One of the three Czechoslovaks expelled from Britain for spying in May was Jan Sarkocy, a political secretary at the Czechoslovak embassy. The British authorities have not said exactly what he is supposed to have done. For all I know, he might be a top-level StB spook who has stolen Britain's most valuable secrets. I was hoping to ask him, but he called off a lunch date because he was busy packing. Somehow, though, I doubt he was much more than what he said he was – the junior diplomat responsible for relations with peace movements in Britain (and women, he would add sheepishly).
There was something about Sarkocy, despite his James Bond
good looks, that made him an extremely improbable secret agent.
I first met him when I worked for European Nuclear
Disarmament. He'd got in touch because he wanted to discuss a complaint END had
made about treatment of Charter 77, the Czechoslovak dissident movement with
which END had had a long and fruitful exchange of ideas. Because END had a
policy of behaving in a civilised manner to the eastern European authorities –
a policy not often reciprocated – a woman colleague invited Sarkocy to the
office for a chat.
After that he kept inviting himself back. He didn't try to
blackmail or extract information. In fact, his conversation was decidedly
minimal. When he wasn't blushing and studying his shoes – they must run a
blushing and shoe-studying course at the Czech diplomatic school – he just
gazed starry-eyed at my colleague's long blond hair, wearing an inane grin.
Although the rest of the END staff found it very funny, she
tired of it after a while and fobbed Sarkocy
off on me.
By this time I was working at Tribune. Sarkocy came
to see me five or six times in all, for the most part asking stupid questions
about the peace movement that a cursory reading of its press would have
answered. I responded politely, taking care never to tell him anything
important. I wondered why on earth he was going through the routine, which
would always end in my saying that I didn't think that much of the way his
government treated its dissidents and his blushing and studying his shoes.
Once, though, proceedings got a little hotter. Last summer,
a Tribune contributor rang me in
a state of great excitement to say he'd just been thrown out
of Czechoslovakia, along with other western peace movement activists. Their
meeting with Charter 77 in Prague had been broken up by leather-jacketed secret
police. I arranged that he should come round for lunch. Then, around 1 o'clock,
Sarkocy walked through the door. I'd forgotten that I'd agreed to meet him. I
hastily rang the contributor to put him off but he'd already left. So there was
nothing for it but to tell Sarkocy that
I'd made a mess of arrangements and that if stayed he would no doubt be in for
a verbal pasting.
“Ha! Ha!” said Sarkocy, putting on his best inane
grin, “We must talk about these problems.” But when
the contributor arrived, there wasn't much of a chance for Sarkocy to get a
word in edgeways. He just blushed and studied his shoes as the tirade went on
and on: “What kind of government expels peace activists for having meetings
with its citizens? A bloody dictatorship, that's the sort of government! Are
you proud of the way your colleagues behave? Aren't you ashamed to serve such a
government? I guess you're a secret policeman yourself, aren't you?”
Eventually, this was too much even for Sarkocy, who left,
mumbling about investigating complaints and sorting out problems. I saw him
only once after that, the day after Mikhail Gorbachev's speech to the United
Nations. “The first we heard of it was on the television news,” he said
disconsolately. “The Soviets don't tell us anything any more.”
