by Len Deighton
I know I shouldn’t have felt resentment or envy that Billy had been sending a regular fax letter to his mother, but couldn’t it have been arranged without the threat of withdrawing his pocket-money? And couldn’t there have been a copy forwarded to me? No matter. When I had Billy and Sally to myself I’d make sure I did the right thing for Fiona, and even for her parents. And I would have Gloria too, if everything went according to plan.
I looked at the next room, and at Fiona standing under the merciless bare bulb that lit it. She was trying to close the lid of her suitcase upon a tall pile of beautifully folded clothes interleaved with white tissue paper. She was kneeling on the rollaway bed, pushing down on the lid of the case with all her might, but she couldn’t get it closed. Unaware that I was watching her, she gave a scarcely audible sob that combined anger with despair. There were tears shining on her cheeks and her eyes were bright and mad. Was she worn out, just frazzled, angry and bordering on the hysterical due to her worries about the work she did, and her unremitting schedule? Or was this a glimpse into her real mental state?
‘Are you all right, darling?’ I called from the bedroom without letting her know I had seen her break down and cry.
Slowly she got to her feet and came at snail’s pace to the door. She leaned an arm against the door-frame and whispered: ‘Would you mind helping me, darling? I never can seem to close it.’
She never could seem to close it because she put ten times as many clothes into the case as it was designed to hold. And like all women, she thought that all it needed was a man’s weight and muscle to shut and lock it. It never occurred to her that the hinges were being strained to breaking-point. I got the case and put it on the floor. After a struggle, I got it closed and locked. ‘You’d better put a strap round it,’ I said. ‘You’ve put far too much into it. One of these days it’s going to burst open and scatter your silk panties across the carousel.’
‘Don’t be silly, darling. I’ve cut back to the bare minimum; I should have my low-heel shoes, my new hat and some more woollens really. Düsseldorf will be cold at this time of year,’ she added with unanswerable logic. Then, on the carpet at her feet, she noticed the fabric flower, a white camellia that must have fallen off her Chanel dress when I was trying to get the case closed. She picked it up, and as she pretended to smell it she looked at me and smiled. She had restored herself, wiped her tears and polished her smile. She picked up a hairbrush and began putting it through her hair in a way she used to do every evening before she went to bed.
What had happened to her after she defected; during those terrible years when she was a double-agent? She seldom talked of it, but once she’d confided that the worst part was the interrogation that took place when she first arrived over there. The Soviets have many skilled interrogators; it is a talent born of their sort of paranoia. And there would be no relaxation of their rigour even when they were questioning ‘a heroine of the battle for socialism’. It was a lonely business, she said, and then changed it to being a solitary business. ‘But after surviving those endless questions I never felt really lonely again,’ she’d told me. ‘I often felt isolated and sometimes I felt forsaken, but I never felt lonely. I knew I was lucky just to have survived it.’ Poor Fiona.
‘A penny for your thoughts, darling,’ she said.
‘Nothing,’ I said, and before I had to invent a lie the phone rang. I was nearest, and when I answered it the night-duty clerk told me that the car was on its way. When I relayed this message to Fiona she emphatically denied that it could be for her.
‘I have no car. Bret’s driver is taking me to the airport. I think I’ll phone and ask him to bring the typed report with him from the office. No, it can’t be anyone for me, darling.’
‘Who is the car for?’ I asked the duty clerk.
‘For you, Mr Samson. Mr Rensselaer and Mr Cruyer will be collecting you in five minutes. Would you please go downstairs and wait for them. It’s very urgent, they said. Very very urgent.’
6
Mayfair, London
‘Who is it? Bernard? Good! Put your skates on and hurry on down. I’m in a car at your front door and it’s urgent. Urgent.’
It was Dicky Cruyer’s reedy voice on the apartment’s door-phone speaker. I had only put the phone down two minutes before, and now he was at my door. He was taking no chances on my finding a way to escape him.
‘What’s happened?’ I said into the door phone.
