by James Munro
Craig continued to take photographs.
A Bentley Continental whispered up to the curb and a tall, thin man got out. He was gray-haired, elegant, a white carnation in the buttonhole of his dark-blue suit. He limped slightly as he walked up to the doorway, and there was a smeared scar on one side of his face that suggested unsuccessful plastic surgery.
"That's the owner," said Millington. "Julek Brodski. He's a naturalized Pole."
"Any form?" asked Craig.
"No. He was a squadron leader in the Polish air force during the war. Got a D.S.O. Matter of fact, he's supposed to be a count or something. No, Brodski's all right," Millington said. He looked at a photo of a girl whose inability to handle a sunshade was causing her some embarrassment. "As a matter of fact he runs a nice, clean place."
"That the lot?" Craig asked, and Millington nodded. "What time do the girls arrive?"
"Four thirty," said Millington.
"Let's go and look at the place where Driver plays cards," said Craig.
Driver played in the basement of Luigi's, a sad, ineffective little cafe three blocks from the strip club. On the ground floor there was a soda fountain and seats that looked like the pews of the Methodist chapels Craig remembered from his boyhood. Three tired waitresses, who looked as if they hadn't left the building for weeks, shambled back and forth serving meals whose cheapness did nothing to compensate for their nastiness. Craig sat in the van and took more pictures—of the waitresses, of everybody who seemed at ease in the place, of a fat man who visited the cash register every half hour and rang up "NO CHANGE," then counted the take. The fat man was the proprietor. His name wasn't Luigi; it was Arthur. Fat Arthur. He was very fat indeed, but he didn't look soft. Downstairs was exactly the same, Craig learned, except that there was a little room behind the dining area, and in that room a poker game went on, sometimes for days. It was a quiet game, restricted to friends of Arthur's, dishonest men who kept their dishonesty to themselves. The police weren't interested. Millington suddenly looked restless.
"What's wrong?" Craig asked.
Millington flushed. "I drank too much beer," he said.
"The loo's in that cupboard," said Craig, and pointed.
Millington, half-believing, opened the cupboard door. It was true.
"You think of everything," he said.
"We try," said Craig. "We have to, in our business."
He looked again into the street as Millington voided his bladder.
"Come here," he said, and began taking pictures.
"I can't," said Millington.
Craig took more pictures, and at last Millington came over to him and looked out of the window at a tall young man in a Brooks Brothers gray-flannel suit, knitted silk tie, and button-down collar.
"That's Driver," said Millington.
Craig looked down at Millington's unzipped fly.
"You do pick your times, don't you?" he said.
The van drove off at last, and Craig set up the developing tank inside it, curtained it off, and switched on the infrared lights. The photographs came out well enough, even the photographs of photographs of the stars of Nuderama, Karen and Tempest and Maxine. Craig numbered each picture and took notes on the names as Millington talked. For the first time Millington became aware of Craig's fury of concentration, his utter disregard of everything but the job on hand. Millington began to wonder what a man had to do to afford a fifty-guinea suit, a Longines-Wittnauer watch, Guerlain cologne. He looked for the hundredth time at Craig's hands. They were big hands, for Craig himself was big—six feet two and thirteen stones at least, with a heaviness of shoulder that stretched his suit glove-tight across the back—but they were neat hands too, long-fingered, deft in their movements. The knuckles were strange: each was flattened, so that across the back of each hand there was a continuous ridge of bone, and the skin that covered it looked like leather. The edge of each hand was odd too, because it was not rounded but straight and flat, and covered from wrist to fingertip in the same leathery skin. It reminded Millington of the blade of an ax.
The van pulled over to the curb by a tube station, and Craig finished his notes.
"All right," he said. "This is where you leave us."
"What are you going to do now?" Millington asked. "Can you tell me?"
"I'm going back there," said Craig. "Our people see this as a rush job. So I'll rush it." He grinned. "That's where I've got the edge on you. I can go in there and make things happen. You have to wait and pick up the pieces."
"I have to go back there myself," said Mill-ington. "Not after Driver," he added hastily. "We're laying off him till we get clearance from you. But I may see you."
