Men Without Scruples
By Mark Falcoff

It took an act unprecedented in all history—the ramming of passenger planes into national landmarks—to awaken Americans to the reality of international terrorism. Long protected by geography and circumstance from a contagion that has for a century plagued the major European countries, Israel, the Near East, and parts of Asia, the September 11 attacks drove home the unpleasant reality that in a globalized world    America is no longer safe. Hardly had the smoke cleared, however, before legions of intellectuals at home and abroad rushed in to “explain” the motivations of the perpetrators. The most common excuses offered were poverty and injustice in the Third World; American support of Israel; U.S. entanglement with autocratic governments in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, and Pakistan; and other alleged failings of American foreign policy.

 

What all these explanations have in common is the notion that peace could be expeditiously achieved by eliminating the “root causes” of terrorism. What they discount altogether is the possibility that terrorists follow an internal logic or emotion of their own, a sensibility that normal people do not share and cannot resolve. Our reluctance to consider this possibility is understandable: It is frightening to consider that nothing we do or fail to do will cause the terrorist to swear off murder and mayhem.

 

The world of the terrorist is generally a closed one, but not one wholly impervious to inspection. The great novelist Joseph Conrad believed that even “perverse unreason has its own logical processes.” To that end, in 1907 he produced an extraordinary novel that sought to unravel the tangled skein of the revolutionary mind: The Secret Agent. In many ways, he was the ideal person to address the subject. The son of Polish patriots who had been forced into expatriation by Czarist Russia, he was intimately familiar with both autocratic states and the revolutionary violence they engendered.

 

Case in point: The very year The Secret Agent was published, the governor-general of Moscow was assassinated by a bomb thrown into his open carriage, an event which Conrad reproduces with a luxury of dramatic detail in the opening scenes of a later novel, Under Western Eyes (1911). But whereas the revolutionaries of his second novel are battling the stupidity and cruelty of the Czarist regime, in The Secret Agent, Conrad’s terrorists are plotting in Edwardian London, capital of the principal liberal state of the day. It is this paradox which makes the novel particularly fascinating—and probably the best work of fiction Americans can read to understand the international terrorists presently aligned against the liberal West.

                                                       

Outrage wanted, the worse the better

 

The principal character of The Secret Agent is an obscure, nondescript Englishman of partial French descent by the name of Verloc. He occupies a house in a dark back street of a working-class district of London, together with his wife, his wife’s mother, and his wife’s mentally retarded brother Stevie. Annexed to the front of the house is a musty shop where Mrs. Verloc sells newspapers, magazines, and sundries. It is not this, however, that constitutes the principal source of the family income. Mrs. Verloc would be hard pressed to say exactly how her husband earns his income; all she knows is that he is engaged in some vague “political work.”

 

The nature of this work is almost immediately revealed to the reader, however, as Conrad follows Mr. Verloc from his dingy lodgings to a grand building which turns out to be the Embassy of a Foreign Power. Though unnamed, from various tantalizing hints it appears to be the diplomatic mission of Czarist Russia. We quickly learn the nature of Verloc’s association with the people there; he is, in fact, a secret agent—or rather, a double agent. On the surface, he is a regular in revolutionary anarchist circles of the British capital; in secret, he is on the payroll of the most illiberal regime in Europe.

 

Although he has been drawing a salary from the Embassy for the past 11 years, it appears that Verloc is wearing out his welcome. His employers are beginning to doubt the value of their investment and have issued an ultimatum. His job, they remind him, is to discredit British democracy—a model for too many restive Russians. “What is wished for just now,” the chief of chancery explains, “is the accentuation of unrest.” The first secretary, Mr. Vladimir, is even more emphatic. “You don’t use your opportunities,” he complains. “What we want now is activity—activity…. You call yourself an ‘agent provocateur.’ The proper business of an ‘agent provocateur’ is to provoke. As far as I can judge from your record…you have done nothing to earn your money for the last three years.”

