Billion-Dollar Brain

by Len Deighton

It was still hot, but the pinpoints of scalding water had changed to steam. My skin was burning. I avoided looking at the thermometer.

  ‘What’s the difference?’ I asked. ‘If you are really dropping people anywhere along that coast I wouldn’t give them forty-eight hours before they are signing a statement for the public prosecutor. That’s the Baltic Military District* over there: one of the most sensitive areas in the world. It’s full of missiles, airfields, sub-bases, the lot; and what’s more it’s full of guards and patrols.’

  Harvey squeezed the sweat from his face with the edge of his hand and then he looked at his hand as though trying to tell his own fortune. He stood up. ‘You’re probably right,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’ve been too long with this screwy outfit; I’m beginning to believe that stuff they are handing out from the New York office. Let’s get out of here, huh?’ But neither of us moved. Outside the van revved up. The spine of the tree curved like a man stretching tall after a heavy sleep. Its arms flicked snow loose in a final fastidious gesture of contempt, and then the whole thing began to tilt. It was a slow graceful fall. There was no sound through the double-glazing. I watched the tree hit the ground in a cloud of snow. ‘Just like that,’ said Harvey. ‘You’re right. Just like that.’ And I knew that he had been watching the death of the tree too.

  Harvey opened the heavy door of the smoke room. The central room was urgent and noisy like a front-line dressing station. Old women in white coats were clattering around with loofahs and stainless-steel buckets and throwing water over motionless pink men on slabs.

  I followed Harvey outdoors into the snows-cape. We walked naked along the path that led across the ice-covered sea. Harvey walked along in an envelope of white steam. I suppose I did too for I didn’t feel even slightly cold. Harvey dropped through a large hole in the ice. I followed, and tasted the salty sweet taste of the Baltic.

  I opened my eyes under water and saw the ghost-like shape of Harvey against the darkness all around. For one terrifying moment I fancied what would happen to someone carried under the ice by the current. Perhaps not another break in the ice for…what? One hundred miles? Two hundred miles?

  My head bobbed out into the cold dry air. Harvey’s face was near, his fair hair plastered close to the skull like golden syrup. I noticed a small bald patch on the crown of his head. I still didn’t feel the cold.

  ‘You’re right,’ Harvey said. ‘Right about this hunky we’re dropping tomorrow. The poor bastard is a write-off.’

  ‘Can’t you…’

  ‘No, no,’ said Harvey. ‘Not even if I wanted to. Just make sure he doesn’t get too close a look at me, that’s all I can do. Self-preservation: the first law of intelligence.’

  Harvey swam towards the ladder. On the shore one of the men was tying a rope to another tree.

  I was keen to stay close to Harvey while he made preparations for the dispatch of this agent, but Harvey left the flat before breakfast. Signe brought me coffee in a pot with a felt cover that had eyes and a nose, then she sat on the edge of my bed holding a silly conversation with the felt cover while I drank my coffee.

  ‘Harvey’s given me a job to do,’ she said, tiring of her game.

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Rilly. All Englishmen say rilly like that.’

  ‘Give me a break. I’ve only been awake three minutes.’

  ‘Harvey’s jealous of us.’

  ‘Did he find out?’

  ‘No, it’s his Slavic melancholy.’

  It was true that Harvey Newbegin’s family had come from Russia but there was nothing Slavic about him that anyone but Signe could detect.

  ‘Did Harvey tell you he was Slavic?’

  ‘He didn’t have to, he has a typical moujik face. A Finn can recognize a Russian at a thousand metres across open sights. That faint reddish tinge in his fair hair—did you notice that? And those orange-brown eyes. Beer-coloured, we say. Look at my face. I am a typical Tavastian. Broad head, broad face, fair complexion, blonde hair, blueish-grey eyes and this funny concave nose I have.’ She stood up. ‘Look at my structure. Big bones, wide hips. We are Tavastian people from the south and centre of Finland. You will see no one like Harvey among us.’

  ‘It’s a great structure.’

  ‘You say things like that and Harvey will guess.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn what he guesses,’ I said.

  She poured me a second cup of coffee. ‘Today he told me to deliver a packet and I was not to tell you. Pooooffffff. I’ll tell you if I want to, he thinks I am a child. When you have showered and shaved we shall deliver it together.’

