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occasionally, when he was absolutely certain, but then very big when the basic nature
of the postal traffic changed. Now Poland was mobilizing for war and a spate of
munition orders and diplomatic cables poured through his department. Blofeld changed
his tactics. This was valuable stuff, worth nothing to him, but priceless to the enemy.
Clumsily at first, and then more expertly, he contrived to take copies of cables,
choosing, for the ciphers hid their contents from him, only those prefixed «MOST
IMMEDIATE» or «MOST SECRET.» Then, working carefully, he built up in his head a
network of fictitious agents. These were real but small people in the various embassies
and armament firms to whom most of the traffic was addressed a junior cipher clerk in
the British Embassy, a translator working for the French, private secretaries real ones
in the big firms. These names were easily obtained from the diplomatic lists, by ringing
up a firm and asking Inquiries for the name of the chairman's private secretary. He was
speaking for the Red Cross. They wished to discuss the possibility of a donation from
the chairman. And so on. When Blofeld had all his names right, he christened his
network TARTAR and made a discreet approach to the German Military Attache with
one or two specimens of its work. He was rapidly passed on to the representative of
AMT IV of the Abwehr, and from then on things were easy. When this pot was bubbling
merrily, and the money (he refused to accept payment except in American dollars)
coming in (it came in fast; he explained that he had so many agents to pay off), he
proceeded to widen his market. He considered the Russians but dismissed them, and
the Czechs, as probable non-, or at any rate slow-, payers. Instead he chose the
Americans and the Swedes, and money positively showered in on him. He soon
realized, for he was a man of almost mimosaic sensibility in matters of security, that the
pace could not possibly last. There would be a leak: perhaps between the Swedish and
German secret services, who he knew (for through his contacts with their spies he was
picking up the gossip of his new trade) were working closely together in some
territories; or through Allied counter-espionage or their cryptographic services; or else
one of his notional agents would die or be transferred without his knowledge while he
continued to use the name as a source. Anyway, by now he had $200,000 and there
was the added spur that the war was getting too close for comfort. It was time for him to
be off into the wide world into one of the safe bits of it. Blofeld carried out his
withdrawal expertly. First he slowly petered off the service. Security, he explained, was
being tightened up by the English and the French. Perhaps there had been a leak he
looked with mild reproof into the eyes of his contact this secretary had had a change of
heart, that one was asking too much money. Then he went to his friend on the Bourse
and, after sealing his lips with a thousand dollars, had all his funds invested in Shell
 27
Bearer Bonds in Amsterdam and thence transferred to a Numbered Safe Deposit box
with the Diskonto Bank in Zurich. Before the final step of telling his contacts that he was
brulé and that the Polish Deuxième Bureau was sniffing at his heels, he paid a visit to
Gdynia, called on the registrar and on the church where he had been baptized and, on
the pretext of looking up details of an invented friend, neatly cut out the page recording
his own name and birth. It remained only to locate the passport factory that operates in
every big seaport and purchase a Canadian seaman's passport for $2,000. Then he
was off to Sweden by the next boat. After a pause in Stockholm for a careful look round
the world and some cool thinking about the probable course of the war, he flew to
Turkey on his original Polish passport, transferred his money from Switzerland to the
Ottoman Bank in Istanbul, and waited for Poland to fall. When, in due course, this
happened, he claimed refuge in Turkey and spent a little money among the right
officials in order to get his claim established. Then he settled down. Ankara Radio was
glad to have his expert services and he set up RAHIR, another espionage service built
on the lines of TARTAR, but rather more solidly. Blofeld wisely waited to ascertain the
victor before selling his wares, and it was only when Rommel had been kicked out of
Africa that he plumped for the Allies. He finished the war in a blaze of glory and
prosperity and with decorations or citations from the British, Americans, and French.
Then, with half a million dollars in Swiss banks and a Swedish passport in the name of
Serge Angstrom, he slipped off to South America for a rest, some good food, and a
fresh think.
And now Ernst Blofeld, the name to which he had decided it was perfectly safe to
return, sat in the quiet room in the Boulevard Hauss-mann, gazed slowly round the
faces of his twenty men, and looked for eyes that didn't squarely meet his. Blofeld's
own eyes were deep black pools surrounded totally surrounded, as Mussolini's were
by very clear whites. The doll-like effect of this unusual symmetry was enhanced by
long silken black eyelashes that should have belonged to a woman. The gaze of these
soft doll's eyes was totally relaxed and rarely held any expression stronger than a mild
curiosity in the object of their focus. They conveyed a restful certitude in their owner
and in their analysis of what they observed. To the innocent they exuded confidence, a
wonderful cocoon of confidence in which the observed one could rest and relax,
knowing that he was in comfortable, reliable hands. But they stripped the guilty or the
false and made him feel transparent as transparent as a fishbowl through whose sides
Blofeld examined, with only the most casual curiosity, the few solid fish, the grains of
truth, suspended in the void of deceit or attempted obscurity. Blofeld's gaze was a
microscope, the window on the world of a superbly clear brain, with a focus that had
been sharpened by thirty years of danger, and of keeping just one step ahead of it, and
of an inner self-assurance built up on a lifetime of success in whatever he
hadattempted.
The skin beneath the eyes that now slowly, mildly, surveyed his colleagues was
unpouched. There was no sign of debauchery, illness, or old age on the large, white,
bland face under the square, wiry black crew-cut. The jaw line, going to the appropriate
middle-aged fat of authority, showed decision and independence. Only the mouth,
under a heavy, squat nose, marred what might have been the face of a philosopher or a
scientist. Proud and thin, like a badly healed wound, the compressed, dark lips, capable
only of false, ugly smiles, suggested contempt, tyranny, and cruelty but to an almost
Shakespearian degree. Nothing about Blofeld was small.
Blofeld's body weighed about two hundred and eighty pounds. It had once been all [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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