by Len Deighton
A nimble little woman rushed to the gates and tugged them open. The house was tall and narrow and not particularly beautiful, but it was artfully placed in about twenty acres of ground. To the right, the kitchen garden sloped down to two large glasshouses. Beyond the house there was a tiny park where statues hid behind trees like grey stone children playing tag, and in between, there were orderly rows of fruit trees and an enclosure where laundry could just be glimpsed flapping in the breeze.
I drove slowly past a grimy swimming pool where a beach ball and some ice-cream wrappers floated. Tiny flies flickered close to the surface of the water. Around the rim of the pool there was some garden furniture: armchairs, stools and a table with a torn parasol. The woman puffed along with me. I recognized her now as the woman who had injected me. I parked in a paved yard, and she opened the side door of the house and ushered me through a large airy kitchen. She snapped a gas tap en passant, flipped open a drawer, dragged out a white apron and tied it around her without slowing her walk. The floor of the main hall was stone flags, the walls were white-washed and upon them were a few swords, shields and ancient banners. There was little furniture: an oak chest, some forbidding chairs, and tables bearing large vases full of freshly-cut flowers. Opening off the hall there was a billiard room. The lights were on and the brightly coloured balls lay transfixed upon the green baize like a pop-art tableau.
The little woman hurried ahead of me opening doors, waving me through, sorting amongst a bundle of large keys, locking each door and then darting around me and hurrying on ahead. Finally, she showed me into the lounge. It was soft and florid after the stark austerity of the rest of the house. There were four sofas with huge floral patterns, plants, knick-knacks, antique cases full of antique plates. Silver-framed photos, a couple of bizarre modern paintings in primary colours and a kidney-shaped bar trimmed in golden tin and plastic. Behind the bar were bottles of drink and arranged along the bar-top some bartender’s implements: strainers, shakers and ice-buckets.
‘I’m delighted to see you,’ said Monsieur Datt.
‘That’s good.’
He smiled engagingly. ‘How did you find me?’
‘A little bird told me.’
‘Damn those birds,’ said Datt, still smiling. ‘But no matter, the shooting season begins soon, doesn’t it?’
‘You could be right.’
‘Why not sit down and let me get you a drink. It’s damned hot, I’ve never known such weather.’
‘Don’t get ideas,’ I said. ‘My boys will come on in if I disappear for too long.’
‘Such crude ideas you have. And yet I suppose the very vulgarity of your mind is its dynamic. But have no fear, you’ll not have drugged food or any of that nonsense. On the contrary, I hope to prove to you how very wrong your whole notion of me is.’ He reached towards a bevy of cut-glass decanters. ‘What about Scotch whisky?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘You’re right.’ He walked across to the window. I followed him.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all. We are both ascetics.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ I said. ‘I like a bit of self-indulgence now and again.’
The windows overlooked a courtyard, its ivy-covered walls punctuated by the strict geometry of white shutters. There was a dovecote and white doves marched and counter-marched across the cobbles.
There was a hoot at the gate, then into the courtyard drove a large Citroën ambulance. ‘Clinique de Paradis’ it said along the side under the big red cross. It was very dusty as though it had made a long journey. Out of the driver’s seat climbed Jean-Paul; he tooted the horn.
‘It’s my ambulance,’ said Datt.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Jean-Paul driving.’
‘He’s a good boy,’ said Datt.
‘Let me tell you what I want,’ I said hurriedly.
Datt made a movement with his hand. ‘I know why you are here. There is no need to explain anything.’ He eased himself back into his armchair.
‘How do you know I’ve not come to kill you?’ I asked.
‘My dear man. There is no question of violence, for many reasons.’
‘For instance?’
‘Firstly you are not a man to use gratuitous violence. You would only employ violent means when you could see the course of action that the violence made available to you. Secondly, we are evenly matched, you and I. Weight for weight we are evenly matched.’
‘So are a swordfish and an angler, but one is sitting strapped into an armchair and the other is being dragged through the ocean with a hook in his mouth.’
‘Which am I?’
‘That’s what I am here to discover.’
‘Then begin, sir.’
‘Get Kuang.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean get Kuang. K.U.A.N.G. Get him here.’
Datt changed his mind about the drink; he poured himself a glass of wine and sipped it. ‘I won’t deny he’s here,’ he said finally.
‘Then why not get him?’
He pressed a buzzer and the maid came in. ‘Get Monsieur Kuang,’ he said.
The old woman went away quietly and came back with Kuang. He was wearing grey flannel trousers, open-neck shirt and a pair of dirty white tennis shoes. He poured himself a large Perrier water from the bar and sat down in an armchair with his feet sprawled sideways over the arm. ‘Well?’ he said to me.
‘I’m bringing you an American hydrogen expert to talk to.’
Kuang seemed unsurprised. ‘Petty, Barnes, Bertram or Hudson?’
‘Hudson.’
‘Excellent, he’s a top man.’
‘I don’t like it,’ said Datt.
