by Len Deighton
‘I’m sorry about putting you into that little box-room with all those filing cabinets,’ said Dicky, with what almost sounded like genuine contrition. ‘We’ll find you something better – somewhere with a window – when they confirm me in Operations.’
‘It makes no difference,’ I said, although it was difficult to ignore the fact that not only was Dicky’s two-window office, with its view across the park, one of the largest in the building, but he’d annexed the grand office next door as an ante-room for his secretary, with an extra partitioned area where visitors could kick their heels waiting for him to receive them. No chance that on the floor of my little sanctum I’d have a lion-skin rug like this one in Dicky’s office, for the simple reason that my room was smaller than an average-sized lion could stretch its legs.
‘No other insights, I suppose?’
‘Not right now, Dicky.’
‘What’s next then?’
‘I’d like to spend a couple of hours in the Data Centre,’ I said.
‘What for?’
‘I’d like to try something on the computer.’
‘About VERDI?’
‘Yes. It could have a bearing on it.’
‘Very well, Bernard. My secretary will give you a chit for the Data Centre. Our time over there is being rationed nowadays. I suppose you heard that?’
‘Yes, I heard.’
‘More coffee?’ It was a signal for me to depart.
I got to my feet. ‘No, it’s exquisite but one cup is my ration.’
He smiled. His capacity to drink gallons of strong black coffee was something Dicky liked to boast about.
When I got to the door and opened it, Dicky came striding after me. He seized the door and pushed it closed in a gesture of confidentiality, although there was no one behind it to eavesdrop. ‘What you don’t know,’ said Dicky, ‘is that what you’ve just told me fits in with what I know already.’
‘What do you know?’
‘As far as the opposition is concerned, VERDI has completely disappeared. We’ve heard nothing about anyone being shot in Magdeburg and VERDI has not responded to any of our signals.’
‘That’s hardly confirmation, Dicky.’
‘Don’t be silly, of course it is. We’ve looked after this man like a cherished possession: we’ve assigned goodbye codes, drops and safe houses. He only has to raise an eyebrow. Until now he’s ignored it all.’
‘Am I allowed to know why VERDI is so important to us?’ I asked. ‘Does he have some special knowledge or what is it?’ I opened the door, but Dicky took a grip on it and closed it again. When determined he could muster considerable strength.
‘Yes,’ said Dicky earnestly, ‘VERDI has very special knowledge. He’s bringing a lot of data with him. We need to keep him alive and all in one piece because he’ll have to unravel it all. We have special plans for him. The big brass is asking me how long it’s all going to take.’
‘And what do you tell them?’ I asked, as I suspected that whatever Dicky was promising the big brass, someone like me was going to be struggling to deliver.
‘I don’t promise them anything, Bernard.’
I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘The only sensible thing to do is to wait until VERDI feels safe enough to make contact again.’
‘Hah!’ said Dicky, as if I’d tried to trick him. ‘And we’ll still be waiting for him at Christmas.’
‘Don’t push him, Dicky. You might be prodding a hornet’s nest.’
‘I’ll give him a couple of days,’ said Dicky, as if driving a bargain with me. ‘Then someone will have to go and track him down and see what’s happening.’
A couple of days! My blood turned to water. ‘Lovely coffee, Dicky,’ I said, finally wrenching the door open. ‘But they say too much of it makes some people very tense.’
‘Not me,’ said Dicky, biting into a fingernail. ‘I’m used to it.’
The money to build the London Data Centre had been voted through when the USSR was at its most bellicose. Various sums had been suggested as the cost of it; five hundred million pounds was one of the more modest guesses.
The ‘Yellow Submarine’ occupied three recently dug levels below the cellars of Whitehall. The entrance was in the Foreign Office, so that it was difficult for outsiders to spot or film those who made regular visits to the big computer. I handed in my duly signed chit to the guard in the security room. Nowadays not only did he have to identify me as an authorized user by calling up my computerized photo and description on the video screen, he also had to book me in, so that my time in the Centre was charged in hours and minutes to the Department’s allotted time.
