The Ipcress File

by Len Deighton

  Chapter 21

  [Aquarius (Jan 20-Feb 19) You may meet delays in private plans, but be circumspect. Your wellmeaning efforts may well be misunderstood.]

  The next two days were nerve racking. Life on the atoll busied itself into a frenetic but organized scramble as the day for the explosion neared. As far as I could tell, my role as observer was uninterrupted, and my entrée to the dreariest possible conferences unfortunately unimpeded. Jean and I had few opportunities for more than a word or so without the risk of being overheard or recorded. Our decision to appear rather distant meant a chance of remaining unimplicated for her—but a feeling of sharpened desire in me that no man should feel for his secretary if he wants to stay in a position to fire her. I saw her waiting for signatures or documents in the long grey fibreboard corridors. While standing still, her smooth body would move—slowly and imperceptibly—under the thin summer uniform fabric, and I would think of the small circular gold ear-ring of hers that I had found in my bed-clothes on Wednesday morning.

  More times than I care to provide excuses for, I edged past her in narrow corridors and doorways. Electricity passing between us assuaged the deep aloneness I felt. My desire wasn’t a burgeoning pent-up explosive fullness, but a gentle vacant need. Fear brings an edge to physical desire sharper than a Toledo blade, and a pitch more plaintive than a Dolmetsch flute.

  I’d spent most of the two days working closely with Dalby. It was a pleasure. The difference between Dalby and the other people from the Intelligence units with his background was his readiness to use information from his inferiors—both socially and militarily speaking. He was prepared to let the technicians conclude opinions from their data, where others would try to understand the techniques in order to jealously guard the privilege of deciding anything at all.

  Jean and I had discovered the box in the blockhouse on Tuesday. On Thursday the General Commanding—General Y. O. Guerite, had invited all commissioned men and available girls to a party in his house.

  The General’s house backed on to one of the coves on the rocky side of the island. The sun made the tree trunks a pink that stampeded the gastric juices. Once more the sunset was a layer cake of mauve and gold. The insects had come out to do their daily battle with the resources of the American chemical industries, and through the trees an obliging Engineers Corps had remembered to provide lines of winking fairy lights. Large martinis clinked with ice and glowed with lemon and cherries. Small pasty-faced waiters walked heavily on their flat, perpetually aching feet, and looked ill at ease out of doors. Here and there well-built clean-cut figures, tanned and alert, moved briskly to distribute trays of drinks, and tried to look like the pasty-faced aching waiters whose white jackets they shared.

  Three army musicians moved coolly and mathematically within the modal range of ‘There’s a small Hotel’ and linking modulated inversions walked around the middle eight with creditable synchronization. Here and there a laugh walked up the foothills of noise.

  Beyond the lights at the far end of the General’s little garden, Dalby was sitting perched uncomfortably on a rock edge. Two or three feet below him the water moved quietly. Out at sea a grey destroyer sat at anchor, a trace of smoke demonstrating its ever-ready head of steam. On its sides, a huge white ‘R’ told me it was one of the ships used to measure force and radiation underwater by means of vast wire nets to which measuring equipment was attached. Upon a launch alongside, shiny black rubber-garbed frogmen climbed, explained, ordered, carried and descended, as they checked the net fittings on the hull.

  Dalby made circular motions with his glass of martini, swirling it into a thin layer of clear centrifugal controlled violence. He sipped a little of the undulating alcoholic surface and rubbed the glass edge on his lower lip.

  ‘There’s no way of contracting out,’ he was saying.

  I couldn’t help connecting his remark with myself, but he went on, ‘To do any sort of bargain with them is quite out of the question, merely because there is no guarantee that their word will be kept. The minute war becomes the better way to expound Communism, war will be begun by Communists. And make no mistake, they won’t be using kids’ stuff like this bomb. It will be area saturation with suitable nerve gases.’

  He looked across the imported and carefully laid out grass turf now crowded with summeruniformed men and women. Between me and the big long tables of food a plump girl in white held the arms of two Marine Corps lieutenants, and all three heads bowed as her white pointed shoes nimbly followed the triple rhythms and superimposed discords of a cha cha cha.

