Secret agents
Richard West
The Spy's Bedside Book Graham Greene and Hugh Greene (Granada £3.95) The Riddle of the Sands Erskine Childers (Everyman £2.50) Epitaph for a Spy Eric Ambler (Everyman Paperbacks £2.50)
The newly re-published Spy's Bedside Book, compiled by the brothers raharn and Hugh Greene, starts with the "IV chapter of Greenmantle, where Bulb- vant tells Hannay about the plot to inflame the East: 'I have reports from agents every- Whhere — pedlars in South Russia, Afghan arse-dealers, Turcoman merchants, 131.1- g,..nnis on the road to Mecca, Sheikhs in North Africa, sailors on the BlackSea eya.st, sheep-skinned Mongols, Hindu Greek traders in the Gulf, as well as t'esPectable Consuls who use cyphers.' 'very time I re-read Greenmantle, that Passage still excites, although I know. tr'er,,fectlY well that Buchan wrote it with his 17,..(te in his cheek, that Bullivant and f,7triaY are preposterous characters. The fact remains that Buchan was the supreme iiirecIter spy thrillers, if only three or four, Greenmantle, really came off. ThNPw the Everyman series of 'Classic rlle.s' has reprinted books by the second and third best writers of spy fiction, Erksine 'id. and Eric Ambler. The Riddle of literSl Sands is unique in many ways beside the ones that Erskine Childers did not t wi rite another book. It was published in when England still regarded France as by-ntlarnral enemy, but it warned of a plan iniZerinanY to destroy the Empire and even tha."e England from the sea. The heroes of of st°rY expose this plot under the pretext a Yachting holiday on the German coast. Although there is one real villain, an English traitor, the majority of the Ger- mans who appear in the book are decent and friendly. It is clear that Childers greatly admired the German race and wished that the English had the same sense of patriotism and duty. Above all, the Riddle of the Sands is informed with a love of the sea, the sands and the little ports of the Ger- man coast, in the mist and storms of autumn. Like Buchan, like Graham Greene and all the best writers of spy fiction., Childers had a magnificent way of convey- ing the feel of a foreign place. He also liked the very business of travel. 'Carter, bring me a Bradshaw', the hero says to his servant, adding: 'An extraordinary book, Brad- shaw, turned to from habit, even when least wanted, as men fondle guns and rods in the close season.' But Bradshaw, along with most of the fun, has vanished. The Eric Ambler thriller, Epitaph for a Spy, is not one of his best, precisely because it is static. The whole action takes place at a seaside hotel in the South of France some time in the 1930s. Its atmosphere is rather like an Agatha Christie novel except that one of the guests is a sPY and not a murderer. I have always felt that Ambler was at his best when he kept his hero mov- ing from country to country, normally in a third class railway carriage or tramp steamer. The life of Ambler's secret agents is never as comfortable or as glamorous as it was for James Bond, or even a real-life spy like Reilly. Erskine Childers never attempted a sequel to the Riddle of the Sands. He channelled his romantic fantasies into Irish Fenian politics, getting himself shot in one of their internecine feuds. He was neither the first nor last Englishman to go mad in Ireland. Eric Ambler, however, is still with us, still writing excellent thrillers. He con- tinues to travel a lot in order to get the right atmosphere, though nowadays he seems to prefer the Caribbean to southern Europe. Places like Surinam are more seedy and nasty than the modern south of France. The Caribbean is also the setting for one of the best bits of the Spy's Bedside Book, a story called Schnitzel, alias Jones, by Richard Harding Davis. It is a portrait of an appalling young American who is up to his eyes in the mining politics of some Latin American country. Among the fantasies with which he bores the narrator, his fellow passenger bound for New York, is the plot to kill him by one or all of the business fac- tions with whom he deals. And sure enough, he really is murdered as soon as he gets to New York:
'Tell me!' I commanded. 'Who did this? ...'
'My own people' he whispered. In my indignation I could have shaken the truth from him. 'Then by God', I whispered back, 'you'll tell me who they are.'
The eyes flashed sullenly. 'That's my secret', said Schnitzel. The eyes set and the lips closed. A man at my side leaned over him, and drew the sheet across his eyes.
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