by Len Deighton
The bell rang only two minutes after she'd gone downstairs. I chuckled in that patronizing way that men do when women forget keys, can't open a tin or stall in traffic. 'Put your door keys on the same ring…' I said, but when the door was open far enough, I saw two men in black overcoats and one of them carried a burnished metal case that might have contained soap samples.
'No thanks,' I said.
But the sort of sales course these two had graduated from had 'no, thanks' as the first lesson. They were heavyweights: with big hats that bent the tops of their ears over, and the sort of teeth that went up in value whenever paper money slipped. They lowered their shoulders. I had the door almost closed when four hundred pounds of animal protein split the facing board almost without pause and sent me pirouetting down the hall.
By the light coming through the hall window I could see them better. One — a swarthy man, with a neatly trimmed beard and pigskin gloves — I'd seen before. He had been in the passenger seat of the blue BMW that had tried to force us off the Great Hamish road.
It was this one that tried to bear hug me now, and put his face low enough for me to elbow. He avoided the full force of it only by twisting his head, while I put my foot on his instep with enough force to make him grunt. He reeled back into his friend but my victory was short-lived. All three of us knew that I'd stand little chance if they backed me into the larger space of the lounge. They paused before the head-down charge, then together they gave me the sort of treatment that had worked so well on the door panels. My feet left the ground and I went right over the back of the sofa. As I came into land on the carpet, I took with me the coffee tray, cakes and a blizzard of flying chinaware.
I was still full length as the clean-shaven one came wading through the debris. I was only just fast enough to ensure that his big, black, well-polished military boot, with its lace double knotted, nicked my ear, instead of carrying away the: side of my head.
I rolled away from him, raising myself up on my knees. I grabbed the edge of the rug and fell forward again still holding it. With one foot still raised he was in the perfect pose. He went over like a brick chimney. There was a thud as his head hit the glass front of the TV, and a blast of song as his sleeve went down the controls. For a moment he didn't move at all. On the screen there were singing glove puppets, brutally compressed and repeated across the screen in horizontal slices.
The bearded one gave me no time to admire my handiwork. He came at me even before I was fully upright. One hand was ready to chop and the other was looking for a wristlock. But the judo man is off balance at the time he makes his grab. I jabbed him hard. It was enough to make him step back a pace and yell, although it might not have been had I not been holding the brass-plated fire-tongs that Marjorie's mother had given us for Christmas.
But I hadn't crippled either of them. I'd just slowed them a little. Worse, I'd come to the end of my surprises: they were wary. The fellow under the TV was already back on his feet and he was staring at the flickering strips of glove puppet as if fearing for his vision.
Then he turned and they came at me from different sides. 'Now let's talk,' I said. 'I've heard about hard-sell techniques, but this is ridiculous.'
The bearded one smiled. He was dying to put his world-famous right cross on me. I could tell that from the way he was drawing the diagrams of how he'd do it. I taunted hurt twice, and then came in early to make him throw it. I took it on the forearm and it hurt like hell but not as much as the right jab I hung on his jaw.
He slewed as he fell, revealing the bald patch on his head. For a moment I felt ashamed, and then I thought maybe Joe Louis and Henry Cooper had bald patches, too. And by that time the other one was slamming short body punches into my ribs and I was making noises like an old concertina that had been dropped on the floor.
I punched him off, but baldy came behind me and took my left wrist with enough enthusiasm to make my nose touch my knees. And suddenly the whole world was sliced into horizontal slices and singing like glove puppets, and I could hear this voice shouting, 'What did I tell you in the car. What did I tell you in the car.' It was a very angry voice.
It wasn't Marjorie. It was a broad-shouldered elderly Soviet security Colonel named Stok. He was waving a pistol and threatening to do terrible things to his friends in Russian.
'He attacked us,' said the hairy one,
'Get to work,' said Stok. The bearded man picked up the metal case and went with it into the next room. 'And fast,' said Stok. 'Very, very fast.'
There will be trouble,' I said.