  ‘Don’t make any mistake, Jimmy,’ Dalby was speaking directly to a staff-brigadier. ‘Where your military system has the direct support of commerce and industry, you are absolute world beaters. This whole atoll is an unrivalled feat: but it’s a feat of logistics and organization that you’ve had a lot of practice in. There is not much difference between creating, at a speed fast approaching the Biblical record, a Coca-Cola plant with a shooting gallery for employee recreation, and creating a shooting plant with a Coca-Cola gallery for recreation.’

  ‘So does it matter, Dalby?’ The Brigadier, a bigboned athlete of sixty or more, hair grey and one eighth of an inch long, spectacles with their fine gold frames glinting as the reflections of a hundred fairy lights ran across his eyes. ‘Who cares where the credit lies. If we can make the biggest damndest greatest bang no one is going to give a damn about details. They’re just going to stay well clear of Uncle Sam.’ Finding something lacking in the audience reaction, he hastily added, ‘And well clear of NATO too. The whole free world in fact.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s what Dalby means,’ I said. I was always explaining to people what other people meant. ‘He grants you the ability but is unsure if you will use it correctly.’

  ‘You’re going to give me the old “Europe: home of diplomacy” stuff, eh boy?’ The Brigadier turned his huge grey head to face me. ‘I thought Khrushchev tactics had brought you guys up to date on that stuff.’

  ‘No, merely that Europeans have a firm and fearful knowledge of what happens when diplomats fail,’ I told him.

  ‘Diplomats and surgeons never fail,’ said Dalby. ‘They have too strong a union ever to have to admit it.’

  I went on, ‘Americans are not noted for assuming failure to be possible before starting something.’

  ‘Oh heck, relationships between any rival business outfits are the same as between nations.’

  ‘I think that was true at one time, but now the destructive capabilities are such that, to extend your analogy, we must think in terms of cartels. Rivals must unite to live and let live.’

  ‘You Europeans always think in terms of cartels. That’s one of your worst failings. An American guy figures out how to make a ballpoint pen, he figures on selling them at a nickel a throw. In Europe when you first had speed-balls I saw them on sale nudging two English pounds! The difference is: the English guy makes three and a half thousand per cent profit, and his competitors steal his ideas, but the American with a two per cent profit sells so many no one can catch up—he winds up a millionaire.’

  A tall, very thin girl with large teeth and a streak of silver hair across the crown of her head came up behind the Brigadier and touched her elegantly manicured and varnished nails to his mouth. In front of the musicians, a wooden dance floor as big as a gramophone record was as crowded as a magnet dipped in iron filings and only half as comfortable. The Brigadier was led off in that direction. Dalby and I stood submerged in the sea sounds, the wind in the trees sound, the chatter and ice and ‘Lady Be Good’ and hand-hitting-shoulder sounds, passing police jeep and ‘Why don’t we drive out there while it’s a lovely moon,’ and pebble in the sea sounds, glassful down uniform, and ‘if he’s a very close friend of yours’ and flattened sevenths and ‘you do that up this very minute’ sounds, and Dalby said, ‘Americans are funny.’ Getting no response from me he went on, ‘Americans are much too brutal while they are trying to make money, and much too s
loppily sentimental and even gullible after they make it. Before: they think the world is crooked. After: they think it quaint.’

  ‘Which category does your Brigadier friend come into?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh neither,’ said Dalby, and little decisions about saying more filtered through his eyes. ‘He had one of the best brains I have ever come across. He owned a small publishers in Munich between the wars and then after the war, was in and out of all kinds of things. Three times, so the stories go, he’s had a million dollars, and twice he’s had only the battered old Riley car he runs around in, and a suit. A couple of months ago he was heading into the ground very quickly, when the army conscripted him into this project! An extraordinary fellow isn’t he?’

  I could see the Brigadier now: his dark-green tie, tucked neatly into the opening of his light-buff shirt, a slab of ribbons as large as a half-pound of chocolate, and his big beat-up face with pockets of light and shadow running across it as he performed the slow motion ‘running on the spot’ movements of the dance.

