The Harry Palmer Quartet. Len Deighton

One it was called “shell shock”, in World War Two, “battle fatigue”. As soon as abreaction hits one of your group, the others soon topple – one after the other they are hooked.’

      ‘You said there were three basic systems,’ said Jean. ‘You’ve told me only one.’

      I said, ‘Oh, did I? I didn’t mean that the systems were different – only the way the one system was applied. The haunted house was the first sort. Then Jay thought of using small private nursing homes – less conspicuous, you see, and no need for all the building work – or the conversion back to normal before they moved out again. It was the nursing home aspect that Carswell found with his “concens”; do you remember the description he gave us? The fever rate was high because that is the best physical debility to prepare one for brain-washing.’

      ‘You mean that they were deliberately given fever, then whipped into one of these nursing homes?’ Jean said.

      ‘The other way round,’ I told her. ‘They were brought in, then given fever.’

      ‘Injected with it?’ Jean asked.

      ‘Apparently medical science still uses mosquitoes. They strap a glass cup on the skin and the mosquitoes bite. That’s when it’s needed to give a patient fever; it’s pretty rare nowadays.’ Jean didn’t wrinkle her nose or say ‘how awful’ when I got to the mosquito bit and I appreciated that.

      ‘The fever speeded things up,’ Jean said.

      I agreed, ‘It certainly did, which led to the third system. This was to create this breakdown …’

      ‘Abreaction?’

      ‘Yes, this abreaction. To create it by drugs alone; what doctors call a pharmacological shock. It’s done by injecting lots of insulin into the blood stream; this lowers the sugar in the blood, and very soon you have the same twitches and convulsions that one sees in abreaction – shouting and sobbing and finally collapse into a deep coma. Later they gave intravenous sugar.’

      ‘Why didn’t they do that to you?’ asked Jean. ‘Why didn’t you go to one of their nursing homes?’

      ‘I do believe you still have doubts about me.’ Jean laughed nervously, but it went home. ‘That was my big worry, I can tell you, but it’s tricky; they needed the man who had experience, but he was deeply involved at the place in Scotland. Luckily he couldn’t be in two places at once. Plus the fact that the older system is more thorough, and I was considered difficult.’

      ‘You can say difficult again,’ said Jean. ‘But I’m still not sure if I understand even now. You mean, after this brain-washing, these people, these “concens”, went back to work but were really working as Russian agents, their convictions totally reversed?’

      I said, ‘No. It’s far more complex than that. Everything revolves round Jay, really; to understand IPCRESS you must understand Jay. Jay has spent his life amidst changing political scenes. Here in England it’s easy for us to have allegiance to a government that has stayed pretty constant since the Stuart restoration; but Jay has seen governments come and go too often to place too much reliance on them. He remembers the Tsars; government by ignorance; Paderewski, government by gentle pianist; Pilsudski, the general who won the brilliant battle of Warsaw in 1920, and smashed the new Soviet Armies under Voroshilov. He remembers the dictator who seized power by shouting “This is a whorehouse, all get out!” to Parliament. He remembers the government who followed Hitler’s example in 1938 by grabbing a piece of Czechoslovakia by force. He remembers the Nazis, and then, after the war, the protégés of London and Moscow fighting each other for power. Jay has come through all these changes like a plastic duck going over Niagara – by floating along with the current. He has sold information. Information from Klaus Fuchs in Britain, Alan Nunn May in Canada, and the Rosenbergs in the US. Then he graduated to kidnapping and arranging that Otto John from West Germany, the Italian physicist, Bruno Pontecorvo, and Burgess and Maclean should travel eastward. But always for money. He would have sent them equally willingly to anyone who named the right price. Then one day, perhaps while he was shaving, an idea hit him; he would brain-wash a network of well-placed men, and all of them would clear their information through Jay. They would be loyal to Jay personally. Jay knew enough about psychiatry to know that it was possible (and let’s not forget that it’s been working very well for nearly a year), and he knew that it would make us all “trigger happy”, suspicious of everyone once we got on to it.’

      I ordered some more coffee and phoned Charlotte Street to see if there were any cables for me, but there was nothing fresh. I went back to Jean.

      ‘What was that water tank that you mentioned in the “haunted house” report?’ she asked.

      ‘Yes, the water tank. I should have perhaps said four ways because that was for another system. You mask the subject’s eyes and fit him with breathing apparatus, then suspend him face down in a tank of blood-heat water. At first he sleeps; when he awakes he is completely disorientated and subject to anxiety and hallucination. You choose the right moment and begin to feed him information …’

      ‘Hence the tape recorder.’

      ‘Exactly …’

      ‘It’s a quick way of brain-washing then?’

      ‘It is, but they discontinued it, so it probably wasn’t so sensational.’

      ‘And they didn’t use TAP* either,’ Jean said.

      ‘No,’ I said, ‘and I didn’t know you’d read that report.’

      ‘Yes, Alice gave it to me to read last night. There were some mentions in a Norwegian medical journal which I translated for her.’

      ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘that’s all right then.’

      ‘Alice said you’d say that.’ Before I could say anything, Jean continued, ‘This brain-washing …’

      ‘Say “thought reform”. No one says “brainwashing” nowadays.’

      ‘This thought reform,’ said Jean, ‘is it … ?’

      ‘Enough of thought reform,’ I said, ‘what are you doing tonight?’

      Jean fingered the lone gold ear-ring, and looked at me from low down under her eyelids. ‘I thought perhaps I should give you a chance of making your ear-ring into a pair,’ she said. It was suddenly very quiet and Jean picked up a copy of the Guardian, and I fought back the goose pimples.

      The newspapers were playing it down but London murders always found an audience. ‘London Club Murder’ it said, and there was a lot of stuff about the police going through the membership books at the ‘Tin-Tack Club’ where Charlie was a part-time barman.

      ‘Murray said he was a close friend of yours,’ said Jean.

      I told her that he had warned me when I was in danger, but I didn’t tell her that anyone else had.

      ‘But why would anyone want to kill him? For helping you?’

      ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘It was more tragic than that. He’d lent me some clothes, including a light-blue raincoat. I gave Charlie his raincoat back at Fortes, and he wore it when he left me and returned home. It was a simple case of mistaken identity.’

      ‘Who arranged it?’ asked Jean.

      ‘A hoodlum that worked for Jay’s network. We’ll pick him up,’ I said.

      ‘Not Jay himself?’

      ‘No, certainly not. On the contrary. As soon as he got wind of Charlie’s connection with C-SICH he rushed down to talk to Dalby, which is where I came in.’

      ‘He hoped Dalby could black it out?’ Jean said.

      ‘Yes, but Dalby hadn’t a chance with C-SICH. It’s got too many direct government connections via industry, as well as the combined services side of it.’

      ‘They