The Harry Palmer Quartet

But now the conversation was taking a different turn. Ross, it seemed, wasn’t taking over Charlotte Street. The purpose of my visit was an explanation to me!

As I sorted it out afterwards, it all began because Ross wanted to be quite sure that I wasn’t working for the Jay and Dalby set-up. So he asked if he could offer me the Al Gumhuria work. They calculated that if I was channelling stuff out through Jay I’d jump at it. I hadn’t. I had told Ross to keep it. From that moment ‘my future was assured’ as the old army saying has it. Now Ross wanted me to be quite clear about his hands being clean, so he had the top brass tell me in person.

The Exalted Military Personage was very keen to hear how I got out of the Wood Green house, and at one stage said, ‘Good show!’ again, and after that, something that I still consider rather foolish for a man of his experience. He said, ‘And now is there anything I can tell you?’

I told him that I had overseas and detachment pay outstanding for nearly eighteen months. He was a little shattered, and Ross didn’t know where to put his face for embarrassment. But the EMP adopted an ‘all boys together’ attitude, and promised to action it for me if I let his ADC have details in writing. Ross had the door open, and Alice was about to go through it when I leaned across the vast highly polished desk and said, ‘When do you arrest Henry?’ Ross closed the door and came back to the desk. The EMP came around it. They both looked at me as though I wasn’t using Amplex.

At last the EMP spoke; his brown wrinkled face was close to mine. He said, ‘I should be furious with you. You’re implying a reluctance on my part to pursue the Queen’s enemies.’

I said, ‘I’m implying nothing, but I’m glad to hear that the suggestion would anger you.’

The EMP unlocked a tray on his desk and produced a slim green file; on the cover it said ‘HENRY’ in magic-marker lettering. It was about all we knew of the man who phoned Jay that night. Inside there was a note from the PM in his own handwriting, my report, and a long screed from Ross. The EMP said, ‘We are as anxious to clear it up as anyone, but we’ll have to have more facts than this.’

‘Then, with respect, sir, I suggest that you pass it on to the appropriate authority,’ I told him. ‘To be quite frank,’ Ross began, but I refused to be interrupted. I stared the EMP full in the eye. ‘This report of mine was submitted to the Cabinet. Neither you nor Colonel Ross has any right to open a file, handle a file, or comment in any way. The sphere of activities are clearly defined by the Cabinet. I’ll take this file with me, and I must ask you to treat its contents as top secret, pending the submission of my further reports to the Cabinet.’ It wasn’t that there were reasons for suspecting the EMP of attempting to cover up for the elusive Henry, but I didn’t want this file to be mislaid. At that moment I resolved that one day I would track down Jay’s highly placed friend. Something of this must have shown on my face in spite of my training.

‘My dear fellow,’ said the EMP. ‘Nothing was further from my mind than treating you in a cavalier fashion.’ I had won. I had won so soundly that the EMP produced his XO Brandy. I allowed myself to be mollified, but not too quickly. It’s great, that Hennessy XO Brandy.

Alice and I had a car waiting to take us back to Charlotte Street. We rode in silence almost all the way, but just before Goodge Street Alice said, ‘Not even Dalby would have attempted that.’ It was as near as Alice ever came to admiration. I gave her the green file and said airily, ‘Give this one of our file numbers, Alice.’ But my triumph was short-lived, for later that afternoon she brought in the two files I’d left in Waterman’s car. You could never beat Alice.

That evening Ross rang and said he had to see me, about Jay. And Carswell, Painter, Ross and I had a conference. The end was inevitable, and it came on Saturday. Jay was paid £160,000 to open a department working directly between Ross and myself. On this same day a Jensen 541S sports car went off the Maidstone by-pass while going at an absurd speed. There was one occupant, a Mr Dalby; death, they said, was instantaneous.

There was still much work to do at Charlotte Street. K.K., late of Wood Green, wanted to claim diplomatic immunity, but failed. I put an advertisement into France-Soir, thanking Bert for his offer of help, and telling of my cancelled tour.

Alice bought an electric coffee-mill for the office, so that we could have real coffee, and I got all my back pay and allowances. I paid the pianist at the ‘Tin-Tack’ thirty shillings and sent Alf Keating an oil heater. The dispatch office was making a book on the Open; I put five shillings on Munn & Felton’s (Footwear) Brass Band. A little note from Chico thanked me for doing his requisitions the night he went to Grantham, and Jean sewed a patch into my brown worsted trousers.

On Tuesday I had a visitor; the American brigadier from Tokwe. He brought two large cardboard boxes with him, and after lunching at the ‘Ivy’ we returned to the office to watch a demonstration.

From the cardboard boxes he brought a wooden contraption, its paint chipped and faded. When fitted together it was about six feet long; attached to each end was a red automobile light. It wasn’t until he showed me photographs of the battered motor cycle they had dragged from the ocean floor that I realized Dalby’s ingenious scheme.