  ‘Wanted to borrow you for a year,’ Dalby said. We both continued to look at the dance floor.

  ‘Did he get me?’

  ‘Not unless you particularly want to go. I said you’d prefer to stay with Charlotte.’

  ‘Let me know if I change my mind,’ I said, and Dalby gave me the slanted focus.

  ‘Don’t let the last few days put a scare into you,’ Dalby said. The plump little girl in white was still demonstrating dance steps. ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, really. It was planned to keep you on the hook for a day or so,’ Dalby went on, since I hadn’t replied, ‘but they were anxious to take the heat off a high-ranking suspect, so they did a phase two on you so he’d stick his neck out helping to clobber you. Just grin and bear it for a little while longer, and look like you’re suffering.’

  I said, ‘Just as long as the executioner is in on our cosy little secret,’ and I headed across to the girl in white for a cha-cha lesson.

  By twelve-thirty I was loaded with anchovy, cheese dip, hard egg and salmon, and about 300 geometrically shaped pieces of cold toast. I cut out by the side entrance of the garden, across the service road at the side of the post office. Blue light glowed from within the sorting office, and a radio played soft big band music which jarred against the music and laughter from the General’s garden. Beyond the post office a white quonset hut stood alone. Inside, behind the counter, a young blond PFC with an almost invisible moustache handed me two cablegrams that had arrived since I last saw him at 6.30.

  ‘A spy has no friends’ people say; but it’s more complex than that. A spy has to have friends, in fact many sets of friends. Friends he’s made by doing things and by not doing other things. Every agent has his own ‘old boy network’ and like every other ‘old boy network’ it cuts across frontiers, jobs and every other loyalty—it’s a sort of spy’s insurance policy. One has no specific arrangement with anyone, no code other than a mutual sensitivity to euphemisms.

  I opened the first cable. It was from a man named Grenade.* He was a political man now, and of high enough rank never to have it used as a prefix to his name. The cable said, ‘YOUR NOMINEE REDUNDANT STOP 13BT1818 WILL PAY BERT.’ It had come from the main post office in Lyons and there was no way of associating it with Grenade except that I had monitored some stuff when he was working for French Intelligence, and Bert had been his cover name.

  The PFC lit a cigarette for me and coughed his way into the harsh French tobacco of one of mine. I looked at the other cable. It was an ordinary civilian cable handed over a post office counter, and paid for in cash. It had originated at Gerrard Street post office, London. It said: ‘READING A PAPER IN JC ON 3rd OF SECOND.’ It was signed: ‘ARTEMIDORUS.’

  I looked at the two sheets of paper. Each sender had implied his message in different ways. Grenade was clearly telling me that I was for the high jump, but that I could use the funds he’d stacked at that number bank account in Switzerland. To find which bank would be easy enough, since they had different codes, and anyone quoting the number can draw without too much trouble. I smiled as I wondered whether this account was the result of the American Express forgeries he had once been involved with. It would be ironic if I was clamped for being an accessory when I tried to draw on it. The second cable was from Charlie Cavendish, who was an undercover man for C-SICH.* He liked me because I’d been in the Army with his son. When his son was killed, I’d told him, and had got on so well with the old man that I saw him often. He had a great and devastating sense of humour that illuminated dark corners and prevented him getting a senior position. He lived in a poky Bloomsbury flat, ‘to be near the British Museum,’ he said, and probably had trouble finding the few bob to pay for the cable. It was the most sobering of all my messages.

  Back at the party, globules of people were clinging together. I smiled at a very young soldier sitting on a frame chair outside the room the General used as a second office.

  ‘The General is definitely not to be disturbed, eh, soldier?’ I leered. He smiled back in an embarrassed way, but made no attempt to stop me going into the library. I moved with a studied lack of hurry and lit another cigarette.

  The General’s set of Shakespeare were pigskin, hand-tooled, a pleasure to handle. I didn’t need to look up Artemidorus in the third scene of Act 2 Julius Caesar. The old man knew that I knew the play well enough. But I looked it up.*

  The library was lit by a signal rocket and a hundred ‘Ahs!’ lay lethargic on the air. In the anticipatory silence a voice outside the window said, ‘They just don’t make corks the way they used to.’ Then followed a giggle-giggle of laughter and the sound of pouring wine.

