I SUPPOSE 'RUTH is stranger than fiction. Reading Mr. Graham
Greene's Our Man in Havana a few days ago on a train journey I came upon the pas- sage where the, newly recruited British Secret Service agent is instructed to send his reports by micro-photography; the document is photo- graphed; the photograph is reduced in size until ° it is the size of a full-ship, in which condition it is stuck to an ordinary letter; and when it reaches the boys with the tiny, pointed heads they unstick the full stop, blow it up photographically. and Sir Percy Sillitoe's your uncle. The whole idea ■N too absurd, I decided, to carry conviction; in Mr. Greene's only .slightly distorted world it stuck out like a false nose on a Guards officer detailed to shadow Guy Burgess;- But then, I arrived at Euston and picked up a newspaper. 'Full Stop Spy,' read the headlines, and underneath was the story of a Polish student who had been deported for espionage activities. And how had he sent back his reports? He photographed the dociv meats, reduced the photograph in size until it was no bigger than a full-stop, stuck it to an ordinary letter. . . .
PHAROS
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