A Dandy in Aspic

by Derek Marlowe

“Follow us downstairs. I want you to see something.” Eberlin turned and joined the group.

  “It’s a photo,” Frazer said, “a photo of Krasnevin.”

  Eberlin stopped deadstill and turned his back on the men and went cold. It suddenly struck him with awesome simplicity. They know. It’s all a gigantic trap. They know he’s Krasnevin. They’ve known all the time. The invitation to Selvers, all the people here, the scrutiny. It’s all a ridiculous trap, a macabre game. They don’t want him to do anything at all, not to go to Berlin, not to find Krasnevin. Because they’ve found him. He’s standing on the terrace with them, smoking their cigarettes. My God, they know.

  “Come along, Eberlin, there’s a good chap,” said Quince sweetly. “It’s only downstairs.” And Quince put his hand on his shoulder and led Eberlin into the house.

  He walked dumbly, his mind filled with a thousand things, a mad desire to run away and be caught in five minutes by the others or by the dogs. He had been so innocent, so unsuspecting, so damn innocent. Gatiss himself had told him not to trust anyone, no one at all, and here he was, being led by this grinning, ridiculous clown on his right, into the web, ready to be eaten.

  “Mind how you go, because there are a few steps. That’s it.”

  His footsteps resounded loudly in the narrow corridor, down steep stone steps toward an open door at the bottom.

  “Just in here. There we are. Just here.”

  He was in a low cellar, lit only by three angle-poise lamps on small tables, and empty except for a screen and half a dozen folding chairs. Frazer was standing by the screen, talking quietly to Flowers, ignoring Eberlin. They didn’t even look at him; they were that sure. The door was closed behind him. This was it.

  “Take a seat. We won’t be a minute,” Quince said and hurried over to Frazer and whispered something to him. Eberlin, perched on the hard narrow chair, studied the three faces before the screen for any sign of their intentions. There were none. Flowers said something and the other two men glanced over at Eberlin, then looked away. Finally Flowers and Quince sat one on each side of him, Quince offering him a chocolate which he refused, and Fraser said:

  “The film of Krasnevin reached our files only recently. I think you might find it very interesting, Eberlin.”

  He nodded to a projectionist hidden in the darkness. There was a whirr of machinery, and the six-by-four screen was suddenly filled with white light, and then reversed numbers, and then, the film shaking as if taken by a hand-held camera, a zoom shot of the London Transport bus terminal at Victoria. The screen was blotted out momentarily by a bus passing across it, and then the camera, shooting wild and low, was focusing across the rows of people queueing at respective stops, into the taxi rank, and attempting to pick out a man emerging from the depths of the railway station itself. Eberlin’s heart raced. The lighting had been bad and the figure was blurred and hazy, then suddenly it came into the light and the camera cut in closer and onto the face and the picture froze. The man’s head turned, one hand a streak of gray as if he had been hailing a taxi, and Eberlin stared at the enlarged, black and white, still face before him on the screen and his heart sank, and he wanted to rip the film from the wall and attack the men in the room and rush out. He was sweating profusely under his clothes and he was angry and hemmed in and frightened. He ought to have shouted out but he didn’t. He sat there and said nothing. He couldn’t speak. He had to keep quiet. For he had underestimated them. All the careful planning and cover was breaking apart. The face before him, unmistakable, terrifyingly clear, belonged to Pavel.

  6

  Pavel

  Could the carpenter who constructed Christ’s cross

  have conceivably been called Joseph?

  –ALEXANDER EBERLIN

  “WHAT about the one with that squiggle on top?”

  “Oh. Let me see…. Coffee I think. Yes, coffee.”

  “No…. What about this one?”

  “Diamond?”

  “Yes. I suppose so.”

  “That’s nougat, sir.”

  “Oh. Well, I’ll try it then.”

  “Yes. It’s nougat. There’s another underneath.”

  Half an hour had passed and they were sitting in the long room again, curtains drawn around the table once more. The Four Musketeers. Eberlin was asked if he wanted another chocolate and he said he didn’t and then he said he really didn’t. The chocolates lay in their box in the center of the table, the only occupant, discussed, revered, elevated like a host. Quince, nose shining, bounced his exclamations from one to another, the inside of his fingers deep brown from chocolate tasting. Suddenly Frazer looked across at Eberlin, seeing him sitting there, quiet, a reluctant onlooker to the feast.

