Billion-Dollar Brain

by Len Deighton

‘Wouldn’t you?’ I said. ‘I was just going to tell you about my love affairs.’

  ‘Were you truly?’ she said with a flattering amount of alarm in her voice.

  ‘I’m just teasing,’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to have any women in your life except me.’

  I was surprised. ‘I’m surprised,’ I said.

  ‘I’m zipreezed,’ Signe mocked.

  ‘You’re getting very wet. Shall I try and get a cab?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ she said. ‘I live on Eighth Street and I like walking in the rain.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘Do you really?’

  ‘On account of my father who was a Saudi-Arabian rain maker.’ Signe’s hand squeezed mine. ‘He broke his heart when his village got connected to the mains.’

  Signe looked up into my eyes. ‘How terrible. Tell me about it.’

  I told her.

  Signe’s apartment was in a small block built over a row of shops. The hallway was bleak and one window was broken. Signe lived on the first floor. Her hall was papered with straw paper and there was a strange set of horns upon which Signe hung her yellow oilskin coat. She tapped it. ‘Hang up your coat, plastic elk horns.’

  ‘I didn’t know you hunted the great plastic elk.’

  ‘It was there when I moved in. Horrible, isn’t it?’ She swished her fingertips through her hair and sent a spray of water over me.

  ‘Take it easy,’ I said. ‘I once gave away a dog that did that.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I forgot you English hate water.’ She disappeared into the bathroom and reappeared with her head under an enormous towel which she kneaded sensuously. ‘This way,’ the towel said. She led me into the kind of large room that Americans call studios. It was papered in white and gold. On the walls were small pieces of wood that I later learned were the sculptures of one of Signe’s ex-boyfriends. Highly polished floorboards peeped around the white carpets, the curtains were ruffled and there were white shades with bobbles. On the floor there were three whodunit paperbacks and a copy of The Village Voice with face-powder spilled on it. It was easy to spot the big-city items that Signe had added to the furnished apartment. There were a couple of fairground signs from Third Avenue antique shops, a polar-bear rug and two huge basketwork chairs that looked like witchdoctors in full gear and creaked when sat upon. Signe leaped across the room like a rubber kangaroo and landed flat upon the sofa. She bounced and cuddled herself into half a dozen bright scatter cushions.

  ‘My apartment,’ she yelled. ‘Mine, mine, mine.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Sit down. I’ll make you some coffee.’

  ‘I abandoned a perfectly good bacon sandwich,’ I said.

  ‘Poo on your bacon sandwich. I shall make you something delicious.’

  ‘What?’ I said suspiciously.

  ‘I’ll see what’s in the ice-box. Sit down and stop looking so English.’

  ‘How do the English look?’ I asked. I had ceased protesting that I was Irish.

  ‘Embarrassed,’ she giggled. ‘Too many elbows and too many feet.’

  I moved a pair of cotton slacks, a brassière, a housecoat, a page of a letter in Finnish, a jar of Pond’s cold cream, some roll-on deodorant and a half-full cup of cold coffee in order to sit on the basketwork chair.

  ‘Ah, there it is,’ Signe said, coming back into the room and taking the cold coffee from me. ‘Do you take sugar and cream?’

  ‘Cream, no sugar.’ I dried my trouser legs in front of the fire until Signe returned with a toasted ham sandwich and coffee.

  ‘I’m through with Harvey,’ she said. ‘You’re steaming.’

  ‘I always steam when I’m alone with girls. What happened?’

  ‘I couldn’t put up with him. Those moods. One moment he’s all smiles, the next moment he snaps my head off.’

  ‘That’s right. That’s what he does all right. He does it to me.’

  ‘He even does it to Midwinter. They are getting fed up with him too.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The organization. Our organization. Even they are fed up with his moods.’

  ‘It doesn’t make him less efficient,’ I said.

  ‘It does if everyone hates him, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes it does, I suppose.’

  ‘He told me he would kill you. That’s why I was so frightened for you.’

  ‘It’s nice to know someone was,’ I said. ‘But why would Harvey kill me?’

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘No, I don’t know why.’

  ‘You don’t have to shout at me.’

  ‘No, I don’t know why.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you say it quietly the first time? It’s because you are checking up on him.’