This wooden plank bolted to the back of a motor cycle was what I followed across Tokwe the night I was arrested. The motor bike was too small to register on the radar screen. Dalby moved the block across the road, and connected the HT wires to kill the only witness. He used the High Speed TV, then threw it into the sea nice and near my car, knowing that it would be detected by echo sounders, and that my close proximity would implicate me. Then he drove away relying on wind, a good silencer, and confusion. He dumped the bike in the sea off another part of the island, having left the road and travelled across open country. The two men that Jay’s network had working for the USMD1 told the British authorities that the Americans were holding on to me, and the Americans, that the British had asked for my return. After that, Jay took over, and brought me into the UK as a hospital case.

I appreciated the work that this officer had done. He felt he owed me a debt. I told him about Dalby being killed, and he didn’t look surprised or cynical, so I left it at that.

He asked, ‘This feller, Dalby; the Reds had brainwashed the guy, huh?’

I said we weren’t sure, but perhaps we looked for motivation in the wrong places these days. We tend to forget that there are people who are simply after money and power, and they have no psychological complications at all. I said I thought Dalby and Jay were both like that, and that a feud had been not so far away when it all blew up in their faces.

‘Money and power, eh?’ said the Brigadier. ‘Just a simple case of a couple of well-informed SOBs.’

‘Perhaps that’s about it,’ I said.

‘I asked Dalby for you at Tokwe,’ he told me, and I said I knew.

‘I just had a hunch, you know what I mean,’ he said.

I knew what he meant.

And he said, ‘Can I ask you just one more thing?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘How were your people so sure that Colonel Ross and Miss Bloom (that was Alice’s other name) – I mean to give no offence, you understand.’

I said I understood.

‘But how were they so sure that Ross and Miss Bloom couldn’t be … well, reached?’

I said that there were people who were very difficult to brain-wash.

‘Is that so?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘Obsessional neurotics; people who go back twice to make sure the door is locked, who walk down the street avoiding the joins in the paving, then become sure they’ve left the kettle on. They are difficult to hypnotize and difficult to brain-wash.’

‘No fooling,’ he said. ‘It’s a wonder we had so much trouble in the US then.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Don’t quote me about Alice and Ross.’

‘Not a chance,’ he said. But from a couple of things Alice said next day, I think he must have done.

The ‘Henry File’? It’s still as slim as the day I brought it from the War House. Everyone in the department has theories of course, but whoever tipped off Jay is keeping his head well down. Mind you, as Jean said the other day, when we do identify him, it’s sure to turn out to be some relation of Chico.

Another thing we never did finally work out was how Dalby got my prints on to the HS TV camera, but I think he must have screwed the handles on to something (perhaps a door) at Charlotte Street, then taken them with him to Tokwe, and fixed them to the camera before dumping it.

Jean had been back to the Japanese blockhouse the day after I was arrested, but the cathode tube, slip of information and pistol had all gone. She had then sat down with a map of the area and worked out Dalby’s motor cycle trick by sheer brain-power. When the Brigadier heard Jean’s story he had the three places she’d marked, dragged. With no result. She told me it was a terrible moment; but they hadn’t allowed for the undertow. The motor cycle was finally found quite a long way out.2 Luckily the wooden gimmick was still attached (Dalby couldn’t risk it floating) and by now the Americans were really convinced. Skip Henderson was recalled to Tokwe (it seems the death of Barney was a bona fide accident) and Ross flew to the Pentagon. From then on the skids were under Dalby, but it wasn’t doing me a lot of good.

That’s about all of the IPCRESS story. There has been a lot of work go through Charlotte Street since; some interesting, but mostly boring. Painter has a whole medical research lab working with him, but so far they have found no way of ‘de-brain-washing’ people, and many of the original network are still under the threat of the Treason Act, while some still forward reports under the impression that they are going via Jay to some foreign power. Of course I don’t let Jay handle them, just in case he gets ideas. I see Jay at the monthly conference with Ross, when we prepare the Army Intelligence Memoranda Sheet. He seems happy enough, and he’s certainly efficient. I remember another thing about Jays – they store food for winter. ‘Moving in from opposite ends to the same conclusion,’ Dalby said once, and every time I am with Jay I think about it. But I doubt if this was what Dalby meant.

Anytime I want Jay I know I can find him at the ‘Mirabelle’, and last Saturday morning I bumped into him at Led’s. He wants Jean and me to go to dinner with him. He said he would cook it himself. I’d like to go but I don’t think I will. It’s not wise to make too many close friends in this business.

1 United States Medical Department.

2 (It’s my theory that Dalby had it going at high speed towards the water to take it as far as possible, but Jean says it’s the undertow.)

Epilogue

It’s a dead sure way of getting into trouble putting too much information down on paper, but I suppose having got this far I had better tell you the true end of the IPCRESS fiasco.