  “Not a great sweet eater, I see.”

  “Not a great sweet eater,” replied Eberlin.

  “Well, it’s just a small break after talking for half an hour. I hope you feel more confident about tackling Krasnevin. Do you think you can handle it?”

  “I think I might surprise you.”

  “Good. Good. Well, we ought to go through your cover now.” Frazer crossed the room to a chair and brought over a thin black briefcase with the initials R.R.F. embossed on the front, and set it down on the table, pushing the chocolates aside. Unlocking it, he pulled out a sheaf of neatly typed papers, classified SEC.55F and carboned twice. The words CONFIDENTIAL and TOP PRIORITY were stamped on each page, which were forty-three in number. He handed a carbon copy to Eberlin and set one before himself.

  “All you will need to know is there, but I’ll run over the salient points now in case there are any questions. As you see from the first page, you will be traveling under the name of ‘George Dancer’ and your occupation is Agency Supervisor for National Oil. You are in Berlin on your three-week holiday, and since you are interested in cars, are going to make a special point of watching the Berlin Grand Prix which takes place on the Avus on Saturday the twenty-ninth of August. Two weeks’ time. You are unmarried and will be staying at the Kliest Hotel in Leitzenburgerstrasse. Modest room. I’d like to put you in the Kempinski, but neither we nor Dancer could afford it. All right so far?”

  “What exactly does an agency supervisor do?”

  “Nothing much really as I understand. The Agency works on this principle: an oil firm will control a number of garages throughout England, say, and any commercial company whose lorries obtain petrol from these particular garages can have a contract with the oil firm concerned. This means that the drivers do not pay for their petrol in cash but sign an invoice, which is then sent to the Agency. The Agency then reimburses the garage and charges the company. Pure paper work done by a lot of wretched clerks. The supervisor therefore looks after the clerks, answers the phone and answers queries, bad debts, etc. It’s all there. Page five, I think. No, page six. Beginning second paragraph. By the way, there is a real George Dancer, who is an agency supervisor, but he’s happily in Majorca now on our money. So no trouble there.”

  “How much does he get paid?”

  “Ten fifty a year thereabouts. Clerks get seven fifty. That’s there too. Of course the difficulty of this cover is that you have only three weeks, but I want that to be sufficient. If there’s no joy after that time, you come back to England and we think again. Here is your passport. It’s seven years old and your occupation is listed as Accountant since you were promoted only five years ago. As you see, you’ve been to France twice, in ’59 and ’60, and Berlin once in ’61, but only for one week.

  Eberlin flicked over the pages of the passport, then put it aside and lit a cigarette. He now had three names. The permutations were infinite. The maze terrifyingly committing. The Eberlin Trinity. “How much do you pay for your suits, sir?”

  It was Flowers’ voice once more, scrutinizing him.

  Eberlin raised his eyebrows and turned toward him. Flowers continued:

  “How much, sir? A man like Dancer couldn’t afford clothes like that. You will have to wear something cheaper and not so well cut.”
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  “I do not possess a suit that is cheaper or not so well cut, Colonel,” Eberlin replied. Frazer smiled. “But I appreciate your questions. I am less of a fool than you think and will dress the part, however demoralizing.”

  There was a brief pause, then Eberlin turned back to Frazer. “How do I contact you, sir?”

  “Simply by writing letters, airmail, to a girl friend. We’ve chosen Vogler and you will write love letters, New Code D5, to her at her private address. The first one, of course, should be harmless so that we can see if it has been tampered with on its way over. Sorry about the love letter bit, but Dancer would do it. Anyway, Vogler will write back. Here’s a snapshot of her for you to keep in your wallet.”

  He passed over a small photograph of Heather Vogler, standing in a bikini on a beach–Eberlin recognized it as Brighton–smiling into the camera shyly, one hand posed on her left hip. It was gauche and self-conscious, but Eberlin liked it. She was really rather a sweet girl and he suddenly remembered her standing naked in his room, hopping on one leg and pulling off a pair of white nylon pants, two nights before. He wondered if he had dreamed it. He had been drunk. What a hell of a weekend.

