A brace of Helen MacInnes again

These two spy novels take Helen MacInnes well into the 1970s, doing as she usually did, making the plot and action describe events only a year before the publication. Agent In Place (1976) and Prelude to Terror (1978) keep to the format that served her so well over the previous two decades. The danger of reading all her twenty odd books over only a few months is that the reader can get a little weary with repetition. The plots are similar in that there is usually an amateur American, aged between 30 and 40, who has seen service in Korea and now works as a news correspondent or as an Art connoisseur, who travels to Europe (Italy, Greece, Spain, Switzerland, Germany or Austria) and gets mixed up with enemy agents, usually communists. He links up with, willingly or unwillingly, with the CIA and, often, the British to foil whatever dastardly plot is going on. There is usually a young woman, 25 to 35, who is also another amateur or a Western agent whom he falls for. For a reader in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s - what was there not to like?! The Cold War was at its height, with enemy agents two-a-penny in Western Europe, with some deep undercover in the USA and in the Western spy agencies themselves.

 

                                      First edition - 1976                 Fontana paperback

Agent in Place is, essentially, a warning by MacInnes about two of the most dangerous types in the espionage game: the idealist in a position of trust and the 'deep sleeper' agent who is activated after many years. These are Charles 'Chuck' Kelso, working at the Institute for Analysis and Evaluation of Strategic Studies,  and Rick Nealey (Alexis), communications director to Congressman Pickering of the House of Representatives, respectively. A NATO Memorandum is temporarily stolen by Chuck to release partially to the Press but Rick manages to photograph the entire document, which includes Western agents' names etc. MacInnes' voice is heard early on: Americans were smart - a considerably enemy and one that posed a constant danger - that was what had been dinned into him (Alexis) in his long months of training; but after nine years in Washington, he had his doubts. What made clever Americans so damned stupid once they got into places of power?

The story unfolds in New York and Washington and then moves to the Mediterranean resort of Menton, where both the Russian and the NATO intelligence forces gather. Chuck's brother, Tom, gets involved with his beautiful wife Dorothea; as does Tony Lawton (late thirties? early forties? His voice was attractive...he retained that warm smile and gentle humour in his talk..) a much travelled Wine Merchant - or is that just a 'cover'?! Sure enough 'the' MacInnes girl surfaces: Nicole, French...a fragile-looking girl, small-boned, who could carry the latest fad in fashion...Yes, thought Tony...she was very good in every way... However, she plays a very minor role in the story and it's only in the final chapter that she returns, determined to resign as an agent. She then leaves with a "See you some time" on a telephone call. It feels almost as an afterthought that MacInnes slips in a final 22 lines so that Tony and Nicole can drive off into the sunset. All the 'baddies' were killed, one particularly effective self-blowing up with a boat, or rounded up. I had the odd feeling that the book, good though it read, was a little bit of a rushed job. It was mildly claustrophobic (like Message from Malaga). The bitterness about some Americans, seen in previous novels, was there too:

The all-too typical American of the day: who worried about what happened to other men in other places? Especially when they were espionage freaks, spooks worried in a maze of threat and danger - their own choice, wasn't it? Probably their own creation, too. They did it for kicks or the money, everyone knew that. (Read your friendly local newspapers.) Saving the West? Me included? That's a big laugh. All part of their own hothouse fantasies. Who's threatening me - little men in black pyjamas? Look, get rid of the ego-trippers, the paranoiacs. Then we can all make nice profits and get promotion and enjoy our skiing and our suntanning...

Between this book and the next, MacInnes's husband, Professor Gilbert Highet, died. Could that account for the above and parts of the following book?

 

                                      First edition - 1978                 Fontana paperback  

MacInnes was back on form with Prelude to Terror and in her beloved Vienna/Austria again. The novel was dedicated To Gilbert, my dear companion, who has gone ahead on the final journey. Colin Grant (the amateur American not quite 40) has to go to Vienna to bid for a valuable landscape by the 17th c. Dutch master, Ruysdael for Victor Basset, a very wealthy American collector. It is being sold for a Hungarian who hope to use the money once he escapes to the West. However, all is not what it seems. Grant also want to get over his wife's senseless and brutal murder by a teenager in a Washington Street only ten months' earlier. This trip to Vienna, a much-needed diversion for Grant, leads to murder with his own life in danger throughout the rest of the book.

Occasionally he remembers his wife: Not even grief stayed the same. In these last few days, so much had filled his mind, so much had kept him moving, that no time had been left for bitter memories, or - let's face it, he told himself - for self-pity. Was that really what intense preoccupation with private sorrow could degenerate into? Grief for the past that overwhelmed the present, cut off the future?...there were some who began to mourn more for their own loss than for those who had been snatched away from them. Surely, that came from MacInnes's own heart. 

Moreover Grant meets up with Avril Hoffman, an English girl and one of the NATO agents assigned to his 'case': This girl's eyes were dark brown, not blue; her features were less perfect, pretty but not startlingly beautiful... And Avril plays a major role in the story, even getting kidnapped (but then rescued) by the communists. Grant, for his own safety, after successfully bidding for and extracting the painting from communist plans, finally ends up in a remote house in a remote Alpine village - with Avril. One difference in her novels of even a few years previously, is that MacInnes now brings (tasteful) sex into her story line: Avril and Grant sleep together at the chalet. The following morning Grant moved over to the bed, stood watching her. It was a sleep so perfect that he couldn't bring himself to disturb it. He touched her rumpled dark head, felt a strange mixture of emotion suddenly grip him, sheer exaltation of joy and happiness, or relief and thankfulness. Gently, his lips touched the smooth curve of cheek, the firmness of her neck, the rounded shoulder... Avril is then moved to the safety of a nearby farm, while Grant waits for the Russian agent. The denouement, when it comes, was not what I expected. Avril races back with a warning, shoots at the enemy and is in turn shot - dead. I didn't quite 'buy into' that; in particular, Grant although, of course, upset (he had also been wounded) then decides that his future plan should be to volunteer to become a USA agent. Just as, for centuries, the ideal career was to become a Minister in the Church (particularly the Scottish Presbyterian version) now it appears, to MacInnes at least, that the highest calling should be a CIA Agent! Grant bows out with the final paragraph: He rose and went indoors to pack. Tomorrow was an early start. And just keep going, he told himself. That's all you can do. That's all any of us can do.