Billion-Dollar Brain

by Len Deighton

  Doctor Felix Pike and his brother Ralph both lived in a small village. There was a sharp frontier between the houses of the natives—plaster gnomes, nylon curtains, metal-frame windows and pre-fab garages—and the houses of the invaders—modern sculpture, whitewash, antique gates, brown wainscoting, grandfather clocks. Pike drove up to a modern version of a Georgian house. In the drive there was a silver Porsche convertible. ‘My brother’s car,’ Pike said. ‘He’s not married,’ as though the car was an automatic reward for a remarkable feat; which I suppose in a way it was. ‘My younger brother Ralph lives there,’ Felix Pike said pointing to a converted limestone barn adjacent to his house. The driveway was full of bronze urns and the house was full of regency stripes, illuminated niches, wall-towall Wilton and furniture with bobbles on. There was a sweet smell of lavender polish as we walked through a couple of rooms that were just for walking through, into what Mrs Pike—a tightly scripted woman with mauve hair—called the small lounge. There was a quartet of Queen Anne chairs arranged round a late-medieval electric fire. We sat down.

  Through the french windows the lawn was the size of a small landing strip. Beyond it six bonfires built tall columns of smoke on flickering bases of flame, as though a besieging army were encamped there among the bare foggy trees.

  The woman with mauve hair waved to the nearest fire and a man threw a final shovel-load of something on to it and walked to the patio. He wiped the blade of the shovel clean with a wire brush and placed it in a wooden box. He brushed his boots upon the mat, then entered through the french windows. He wore those sort of worn-out ancient clothes that the English upper classes wear on Sundays to distinguish them from the people who wear their best clothes on that day. He adjusted the silk choker at his throat as though it was a mosquito net, and I was a mosquito.

  ‘This is my younger brother, Ralph,’ said Dr Felix Pike. ‘He lives next door.’

  ‘Hello,’ I said. We shook hands, and Ralph said, ‘Good man’ in the low sincere voice they use in films just before they do something dangerous. Then, in case the old clothes and choker should have misled me, he produced a hide case containing six Cristo No. 2s. He offered them round, but I preferred my Gauloises.

  This man Ralph was younger than the first Pike, perhaps not even forty in spite of his pure white hair. He was slightly flushed and shiny with the exertions of gardening, and although at least twenty pounds heavier than his brother he either had it well strapped up or did thirty push-ups before breakfast. He smiled that same tricky smile that his brother Felix had. He fished a gold cigar-cutter from his gardening waistcoat and circumcised his cigar.

  ‘Things at the surgery,’ said Ralph, the one in gardening clothes, as if he was offering them with the cigars. His foreign accent was a trace heavier than his elder brother’s.

  ‘Fine,’ said Felix Pike. ‘Fine.’

  ‘I do the honours?’ Ralph asked and without pausing poured us all brandy and soda into heavy cut-glass goblets.

  Dr Felix Pike said, ‘And I trust all your…’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘Fine,’ said the man in gardening clothes. He lit his cigar with care and sat down in a hard chair to avoid soiling the chintz.

  Dr Felix Pike said, ‘I see our Corrugated Holdings dropped a packet, Ralph.’

  Ralph exhaled without haste. ‘Sold Thursday. Sell while they’re rising; don’t I always tell you that? Certum voto pete finem, as Horace says.’ Ralph Pike turned to me and said, ‘Certum voto pete finem: set a limit to your desire.’ I nodded and Dr Felix Pike nodded and Ralph smiled kindly.

  Ralph said, ‘When I go public I’ll look after you, never fear. I’ll give you a green form, Felix. And hold on to them this time. Don’t do an in-and-out as you did with the Waldner shares. If you want a word of advice: unload your coppers and tins; they’re going to take a nasty drop. Mark my advice, a nasty drop.’

  Dr Felix Pike didn’t like taking advice from his younger brother. He stared at him fixedly and moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.

  Ralph said, ‘You should remember that, Felix.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dr Felix Pike. His mouth slammed down like a guillotine blade. It was a nasty mouth, an all-or-nothing device that closed like a trap, and when it opened you expected a greyhound to leap out.

