Read My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy for Free Online

they drew on gloves and unpacked it item by item, probing each article with their fingers and holding it up to the light. Finding nothing suspicious in my change of underwear, they next examined the suitcase, tapping its surface carefully and measuring its inner and outer dimensions. There was a sigh when its innocence was established beyond doubt. For a second, I hoped that that would be the end of it, and that I would simply be told to get out of town by the first available train—but only for a second.
    “And now,” said the major nastily, “what about you?”
    He asked me to turn out my pockets. I could no longer postpone action. Taking first my wallet, I threw it down on that fine table, giving it at the last moment a flick of the wrist which sent it spinning towards the far end. As I had hoped, all three men made a dive at it, spreadeagling themselves across the table. Confronted by three pairs of buttocks, I scooped the scrap of paper out of my trousers, a crunch and a swallow, and it was gone. I emptied my remainingpockets with a light heart, and the major fortunately spared me the intimacies of a rigorous body-search. He gave me instead a dry little lecture on the Communists dominating the British Government, and ordered me to get out of Córdoba next day. I was paying my hotel bill in the morning when my two friends of the Civil Guard emerged from a recess in the lounge and asked if they might share my taxi to the station. As I boarded the Seville-bound coach, I gave them a packet of English cigarettes, and they waved to me happily as the train pulled out.
    It was not a heroic episode. Even if my coding instructions had been found, my British passport would probably have saved me from the death sentence. But in subsequent years I have often had occasion to reflect that the really risky operation is not usually the one which brings most danger, since real risks can be assessed in advance and precautions taken to obviate them. It is the almost meaningless incident, like the one described above, that often puts one to mortal hazard.



III. “A N O LD -E STABLISHED R ACKET ”—SIS
    My transfer, or rather my drift, from SOE to SIS was completed in September 1941. A dynamic lady who made the same move a year or so later was happy at the change, because, as she said: “If you have to work for a racket, let it be an old-established racket.” I could have said the same earlier, if I had thought of it. It would have been stupid to underrate the ability of the new men flowing into Baker Street, and their objective was a thoroughly worthy one. Yet they brought with them a style of strained improvisation as they left their tidy offices in the City and the Temple to spread disorder and financial chaos throughout Europe, gamekeepers turned poachers one and all. It was great fun in theory with ideas whizzing up and down the corridors. But most of the hard work involved pleading with the Air Ministry and the Admiralty for an extra aeroplane or an extra small boat, and SOE had yet to establish itself with Britain’s perennially conservative services.
    SIS was also undergoing changes, and its staff was expanding, but all too slowly, to meet the growing hunger of the services for intelligence. But there was a hard core of established practice and a staff structure to correspond. The new accretions did little tochange its essential nature. SIS resembled the Chinese in their ability to absorb and digest alien influences. Under pressure, it took in representatives of the Foreign Office and of the service departments, of whom Patrick Reilly * alone left a significant mark. It even survived more corrosive imports, such as Graham Greene and Malcolm Muggeridge, both of whom merely added to the gaiety of the service. † In short, I was happy to find solid ground beneath my feet, and to get down to real work.
    As is well known, the headquarters of SIS were then in Broadway Buildings, just across the road from St. James’s Park