The Memory Trap

by Anthony Price

  ‘No?’ There was a set of Low cartoon originals on the wall of Matthew’s study. But it didn’t include the famous 1940 one, in which an embattled British Tommy shook his fist against the dark clouds of impending defeat, facing it alone. And that omission switched his own control from Defence to

  Offence.

  ‘

  Well, don

  ’

  t forget to get his name, love

  —

  he

  ’

  s obviously ready for promotion. But meanwhile

  …

  give me some bad news: tell me something awful.

  ’

  ‘What?’ The tables were turned on that word.

  ‘Tell me something awful.’ What was awful? ‘Mrs Mills is pregnant again—and the washing-machine has gone wrong … And Cathy’s fallen in love with the boy who delivers the papers—anything.’

  ‘What—?’ Suddenly her voice changed.

  ‘

  You mean it

  —

  don

  ’

  t you!

  ’

  ‘I mean it—yes!’ There was just an outside chance that all this was going on tape somewhere. But, as Jack wasn’t the man to squander his resources eavesdropping on someone he trusted, it was on the far outside.

  Several seconds ticked away. ‘Cathy wants to go to India for her year off before University as a nursing auxiliary. And I’ve said no.’

  Audley agreed with her. ‘Change your mind—say yes.’

  ‘What d’you mean? They catch the most awful diseases—‘

  ‘I know. But “yes” will buy us time. “No” will only make her more determined. Just leave it to me.’ He began to feel guilty. But then the genuine awfulness registered, and he didn’t. ‘Goodbye, love! I’ll call you again … when I can—‘

  He put the phone down, and then picked it up again and punched in the well-remembered numbers of the Saracen’s Head public house by the river.

  ‘Saracen.’

  Teenage female voice. ‘Get the boss, dear.’

  ‘Dad’s ‘avin’ ‘is breakfast. You’d better call back later.’

  There had been a child in the background at the Saracen’s Head long ago, he remembered. ‘Just tell him it’s a friend of Mr Lee’s, dear.’

  ‘’E won’t like it—‘

  ‘He won’t like it if you don’t tell him. Go on! A friend of Mr Lee’s.’

  There was a moment’s silence. ‘Oh—all right! But ‘e won’t like it.’

  Audley waited. It had been a very small child, his memory corrected him. But it had also been a long time ago—the old days indeed!

  ‘Saracen.’ Dad’s tone bore out the ex-small child’s warning. “Ullo.’

  ‘I’d like a word with Mr Lee.’ Audley crossed his fingers.

  ‘Oo wants ‘im?’

  So far, so good. ‘A friend of his.’

  ‘Oh yus? Well, ‘e ‘ain’t ‘ere.’

  Audley relaxed. It was like fitting a key into the rusty old lock of a long-disused room and finding that it still turned easily, as though newly-oiled. ‘Mr Lee owes me three favours, for services rendered.’ Over the years, those numbers had gradually decreased, as those Anglo-Israeli debts had been called in one by one. Although, of course, it wouldn’t be Jake himself, now. So it all depended on how well his successors had been briefed. ‘I want to speak to him, nevertheless.’

  ‘Oh yus?’ The landlord, of the Saracen’s Head might also be struggling with his memories of long-disused procedures, as between “Mr Lee” and his “friend”. But when you worked for the Israelis once, you worked for them always, was the rule. ‘An’ this would be an emergency, like—as per usual?’ The phlegm rattled in the man’s throat as he chuckled. ‘Naow—don’t tell me! Face-to-face—or you got a number?’

  Audley estimated Butler’s orders against his own need. With the trouble he was already in—the new Russian trouble as well as the Berlin-Capri trouble—he was already in for a penny, in for a pound; and he could easily and (probably safely) encode Matthew’s number with the very private and unforgettable formula which he and Jake had decided so long ago, after they had agreed that the one set of figures which no soldier ever forgot was his old army number. But he had always hated the telephone, and the hothouse temperature of Matt’s flat was stifling him. ‘Face-to-face.’ Everything came together as he spoke: perhaps because he felt suddenly starved he imagined he could smell Marie-Louise’s bacon, and her coffee too—and this side of Heaven there would be nothing to equal a thoroughly-Anglicized Frenchwoman’s coffee-and-bacon. And also he must allow “Mr Lee” time to make a rendezvous. So the lines on the map converged as he drew breath: ten minutes from here, in Sir Matthew Fattorini’s Rolls-Royce, plus five for him from there to Jack Butler’s fastness on the Embankment … plus fifteen to demolish the bacon and the coffee before that … finally offering “Mr Lee” maybe twenty minutes—? ‘Fifty minutes. By the statue of General Abercrombie, in Abercrombie Gardens. One hour, maximum. Then I’ll be gone. Have you got that?’

