Nor is Lilstein wrong in what he says about your respective masters, going on what you know of your President he’ll give the Russians a free hand and carry on playing his accordion in the Élysée.
So all you need do is use Lilstein’s information to force your President to take a tougher line with the Russians, he wouldn’t be able to just let them get on with it any more, that would make him look as if he didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation, if he is given information or advice which will encourage him to be firm, he can’t then say that it’s all come as a surprise to him, and he’ll relay it to the Americans, and the Americans will be pleased with France and her President, a win-win situation, you already stopped one war with the information you passed on.
No, that’s not megalomania, Lilstein gave you the exact figure for American losses in Vietnam, no one knew it, you were given the real figure before even the American President got it, and you passed it on keeping everything low key, and now you’re going to stop another war with the information you are about to receive. This time it’ll be the French telling the Americans: ‘the Russians are going to invade Afghanistan.’ Ties of friendship renewed with Washington.
You don’t need to stand on a platform or chant ‘Stop the cannon! No to machine guns!’, that sort of thing never served any useful purpose, you say nothing, you eat Linzer tart with Lilstein, and the war fades into the background. In the Élysée, your President is inclined to negotiate with the Russians, everyone knows that, you only have to read the newspapers, but the day he learns that the invasion really will happen he’ll be forced to tell the Americans and he’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with them and NATO will force the Russians to back off.
‘The best thing,’ Lilstein tells you, ‘would no doubt be to call a halt now, that way they’d stop hunting for a mole, we’ll have had a pretty good run, a Great Adventure, and you can stop worrying. Let’s leave them to their war, after all, why shouldn’t the Russians be entitled to a little colonial war, like everybody else? I’m not even sure many people will try to stop them.’
*
Everyone filed in and out of Berthier’s cubby-hole except Madame Cramilly, who went and complained to de Vèze, and de Vèze sent her packing, and Madame Cramilly told him that she had seen Berthier coming out of his — the Ambassador’s — office one day when he was out of town.
‘That’s his job,’ said de Vèze.
He scribbled a telegram for Paris: ‘It’s him or me.’
Chapter 6. 1978, Four or Five Lilsteins
In which de Veze takes a ride on a merry-go-round near the Palais de Chaillot.
In which, despite your age, Lilstein continues to address you as 'young gentleman of France’.
In which we are present at the very first meeting of de Veze and the niece of a Soviet marshal.
In which, in the presence of a lady, you have a reaction which might well compromise your activities as a mole.
… human beings who as they stood before me have imperceptibly divested themselves of their first and often their second and third simulated selves…
Moscow, June 1978
Berthier burst into de Vèze’s office:
‘You’ve got to hand it to them…’
He’d come straight from the telex room, a sleepless night, at last he’d found a number of bugs, not in the furniture, not in the walls, but inside certain machines, some of them dead simple, wires connected to a condenser with a shunt resistance, it modulates a high-frequency wave which can be tuned into remotely, better than tape-recorders any day said Berthier, he’d found his sharp tongue again, he gave orders:
‘No one comes in, no one goes out until I’ve finished here.’
He asked Paris for reinforcements, they arrived within twenty-four hours.
‘Why “Lofty”?’ one of the new arrivals asked a secretary.
‘Because he’s so close to the ground.’
Virtual house arrest for all personnel, and a pretty good haul, electronic receivers in the telexes and especially the coding machines, high-quality work, built into the circuits, parts disguised as transistors and condensers, the equipment was pretty old, according to the technicians the appliances dated from the early sixties, and the instruments ditto.
Stout machines, sturdy, in the French mould, with a cast-iron base, the kind that don’t often need replacing, riddled to the core with bugs by the craftsmen of the KGB, doubtless when they were being brought from Paris to Moscow, would you believe, by rail in sealed trucks, and they’d been checked on arrival, that’s right, by unskilled workmen, early sixties, that meant the bugs had been installed in de Gaulle’s time, that’s almost fifteen years ago.
People in the Embassy breathed again, no one had seriously believed there was a mole, and when Berthier left everyone congratulated him on doing a good job, before the month was up, Madame Cramilly gave him a small papyrus in a pot as a present, he said very nice things about her, he told her that she reminded him of Celeste, the old lady in Babar, a lot of playful confidences were exchanged but no one told Berthier what they called him behind his back.
The naval attaché returned, this was Moscow, life there was not always easy, but the Embassy recovered and again became an efficient and happy community, with its dachshund, its papyrus, its military attachés, its four-colour ball-point pens and its old lady, a kind of scaled-down Célesteville, from which anger, discouragement, slackness, stupidity, fear, laziness and ignorance eventually faded under the benign influence of patience, knowledge, intelligence and hard work.
All minds now were focused on getting ready for the barbecue to be held in the Embassy gardens, the next big occasion.
In Paris, the President was not the least put out by this discovery, everyone calmed down, the aged Moscow equipment was repatriated and replaced by new machines which had the blessing of the Americans, who had even been allowed to give them a health check. Just in case, a team was set up to check out the staff who’d been involved with messages and codes during this whole period, some had retired and were living in the country, that too caused some problems for individuals without producing any positive results, there was an excellent report which summed up the affair, the point being to stop a few people sleeping easy in their beds.
According to this report, a great deal of information had been leaked via the interceptors, not things which were very secret in themselves: for the sensitive stuff the old tried-and-tested precautions were observed, no names, no plans, but a sharp eavesdropper could get a very clear idea of Western policy by putting together a few general principles contained in messages exchanged between the Embassy and Paris.
And that’s how the Russians must have found what was more or less a green light for their invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, when a French ambassador asked to know what he should say to the Kremlin by way of caveats and was told he should say ‘that it has been agreed with Washington, London and Bonn that we shall remain, within limits, flexible’.
Perhaps the investigators made too much of this in order to make their discovery sound important.
So the Minister had been right to send in Berthier, he summoned de Vèze to Paris, this time it is not known if de Vèze knocked before entering, what we do know is that the Minister allowed himself the luxury of apologising to de Vèze for Berthier’s mission, it hadn’t been easy, but it had been worth all the trouble.