 

Verloc has been hired, they remind him, to stir up incidents which will force the government to launch a campaign of repression in England, a country which Vladimir describes as “absurd with its sentimental regard for individual liberty.” The English leadership class must be “brought into line…. What they need just now is a jolly scare.” Verloc’s handlers have given the matter a good deal of thought and come up with a plan for a series of outrages. They will blow up buildings of great historic or cultural significance, ideally ones connected to science, since the English bourgeoisie tend to associate it with their material prosperity. The first target, they explain, is the Greenwich Observatory, which “the whole civilized world has heard of. The very bootblacks in the basement of Charing Cross Station know something of it.” Verloc is given a month to carry out a “dynamite outrage.” Otherwise he will lose his employment.

 

Outcasts, then terrorists

 

The narrative now shifts to Verloc’s home, where his revolutionary friends have gathered (with Mrs. Verloc, her mother, and brother safely out of earshot). What a maladjusted bunch they are! First there is Michaelis, a locksmith by trade (and, Conrad adds with a malicious flourish, “a great frequenter of evening schools”) who has been released on parole after serving part of a prison sentence. His crime was to have participated in an attack on a police van with a view to liberating some prisoners aboard. Unfortunately, in the process one of the police constables was shot and killed, leaving a widow and small children. Responding to widespread public indignation, British justice condemned to death the three principal actors in the plot. Michaelis escaped the scaffold because he was a mere accessory (his job was to force open the van once it was stopped en route). His presence in the room now is due to an early release after a campaign by right-thinking (that is, left-thinking) people “who wished to exploit the sentimental aspect of his imprisonment…for purposes of their own.” The agitation for his release has yielded a patroness, a distinguished figure of London society, an older woman he managed “without effort to impress.”

 

Then there is one Karl Yundt, an aging terrorist whose physical description and general persona bear a chilling resemblance to Vladimir Lenin, all the more remarkable since Conrad could not possibly have been aware of the existence of the Russian revolutionary at the time. “I have always dreamed,” Yundt explains, outlining his personal philosophy, “of a band of men absolute in their resolve to discard all scruples in the choice of means, strong enough to give themselves frankly the name of destroyers.” He adds: “No pity for anything on earth, including themselves, and death enlisted for good, and all in the service of humanity—that’s what I would have liked to see.”

 

The next member of the cell is Ossipon, a good-looking former actor whose current role—it is nothing more than that—is of a suffering poor person in revolt against unjust capitalism. His revolutionary career has been strictly confined to “platforms...secret assemblies…private interviews.” Not once has he “personally raised as much as his little finger against the social edifice.” Though perennially unemployed, he would never want for anything, Conrad explains, “as long as there were silly girls with savings banks in the world.”

 

The most interesting figure in the circle goes by the appellation “the professor.” A one-time lab assistant at a technical institution, he lost his job by quarrelling with the administration; he also lost a subsequent position at a dye factory. The failure of the world to recognize his true merits has driven him to channel all his energies into revolutionary ballistics.

 

The professor is currently devoted to producing the perfect detonator. “I walk always with my right hand closed around the India-rubber ball which I have in my trouser pocket. The pressing of this ball actuates a detonator inside the flask I carry in my pocket.” Alas, there are kinks in the system. “I work 14 hours a day and go hungry sometimes…. My experiments cost money now and then, and then I must go without food for a day or two.”

 

Unlike some of the other terrorists, the professor is committed to destruction for its own sake. He does not profess to envision a better social order; he frankly advocates an apocalypse. “What’s wanted is a clean sweep and a clear start for a new conception of life,” he explains. “The future will take care of itself if you only make room for it.”

 

The professor also understands something that the others do not—that provoking government repression can be a revolutionary act in itself. He pontificates: “It is this country that is dangerous, with her idealistic conception of legality…. To break up the superstition and worship of legality should be our aim…. Nothing would please me more than to see [the police] shooting us down in broad daylight.” Thus, though inspired by different objectives, the professor’s immediate agenda coincides with that of Mr. Vladimir at the other end of the political spectrum.

