The phrase “it goes without saying” cannot be used other than to introduce or comment upon that which has just been or will be said. “It is unthinkable that…” functions similarly. Obviously, nothing can be called unthinkable which has just been thought — or published in a thriller.
The phrase “conspiracy theory” was once synonymous with delusional, rationally absurd notions. And yet our executive, intelligence community, and Justice Department have undeniably conspired against Donald Trump and other perceived threats to the state. At the same time, Israel’s Mossad has executed unprecedented operations against its enemies, some of which would be literally unbelievable — exploding pagers? Really? — had they not actually happened. Is it conspiratorial to note that these are beloved tropes of spy fiction?
Where might Islamic Jihadists have discovered the idea of flying aircraft into iconic structures? In Tom Clancy’s techno-thriller Debt of Honor (1994), a Japanese terrorist flies a 747 into the Capitol, and in Thomas Harris’s Black Sunday (1975), Islamic terrorists rig the Goodyear blimp as a bomb and fly it into the Superbowl.
Many writers were literally secret agents. Frederick Forsyth, the creator of the techno-thriller, was a spy for the British secret service while working as a journalist. So, too, were Graham Greene and Somerset Maugham. Ian Fleming worked in wartime London as a strategist for Churchill’s saboteurs, the Special Operations Executive. His Bond books, though enjoyable, are neither technically interesting nor especially informative. In Casino Royale, for example, Bond carries a .25 caliber Beretta, a purse pistol, which any shooter will tell you is a “good thing to have if you don’t have a gun”. In his next outing, 007 has upgraded to a .32 caliber Walther, which is not much better.
When enlisted in the War Effort, Fleming’s imagination conjured a plan to capture a German seaplane, fill it with British commandos, then stage an engine-out landing near some Nazi ship or base that needed destruction. It was never implemented.
One of the grandest wartime schemes did become a book: The Man Who Never Was. It concerns Operation Mincemeat, which was a plot whereby a British vagrant, who had died from ingesting rat poison, was dressed and accoutred as an officer in the Royal Marines. His body was carried by submarine to the coast of Spain where it was ejected and swiftly washed ashore. The briefcase handcuffed to his arm carried correspondence indicating that the upcoming British invasion would target Sardinia. The Nazis fell for the ruse, diverting forces from Sicily — the actual Allied objective. One of the authors of the original Operation Mincemeat memo was Commander Ian Fleming, so that’s a horse on me.
“Many writers were literally secret agents.”
Operation Mincemeat was also memorialised in a rather good 1956 film starring Clifton Webb. A lesser-known version is Duff Cooper’s 1950 novel Operation Heartbreak. Not only a novelist, Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich (1890-1954) was also a prominent Tory politician, First Lord of the admiralty, and, after the war, ambassador to France. During the First World War he served in the trenches as a Lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards. During Churchill’s time in the “Wilderness”, and, in his Prime Ministry, Duff was his closest ally. In his retelling of Mincemeat, he has a British colonel, who just missed combat in the Great War, trapped on desk duty in the Second. After he dies of a heart attack, it is his body used in the ruse.
At least we know Mincemeat definitely happened. We have no such assurances for its prequel, a story that blurs the lines between fact and fiction even if it never ended up on bookshelves.
Richard Meinertzhagen was chief of British military intelligence in East Africa at the outset of the First World War. Transferred to Egypt, he operated in Palestine against the Turks. He’s most famous for the so-called Haversack Ruse, the older brother of Mincemeat. On reconnaissance, Meinertzhagen contrived to get too close to the Ottoman lines — which promptly tried to shoot him. Despite nearly falling off his horse, Meinertzhagen managed to gallop back to safety, though not before dropping a haversack full of (false) information about General Allenby’s plans for the recapture of Jerusalem. It’s a cracking tale, and as its appearance in Mincemeat suggests, a tactic probably as old as warfare. And perhaps it’s even true.
Why should I doubt it? Well, off the field, Meinertzhagen was a colossal fraud. Acclaimed as one of Britain’s premier ornithologists, he sent back undiscovered specimens from his posts around the world. Their pride of place in museums was marred only by the discovery that they were, universally, cut-and-paste assemblages of unrelated birds. Such is the fondness for Meinertzhagen in the Spy Thriller community that a homage was paid him in one of the Smiley books. Smiley has assembled and dispersed his beloved “watchers” to surveil an opponent. He names them, and among them are “the two Meinertzhagen girls”.
As a fellow fraud, John le Carré must have loved the rotter. He was one of the great writers of the 20th century and along with Patrick O’Brien, and our George V. Higgins, he elevated the genre novel to something superior — to the status of “art”. His books, like Joseph Conrad’s spy classics, are suffused with pathos and sadness. He was one of the century’s most successful writers, both artistically and financially.
Who, then, would indict him as a fraud? Le Carré himself, self-confessed as a hypocrite — not as a writer, but as a spy. All his books concern the fight of the secret service against the Communist threat, even as its agents battle Whitehall corruption and treason. All his work is about disillusionment, none more so than A Perfect Spy (1986), whose hero, like le Carré himself, was raised by a confidence-man father. The protagonist, unlike le Carré, becomes a double-agent, so enamoured of acceptance that he serves two warring powers simultaneously. Upon being discovered, he goes mad and takes his own life.
A fictional soldier of fortune for America was Joe Gall. He featured in 20 thrillers by Philip Atlee. These were yarns featuring sadism and pornography — unsurprisingly attractive to me as an adolescent boy. In each of the books he (like James Bond) falls in love with a new women who is murdered by the book’s end.
The mythic Gall was a contract agent for a government outfit so secret it even lacked a name. He was notable for his various martial skills, and for an absolute immorality in the service of his country. But more to the point is the author’s pedigree. Philip Atlee was James Atlee Phillips, brother of David Atlee Phillips, who, it seems, was the CIA handler of Lee Harvey Oswald. Now that we are able to peruse the JFK assassination files in which he features, we can not only enjoy the light they shed on conspiracy, but also look forward to the subsequent conclusion that the files themselves have been faked.
