Mexico Set

by Len Deighton

  He smiled self-consciously. ‘You’re right, Bernie. But Stinnes will continue to be suspicious, you mark my words.’

  ‘Sure, but he’ll be suspicious of London and whether those tricky desk men will keep their promises. He won’t be worrying if I’m a KGB plant. A man like Stinnes can probably recognize a KGB operator at one hundred paces just as we can recognize one of our people.’

  ‘Talking of recognizing one of our own at one hundred paces, Dicky is heading this way,’ said Werner. ‘Is the man with him SIS?’

  Dicky Cruyer was still wearing his Hollywood clothes; today it was blue striped seersucker trousers, sea-island cotton sports shirt and patent-leather Gucci shoes. He was carrying a small leather pouch that was not, Dicky said, a handbag, or anything like one.

  Dicky had his friend from the embassy in tow. They’d been at Balliol together and they made no secret of their intense rivalry. Despite their being the same age, Henry Tiptree looked younger than Dicky. Perhaps this was because of the small and rather sparse moustache that he was growing, or his thin neck, bony chin and the awkward figure he cut in his Hong Kong tropical suit and the tightly knotted old school tie.

  Dicky told me how his friend Henry had been made Counsellor at the very early age of thirty-eight and was now working hard to reach Grade 3. But the diplomatic service is littered with brilliant Counsellors of all ages, and a large proportion of them get shunted off to the Institute for Strategic Studies or given a fellowship at Oxford, where they can write a lot of twaddle about Soviet aims and intentions in Eastern Europe, while people like me and Werner actually deal with them.

  ‘Henry has arranged everything about the baggage,’ said Dicky.

  ‘There was nothing to arrange about my baggage,’ I said. ‘I checked it through when we first got here.’

  Dicky ignored my retort and said, ‘It will go air freight. But because we have first-class tickets they’ll put it on the same plane we’re on.’

  ‘And which plane is that?’ I asked.

  Henry looked at his watch and said, ‘They say it’s coming in now.’

  ‘You don’t believe that, do you?’ said Dicky. ‘Ye gods, these airline buggers tell lies more glibly than even the diplomatic service.’

  ‘Haw haw,’ said Henry dutifully. ‘But I think this time it’s probably true. There are lots of delays at this time of year but eventually they come lumbering in. Three hours is about par for the course. That’s why I thought I’d better be here to see you off.’ Henry pronounced it ‘orrf’, he had that sort of ripe English accent that he’d need for becoming an ambassador.

  ‘Plus the fact that you had to be here because it’s bag day,’ said Dicky. Henry smiled.

  Werner said, ‘Bag day?’

  ‘The courier with the diplomatic bag is coming in on this plane,’ I explained.

  ‘Even so, your presence is much appreciated, Henry,’ Dicky told him. ‘I’ll make sure the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary hears about the cooperation you gave us.’ They both laughed at Dicky’s little joke but there was a promise of some undefined help when the opportunity came. Balliol men were like that; or so Dicky always said.

  I could see that Werner was eyeing Henry with interest, trying to decide whether he was actually employed by the SIS within the embassy staff. It seemed possible. I winked at Werner. He grinned as he realized that I’d known what was in his mind. But we untutored men were like that; or so I always said.

  ‘Dicky says that you’re the man who holds the department together,’ said Henry.

  ‘It’s not easy,’ I said.

  Dicky, who had expected me to deny that I held the department together, said, ‘Henry loaned us the car.’

  ‘Thanks, Henry,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know how you managed with that damned air-conditioning not working,’ said Henry. ‘But I suspect you chaps are going to charge full Hertz rates on your expenses, eh?’

  ‘Not Dicky,’ I said.

  ‘Haw haw,’ said Henry.

  Dicky changed the subject hurriedly. ‘Strawberries and freshly caught salmon,’ said Dicky. ‘This is the time to be in England, Henry. You can keep the land of tacos and refried beans.’

  ‘Don’t be a sadist, Dicky,’ said the man from the embassy. ‘I’m hoping my transfer comes through. Else I might be stuck here until Christmas or New Year. I have no chance of leave.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have joined,’ said Dicky.

