Complete Works of Ian Fleming, page 286
‘Poor Patterson! He and the pilot were tried at Luderitz. They got them under the Diamond Industry Protection Proclamation of 1939. Patterson got nine months’ hard labour and Blake got six. Not much. That’s what I mean about it being well worth the gamble. Patterson will have been out for more than three years. I wonder what he’s doing now. I’m rather sorry for him, really. It was a good scheme and it nearly came off, and I certainly wouldn’t like to find myself in reach of a million pounds of somebody else’s money.’
I said, ‘With all those diamonds to be found on the beach I wonder they don’t have a smuggling case every week.’
‘That’s what I thought when I got there,’ said Blaize. ‘They had just got over another case when I arrived. It was a smaller business, but fairly typical. Like to hear about it?’
‘Yes.’
‘There was a man working in the stores at Oranjemund. He was a respectable chap whom I’ll call de Graaf. Quite a pillar of the local rugger club. He had a friend called Andries Coetzee, one of the duty radiographers on the Security Staff. One evening early in January 1954 de Graaf invited Coetzee and his wife to his house for a drink. There was nothing suspicious in this. In these mining townships there’s an endless round of visits between the houses, and anyway the two knew each other well.
‘After a certain amount of the usual chitchat and a drink or two de Graaf rather cryptically asked Coetzee to come into his bedroom as he wanted to “talk business”. Coetzee couldn’t imagine what sort of “business” there was to discuss, but he went into the bedroom and asked what it was all about. De Graaf simply said, “Well, if you are afraid, say so.” When Coetzee looked dumb, de Graaf, who must have been a theatrical sort of chap as well as rather crazy, went to the wardrobe and produced a jar of Vaseline, which he brought back and raised significantly in front of Coetzee’s blank eyes. He then, still without saying anything, unscrewed the top and dug his finger into the Vaseline and extracted a big diamond. Coetzee began to understand.
‘De Graaf then took out two more diamonds and held the sticky stones out in his hand. He propositioned Coetzee to take the stones out of the compound. It would be easy for Coetzee. He was a trusted man and above suspicion. De Graaf said he had another diamond hidden in the garden. He would pay Coetzee a quarter of the value of the four stones.
‘Coetzee was bowled over by this proposition, particularly as it came from de Graaf, whom he’d thought of up till then only as a pleasant fellow and a good rugger player. Coetzee said all right, he would do the job. All he asked was that de Graaf should tell him which day he wanted the deed done. Then they went back to Mrs. Coetzee in the living-room.
‘The next morning Coetzee went straight to the General Manager, and from that moment all his dealings with de Graaf were controlled by Piet Willers, the Security Officer, and Sergeant Cilliers of the Diamond Detectives.
‘Nothing happened for a fortnight, then de Graaf had another talk with Coetzee and asked if he was really ready to go through with his end of the job. Coetzee said that he felt perfectly happy about the whole business – which he probably did, as it was going to mean promotion for him – and de Graaf handed over the four diamonds and told him to keep them for the time being. They were later found to weigh 104 carats and were valued at over £6000.
‘Meanwhile the security people were wondering how the devil de Graaf, who worked in the stores, could have got hold of the diamonds. Obviously he had accomplices and Coetzee was briefed to try and find out who they were. A few days later, de Graaf buttonholed Coetzee and produced another thirty-seven small diamonds weighing 26 carats. He now thought that he had Coetzee involved up to his neck in the business, and treated him as his partner in crime.
‘In the course of conversation Coetzee discovered that de Graaf had three Europeans and two Ovambos collecting for him. A month later de Graaf handed over another sixteen diamonds weighing 37 carats, and revealed the names of his accomplices.
‘The Diamond Detectives held their hand, and at the end of March de Graaf put in his resignation and went and saw Coetzee to make his final arrangements, which were simple. As soon as de Graaf had been searched and X-rayed and was free to leave for the outside world, Coetzee in the X-ray Department was to slip him the bag of diamonds, and de Graaf would take the company bus across the Orange River to freedom.