  ‘You don’t believe that?’

  ‘I do believe it. You overplay your part. You’re always pretending you don’t know who General Midwinter is and you don’t know what the organization is. No one could be as ignorant as you pretend to be.’ She waited for me to reply.

  ‘That gives me a chance to be a villain or a fool,’ I said.

  Signe agreed.

  I said, ‘Harvey thinks I am employed by Midwinter to check up on him?’

  Signe pursed her lips at me. ‘Kiss, kiss,’ she said. I went across to her and kissed her.

  ‘Do you call that a kiss?’ she said.

  ‘Make it do for now,’ I said.

  ‘General Midwinter says you are to move in here with me.’

  ‘You are lying again, Signe.’

  ‘No, truly. He doesn’t like using hotel switchboards to transmit orders. The Midwinter organization pays the rent for both my apartments—New York and Helsinki—so I can’t argue when they send me guests. I’ve prepared for you. Come and see.’

  I went into the bedroom. There was a double bed with flowered sheets, and on the pillows a pair of pyjamas and a négligé.

  ‘Our boudoir,’ said Signe. She opened a wardrobe and swept back the hangers to make room for my non-existent dozen suits. I opened a cupboard and about fifty pairs of Signe’s shoes fell over me. Signe clapped her hands and laughed. ‘I love shoes,’ she said. ‘I love shoes.’ She picked up the shoes in armfuls and stacked them away with obsessional care, keeping the toes carefully in line. When she spoke it was to the shoes. ‘You will stay?’ she said anxiously. ‘I get awfully frightened at night. The cats knock the garbage cans over and last week someone got into the front hall and smashed the mirror and the door. That’s why it looks so awful down there. The police caught him, but his mother came round next day in a Jaguar and paid the landlord three hundred dollars not to prosecute. You will stay, won’t you?’ She wrapped her arms around me and sought my spine with her fingertips.

  ‘I wouldn’t want you to be frightened at night,’ I said.

  I went back to the hotel to collect my baggage, a quarter-full bottle of whisky, two paperback books—The Thirty Years War by Wedgwood and The Complete Guide to New York City—one worsted suit, four cotton oxfords, socks and underwear in one small fibre-board case.

  The phone rang. The same metallic voice spoke. ‘You will move into Miss Laine’s apartment today,’ the voice said. ‘You will be going south for training within a few days. If you require money record an affirmative now.’

  ‘I need money,’ I said. ‘Only machines don’t need it.’ This time I rang off before the machine did.

  It was an idyllic weekend. Midwinter didn’t call. Harvey didn’t try to kill me—as far as I know—and Signe and I wandered around Greenwich Village gawking and scoffing, eating and shopping and arguing without malice. On a Saturday the Village is crowded: girls with dirty hair and men with pink pants and poodles. Shops full of rude paintings, rustic sandals, cut-price records, any tie in the window 80 c., primitive jewellery and cold storage in our own vaults $2 up. Frantic electric signs were ticking like wire brushes and the trumpet call of police sirens played a counter-melody to the bass gearbox
es of ancient buses. On the corner a girl selling the Catholic Worker gave a cigarette to Socialism What It Means. The sun, incandescent orange, dropped slowly on to Pier 56 and made the buttes of midtown Manhattan shine like fool’s gold.

  We had dinner in the Village: a French restaurant where the Provençal dressing is warm ketchup, and it’s all candlelight and striped aprons and waiters with waxed moustaches who talk like Maurice Chevalier.

  ‘Ow izz zat for madame et monsieur?’ the waiter said and left without waiting for a reply.

  I said, ‘Evryzink izz what we call in my countree zipreezingly ockay.’

  Signe seemed very happy and my pleasure was watching her. She wore a white dress that made her shoulders look even more tanned than they were. Her hair gleamed like a hastily polished brass pot, its tiny dents reddish brown. Her eyes were dark and carefully made darker but her lips were without lipstick and her face had only the merest dusting of powder.

  ‘I’m glad you talked me out of Poetry and Jazz.’

  ‘So am I,’ I said.

  ‘A nice restaurant or a settee is the best place to spend an evening.’

  ‘That’s it,’ I said.

