Horse Under Water. Len Deighton

      

       Cover designer’s note

      In creating cover designs for the new publication of Len Deighton’s quartet of spy novels, I came up with the metaphor of the chess game as it relates to the spy game. Three enamel U-boat sub-mariners’ cap badges became pawns on the chessboard.

      A constant feature of Deighton’s nameless protagonist’s Charlotte Street WOOC(P) office was the ubiquitous pack of Gauloises cigarettes and the ever-present tin of Nescafé. (This very same street was used as the location for the HQ of the nest of spies in Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent.) The Swiss had invented instant coffee prior to World War II, but it only became available in the UK in the 1950s, so when freeze-dried soluble grains were introduced a while later they became the beverage of choice for the Swinging London set. My search for a UK Nescafé tin of that period ended when I located one in far-off Australia!

      Finding a contemporary, key-opened Portuguese sardine tin became virtually impossible. Discovering the illustration of a sardine on a cigarette card and a crested souvenir spoon from Lisbon became much easier, thanks to eBay!

      My wife, Isolde, who produces all of my art work, and is a dab-hand at Photoshop, reproduced the period British European Airways ticket, incorporating the exact flight number described in the book.

      One obsession of Deighton’s nameless protagonist is solving crossword puzzles. Since I have kept copies of the illustrations I produced for the London Sunday Times during the 1960s, I was able to find among the pages of the newspaper a crossword puzzle of the period.

      The 1943 German postage stamp on the spine of the book depicts a German U-boat. The group of cigarette cards on the back of the cover spells out in semaphore K.U.Z.I.G. and Y. The nautical interpretation of these letters is referred to in the book as ‘Permission granted to lay alongside’.

      Some years ago, given the possibility of producing a feature film on the subject of the Nazi plan to flood the Allied economy with counterfeit money, I purchased a fake £20 note.

      On meeting a survivor of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where, as an engraver, he was forced to produce the counterfeit bank notes, I showed him my note, which he held to the light and proudly proclaimed, ‘Yes, it’s one of ours!’

      I photographed the jacket set-up using natural daylight, with my Canon OS 5D digital camera.

      Arnold Schwartzman OBE RDI

      LEN DEIGHTON

       Horse Under Water

       Copyright

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape 1963

      Copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 1963

      Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2009

      Cover designer’s note © Arnold Schwartzman 2009

      Cover design and photography © Arnold Schwartzman 2009

      Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebook

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780586044315

      Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780007343010

      Version: 2017-05-22

      I cannot tell how the truth may be;

      I say the tale as ’twas told to me.

      SCOTT

      Perhaps the worst plight of a vessel is to be caught in a gale on a lee shore. In this connection the following … rules should be observed:

      1. Never allow your vessel to be found in such a predicament …

      CALLINGHAM, Seamanship: Jottings for the Young Sailor

      Contents

       Cover

      Cover designer’s note

       Title Page

      Copyright

       Epigraph

      Introduction

      Solution

      Horse Under Water: Secret File No. 2

1. Sweet talk

2. Old solution

3. Undersea need

4. Man with a tail

5. No toy

6. Ugly rock

7. Short talk

8. I hit it

9. I sit on it

10. Sort of boat

11. Help

12. Sort of man

13. More to do

14. Portuguese O.K.

       15. Reaction in the market

       16. One too many

       17. Da Cunha lays it down

       18. Sad song

       19. Never say this

       20. Enemy

       21. Are the wages of this, that?

       22. Charly raises its