  Ralph smiled, ‘Been down to the boat lately?’

  ‘Was going today.’ He stabbed a thumb at me as though soliciting a ride on a lorry. ‘Then this came up.’

  ‘Bad luck,’ said Ralph. He pinged my empty goblet with his fingernail. ‘Another?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Felix?’

  ‘No,’ said Dr Felix Pike.

  ‘Did Nigel like the sub-machine gun?’

  ‘Loved it. He wakes us up every morning. I’m not supposed to thank you because he’s writing to you himself; with chalk on brown paper.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ said Ralph. ‘Arma virumque cano.’ He turned to me and said, ‘Of arms and the man I sing. Virgil.’

  I said, ‘Adeo in teneris consuescere multum est. As the twig is bent the tree inclines. Also Virgil.’ There was a silence, then Dr Pike said ‘Nigel loved it’ again, and they both stared at the garden. ‘Do have another,’ Ralph offered.

  ‘No,’ said Dr Felix Pike. ‘I must change, we have people coming.’

  ‘Mr Dempsey will be wanting the package,’ said Ralph, as if I wasn’t listening.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, to prove I was.

  ‘Good man.’ He kissed the cigar affectionately but fearfully, as if there was a good chance it might explode. ‘I brought it today,’ he said. ‘It’s switched on.’

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  I reached into my back pocket and produced my torn half of the five-mark note. Dr Felix Pike walked across to one of the illuminated nooks. He moved two soft-focus portraits of his wife, another of those shiny brown spheres that I’d seen at the surgery—and finally found his half of the note under one of the Staffordshire figures that were drawn up in ranks along the glass shelves. He passed the half banknote to his brother Ralph, who fitted the two halves together in the same casual but careful way that he had handled the spade and cigar.

  ‘Right,’ he said, and went to get my half-dozen eggs for Helsinki. The package was wrapped in that plain discreet green paper that Harrods use. It was tied with a little loop to carry it. Before we left Ralph said that coppers would take a nasty drop again.

  Dr Pike would like very much to have given me a lift back to the centre of town but…I understood, didn’t I? Yes. I took a bus.

  The fog had become thicker and was that sort of green they call a ‘pea-souper’. The shoe shops were prisms of yellow light and past them buses were trumpeting, ambling aimlessly like a herd of dirty red elephants looking for a place to die.

  I held the green-wrapped package on my knees and developed a distinct impression that it was ticking. I wondered why the second Mr Pike had said it was switched on but I didn’t intend to find out the hard way.

  Waiting for me at Charlotte Street was one of the ‘bombers’.

  ‘Here it is,’ I said. ‘Easy does it, I’d like to deliver it in one piece.’

  ‘I’m not taking chances today,’ said the duty bomber. ‘I’ve got a steak-and-kidney pudding waiting for me tonight.’

  ‘Take your time,’ I said. ‘It’s the long slow simmering that produces the flavour.’

  ‘You got a little huffy last night,’ Dawlish said.

  I said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ said Dawlish. ‘You were right. You have instinct that comes from training and experience. I won’t interfere again.’ I made noises like a man who doesn’t want compliments.

  Dawlish smiled. ‘I don’t say I won’t have you fired or transferred, but I won’t interfere.’ He toyed with his fountain-pen as though uncertain how to break the news. ‘They don’t like it,’ he said finally. ‘The written memo went to the Minister this morning.’

  ‘What did the memo say?’

/>   ‘Precious little,’ said Dawlish. ‘One sheet of foolscap double-spaced. I pretended it was a précis.’ He smiled again. ‘We’ve known about this organization run by Midwinter but we’ve never had it linked to this country before. Both these Pike brothers are Latvian; they hold extreme right political views and the one named Ralph is a top biochemist. That’s what the memo said and it worried the Minister sick. I’ve been over there twice today and neither time did I have to wait longer than three minutes. It’s a sure sign. Worried sick.’ Dawlish tutted and I tutted in sympathy. ‘Stick close to your friend Newbegin,’ said Dawlish. ‘Get into this Midwinter organization and take a good look at it. I only hope yesterday won’t make it dangerous for you.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘The Americans are not spiteful, whatever other faults they have.’

