by James Brodie
“Honest Johns, you say, Sandie,” Frank pounced.
“Yeah,” said Sandie, slightly deflated after her triumph, perhaps even then beaming aboard the glimmerings of awareness that she had put her foot in it. Forsythe wriggled. I spoke: “I thought it was NATO policy not to give West Germany nuclear warheads.” This was re-imbursement in full, if in a different currency, for his hospitality at Westminster earlier in the autumn.
“That’s right, Alex. That’s too damned right. But it seems our friend here has some kind of authority to override NATO decisions. I’d like you to tell me about that fucking authority Ronnie.” The tail end of Frank’s final sentence rose in volume giving a fearful intimation of barely suppressed violence. As I’ve said, he was a big man.
“Frank, it was a joke. Tell them Sandie, it was a joke. Tell them what Mac said.” To others Forsythe might have been pitiful but I felt no pity, only a wish for remorseless, relentless retribution. Sandie had reached the limit.
“For fuck’s sake leave off,” she half screamed, half shouted, her voice dropping another three or four rungs down the social ladder. “... I can’t take any more.” Even in that moment of crisis as Sandie broke down crying and Jenny too began to sob violently in sympathy, even as Frank shaped up to pin Forsythe to the wall in order to speed up the communication process, even then as I glanced across at Pascale, quivering with tension, taking it all in, trying to commit every second of it to memory, I couldn’t help laughing inwardly when I compared the differing fortunes of the two rival femmes fatales, unknowing rivals as far as Sandie was concerned. For all Pascale’s sophistication it had been Sandie who had brought home the bacon, such as it was. She’d just lay drunkenly back one night and received it, she hadn’t even known what to do with it. Here before me, I sensed, was one of those lessons life has to give us at strategic intervals during our stay here. Sometimes we miss them - don’t even see them as they hurtle by. But sometimes we stick out a hand and catch them, and who knows, if we catch enough, sometimes we even gain wisdom, or just a little of it.
“You asshole,” Frank said as he pushed Forsythe to the wall. “... You Motherfuckin’...” But for once words failed him. “... You fuckin’ Limeys... Fuchs...Burgess, Maclean... The Krogers.... Now Vassall - What is it with you guys?.... You Mother-fuckers.”
“You’ve got it all wrong Frank. I never said a word, I never ….”
“I know you didn’t. How do I know? Because you know nothing. Anything you know, everyone knows. That’s why, buddy, I’m fucking glad you know nothing... You guys just can’t keep your fucking mouths closed can you.... Jesus, who needs the Russians with you around.”... Somewhere inside Sandie another fuse blew.
“Fuckin lay off him, Frank,” she screamed, ineffectually trying to pull him away from Forsythe. “... Lay off him.”
“Not you too, little baby?” Frank turned his attention to her and grabbing her by the waist hoisted her high into the air. Forsythe exhaled, coughing, released from the spotlight of attention.
“What have we here?” said Frank examining Sandie with a collector’s eye. “... Another of Christopher Bryant’s little girls, sent out to spy on poor defenceless little politicians. But honey, tell me true, he was too easy, wasn’t he?” He nodded back at Forsythe. “... There aint no fun in shootin fish in a barrel... Why didn’t you take me on? That would have been more fun - For both of us.”
“You’re a nutter, Frank,” was Sandie’s reply. She was surprisingly calm now considering she was being held two feet above her normal height. Perhaps she was enjoying it.
“You’ve said it, Frank,” said Forsythe. “... Her and that bent friend of Bryant’s.” He pointed at me. “.... And who was it introduced the French tart into the set?” This was too much for French tart.
“But Frank, Honey,” drawled Pascale in a very plausible Southern Belle persona, “... d’you mean to tell me you was only joshin when you told me about that lil’ole secret deal you set up on the side with those Krauts when they came over to the U.S. last year. Why I do declare it was you yourself who promised Herr Strauss electro percussive firing mechanisms for those warheads you gave him to go on top of those lil ole Pershing missiles they bought to help the good ole U.S. out of its balance of payments problems.” By the time she had finished Frank had dropped Sandie and was looking at Pascale in revolted fascination. She approached him and caressed his face with loving care. “... Why, call me a liar if you dare, Frank Hough.”
Pascale had a certain style in the way she chose to show two fingers to the world. “... and you, Ronnie Forsythe, fancy letting this poor young country, whose supposed to be your .... ally... fall so far behind those awful Soviets in the field of long range ballistic missiles... If we was waiting for Blue Streak we’d all be communist by now - Shame on you.”
“Goddamit woman. Hold your tongue.”