‘You don’t have to like it,’ I said. ‘If Kuang and Hudson want to talk a little it’s nothing to do with you.’ I turned to Kuang. ‘How long will you want with him?’
‘Two hours,’ said Kuang. ‘Three at the most, less if he has written stuff with him.’
‘I believe he will have,’ I said. ‘He’s all prepared.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Datt complained.
‘Be quiet,’ said Kuang. He turned to me. ‘Are you working for the Americans?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m acting for them, just this one operation.’
Kuang nodded. ‘That makes sense; they wouldn’t want to expose one of their regular men.’
I bit my lip in anger. Hudson had, of course, been acting on American instructions, not on his own initiative. It was a plan to expose me so that the CIA could keep their own men covered. Clever bastards. Well, I’d grin and bear it and try to get something out of it.
‘That’s right,’ I agreed.
‘So you are not bargaining?’
‘I’m not getting paid,’ I said, ‘if that’s what you mean.’
‘How much do you want?’ asked Kuang wearily. ‘But don’t get big ideas.’
‘We’ll sort it out after you’ve seen Hudson.’
‘A most remarkable display of faith,’ said Kuang. ‘Did Datt pay you for the incomplete set of documents you let us have?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Now that our cards are on the table I take it you don’t really want payment.’
‘That’s right,’ I said.
‘Good,’ said Kuang. He hooked his legs off the arm of the chair and reached for some ice from the silver bucket. Before pouring himself a whisky he pushed the telephone across to me.
Maria was waiting near the phone when I called her. ‘Bring Hudson here,’ I said. ‘You know the way.’
‘Yes,’ said Maria. ‘I know the way.’
29
Kuang went out to get ready for Hudson. I sat down again in a hard chair. Datt noticed me wince.
‘You have a pain in the spine?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I did it in a discothèque.’
‘Those modem dances are too strenuous for me,’ said Datt.
‘This one was too strenuous for me,’ I said. ‘My part
ner had brass knuckles.’
Datt knelt down at my feet, took off my shoe and probed at my heel with his powerful fingers. He felt my ankle bone and tut-tutted as though it had been designed all wrong. Suddenly he plunged his fingers hard into my heel. ‘Ahh,’ he said, but the word was drowned by my shout of pain. Kuang opened the door and looked at us.
‘Are you all right?’ Kuang asked.
‘He’s got a muscular contraction,’ said Datt. ‘It’s acupuncture,’ he explained to me. ‘I’ll soon get rid of that pain in your back.’
‘Ouch,’ I said. ‘Don’t do it if it’s going to make me lame for life.’
Kuang retreated back to his room. Datt inspected my foot again and pronounced it ready.
‘It should get rid of your pain,’ he said. ‘Rest for half an hour in the chair.’
‘It is a bit better,’ I admitted.
‘Don’t be surprised,’ said Datt, ‘the Chinese have practised these arts for centuries; it is a simple matter, a muscular pain.’
‘You practise acupuncture?’ I asked.
‘Not really, but I have always been interested,’ said Datt. ‘The body and the mind. The interaction of two opposing forces: body and mind, emotion and reason, the duality of nature. My ambition has always been to discover something new about man himself.’ He settled back into his chair. ‘You are simple. I do not say that as a criticism but rather in admiration. Simplicity is the most sought-after quality in both art and nature, but your simplicity encourages you to see the world around you in black-and-white terms. You do not approve of my inquiry into human thoughts and actions. Your puritan origin, your Anglo-Saxon breeding make it sinful to inquire too deeply into ourselves.’
‘But you don’t inquire into yourself, you inquire into other people.’
He leaned back and smiled. ‘My dear man, the reason I collect information, compile dossiers and films and recordings and probe the personal secrets of a wide range of important men, is twofold. Primarily because important men control the fate of the world and I like to feel that in my small way I influence such men. Secondly, I have devoted my life to the study of mankind. I love people; I have no illusions about them, it’s true, but that makes it much easier to love them. I am ceaselessly amazed and devoted to the strange convoluted workings of their devious minds, their rationalizations and the predictability of their weaknesses and failings. That’s why I became so interested in the sexual aspect of my studies. At one time I thought I understood my friends best when I watched them gambling: their avarice, kindness, and fear were so much in evidence when they gambled. I was a young man at the time. I lived in Hanoi and I saw the same men every day in the same clubs. I liked them enormously. It’s important that you believe that.’ He looked up at me.
I shrugged. ‘I believe it.’
‘I liked them very much and I wished to understand them better. For me, gambling could never hold any fascination: dull, repetitive and trivial. But it did unleash the deepest emotions. I got more from seeing their reactions to the game than from playing. So I began to keep dossiers on all my friends. There was no malign intent; on the contrary, it was expressly in order to understand and like them better that I did it.’
‘And did you like them better?’
