Billion-Dollar Brain

by Len Deighton

  The bartender said, ‘What you think of the show?’ He gave me my drink and a membership card. I said, ‘It’s like eating chocolate with the wrapper still on.’

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ said the bartender. He nodded.

  I said, ‘Did you have a blonde girl in here about nine thirty?’

  ‘Hey is your name Dempsey?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. He passed me a note that was propped behind a bottle of Long John. The note said, ‘Urgent Sachmeyer’s’, then there was an address over in the Mexican sector near the expressway. It was written in lipstick. As I put the note in my pocket the door swung open and two military policemen came into the bar. Their white caps and batons shone in the soft light reflected from the stripper’s flesh. They watched the girl for a moment, walked softly behind the row of men at the bar, then slid gently and silently into the street.

  ‘Your doll?’ asked the bartender. He didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Great doll.’

  ‘Yes,’I said.

  ‘See my name is Callaghan from the old country,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well I’m going to move along now.’

  ‘She’s a joker that girl of yours. Her friend came in and said “Reach for the sky” and pretended he had a gun and she played along with him right up to the time they left together. He was making all kinds of gags too. She wrote that note while pretending to look in her handbag. They’re real crazy friends, your friends. I like a sense of humour. You can’t get along without it. Especially in my job. Why take just the other day…hey, you didn’t finish your Jack Daniels.’

  The address Signe had written was south of Milam Square. Behind the Banana and Produce Company a derelict building was a-flutter with torn posters, ‘First choice for District Judge Papa Schwartz’, ‘Re-elect Sanders to legislature’, ‘Free parking for Funeral Home’. The streets were jammed tight with narrow shop fronts and grimy cafés. Religious statuettes and rat-traps shared a shop-window with dog-eared movie magazines and loaded dice. I found the shop I wanted; an open Bible and a quote from it in Spanish written across the glass in white-wash. A large plastic sign in the doorway said ‘Sachmeyer. Dentist. First Floor up. Go up.’ I went up.

  There was a big plain-fronted wooden door with a sign that said ‘Come in’. It was locked. I felt along the ledge at the top of the door and sure enough the key was there. I let myself in. The first room was a waiting-room, a ramshackle place where grey stuffing oozed from knife slashes across the plastic seats. I went into the surgery. It was a large room, with two windows, which flashed with neon from the sign outside. The neon sign made little clicks as it changed colour. In the alternate pink and blue light I saw trays full of forceps and scalers, mouth lamps, mirrors and drills and two trolleys with more of them. There was an X-ray machine, rolls of cotton wool balanced upon the water-heater, matrix holders and impression trays, and small glass shelves smiling with false teeth. There was a huge adjustable chair with one of those disc lamps above it. In the dentist chair there was a man. His body slumped lifelessly like a torn rag doll. His head had slipped out of the supports and his hands almost touched the floor. He was a large man with a hooked nose and a deep-lined, worried-looking face. From his mouth crawled a long, dead centipede of dried blood. He was pink and then blue and then pink and then blue. A motor-cycle cop with his siren on went roaring along the elevated expressway that was level with the surgery window. The siren died away into the hot distant night. I went close to the body. In the lapel there was an enamel badge with the FFF symbol. I don’t know how long I remained staring at him but I was disturbed by the noise of voices in the waiting-room. I picked up a dental chisel and resolved to sell my life dearly.

  ‘Liam. Is that you, darling?’ It was Signe’s voice.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, hoarsely.

  ‘What are you doing in the dark, dearest?’ she said, swinging into the room and switching all the lights on. Harvey was right behind her.

  ‘We were waiting for you downstairs,’ he said. ‘Didn’t expect you would prefer it up here with the molars.’ He laughed as though that was a particularly witty thing to say. There was another man behind Harvey who took off his jacket and slipped into a white coat. ‘I don’t think I’d better join you,’ he said in a heavy German accent. ‘This fellow will be coming round any moment now.’

  Signe said, ‘Look at Liam’s face.’

  ‘Thought you’d discovered a vile plot?’ Harvey asked flippantly.