‘Yes, I know you’ve had a long day, Bernard. We all have. Jump to it, there’s a good chap.’
I felt like pointing out that Dicky’s long days were invariably punctuated by leisurely lunches followed sometimes by a post-prandial doze in his office with the ‘meeting in progress’ sign switched on.
Fiona was toying with the fabric camellia, wondering perhaps whether to ask me to open the case again. She looked at me as I hung up. ‘Dicky,’ I said. ‘He’s downstairs, waiting for me.’
‘It’s late,’ she said.
‘Do you know what it might be?’ I asked. She shook her head. I unlocked my desk and got the VP70 pistol that had proved so useful against the hoodlums. It was a bit on the heavy side, but used with a soft holster it was a nice smooth gun that didn’t rip the linings from my jackets. She watched me test it and check the magazine but didn’t comment. Things had changed; there was a time when the sight of me packing a gun brought out all her anxieties. I said: ‘I’ll be off then.’
‘Goodbye, darling,’ she said. ‘I’ll miss you.’ She held her arms out to me.
We embraced and I kissed her. ‘Have a safe trip,’ I said. She shivered.
‘Oh, I forgot,’ she said into my ear as if cooing songs of love. ‘That silly girl … the one Dicky has given me as a temporary secretary, opened one of your letters.’
‘Was it anything exciting?’ I said, still holding her tightly.
‘The bank. You were terribly overdrawn. Three thousand and something … and four hundred … I forget exactly how much. I transferred some money from my account to tide you over.’
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ I said. ‘I have back-pay due … overdue, in fact.’
‘We are not so rich we want to pay those bloodsuckers any more bank overdrafts,’ she said. ‘Or are we?’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘There’s no need to give me so much housekeeping money. Not while you are in Berlin.’
‘You are my wife,’ I said doggedly.
‘I worry about you,’ she said. ‘Daddy gives me more money than I need. And it must be terribly expensive for you in Germany with the mark going up and up.’
‘I manage.’
‘I wish I could be with you.’ Her fingers explored my waist. ‘You’ve lost weight.’ I turned my head and looked into her moist eyes. It was never easy to know exactly what was in her mind. Perhaps that was why she was able to hold her own among all those inscrutable public-school ruffians. I was not convinced by her wish. Why should she want to be with me? She’d be confirmed as permanent Deputy Europe within a month or two. No woman had ever got that high on the promotion ladder. Perhaps she guessed what was in my mind, for after what seemed ages she said: ‘Do you love me, Bernard?’
‘Yes, I love you.’ It was true. I loved her no less than I had always loved her. The only difference was that now I loved Gloria too and, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t stop thinking of her. ‘Take care, darling.’
Waiting for me in the street there was a black Rolls-Royce with three whip antennas. It was not a new car; it was tall and angular, built in those days before every Rolls wanted to squat down and look like a Mercedes.
The driver opened the door for me. ‘Jump in,’ said Dicky, indicating the little folding jump-seat upon which he had been resting his boots. It was warm inside the car, the engine was purring away and the heater was on. Dicky slumped on the black leather back seat with Bret Rensselaer in the far corner.
Bret nodded to me. He was hunched stiffly against the arm rest in a dark
suit, charcoal-grey tie, starched white shirt and gleaming black Oxfords neatly laced. His face was dejected and his hands clasped as if in prayer. The sleek Rolls belonged to Bret: elderly, respected, formal and waxen, like the man himself. Like some other American Anglophiles I’d met, Bret had an obsession with renowned old English motor-cars if they had an extra long wheelbase and elaborate custom-made coachwork with brass fittings and silk tassels.
Dicky was wearing scrubbed jeans, and a dark blue cable-knit sweater, the collar of his denim shirt just visible above the neck of it. The way he now rested one leg across his knee revealed the cleated sole of his stylish crosscountry boot. Bundled alongside him on the seat he had his leather jacket. It looked as if Bret had picked him up from home at short notice.