  ‘Yuss.’ The phone clicked and died. Time—seconds, rather than minutes—was always of the essence on the phone, when you didn’t know you were on a safe line, they would have taught him.

  He looked at his watch. Fifty minutes from now.

  ‘And how is that beautiful daughter of yours, David? I am told that she takes after her mother—yes?’

  His mouth was full of bacon. And the bacon carried with it a hint—the merest paradisal hint—of kidney-fat, did it—? ‘Cathy?’

  ‘She must be working for her examinations, surely—? Always, now, they are in the midst of examinations!’

  A major anti-terrorist alert? (Matthew, still only half-dressed, had been silenced by his wife: “Let the poor man eat his breakfast, cheri! Is the car ready? Do something useful!”)

  ‘She has exams, yes.’ Not co-operation—more like cause-and-effect: but what cause could produce this effect? The irony was that he needed to know the answer to that much more urgently than Matthew himself, who only had his stocks and shares at risk. ‘But now she wants to go to India, before university. So Faith’s worried sick.’

  ‘Ah! India—yes!’ Marie-Louise nodded sympathetically. ‘She is too young for India. The women there are wonderful—they hold the country together. But the men … they are not to be trusted with young unmarried girls.

  ’

  Then she brightened.

  ‘

  But India

  …

  that will be Christian India, yes? To do mission work

  —

  that is what the young people do now

  …

  That could be worse, you know.

  ’

  ‘Worse?’ The more he thought about Cathy in India, the worse it genuinely became.

  ‘It is not political. One of my nieces wished to go to Nicaragua, from where the dreadful coffee comes, to help the revolution. Matthew had to arrange a more suitable enterprise for her—where was it, chéri? Perhaps you could do the same for David’s Catherine—?’

  India, damn it!

  ‘Round again, sir?’ The voice of Matthew’s driver sounded cool and distant over the intercom of the Rolls as they turned into Abercrombie Gardens once more, past the statue of the old general who was one of Jack Butler’s special idols.

  Audley looked at his watch. The Israelis were almost out of time now, and his bright idea was beginning to look more than ever like the desperate long-shot it had always been, with the temperature of Anglo-Israeli intelligence relations so chilly these days.

  ‘Yes—no! Hold on—slow down!’ Where there had been nobody on the last circuit, there was now a young man loitering, although he looked far too young to be “Mr Lee.” But then everyone was young now—not just police constables but police superintendents and the Mr Lees of this world. ‘Stop here, please.’

  The Rolls drew up with its usual silent good manners. ‘Shall I co
me back, sir?’

  ‘Ah … ‘ Audley felt crumpled and disreputable in his creased suit and three-day shirt: all he could hope for, if anyone was peeking through their curtains on the other side of the street, was that he might pass for an eccentric millionaire taking his morning constitutional. ‘Yes.’ Damn Butler! Damn India—and damn Berlin and Capri, most of all! ‘Ten minutes—‘ Damn the whole bloody-lot-of-them!’—and then keep coming round. Right?’

  The Rolls slid away, as though powered by thought rather than anything so vulgar as an internal-combustion engine, and the London October-chill hit him immediately. So … he was grasping at a straw, then. But there was a newspaper kiosk at the other end of the crescent of trees. So he would grasp the straw nonchalantly, as though he had all the time in the world, even though he suspected he’d already lost the game, and was into injury-time.

  ‘Daily Telegraph, please.’ For a moment he was embarrassed then, in the sudden knowledge that he had no Queen’s coinage in his pocket, having nearly had no lire to purchase his Villa Jovis ticket. But then he thought again, re-estimating the odds that there might yet be some of the Queen’s coins among the foreign detritus in his palm. ‘How much is that—?’