 

Selfish humanitarians

 

Verloc’s pressing need to produce results for his sinister diplomatic employers and the professor’s devotion to the science of terror eventually converge. The latter produces a time bomb with a 15-minute delay, and the former decides to deploy it. Verloc tells his wife (without further explanation) to withdraw all the money from their bank accounts (“we may be needing it”). He places the bomb into an ordinary-looking parcel, and Stevie, the imbecile brother of Mrs. Verloc, is conscripted (without Mrs. Verloc’s knowledge) to deliver it. The young man is taken out on a walk, and given detailed instructions to plant the bomb on the grounds of the Greenwich Observatory, then make an expeditious exit from the park. Mr. Verloc leaves him to the task.

 

The scene now shifts, presumably some hours later, to Mrs. Verloc’s front door, where the caller is Chief Inspector Heat of the Special Crimes Department. Something terrible has happened. The inspector produces from his pocket a piece of cloth on which is inscribed Stevie’s name and address; Mrs. Verloc had sewed it into his overcoat in case he got lost and was unable to explain precisely where he lived. To Mrs. Verloc’s horror, Inspector Heat explains that apparently a mere five minutes after being left alone in Greenwich Park her brother stumbled on a tree root and a package he was carrying exploded, shattering him into unrecognizable bits. It was necessary to gather him up, he remarks without embellishment, with a shovel.

 

The police have not been idle in their attempt to discover the intellectual author of the affair. Indeed, they know all. While Inspector Heat is discussing the matter with Mrs. Verloc, her husband unexpectedly returns to the house. He and the police official move to another room to discuss their business. Somewhat surprisingly, instead of arresting Verloc, the inspector suggests that he “clear out” as soon as he can. But Verloc fears the long arm of revenge by the anarchists when they discover his collusion with the Embassy of a Foreign Power. Instead he bargains for a light sentence by promising to tell everything he knows. In prison he will be safely out of reach of his former comrades. The inspector is uninterested.

 

Even without Verloc’s confession the authorities have learned of his double role, and his long relationship with the Embassy. This leads the assistant police commissioner to a remarkable interview with Mr. Vladimir. “In less than 12 hours, we have established the identity of a man literally blown to shreds, have found the organizer of the attempt, and have had a glimpse of the inciter behind him. And we could have gone further,” he adds, “only we stopped at the limits of our territory.” Clearly Vladimir will soon be reassigned to another country.

 

Meanwhile, after the inspector’s departure, Verloc is forced to face his wife. In many ways it is the most suspenseful and dramatic scene in the novel. Completely oblivious to her overwhelming grief at the death of her brother, he grandly outlines his plans for the future. This was “his first really confidential discourse to his wife,” Conrad writes.  “They would vanish together without loss of time…far from England…. Spain or South America.” As he rambles on, Mrs. Verloc’s anger reaches the boiling point. She reaches for a carving knife on the kitchen table and dispatches her husband in one, fortuitously aimed blow.

 

The story does not quite end there. Ossipon, learning of the fatal stabbing, descends upon Verloc’s widow with a view toward liberating her from the cash she had withdrawn from the bank. Utilizing the sex appeal with which he has long charmed the naive, he manages to convince her that he secretly loved her all along—which Mrs. Verloc chooses to believe. They plan their escape together to France, and she entrusts all her ready cash to him for safekeeping. But as the train starts off from the station, Ossipon excuses himself on some pretext and jumps free before it picks up speed. Finding herself abandoned by the amoral revolutionary, and penniless, the hapless Mrs. Verloc tosses herself off the train and meets a rapid and inglorious death.

 

Haters, hustlers, and narcissists

 

So much for the bare bones of the story. It is Conrad’s morose observations in the course of his narrative that lend this book particular interest for the contemporary reader. To start, the author emphasizes the differences between terrorism and ordinary criminality. Everyday criminals operate within the same mental and moral universe as the forces of law and order. The burglar and policeman, Conrad writes, “both recognize the same conventions, and have a working knowledge of each other’s methods, and of the routine of their respective trades.” Thieves are simply out to make a living in their favorite way. They do so dispassionately, “without morbid ideals…free from all taint of hate and despair.” In their own strange way they are even “respectful of the constituted authorities”—in the sense that their purpose is to avoid contact with them as much as possible.