"You won't know me," said Craig.
"Naturally not," Millington stood up, and surprised himself by holding out his hand.
"Good luck," he said.
"You too," said Craig^ and shook his hand.
Millington said: "Yes, well—" and scrambled out of the van. A moment later his head reappeared in the doorway.
"You're parked on a yellow line," he said.
5
The room was bare, efficient, and utterly devoid of decoration. On one cream-washed wall a darker patch showed where a picture had once hung. It had been a portrait of Stalin. Chelichev was glad that such extravagant idolatry was no longer necessary. It was idiotic, and it interfered with the clean lines of his room. So did the dark patch, but he refused to have it painted out. It reminded him of days that had not been gone for very long, days that might, if one was not careful, come back. He settled back in his chair; he looked like an ad for superior whisky, a lean, leathery, handsome horseman; a tough and well-preserved Fifty who could still play hell with the ladies. His Soviet army general's uniform had been cut and tailored by an expert. It, like everything else in the room, was fanatically clean, as if room and owner had been purged by fire. He looked at the one note on his desk, tore it into four neat squares, murmured into a desk phone, then sat back, at once at ease and watchful, as a cat sits.
The woman who came in was beautiful. Tall and deep-bosomed, green-eyed, with thick, heavy hair
so blond as to be almost white. A former prima ballerina assoluta of the Bolshoi had taught her to move, a film makeup man had taught her how to make up, a Hungarian couturier had spent weeks showing her how to choose and match clothes, gloves, handbags, shoes. The result was at once beautiful and splendid: a woman of superb proportions and exquisite taste. Chelichev looked pleased.
The woman said: "This is an honor, comrade-general."
The voice was deep, melancholy, beautiful. An actor of the Stanislavsky method had made it so.
Chelichev said: "For me it is a pleasure. A very great pleasure." The woman lowered her head, acknowledging a tribute that could never be commonplace.
"Soong is dead," he continued. "You did remarkably well in Morocco."
"Thank you, comrade-general."
"The information you passed on to Dovzhenko was relayed here. We knew he had gone to Britain of course—it was just good luck that we found him —but the execution, that was remarkably efficient. Except"—he scowled—"that somebody thought it would be amusing to have one of the executives speak to him in Cantonese. We are not here to be amusing. To be amusing is to betray a secret. In this case I think it betrayed who killed Soong to Department K."
"The British intelligence organization?"
"Exactly. Department K is very good. Very original. They never make jokes." He paused. "No. That is not true. The British always make jokes, but it is part of their technique. Their minds work that way. Soong is a good lead for them." He paused again, and the woman knew she was on trial. It was her turn to speak.
"You mean it might lead them to BC?"
"It might. Yes. Their leader, Loomis, is a terrible man. He is also very clever. Everything that happens he turns to his advantage. How would such a man react if he knew that a foreign group was doing all it could to attack the USSR?"
"There have been more i
ncidents?"
"Two cases of sabotage," he said. "One very spectacular. The theft of a certain archives—they were recovered, and the man who stole them killed himself. That was a pity—but to retain the archives was essential. They were about Beria, and very revealing. BC exists all right."
"Of course," the woman said.
"Of course." Chelichev's voice was ironic. "But there are certain people, even in the Presidium, who do not think so. They blame it all on the Americans and the British. If it were true, it would be an act of war. We must stop BC before our masters start demanding reprisals."
He looked at the woman again, noting the fact of her youth and beauty. His look was not one of desire but of pity.
"Another war could destroy us all," he said, "including those of our masters who say it couldn't happen. Just because we take reprisals against those who have done nothing to us. We must find BC and destroy it. Soon."
The woman said: "Dovzhenko had a lead. BC has a bank account in Tangier. I heard about it and brought in Dovzhenko to find out."
"In a bank called Credit Labonne," said Chelichev. "They have a million pounds in Deutschmarks."
"A million pounds sterling?" He nodded. "What a strange way to put it. Why not just say however many million Deutschmarks it is? Unless—"
"It's about eleven million," said Chelichev. "Unless what?"
