Mexico Set

by Len Deighton

‘Where will you meet your friend?’ I said.

  The boy looked at me long enough to let me know I was asking too many questions, but he answered. ‘Theo decided to head back home. He left his back-pack with us. He didn’t want to go on down to Acapulco.’

  ‘That’s tough,’ I said.

  ‘Those manzanillo trees really burn a piece out of you, man.’

  ‘I’ll watch out for them,’ I said.

  ‘Do that,’ said the boy. The rocks here were volcanic, teeth riddled with cavities so that the sea gurgled and gulped and vented spray that hissed before falling back, in a flash of fluorescent light, on to the sharp, black molars.

  ‘Thanks for the cigarettes,’ the girl said very quietly as we moved away. There was another girl alongside here. She put her arm round the girl who’d been crying and, as we moved away, she said, ‘Try and go to sleep, Betty. Tomorrow we must move on.’

  Werner and I strolled back along the beach and then got into the little pick-up truck. It had four-wheel drive and had managed the final section of road without much trouble. Werner had borrowed it. He had an amazing ability to get almost anything at any time anywhere. I didn’t ask where it had come from. He looked at his watch. ‘Stinnes should be here any minute,’ he said.

  ‘A man like that is usually early,’ I said.

  ‘If you’ve got any doubts…’

  ‘No, we’ll hang on.’

  ‘Did you wonder who those people were on the beach? Did you guess they were hippies?’

  ‘I’m still wondering,’ I said. I could taste the salt spray on my lips and I polished my glasses again to get rid of the marks.

  ‘What the girl was crying about? Is that what you’re wondering?’

  ‘Six people back-packing through miles of scrub but there’s seven packs?’

  ‘One belongs to the kid who went looking for the clinic. Hell, you know the crazy things people do.’

  ‘An injured kid abandons his back-pack? That’s like saying he’s abandoned all his belongings.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Werner.

  ‘And the other six carry an extra back-pack? How do you do that, Werner? Never mind cutting your way through the scrub at the same time. How do you carry a back-pack when you’re already wearing one? Try it some time.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘If those kids had an extra pack to carry they would take it to pieces and distribute it. More likely – seeing those kids – they would sell it in the local village where a decent pack would get them some stores or something to smoke or whatever they wanted.’

  ‘And the boy had a bad cut on his arm,’ said Werner.

  ‘A bad cut in exactly the right place, Werner, the left forearm. And there were cuts on his hand too. Maybe more cuts under the borrowed T-shirt. The girl was sobbing like her heart was broken. And the other girl was comforting her.’

  ‘Someone had taken a shower bath.’

  ‘Yes, and washed one set of clothes,’ I said. ‘Four men and three girls, sleeping on the beach each night. It’s a recipe for trouble.’

  ‘Why dig for water? There must be water in the village,’ said Werner.

  ‘Sure. And you can bet that Biedermann didn’t start building his house until he found water there.’

  ‘If we’re guessing right, we should tell the police,’ said Werner.

  ‘Oh, sure,’ I said. ‘That’s all we need, the local cops quizzing us all night and walking all over Stinnes and Biedermann too. I can’t think of any surer way of ending any chance of enrolling Stinnes than having him walk into a murder investigation that we’ve made sure coincided exactly with his expected time of arrival.’

  ‘I don’t like the idea of just doing nothing about it,’ said Werner.

  ‘Sometimes, Werner, you amaze me.’

  He didn’t answer. I’d seen him like this before. Werner was in a self-righteous sulk. He thought I should report my suspicions to the police and I had no doubt that he was preparing a lecture to which I would be subjected when he had it word-perfect. We sat in the car, watching the eastern sky lighten and thinking our own thoughts, until, half an hour later, we saw the headlights of two cars bumping along the track towards us.

  Stinnes was in one car and Paul Biedermann in the other. One of the cars had got stuck on the final stretch of bad road. Biedermann opened the gate without more than a mumbled greeting and we all drove up to the house.

  ‘I’m sorry about the locked gate,’ said Biedermann. There had been no formal introductions. It was as if by tacit consent this was to be a meeting that never took place. ‘The servants must have forgotten what I told them.’