‘Been on holiday somewhere lovely, Mr Samson?’ said the guard as the video screen pronounced me persona grata and he waved me through.
‘No, we won a sun-lamp at bingo,’ I said.
I pinned on the big red plastic badge displaying my photo, its bright red surround announcing my right to be in the third, deepest and most secret level. From the lobby I took the shiny new lift past the mainframes, past software storage and down to secret data access. I got out and blinked at the fierce and unrelenting blue glare that came from the concealed ceiling lighting. There were offices all round this level. Access to them was from a corridor formed by a clear glass wall. Through the glass wall there was a view of an open area where sixty work-stations – buzzing, humming and clicking – were arranged in waist-high bull-pens, each pen just tall enough to provide privacy for anyone seated there. Almost all the bull-pens were occupied, their status signalled by the tiny red lights that shone from the top of each occupied console when its computer was switched on.
I walked along until I spotted Gloria. She was occupying one of the best pens – the ones at the corners – and had made it into a den. She was perched on one of the primitive typist chairs that the accountants insisted were good for the spine, although they didn’t use them themselves. The chairs in the cashier’s department were all soft, expensive and bad for you.
On her lap Gloria balanced a couple of printed reference books and a notebook garlanded with yellow flags. Her waste-bin was overflowing with discarded print-out and there were memos, reports, paper coffee cups, Coke cans and ballpoint pens scattered around as if she’d been working here non-stop for a week.
It was the first time I’d seen her for many weeks, and now I looked at her and remembered. She must have felt my eyes on her for she looked up suddenly. Burdened by her books she raised her arm and waved her hand, rippling her fingers in a gesture that hit me with a sudden pang of recognition.
I walked over to her. ‘Gloria. Hello,’ I said diffidently. As I said it, a movement in the next row of machines revealed the inquisitive and unfriendly eyes of a man named Morgan peeping over the top of the bull-pen. Morgan was a malevolent denizen of the top floor who was working on a PhD in gossip.
Gloria put her books on to the floor and stood up. ‘Bernard! How wonderful. I was hoping … I heard you had arrived.’ The greeting was warm but her manner was reserved. But then she softened a little: ‘Your poor face. What did you do, Bernard?’ She leaned forward and touched my bruises tenderly, bringing our faces very close so that I could smell her perfume and feel her breath and the warmth of her body. ‘Is it awfully painful?’ Must she lean so close like that? Was it some kind of test of my passion? Or was she testing her own self-control? Still undecided about her motives, and knowing that Morgan was watching us, I compromised by giving her a brief brotherly kiss on the cheek. She smiled and touched her cheek where my lips had been. Her fingers were slim and elegant, but there was ink on the fingertips to remind me of the sixth-form schoolgirl she’d been only a short time ago.
‘You’re looking well,’ I said. It was a stupid thing to say but I doubt if she heard me: everything that was happening between us was going on in the intimacy of our memories.
She was slim, and so astoundingly young, both attributes emphasized by her tight black jeans and equally close-fitting white sweater. I could
hardly believe that this was the same creature I had bedded and lived with as my wife. No wonder at the consternation that domestic reshuffle had caused amongst my friends and colleagues. She smiled nervously and looked as if she was about to offer to shake hands. There was a certain clumsiness about her. Her face was soft and unwrinkled and the expression on it was more of bewilderment than of confidence; and above all she exuded sexual attraction. She seemed entirely unaware of the effect she was having on me, although that might be more rationally explained as a measure of my lifelong failure to understand women. So while I found myself succumbing to this intoxicating sexual allure there was another – sober – half of my brain that saw what was happening, wondered why, and advised against it.
Perhaps she realized that Morgan was in a nearby cubicle, for she lowered her voice almost to a whisper. ‘I was going to come to California and rescue you,’ she said with a grin. ‘I thought they were holding you prisoner.’ She’d had her blonde hair cut quite short and it was held with a cheap plastic clip. This added to the schoolgirl appearance. I wondered if she knew that.
