Dis­in­for­ma­tion, mis­in­for­ma­tion, dis­trac­tion, misdirection…pertinent to every­one in today’s pit­fall-rid­den world of the Inter­net and social media, but par­tic­u­lar­ly per­ti­nent to peo­ple in the spy game. Spooks love devis­ing stings to dis­rupt their ene­mies’ net­works by plant­i­ng fake infor­ma­tion. Take Oper­a­tion Mince­meat for exam­ple: this was the suc­cess­ful British decep­tion oper­a­tion of the Sec­ond World War to dis­guise the 1943 Allied inva­sion of Sici­ly.

British intel­li­gence obtained the body of a recent­ly deceased tramp, dressed him as an offi­cer of the Roy­al Marines (and pre­sum­ably also gave the corpse a hair­cut and a shave?), and dumped him into the sea off the south­ern coast of Spain, know­ing that the body would inevitably come to the atten­tion of the Span­ish gov­ern­ment. Sus­pect­ing also that the nom­i­nal­ly neu­tral Span­ish gov­ern­ment might spill the beans to the Ger­mans (which they duly did), they plant­ed per­son­al items on him iden­ti­fy­ing him as the fic­ti­tious Cap­tain William Mar­tin and includ­ed fake doc­u­ments sug­gest­ing that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sar­dinia instead of Sici­ly. The ruse worked: the Ger­mans shift­ed their rein­force­ments to Greece and Sar­dinia and the Allies suc­cess­ful­ly invad­ed Sici­ly.

One young intel­li­gence offi­cer involved in that oper­a­tion was one Ian Flem­ing, work­ing in the Naval Intel­li­gence Divi­sion; we needn’t go far to find the sources of his inspi­ra­tion for a cer­tain 007. How­ev­er, today we’re vis­it­ing anoth­er writer for whom the spy game inspired lit­er­ary gold: Gra­ham Greene and his 1958 nov­el Our Man In Havana. Greene was an MI6 man, join­ing in August 1941 and despatched to the Iber­ian penin­su­la where he learnt about a group of dou­ble agents who fed mis­in­for­ma­tion to their Ger­man han­dlers. One such was “Gar­bo”, a Span­ish dou­ble agent in Lis­bon, who pre­tend­ed to con­trol a ring of agents all over Eng­land and was a past mas­ter at dis­in­for­ma­tion. Gar­bo was the main inspi­ra­tion for Wor­mold, the pro­tag­o­nist of Our Man in Havana.

Greene wrote a first ver­sion of his sto­ry in 1946, hav­ing a film script in mind and set­ting it in Esto­nia in 1938, though soon real­is­ing that Havana, which he had vis­it­ed sev­er­al times, would be the bet­ter loca­tion. The black com­e­dy nov­el fol­lows the life of Jim Wor­mold, an Eng­lish vac­u­um clean­er sales­man liv­ing in Havana dur­ing the Ful­gen­cio Batista regime, who is recruit­ed into MI6 to spy on the Cuban gov­ern­ment. Find­ing no use­ful dirt, Wor­mold takes to fab­ri­cat­ing reports; just as his con­fi­dence grows so too grows the excite­ment and dra­ma of his tall tales.

Greene builds his plot using com­i­cal­ly sketched scenes of espi­onage escapades, in an atmos­phere of a Cuba on the brink of com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion and the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis. In this excerpt, Wor­mold is hav­ing his dai­ly con­sti­tu­tion­al in Slop­py Joe’s bar when he is met by his recruiter.

Wor­mold led the stranger through a door at the back, down a short pas­sage, and indi­cat­ed the toi­let. ‘It’s in there.’
‘After you, old man.’
‘But I don’t need it.’
‘Don’t be dif­fi­cult,’ the stranger said. He put a hand on Wormold’s shoul­der and pushed him through the door. Inside there were two wash­basins, a chair with a bro­ken back, and the usu­al cab­i­nets and pis­soirs. ‘Take a pew, old man,’ the stranger said, ‘while I turn on a tap.’ But when the water ran he made no attempt to wash. ‘Looks more nat­ur­al,’ he explained (the word ‘nat­ur­al’ seemed a favourite adjec­tive of his), ‘if some­one barges in. And of course it con­fus­es a mike.’
‘A mike?’
‘You’re quite right to ques­tion that. Quite right. There prob­a­bly wouldn’t be a mike in a place like this, but it’s the drill, you know, that counts. You’ll find it always pays in the end to fol­low the drill. It’s lucky they don’t run to waste-plugs in Havana. We can just keep the water run­ning.’
‘Please will you explain…?’
‘Can’t be too care­ful even in a Gents, when I come to think of it. A chap of ours in Den­mark in 1940 saw from his own win­dow the Ger­man fleet com­ing down the Kat­te­gat.’
‘What gut?’
‘Kat­te­gat. Of course he knew then the bal­loon had gone up. Start­ed burn­ing his papers. Put the ash­es down the lay and pulled the chain. Trou­ble was – late frost. Pipes frozen. All the ash­es float­ed up into the bath down below. Flat belonged to an old maid­en lady – Baronin some­one or oth­er. She was just going to have a bath. Most embar­rass­ing for our chap.’
‘It sounds like the Secret Ser­vice.’
‘It is the Secret Ser­vice, old man, or so the nov­el­ists call it. That’s why I want­ed to talk to you about your chap Lopez. Is he reli­able or ought you to fire him?’
‘Are you in the Secret Ser­vice?’
‘If you like to put it that way.’
‘Why on earth should I fire Lopez? He’s been with me ten years.’
‘We could find you a chap who knew all about vac­u­um clean­ers. But of course – nat­u­ral­ly – we’ll leave that deci­sion to you.’
‘But I’m not in your Ser­vice.’
‘We’ll come to that in a moment, old man. Any­way we’ve traced Lopez—he seems clear. But your friend Has­sel­bach­er, I’d be a bit care­ful of him.’
‘How do you know about Has­sel­bach­er?’
‘I’ve been around a day or two, pick­ing things up. One has to on these
occa­sions.’
‘What occa­sions?’
‘Where was Has­sel­bach­er born?’
‘Berlin, I think.’
‘Sym­pa­thies East or West?’
‘We nev­er talk pol­i­tics.’
‘Not that it mat­ters. East or West they play the Ger­man game. Remem­ber the Ribben­trop Pact. We won’t be caught that way again.’
‘Hasselbacher’s not a politi­cian. He’s an old doc­tor and he’s lived here for thir­ty years.’
‘All the same, you’d be sur­prised… But I agree with you, it would be
con­spic­u­ous if you dropped him. Just play him care­ful­ly, that’s all. He might even be use­ful if you han­dle him right.’
‘I’ve no inten­tion of han­dling him.’
‘You’ll find it nec­es­sary for the job.’
‘I don’t want any job. Why do you pick on me?’
‘Patri­ot­ic Eng­lish­man. Been here for years. Respect­ed mem­ber of the Euro­pean Traders’ Asso­ci­a­tion. We must have our man in Havana, you know.’