  ‘Dr Sachmeyer does the teeth of the American students at the Brain,’ Signe said. ‘You can spot a man’s nationality from looking at his dental work. Dr Sachmeyer has to give them European mouths.’

  ‘I’m starved,’ said Harvey. ‘Shall we have Chinese food or Mexican? Git along.’ He pointed his fingers like pistols and Signe raised her hands. ‘Dinner on me,’ said Harvey. ‘Maverick limey has negotiated the hell-fire of the Brain and the almighty trail-boss Midwinter has summoned him for a special assignment.’

  ‘What sort of assignment?’ I asked.

  ‘Assignment Danger. Da-da-da-di-da-da,’ said Harvey, imitating the opening chords of a TV serial.

  ‘What kind of danger?’ I asked although I had already decided that Harvey was a little drunk.

  ‘Being with the duchess,’ said Harvey, indicating Signe who struck him playfully. I had the idea that they had been quarrelling and hadn’t quite made it up.

  ‘That’s the kind of danger I can handle,’ I said.

  Harvey’s hunger got the better of him only fifty yards down the street and even though Signe was keen to go downtown Harvey had his way. It was a wide-open Mexican restaurant where the menu was painted across the window. The TV high in the corner was tuned to KWEX and the Spanish commentator was getting as frantic as the fighters. Below the screen, oblivious of the carnage, sat a group of downtowners radiating Guerlain and Old Spice and mixing with real people. Harvey ordered the complex Mexican food and it arrived promptly.

  Harvey was clowning around pretending to be a gunman, which was his way of being sarcastic to me. Signe was being reserved and held my arm tightly all the time, as though she was frightened of Harvey.

  ‘What are you fidgeting around for?’ Harvey asked her.

  ‘It’s so hot in here. Do you think I could go to the powder room and take off my girdle?’ she said.

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Harvey. ‘Have a good time,’ but Signe didn’t move. She was staring at me.

  The word ‘girdle’ solved a problem. The man in the dentist’s chair was the hook-nosed girdle salesman, Fragolli, who had been our contact in Leningrad. He didn’t know anything about America. How could he possibly have American dentistry? Harvey and Signe had hustled me out of there too quickly.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said midway through a mouthful of frijoles. ‘You two have been kidding me.’ I got up from the table.

  Signe grabbed my arm tightly. ‘Don’t leave,’ she said.

  ‘You both lied,’ I said.

  Signe looked at me with a wide-eyed look of sadness. ‘Stay here,’ she said and touched my fingers and stroked them. The TV boxers jabbed and parried.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  She lifted my hand and put the fingertips into her soft half-open mouth. I pulled my hand away from her.

  One of the men at the corner table was saying ‘…name of an island where the most potent forces of nature were first revealed to man; that’s why they call the swimsuit a bikini,’ and the downtowners all laughed. I hurried into the street.

  Lighted shops painted yellow patches on the pavement and huddles of men stood here and there talking, arguing and gambling. The shop lights illuminated them as though they were valuable items on display in a museum. There was a curious all-enveloping blueness that nights in the tropics have, and on the air was the sweet smell of cumin and hot chilli. I hurried back the way we had come, splashing through the puddles of yellow light and past a shop full of tiny blue boxers fighting a vicious silent war. I brushed through a group of Mexica
ns and broke into a run. Past the Bible in the window I swung into the doorway of Sachmeyer’s and up the stairs. At the waiting-room door there was a man in shirt-sleeves fanning himself with a straw hat. Under his arm was a heavy shoulder-holster and behind him in the doorway stood a policeman in blue shirt, bow tie, white crash helmet and riding breeches.

  ‘What’s the hurry?’ said the tall cop.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said. To a policeman an immediate answer is a sure sign of guilt.

  The man with the straw hat put it on his head and produced a lighted cigar from nowhere. He inhaled. ‘Dead punk in the dentist’s chair. Now you answer one o’ mine. Who in the name of Christ are you?’ A siren grew very loud. There was a yelp of tyres outside.

  ‘I’m an English reporter,’ I said. ‘I’m gathering local colour.’