  ‘I mustn’t complain. I had an enjoyable six months learning the lingo and I get up to Los Angeles now and again. Mind you, these Mexicans are a rum crowd. It doesn’t take much to make them awfully cross.’ Henry said ‘crorss’.

  ‘No matter. You won’t be here for ever. And now you’re Grade 4 you’re certain to end your career with a K,’ said Dicky enviously. It was Dicky’s special grievance that equivalently graded SIS employees could not count on such knighthoods or even lesser honours. Everything depended upon where you ended up.

  ‘As long as I don’t spill drinks over the President’s wife or start a war or something.’ He laughed again.

  Quietly I asked Dicky if he’d told the embassy about their intercepted signals.

  ‘Ye gods,’ said Dicky. ‘Bernie has just reminded me of something for your very private ear. Something for your Head of Station’s very private ear, in fact.’

  Henry raised an eyebrow. Head of Station was the senior SIS officer in the embassy.

  Dicky said, ‘Strictly off the record, Henry old bean, we have reasons to believe that the Russians are listening to your Piccolo machinery and have learned to read the music.’

  ‘I say,’ said Henry.

  ‘I suggest he tells your Head of Mission immediately. But he must make it clear that it’s only a suspicion.’

  ‘I don’t get to talk to the boss all that often, Dicky. The top brass stagger off to Acapulco every chance they get.’ He went to the window and said, ‘It’s coming in now. She’ll turn round quickly. Better get your luggage checked through.’

  ‘It might be a hoax,’ said Dicky. ‘But we hope to be in a position to confirm or deny within a couple of weeks. If there’s anything to it you’ll hear officially through the normal channels.’

  ‘You London Central people really do see life,’ said Henry. ‘Have you really been doing a James Bond caper, Dicky? Have you been crossing swords with the local Russkies?’

  ‘Mum’s the word,’ said Dicky. ‘We’d better get some of these airline chappies to haul this baggage over to the check-in.’

  ‘But where will we sit then?’ said ever-practical Werner.

  Dicky ignored this question and snapped his fingers at a passing slave, who readily and instantly responded by tipping Werner off his perch and grabbing Dicky’s other cases to swing on to his shoulder.

  Dicky stroked his expensive baggage as if he didn’t like to see it go. ‘Those three are very fragile – muy fragil. Comprende usted?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ said the porter. ‘No problem, buddy.’

  ‘So those Russian buggers are reading the Piccolo radio traffic,’ mused Henry. ‘Well, that might explain a lot of things.’

  ‘For instance?’ said Dicky, counting his cases as the porter heaved them on to a trolley.

  ‘Just little things,’ said Henry vaguely. ‘But I’d say your tip-off is no hoax.’

  ‘One up for Mr Stinnes,’ said Werner.

  The TV monitor flashed a gate number for our flight, and we hurriedly said goodbye to Henry and Werner so that Dicky could follow closely behind the porter to be sure his cases didn’t go astray.

  ‘Henry did modern languages,’ said Dicky, once we were airborne and heading home with a glass of champagne in our fists and a smiling stewardess offering us small circular pieces of cold toast adorned with fish eggs. ‘He was a damned fine bat; and Henry’s parties were famous, but he’s not very brainy and he wasn’t exactly a hard worker. He got this job because he knows all the right people. To tell you the truth, I never thought he�
�d stick to the old diplomatic grind. It’s not like Henry to have a regular job and say yes sir and no sir to everyone in sight. Poor sod, sweating out his time in that hell-hole.’

  ‘Yes, poor Henry,’ I said.

  ‘He’s desperately keen to get into our show but quite honestly, Bernard, I don’t think he’s right for us, do you?’

  ‘From what you say I think he’s exactly right for us.’

  ‘Do you?’ said Dicky.

  Dicky had arranged everything the way he liked it. He’d put his three fragile parcels on to a vacant seat and secured them with the safety-belt. He’d taken off his shoes and put on the slippers he’d taken from his briefcase. He’d swallowed his motion-sickness tablets and made sure the Alka Seltzer and aspirin were where he could find them easily. He’d read the safety leaflet and checked the position of the emergency exits and reached under his seat to be sure that the advertised life-jacket was really there. ‘These airline blighters speak their own language,’ said Dicky. ‘Have you noticed that? Stewardesses are hostesses; it makes you wonder whether to call the Stewards “hosts”. Safety-belts are lap-straps, and emergency exits are safety exits. Who thought up all that double-talk?’