'We thought you both got into the car,' said Stok.
'You'd better get new glasses before you trip off World. War Three.'
'We hoped you would be out,' said Stok. 'It would have been simpler.'
'It's not complicated this way,' I said angrily. 'You let your gorillas out of their cage, oil your gun, rough up the citizens, break the furniture often enough, and soon life will be as simple here as it is in the Soviet Union.'
Through the door I could see the two men getting drills and a hammer from the metal case. 'They'll find, nothing here,' I told Stok.
'There is a conspiracy,' Stok said. 'A Soviet official is threatened.'
"Why not tell the police?'
'How can we be sure the police are not the ones arranging it?'
'In your country, you can't,' I said.
Stok's mouth moved as if he was about to argue but he thought better of it. He decided to smile instead but it wasn't a heart-warming smile. He unbuttoned his overcoat to find a handkerchief to wipe his nose. His suit was a well-cut Western one. With it he wore a white shirt and silver tie. The nervous hands and piercing eyes completed the Godfather look. 'Five minutes, and we will be gone,' he said.
From the next room there was a quick exchange in Russian too fast for me to understand even vaguely. 'The medical bag?' said Stok to me. 'What are you doing with a medical bag?'
'Marjorie's,' I said. 'The girl; she's a doctor.'
Stok told them to carry on the search. 'If the girl proves not to be a doctor we might have to return.'
'If the girl proves not to be a doctor I might be dead,' I said.
'You are not hurt,' said Stok. He walked close to me and looked at the tiny mark left by the welt of the boot. 'It is nothing,' he said.
'By your standards nothing more than a good evening.'
Stok shrugged. 'You are under surveillance,' he said. 'I warn you.'
'The more the merrier,' I said. 'Tap the phone too if it will make you feel good.'
'It's not a joke.'
'Oh! It's not. Well, I'm glad you told me that, before I split my sides laughing.'
From the next room I could hear Stok's two friends tapping' and hammering, in pursuit of secret compartments. One of them brought him the file in which I keep a record of my expenses. Stok put away his pistol and put on his reading-glasses in order to scrutinize the sheets but I knew there was nothing there that would compromise security. I laughed. Stok looked up and smiled and put the file back on the table.
'There's nothing,' I said. 'You're wasting your time.'
'Probably,' agreed Stok.
'Ready,' called the voice from the next room.
'Wait a minute,' I said as I realized what they were going to do. 'I can explain about that — this flat belonged to a bookie. There's nothing in there now. Nothing at all.'
I pushed Stok aside to get to the next room. His two friends had fixed our Birmingham carpet upon the wall. It covered the wall safe upon which they had affixed six small charges. They triggered them as I got to the doorway. The carpet billowed into a great spinnaker before I heard the muffled bang. There was a rush of hot cordite-smelling air that hammered me backwards.
'Empty,' said the bearded one; already he was throwing his odds and ends back into the metal case.
Stok looked at me and blew his nose. The other two hurried out through the front door but Stok delayed a moment. He raised a hand as if he was about to offer an a
pology or an explanation. 'But words failed him; he let the hand drop to his side, turned, and hurried out after his friends.
There was the sound of a scuffle as Frazer met the Russians on the stairs. But Frazer was no more of a match for them than I had been, and he came through the door dabbing at his nose with a blood-spotted handkerchief. There was a Special Branch man with him: a new kid who insisted upon showing me his card before photographing the damage.
Well, it had to be the Russians, I thought. There was something inimitable in it. Just like the business of forcing us off the road and then waiting in The Bonnet to show us' who they were. Just like the intelligence trawlers that followed nato ships, and the big Soviet Fleets that harassed us at sea. It was all part of the demonstration of their resources and their knowledge, an attempt to bully opponents into ill-considered action.
It was typical too that the security Colonel had arrived separately, taking no chances of being in the same car with the house-breaking tools and explosives. And that half-hearted gesture of regret — tough bastards, and I didn't like it. I mean, you go for a dip in the municipal baths, and you don't expect to catch sight of a shark fin.