  Two more cops came clattering up the stairs with drawn guns. The switched-off siren was taking a long time to die. One of the cops behind me on the stairs put an arm-lock on me. The detective with the cigar spoke in the same unhurried voice. ‘Take this guy down to the station house. Show him a little local colour. Maybe he’ll tell you how he gets to know about murders in the city before you do.’

  ‘It’s just local colour I’m after,’ I said. ‘Not contusions.’

  The blades of the siren were still making a very low groan. The detective said, ‘Take it easy with the limey, we don’t want Scotland Yard horning in on the case.’ All the policemen laughed loudly. That detective must have been at least a captain.

  The prowl-car boys handed me downstairs and gave me the hands-flat-against-the-roof-of-the-car routine while they frisked me. I stared into the blinding glare of the revolving light. Behind me I heard Harvey’s voice say, ‘Hello, Bernie,’ and the voice of the detective said, ‘Hi, Harv.’ They were both being very relaxed. A bumper sticker on the police car said, ‘Your safety: our business.’

  Harvey said, ‘This is one of our boys, Bernie. The General wants me to send him to New York tonight.’

  The cop finished frisking me and said, ‘Get in the car.’

  The detective said, ‘If the General’s gonna be responsible for him…see I might wanna see him again.’

  ‘Sure sure sure,’ said Harvey. ‘Listen, I’ve been with him for nearly three hours, Bern.’

  ‘OK,’ said the detective. ‘But you are kinda running up a backlog in my favour account.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, Bernie. I’ll talk to the General ’bout that.’

  ‘Do that,’ said the detective. I was glad that it was so near election time. He shouted to the two cops to turn me over to Harvey.

  ‘Come back and finish your frijoles,’ said Harvey. ‘That’s how people get indigestion, jumping around like that in the middle of the meal.’

  ‘It isn’t indigestion I’m frightened of,’ I said.

  SECTION 7

  New York

  Hey diddle dinkety, poppety, pet, The merchants of London they wear scarlet, Silk in the collar and gold in the hem, So merrily march the merchant men.

  NURSERY RHYME

  Chapter 20

  Five o’clock in the morning. Manhattan was blue with cold. In the hot lushness of southern Texas it had been easy to imagine that summer had arrived, but thirty seconds in New York City corrected that illusion. I was moving through midtown Manhattan in General Midwinter’s chauffeur-driven Cadillac—the one with leopard-skin seats. Five o’clock is the top dead centre of the Manhattan night. Just for one hour the city is inert. The hearses have been brought up to the doors of the city hospitals but they haven’t yet begun to load. The last cinema on Forty-Second Street has closed and even the billiard rooms have racked the cues and shut down. The cabs have vanished but the office cleaners haven’t appeared. The fancy restaurants are closed but the coffee counters aren’t open. The last wino has curled into newspaper and stretched out on the last bench in Battery Park. Down in Washington Produce Market they are huddled round the oil-drum fires. The news desks have released their radio cars, it’s so cold even muggers have stayed at home, to the regret of patrolmen longing to thaw their ears in the precinct house. The city’s seventy thousand wild cats have pounced upon pigeons in Riverside Park or Norwegian wharf rats in Washington Market and now they too are asleep under the long line of still cars. Even the Spanish-speaking radio stations are subdued. The only movement is compressed steam roaring along at three hundred miles an hour under the roadways, escaping now and again with a spectral puff, and the shuffle of wet newspapers as far as the eye can see down the long, long streets to the bloodshot dawn.

  The car followed Broadway all the way to Wall Street, stopping outside a glass cliff that reflected the smaller buildings as though they were trapped inside it. A thin, shirtless man with a pistol and squeaky shoes unlocked the glass door, relocked it and led the way to a bank of lifts that were labelled ‘Express 41 to 50 only’. The man with the pistol chewed gum meditatively and spoke quietly as people do at night. ‘It’s wonderful ain’t it,’ he said. ‘Modern Science.’ He pushed the lift button for the third time.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s just a matter of time before the machines are pressing buttons to call people.’

