Inconspicuous Man

HANDBOOK FOR SPIES (273 pp.)--Alexander Foote--Doubleday. ($3).

Anyone looking at Alexander Foote a second time might remember him, but the chances are he wouldn't be looked at twice. A quiet chap of 44, about 5 ft. 9 in., with thinning, mouse-colored hair, he looks like the British civil servant he is; he works for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries now. But back in the '30s, he was a disgruntled salesman who had swallowed communism hook, line & sinker.

When the Spanish Civil War came, Foote went to Spain and fought with the 6th International Brigade. Perhaps it was his near-genius for inconspicuousness that made Foote just the man for the Russians. When British Communists recommended him for a dangerous "assignment" on the Continent, he jumped at the chance, entered the Red army intelligence six months before the fall of Madrid. He became a cog in an espionage network that Fed information directly into Red army headquarters in Moscow. Except for an interval in a Swiss jail, he worked for the Russians until 1947. But long before that time Foote's disillusionment had set in.

Lunch in Munich. Foote's Handbook for Spies is an unpretentious, understated account of the job he did for his Russian employers. Readers looking for cloak-&-dagger excitement will not find it here. But the lack of phony tension and climax gives the book its own quiet tone of truth. Writes Foote: "The only excitement a spy is likely to have is his last, when he is finally run to earth." Foote was run to earth just once, fortunately for him in neutral Switzerland.

Foote's actual career as a spy began in Switzerland in October 1938. On his first assignment, he was sent to Munich where he set himself up as an amiable tourist of independent means; his pay and expense money came to $300 (U.S.) a month. This mission consisted largely in lunching at Hitler's favorite restaurant and reporting on the Fuhrer's habits.

Back in Switzerland, after the war began, Foote transmitted such information as the Russian network could pick up about the German army's order of battle (strength and disposition of forces). He claims that one colleague, whose cover name was "Lucy," obtained complete Wehrmacht dispositions during the war. If so, and if the Russians credited the information from Switzerland, they need seldom have been surprised. Later, says Foote, Lucy turned out to be an adviser to the Swiss government with perfect high-level sources in Wehrmacht headquarters.

Crack the Whip. Foote has a good deal to say about Soviet spy-recruiting methods and the whip-cracking tactics of the Moscow chiefs. As valuable as the spies themselves, he says, are the party members and fellow travelers who pass on information, sometimes innocently, which the best of spies could never hope to get.

In Foote's case, the more he dealt with his Russian masters and the more he saw of their methods, the more he felt disillusioned with his dream of communism. Reading his report, it is easy to believe that Handbook, with all its lack of action and its glossy evidence of a ghostwriter's assistance, is the work of a man who knows what he is talking about.

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