the Sahara Desert. Wylton had married an art school friend of mine and from that day of their wedding onwards he was a valuable element of my life and a treasured adviser. He was a man of many parts, many trades and countless fresh and original ideas. Restless, in a way that Australians sometimes are, he was always brimming with energy. He had offices, and the most beautiful old houses, in many parts of London. I never saw him drunk or even tipsy, but every time I entered Wylton’s office he was opening a bottle of chilled champagne to pour a glass of it for me. French Champagne? Don’t be silly; only the best of the best was good enough for Wylton’s friends. A considerable proportion of all the champagne I ever drank must have been the bottles of the Australian champagne that I consumed in Wylton’s company. During my time as a film producer I rented my wonderful Piccadilly film office from him. The old high-ceilinged room overlooked Hyde Park Corner and the view was so captivating that it was difficult to tear myself away at day’s end. I worked with him to advertise Australian wine.
In 1974 he created a World Cup Rally and invited me to participate. I drove one of the specially tuned Peugeot cars, and joined the ‘marshals’ that timed and checked the progress of the contestants. The route went hundreds of miles into the Sahara. It was an adventure, and the desert sequences in Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy faithfully reflect my time in Algeria – at that time a forbidden and little-visited nation. Pounding along on the desert tracks with these professional drivers made me realize what a complicated and scientific business rally driving is for such men and women. I learned the Arabic word for oranges, heard some new profanities and improved my driving, too.
Although I do not favour giving my fictional characters the names of real people, I inserted the name of Charlie Kelly into this story because Charlie was one of the most highly regarded Irish detectives in New York’s Police Department and a good friend who opened many doors for me. It was Charlie who secured for me my honorary membership of the NYPD. And Charlie provided a characterization that he never recognized.
Is this a Harry Palmer story I am sometimes asked, and the answer is ‘yes’. But the principal difference in the story construction is having Major Mann with him. Conan Doyle was probably not the first fiction writer to discover the advantage of giving your principal character a close friend. Comedians in the Victorian music halls had proved the rich benefits that come from having a ‘straight’ man ‘feed’ the comic. But like his predecessor – Colonel Schlegel in Yesterday’s Spy – Major Mann turned the tables on me. I had hardly started the outline when I found that my memories of my times with US servicemen – flyers in particular – were demanding a voice in the story. And, unlike Dr Watson’s passive role, Mann’s participation was a vital and dynamic one. American syntax gave the galloping Major the primary role in the story and the Harry Palmer figure (Frederick Anthony in the book), is my Doctor Watson. But it is of course Dr Watson with whom the reader identifies, and so it should be in this story.
Another distinction that followed publication of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy was that my use of ‘rat fink’ was recorded in a supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary. It was this vulgar expression that came to my mind when I heard that my American publishing house insisted upon changing the title of this book for the US market. It did not do much to warm my relationship with that concern or with the English friend who was the editor responsible.
Over the years many readers have told me that I write love stories and most of them are surprised when I agree with that verdict. Men and women share our world but do not share its rewards. Neither do they share the same dreams and pleasures. It is this fundamental mismatch that makes true love so sublime. It also makes observing the world around us so surprising, and writing about relationships so difficult and so sustaining. Twinkle is a love story but it does not celebrate the elation and unremitting joy that love is supposed to bring. Like many true love stories it is sad.
I usually feel a sense of deprivation when the writing ends. But that feeling is usually accompanied by dissatisfaction; knowledge that one might have done better in some aspect or other of the process. It is that dissatisfaction which starts us on the next book, swearing to do better. Twinkle was no exception to that sad feeling but this time I had the unusual belief that I had come near to what I started out to do.
Len Deighton, 2012
1
‘Smell that air,’ said Major Mann.
I sniffed. ‘I can’t smell anything,’ I said.
‘That’s what I mean,’ said Mann. He scratched himself and grinned. ‘Great, isn’t it?’
There’s not much to smell when you are one thousand miles into the Algerian Sahara; not much to smell, not much to do, not much to eat.
For those travellers who know the swimming-pools and air conditioning of the government hotels along the northern edge of the Sahara, Adrar comes as a shock. Here the hotel has no more than tightly drawn curtains to protect the tourist from the sun, and the staff have noisy arguments about who should siesta on the cold stone floor of the entrance hall. Only Europeans stayed awake all day, notably four bearded Austrians who, night and day, played cards in the shuttered dining-room. They were waiting for a replacement petrol pump for their truck. Between games they swigged sweet, warm cola drinks. There was no alcohol on sale, and smoking was frowned upon.
Even on this winter’s evening the stones and the sand radiated the heat of the desert day.
There was no moon but the stars were so bright that we could easily see our vehicles piled high with stores and sextant and a sign that said ‘Dempsey’s Desert Tours’. They were parked on the huge main square of Adrar. Mann walked round the vehicles just to make sure the supplies had not been plundered. It was unlikely, for they were outside the police station.
Mann stopped and leaned against the Land Rover. He took out a packet of cheroots; there were only four left. ‘Look at those stars,’ he said.
‘The Milky Way – I’ve never seen it so clearly. A spaceship travelling at 100,000 miles per hour would take 670 million years to cross the Milky Way,’ I said. ‘There’s a hundred thousand million stars there.’
‘How do you know?’ said Mann. He put the cheroot in his mouth and chewed it.
‘I read it in the Reader’s Digest Atlas.’
Mann nodded. ‘And do you know something else … the way they’re going, in another few years there will be another million stars there – enough spy satellites to put both of us out of business.’
‘Twinkle, twinkle, little spy,’ I said.
Mann looked at me to see if I was being insubordinate. ‘Let’s go back inside,’ he said finally. He decided not to light the cheroot. He put it away again. ‘I’ll buy you a bottle of Algerian lemonade.’ He laughed. Mann was like a small, neatly dressed gorilla: the same heavy brow, deep-set eyes and long arms – and the same sense of humour.
The dining-room is large, and although the big fans no longer turned it was the coolest place for hundreds of miles. The walls are whitewashed light blue, and crudely woven striped rugs are tacked to floor and walls. Overhead, the wooden flooring rattled like jungle drums as someone moved. There was the sudden roar of the shower and the inevitable violent rapping of the ancient plumbing. We helped ourselves to soft drinks and left the money on the till.
‘That Limey bastard takes a shower every five minutes.’
‘Yes, about every five minutes,’ I agreed. Major Mickey Mann, US Army Signal Corps, Retired, a CIA expert on Russian electronics and temporarily my boss, had showed no sign of discomfort during the heat of day in spite of his tightly knotted tie and long trousers. He watched me carefully, as he always did when offering criticism of my fellow countrymen. ‘That particular Limey bastard,’ I said quietly, ‘is sixty-one years old, has a metal plate in his skull and a leg filled with German shrapnel.’
‘Stash the gypsy violin, feller – you want to make me weep?’
‘You treat old Dempsey as if he’s simple-minded.