Notes on the espionage business, jotted while recuperating from an overdose of spy novels.
Spies are old and tired and sick of it all.
Their home office is in London, but they are very seldom permitted to go there. They are expected to stay out in the cold, looking seedy and lunching on meat pies and bad coffee.
This keeps them in Berlin a great deal of the time and allows them to become involved with fräuleins. Afterward they sit alone over meat pies and coffee brooding upon their failed marriages and wondering if their children still love them.
The fräuleins usually get murdered or turn out to be spies for the Russians, the Chinese, the Americans or the home office in London, which trusts nobody.
For this reason, spies spend many of their idle hours wondering why they didn’t go into more agreeable work when they were young.
One day they are called to London for a meeting with Control. Nobody knows who Control is. Even Control’s wife believes he leads a humdrum life as a floorwalker at Harrods. Having lost faith in him, Control’s wife has been carrying on for years with a Socialist Member of Parliament.
For this reason, Control is old and tired and sick of it all. There is talk in Whitehall that he is losing his edge, that he has gone downhill since Eton.
When spies are called home to meet with Control, they see the telltale signs of age, fatigue and sickness of it all. Spies are trained to detect such weaknesses.
“Control is old and tired and sick of it all,” spies say to themselves.
They have tea in the office and engage in hollow heartinesses. This gives Control the chance to size up spies and see whether life out in the cold has destroyed their character. He notes with sadness that they are old and tired and sick of it all.
For this reason and others, Control does not trust spies. Spies do not trust Control, either, and for good reasons.
Having read as much spy literature as the next man, they know that Control is either (a) a Soviet or Chinese agent, (b) the chap who arranges all those murders of fräuleins in Berlin or (c) a man of such unscrupulous fidelity to his country that he will have his own spies murdered whenever necessary to protect his network.
Naturally, their blood runs cold when Control becomes sympathetic and says, “You’re old and tired and sick of it all, aren’t you, old chap?”
This is the way Control always begins when proposing one last big job, with the promise that when it is over the spy will be given a desk job in the home office reading cables from equatorial backwaters for rotten pay while being kept under surveillance by the secretaries.
When spies hear this from Control they realize that they are probably going to be given the business. If Control has something big in the air, it’s a cinch that any small-fry, old, tired and sick-of-it-all spies he chooses to involve will be used only as pawns.
The spies know this, and Control knows they know it. What’s more, spies know Control knows they know it.
What spies don’t know is why they have stayed with this filthy business all these years. Control doesn’t know either. Once there was principle involved in it, duty to crown and self. But that was when they were all young and peppy and had not foreseen that they would get mixed up in the dirty business of murdered fräuleins.
And now—now they simply plow ahead, double-crossing each other, watching the fräuleins fall like duckpins, living on meat pies and filthy coffee, seeing their wives waltzing around the West End with flashy Socialists.
Living in an unrelieved state of depression, spies always accept the big job, even when it takes them to Macao. It is better than retiring to Bognor Regis with nothing to do but think about what rotten husbands and fathers they have been.
Moreover, even in Macao they are certain to find one last chance at true love, for, though the meat pies of Macao are not much to smack the lips about, the chances are excellent for finding a youthful Eurasian knockout who can restore a spy’s sense of simplicity, honor and loyalty.
Afterward, they know, Control’s plan may require them to be shot as part of a master scheme to pull an intelligence coup, but on the other hand, maybe Control will only need to have the Eurasian beauty ventilated.
It is a fifty-fifty chance to survive for another bout of Weltschmerz. Maybe even better, since it’s altogether possible that Control will be exposed as a Soviet spy back in London and given the chop before the Macao scene becomes messy.
Spies are old hands at computing the odds. Not like the innocent Americans from CIA who do it all with computers and lack all sense of the weariness of absolutely everything as well as the character it takes to become old and tired and sick of it all.