  ‘I met Harvey in a restaurant,’ she mused. ‘I was with a nice boy. I wanted the sugar and rather than wait for the waiter to return or ask this boy to get it, I asked Harvey for the sugar. Harvey was all alone. I said, can I have the sugar and he picked up a knife from the table-top and pretended to carve his heart out, put it in the sugar bowl and presented it to me. I thought he was fun but I didn’t take much notice especially since this boy I was with was angry. The next moment the waiter came back to Harvey carrying a little cake with twenty-six candles—all alight—he put it down in front of Harvey and Harvey sang—quite loudly all by himself—Harvey sang “Happy Birthday to Me” all through. Then everyone there clapped and people sent him drinks and we all got talking.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘We had a love affair. Frantic. For those first few weeks we couldn’t keep our eyes off each other. Couldn’t keep our hands off each other. And talk. Obsessively. Staring at each other while having dinner or being at a party, then go home, go to bed and talk. Talk, make love a little. Talk, talk as though you can tell each other everything you’ve ever done or seen or said or thought. I can’t tell you how I love when I love. I’d just look into Harvey’s eyes and there was a silent scream that drained me, like I had a baby inside me, that never stopped sobbing. It was great but it ends. It always ends.’

  ‘Does it?’

  She smiled. ‘It does when you are in love with a moody crackpot like Harvey. Let’s forget him. Let’s talk about you. They’ll send you for training to San Antonio, Texas. Can I visit you there?’

  ‘You know more about it than I do,’ I said. ‘Sure, come and see me.’

  ‘Three weeks from tonight. Nine thirty. There’s a Club on Houston Street. They have to call it a club or they’re not allowed to serve hard liquor. If I write it down will you be sure to be there?’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I said.

  ‘That will be wonderful. Now let’s order champagne. Pol Roger ’55. I will pay for it.’

  ‘You don’t have to pay,’ I said and ordered it.

  ‘I love champagne.’

  ‘So you keep saying. How about moving on to something else, shoes for instance.’

  ‘You are fishing. I’ll tell you what else I like.’ She thought deeply. ‘Champagne, hot scented baths, Sibelius, tiny kittens, very, very, very expensive underwear that you hardly know you’re wearing, and skiing at night and going into the big stores on Fifth Avenue and trying on all the three-hundred-dollar dresses and shoes and then saying that I don’t like any of them—I do that quite often—and…’ She wet her lips with her tongue to indicate deep thought ‘…and always having a man madly in love with me—because that gives you confidence when you’re mixing with people—and I like outsmarting men who try to outsmart me.’

  ‘Quite a list.’ The waiter brought the champagne and thumped it around in a bucket of ice to persuade us that it hadn’t come out of the refrigerator. It went pop, and Signe leaned forward into the candlelight so that all the customers could see her, and sipped at the champagne and narrowed her eyes at me in a gesture of passion that she had seen in some bad film. I cranked the handle of an old-time movie camera and Signe sipped her champagne and the waiter said, ‘Izzz evryzink all right, madame?’ and Signe started coughing.

  SECTION 6

  San Antonio

  He loves me, he don’t, He’ll have me, he won’t, He would if he could, But he can’t, so he don’t.

  NURSERY RHYME

  Chapter 17

  I was the sole passenger. I left New York in Midwinter’s Jet-star. The weather bureau was predicting light rain and snow flurries and the cirrus was thickening, but over San Antonio, Texas, three and a half hours later, the night was crystal clear. The landscape was green. The trees were dense with leaves. The air clung like a warm facecloth. Men moved in the leisurely evening warmth like alligators across a mud-flat. I loosened my shirt collar and watched a couple of generals being saluted by their chauffeurs. On the seats there was a tall man in stetson and jeans and a Mexican girl listening to a Spanish station on her transistor radio and flipping the gatefold of Playboy.

  ‘You looking for Colonel Newbegin?’ called the man in the stetson. He hadn’t moved a muscle.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. He stretched himself lazily and picked up my case. On his shoulder a silk patch read, ‘Midwinter. Facts for Freedom.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said. He rolled a cigarette across the width of his mouth without using his hands. I followed him. I’d follow anyone who can do that.