 

The ordinary criminal therefore represents no particular challenge to the policeman’s imagination. However, being “inaccessible to ideas of revolt,” the average policeman has a much harder time putting himself into the mind of a terrorist. The concrete effects of this intellectual disability are obvious.

 

On the other hand, the terrorist or revolutionary is often capable of inspiring a fascination in the most privileged sectors of society. As Conrad shows piercingly, this not infrequently serves to coax loud support and large sums of money out of these elites. Sometimes, as in the case of Michaelis’s patroness, the draw is a highly sophisticated mixture of curiosity, danger, and sexual charisma. To be sure, the element of danger is strictly rationed. Though the great lady in The Secret Agent is wealthy, she does not see herself as particularly threatened by Michaelis’s revolutionary ideas. Indeed she is so wealthy she regards herself, “as it were, above the play of economic conditions.” Her social conscience is driven by the very fact that she has so little firsthand knowledge of human misery, and therefore cannot imagine how a settling of scores down the economic pyramid could possibly boil up to affect her own well-being.

 

In any case Michaelis’s patroness does not regard herself as a capitalist at all, which though technically untrue is perhaps understandable, since the source of her wealth is so chronologically remote. She resents the “new element of plutocracy in the social compound,” and imagines that bringing the entire system down would “do away with the multitude of the ‘parvenus’ whom she disliked.” She is saturated with curiosity to know what the new, post-revolutionary world will look like, and how she will fit in, a curiosity which the great lady’s pet revolutionary is unable (or perhaps understandably reluctant) to satisfy.

 

Conrad also understands that the revolutionary personality is dominated to a surprising degree by laziness, only infrequently punctuated by frenetic activity. Most revolutionaries, he explains, are idlers driven to revolt not so much by injustice as by resentment at the “self-restraint and toil” which a successful society requires of its members. Most of the characters in Verloc’s revolutionary circle thus have no jobs in the ordinary sense of the word. Most have women to take care of them. Apart from lassitude, most revolutionaries are consumed with vanity—which, Conrad reminds us, is “the mother of all noble and vile illusions, the companion of poets, reformers, charlatans, prophets and incendiaries.”

 

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of The Secret Agent is the light that Conrad shines into the dark corner where terrorists and nation-states meet, commingle, and support each other’s agendas. The anarchists and the autocrats have the same short-term objective in this book, which is to discredit democracy and provoke a wave of repression. In that sense Verloc, although technically a double agent, is serving both of his masters equally. In the modern world this blending of shared hatreds has developed even further. Today’s Islamic terrorists operate with the financial and moral assistance of private plutocrats, the criminal underground, and states with whom the West maintains normal, even superficially cordial relations.

 

After the events of September 11, 2001, the late Susan Sontag—a typically fatuous American literary celebrity—rushed forward to explain that the events in New York and Washington were a rational, justifiable, indeed understandable reaction to “specific foreign policies.” She did not explain what these policies were; there was no need to. Everybody in her fashionably rebellious public “knew” what she meant.

 

But Joseph Conrad would not have agreed. To the contrary, he argues in The Secret Agent that people are often inspired to lash out at society not for specific grievances but rather by perverted spiritual needs. The “injustices” against which they are supposedly acting are often figments of the imagination. As Christopher Hitchens recently put it, “terrorist attacks aren’t caused by any policy except that of the bombers themselves.”

 

Unfortunately, acts of terror have spiraled upward in violence by many orders of magnitude since 1907. Yet their origins, methodologies, and, above all, ideological and moral qualities remain essentially those that Conrad brilliantly mapped out nearly a century ago.

 

 

Mark Falcoff is resident scholar emeritus at AEI.