Spy Sinker by Len Deighton

of your plan. There are a number of points you raise that are somewhat contentious. But you realize that, of course.'
    'It's a ten-year plan,' said Bret. 'They are in a bad way over there. A well-planned attack on their economy and the whole damned communist house of cards will collapse.'
    'Collapse? What does that mean?'
    'I think we could force the East German government into allowing opposition parties and free emigration.'
    'Do you?' The idea seemed preposterous to the old man, but he was too experienced in the strategies of Whitehall to go on record as a disbeliever. 'The Wall comes down in 1988? Is that what you are saying?' The old man smiled grimly.
    'I don't want to be too specific but look at it this way. In World War Two RAF Bomber Command went out at night and dropped bombs on big cities. Subsequent research discovered that few of the bombers had found their way to the assigned targets, and the few that did bombed lakes, parks, churches and wasteland so that only one bomb in ten was likely to hit anything worthwhile.'
    Sir Henry was fingering the coloured cards upon which there were graphs and charts showing various statistics mostly concerned with the skilled and unskilled working population of the German Democratic Republic. 'Go on, Bret.'
    'When Spaatz and Jimmy Doolittle took the US Eighth Air Force into the bombing campaign they went in daylight with the Norden bombsight. Precision bombing and they had a plan. They bombed only synthetic-oil plants and aircraft factories. No wasted effort and the effect was mortal.'
    'Weren't they called panacea targets?'
    'Only by the ones who were proved wrong,' said Bret sharply.
    'I seem to remember some other aspects of the strategic bombing campaign,' pondered the old man, who hadn't missed the point that the RAF got it wrong and the Americans got it right. Neither did he miss the implication that the efforts of the SIS had up till now been ninety per cent futile.
    'I wouldn't want to labour the comparison,' said Bret, who belatedly saw that this example of the RAF's wartime inferiority to US bombing performance might be less compelling to an English audience. He tried another approach. That "Health and Hospitalization" chart you are holding shows how many physicians between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five are holding their health scheme together. I estimate that the loss of twenty-five per cent of that labour force – that's the red sector on the chart – would make the regime start closing hospitals, or hospital departments, at a rate that would be politically unacceptable. Or take civil engineering: look at the chart I see on the table there…'
    'I've looked at the charts,' said Sir Henry, who had never liked visual presentations.
    'We must target the highly skilled labour force. It will put acute strain upon the communist society because the regime tells its people that they endure low wages and a drab life to get job security and good social services: health care, urban transportation and so on. And a brain-drain is something they can't counter. It takes seven years to train a physician, an engineer or a chemist: even then you need a bright kid to start with.'
    'You mentioned political opposition,' said the D-G, and put Bret's charts aside.
    Bret said, 'Yes. We also have to change our disdainful attitude to these small East German opposition groups. We must show a little sympathy: help and advise the Church groups and political reformers. Help them get together. Did you see my figures for Church denominations? The encouraging thing the figures demonstrate is that we can forget the rural areas: Protestants in the large cities will give us enough of the sort of people we want and we can reach townspeople more easily.'
    'Strategic bombing. Ummm,' said the D-G. Even the Cabinet Secretary might see the logic of that approach when he was being told about all the extra money that would be needed.
    'And the people we want are the people in demand in the West. We