They had all gone by the time Marjorie returned. At first she didn't look through the bedroom door, to where the previous tenant's safe had its door dangling and its lock shredded into wire wool. Or at paper wrappings from the explosive charges or the twists of wire and dry batteries. And she didn't see the thick layer of old plaster that covered the bed and my suit and her dressing table. Or the carpet with its circular burn in the middle.
She just saw me picking up the fragments of the china tea service her mother had given her and Jack for their wedding anniversary.
'I told you about the old man with the twisted hip,' said Marjorie.
'What!' I said.
'Doing exercises. You'll do the same. You see! You'll be in the Emergency Ward with him: you're too old for press-ups.'
I tossed the pieces of china on to the tray with the broken teapot.
'Well, if it wasn't exercises,' said Marjorie, 'what's happened?'
'A Colonel from the Russian embassy, and an explosives man, and a driver with gold teeth and a beard. And then there was the Navy and Special Branch taking photos.'
She stared at me trying to see if I was joking. 'Doing what?' she asked guardedly. She sniffed the burnt air and looked around the room.
'With a cast like that,' I said, 'who needs a plot?'
Chapter Eight
Line reject: to miss a move. Wargamers must remember that fuel, fatigue and all logistic support will continue to be expended during such a move. Continuous instructions {air patrols etc.) will be continued and naval units will continue on course unless halted by separate and specific instruction. Therefore, think twice before rejecting.
GLOSSARY. 'NOTES FOR WARGAMERS'. STUDIES CENTRE. LONDON
There's a large piece of plush Campden Hill landscape trapped on the wrong side of Holland Park Avenue. That's where the Foxwells live. Past the police station there's a street of crumbling Victorian villas that West Indian tenants have painted pistachio green, cherry red and raspberry pink. See it in daylight and it's a gargantuan banana split, with a side-order of dented cars.
'On the corner there's a mews pub: topless dancers Friday, Irish riots Saturday, on Sunday morning, advertising men and a sports car club. Alongside the pub there is the mews. At the mews's far end a gate opens onto the entirely unexpected house and garden that Foxwells have owned for three generations.
It was hard to believe that this was central London. The trees were bare, and sapless roses hung their shrunken heads. A hundred yards up the drive there was a large house just visible in the winter gloom. In front of it, well clear of the London planes, the gardener was burning the last of the fallen leaves. He raked the fire with great apprehension, as a man might goad a small dragon. A billow of smoke emerged and fierce embers crackled and glowed red.
'Evening, sir.'
'Evening, Tom. Will it rain?' I went round and opened the car door for Marjorie. She knew how to operate it for herself, but when she had her hair up she liked to be treated like an elderly invalid.
'There's snow up there,' said Tom. 'Make sure your anti-freeze is in.'
'I forgot to drain it out last year,' I said. Feeling neglected, Marjorie put her hands in her pockets and shivered.
'That's cruel,' said Tom. 'She'll rust.'
Ferdy's house sits on two acres of prime London building land. It makes the apples he grows in the orchard an expensive delicacy, but Ferdy is like that.
There were cars already there: Ferdy's Renault, a Bentley and an amazing vintage job: bright yellow, perhaps too ostentatious for Al Capone but certainly big enough. I parked my Mini Clubman next to it.
I hesitated for a moment before ringing the bell. These intimate little dinner parties of the Foxwells were planned with the special sort of skill that his wife gave to everything she did. Committees devoted to musical charities, societies for new music and, according to Ferdy, a trust that restored old organs. But in spite of such gags, Ferdy gave some of his time and money to the same charities. I knew that dinner would be followed by a short recital by some young singer or musician. I knew too that the performance would be Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven or Bach, because Ferdy had vowed never again to have me at one of the evenings the Foxwells dedicated to twentieth-century music. It was a disbarment for which I was eternally thankful. I guessed that the other guests that I saw at these dinners had similarly disgraced themselves by contributing to the discord.
