Dirty story

Dirty Story is a satirical novel by Eric Ambler , which appeared in 1967 under the original title Dirty Story and was edited in 1968 by Diogenes Verlag in Zurich in a German translation by Günter Eichel . It is already clear from the subtitle of the original: A Further Account of the Life and Adventures of Arthur Abdel Simpson that Ambler directly linked to his greatest success, Topkapi ( The Light of Day ), in which an Anglo-Egyptian is the main character. The novel deals with a war over rare earths in two fictional Central African countries, which is triggered by a Swiss mining company and its mercenary troops, in which Simpson has hired. The raw manuscript of the novel was submitted in March 1967 after apparently only four months of production. After minor corrections, the work was published at the end of September 1967.

Course of action

Beginnings in Athens

The novel is set without a time in the present 1966/67. Simpson works as a tour guide and tugboat in Athens . His Egyptian passport has expired and his Greek residence permit will be extended in ten days. The British consulate made it clear to him that no help could be expected from Great Britain , as he had never been a British citizen.

To get a temporary passport from a Latin American state, Simpson makes an advance payment to the corrupt ambassador Gomez. Since he cannot raise the rest of the money, however, he is hired by Goulard, a former French paratrooper, to produce an Italian “cultural film” against an ancient backdrop - in fact, it is a porn film that is supposed to be shot with prostitutes. Since Goulard tries to do a side business with the prostitutes, the brothel owner, Madame Irma, files charges of fornication - Goulard and Simpson have to flee Athens.

Interlude in Djibouti

Goulard and Simpson flee aboard the SS Wolvertem , a freighter based in Monrovia but owned by a Belgian shipping company. The ship is only in Piraeus due to damage that has now apparently been repaired. The actual travel destination is Lourenço Marques (now Maputo ) in Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique ), where Wolvertem is supposed to deliver steel components from Antwerp . Your captain is a Flemish named Van Bunnen. As soon as the freighter has passed the Suez Canal , a new defect occurs. The French Djibouti must be called as an emergency port .

Here Goulard and Simpson fall out with Van Bunnen, who fears difficulties with the French authorities because of his passengers during a longer stay. By chance, however, Goulard meets an old friend from French service, Major Kinck, in town. Kinck is reportedly looking for security guards for a French mining company. Apparently it is only a matter of securing mining areas for so-called "rare earths", precious metals such as titanium, which are needed in space travel. During the Second World War, Simpson worked in the British 8th Army in Libya in a completely subordinate role - as a civilian interpreter in the catering office in Cairo - but now stylises himself to be an intelligence officer who took part in actions against Rommel's Africa Corps :

Bring two old soldiers together, and when one begins to remember, it won't be long before the other begins to remember too. And then hours after hours, truth and lies get mixed up, but no one cares what lies and what is truth as long as the lies sound somehow reasonable and the truth is not too incredible. (Dirty Story, 1978, pp. 85f.)

So not only Goulard but also Simpson is hired by Kinck. The other whites Kinck hired, René Barrière, Johannes Ruys and Adrian Willens, are from France, Holland and the Republic of South Africa. The troops first fly to South Sudan by plane and make a stopover in Juba . From there they fly to a "neighboring country" of Sudan, which geographically can be the Central African Republic , but which is referred to in the novel as Mahindi.

In war

In Fort Grebanier, Simpson learns, somewhat surprised, that the group is by no means hired as a security force for the Swiss Société Minière et Métallurgie de l'Afrique Centrale (SMMAC), but rather as their storm troop, which, with the support of Mahindi's armed forces, is supposed to attack neighboring Ugazi. An American-West German consortium, the Ugazi Mining and Development Corporation (UMAD), has taken over an area with rare mineral deposits there. It's hundreds of millions of dollars worth of deposits. A coup d'état is intended to bring part of the area in question under control and the government of Ugazi, but above all the UMAD, to be forced to make concessions. Simpson is used as a radio operator. He gets into a life-threatening situation when he gets involved in the double play of his fellow combatant Will, who has contacts to the other side and has taken out a kind of reinsurance in the event of the company's failure. After numerous fights with the Ugazi troops, Simpson and Willens manage to escape through the front line to the opposite side, where they are welcomed in a friendly manner.

End and new beginning - in Frankfurt am Main

It is through Mrs. Willens that Simpson finally realizes the moral of the story. In disbelief, he hears from her that both companies are already negotiating a division of the yield in Geneva - without the government of Ugazi, who is now stealing the "rare earths", as Simpson says:

Mrs. Willens sighed patiently. “We're talking about businessmen Arthur, not boy scouts. UMAD owned something that SMMAC wanted a piece of too. So the SMMAC made some kind of offer, and it worked. Now everyone has their share and everyone is satisfied. The Ugazis may grumble first, but once they take their share of the profits they will be satisfied too. What is wrong there? "

"Nothing, Mrs. Willens," I said stiffly. "That would be a good defense for a robbery in broad daylight, by the way."

She laughed. "You are a moralist, Arthur," she said. "Do we want to order another drink?" (Schmutzige Geschichte, 1978, p. 295)

During the war, Simpson came across 16 passports that were in the prefecture's vault. With these passports, he decided to start a new life in West Germany. He travels to Frankfurt am Main via Tangier to get into the passport business. He trusts that in the many new or renamed states on earth, the number of which has now risen to over 140, the passport authorities will easily lose track and will not notice that the fantasy state he invented, including its passports, does not even exist.

reception

Ambler was accused of simply creating a sequel to "Topkapi" without developing any further characters. The novel was not a great commercial success, but its inclusion in the Diogenes program in Zurich succeeded in finally establishing Ambler on the German-speaking market. Ambler's biographer Stefan Howald rejects the harsh criticism of the novel and sees in Dirty History an "improved new edition" of "Topkapi" in which Ambler succeeded in constructing a political lesson through the use of comedic, satirical and even grotesque stylistic devices.

Contemporary background

Although Dirty History appears in the year the Biafra War began , it is more likely that Ambler used the events of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a model from 1961 to 1967. After the massive deployment of white mercenaries in the civil war of 1964, which ended with the victory of Moises Tschombé and the defeat of the left-wing uprising movement, the mercenaries remained in the country as the main power of Tschombé, backed by Belgian financial circles, until it was overthrown by Mobutu in 1966. While the manuscript of "Dirty History" was still being worked on by the publisher, a revolt broke out by Tschombé's mercenaries in July 1967 . Another factor that speaks for the contemporary context is that, according to Howald, Ambler had already conceived the novel in 1963 with the setting Syria , but now relocated the plot to Central Africa for political reasons.

literature

Eric Ambler: Schmutzige Geschichte , Zurich 1978 (first edition 1968).
Stefan Howald: Eric Ambler. Eine Biographie , Zurich 2002, pp. 364–375.
Hans Germani : The beautiful days of the mercenaries in Bukavu are drawing to a close. Schramme's men enjoyed the "sweet life" for a long time , in: Die Welt vom November 3, 1967, p. 3.
Jean Schramme: Le Bataillon Léopard. Souvenirs d´un Africain blanc , Paris 1969.
Anthony Mockler: The New Mercenaries , 2nd edition, New York 1987. (First edition 1985).