‘All went well, and de Graaf was on his way to the bus with a fortune in his pocket when the detectives pounced. The smuggler put up a fight, but was finally overcome and carried off to jail. De Graaf got three years’ hard labour, and his chief accomplice two years. The rest of the dozen or so crooks were sacked and blacklisted. Coetzee got his promotion.’
Blaize concluded, ‘A typical, sordid little case involving a lot of small crooks and one honest man. Not very interesting, really, but you get a sort of breath of the compound life of drinks and rugger and “good chaps”, one of whom had something besides lint and liniment stashed away in the medicine cabinet in his tidy little bungalow.’
Chapter 3. THE DIAMOND DETECTIVES
THE NEXT DAY we went for a walk through the Kasbah to the Sultan’s Palace, where we were picked up by an extremely young guide and forced to say ‘How interesting!’ at intervals for about half an hour’s sightseeing. We were delighted when, in accordance with tradition, the guide offered us his sister at the end of the tour, but we chastely retired to a roof café overlooking the beautiful crescent of Tangier Bay and ordered mint tea.
I was getting to know Blaize. There are many types of secret agent, from the drab ‘private eye’ soaked in alcohol and nicotine who spies on wives and husbands and lovers, to the top professionals. The finest craftsman is a man like Alexander Foote, who worked all through the war for the Russians and became their top man in Switzerland. Foote, besides being an expert wireless operator, was a careful, dedicated man who worked for a cause and not for money. He came over to England after the war and settled down quietly to working for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. He died last year, I heard.
Then there are the colourful spies like Sorge, the brilliant, luxury-loving German who worked for Russia in Tokio, and girls like Christine Granville who was murdered by a love-crazed ship’s steward in a Kensington hotel in March 1952, after a fabulous record in wartime espionage for which she earned the George Medal.
But Blaize, like all Britain’s best secret agents, belonged to none of these categories. He had common sense, a passion for accuracy and a knowledge of men and how to use them which would have brought him to the top of, for instance, the Civil Service. But he also had a taste for adventure and a romantic streak which in the Civil Service would have been sublimated into mountain climbing and amateur theatricals.
That morning, as we watched the levanter corral the white horses into the Bay of Tangier, he gave me the details of the ‘Desmond’ case, and I think his preliminary remarks illustrate the down-to-earth, commonsense qualities of the man.
Blaize said: ‘I’m afraid I’m not giving you much of a picture of my day-to-day life chasing after smugglers. After a bit it became rather dull; a hard grind of air trips round the various mines all over Africa, making myself pleasant to the local big brass; keeping my eyes open and trying to make it seem that my suggestions for improving security had been made by the man I was talking to and not by me.
‘You can imagine that IDSO wasn’t very popular. We were a private army and we were from London. On the other hand we’d got absolute carte blanche from Sir Ernest Oppenheimer himself, and it would be wise to co-operate with us – or at least to seem to do so.
‘It was rather like during the War, when private armies sprang up and had their day until they made a mistake and were disbanded or swallowed up by the Intelligence “Establishment” who thought they ought to have a monopoly. You’ll remember what it was like, particularly at the beginning, when two or three separate teams were all plotting to blow up the Iron Gates on the Danube for instance. And then later, in Yugoslavia, when rival gangs were dropping arms to Mihailovic and the Reds. Then they formed SOE to try to straighten things out, and SOE found themselves up against the Secret Service and Naval Intelligence, OSS, MEW, G2 and all the others.
‘Why, only the other day you got much the same sort of picture from Crabb’s disastrous frogman exploit. That was a “private army” job that should have been handled – if it was handled at all – by the Navy, who know infinitely more about frogmen than any Secret Service. You’ll remember how that one blew up in everybody’s face.
‘Well, IDSO must have had the same sort of look about it to the regular De Beers security staffs and to the Diamond Detective Department in Kimberley, and heat was generated all over the place. A lot of my job consisted of being tactful and saying “After you, Alphonse” to self-important officials all over Africa.
