Graham Greene (29 page)

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL F. M. BAILEY

hen M. poured him three fingers from the frosted carafe Bond took a pinch of black pepper and dropped it on the surface of the vodka. The pepper slowly settled to the bottom of the glass leaving a few grains on the surface which Bond dabbed up with the tip of a finger. Then he tossed the cold liquor well to the back of his throat and put his glass, with the dregs of the pepper at the bottom, back on the table.

M. gave him a glance of rather ironical enquiry.

“It's a trick the Russians taught me that time you attached me to the Embassy in Moscow,” apologised Bond. “There's often quite a lot of fusel oil on the surface of this stuff—at least there used to be when it was badly distilled. Poisonous. In Russia, where you get a lot of bath-tub liquor, it's an understood thing to sprinkle a little pepper in your glass. It takes the fusel oil to the bottom.”

IAN FLEMING

t became advisable to discover who the actual people were who foregathered on certain nights in a certain cottage on the West coast of Ireland. A varnish was invented composed mainly of dichlorethyl sulphide—better known as Mustard Gas. This varnish was spread on the gate, and everybody who went in smeared his hand with it. For an hour nothing happened. But at the end of an hour a sore began to spread. Under the best conditions it takes six weeks for that sore to heal; so that identification became more certain and more simple than even fingerprints could make it.

ROGER LANCELYN GREEN
[ON MAJOR A. E. W. MASON OF THE SECRET SERVICE]

nce I went “butterfly-hunting” in Dalmatia. I went armed with most effective weapons for the purpose, which have served me well in many a similar campaign. I took a sketch-book, in which were numerous pictures—some finished, others only partly done—of butterflies of every degree and rank, from a “Red Admiral” to a “Painted Lady.”

Carrying this book and a colour-box, and a butterfly net in my hand, I was above all suspicion to anyone who met me on the lonely mountain side, even in the neighbourhood of the forts.

I was hunting butterflies, and it was always a good introduction
with which to go to anyone who was watching me with suspicion. Quite frankly, with my sketch-book in hand, I would ask innocently whether he had seen such-and-such a butterfly in the neighbourhood, as I was anxious to catch one. Ninety-nine out of a hundred did not know one butterfly from another—any more than I do—so one was on fairly safe ground in that way, and they thoroughly sympathised with the mad Englishman who was hunting these insects.

They did not look sufficiently closely into the sketches of butterflies to notice that the delicately drawn veins of the wings were exact representations, in plan, of their own fort, and that the spots on the wings denoted the number and position of guns and their different calibres.

SIR ROBERT BADEN-POWELL

CONCEALING A FORT IN A MOTH'S HEAD
This sketch was made, giving all the particulars that I wanted. I then decided to bury it in such a way that it could not be recognised as a fortress plan if I were caught by the military authorities. One idea which occurred to me was to make it into the doorway of a cathedral or church, but I finally decided on the sketch of the moth's head. Underneath in my notebook I wrote the following words:
“Head of Dula moth as seen through a magnifying glass. Caught 19.5.12. Magnified ab out six times the size of life.” (Meaning scale of 6 inches to the mile.)

This sketch of a butterfly contains the outline of a fortress, and marks
both
the position and power of the guns. The marks on the wings
between
the lines mean nothing, but those
on
the lines show the nature and size of the guns, according to the keys below.

The position of each gun is at the place inside the outline of the fort on the butterfly where the line marked with the spot ends. The head of the butterfly points towards the north.

ith the practical genius of their nation, the English, after long preparation, accomplished a piece of espionage unexampled in the history of the pre-war Secret Service. They placed agents in the great cities of the Rhine, extending from Holland to Switzerland, and in the German cities on the route Amsterdam–Hanover–Schneidemühl–Thorn. Along this route they flew carrier pigeons, by means of which they could at any time, even in serious emergencies, forward news and information. Early in the year 1914 this organisation was perfected in the most ingenious fashion. The British Secret Service agents had noted that the carrier pigeons followed, in the one case, the course of the Rhine, and in the other the railway between Amsterdam and Thorn. They now had tiny cameras made, so light that they could be fastened to the birds' tails. These appliances were fitted with clockwork, which at set times would expose portions of a film, and since a whole flight of pigeons was always released simultaneously, and their cameras could be set to make exposures at different times, it would be possible to obtain a fairly continuous series of photographs.

H. R. BERNDORFF

s, holding the lapels of my coat, I tried to review the situation in my mind, I suddenly felt in my breast pocket a notebook, which contained in cryptic form an account of the moneys I had spent. The Cheka agents had ransacked my flat—they were probably searching it at that moment, but they had not thought of searching the clothes we had put on when we were arrested. The notebook was unintelligible to anyone except myself. But it contained figures, and, if it fell into Bolshevik hands, they would find some means of rendering it compromising. They would say that the figures represented movements of Bolshevik troops or moneys I had spent on fomenting counter-revolution. That notebook preyed on my mind. How was I to be rid of it? We might be searched at any moment. In the circumstances there seemed only one solution to the problem. I asked permission of our four sentries to go to the lavatory. It was granted, but the affair was not so simple. Two gunmen accompanied me to the door, but, when I started to close it, they shook their heads. “Leave it open,” they said and took up their stand in front of me. It was an embarrassing moment. Should I take the risk or not? Fortunately, the decision was made for me by the insanitary conditions of the place. There was no paper. The walls were smeared with stains of human excrement. As calmly as I could, I took out my notebook, tore out the offending pages and used them in the manner which the circumstances dictated. I pulled the plug. It worked, and I was saved.