question as he stared at the kit in disbelief. The plastic cylinder was clearly a miniature microphone, an electronic bug, and the tools were for installing it.
“Well,” Theodora said smoothly, “the expedition probably can’t succeed without Philby; the—the Russian equivalent of our SOE, at least, is convinced that it can’t, and I think they’re right. Philby is in a privileged position, relative to the thing on Ararat, that the Russians know they can’t duplicate with anyone else—you’ll be told about that shortly, when you get to Kuwait. They may serve some sort of tiffin on the plane.”
The archaic word reminded Hale that Theodora had long ago served in the Indian Civil Service, the Raj—where high-handed schemes had been the standard
modus operandi.
“When I—get to Kuwait,” Hale said in a monotone. He gave the old man a wide-eyed questioning stare and waved his spread fingers stiffly at the kit.
Theodora frowned impatiently and snapped his fan closed to use it and both hands in a pantomime of drilling and inserting.
He wants me, thought Hale incredulously, to plant a bug in this secured conference room! In Number 10 Downing Street!
I wonder what the new PM’s attitude will be toward the poor old services
— the old man doesn’t intend to wait for hints.
Theodora held up his free hand. “But!—when we grabbed Philby at the Turkish–Soviet border in the winter of ’52 and forced him to switch sides, there wasn’t time to set up a sabotage of the Russian attempt on the mountain; we had to force them simply to abort it, so that they’d have to try it again at some later date, when we’d have something prepared.”
Would you break the laws of England, if we ordered it?
thought Hale as he tried to pay attention to what Theodora was saying;
Yes
,
I would.
God help me. He sighed and glanced around the room as Theodora had done. There was no telephone, nor any window frame at all, much less a nice metal one to damp the microphone’s electro-magnetic field, and Hale finally shrugged and pointed down at the table.
The old man nodded judiciously, and then went on, “We had to ask Philby himself!—who had then been a double agent of ours for only about ten minutes—what development would cause the Russians to call it off; and in his imperturbable way he advised fomenting an uprising among the native Kurds, with the Turkish government goaded to respond in force.”
Hale leaned forward to lift his chair by the arms, hike it back a yard, and then slowly and silently lower it to the wooden floor; then he slid the handkerchief and its burden closer to him and knelt carefully between the chair and the table.
“So we hastily burned some Kurd villages in the area,” Theodora said, waving his ivory fan to make it rattle, “shot a couple of the Oscars with Kurdish rifles, and got an excitable Turk captain to radio a grossly exaggerated report of it to Ankara, and then we bribed a Security Inspectorate bureaucrat there to send in the Turkish Air Force.”
Hale recalled that
Oscar
had been the enduring American mispronunciation of the Turk word
asker
, which meant soldier; and fleetingly, remembering the hospitality of a Khan in the Zagros Mountains, he hoped the Kurds had come through the contrived skirmish without too many casualties. He nodded, then picked up the tiny hand-drill and ducked his head under the tabletop and peered up at the underside; a hole for a counter-sunk screw in the corner-block nearest him looked like the best spot, and he pressed the bit of the drill at an angle into the hole and began twisting the handle, cupping his free hand under it to catch the curls of sawdust. The knees of the old man’s neatly pressed striped trousers were only a couple of feet in front of his face.
Theodora wasn’t speaking any louder than before, and Hale had to cock his head to hear him as he kept twisting the drill: “It was a proper circus around Ararat for a week or so, with the ignorant
“Well,” Theodora said smoothly, “the expedition probably can’t succeed without Philby; the—the Russian equivalent of our SOE, at least, is convinced that it can’t, and I think they’re right. Philby is in a privileged position, relative to the thing on Ararat, that the Russians know they can’t duplicate with anyone else—you’ll be told about that shortly, when you get to Kuwait. They may serve some sort of tiffin on the plane.”
The archaic word reminded Hale that Theodora had long ago served in the Indian Civil Service, the Raj—where high-handed schemes had been the standard
modus operandi.
“When I—get to Kuwait,” Hale said in a monotone. He gave the old man a wide-eyed questioning stare and waved his spread fingers stiffly at the kit.
Theodora frowned impatiently and snapped his fan closed to use it and both hands in a pantomime of drilling and inserting.
He wants me, thought Hale incredulously, to plant a bug in this secured conference room! In Number 10 Downing Street!
I wonder what the new PM’s attitude will be toward the poor old services
— the old man doesn’t intend to wait for hints.
Theodora held up his free hand. “But!—when we grabbed Philby at the Turkish–Soviet border in the winter of ’52 and forced him to switch sides, there wasn’t time to set up a sabotage of the Russian attempt on the mountain; we had to force them simply to abort it, so that they’d have to try it again at some later date, when we’d have something prepared.”
Would you break the laws of England, if we ordered it?
thought Hale as he tried to pay attention to what Theodora was saying;
Yes
,
I would.
God help me. He sighed and glanced around the room as Theodora had done. There was no telephone, nor any window frame at all, much less a nice metal one to damp the microphone’s electro-magnetic field, and Hale finally shrugged and pointed down at the table.
The old man nodded judiciously, and then went on, “We had to ask Philby himself!—who had then been a double agent of ours for only about ten minutes—what development would cause the Russians to call it off; and in his imperturbable way he advised fomenting an uprising among the native Kurds, with the Turkish government goaded to respond in force.”
Hale leaned forward to lift his chair by the arms, hike it back a yard, and then slowly and silently lower it to the wooden floor; then he slid the handkerchief and its burden closer to him and knelt carefully between the chair and the table.
“So we hastily burned some Kurd villages in the area,” Theodora said, waving his ivory fan to make it rattle, “shot a couple of the Oscars with Kurdish rifles, and got an excitable Turk captain to radio a grossly exaggerated report of it to Ankara, and then we bribed a Security Inspectorate bureaucrat there to send in the Turkish Air Force.”
Hale recalled that
Oscar
had been the enduring American mispronunciation of the Turk word
asker
, which meant soldier; and fleetingly, remembering the hospitality of a Khan in the Zagros Mountains, he hoped the Kurds had come through the contrived skirmish without too many casualties. He nodded, then picked up the tiny hand-drill and ducked his head under the tabletop and peered up at the underside; a hole for a counter-sunk screw in the corner-block nearest him looked like the best spot, and he pressed the bit of the drill at an angle into the hole and began twisting the handle, cupping his free hand under it to catch the curls of sawdust. The knees of the old man’s neatly pressed striped trousers were only a couple of feet in front of his face.
Theodora wasn’t speaking any louder than before, and Hale had to cock his head to hear him as he kept twisting the drill: “It was a proper circus around Ararat for a week or so, with the ignorant
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