The Minister just wanted to know how to evade questions, as all Ministers do. He asked me a few searching questions like, ‘Any good fishin’ in the Lebanon?’ and ‘Have another?’ and ‘D’you know young Chillcott-Oakes?’ After leaving the Minister I drove down to a house near Staines. I knocked on the door in a rather strange series of rhythms, and a woman with a moustache opened it. In the back room there was an old man standing amid three partly packed suitcases. I gave him sixty crumpled five-pound notes, which were genuine, and two medium-quality forged UK passports.

The man said, ‘Thank you,’ and the woman said the same thing, twice more. As I turned to leave, he said, ‘I’ll be at number 191 if you ever need me.’

I said thanks and drove to London, and the little old man who had been my jailer at the house in Wood Green took the plane to Prague. This, too, was a spy’s insurance policy.

1 19 Stanislavskaya Street, Moscow (facing the East German Embassy). A building occupied by SMERSH – the counter-intelligence unit of the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti).

Appendix

MEDWAY II

During the dark days of the Mediterranean War when it looked like the Wehrmacht had finished what Darius began, Beirut was a submarine base called Medway II, and was the scene of a topsecret mission. U.307 had been sunk in thirty-eight fathoms of water not far away. In the water-filled U.307 the control room was equipped with a new infra-red sighting device for night viewing above water. It was deep for a diver, but not too deep. It was still wet when we got it aboard the plane, and it dripped over my knees on the way to London, where I met Ross for the first time.

Extract from Handling unfamiliar pistols (Chapter 5). Document 237. HGF. 1960.

In handling Smith & Wesson revolvers the following rules should be observed. PROVIDING that (i) the cylinder has six chambers, and (ii) it revolves anti-clockwise. (Note that Colt cylinders revolve clockwise.) There are 4 categories:

1. .445 inch. Only British or US ammunition marked .455 inch.

2. .45 inch. BEWARE. Not .45 auto ammunition.

3. .45 inch DA. In this .45 auto ammunition can be used but will not extract without two special three-round clips. Extraction can however be effected with the aid of, e.g., a pencil. BEWARE. Not rimmed ammunition.

4. .38. Any pistol with chamber longer than 1.5 inches will take any British or American ammunition except auto ammunition.

These rules only provide a general guide and THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS.

INDIAN HEMP (MARIJUANA)

Prices at time of writing:

Rangoon: 10/- per lb block.

UK (Dockside): £30 per lb.

Wholesale: £50 per lb.

Clubs, etc: £6 per OZ, or 10/6 per cigarette.

(1lb makes approximately 500 cigarettes.)

In 1939 British Military Intelligence used Wormwood Scrubs Prison as its HQ. The prisoners had all been evacuated and the cells were used as offices, each cell being locked when it was vacated as a security measure. However, after a bomb destroyed a section of the building, it was decided to move to a block of offices in St James’s Street, where they remained until the end of the war.

JOE ONE

Near the Holo Archipelago where the waters of the Sulu Sea dilute the Sea of Celebes and the fingers of the Philippine islands grope towards Northern Borneo a B29 of the United States Air Force led a fast-moving shadow through the hot afternoon sun of August, 1949.

Special attachments held photographic plates which soaked up cosmic rays. For months this unit had charted and flown carefully calculated routes across the Pacific. It was a boring detail, and the crews were happy when each long day’s flight was ended and cold showers were waiting to revitalize cramped muscles and an open-air movie helped their minds into neutral. But this day was different, this crew had hardly parked their gum when an urgent call recalled them to the briefing-room.

The photo-lab technicians had got used to developing these plates by now. The image was generally of long wormlike strips of light and often needed a little extra development to get a good contrasty image that made plotting the results much easier. But these plates were absurdly different, they were fogged. Not fogged by daylight but soaked black by an intense concentration of cosmic radiation. Otherwise called a ‘hot’ area. As the Commanding General said at the time, ‘If the atmosphere is taking that kind of cosmic ray penetration we’d better get into the lead suit business.’ But the world wasn’t taking it. This was an atomic explosion.

In that briefing-room in that Pacific USAF base a big truth slowly took shape in the minds of these airmen. There had been no American bomb exploded that year.

The whole base swung into action. One after another the huge B29s trundled around the perimeter track and stepped off the end of the runway into the heavy tropical night air. This time, however, these were planes of the Atomic Bomb Detection Unit which had been formed only the previous year. Special aircraft scooping dust particles from the air as they retraced the path of the afternoon flight. Two Atomic Energy Commission laboratories in the United States had been alerted to stand by for the dust samples.

It took five days before Washington had the detailed report. The explosion it said was almost certainly a bomb. (Until September 23 it was stated that there was a one-in-twenty chance that it wasn’t a bomb.) Moreover the particles indicated a plutonium device. This was an explosion six times more powerful than the Hiroshima one and not to be compared with the first American explosion at Alamogordo.

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