  He repeated that to himself as the doors closed him out of sight. The lift moved fast enough to make my ears pop and the numbers flicked like Bingo results. It arrived with a ding. A man stood there in white trousers and a sweat shirt that said ‘Midwinter Mining Athletic Team’ across the front of it. ‘S’way feller,’ he said, and walked down the corridor making cracking noises by flicking a white towel against the air. At the end of the corridor there was a gymnasium. In the exact centre of it, cycling methodically, was General Midwinter. ‘Come here boy,’ he called. He was wearing a large pair of white shorts, a white singlet and white cotton gloves. ‘You made good time.’ He said it as if speaking to a packing case, pleased by the efficiency of his organization and transport. ‘I hear you felt the strain a little on my Active Course.’ He looked at me and winked. ‘I’m cycling from New York to Houston,’ he said.

  ‘Five and three-quarters,’ said the man from the Midwinter Mining Athletic Team. Midwinter pedalled in silence for a moment or two, then he said, ‘Keep yourself fit boy. Healthy mind in a healthy body. Get rid of that surplus weight.’

  ‘I’m happy the way I am,’ I said. Midwinter stared at his handlebars. ‘Self-indulgence goes hand in hand with titillation and pornography. Makes a country soft. These are weapons of Communism.’ His forehead was moist with his exertions.

  ‘The Russians hate pornography,’ I said.

  ‘For themselves,’ said Midwinter. He was puffing a little now. ‘For themselves,’ he said again and waggled a finger at me. It was about this time that I realized that Midwinter’s winks were nervous twitches. He said, ‘They used to build ships of wood and men of iron. Now they build ships of iron and men of wood.’

  ‘The Russians?’

  ‘No, not the Russians,’ said Midwinter.

  The man in the athletic-team vest said, ‘Six miles exactly, General Midwinter.’ Midwinter climbed off the exercise machine, careful not to give away an extra inch. He reached behind him for a towel without looking to see if it was there. The man in the athletic-team vest made sure it was there, then he put a rubber glove over Midwinter’s cotton-clad false hand. Midwinter walked across to the locker room and disappeared into the showers. There was a noise of the water and Midwinter’s loud voice said, ‘There are only two sorts of mind left today. Either you are going to have everything done for you by the Government, like you are some sort of invalid. Either you are going to have everything from diapers to Derbys made in some state factory and your body’ll wind up on some dump where they make fertilizer…’

  I said, ‘Spending my afterlife as fertilizer is the least of my problems.’ Either Midwinter didn’t hear or didn’t choose to. His voice went on, ‘…or you believe that everyone is free to fight for what he believes is right.’ The sound of the water stopped but Midwinter didn’t
quieten his voice. ‘That’s what I believe. Luckily there’s an awakening in this country of ours and a lot of other people are declaring that’s what they believe too.’ There was a silence, and when Midwinter appeared again he was in a white bath-robe. He stripped the rubber glove from his cotton-clad hand with a sucking sound, and threw it to the floor.

  ‘I’m interested in facts,’ Midwinter said.

  ‘Are you? Not many people are nowadays.’

  Midwinter spoke in a soft voice as though he was cutting me in on a very special deal. ‘A Gallup Poll found that eighty-one per cent of Americans preferred nuclear war to Communism. In Britain only twenty-one per cent felt that way. Red-blooded Americans are rallying to anti-Communist leaders; no time now for internal arguments. The USA must double its spending on armaments. We must get an effective military satellite into orbit and the Russkies had better know we’ll use it—we mustn’t fritter away the lead as we did with the atomic bomb—we must double our expenditure right away.’ He looked at me and did that nervous twitch with his eye. ‘Got me?’

  ‘I get you,’ I said. ‘It’s that same America that broke away from George the Third because sixty thousand pounds was too much to pay towards the cost of the military. But even if what you suggest is a good idea, won’t the USSR just go ahead and double her arms budget too?’

  Midwinter patted me on the arm. ‘Maybe. But we spend ten per cent of our gross national product at present. We could double that without suffering; but the USSR already spends twenty per cent of her gross national product. If she doubles that, boy, she will crack. Get me: she’ll crack. Europe’s got to stop hiding behind Uncle Sam’s nuclear power. Get some of those teddy boys into uniform; get tough. Close ranks, hit them hard. Get me?’

  ‘From where I’m sitting it sounds dangerous,’ I said.