  The dim light of the small desk lamp enabled me to see a slim figure standing at the door. The tearing sound of another rocket made me jump. The figure was a tall young PFC with a Band-Aid on his neck and ginger eyebrows that he jammed together to simulate concentration. He marched towards me. He carefully read my identity brooch then compared the photo with me. He gave me a strange perfunctory salute.

  ‘Compliments of Brigadier Dalby, sir,’ he said.

  Brigadier, I thought. What the hell is coming next? He waited.

  ‘Yes?’ I said inquiringly, and put Julius back on the shelf.

  ‘There’s been an accident, sir. A generator truck has gone off the road at “Bloody Angle”.’ I knew the place that bore the name of one of Lee’s Civil War emplacements. A low brick wall painted in black and yellow checks separated a roadway blasted out of solid rock from a perpendicular drop into empty space. It was a tricky place for cornering in a jeep; with thirty foot of generator truck it was like drinking from a square glass. He didn’t have to say the next bit. ‘Lieutenant Montgomery was the officer on it, sir.’ It was Barney. The young soldier looked awkward in the face of death. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said. He was being nice. I appreciated it. ‘The Brigadier was heading for his car. He said that if you didn’t have transport I was to…’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I told him, ‘and thanks.’ Outside the clouds had put dark glasses on the moon.

  It was a black night, of the sort one only encounters in the tropics. Dalby had on a lambswool US Army windcheater, and stood near a big new shiny Ford. I shouted, ‘Let’s go,’ but his reply was lost in the crackle crackle of a big chrysanthemum rocket. I couldn’t get used to the idea of a dead Barney Barnes. I told myself that it was a mistake, the way one does with facts that the brain prefers to absorb piecemeal.

  By the time I had pulled the big oversprung Lincoln Continental on to the road, Dalby’s rear lights were way down the General Guerite highway. The big V8 engine warmed to the rich mixture. I saw Dalby pull over to the left and head along the coast road. This road was less carefully made since only certain lorries carrying supplies were normally allowed to use it. To the left only a hundred metres of sea separated us from the Shot Island. Had it been a better night the ‘mountain’ would have been clearly visible. Dalby was drawing even farther ahead and must have be
en doing sixty in spite of the road. I hoped he’d be able to talk us out of trouble if any of the road sections were closed. The forty-foot towers at about 300-yard intervals reflected back the sound of the car in roars. Most of the towers held only infra-red TV cameras, but every third tower was manned. I hoped none would phone ahead to stop us taking this obvious short cut from the General’s party. Odd tangles of brush obscured Dalby’s lights now and again. I was peering at the blackerty that sat upon the windscreen when I caught sight of the red ‘CAUTION HALT AT 25 YDS’ sign. I stopped the car. It was 2.12 A.M.

  They had closed this section ahead of me with only three miles of forbidden road to traverse. Dalby was nowhere in sight, he had slipped through.

  As I felt for my spare cigarettes my hand touched a coarse fabric. I switched on the dashboard light. Someone had left a pair of heavy asbestos insulation gauntlets on the seat. I wondered if Barney had been in the car; he was doing the ‘power’ act. Then I found my Gauloises.

  I clicked the cigarette lighter on and waited for it to glow red.

  I was still waiting when the sky exploded into daylight—except that daylight and I had, neither of us, been so bright lately.

  * * *

  *See Appendix: Grenade, p. 333.

  *Combined Services Information Clearing House.

  *See Appendix: Julius Caesar, p. 336.

  Chapter 22

  I opened the car door and rolled out into the white frozen day-like night. It suddenly became very quiet until from the far side of the island I heard a siren wailing pitifully.

  Overhead two police helicopters chug-chugged towards Shot Island, and began dropping hand grenades into the sea. Under each, a huge spotlight waved an erratic beam.

  The Air Police had located, recognized and flown towards the light of the large flare, while I was still expecting my eyeballs to melt.