  ‘It must have been the same PR man who renamed the War Office the Ministry of Defence.’

  I held up my glass so that the stewardess could pour more champagne. Dicky put his hand over his glass. ‘We’ve a long journey ahead,’ he said with an admonitory note in his voice.

  ‘Sounds like a good reason to have another glass of champagne,’ I said.

  Dicky put down his glass and slapped his thigh lightly, like a chairman bringing a meeting to order, and said, ‘Well, now I’ve got you to myself at last, perhaps we can talk shop.’

  The only reason we’d not spent a lot of time talking shop was because Dicky had spent every available moment eating, drinking, shopping, sightseeing and extending his influence. Now he was going to find out what work I’d been doing so that he’d be able to persuade his superiors that he’d been working his butt off. ‘What do you want to know, Dicky?’

  ‘What are the chances that Comrade Stinnes will come over to us?’

  ‘You’re skipping the easy ones, are you?’

  ‘I know you hate making guesses, but what do you think will happen? You’ve actually met with Stinnes. What sort of fellow is he? You’ve handled this sort of defection business before, haven’t you?’

  I didn’t hate making guesses at all; I just hated confiding them to Dicky, since he so enjoyed reminding me of the ones I got wrong. I said, ‘Not with a really experienced KGB official, I haven’t. The defectors I’ve dealt with have been less important.’

  ‘Stinnes is only a major. You’re making him sound like a member of the Politburo. I seem to remember you were involved with that colonel…the air attaché who dithered and dithered and finally got deported before we could get him.’

  ‘Rank for rank, you’re right. But Stinnes is very experienced and very tough. If we get him we’ll have a very good source. He will keep the debriefing panel scribbling notes for months and months and give us some good data and first-class assessments. But our chances of getting him are not good.’

  ‘You told me he said yes,’ said Dicky.

  ‘He’s bound to say yes just to hear what we say.’

  ‘Is it money?’ said Dicky.

  ‘I can’t believe that money will play a big part in his decision. Men such as Stinnes are very thoroughly indoctrinated. It’s always very difficult for such people to make the change-over to our sort of society.’

  ‘He’s a hard-nose communist, you mean?’

  ‘Only inasmuch as he knows he mustn’t rock the boat. I’d be surprised to find he’s a real believer.’ I drank my champagne. Dicky waited for me to speak again. I said, ‘Stinnes is a narrow-minded bigot. He’s one of a top-level elite in a totalitarian state where there are no agonizing discussions about capital punishment, or demos about pollution of the environment or the moral uncertainties of having atomic weapons. A KGB major like Stinnes can barge into the office of a commanding general without knocking. Here in the West no one has the sort of power that he enjoys.’

  ‘But we’re offering him a nice comfortable life. And, from what you say about his wanting a divorce, the offer comes at exactly the right time.’

  ‘Giving up such power will not be easy. As a defector he’ll be a nobody. He’s probably seen defectors and the way they live in the Soviet Union. He’ll have no illusions about what it will be like.’

  ‘How can you compare the life of a defector going to the East with that of a defector coming to the West? All they have to offer is a perverted ideology and a medieval social system based on privilege and obedience. We have a free society; a free press, freedom to protest, freedom to say anything we like.’

  ‘Stinnes has spent a long time in the upper layers of an authoritarian society. He won’t want to protest or demonstrate against government – whatever its creed – and he’ll have precious little sympathy for those who do.’

  ‘Then give him a handful of cash and take him round the shops and show him the material benefits that come from free enterprise and competition.’

  ‘Stinnes isn’t the sort of man who will sell his soul for a mess of hi-fi components and a micro-wave oven,’ I said.

  ‘Sell his soul?’ said Dicky indignantly.

  ‘Don’t turn this into a political debate, Dicky. You asked me what chance we stand, and I’m telling you what I think is in his mind.’

  ‘So what sort of chance do we stand?’ persisted Dicky. ‘Fifty fifty?’