  The old woman in the kiosk goggled at him for an instant, not so much as at an eccentric millionaire as at an idiot, while keeping tight hold of the Daily Telegraph she

  ’

  d been about to surrender.

  Audley squinted at his small change. ‘Yes—?’

  ‘‘Ere—‘ On second thought, she decided that he was a Martian who had made his historic landfall inadequately prepared; but, if she could, she would sell him a paper; so she leaned across to finger his coins. ‘Thirty-p … that’s twenty—that’s forty—‘ she pinched the appropriate coins’—an’ eight-p change—right?’

  ‘Right.’ Audley accepted his Telegraph gratefully. When it came to newspapers, he knew his business in content, if not in price: the subs on the Telegraph weren’t into clever design on the news pages, even under the new Max Hastings editorial management; but they still picked up all those unconsidered trifles of news, local and international, for their fillers—

  He opened the paper up. (Let the very-young-man wait—if he was a Mossad very-young-man he still had three minutes of waiting-time!) Cuccaro’s cover story was just the sort the Telegraph liked

  —

  Virus kills tiger

  That wasn’t it … even though it was a vintage Telegraph heading—

  Pushchair snatch

  foiled by nannie

  Another good one. But it was not the one he wanted. He turned the page to foreign news—

  Mafia shoot-out

  on holiday isle—

  Elizabeth’s handsome captain had done his work well, even allowing for all his advantages—

  A man fell to his death and two more were shot in a Mafia-style execution on the holiday island of Capri yesterday, visited by thousands of British tourists every year—

  The grammar was maybe a bit rocky. But the facts were nearly right, as reported, even though absolutely wrong—

  Holiday-makers scattered as gangsters opened fire on their rivals without warning—

  That was also pretty close to the facts, give-or-take the truth—

  The Italian police have taken a fourth man into custody, who is believed to have taken part in the shoot-out. A fifth man and a woman are also helping the police with their inquiries—

  Even that was good, in its acceptance of what any uncontrollable eye-witnesses might have seen in the aftermath, when half of Capri had appeared out of nowhere, even before Cuccaro had arrived with Paul and Elizabeth, and the situation had become decidedly messy.

  He re-folded his Telegraph quickly and untidily, shivering slightly as he set out for General Abercrombie’s statue—even remembering, as he did so, why Jack Butler so admired the old soldier—

  The trees above were dripping early-morning moisture, and the pavement was pock-marked by all sorts of filth—pigeon-shit and dog-shit, and general all-sorts-of-litter-lout shit, from take-away plastic containers to beer-cans and last night’s evening newspapers. And the need to avoid this different mess took his attention until he reached the corner of the gardens, where the old General stood, sword-in-hand and bare-headed, looking blindly out over the London traffic, as he would surely not have looked over the Egyptian desert when he’d beaten the French.

  There was nobody there—sod it!

  He looked half-around. And then at the blackened panel below the statue: the old General, mortally-wounded, had still worried about the soldier’s blanket in which they’d covered him. Because every soldier needed his blanket, just as he himself would have liked one now in the morning chill.

  ‘Hullo, David.’ Jake Shapiro appeared from behind the statue. ‘You travel in style these days!’

  If the old General had stepped down and offered him another blanket, Audley knew he’d not have been more dumb-struck. ‘Jake—?’

  ‘Let’s go and walk among the trees.’ Jake kept well behind the statue, away from the road. ‘Come on!’

  The seconds of his minutes were ticking, Audley remembered. ‘For God’s sake—I thought you’d retired, Jake!’ But he stepped out automatically: Jake had not only retired—he ought to be even more out-of-favour now, as an Arab-lover, with his present government. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘You asked for “Mr Lee”—‘ Jake pushed him towards the central path, between the trees ‘—and now you are complaining?’

  Audley disciplined himself. ‘I’m not complaining. I’m just thinking … maybe I should have retired, too. But then … by the same token … I suppose I might still be here, mightn’t I? Taken out of mothballs?’

