56
DORIS LESSING
with the locals, obviously believing that understanding with others
happens by a sort of osmosis. And of course, any diplomat that
shows signs of going native, that is to say really enjoying the manners
and morals of a place, must be withdrawn at once.
Not so the masters among the spies: one dedicated to his coun–
try's deepest interests must be worse than useless. The rarest spirits
must be those able to entertain two or three allegiances at once; the
counterspies, the double and triple agents. Such people are not born.
It can't be that they wake up one morning at the age of thirteen
crying: "Eureka, I've got it, I want to be a double agent! That's
what I was born to do!" Nor can there be a training school for
multiple spies, a kind of top class that promising pupils graduate to–
ward. Yet that capacity which might retard a diplomat's career, or
mean death to the small fry among spies, must be precisely the one
watched out for by the Spymasters who watch and manipulate in
the high levels of the world's thriving espionage systems. What prob–
ably happens is that a man drifts, even unwillingly, into serving
his
country as a spy - like my acquaintance of the cocktail party who
then found himself spying on the Senior Service of his own side.
Then, whether there through a deep sense of vocation, or unwillingly,
he begins by making mistakes, sometimes pleased with himself and
sometimes not; he goes through a phase of wondering whether he
would not have done better to go into the Stock Exchange, or what–
ever his alternative was - and then suddenly there comes that mo–
ment, fatal to punier men but a sign of
his
own future greatness,
when he is invaded by sympathy for the enemy. Long dwelling on
what X is doing, likely to be doing, or thinking, or planning, makes
X's thoughts as familiar and as likable as
his
own. The points of
view of the nation he spends all
his
time trying to do undo are
comfortably at home in a mind once tuned only to those of his
own dear Fatherland. He is thinking the thoughts of those he used
to call enemies before he understands that he
is
already psychological–
ly a double agent, and before he guesses that those men who must
always be on the watch for such precious material have noticed,
perhaps even prognosticated, his condition.
On those levels where the really great spies move, whose names
we never hear, but whose existence we have to deduce, what fantastic
feats of global understanding must be reached, what metaphysical
heights of international brotherhood!
