Horse Under Water Horse Under Water Horse Under Water (1963, , ) is the second of four Len Deighton spy novels featuring an unnamed British agent protagonist (named Harry Palmer in the film adaptions). It was preceded by "The IPCRESS File" and followed by "Funeral in Berlin". The novel is set in 1960, mostly in a small fishing village in Portugal, which was then a dictatorship led by António de Oliveira Salazar. It retains the style of "The IPCRESS File" — multiple plots twists, Gauloises cigarettes, grimy, and soot-stained British winter. In common with several of Deighton's other early novels, the chapter headings
The IPCRESS File The protagonist reveals to Jean that Jay and Dalby were using a process called "Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned REflex with Stress" (IPCRESS) to brainwash the VIPs into loyalty to the Soviet Union, which they had also unsuccessfully attempted to subject the protagonist to. The seemingly irrelevant links that Carswell had discovered were in fact indicators of the personality traits that Jay had used to determine which VIPs would easily succumb to the process. Dalby was the one who had sabotaged the American bomb test, as part of Jay and Dalby's efforts to frame the protagonist. Colonel Ross reveals that