Cause for Alarm

posted to www.marxmail.org on July 19, 2003

Victim of a "trade recession", engineer Nick Marlow has reached the end of his rope. When he finally gets a job offer from the Spartacus Machine Tool Company to take charge of their branch office in Milan, he is relieved to be working once again. Without any strong convictions about politics in general or fascism in particular, he seems--like all Eric Ambler heroes--an unlikely candidate for intrigue. But in short order the hero of the newly reissued "Cause for Alarm" finds himself shoulder to shoulder with a Soviet spy in a high risk bid to stave off a new World War.

After arriving in Milan, he is visited by a Nazi agent, a retired General named Vagas, who is described as a "tall, heavy man with sleek, thinning grey hair, a brown, puffy complexion and thick, tight lips." "Fixed firmly in the flesh around his left eye was a rimless monocle without a cord to it. He wore a thick and expensive-looking black ulster and carried a dark-blue slouch hat. In his other hand he held a malacca stick." After Vagas leaves his office, Marlow is left wondering why "General Vagas thought it necessary to carry a sword-stick." Of course, in this genre, that is an invitation to turn the page to the next chapter to find out why.

We discover that Vagas is anxious to find out the status of Italian armaments. Since the Spartacus corporation is an important supplier of machinery used to turn out artillery shells, Marlow has knowledge that is worth a lot to the Nazis. In exchange for delivering information about his own company's involvement and the status of the Italian armament clients he visits regularly, he will be paid handsomely. Even though the Germans and the Italians are in an alliance, they don't quite trust each other. Like Mafia gangsters who periodically form syndicates, they always have to look over their shoulder to see if a knife is about to be plunged into their back by a partner.

As it turns out, the affinity with the Mafia is not just metaphorical. We learn that a branch of the fascist secret police has murdered Marlow's predecessor after they find out that he too had been funneling information to Vagas. Called the "Organization for the Repression of Anti-Fascism", or OVRA, it is the Italian counterpart of the Gestapo. As a peculiarly Italian wrinkle on repression, it is composed largely of ex-Mafia gangsters. As is the case with many of the historical allusions in an Ambler novel, this organization actually existed. Zaleshoff, the Soviet agent who is trying to recruit the engineer to a sting operation that will pit the Nazis against their Italian allies, explains the origins to Marlow:

The word 'Ovra,' Mr. Marlow, is formed by the initial letters of four Italian words Organizzazione Vigilanza Repressione Anti-fascismo, vigilant organisation for the repression of anti-fascism. In other words, Mr. Marlow, secret police; the Italian counterpart of the Nazi Gestapo. Its members are as nice a bunch of boys as you could wish to meet. You've heard of the Mafia, the Sicilian secret terrorist society? Well, those birds were the inventors of protection racketeering. Anyone who didn't or couldn't pay was beaten up or shot. In the province of Palermo alone they bumped off nearly two thousand in one year. Chicago was a kiddies' play-pen compared with it. But in nineteen-twenty-three, the Fascisti had an idea. They smashed the Mafia. It took them some time, but they did it. It was, they claimed, one of the blessings of Fascismo. But, like some other Fascist blessings, it was mixed. Some of the Mafia hoodlums emigrated to the United States and took their trade with them, which was very nice for the Italians but not so good for the American public. The big majority of the boys, however, were recruited by the Ovra, drafted to different parts of the country, so that they couldn't get organised again, and set to work on behalf of the Government. That wasn't so good for the Italian public. The Ovra's first big job was to liquidate the opposition: the Liberals and the Socialists. That was in nineteen-twenty-four. They did a swell job. The murder of the opposition leader, Matteotti, a few hours before he was due to produce documentary evidence in support of a speech indicting the Fascist Government, was an early success. But it was only a beginning. These were the holy fathers of American gangsterism and they knew their stuff.

Although the exciting plot and vivid characterization suffice to make "Cause For Alarm" a literary treat for any reader jaded by the typical contemporary navel-gazing postmodernist fare, the relationship between Marlow and Zaleshoff should be of special interest to leftists. (Although they represent themselves as Americans, Marlow--and the reader--will immediately recognize the Zaleshoffs as Soviet operatives.) It expresses in literary form the aspirations of the popular front in the west, which was seeking to humanize the Soviet Union. Andreas Zaleshoff and his sister Tamara are deeply sympathetic characters. Although they are anti-fascist fighters, they are not dour or strident leftists.

After being beat up by the ORVA, who suspect him of working for Vagas, Marlow agrees to join the Zaleshoffs. In his case, the decision seems motivated more by a desire for revenge than concern about world affairs. Despite his personal affection for the Soviet spies, he is always a bit skeptical about their idealism. After Marlow confesses that he is thinking about taking another job in the armaments industry, despite everything he has seen in Italy, Zaleshoff questions this decision. Their dialog not only goes to the very heart of the kinds of contradictions scientists, technicians and engineers are forced to make in bourgeois society; it amounts to about as much as an open political statement from the author as you are likely to find in a body of work that puts much more of an emphasis on entertainment than didacticism:

"What of it?" I said indifferently. "Someone's got to do the job."

He laughed, but without good humour. "The stock reply according to the gospel of King Profit. Industry has no other end or purpose than the satisfaction of the business man engaged in it. Demand is sacred. It may be a demand for high explosives to slaughter civilians with or one for chemical fertilisers, it may be for shells or it may be for saucepans, it may be for jute machinery for an Indian sweat-shop or it may be for prams, it's all one. There's no difference. Your business man has no other responsibility but to make profits for himself and his shareholders."

"All that's nothing to do with me."

"Of course it isn't," he rejoined sarcastically, "you're only the guy that makes it possible. But you also may be the guy that gets squashed to a paste when those shells and high explosives start going off you and your wife and kids."

"I haven't got a wife and kids," I said sullenly.

"So what?"

"Damn it, Zaleshoff, I've got to eat. If there's a shortage of skilled engineers and I'm a skilled engineer, what do you expect me to do? Get up on a soap box?"

"In a year's time, my dear Marlow, the same trade paper will be telling you that there are too many skilled engineers. Too many or too few too much or too little empty stomachs or overfed ones-the old, old story. When are you English going to do something about it?"

"Are you speaking as an American or a Russian?"

"What difference does it make? Isn't it common-sense to replace an old, bad system with a better one?"

"You mean Socialism?"

I must have said it derisively for he laughed and did not answer.