  Signe drove the old VW carefully—she was a good driver—and insisted upon taking me the prettiest way to Inkeroinen, which meant through the little side roads around Kouvola. It was a sunny day and the sky was like a new sheet of blotting paper with blue ink tipped into the middle of it. The road curved and climbed and went through all the antics of a mountain pass to persuade you that the land wasn’t rather flat, and small clumps of trees and farmhouses aided the illusion. It was lonely, and small groups of children going to school on skis waved to us as we passed.

  I had the feeling that Signe hadn’t dismissed Harvey’s words of caution about me as completely as she professed and I carefully refrained from asking about the parcel. At Kouvola where the railway line divides, we took the southern road which still follows the railway. A long train of timber wagons and oil tanks was being shunted around a siding and the locomotive laid a coil of black smoke across the white landscape.

  Signe said, ‘What do you think’s in the parcel? It’s in the glove compartment.’

  ‘Hell,’ I said. ‘Let’s not waste a wonderful trip talking business.’

  ‘I want to know. Tell me what you think.’

  I took a small brown-paper parcel from the glove compartment.

  ‘This?’

  ‘Money, eh?’

  ‘It’s not the shape of any money I ever saw.’

  ‘But if I told you that Harvey borrowed two paperback books from me last night.’

  ‘Got you,’ I said. If you allowed for the shape of two paper-backs, between them and jutting from the end was a two-inch pack of what could be paper money.

  ‘Dollar bills.’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘What do you mean “could be”? You know it is.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve got to leave them in a taxi-cab in Inkeroinen.’

  Inkeroinen is a scattering of shops and houses clustered around a small railway junction. The main street looks like the approach to a village. In the shops there are refrigerators from West Germany, jazz records and detergents. Across the road is a small wooden kiosk selling cigarettes and newspapers; the back portion of it is a taxi-drivers’ den. Outside there were three bright new taxis. Signe stopped the VW on the far side of the road and killed the motor. ‘Hand me the packet,’ she said.

  ‘What will you give me for it?’ I asked.

  She looked at her watch for the fourth time in two minutes.

  ‘My virtue,’ she said.

  ‘None of us has that any more,’ I said.

  She smiled tightly and took the packet. I watched her walk across the road to the Ford taxi. She opened the rear door and looked in as though looking for something she had mislaid. When she closed the door again the packet wasn’t in her hand. A white Porsche came along the road from the direction of Kotka. It was travelling fast and wobbled as it hit the bumpy piece of road under the railway bridge. It lost speed and pulled up outside the kiosk with a squeal of brakes. The police highway patrols use white Porsche cars.

  I moved into the driving seat and started the motor of Signe’s VW. It was warm and sprang to life immediately. A policeman got out of the Porsche, putting on his peaked cap as he did so. Signe saw the policeman just as I pulled away from the kerb. He touched his peaked hat and began to say something to her. Along the road behind me came the country bus from Kouvola. I drove twenty yards ahead so that the bus would not
be blocking my way when it stopped at the bus stop, then I stopped and looked back. On the window of the cabmen’s room a hand was wiping a small area of condensation clear.

  The police driver of the Porsche got out of the car and went around Signe to the kiosk. Signe was not looking towards me. By all the normal rules I should have pulled away before that, but if the road was clear I could let things get more serious before doing anything, and if it was blocked it was already too late. A familiar figure got out of the bus and walked straight to the cab rank. I had no doubts that he was going to pick up the package. He walked past Signe and both cops. He climbed into the rear seat of the Ford. The driver of the police car purchased two packets of Kent and threw one pack to his friend who caught it without a pause in his speech to Signe, then saluted, and both policemen got into the Porsche. The man in the rear seat of the taxi showed no sign of finding the package, but now he leaned across the driver’s seat and sounded the horn. The police car revved up and roared away. I turned the VW round and pulled up where Signe was standing. She climbed in.

  ‘Glad you stayed?’ she smirked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It was sloppy and unprofessional. I should have moved away immediately.’