  Harvey was sitting in an olive-drab station-wagon. Across the front of it was painted ‘Keep your distance’ in mirror writing. We drove through the humid night and things flew into the beam of the headlights. We headed north—away from the city on US 281 as far as State Highway 46. At Bergheim—three houses and a gas station—we turned on to one of those narrow tracks that don’t even get a farm road numeral. The driver took the road carefully as it dipped and turned, and forded rivers that shone like a newly tarred road and roared and pounded against the floor. Large animals, drinking, bounded back into the undergrowth, blinded by our lights. At one curve in the road the driver stopped and flashed his main beams. A torch flashed. We drove slowly to where a sentry stood. He shone his hand-lamp into the car and then, without speaking, opened the gate across a side road. In the flow of the headlights I read the notice, ‘Department of Agriculture Experimental Station. Animal traps dangerous to you are set in this area. Proceed no further.’ Then there was a skull and cross-bones and the word ‘Danger’ very large. The signs were repeated every ten yards. We drove two hundred yards and then the driver switched a dashboard control marked ‘garage doors’ which sent a radio recognition signal to the second compound. The sentry there came out and flashed his lamp around, and then we entered a high steel-mesh fence that said ‘Department of Agriculture. YOU are in danger. Do not move. Shout for assistance, there is a game warden near to you. Danger 600 volts.’ The signs were illuminated by spot-lights which marked the fence-lines for miles in each direction.

  ‘Welcome to Texas,’ said Harvey.

  The Brain was three buildings that looked single-storey from outside but they went deep into the rocky hillside. Tinted glass filtered the bright morning sunlight and powered swivel shutters excluded it at will. Harvey was dressed in a khaki uniform with colonel’s insignia on the collar. On his sleeve there was a red Facts for Freedom patch.

  We walked past the Brain along a chalky white cart-track. Here and there on the hillside I could see sheep and goats grazing among the wild flowers and stunted trees. High above a trio of hawks faltered on the rising air and the only sound was the scraping of insects.

  Harvey said, ‘All Midwinter personnel come here for training in intelligence work. Some are management development students, they are between
twenty-eight and thirty-six years old and they stay here for fifteen weeks. Some are Advanced Management students between thirty-seven and fifty. Their course lasts thirteen weeks. At least eight per cent of them have previous intelligence experience, although we do recruit direct from other commercial organizations (especially ones that Midwinter has an interest in) and sometimes even from college. They learn staightforward administration applied to intelligence work. We show them some of the dirty tricks, but it’s pretty elementary because none of those boys are likely to be used in any sort of field work. They don’t get much more out of it than they would from reading a James Bond paperback, but it makes them understand a few of the problems the field men face. So that one day when they are sitting on their fat butts in Frankfurt or Langley and some poor guy’s written seven point nine two centimetre automatic rifle instead of seven point nine two millimetre, they won’t want to fire him for bad writing. Jesus it’s hot. Well that’s the gut course,* so they are called gut-men. The Operations students—the field men—are called spitballs around here. There’s a spitball course going through now, you’ll join it for a couple of days.’ Harvey scrambled up some roughly cut foot-holds, held on to a gnarled grey tree and offered me his other hand. At first sight this was like English countryside, but close to where you could see the baked cracked topsoil, the dead convoluted trees, bleached stones like animal skulls and huge pear cactus in bright yellow flower, close to the land was hard, dry and pitiless.

  Harvey helped me up and pointed to a concrete runway just below us. ‘That’s the strip. We call that Longhorn Valley, so that’s Longhorn Strip. We can’t get a large plane in there of course, but it’s useful having our own field sometimes.’ He looked at his watch. ‘The hill we are on is called Loving Alto. Alto is Mex for a bald-top hill and Loving was an old trail boss who first named it.’ Harvey sank down into the parched grass. On the hillside facing us I could see four turkey vultures scavenging in the carcass of a raccoon. ‘Gee it’s good to feel that hot sun,’ said Harvey. A line of furry caterpillars played follow my leader across the path. Harvey looked at his watch. ‘Above where the river shines,’ he said. Out of the drone of insect life around us I could distinguish the sound of an aeroplane engine. I followed his pointed finger and saw the plane, not very high above the horizon.