master stroke of organizational insight, it was decided to open communications between the two agencies, and the international branch was installed in the next office down the corridor, becoming known in official circles as MIâ6.
In harness, they muddled their way through the Second World War, relying largely on the French organizational concept, â
système
D.â Their agents earned reputations for bravery and enterprise, which qualities were vital to survival, considering the blunderers who insisted on parachuting French-speaking agents into Yugoslavia. No energy was spared in the rounding up of Irish nationalists on the basis of the rumor that Ireland was a secret signatory of the Axis Pact.
At home, their operatives uncovered spy rings that were passing information by means of cryptic keys in the knitting patterns of balaclavas that womenâs institutes were supplying to troops in Africa. And they captured no fewer than seven hundred German parachute spies, nearly all of whom had been trained with such insidious thoroughness that they spoke no German at all and pretended to be innocently pushing their bicycles to work in munitions plants. It was obvious that these were agents of the highest importance, because their controls had gone to the trouble of giving them covers that included homes hit by the blitz and county clerk records supplying them with generations of British ancestors.
In Europe, MIâ6 agents blew up bridges in the path of the advancing Allied armies, thus preventing hasty and ill-considered thrusts. It was they who uncovered Switzerlandâs intention to declare war on Sweden as a last resort. And on three separate occasions only bad luck prevented them from capturing General Patton and his entire staff.
When the war was over, each agent was required to write a book on his adventures, then he was permitted to enter trade. But the romance surrounding MIâ5 and MIâ6 was tarnished somewhat by a pattern of defections and information leaks that embarrassed British Intelligence almost as much as the existence of that agency was an embarrassment to British intelligence. Clearly, something had to be done to prevent these defections and leakages and to maintain the honor and reputation of the organization. Following the fashion of the day, the government turned to the United States for its model.
At about the same time in America, the 102 splinter spy groups that had sprung up in the Army, Navy, State Department, Treasury, and Bureau of Indian Affairs were merged into a vast bureaucratic malignancy, the CII. This organization, like its British opposite number, was having its share of defections and its share of witch-hunting self-examination spawned by the McCarthy panic. In reaction, it organized an internal cell designed to police and control its own personnel and to protect them from assassination abroad. This last was achieved by the sanction threat of counterassassination, and the cell that performed these internal and external sanctions was known as the Search and Sanction Divisionâpopularly known as the SS Squad. It was for SS that Jonathan had worked, before he managed to release himself from their coils.
Emulating the American structure, the British developed an elite inner cell which they installed in the next room up the corridor, which room happened to be a toilet. Despite the fact that they refurbished the space to accommodate its new function, wags immediately gave the assassination group the nickname: The Loo.
â. . . and that ought pretty much put you into the big picture,â Yank concluded. âAt least you know who we are. Any questions?â
Jonathan had been listening with only half an ear as he watched the countryside flow past his window, a grimy twilight beginning to soften the line of the background hills. They had left the motorway and were threading through country lanes. When they passed through a village, Jonathan noticed the arms
In harness, they muddled their way through the Second World War, relying largely on the French organizational concept, â
système
D.â Their agents earned reputations for bravery and enterprise, which qualities were vital to survival, considering the blunderers who insisted on parachuting French-speaking agents into Yugoslavia. No energy was spared in the rounding up of Irish nationalists on the basis of the rumor that Ireland was a secret signatory of the Axis Pact.
At home, their operatives uncovered spy rings that were passing information by means of cryptic keys in the knitting patterns of balaclavas that womenâs institutes were supplying to troops in Africa. And they captured no fewer than seven hundred German parachute spies, nearly all of whom had been trained with such insidious thoroughness that they spoke no German at all and pretended to be innocently pushing their bicycles to work in munitions plants. It was obvious that these were agents of the highest importance, because their controls had gone to the trouble of giving them covers that included homes hit by the blitz and county clerk records supplying them with generations of British ancestors.
In Europe, MIâ6 agents blew up bridges in the path of the advancing Allied armies, thus preventing hasty and ill-considered thrusts. It was they who uncovered Switzerlandâs intention to declare war on Sweden as a last resort. And on three separate occasions only bad luck prevented them from capturing General Patton and his entire staff.
When the war was over, each agent was required to write a book on his adventures, then he was permitted to enter trade. But the romance surrounding MIâ5 and MIâ6 was tarnished somewhat by a pattern of defections and information leaks that embarrassed British Intelligence almost as much as the existence of that agency was an embarrassment to British intelligence. Clearly, something had to be done to prevent these defections and leakages and to maintain the honor and reputation of the organization. Following the fashion of the day, the government turned to the United States for its model.
At about the same time in America, the 102 splinter spy groups that had sprung up in the Army, Navy, State Department, Treasury, and Bureau of Indian Affairs were merged into a vast bureaucratic malignancy, the CII. This organization, like its British opposite number, was having its share of defections and its share of witch-hunting self-examination spawned by the McCarthy panic. In reaction, it organized an internal cell designed to police and control its own personnel and to protect them from assassination abroad. This last was achieved by the sanction threat of counterassassination, and the cell that performed these internal and external sanctions was known as the Search and Sanction Divisionâpopularly known as the SS Squad. It was for SS that Jonathan had worked, before he managed to release himself from their coils.
Emulating the American structure, the British developed an elite inner cell which they installed in the next room up the corridor, which room happened to be a toilet. Despite the fact that they refurbished the space to accommodate its new function, wags immediately gave the assassination group the nickname: The Loo.
â. . . and that ought pretty much put you into the big picture,â Yank concluded. âAt least you know who we are. Any questions?â
Jonathan had been listening with only half an ear as he watched the countryside flow past his window, a grimy twilight beginning to soften the line of the background hills. They had left the motorway and were threading through country lanes. When they passed through a village, Jonathan noticed the arms
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