‘In some ways. There were disillusions, of course, but a man’s failings are so much more attractive than his successes – any woman will tell you that. Soon it occurred to me that alcohol was providing more information to the dossiers than gambling. Gambling showed me the hostilities and fears, but drink showed me the weaknesses. It was when a man felt sorry for himself that one saw the gaps in the armour. See how a man gets drunk and you will know him – I have told so many young girls that: see your man getting drunk and you will know him. Does he want to pull the blankets over his head or go out into the street and start a riot? Does he want to be caressed or to commit rape? Does he find everything humorous, or threatening? Does he feel the world is secretly mocking him, or does he throw his arms around a stranger’s shoulders and shout that he loves everyone?’
‘Yes. It’s a good indication.’
‘But there were even better ways to reach deep into the subconscious, and now I wanted not only to understand people but also to try planting ideas into their heads. If only I could have a man with the frailty and vulnerability of drunkenness but without the blurriness and loss of memory that drink brought, then I would have a chance of really improving my dossiers. How I envied the women who had access to my friends in their most vulnerable – post-coital triste – condition. Sex, I decided, was the key to man’s drives and post-sex was his most vulnerable state. That’s how my methods evolved.’
I relaxed now that Datt had become totally involved in his story. I suppose he had been sitting out here in this house, inactive and musing about his life and what had led to this moment of supreme power that he was now enjoying so much. He was unstoppable, as so many reserved men are once explanations start burbling out of them.
‘Eight hundred dossiers I have now, and many of them are analyses that a psychiatrist would be proud of.’
‘Are you qualified to practise psychiatry?’ I asked.
‘Is anyone qualified to practise it?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Precisely,’ said Datt. ‘Well, I am a little better able than most men. I know what can be done, because I have done it. Done it eight hundred times. Without a staff it would never have developed at the same rate. Perhaps the quality would have been higher had I done it all myself, but the girls were a vital part of the operation.’
‘The girls actually compiled the dossiers?’
‘Maria might have been able to if she’d worked with me longer. The girl that died – Annie Couzins – was intelligent enough, but she was not temperamentally suited to the work. At one time I would work only with girls with qualifications in law or engineering or accountancy, but to find girls thus qualified and also sexually alluring is difficult. I wanted girls who would understand. With the more stupid girls I had to use recording machines, but the girls who understood produced the real results.’
‘The girls didn’t hide the fact that they understood?’
‘At first. I thought – as you do now – that men would be afraid and suspicious of a woman who was clever, but they aren’t, you see. On the contrary, men like clever women. Why does a husband complain “my wife doesn’t understand me” when he goes running off with another woman? Why, because what he needs isn’t sex, it’s someone to talk to.’
‘Can’t he talk to the people he works with?’
‘He can, but he’s frightened of them. The people he works with are after his job, on the watch for weakness.’
‘Just as your girls are.’
‘Exactly, but he does not understand that.’
‘Eventually he does, surely?’
‘By then he no longer cares – the therapeutic aspect of the relationship is clear to him.’
‘You blackmail him into co-operating?’
Datt shrugged. ‘I might have done had it ever proved necessary, but it never has. By the time a man has been studied by me and the girls for six months he needs us.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Datt patiently, ‘because you persist in regarding me as some malign monster feeding on the blood of my victims.’ Datt held up his hands. ‘What I did for these men was helpful to them. I worked day and night, endless sessions to help them understand themselves: their motives, their aspirations, their weaknesses and strengths. The girls too were intelligent enough to be helpful, and reassuring. All the people that I have studied become better personalities.’
‘Will become,’ I corrected. ‘That’s the promise you hold out to them.’
‘In some cases, not all.’
‘But you have tried to increase their dependency upon you. You have used your skills to make these people think they need you.’
‘You are splitting hairs. All psychiatrists mu
st do that. That’s what the word “transference” means.’
‘But you have a hold over them. These films and records: they demonstrate the type of power you want.’
‘They demonstrate nothing. The films, etc. are nothing to me. I am a scientist, not a blackmailer. I have merely used the sexual activities of my patients as a short cut to understanding the sort of disorders they are likely to have. A man reveals so much when he is in bed with a woman; it’s this important element of release. It’s common to all the activities of the subject. He finds release in talking to me, which gives him freedom in his sexual appetites. Greater and more varied sexual activity releases in turn a need to talk at greater length.’
‘So he talks to you.’
‘Of course he does. He grows more and more free, and more and more confident.’
‘But you are the only person he can boast to.’
‘Not boast exactly, talk. He wishes to share this new, stronger, better life that he has created.’
‘That you have created for him.’
‘Some subjects have been kind enough to say that they lived at only ten per cent of their potential until they came to my clinic.’ M. Datt smiled complacently. ‘It’s vital and important work showing men the power they have within their own minds if they merely take courage enough to use it.’
‘You sound like one of those small ads from the back pages of skin magazines. The sort that’s sandwiched between acne cream and peeping-tom binoculars.’
‘Honi soit qui mal y pense. I know what I am doing.’
I said, ‘I really believe you do, but I don’t like it.’
‘Mind you,’ he said urgently, ‘don’t think for one moment I’m a Freudian. I’m not. Everyone thinks I’m a Freudian because of this emphasis on sex. I’m not.’
‘You’ll publish your results?’ I asked.
‘The conclusions possibly, but not the case histories.’
