I saw a book I read long ago, and much enjoyed, in the bookstore a while back, and picked it up for rereading because of the former but also because it seemed that it might be topical, since the name was
They Came To Baghdad.
I remembered it as being an engaging espionage story, with a lot of topical ambiance and some archeology, and wanted to see how it looked in the light of the current tragedy.
It's an oldie-but-goodie, like a classic film, and like all of Christie's stuff more than just lightweight genre fiction:
there's a lot more encoded of past mores and social history than one realizes, caught up in the plot, until one encounters someone making a categorical statement about the past, and thinks - No, that isn't true, and then wonders how one knew that. Usually the answer is Sayers, or Christie, or sometimes PG Wodehouse.
But this one is particularly poignant, given the present circumstances, and despite its datedness and occasionally inept phrasing, there is a real respect and affection for the people of Iraq, and the tensions of their situation, that is all the more heartbreaking today.
What I had forgotten, was that it was far more strange and daring in its plot than the much more complex and more sophisticated spy thrillers contemporary to it, by Helen MacInnes, for example. Not for Christie the black-white dichotomy of Good Westerners, Bad Commies, in this tale of attempts to sabotage a peace summit held in, yes, Baghdad. Unavoidable spoilers, but I do hope you will read the story, since there is a great more to it than this, as a rather ditzy young woman impulsively follows the attractive young man she met in the park overseas to where he's going to work for a foundation that translates masterworks of Western Literature into different languages, to promote world peace and understanding.
There, unable to track him down right away, she gets caught up as a bystander into a mess of double agents, disguised agents, abductions and murder. Halfway through the story, an earnest British intelligence officer working undercover as a businessman in Baghdad tries to explain what she's fallen into and recruit her as an operative (he recognizes that she has hidden strengths and depthes, under the impulsiveness):
"I know everybody says there's going to be another war sooner or later," said Victoria.
"Exactly," said Mr. Dakin. "Why does everybody say so, Victoria?"
She frowned. "Why, because Russia -- the Communists -- America--" she stopped.
"You see," said Dakin. "Those aren't your own opinions or words. They're picked up from newspapers, and casual talk, and the wireless. There are two divergent points of view dominating different parts of the world; true enough. And they are represented loosely in the public mind as 'Russia and the Communists' and 'America.' Now the only hope for the future, Victoria, lies in peace, in production, in constructive activities and not destructive ones. Therefore, everything depends on those who hold those two divergent viewpoints, either agreeing to differ and each contenting themselves with their respective spheres of activity, or else finding a mutual basis for agreement or at least toleration. Instead of that, the opposite is happening, a wedge is being driven in the whole time to force two mutually suspicious groups further and further apart. Certain things led one or two people to believe that this activity comes from a third party or group working under cover and so far absolutely unsuspected by the world at large. Whenever there is a chance of agreement being reached or any sign of disperal of suspicion, some incident occurs to plunge one side back in distrust, or the other side into definite hysterical fear. These things are not accidents, Victoria, they are deliberately produced for a calculated effect."
"But why do you think so and who's doing it?"
"One of the reasons we think so is because of money. The money, you see, is coming from the wrong places. Money, Victoria, is always the great clue to what is happening in the world. As a physician feels your pulse, to get a clue to your state of health, so money is the life blood that feeds any great movement or cause. Without it, the movement can't make headway. Now here, there are very large sums of money involved and although very cleverly and artfully camouflaged, there is definitely something wrong about where the money comes from and where it is going. A great many unofficial strikes, various threats to Governments in Europe who show signs of recovery, are staged and brought into being by Communist zealots for their cause -- but the funds for these measures do not come from Communist sources, and traced back, they come from very strange and unlikely quarters. It is not Capitalist money, though it naturally passes through Capitalist hands.
"Another point, enormous sums of money seem to be going completely out of circulation. As much as though -- to put it simply -- you spent your salary every week on things -- bracelets or tables or chairs -- and those things then disappeared or passed out of ordinary circulation and sight. All over the world a great demand for diamonds and other precious stones has arisen. They change hands a dozen or more times until finally they disappear and cannot be traced.
"This, of course, is only a vague sketch. The upshot is that somewhere a third group of people whose aim is yet obscure, are fomenting strife and misunderstanding and are engaging in cleverly camouflaged money and jewel transactions for their own ends. We have reason to believe that in every country there are agents of this group, some established there many years ago. Some are in very high and responsible positions, others are playing humble parts, but all are working with one unknown end in view. In susbstance, it is exactly like the Fifth Column activities at the beginning of the last war, only this time it is on a world wide scale."
