of the Secret Service is commenting to the HQ officer in charge of Tripp’s station, “What a lot of stamp collectors he has among his agents.”
“It might be worse. Do you remember old Stott’s agents? They all wanted art photos from Paris.”
“Stott’s at a loose end, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Send him over to take a look at Tripp’s station. He may be able to give Tripp some advice. I always believe in letting two sound men get together.”
2
STOTT IS A MUCH OLDER MAN THAN TRIPP. HE IS BOTTLE-nosed and mottled with a little round stomach and a roving eye. Tripp is naturally apprehensive of his visit and expects to be unmasked at any moment, but to his relief he finds that Stott is much more interested in the foods and wines of Latesthia, and in the night life, than in the details of Tripp’s organization. There are even fleeting moments when Tripp wonders whether it could possibly be that Stott also had run his station on notional lines, but such a thought of course can hardly be held for long.