  The ‘servants’ were a man and boy who, judging by the state of their boots, had recently arrived by the footpath that I had taken on the previous visit. They gave us mugs of the very sweet coffee made from the sugar-coated coffee beans that Mexicans like. They wore checked shirts and jeans. One of them was little more than a child. I guessed they were also the ‘crew’ of Biedermann’s motor boat. They treated Biedermann with a surly deference that might have been the result of the drunken rages that he was reputed to indulge in. But now Biedermann was sober and withdrawn. The four of us stood on the patio looking at the sun-streaked dawn sky and down to where a forty-foot cabin cruiser was at anchor a hundred metres offshore.

  I took this opportunity to look at Stinnes, and I suppose he was making the most of this chance to study me. It was only his perfect German and the Berlin accent that made it possible for Stinnes to be mistaken for a native Berliner. Such thin, wiry bodies and Slavic faces are common on the streets of Moscow. He’d removed his straw hat and revealed a tall forehead and hair that was thinning enough to show the shape of his skull. His eyes flittered behind small, circular, gold-rimmed spectacles that he now took off to polish while he looked around. He’d been in the sun, and the chin from which he’d shaved a small beard was darkened. But his complexion was sallow and without pigment enough to tan evenly. In the Mexican sun his cheekbones and nose had turned a yellowish brown like the nicotine-stained fingers of a heavy smoker. And his cotton suit – so light in colour as to be almost white – was ill fitting and wrinkled by the car journey. And yet, for all that, Stinnes had the quick intelligent eyes and tough self-confidence that makes a man attractive to his fellow humans.

  ‘Let’s get going,’ said Biedermann impatiently. He was nervous. He made sure he never met my gaze. ‘Leave the coffee. Pedro and his son will make more on the boat if you want it. We’re taking food aboard.’ He fussed about us like a tour guide, leading the way as we went down to the pier. He was telling us to mind the steps and to watch out for the mud or the slippery wooden boards. I looked along the coast to see the hippies on the beach, but it was too far and they were hidden by the rocks. I looked back over my shoulder. Stinnes was at the very rear, picking his way down the steps with exaggerated care, his straw hat, old-fashioned spectacles and creased white suit making him look like a character from Chekhov. Not the muddled, avuncular Chekhov of the Western stage but the cold, arid class enemy that the Soviet theatre depicts.

  The sun was coming through the haze now, its yellowish glare like a melted blob of butter oozing through a tissue-paper wrapping. No one had commented on Werner’s presence, and I was grateful to him for being there. Either they didn’t plan to get rough, or they planned to get so rough that one extra victim would make no difference.

  It was named Maelstrom and was the sort of boat that the Paul Biedermanns of this world love. It stood high out of the water with a top deck used for spotting and an awningcovered stern and a big ‘dentist’s chair’ for the man who was fishing. The lounge was lined with expensive veneering and had a stereo hi-fi, a big TV and a wet bar with refrigerator. Steps up from there gave on to a big ‘bridge’ where a swivel seat provided the captain with a panoramic view through the wrap-around windscreen. There was even a yachting cap with the word ‘captain’ entwined in crossed anchors and embroidered in fine gold wire. But Pedro the
Mexican didn’t wear the captain’s hat; his long greasy hair would have stained it. He sat at the controls like a long-distance bus driver waiting at a depot. He rested on the wheel, toying with a wrapped cheroot that he never lit. There was a cheap transistor radio jammed behind the sun visor. He tuned it to a local station that played only Mexican music, and then turned the volume down so that it couldn’t be heard in the lounge.

  The big engines throbbed with a note so low that the sound was less apparent than the vibrations through the soles of my shoes. Stinnes looked round without much sign of delight or admiration. I suppose it was everything a communist hated. Even a lapsed fascist like me found it a bit too rich.

  ‘Now who would like a drink?’ asked Biedermann, in a voice that had the cheerful vibrancy of the perfect host. He had unlocked the bar and was pulling various bottles of drink from the cupboard. ‘Scotch. Brandy. English gin.’ He held up a bottle and shook it, ‘Robert Brown – that’s Mexican whisky, and if you’ve never tried it it’s quite an experience.’