‘Not quite a prisoner,’ I said, although upon reflection I suppose she was right. I don’t think it would have been very easy to push my way out of there, shout goodbye to Bret, and depart.
‘I sent a postcard. Did you get it?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Van Gogh: the postman in the blue uniform.’
‘I didn’t get it.’
‘They’re letting me work on the Hungary desk.’
‘So I heard. I suppose you are making a name for yourself.’
‘I work hard,’ she said. ‘But I’ve forgotten so much of my Hungarian. The grammar. My father is helping me.’
‘You’re living with your parents again?’
‘You never wrote,’ she said, without making it into an accusation or a reprimand.
‘I’m sorry. I tried to write …’
‘Wives come first, Bernard. “Other women” know that. Deep in their hearts they know it.’ There was still no bitterness audible in her voice, but she tossed her head, and she pouted for a moment before remembering to smile. ‘You went off on that Friday morning and said it was just for the weekend. Back Monday or Tuesday, you said … And you never came back. I still have suitcases with your clothes and all sorts of things.’
‘I wasn’t told that they planned to bring Fiona out that weekend. I had to go. They said she’d know it wasn’t a trap if I was there.’
‘I’m not blaming you, Bernard, I’m really not. It’s the job. It’s the men running this bloody rotten Department. They treat us all like dirt.’
‘But you’re all right?’ I asked. ‘I put money into your account.’
‘You were decent enough, Bernard. But they were determined to separate us. First they reneged on their promise to keep me on full pay if I could get a place doing Slavonic Studies at Cambridge. No money, they said. When they saw that you and I were still together, they closed Daddy down.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They bullied him about us. They hated you and me living together. You can see why, now that we know Fiona’s defection was all a ruse. They knew she was coming back. They bullied my poor father about it.’
‘Who did?’
‘How can they be such hypocrites? What harm did we do to anyone? We were happy together, weren’t we, Bernard?’ She looked over the partition to be sure there was no one in earshot.
‘Who did?’ I said. ‘Who knew Fiona was coming back and that it was all a ruse?’
‘Daddy won’t talk about it.’
‘So how do you know?’
‘He was happy doing work for the Department until you and I set up home together. Then suddenly he loses the lease on his surgery, and that workshop he had at home is closed down.’
‘Why?’
‘You don’t know the lengths they will go to. And the power they have is awesome. Daddy got a visit from the local Environmental Health Officer or Inspector or something. He said Daddy’s workshop contravened building regulations. It was in a residential zone, they said.’
‘Didn’t your father apply for planning permission when he built that extension?’
‘The Department told him not to apply in writing. They didn’t want any attention drawn to the way Daddy did secret Departmental work at home, in case the KGB noticed and came prying into it. The Department said: Go ahead and build, and promised to arrange some special permission through the Ministry.’
‘It’s not a conspiracy. It sounds more like some jumped-up little sod in some office somewhere. Does the D-G know?’
‘They came into the surgery and removed everything; from plaster casts to his drills and lathe and tools and all the paperwork. Everything. My father won’t pursue it. He took the compensation they offered. But they’ve ruined his life, Bernard. He’s still young and he loved being a dentist.’
‘He can start again.’
‘No, that’s part of the deal. He’ll lose his Departmental pension if he works full-time.’
‘That couldn’t have been because of us living together,’ I said. ‘It’s absurd.’
She looked at me, took my hand and held it. ‘Perhaps not, Bernard. Don’t blame yourself.’
‘Seriously, Gloria. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘It makes sense, all right, Bernard. Your wife runs this Department. She couldn’t have more power if they made her the Director-General. She has only to raise her little finger and everyone is running to fulfil her every wish.’
‘Rubbish,’ I said, and laughed at such exaggeration. But I could see it might seem that way to poor Gloria.
