Silas Gaunt

Genealogy
[please refer to the association charts page for explanation of solid, versus dotted line links - between associates as well as family]

In the graphics from Spy Line onwards, Silas Gaunt is described as being in a ‘Ret’d Consultative role’ while, in the chart for the earlier Berlin Game, Silas is referred to as ‘Advisor to (the) DG’ as well as ‘One-time Head of German Desk’. Re. this latter position, Silas is linked by dotted line to ‘Col. Brian Samson (dec’d)’ - Bernard’s father, who was ‘Once Head of Berlin Field Unit’.

Also in the table for Berlin Game (as well as for Faith) Silas is referred to as “Uncle” to Fiona Samson however, in the graphic for Spy Sinker, he is instead described as ‘Cousin of Fiona Samson’. Berlin Game is the sole graphic where even a dotted line connects the two of them.

In Spy Line Silas Gaunt is linked by dotted line to Frank Harrington. Frank is Head of Berlin Field Unit although, placed directly underneath in the chart, does he in fact report to Silas? Conversely, in the graphics for both Spy Sinker and Faith, should we draw any inference from the placing of Silas alongside Sir Henry Clevemore, the Director-General, where the two are linked by dotted line?

Commentary
Silas is introduced to us as ‘''a huge man, tall with a big belly. He’d always been fat, but since his wife died he’d grown fatter in the way that only rich old self-indulgent men grow fat…heavy jowls that made him look like a worried bloodhound. His head was almost bald and his forehead overhung his eyes in a way that set his features into a constant frown, which was only dispelled by his loud laughs’ [Berlin Game'' chap 4].

Bernard Samson states that ‘When my father was running the Berlin Field Unit, Silas was his boss’ [Berlin Game chap 4]. Bernard adds that in the era immediately before the Wall was erected in former East Germany [August 1961] Silas Gaunt ‘was new to Berlin’, telling Werner Volkmann ‘For a time he convinced me you were wrong about everything, including the Wall’. For his part, Werner describes him as ‘the fat man who could sing all those funny Berlin cabaret songs / What beautiful German he spoke - Hochdeutsch’  [Berlin Game chap 1].

More accurately however, in 1961 Silas was newly- returned to Berlin, having also served there around the end of World War II” ‘''with my driver, a military policeman I’d had with me ever since I arrived. I was a civilian in uniform''’. Silas tells of how he met and recruited one of London Central’s key human sources: ‘''I knew him back when Berlin was Berlin. We shared girlfriends and fell down drunk together…Brahms Four tried to kill me at the end of 1946…The Russkies came running…Alexanderplatz was in their sector…They made a feeble attempt to pull him away, but my driver and I picked him up and carried him to our car…he’d been watching me for a couple of days. He’d heard rumours that I was the one who’d put a lot of Gehlen’s people in the bag, and his closest friend had been hurt in the roundup…I kept him well away from our people in Hermsdorf, I had access to funds and I sent him back into the East sector with instructions to lie low…We were both going to be in a position to help each other in the years ahead…he was a sleeper.’ Silas confirms that he ran Brahms Four personally because the source ‘made that a condition’ yet when he was posted away from Berlin, Bret Rensselaer maintained the pretence that Silas was still the handler: ‘Brahms Four related to Silas in a way no newcomer could hope to do. It was better to let him think his stuff was still coming to Silas.’ [quotes Berlin Game'' chap 4]

Despite technically having retired from the Service to Whitelands - the 600-acre farm in the Cotswolds where he is waited on by loyal Mrs. Porter - Silas clearly still wields great influence throughout London Central: ‘They all come to see me’ he claims, hosting a number of the Department’s senior staff at the request of the Director-General [Berlin Game chap 4].

In terms of character, according to Bernard: ‘Silas was just the same unscrupulous old swine that he’d been when he was working inside; just the same ruthless manipulator of people’ and, when insisting that a covert agent remain in place: ‘There was a cruel determination in him; I’d glimpsed it more than once.’ But is Silas behaving solely as an unscrupulous manipulator on those occasions when he appears to relate to, and be a supporter of Bernard and his father, Brian Samson, before him? It is unclear for example quite what Silas was about to communicate to Bernard, albeit in front of Bret and Dicky, when their discussion about Brahms Four was interrupted. Certainly Bernard suspected he was ‘about to say something quite different.’ [quotes Berlin Game chap 4]

Silas has ‘a partnership in a Bond Street antique shop’ [Berlin Game Chap 4] although it is unknown whether the art dealer who Fiona Samson once worked for is connected. Silas has longstanding, deep links to the Samson family - through Bernard’s father, wife and son Billy, to whom Silas has become godfather. Silas’ relationship to Fiona is only explained very vaguely: ‘not really her uncle; he was a distant relative of her mother’s’. It is unclear at what stage, or under what circumstances, Silas is supposed to have discovered the kinship - just as it is unclear whether Fiona or even Fiona's mother already knew about its existence when Bernard says he introduced them: ‘She’d never even met Silas until I took her to see him when I was trying to impress her, just after we’d first met.’ [above quotes from Berlin Game chap 4]. Stranger again is why Silas (presumably) mentioned in the first place any, never mind this particular obscure relationship to his young work colleague (Bernard) soon after the latter happened to be in the, for him, unfamiliar surrounds of Oxford University meeting the young woman in question.

Indeed, both the facts and chronology surrounding the above and subsequent, related events would benefit from some testing. Bernard recounts that he recommended Fiona for employment by London Central and Bret Rensselaer yet the reader learns Fiona was in fact recruited differently and earlier than this. Her actual recruiter is said to be Henry Clevemore, before he became Director-General of course, although it is noted that the man who was to become known as her ‘Uncle Silas’ was also ‘a year at Oxford, lecturing on political commentary’ [Berlin Game chap 1]. It is further noted - see Genealogy section above - that Gaunt and Fiona are never linked by a solid line in the association charts which accompany the novels, as is the case between her and all other members of her family. Is this an oversight, or might it signal that this supposed kinship is in fact only a fabrication as part of a wider subterfuge?

It seems likely that Silas is one of the people providing Fiona with direct operational support, certainly before she heads overseas. Outwardly, at least, Silas is the stereotypical early 1980s male chauvinist. But does he for example, after lunch at Whitelands, need to dismiss Fiona alongside all the females present in order to meet with her male colleagues, only to convene covertly with her in the small hours? ‘''It was four o’clock in the morning. Fiona was in her dressing gown…’I can never sleep properly away from home. I went downstairs and made tea’…The dogs began barking again. From downstairs I heard…Silas trying to quieten the dogs’ [Berlin Game'' chap 4].