  Stinnes walked across the lounge and very quietly said, ‘Better if you took Mr Volkmann back up to the house, Paul. If Pedro shows me the controls I can handle the boat.’ It was a typical KGB trick; carefully planned but unexpected. They could not learn spontaneity but they contrived ways to do without it.

  Paul Biedermann looked up at him and blinked. ‘Sure. If that’s the way you want it.’

  ‘It’s the way I want it,’ said Stinnes. He took off his straw hat and smoothed his sparse hair by pressing the flat of his hand against his skull.

  ‘And I’ll take Pedro and his kid too. Or do you want them with you?’ When Stinnes didn’t reply, Biedermann gave a nervous smile and got to his feet. ‘Pedro. Show Mr Stinnes how to manage the boat.’

  I was sitting on the far side of the lounge, watching Biedermann carefully. Either he was scared of Stinnes or it was a very good act. Werner was watching the whole scene too. Typically he was hunched in an armchair with his eyes half closed. It was always like that with Werner; he liked to know everything that was going on, and guess the things he didn’t know. But he liked to look half asleep. Werner would have made a very successful gossip columnist, except that he would have missed a lot of deadlines.

  Stinnes looked at me and, although his expression didn’t change, he waited for me to nod before going up to take over the controls. ‘And, Paul,’ said Stinnes. ‘No drinking, Paul. Better we all kept clear heads.’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ said Paul Biedermann. ‘I just thought some-body…’

  ‘Better lock it away,’ said Stinnes. ‘You take Mr Volkmann up to the house and have more coffee.’

  ‘Before you lock it away,’ I said, ‘leave a little something to one side, would you?’

  I poured myself a good measure of malt whisky from the bottle Biedermann had put aside for me and sipped it neat. I never really trust drinking water anywhere but Scotland; and I’ve never been to Scotland.

  I heard the whine of the electric motor that brought the anchor up and felt the boat wallow as the current took a hold. Through the porthole I could see the dinghy containing Werner and Paul Biedermann and the two Mexicans returning to the pier. It was being tossed about. I wondered if Werner was feeling okay. He hated the sea in any shape or form. It was a notable gesture of friendship that he should offer to come along.

  The engines vibrated right through the boat as Stinnes – sitting upstairs at the controls – increased the revs and engaged the screws. The sound of waves pounding against the hull changed to the noise of water rushing past it, and a large patch of sunlight raced across the veneered bulkhead as Stinnes turned the wheel and headed the boat out to the open sea.

  I let Stinnes play with the controls while I continued to drink my malt and ask myself what I was doing out at sea in this floating Cadillac in the hurricane season with a KGB major at the helm. He pushed up the revs after a few minutes, and soon there was the crash of shipped water spewing across the deck, and the boat heeled over so that green ocean dashed against the glass for long enough to darken the cabin. Stinnes corrected the steering, more gently this time. He was learning. Best to leave him alone for a few minutes.

  I left him for what seemed a long time. By the time I went across the cabin to pour myself a second drink, I had to plant my feet wide apart because the boat was reeling. We’d reached the point where the cool equatorial stream of the Pacific was affected by the very warm summer currents that follow the coast. I held tight to my drink as I went upstairs to where Stinnes was at the controls. The sunlight was behind him, turning his sparse hair into a bright halo and edging his white cotton jacket with a rim of gold. There was the muffled sound of Mexican music coming from the little plastic radio.

  ‘Suppose I take you seriously?’ said Stinnes, greeting my appearance on the bridge. ‘Suppose I say, yes I’d like to defect? Is it some kind of joke? Or are you really able to negotiate?’

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ I said with some alarm. ‘We’re out of sight of land.’ I had to talk loudly to be heard over the noise of the sea and the music from the radio.

  ‘I know what I’m doing,’ said Stinnes. ‘Biedermann has radar and sonar and depth-finding gear and every other luxury.’

  ‘Does he have anything to cure a fatal drowning?’ I said.

  ‘Volkmann says you have some sort of deal,’ said Stinnes. He glanced down at the instruments and rapped the baro-meter with his knuckles.

