Charity

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Len Deighton. Charity

Cover designer’s note

Len Deighton. Charity

Copyright

Contents

Introduction

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If you enjoyed Charity, check out these other great Len Deighton titles

About the Author

Other Books by Len Deighton

About the Publisher

Отрывок из книги

Readers will note that Bernard’s name appears in the third panel; is Bernard the “third man” in the story, an unreliable narrator who is more implicated in the shady doings and subterfuge than he has let on? Perhaps the third position equates to the third part of the third trilogy; after all, at crux of the whole series stands Bernard. Or perhaps it best suited the design. I shall leave it to you to decide.

Inspiration comes from the most unexpected places. This time it was from listening to a line from the lyrics of “These Foolish Things”, written Eric Maschwitz, a former colleague from my days in television (and no stranger to spy-craft himself): “A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces…” This brought to mind the idea of a lipstick-tipped East German cigarette overhanging an ashtray containing a cigarette lighter displaying the ever-present KGB badge.

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More uniformed officials came crawling along the train; resolute and unfriendly like a column of jungle ants. But the Polish security man who took me into the conductor’s compartment at the end of the carriage was an elderly civilian, a plump man with untidy wavy hair, long and untidy enough to distinguish him from the soldiers. He was wearing a red-striped bow tie and belted brown corduroy overcoat. He scanned my passport with a battery-powered ultra-violet light. There was nothing wrong with my papers – it was a genuine German Federal Republic document but he ignored the name in my passport and said: ‘Welcome to Poland, Mr Samson.’

If they knew who I was, they knew what I did for a living. So they were not to be persuaded that I was an advertising executive from Hamburg.

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