  ‘You are a coward,’ she said mockingly as she got in beside me.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘If they ever have a cowards’ trade union, I’ll be the man representing England at the World Congress.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Signe. She was still at an age when honour, bravery and loyalty outweigh results. I wished I hadn’t said ‘England’ since I was carrying the Irish passport, but Signe gave no sign of noticing the error.

  I drove slowly up the road, not wishing to overtake the white police car. In my mirror I saw the Ford taxi moving up on me fast. The snow was banked in humps at the roadside but I pulled in as much as I could to let him pass. The man in the rear of the car wore a roll-brim hat and smoked a cigar. He was leaning comfortably into the corner of his seat reading the unmistakable pages of the London Financial Times. It was Ralph Pike. I suppose he was worrying whether coppers were taking a nasty drop.

  I wondered why Ralph Pike hadn’t brought his own packet of eggs to Helsinki, and whether by tomorrow night he wouldn’t have another kind of drop to be worried about.

  I left Signe and the car at Stockmann’s department store. I wanted to buy some blades and socks, but most of all I wanted to avoid arriving back at the flat at the exact time she did, just in case Harvey should be angry at her disobeying him.

  Harvey was at the flat when I got back. He was kneeling in the middle of the lounge fixing small bulbs to the roof rack of Signe’s VW.

  ‘It’s damn cold,’ I said. ‘What about some coffee?’

  ‘Given reasonable luck it will drop even lower by midnight. We’ll need all the cold we can get if the ice is to be firm enough for the plane to land.’ He expected me to ask questions but I carefully refrained from showing interest. I wandered into the kitchen and made some coffee. The blue patch of sky had long since disappeared and as the light faded the snow took on a fluorescent glow.

  ‘It’s not snowing?’ Harvey called.

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘That’s all we need,’ Harvey said.

  ‘A delay?’

  ‘This pilot won’t delay. He’ll fly through a dish of corned-beef hash. It’s a crack-up out there on the ice that I’m most afraid of. Sweating it out trying to repair the plane with the dawn creeping up like thunder-boy, that’s no way to earn a living.’

  ‘You don’t have to talk me round,’ I said. ‘I believe you.’

  ‘The passenger arrived owwww.’ Harvey had jabbed his finger with a screwdriver. He put the finger into his mouth, sucked at it and then waved it around in the air. ‘Wanted to rest up somewhere.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘What did I say? Listen, you talked me into realizing what’s going to happen to that cat twenty-four hours from now. I told him to keep walking till sundown.’

  ‘He’s going to be tired by the time the plane comes.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Harvey said making it a one-word question. I pulled a face.

  ‘Don’t go limp on me, boy,’ said Harvey. ‘You are my flavour of the month. I needed you to point out the facts of life.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But don’t foul it up just to prove I’m right.’

  ‘Hell. The guy’s got enough dough to buy himself a hotel room to rest up in.’

  ‘What time does he call here?’

  ‘Have you got crêpe-de-chine ears? He doesn’t call here. When the Russkies dig him out of the snow tomorrow he’ll say he knows nothing about our operations in Helsinki and I’m going to make sure he’s not lying. He meets us over on the far side of the town at nine thirty P.M.’

  ‘Supposing he’s tired by then? Supposing he ducks out?’

  ‘Then I won’t be sobbing, buster; that will be just dandy.’ He fixed the last lamp-holder to the roof rack and inspected his wiring.

  ‘Help me carry this into the hall. Then we sit and watch TV till nine.’

  ‘Suits me,’ I said. ‘I can use a little vicarious excitement.’

  * * *

  *See Appendix 1.

  Chapter 10

  It’s a weird feeling to have only a layer of ice between you and the sea; weirder still to drive out across the Baltic in a Volkswagen. Even Signe had been a little nervous about that, especially with the four of us inside it, for the ice would not last a lot longer. When we had driven off the land, Signe and Harvey had studied the shrinkage and cracking of the ice at the water’s edge and pronounced it safe.

  We were four because Ralph Pike was with us now. He had said hardly anything since we had picked him up at a draughty street corner where the Hanko road leaves Helsinki. He was wearing a peaked cap of brown leather and a long black overcoat. He loosened his scarf when he got into the car and I could see the collar of his overalls under the coat.