‘What’s the problem?’ I asked as the driver started the engine and pulled away.
‘You’ll see,’ said Dicky. ‘One of your pals is the problem …’
‘We don’t know,’ said Bret, speaking over Dicky’s voice with an irritable tone that made Dicky dry up, look contrite, and chew a fingernail energetically, as if trying to press the words back into his mouth.
For a few minutes neither of them spoke.
‘Are we driving around the park until the spirits try to contact us?’ I said.
Bret gave his famous fleeting smile. But within a few minutes the car had emerged from Park Lane, passed Buckingham Palace and was heading south.
‘Special Branch are there. Five are there too. It will be a Goddamned circus. I don’t want any part of it, unless you need my clout. You and Dicky go inside and look. We’ll park around the corner; I’ll stay in the car.’
‘Look at what?’ I said.
‘A body,’ said Bret. ‘They are getting impatient. They will move him as soon as you’ve had a chance to look. They will have made photos and taken all the measurements by the time we arrive.’
‘One of our people?’
‘That’s what Five claim,’ said Bret. ‘They say one of their people recognized him.’
‘He was carrying a gun,’ said Dicky.
‘Maybe a gun,’ conceded Bret. ‘I had conflicting reports about the gun.’
‘A field agent?’ I asked. I wondered why they wouldn’t just tell me all they knew, but I could see they were both disturbed by it. Dicky was wringing his hands with occasional interludes while he chewed his nails. Bret looked drawn, breathless and stiff. The desk people seldom came into contact with the blood and snot of the Department. Any sudden reminder that they weren’t working in Treasury or Agriculture came as a nasty shock. ‘It’s not Harry Strang, is it?’
‘Harry Strang?’ Dicky’s cry was scoffing in tone. ‘Why should it be Harry Strang?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘You do come out with some ideas, Bernard. Sometimes I wonder what goes on in that brain-box of yours.’ He gave a brief mirthless chuckle and glanced at Bret, who was looking out of the window. ‘Harry Strang,’ he said reflectively. ‘Harry Strang retired ages ago.’
‘They are holding someone,’ said Bret. ‘A youngster. He found the body.’
‘They will have to charge him or let him go,’ said Dicky. ‘We thought you might want to take a look at him. Just in case …’
‘In case of what?’
‘In case you recognize him,’ said Dicky. ‘You’re inside and outside too. You are in Berlin and London. You’re always on the go. You know everyone.’ He looked at Bret; this time Bret met his eyes. ‘Departmental people, I mean.’
‘Do I? Perhaps I do.’ What sort of people did these two know then? I had the feeling that they had brought me along for some other reason; for some reason they didn’t want to admit.
Wimbledon. Once it had been a pretty little village outside London. But when this became the spot where the mighty South Western Railway touched the networks serving London’s southern suburbs, Wimbledon ceased to be a village. A frequent train service, season tickets and affordable housing had helped London swallow it up. The big lighted signs we passed offered Thai takeaways, Big Macs, unisex sauna, rented videos and the brilliantly lit products of The Handmade Belgian Chocolate Shop.
Wide and tree-lined, the backstreet in which we came to a stop was quiet. The houses were large with fake-timber façades, front lawns and wide gravel in-and-out drives. They were built for families who enjoyed Assam tea, and heather honey on Hovis toast, in front of a coal fire, until a nanny in a starched apron came and said it was time for the children to take their bath.
But they were no longer family homes, at least not many of them remained as such. Carefully painted noticeboards stared over the privet hedges to tell you that they were nursery schools or ‘residential homes’. While in Catholic countries men and women selflessly shared their homes and children with their aged relatives, in Protestant countries equally selfless men and women spent every last penny to lock their aged relatives away to languish in such places as these. Here the warm and well-fed unwanted spent their final years seated side by side watching television with the volume very loud. They were plied with sweet tea and fruit cake and frozen dinners by nurses from the Indian subcontinent where the Assam tea comes from. And spent their final days in refined despair.