  ‘Ah … well, as to that, I can’t say.’ Jake grinned at him. ‘But maybe with us it’s like the old music-hall jokes: the old ones are still the best ones?’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ Matthew’s Rolls-Royce was cruising out there somewhere, like a stop-watch ticking silently. ‘Unfortunately, I haven’t time for jokes, Jake. Why are you here—in London?’

  ‘Because this is where the action is. Isn’t it?’ The Israeli stepped delicately around a nameless mess on the path. ‘I was back home. And you were in Washington, and you were not in Berlin. But now you are here, where the action is? So now we are both here—?’

  The Israelis didn’t know about Capri. Or, if they did, Jake wasn’t ready to admit it yet. But if they didn’t … then they might not know about Richardson. But what they did know had to be substantial indeed, to force the new generation of Mossad to swallow its pride and re-enlist Jake Shapiro? Yes!

  ‘You’re here because of me?’ The Israelis had been very helpful in Berlin, of course. But Jake’s presence in London now put a different gloss on that, taken with the present terrorist alert. So whatever they knew must be frightening them. ‘Because of our old “special relationship”, would that be?’ There was no time for finesse. ‘You need a friend at court?’

  ‘”The Court of Queen Margaret”?’ Jake slowed down as they approached the end of the trees. ‘Ah … well, we never did have many friends here, even in the old days. Your Foreign Office was full of Arab-lovers—unrequited lovers, of course.’ He smiled at Audley. ‘Sure—okay! Well … you, at least, were pragmatic, David. You were willing to do business in the old Yorkshire manner: “Owt for nowt”—?’

  ‘What do you want, Jake?’ He could see the very young man standing on guard at the far end of the gardens, apparently engrossed in his Guardian.

  Jake gestured to turn them round into the trees again. ‘I thought it was you who wanted something, David?’

  Audley glimpsed a large car through the trees. But it couldn’t be the Rolls yet. ‘I just want to know what the Russians are doing.’

  ‘Only that? Where do you want me to begin?’

  ‘Don’t piss me around.’ In the old days Jake had usually got what he wanted by indirect means, he recalled: for Jake, an Audley quest
ion was as good as an answer. ‘I’ve been minding my own business in Washington, working up our submission on the new Secrets Bill for Jack Butler. As I’m sure you know.’

  ‘Yes.’ The Israeli nodded. ‘The worthy Sir Jack has heretical views on Freedom of Information and the Public Interest—he believes in them! That I know—yes! The worthy Sir Jack! Yes?’

  And the not-so-clever Jake Shapiro, thought Audley. But then half Jack’s strength was that no one really believed in his sincerity. ‘Yes. But now I want some information—in my interest, Colonel Shapiro.

  ’

  ‘Yes?’ Jake peered into the trees on his left, pretending to be nervous.

  ‘What’s the matter.’ Suddenly Audley actually became nervous.

  ‘Don’t worry. We are well-protected, old friend.’ The reassurance came quickly. ‘You lost someone in Berlin, didn’t you?’

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’ He decided not to hide his fear. ‘Answer the question. My time is running out. And maybe in more ways than one, old friend.’

  The Israeli faced him. ‘Correction. You lost two people in Berlin: you lost a man named Kulik also.

  ’

  ‘How d’you know his name?’

  ‘I know all three names. But only one of them matters now.’

  Audley held his tongue without difficulty. No more questions!

  Jake held up three fingers. ‘Kulik is dead in Berlin.’ One finger went down. ‘That was very careless of you—what my old boss would have called “unnecessary carelessness”. But perhaps understandable at that stage.’

  Audley concentrated on the remaining two fingers—blunt, serviceable fingers, rising from a work-calloused hand. In retirement, Jake had become a working farmer. But soft fruit looked like hard work, judging by those hands.

  ‘And now Prusakov is also dead, as of two days since.’ The second finger went down. ‘But your people cannot be blamed for that.’

  Something out in the furthest corner of Audley’s peripheral vision diverted him from the last finger: the shape of Sir Matthew Fattorini’s Rolls flicked through trees on the inner side of Abercrombie Gardens. But the Rolls didn’t matter now: Who-the-hell-was “Prusakov”?