  ‘Good,’ said Dawlish. He poured me a glass of port and talked about the set of six dram glasses he had bought in Portobello Road.

  ‘Might be eighteenth-century. They call that trumpet-bowled, see?’

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘But aren’t there only five glasses?’

  ‘Ahh! Set of six with one missing.’

  ‘Ahh,’ I said.

  Dawlish’s squawk-box buzzed and the bomber’s voice said, ‘Can I talk, Mr D?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Dawlish said.

  ‘I’ve got it on the X-ray. It’s got electrical wiring in it so I want to go slowly, Mr Dawlish.’

  ‘Good Heavens yes,’ said Dawlish. ‘One doesn’t want the building blown to smithereens.’

  ‘Two doesn’t,’ said the duty bomber, and then he laughed and said it again, ‘two doesn’t.’

  The small metal box that the Pike brothers had given me contained six fertile eggs and an electrical device that kept them at a constant temperature of 37° Centigrade. Each egg-shell had a wax-pencilled number, a filled notch and a puncture. Through the hyaline membrane of each egg a hypodermic needle had inserted a living virus. The eggs had been stolen from the Microbiological Research Establishment at Porton. The duty driver took them back to that quiet and picturesque corner of old England at five o’clock that morning, using a blanket and hot-water bottle to keep them warm and alive.

  For my trip to Helsinki Dawlish and I put six medium-grade new-laid into the metal box. We got them from the canteen, but had a terrible job removing the little lion stamp-marks that guarantee purity.

  Chapter 7

  The West London Air Terminal is stainless steel and glass, like a modern corned-beef factory. Passengers are felled, bled, eviscerated and packed firmly into buses, watched by men with wheelbarrows and dirty boots and red-eyed girls who pat their hairdos and tear up coloured pieces of paper.

  A resonant female voice began the countdown on the bus departure and at the last moment Jean decided to ride out to the airport with me. The airport bus contained the driver, Jean, myself and nine other passengers all but one being male. In the bus baggage compartment were twelve cases of medium size, one hat-box, three paper-wrapped parcels, one hessian-wrapped box, one document case, three sets of skis (in presses and complete with sticks), one set of which were slalom skis, and a small hamper containing samples of ladies’ shoes.

  It was a good haul for the thief who hijacked the whole lot of it. In my case was the electrically heated box of eggs.

  The morning flight to Stockholm and Helsinki was delayed by ninety-seven minutes. By that time the skis and two bags were recovered, but neither were mine. Because I thought I might be under surveillance by parties unknown, LAP Special Branch questioned the only witness of the theft that could be found—an LAP police constable named Blair—and delivered this transcript of his account to me on the aeroplane.

  Special Branch Confidential

  London Airport Copy 2 of 2

  Transcript from tape-band. Police Constable Blair in conversation with Det. Sgt Smith, Special Branch LAP.

  Det. Sgt Smith: We are particularly interested in the man you saw this morning and so I am recording now in order to make a transcript that will keep your descriptions on record. Don’t give your answers in a formal way, don’t hesitate to correct anything after you have said it and don’t hurry; we have plenty of tape. Tell me first what drew your attention to this particular man.

  PC Blair: He seemed very strong. He was working harder than I’ve seen any of the porters ever work (laughter). He sort of um lifted the um cases over into the van one in each hand. He did the whole load in about six journeys across the pavement.

  Det. Sgt Smith: Tell me what he said when he saw you watching.

  PC Blair: Well er like I told you he er I didn’t don’t er remember exactly the words he used but it was something like ‘How’s about a go at the old winter sporting’ but it was more American than that.

  Det. Sgt Smith: Did you take him for an American? PC Blair: No I told you I didn’t.

  (4 seconds silence)

  Det. Sgt Smith: (indistinguishable)…the tape.

  PC Blair: He had a Cockney accent but he tried to talk with an American accent.

  Det. Sgt Smith: And the words.

  PC Blair: And the words he used were an American expression. Yes. I can’t…

  Det. Sgt Smith: No matter. Go on about his appearance.

  PC Blair: He was about medium height. Five ten, nine, about.