  “Here are a couple of old letters we asked Vogler to write to you, and in one she talks about your first night together–her idea–so assume you are lovers. The letters are dated six months and four months ago when you went north to Glasgow on business.”

  The letters were passed across the table, and Eberlin tried to envisage Vogler sitting down at a desk trying to make up billets-doux to nobody. He wondered who she had in mind when she wrote them. As a model. Gatiss? Good God, he hoped not.

  “If we are lovers, I mean Dancer and Vogler,” Eberlin inquired, “Why isn’t she in Berlin with me?”

  “Impossible. You both had a row about it but she is an actress and is committed to finishing a film. Of course there’s always a chance she could join you for the last couple of days. That’s up to you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now. Company-stamped ball pen, two old theatre tickets and a few visiting cards. Couple of other character pieces and a checkbook. By the way, we’re going to allow you an emergency fund of six thousand dollars but don’t touch it unless you really have to. Are you happy so far?”

  Eberlin nodded. He was stalling his plans, for he had none. He had decided for the present to wait till Berlin before he made a move in whatever direction seemed more favorable. The Wall seemed a perfect symbol for his state of mind.

  “Any more questions?” asked Frazer.

  They talked there for another two hours until it began to get cold and Eberlin’s stomach begged to be fed. And then, eyes pained by the concentration and the smoke, he said good-bye to the others and went downstairs and outside to the quadrangle for the last time. The chauffeur was waiting by the Zodiac, leaning against the hood, legs crossed, smoking. He jumped up as he saw Eberlin and hurried to open the rear door.

  “I’ve been asked to drive you the whole way, sir.”

  Eberlin paused, one hand on the roof, the other on the side of the door and looked at the chauffeur.

  “You mean all the way to London?”

  “Yes, sir. If that suits you, sir.”

  “Well it’ll save me ten shillings.”

  He glanced back at the building around him and saw that Gatiss’s Jensen was still there, but the trunk was closed and the wheels straight. He had driven somewhere and returned during the last two hours. That reminded him.

  “Oh,” smiled Eberlin, holding the door, “I’d better see your papers.”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  The chauffeur took out a wallet from his inside pocket and held it in front of him. Eberlin checked the photo with the face and nodded, smiling.

  “You’d better see mine as well. For the record,” and he showed his own identity card and then sat back in the seat and the door was closed.

  The chauffeur turned the car smartly into the center of the gravel square and then headed it out through the arch and on, fast, toward London. The whole journey took place in silence and Eberlin spent it in going over the events of the day in his head, and planning his own moves and counter-moves. If any. Only once was his thinking disturbed. And that was when, just north of Frant on the A267, a steel-blue Jensen with a dented fender roared past, cutting in fine in front of the Zodiac, then roaring on ahead, the blond-haired driver impassive behind the wheel, roaring away up the road and disappearing, a blue speck, into the distance.

  * * *

  Arriving in London, Eberlin told the driver to drop him at Grumble’s Restaurant in Churton Street–he almost said Wheeler’s–where, like a just-released convict, he ordered too much, left half of it, and finished it off with a cup of coffee that nearly decoated the lining of his stomach. He had never cared much for the High Mass of coffee, preferring the instant cares of Maxwell House to anything else. Once he had been invited to dinner by a young high-liver in Security called Palmer, and suffered the full ritual of grinding, pouring, repouring, settling, percolating and stirring in varying degrees, until he was allowed to participate in the Communion of it all, a penitent at the rail, parched, self-conscious and unconvinced. Gathered in his rapidly overflowing file of public bores, a file that included such stalwarts as The Young Banner-Thumping Socialist (plus Partner), cheek to cheek with The Earnest Pop-Art Intellectual, The Turnip-head Bigot and that classic The Proud Husband, he had allotted a prominent niche for The Self-Confessed Connoisseur. It was all too much.