"Unless Dovzhenko found out from an Englishman—or an Englishman put the money in the bank," answered the woman.
"I want you to go to Tangier again and find out," said Chelichev.
"Why not send Dovzhenko too? He's good," the woman said.
"Very good. Unfortunately Department K took him from us two days ago. That is why I feel so sure they'll know about BC by now."
"They kidnapped Dovzhenko?" Somehow she stopped herself from adding the stupid "But that's impossible."
"He did, not they. A man called Craig, from Department K."
"He must be a remarkable man."
"Very. He could—quite literally—kill you with one finger. We have a file on him. Read it."
"Do you think Loomis will use the BC information to hurt us?"
"No," said Chelichev. "He doesn't want a war any more than I do. I might even get him to help us find out who the BC members are. At a price."
"You think they're based in England?"
"Soong went to England, and we know he was trying to contact the BC."
He looked at his watch and said: "That is all, I think. You will study the situation here for a few more days, then go back to Tangier."
"Yes, comrade-general," she said, and added, because the thought of Dovzhenko being overcome by one man was too incredible, "but may I ask—"
"Quickly," said Chelichev.
"Are you quite sure this man Craig kidnapped Dovzhenko? He didn't defect?"
"Craig took him," said Chelichev. "There can be no doubt. Loomis sent word to me himself."
Craig took a taxi to Soho. He wore the same gray suit, and over it a vicuna coat he had bought in Rome. He wished he had Grierson's elegance. Grierson wore clothes with a casual distinction that took two hundred years of selective inbreeding to achieve. Beside him, Craig knew he looked a peasant. Grierson looked asleep all the time, yet was as fast as a cat. He had a way of smiling that was lazy too, as if the world was a hell of a good place to be in, if only he could wake up. Grierson was in a psychiatric home now, lying in bed, tying knots in a piece of string, untying them, retying them. All day, every day. If anybody asked Grierson to do anything else, he began to cry. Deliberately Craig blotted Grierson from his mind. He walked past the club, and the cooing enticements of the barker. "Show starting any minute, sir. Eleven lovely ladies inside. Nonstop strip, sir. Show you all they've got—and they've got everything, sir, believe me."
Craig hesitated. "How much is it?" he asked.
"Twenty-five bob, sir. Includes entrance to the bar. You can watch the show from there, sir. All mod cons at the Nuderama."
Craig gave the half-embarrassed shrug every man gives when he decides to enter a strip show. The movement was perfectly natural. He was half embarrassed. He paid twenty-five shillings to the woman behind the cash desk. The woman had had a henna rinse and wore a black silk dress and pearls. She also had the figure and muscles of a sumo wrestler. Craig decided not to pick a fight with her, and walked down a corridor with wall-to-wall carpeting. The corridor was two feet wide. From time to time, it seemed, the sumo wrestler sprayed it with My Sin. At least there was an atomizer of it beside her, and the place reeked of the stuff. He felt for the handle of the door leading to the theater—the lighting was what the management called discreet—and fumbled his way into what the eighteenth century would have considered an adequate drawing room. Now it contained a stage, a raked auditorium for fifty people who didn't mind each other's company, and a runway down the middle of the auditorium. Behind the auditorium was a raised bar that looked straight into the theater. Stage, auditorium, and bar alike were cheap and nasty. The walls were distempered a vile yellow; the stage curtains, bought as a job lot before Garrick retired, had once been of red velvet but were now the kind of pink that clashed viciously with the yellow walls; the seats had long since lost their springs, and the bar seemed mostly matchwood. The only thing that surprised Craig was how clean it all was.
There were perhaps twenty men sitting in the auditorium. Piped music whispered love to them, but they were all on their own, and all sat either staring straight ahead or looking at their programs, which cost five shillings to buy, six-pence to print, and contained photographs of Karen, Tempest, and Maxine on every page. Their sense of embarrassment was overwhelming: Craig took shelter in the bar. The customers at the bar were in groups. They drank light ale and rubbed their hands and behaved like men who were in for a treat. Each of them seemed to be selling something to the others in his group. Craig eased through them, and went up to the barman, who had "HARRY" embroidered on the left breast of his dinner jacket and a gold loop earring in his right ear.