"But who are these people?" Victoria demanded.
"They are not, we think, of any special nationality, What they want is, I fear, the betterment of the world! The delusion that by force you can impose the Millenium upon the human race is one of the most dangerous delusions in existence. Those who are out only to line their own pockets can do little harm -- mere greed defeats its own ends. But the belief in a superstratum of human beings -- in Supermen to rule the rest of the decadent world -- that, Victoria, is the most evil of all beliefs. For when you say, 'I am not as other men,' -- you have lost the two most valuable qualities we have ever tried to attain: --humanity and brotherhood."
He coughed. "Well, I mustn't preach a sermon. Let me just explain to you what we do know. There are various centers of activity. One in the Argentine, one in Canada, certainly one or more in the United States of America, and I should imagine, though we can't tell, one in Russia. And now we come to a very interesting phenomenon.
"In the past two years, twenty-eight promising young scientists of various nationalities have quietly faded out of their background. The same thing has happened with constructional engineers, with aviators, with electricians and many other skilled trades. These disappearances have this in common: those concerned are all young, all ambitious, and all without close ties. Besides those we know of, there must be many many more, and we are beginning to guess at something of what they may be accomplishing."
Victoria listened, her brows drawn together.
"You might say it was impossible in these days for anything to go on in any country, unknown to the rest of the world. I do not, of course, mean undercover activites; those may go on anywhere. But anything on a large scale of up-to-date production. And yet there are still obscure parts of the world, remote from trade routs, cut off by mountains and deserts, in the midst of peoples who still have the power to bar out strangers and which are never known or visited except by a solitary and exceptional traveller. Things could go on there the news of which would never penetrate to the outside world, or only as a dim and ridiculous rumour.
"I won't particularize the spot. It can be reached from China -- and nobody knows what goes on in the interior of China. It can be reached from the Himalayas, but the journey there, save to the initated, is hard and long to travel. Machinery and personnel dispatched from all over the globe reaches it, after being diverted from its ostensible destination. The mechanics of it all need not be gone into.
"But one man got interested in following up a certain trail..."
Now, I don't for a moment believe that there is really a secret Straussian headquarters located in a remote Shangri-la around Pakistan where the Grand Masters devise their nefarious plans for world domination - that I am sure is as much fantasy as (unfortunately) the likelihood of competent and idealistic undercover British intelligence agents dedicated to trying to thwart them; this is after all an espionage thriller, not a serious nonfiction work of geopolitics.
But the fact that Christie - who spent a lot of time in Iraq, with her archeologist second husband*, and who moved in the diplomatic circles of Britain as well, and who also traveled by train, roughing it, through Old Russia - would have noticed that there was a gulf between the Accepted Version of world events, and the caricatures of either side, and reality, and worked back to a common subtext with roots on both sides of the Atlantic, is I think very significant.
That she would tie it specifically to Fascist rhetoric is also more than the usual Nazis-as-villains meme: in her autobiography, which I read years ago, Christie talked about not having thought much about it, really - thinking that they were a bit over the top, but not all that bad, back in the early '30s, yes their racism was gauche, but it never occurred to her that it was anything worse than British jingoism and protectionism. Then she listened to some nice, fun, German people she met at a party or friends' house, let their guard down and talk seriously the anti-semitic line - remember too that Britain had a strong pro-Nazi movement, which Wodehouse parodied lethally as the "Brownshorts" but was very real, just as our own in the US was with Fr. Coughlin and Charles Lindbergh.
And she said then that she realized what evil was, that she had for the first time been in the presence of true evil, when they revealed the depths of their hatred for Untermenschen, and their assumption that as an upper-crust British aristocrat she would agree with them. (Lady Sybil's experience with the von Uberwalds in Fifth Elephant reminded me of that, btw.)
So there is a little more than cartoon relict Nazis out of an old movie serial going on, here.
In the light of current revelations, the conjecture that it is bound up in a Millenarial attitude towards ruling the hoi polloi for our own good, described in words that are almost identical to CS Lewis' explanation of why he was a democrat, against a similar modern elitism, be it scientific or theocratic - let alone the analysis of policies of money-laundering and funding of radically disparate groups and recruiting young professionals - it almost seems that Dame Agatha should have been named Cassandra instead.
Particularly given that bit about imposing a utopia on the world by force, by engineering a war first...
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*her first husband was a very juvenile, selfish, though physically courageous WWI RAF pilot, and after reading her memoirs I am convinced that he served as the role model for Miss Jones' admirer, Edward.