  ‘Not better anyway,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll tell the old man fifty fifty,’ said Dicky as he mentally ticked off that question. I don’t know why I tried to explain things to Dicky. He preferred yes-or-no answers. Explanations confused him.

  ‘And what about this Biedermann chap?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He’s as rich as Croesus. I looked him up when I got to Los Angeles.’

  ‘I can’t see how he can be important to us, so how can he be important to Stinnes? That’s what puzzles me.’

  ‘I’ll put him into my report,’ said Dicky. Although it sounded like a statement of intent, it was Dicky’s way of asking me to okay it.

  ‘By all means. I’ve got the list of people he forwarded the money to. You could probably get one of the bright young probationers to build that into something that sounded impressive.’

  ‘Are we going to do anything about Biedermann?’

  ‘There’s not much we can do,’ I said doubtfully, ‘except keep an eye on him, and rough him up from time to time to let him know he’s not forgotten.’

  ‘Gently does it,’ said Dicky. ‘A man like that could make trouble for us.’

  ‘I’ve known him since I was a kid,’ I said. ‘He’s not going to make trouble for us, unless he thinks he can get away with it.’

  ‘Getting Stinnes is the important thing,’ said Dicky. ‘Biedermann is nothing compared with the chance of bringing Stinnes over to us.’

  ‘I’ll stroke my lucky rabbit’s foot,’ I said.

  ‘If we do manage to land Stinnes, you’ll get all the credit for it.’

  ‘Will I?’ I said. It seemed unlikely.

  ‘That’s one of the things I told Bret before we left London. I told him that this was really your operation. You let Bernard handle things his way, I told him. Bernard’s got a lot riding on this one.’

  ‘And what did Bret say to that?’ I found that, if you scraped the ancient airline caviar off the little discs of toast, the toast didn’t taste too bad.

  ‘Have you upset Bret?’

  ‘I’m always upsetting him.’

  ‘You’ve got a lot riding on this one, Bernard. You need Bret. You need all the help you can get. I’m right behind you all the way, of course, but if Bret takes over my desk you’d get no support from him.’

  ‘Thanks, Dicky,’ I said doubtfully. It was just Dic
ky’s way of getting me to help him in his power struggle against Bret, but I was flattered to think that Dicky thought I had enough clout to make any difference.

  ‘You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Bernard?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, although in fact I didn’t know. I settled back in my seat and looked at the menu. But from the corner of my eye I could see Dicky wrapping his fountain pen in a Kleenex tissue, although we were already at 35,000 feet and if his pen was going to leak it would have leaked already.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dicky. ‘This one will be make or break for you, Bernard.’ He laid the bandaged pen to rest in his handbag, like a little Egyptian mummy that was to stay in its tomb for a thousand years.

  ‘Thank God there’s no in-flight movie,’ said Dicky. ‘I hate in-flight movies, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. It was one of the very few things upon which Dicky and I could have unreserved agreement.

  Now that we were above the clouds, the sunlight was blinding. Dicky, seated at the window, pulled down the tinted shield. ‘You don’t want to read or anything, do you?’

  I looked at Dicky and shook my head. He smiled, and I wondered what sort of game he was playing with all his talk of this being my operation. He’d certainly taken his time before revealing this remarkable aspect of our jaunt to me.

  We reached London Sunday mid-morning. The sun was shining in a clear blue sky but there was a chilly wind blowing. In response to two telex messages and a phone call made from Mexico, the duty officer had arranged for a car to meet us. We loaded it to the point where its suspension was groaning and went to Dicky’s house. Once there I accepted Dicky’s offer to go inside for a drink.

  Dicky’s wife was waiting for us with a chilled bottle of Sancerre in the ice bucket and coffee on the warmer. Daphne was an energetic woman in her early thirties. I found her especially attractive standing there in the kitchen surrounded by wine and food. Daphne had radically changed her image; floral pinafores and granny glasses were out, and pale-yellow boiler suits were in. Her hairstyle had changed too, cut in a severe pageboy style with fringe, so that she looked like the art student Dicky had married so long ago. ‘And Bernard, darling. What a lovely surprise.’ She had the loud voice and upper-class accent that go with weekends in large unheated country houses, where everyone talks about horses and reads Dick Francis paperbacks.