"Scotch and dry ginger," said Craig.
"Yes, sir," said the barman, and reached for an anonymous bottle of Scotch and a large Schweppes Dry Ginger. He took six shillings from Craig, and went back to opening light ales. Craig sipped the Scotch. It was watered. He drank it and ordered another, straight. The barman reached for the anonymous bottle again, and set a glass in front of Craig. When the measure on the bottle had dropped into the glass, Craig grabbed his wrist. The barman tried to pull away, and found he couldn't.
"I like you," said Craig softly. "You're cute." He sipped his whisky and pushed it back to the barman. "Change this for me, Harry," he said. "I only drink water when I'm thirsty."
The barman said: "I don't understand, sir." The hand on his wrist tightened and he almost yelled out. But he couldn't yell out, not with all the customers watching. They thought the man who held his wrist was teasing him—everybody knew he was gay: it was worth a lot of tips in a strip club—and if he started screaming Mr. Brodski would go berserk. Harry whimpered, and Craig leaned across to him.
"You're too pretty to be dishonest," Craig whispered. "Pour me a proper drink."
"Yes, sir," said Harry, "I'm very sorry, sir."
"You should be," said Craig. "I might have hurt you, Harry."
The barman poured him a Teacher's. Again Craig sipped, but this time he smiled. Harry shuddered and looked down at his wrist. The marks of Craig's fingers lay across it like red bars. Harry took the other glass away, and sold it three minutes later to a man in the costume-jewelry game from Edgebaston. He didn't notice a thing. Craig waited till the barman came past him, then said: "Why don't you buy me a drink, Harry? You can afford it." This time he hadn't lowered his voice, and the group on either side of him watched in awe as Harry poured a double for Craig, dug into his pocket, and put twelve shillings into the till. Every habitue of Nuderama knew that Harry never, never bought anybody a drink.
Then the bar lights dimmed, the lights in the auditorium went out
, and a drummer, a pianist, and a guitar player scrambled into a space the size of a coffin for the lady sumo wrestler. The piped music faded and died, the pianist struck an E, and the guitar player tightened his strings with the air of a man who has worked in strip clubs long enough to know that the audience seldom listens to the music. Some of the men at the bar left then, to try for seats near the runway. The rest took their drinks to the edge of the auditorium, and watched in silence, and with care. After all, twenty-five shillings is a lot of money. The drummer struck a roll, the curtains jerkily parted, and the show was on.
It was memorable solely in that it was utterly devoid of talent. None of the girls involved, not even Karen, Tempest, or Maxine, made the slightest effort to sing, mime, or dance. Their movements were the movements of women, not of dancers. They were tired, bored, and utterly without grace. As entertainment the show failed to achieve the standard of a Girl Guide Gang Show on the first day of rehearsal. But what Girl Guide ever finishes a number naked on a runway, with the nearest cash customer a foot away? And that was the way Karen, Tempest, and Maxine finished every number, while often as not the eight supporting lovelies did the same behind them. Karen was brunette, Tempest was a blonde, and Maxine was a redhead, so there was something for everybody. They were young enough, and prettily fleshed, and the clothes they removed were pretty too. Long gloves, fur stoles, bras and panties of lace and nylon: they were all designed to excite. Their postures too, should have been exciting: the crook of a leg to emphasize the curve of calf and thigh and buttock, the shoulders thrown back to emphasize the sheer fall of a breast, the tightness of the under-curve, the slow recline on a pink divan. // only, Craig thought, they weren't so bored. But they were bored, and made no move to hide it as they stood under the spotlights and filled the world with nippies and navels, bellies and buttocks and breasts, and thought of nothing but how cold it was if you copped the draught from stage right.
The show finished in an hour and a quarter exactly, and the piped music crashed into the dream world of "Harem Nights" and "The Lady Takes a Bath" with a brass band Sousa medley that scattered the customers faster than a burst from a machine gun. Craig sat on alone, and drank Scotch.