‘And, of course, wires got pretty badly crossed sometimes. A good deal of my work consisted of handling double agents – finding an underground smuggling channel and putting a spy in at one end in the hopes that he’d work his way up it till he got to the top.’
Blaize smiled – ‘Rather like that book you wrote last year, but the girls don’t come quite so pretty around the diamond fields. Anyway, right at the beginning a very promising double-agent spiel ended in the most idiotic shambles.
‘It involved a bright, good-looking young man called “Desmond”. He’s going straight now. That was the code name we gave him at the time, and I’ll have to use code names for some of the other performers as they haven’t all been rounded up yet.
‘This chap came from a very good South African family, but he went wrong, and in 1951 he got a two-year sentence for conspiracy to defraud. In prison, a likeable rascal called Sammy Silberstein took a shine to him. Sammy’s a well-known Jew from Jo’burg. He was doing time for illegal possession.
‘Well, he got hold of Desmond and told him there were fortunes to be picked up in IDB. He said that he’d been buying Kimberley stones for twenty years, but that they’d got him so often that if he made another mistake he might easily get “life”. He told Desmond that Desmond was just the man to act as his front. He’d got the appearance and the manners and the influential friends.
‘To cut a long story short, by the time Desmond came out in October ‘53, they were firm friends, and Desmond had agreed to look out for a safe market in Europe for Sammy’s stones. Sammy said that a parcel was already waiting for disposal, and that it was worth forty thousand pounds. A regular supply was assured.
‘Desmond had no intention of doing what Sammy wanted. He had decided to go straight. After prison he flew straight to England and joined his wife and spent the next few months looking for a job. Then, just after he’d got some sort of job as a salesman, he saw in the papers that Sillitoe had been taken on by De Beers to fight the smuggling racket.
‘Desmond was interested. He saw a chance to redeem his past and perhaps get a chit from Sillitoe which might lead to a better job than being a commercial traveller. He talked things over with his wife – she must have been a good girl, by the way; she’d stood by Desmond all through his troubles – and finally wrote to Sillitoe and went to see him, and told him the whole story.
‘Sillitoe liked the look of Desmond and believed him, but IDSO was just beginning, and we were all on our best behaviour vis-a-vis the South African police, so Sillitoe decided to hand the case over to the Diamond Detective Department in Kimberley.
‘Sillitoe saw Brigadier Rademeyer, the South African Deputy Commissioner of Police, and he agreed to use Desmond’s services, on condition that IDSO paid all Desmond’s expenses, including air fares and hotel bills, and gave Desmond part of the value of any diamonds that might be recovered as a result of the operation.’
Blaize smiled. ‘Pretty stiff terms, but as I said, we didn’t want to step on any corns at this stage of IDSO’s career. Desmond flew out and I handed him over to become a police agent, acting under the instructions of Captain van der Westhuisen, who was head of the Diamond Detective Department in Kimberley.
‘Well, the police briefed Desmond to contact Sammy Silberstein, who was out of jail by then. Desmond had no difficulty. Sammy owned a garage in Kimberley, and he was delighted to see Desmond again. The only trouble was that Sammy’s friends thought Sammy talked too much – which he certainly did – and he’d been demoted from the head of his old IDB ring. Another man had taken over. He was a shrewd and very cautious operator, whom I’ll call “X”. And X was a very different kettle of fish from Sammy Silberstein. He at once refused to have anything to do with Desmond, in spite of Sammy’s personal introduction, and he also gave Sammy strict orders that he wasn’t to do any business with Desmond without X’s approval. Desmond was tough. He recognized X as a very dangerous man, but he persevered, and finally, after Desmond had spent several weeks hanging around the garage making friends with the rest of the ring, X thawed and said he’d do a deal with Desmond if the prices were right.
‘Desmond’s story was that he’d got this market in London, and that he was now in Africa looking for stones. X said vaguely that he knew somebody who might know where there was a “parcel” of Fine White and Cape gems, but before there was any question of getting any nearer this parcel he must know what prices Desmond’s principals would pay.