Ferdy and Teresa were in deadly earnest about these musical soirees: they'd put me under real pressure to get me into my second-hand dinner suit. It made me look like a band leader waiting for a return of the nineteen thirties, but twice I'd gone along wearing my dark grey suit, and Teresa had told a mutual friend that I was a man delivering something from Ferdy's office — and she'd felt obliged to ask me to stay — democracy in action. I mean, I like the Foxwells, but everyone has their funny little ways. Right?
I pressed the bell.
Marjorie liked the house. She had an idea that one day, when we grew up, we'd be living in plastic and hardboard scaled-down versions of it. She stroked the door. It was set into an elaborate sea-shell canopy. On each side of it there was a lighted coach lamp. The burning leaves scented the night air. The Notting Hill traffic was no more than a soft purr. I knew that Marjorie was scoring this moment in her memories. I leaned close and kissed her. She clutched my arm.
The door opened. I saw Ferdy, and behind him his wife Teresa. Out spilled the tinkles of music, laughter, and ice-cubes colliding with Waterford glass. It had everything, that house: suits of armour, stags' heads and gloomy portraits. And servants with lowered, eyes who remembered which guests had hats and umbrellas.
There is a particular type of tranquil beauty that belongs to the very very rich. Teresa Foxwell had grown-up children, was on the wrong side of forty and gathering speed, but she still had the same melancholy beauty that had kept her photo in the society columns since she was a deb. She wore a long yellow and orange dress of marbled satin. I heard Marjorie's sharp intake of breath. Teresa knew how to spend money, there was no doubt of that.
Ferdy took my coat and handed it to someone off-stage.
Teresa took Marjorie's arm and walked her off. She must have seen the storm warnings.
'I'm so glad you're here,' said Ferdy.
'Yes…'I said. 'Well… good.'
'You left early and there was a bit of a scene right after.' He turned to a servant v/ho was standing motionless with, a tray of champagne. 'Put the tray on; the hall stand,' said Ferdy.
'A tray of champagne,' I said. "Now that's what I call hospitality.'
Ferdy picked up two glasses and pushed one upon me. 'Schlegel was rude,' said Ferdy. 'Damned rude.'
I took the top off my champagne. I could see I was going to need it. 'What happened?' I said.
And out it came: all the anxieties
and resentments that Ferdy had been storing for goodness knows how long hit me in one long gabble of plaintive bewilderment.
'He doesn't have to come over the speaker with it, does he?'
'No,' I said. 'But perhaps you'd better take it from the beginning.'
'Schlegel came through on the yellow phone, as soon as I put those M.A.D.s into the Kara. Did I mean the Barents, kid. No, Kara, I said. You know where the Kara is, Ferdy kid, he says. You know where the Kara is.'
Ferdy sipped some of his champagne, smiled, and as he continued slipped into his devastating impression of Schlegel's accent. 'And those Mallow flying boats — you're making crushed ice out there, sweetheart, that's all you're doing — check those ice-limits, baby, and take another look at the Kara. Will you do that for me.'
Again Ferdy sipped his drink, by which time I'd almost drained mine. Ferdy said., 'I didn't reply. Schlegel came through on the loudspeaker, shouting, Are you reading me, Foxwell kid, because if you're giving me that old time limey high-hat treatment I'll move your tail out: of that chair so fast your tootsies won't touch the ground, got me.'
I said, 'Schlegel was probably getting a bad time from those cinclant admirals.'
Ferdy putting those huge flying boats down on the ice was probably what was really worrying Schlegel. If the big computer showed them as landing safely, a lot of the Arctic strategy would have to be rethought, but meanwhile, Ferdy might wipe the floor with Schlegel's two V.I.P.s.
'What would you have done?' asked Ferdy.
'Kicked him in the crutch, Ferdy.'
'Zap! Pow! Wallop!' he said doubtfully. 'Yes, look here, drink up.' He took a glass of champagne off the hall stand and handed it to me.
'Good health, Ferdy.'