  ‘Are you just crazy about Mexican music, or are you waiting for a hurricane warning?’ I said. He turned down the volume of the little radio until it was only a whisper heard faintly against the sound of the wind and the throb of the engines. ‘There is a deal,’ I said. ‘Ready and waiting.’

  ‘Why me?’ said Stinnes.

  I’d asked myself that already and got no answer. ‘Why not?’ I said.

  ‘Your government has not sent you all this way without a motive, a good motive.’

  No mention of Dicky Cruyer, I noticed. Did that mean that Dicky was unknown to him? It could be useful. ‘There were other reasons for my being here.’

  He looked at me and his face was blank but I knew he didn’t believe me. He was suspicious, just as I would have been in his place. There could be no half-measures. I would have to work very hard to land this one. He was like me, too damned old and too damned cynical to fall for anything but innocent sincerity or a cynicism even more profound than his own. ‘You are targeted,’ I said. ‘Starred by London as an exceptional enemy agent.’

  The sun was brighter now, coming over his shoulder and falling on the instrument panel so that I could see the controls reflected in the lenses of his spectacles. ‘Is that so?’ His voice was flat, but I had the feeling he believed me and was proud to be starred by London. This was probably the right way to tackle him. It would be like a love affair; and Stinnes had reached that dangerous age when a man was only susceptible to an innocent little cutie or to an experienced floozy. And the stock-in-trade of both was flattery.

  ‘London are like that sometimes,’ I said. ‘They decide they want someone and then it’s rush, rush, rush. I hate this sort of job.’

  ‘I want no mention of all this in your signals traffic,’ said Stinnes. ‘Especially not in your embassy signals from Mexico City. I insist on that right from the start.’

  I didn’t want him to think London was too keen. If Stinnes said no we might have to snatch him and I didn’t want him prepared for that sort of development. I kept it very cool. ‘We’ll have to act quickly,’ I said. ‘If we don’t get everything settled in the next week or so London might lose interest and drop the idea. It’s the way they are.’

  It was fully daylight now and, although the sun had still to eat through the morning haze, there were no clouds. It was going to be a very hot day. The wind was at about eight to ten knots, so that the waves were lengthening and breaking here and there to make scattered white horses. On the westerly horizon I could see two ships. I watched the compass. Was Stin
nes going to turn the tables on me. Were they Russian trawlers, waiting for Stinnes to deliver me to the ship’s side, with a KGB interrogation team leaning over the rails? Perhaps Stinnes understood what was going through my mind, for he swung the wheel gently to head well south of them. As he changed the heading, an extra big wave broke over the bow and dashed spray so that the air was full of the taste of it. ‘Your people are clever, Samson…Is that your true name – Samson?’

  ‘It’s my name. Are they clever?’

  He smiled a humourless little smile. ‘I’m forty, and still a major. Slim chance now for a colonel’s badges. I’m not a wunderkind, Samson. I won’t end up a general with a department to myself and a nice big office in Moscow, and a big car and driver who takes me home each night. Even I have begun to admit that to myself.’

  ‘I thought you liked Berlin,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve been there long enough. I’ve had enough of Berlin. I’ve had enough of sitting in my cramped little house watching West German television advertise all the things my wife wants and can’t get.’ Another wave broke across the bow. He throttled back so that the boat just rode the waves with enough power to hold the heading. The boat slid about, tossed from wave to wave, and I had to grab a rail to hold myself steady. ‘I’m going to get a divorce,’ he said, suddenly occupying himself with the controls so that it seemed to be an aside without importance. ‘Did London know anything about that?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘No, of course not. Even my own people don’t know yet. The Directorate don’t like divorce…instability, they call it. Domestic instability. Anything that goes wrong in a marriage is categorized as “domestic instability”. It can be child beating, wife beating, keeping a mistress or habitual drunkenness. It’s called “domestic instability” and it gets a black mark. It gets you the sort of black mark that results in long talks with investigating officers, and sometimes leads to a short “leadership course” with political indoctrination and physical training. Wives of KGB officers get to depend on it, Samson.’