  Sitting, satiated and despairing, in the small half-lit restaurant, he considered his role as Dancer. He would have to get in touch with Pavel that night. That, at least, was on the cards, pontooned by The Circean Pig, the chosen code name of his operation. For fifteen minutes they had sat in the cellar of Selvers trying to think of a name for the project. It was a customary procedure and the company, all excepting Eberlin, had gone about it like prospective parents with a Name Book. They must have suggested a hundred names, beginning with childish glee, then moving to individual possessiveness over words like Falcon and Hereward and Valiant and other words advertising their military and public school upbringing. Flowers had suggested a whole range of battle names but had been squashed as the discussion turned into a row about military tactics. To Eberlin it had all seemed absurd and he had said that he would prefer it if the operation were anonymous. Hot cries of indignation smattered the air and phrases like “unethical” and “unprecedented” and “traditional” were hurled at him, and he realized once again that he was not of British stock. Finally they gave up and had to resort to the Greek Myths, the eternal source-book for Code Classification. Just as they were frantically searching their memories for an unused god or hero, Gatiss had entered like the leading actor on his cue and had said, “There were some voyagers, employees of Odysseus, who visited a foreign island and were turned into swine. Call it the Circean Pig,” and had left, closing the door–and striding upstairs. A blue pencil was found and the phrase was scrawled in capitals on page one of Eberlin’s file. It was Operation Circean Pig. All were content. Eberlin paid the bill, left the restaurant quickly, took a taxi straight home to South Street, and in ten minutes discovered that his rooms had been searched.

  * * *

  At 8:17 P.M., just as Eberlin was deliberating whether to contact Pavel forcibly, the phone rang. He took it in the bedroom, closed the door, sat on the bed.

  “Hello?”

  There was a brief pause, then the voice, faint and slightly blurred, drunk or perhaps disguised, asked:

  “Kidner?”

  “Who?” replied Eberlin. “Who’s that? Is that Kidner?”

  “I’m afraid there’s no one called Kidner here.”

  A silence and Eberlin could hear contemplative breathing.

  “I want to speak to Kidner.”

  “I’m sorry you must have–”

  “Is that not Mayfair 1128?”

  “No. This is not Mayfair 1128. You have the wrong number, it seems.”
>
  “Oh, that’s constantly occurring. Sorry to have bothered you.”

  “That’s all right.”

  Eberlin put down the receiver, lit a cigarette, walked out of the bedroom, poured a drink and picked up the TV papers, turning to the day’s viewing. Outside it had begun to rain. Kidner, he thought.

  * * *

  Later, Eberlin was sitting sprawled in an armchair, slightly drunk now, staring at the television screen on a small table in one corner of the room. His feet were crossed, slippered, and resting on a small paisley-covered footstool, while one hand clutched a glass of warm Pernod and the other hovered over the RECORD button of a small tape recorder. Benign, powdered by makeup girls, cleancollared and self-conscious, the Reverend A. J. Kidner, all black and white and rehearsed, stared out into the room through the nineteeninch screen, declaiming the Epilogue, tempered and fashioned by a dozen hands of dubious beliefs.

  At eleven twenty-eight precisely, the program having begun on time, Eberlin started the tape recorder.

  And if Christ returned to earth today, would He be surprised at what He saw around Him? The incredible progress of man in the fields of science and technology, and in the fields of the arts, of architecture, of fashion? Would He, this first-century son of a carpenter, be surprised? Of course He would not. For being the Son of God, man is predictable to Him and He, brethren, should be predictable to us. There are no secrets about His love for us. It–

  A click and the Reverend A. J. Kidner was reduced to a dot. Eberlin then rewound the tape and played it back at a slower speed in order to decode the words more easily. In three minutes, he had written in pencil on a piece of paper:

  STAY ALONE DO NOT CONTACT REPEAT SEVER LINK TEMPORARILY DORMOUSE

  The paper was destroyed and the tape wiped clean and then Eberlin, insolently defiant, put on his shoes and overcoat and left the flat and ran out into the rain, surprised by it. He found he had to walk to the Hilton Hotel in order to get a taxi, and only then by tipping a florin to the commissionaire, who said “Thank you, sir” and offered the shelter of an umbrella large enough to contain a circus.