Bret remained in his warm car parked out of sight. Dicky walked ahead of me using his flashlight to find the gate of the house we were looking for. The building was dark, and encased in an elaborate builder’s scaffolding, like an angular version of the bare trees that framed it. There was a man standing on the doorstep. He was in civilian clothes but his stance, and the quiet way in which he challenged our approach, revealed him as a policeman. When he’d seen our identity cards we went in. Just inside the door there was a uniformed cop who’d found a kitchen chair to perch upon. He was reading a paperback book – Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs – that he pushed out of sight as we came upon him.
The whole house was in the process of being gutted by builders. Walking through it was precarious. At the front, a part of the floor was missing so that the cellar was visible. Only the staircase remained to show what a lovely old place it had once been. Dicky used his flashlight as we picked our way through the debris: a cement mixer, broken timber, ladders and bent buckets.
There were voices from the back of the house. I recognized the slight, notably refined, Edinburgh accent of ‘Squeaky’ King of MI5, a prima donna of the Security Service. There were four of them there. The only one I didn’t recognize was a tall pale-faced man wearing a soft felt hat, loosened silk scarf and ill-fitting fawn-coloured overcoat. His stiff white collar and dark tie marked him as a senior police officer in improvised disguise. There was a police doctor with him, a man I knew from the old days. I recognized him because of his distinctively worn-out capacious leather bag of the kind that doctors cart around. There was also Keith Golds of Special Branch, a wily old-timer. I winked at Keith. I could see he’d been here a long time putting up with Squeaky, who technically was in charge. Squeaky was wearing his usual winter outfit: a short sheepskin overcoat with its woolly collar pulled up high around his neck. On his head he had a close-fitting checked cap. With his flushed face and squinted eyes he had the look of a racetrack tout.
‘Hello, Bernard,’ said Squeaky with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
‘This is Mr Cruyer,’ I said, and introduced Dicky to him. Or maybe I introduced King to Dicky. I always seem to do it the wrong way round; and some people, including Dicky, sometimes take that as a serious blow to their pride.
‘Show me,’ said Dicky, without spending too much time on polite exchanges of compliments. At the coal-face we always got along well with the workers from Five but Dicky and Squeaky conducted themselves like viceroys, charged with upholding the authority of their tribal chiefs. Squeaky didn’t disguise his feelings about Dicky intruding into Five territory, while Dicky treated Squeaky like a judge censuring some pretentious traffic cop.
‘Into the breach once more, dear friends,’ said Squeaky, leading the way.
Go
lds rolled his eyes. I suppose they’d all suffered quite a lot from Squeaky while waiting for us to arrive.
He led us into the garage, a separate structure which, until the construction work began, had been connected to the front drive by means of a tarmac area at the side of the house. Temporarily it had become a storage area. They’d taken one of the electric cables the building workers were using, and rigged a bare bulb to illuminate it. There were empty oil-drums and some tea chests and wooden crates all stacked up as high as they could go, and throwing long shadows.
‘Here we are,’ said Squeaky, like a stage conjuror bringing a rabbit from the hat.
The others had seen it before. They’d had a chance to get ready for it. But even I found it gruesome. Dicky looked away and made a retching noise that became a clearing of the throat and then a cough. He got out his little Filofax notebook and buried his head in it.
The body had been moved. A chalked outline showed where it had fallen to sprawl across an oily drip-tray. Everything had spilled out; the dark ancient oil and fresh blood had grown tacky and made a strange pattern like a map of a mythical country drawn across the floor. The corpse was now laid out nearby, and we gathered round it like a funeral party. The upper part of the head was a bloody mess, wire-frame spectacles smashed into it, and the skull battered brutally. Only the lower part of his bloodied face was recognizable. His thin lips twisted in rictus mortis. ‘When a man is born, he cries and others laugh; when he dies he smiles and others cry,’ says the old German proverb. But there were no tears from these mourners.