  Det. Sgt Smith: Clothes?

  PC Blair: He wore white overalls with a red badge here.

  Det. Sgt Smith: (indistinguishable)

  PC Blair: White overalls with a red badge over his left breast pocket. The overalls were dirty and so were his other clothes and that.

  Det. Sgt Smith: Describe his other clothes.

  PC Blair: He had a striped tie with a tinny sort of er cheap pin thing pinned into it like er pin. He er (4 seconds silence)

  Det. Sgt Smith: Don’t hurry.

  PC Blair: Had this funny hair, funny mousy-coloured hair.

  Det. Sgt Smith: How was it funny do you mean?

  PC Blair: It wasn’t a wig or anything but it was funny and after he had leaned over the van he touched his hair like er women do when they look into a glass.

  Det. Sgt Smith: How do you know it wasn’t false?

  PC Blair: Well there’s a man who goes to a pub I know who has false hair and you can tell here (pause) where his hair sprouts (laughter) at his forehead.

  Det. Sgt Smith: You decided that he wasn’t wearing false hair after looking at his hair-line front and neck.

  PC Blair: Yes. (long pause) I think. I think he was just a bit er vain about his hair. I think that’s all it was.

  Det. Sgt Smith: Would you tell me about his face again?

  PC Blair: Well he was a bit pale and he had these sort of er terrible sort of bad teeth and that. And a pair of black rim National Health type glasses.

  Det. Sgt Smith: Tell me as you told me before.

  PC Blair: His breath smelling?

  Det. Sgt Smith: Yes.

  PC Blair: Well that’s right. He had bad breath and these bad teeth. Black teeth.

  (7 seconds pause)

  Det. Sgt Smith: Is there anything you would like to add to that description? There’s no rush.

  PC Blair: No there’s nothing. I can’t think of anything except (3 seconds pause) Well just to say he wasn’t a freak or anything. He was pretty normal looking I mean er I wouldn’t want to harp on anything of the things I’ve mentioned they I mean er he looked pretty ordinary I mean.

  End of transcript from tape-band

  Top copy of transcript to be signed by Det. Sgt Smith and PC Blair.

  I read that transcript on the plane to Helsinki. It was more interesting than the pamphlet about inflating dinghies, but only just.

  SECTION 3

  Helsinki

  Pit, pat, well-a-day, Little Robin flew away; Where can little Robin be? Gone into the cherry tree.

  NURSERY RHYME

  Chapter 8

  Under the armpit of Scandinavia, Finland fits like a gusset; and if this gusset was a
piece of rotten calico then it would rip in the ragged shredded way that Finland has done. The rips are lakes. They are large and numerous and they contain islands that contain lakes that contain islands until the tatters of the coastline fray into the cold northern sea. But at this time of year there is no sea. For miles and miles the shadow of the aeroplane has flitted across hard shiny ice. It is only when a glimpse of brown forest is seen through the snow that one can be sure that the coast has been crossed.

  I saw Signe standing among the red-roofed airport huts even before we landed, and while we taxied in she was running and waving and smiling a gigantic smile. As we walked towards an ancient Volkswagen she took my arm and rested too heavily upon it and asked if I’d brought her anything from London.

  ‘Only trouble,’ I said. She made me get in the driver’s side and we followed a Volga police car and did a careful legal speed all the way into town.

  ‘Did Harvey tell you to meet me?’ I asked.

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Signe. ‘He doesn’t tell me whether to go to meet my friends. Anyway he is in America. Conferring.’

  ‘Conferring about what?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s what he said. Conferring.’ She grinned. ‘Turn left here and pull up.’

  We entered that same comfortable flat off Siltasaarenk where I had met Harvey the previous week. Signe stood behind me and helped me off with my coat.

  ‘Is this Harvey Newbegin’s place?’

  ‘It is an apartment house that my father bought. He installed a mistress here. The girl was a White Russian of an aristocratic family. My father loved my mother but this girl Katya he loved foolishly; as she indeed loved him. Last year my father…’

  ‘How many fathers do you have?’ I said. ‘I thought he died of a broken heart when the Russians bombed Long Bridge.’