  When we had driven for ten minutes or so across the plain of frozen sea Harvey said, ‘All out.’ It was a dark night. The ice glowed and the air smelt of putrefaction. Harvey connected the roof rack to two batteries. He tested the circuit. The lights fixed to the roof rack came on, but paper cones prevented them from being visible from the shore line. I fancied that I could see the lights of Porkkala to the south-west—for the coast bends south along here—but Signe said that it would be too far away. Harvey took a measure of the wind with a little spinner and then reparked the VW so that the lights would show the pilot the direction of the wind. He switched off two of the lights to indicate the wind speed.

  Ralph Pike asked Harvey if he could smoke. I knew how he felt, for in an operation like this nerves take over and you rest so heavily upon the skill of the dispatcher that you ask his permission even to breathe.

  ‘One last good cigar,’ Ralph Pike said to no one, and no one answered. Harvey looked at his watch and said, ‘Time to get ready.’ I noticed that Harvey had forgotten his resolve not to let Pike get a good look at him and stayed close to him all the time. Harvey got a piece of canvas out of the front of the car and then Pike took his overcoat off and they wrapped the coat into the canvas and strapped it up very tight on a long strap, the other end of which they fixed to the belt of Ralph Pike’s overalls. The overalls were very complicated with lots of zip fasteners, and under the arm there was a leather piece that held a long-bladed knife. Pike took off the peaked cap and tucked it inside his overall which he then zipped up tight to the neck. Harvey gave him one of those Sorbo-rubber helmets that paratroops wear on practice drops. Then Harvey walked around Pike, tugging and patting and saying ‘You’ll be all right,’ as though to convince himself. When he was sure everything was exactly as prescribed he got a Pan-Am bag from inside the car. He rummaged around inside it. ‘I’m ordered to give you these things,’ Harvey said, as though he didn’t want to really, but I don’t think he meant that—he was just over-keen to do everything by the book.

>   First he handed over a bundle of Russian paper money that was little bigger than a wad of visiting cards, and some coins jangled. I heard Harvey say, ‘Gold louis, don’t flash them around.’

  ‘I won’t be flashing anything around,’ Pike said angrily.

  Harvey just nodded and twisted a silk scarf inside out to demonstrate the map that was printed on the silk lining. I would have thought silk a little ostentatious for Russia, but nobody asked my opinion. Then Harvey gave him a prismatic compass that was designed as an old-fashioned turnip watch (complete with a chain that was used as a measure for distance-judging). Then they did a countdown on his papers: ‘Army service card,’ ‘Check,’ ‘Former residence card,’ ‘Check,’ ‘Passport,’ ‘Check,’ ‘Working paper,’ ‘Check.’ Then Harvey produced two items from his own pocket. The first was a plastic ballpoint pen. Harvey held it up for Pike to see.

  ‘You know what this is?’ Harvey said.

  Ralph Pike said, ‘It’s the poison needle.’

  Harvey said, ‘Yes,’ very briefly, and handed it over before giving him the little 6·35-mm. Tula-Korovin automatic that the Russians used to call ‘the nurses’ gun’.

  ‘Correct and complete?’ Harvey asked.

  ‘Correct and complete,’ said Ralph Pike, fulfilling some strange ritual.

  Signe said, ‘I think I hear it coming.’

  We all listened, but it was two full minutes before we heard it. Suddenly its noise was distinct and loud like a tractor coming over the western horizon. The low-flying plane stretched its sound full-length across the hard ice. The navigation lights were switched off but I could see the Cessna Skywagon flying steadily in the cold air. As it got nearer, the white face of the pilot shone in the glow from his instruments and he waggled the wings in greeting. It climbed slightly as it neared us…so that he could see the indicator lights on the roof rack of the car, I suppose…then it dipped a wing and dropped abruptly to the ice. Its long skis struck the ice flat-on and the fuselage rocked on the heavy springs. The pilot cut the motor and the plane slid towards us with a curious hissing sound. Harvey said, ‘I’ve got some sort of virus.’ He wrapped his scarf tighter. ‘I’m running a temperature.’ It was almost the first remark he had addressed to me all evening. He looked at me as though defying argument, wiped his nose, then smacked Ralph Pike gently on the back as a signal to go.