‘Desmond went through the motions of cabling to London, and in due course handed X a cable that went like this:
FINE WHITE AND WHITE STONES OF GOOD QUALITY – BETWEEN £17 10S PER CARAT FOR ONE CARATERS TO £60 PER CARAT FOR FIVE CARATERS; £90 PER CARAT FOR TEN CARATERS AND £120 PER CARAT FOR FOURTEEN CARATERS.
CAPE STONES BETWEEN £10 PER CARAT FOR ONE CARATERS TO £40 PER CARAT FOR TEN CARATERS.
‘X said he was satisfied, and it looked to Desmond as if he’d got X in the bag.
‘Not so. The Diamond Detective Department said that another witness would have to be present when the deed was done and the transaction took place. They thought up a gimmick which should have worked but didn’t, to get a policeman into the act. You see, Desmond had never pretended to know anything about diamonds, and X knew he’d no idea of values. At the same time, obviously, one of Desmond’s principals would have to be present when the stones were handed over and the money paid if both sides agreed on a valuation. This would be an expert job.
‘So Desmond was told to tell X that his chief was so interested that he himself would fly over from London to complete the deal.
‘Typically, X’s suspicions were immediately aroused. Like all really good crooks, although he couldn’t see it, he smelt the trap.
‘Desmond bluffed him out of his suspicions. Somebody would have to agree the values. His people weren’t going to buy stones unseen. Anyway, the whole deal depended on mutual trust, and if X really wanted a market for his stones, this was no way to go on.
‘But X was adamant, and there was a period of deadlock. This provided a useful breathing space for the Diamond Detectives to find their idea of the right man to pose as Desmond’s principal and an expert diamond valuer. They found a South African police officer of English origin – a very rare bird these days – with only a faint South African accent, and they came to me and asked me to fix him up for a course of training by the Diamond Corporation in valuing stones. They also requested IDSO to pay this man’s expenses in London while he was learning about diamonds.
‘Again we wanted to be co-operative, and we agreed, and the man, whom we hadn’t seen but knew as “Charlie”, went to London and by November he’d learned all he could absorb. Desmond went back to X and got him interested again, and X finally agreed that he would meet Desmond’s principal in Kimberley.
‘I took the precaution of going to Jo’burg to have a look at Desmond’s “principal” when he stepped off the plane from London, and I was horrified to find that he was completely miscast for the role of a high-powered diamond dealer with a bottomless purse. I told the Diamond Detectives that their man couldn’t possibly be expected to fool X unless his status was whittled down. They agreed, and Desmond was briefed to tell X that his principal had gone sick and was sending a junior valuer in his place.
‘I don’t know how X reacted to this further change of plan, but it can’t have improved his confidence in Desmond, and I was certain in my mind that the whole operation was going sour.
‘However, the situation was out of our hands and the machine slowly ground on towards disaster.
‘The “junior valuer”, his big policeman’s boots showing at the ends of his trousers, met Desmond in Kimberley, and I paid £50,000 into an account at the Standard Bank so that if all went well the packet of stones could be paid for.
‘They met – the two police spies and the formidable X. X played his cards beautifully. No mention was made of any packet of diamonds. Instead, X drew the “junior valuer” into a highly technical discussion of diamond values. Charlie survived the first part of this well enough, but later allowed himself to be drawn deeper and deeper into technicalities, in which he floundered hopelessly. When his ignorance had been finally revealed, X slapped him cheerfully on the back, told him he was a nice chap but knew nothing about diamonds, and wished him good afternoon. And that was that.
‘But all was not necessarily lost. As I said, Desmond was a tough chap and he was determined to get as many of the gang into the bag as he could, even if he couldn’t get the top man, and he switched his attention back to Sammy Silberstein and the smaller fry.
‘Without consulting X, Sammy arranged a meeting at his garage to which he told Desmond he would invite plenty of sellers with real goods to offer. Sammy was attracted by the £50,000 which Desmond told him was waiting to buy gems in the Standard Bank, and he didn’t like the idea of the “junior valuer” closing his account and going back to London without spending any of it.