‘It’s not rubbish, Bernard. If you were some lowly clerk, or just a nobody like me, you’d see the sort of reverence Fiona gets throughout the whole Department. She’s treated like a saint. They weren’t going to have some silly little girl like me ruin all their plans. That’s why they sent you to California to be with your wife. And as soon as you were there they took the children from me, victimized my father and made sure I was rendered powerless.’
‘It’s not a conspiracy, Gloria. You’ve met my father-in-law. You must see what an interfering old idiot he can be. He’s got no connection with the Department.’
‘You told me he was some kind of blood relation.’
‘With Uncle Silas. Yes, a cousin but a very distant one. They are friends but not very friendly. There could be no collusion between them, believe me.’
Absently she fingered the keyboard and called up a directory of codenames. ‘I wish I hadn’t mentioned it,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you.’
‘I’m glad you told me. I’ll go and see Uncle Silas and tell him what’s happened.’
‘Don’t rock the boat, Bernard. Daddy says it’s better to let things remain as they are.’
‘I’ll ask Uncle Silas to give me his advice, without mentioning you or your father.’
‘You’ll get yourself into trouble; you’ll get me into trouble, and you’ll do nothing to help Daddy,’ she predicted gloomily. She leaned down and picked up one of her books from the floor and turned to a marked page. ‘You’ll upset your wife too. She won’t like it.’
‘I’ll go to his house in the country and talk to Uncle Silas,’ I said. ‘Are you down here every day?’
‘Two days or more. I still have a lot to do.’
‘And everything’s okay otherwise?’
She looked at me for a long time before answering: ‘Yes, I’m on a motor-rally team. I’m a navigator. I have a really super driver as my partner. It’s fun.’
‘Motor rallies? You were always a crazy driver, Gloria.’
‘You were always saying that. But I never had a crash, did I?’
‘No, I had all the crashes,’ I said.
We lingered for a moment, neither of us having anything more to say, and neither knowing how to say goodbye. Finally I blew her a kiss, went to a work-station across the aisle and started digging into the mainframe.
From where I was sitting I could see Gloria at work. I suppose I was hoping that she would turn, or find some way of snatching a glance at me. But perhaps she sensed I was watching her, for she never gave a sign that she knew I was there until the moment she packed up her books and papers and left. She waved as she passed me, giving me that same finger-waggling wave that she’d given me on arrival.
‘Tomorrow perhaps,’ she said.
‘Yes, tomorrow.’
There was no way I could pretend to myself or to anyone else that I had forgotten to bring up the question of her visiting the children. It was in the forefront of my mind all the time as I sat at the console. I really tried to think of some way of asking her to stay away from them, but I couldn’t do it. Anyone who’d seen her with the children would know that she loved them as much as anyone could. I suppose that is what had persuaded even my insensitive father-in-law that Gloria’s visits were good for them.
It was not until Gloria left the Centre that I started my real inquiry. It took me only ten minutes to discover that the computer would not provide me with the information I sought. I booted up and responded to the menu request for program with KAGOB, the KGB data section. I brought up another menu and clicked the mouse on RED LAND OVERSEAS to get the biographies. But when I keyed in VERDI the screen responded with the message: ‘All field use cover names now require password for access.’
Damn! There was never a month went past without the data becoming more safeguarded. Soon only the D-G would be permitted to come down here. I tried a couple of the passwords I’d used to get data on previous visits, but the machine was not fooled so easily. I knew VERDI’s real name of course, I’d known it all along. But the first lesson I’d learned from my father was that supplying the real identity of a field agent was absolutely verboten. Even if it was an enemy field agent. I remembered VERDI only too well, just as Werner did. My father had arrested him back in the Seventies, but he’d claimed diplomatic immunity and been released within an hour. His family name was Fedosov and his first name Andrey or Aleksey or maybe Aleksandr. When I went back to the first menu and keyed in Fedosov and asked for a ‘Global’ the machine whirled for a long time and I thought I was going to be lucky, but then it said: ‘File withdrawn in reference Transfer dated 1.1.1865.’