“Oh Frankie, don’t sulk. We all know there aint no point in giving anyone Mace missiles if you aint gonna give em a bomb to put on the top of it... Why even a child knows that... Frank Honey, you yourself told me the Pentagon has projected that in fifteen years every two bit little banana republic is gonna be shoppin down at the local drug store for their very own personalised crude nuclear tactical weapons. And you yourself said a medium range ballistic missile fired from West Germany, or even the UK, could take out Moscow before the Ruskies could say Test Ban Treaty? Call me a liar... You said that as soon as you got rid of those uppity Kennedy brothers and their nigger-loving college sidekicks you could keep the whole shootin match tactical and no need to bother anyone outside of Europe... Didn’t you say that?...”
She had finally touched the raw nerve. Frank had been looking at her in a strange way as she spoke, coldly, dispassionately. Now that she was finished, and was seen to have finished by the way she stood there breathing heavily and emotionally, spent but with so much inside choking her, trying to get out. Now that she had finished he drew back his hand and with one mighty blow knocked her across the room with a cruel swipe to the face. Even as she fell Pascale gave a cry of surprise and fear at the hatred the blow had revealed. Something - her nose or her mouth - started bleeding profusely. She struggled to get up but her legs gave way under the tension of the moment, and she fell back again and sent the stylus of the record player skidding across the record. The neighbours, at last woken from their slumbers, started bashing on the walls in protest. And I said and did nothing.
*****
I had wandered down to the Tate. I was idly looking at some examples of the Camden Town Group and wondering why such instant visual appeal is almost inevitably certification of lack of content, when I heard heavy breathing behind me and turned to find Frank. I passed a lingering glance of regret at a woman I had been eying up who was pretending to be engrossed in a Sickert. Now we would never meet. I wondered if perhaps she was the Chosen One, the female on the planet most in accord with all my moods and senses.
“What d’you want Frank?”
“Come for a walk Alex.”
“Sure, let’s get a coffee.”
“Not here. Let’s get outside. This place is probably bugged.”
“This is the Tate, Frank.”
“Exactly,” he said meaningfully.
Outside the Embankment was uninviting, but we crossed the road and walked alongside the river in the direction of Vauxhall Bridge. The afternoon traffic roared by. As we walked my eye took in the riverscape, on that day a monochrome of greys to the extent that it could have been imagined as a black and white photograph if it wasn’t for the moving red blob of a bus on the Albert Embankment opposite - as crudely applied as the lips on Warhol’s silkscreen of Marilyn Monroe.
“D’you know who I work for Alex?”
I really didn’t want to know. I hesitated.
“You ever heard of The Company?” he asked.
“What company?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He tried another tack. “.. Look Alex. I want to put you on the payroll. I want to give
you an agent’s monthly salary.”
“Agent?”
“That’s right... Agent. Don’t give me all that bullshit that you don’t know what I’m talking about.... You’re right in the middle of it all, I’ve checked you out.... With your contacts you can really earn if you play everything cool. What d’you say to five hundred dollars a month?”
“Do you really need an answer?”
He smiled, relaxing. He paused for a moment waiting for the lights to change at the north end of Vauxhall Bridge, then when they didn’t we turned and headed over it towards Vauxhall Station and its concomitant grime. At the centre of the middle span he stopped and together we leaned over and watched a tug coming underneath travelling downstream, followed by barge after barge full of brightly coloured scraps of paper, cartons, etcetera.
“What d’you want me to do?”
“I’m going to give you a codename. I want you to use it - always, except in public of course... It’ll be your name on The Company files.”
“What is it?”
“SMARTARSE.”
“SMARTARSE?”
“That’s right... Good, isn’t it?... Kind of appropriate..... You will be SMARTARSE 1. Your main job is to act as Cut-Out between me and any agents you recruit.”
“Cut-out?”
“Go-Between... That way you’re the only one who gets to know me.”
“.. And like you. And gets to hope you like me.”
“That’s what I mean... SMARTARSE. Your recruits will be known as SMARTARSE 2, SMARTARSE 3, etcetera. Get it?”
“Who d’you think I’m going to recruit?”
“Alex, Alex....” He gave me a knowing wink. There followed a period of reflection after which he added, “... I think perhaps you may be exaggerating your importance just a little. We don’t expect no major secrets off of you, though we won’t kick you out of bed if you come up with any... No, this game is about putting a gigantic jigsaw together, piece by piece. And a lot of the pieces have just got plain blue sky on them, nothing more... Anyway, I’m not going to say any more right now. I’m just gonna leave your imagination to work on the problem a little, stimulated, of course, by those five hundred bucks a month.” So saying he turned and left me, heading back towards Pimlico. I looked back down into the water, already tuning my mind to the identity of SMARTARSE 2.
December 1962
It was early in December that I first heard the rumours, and I must have been one of the first. They were vague at first and they stayed that way for a long time. Short on facts, high on innuendo, but always vague and always reshuffled on every fresh hearing. At first the names and the phrases all seemed such unlikely bedfellows, as if at school one had been asked to write an essay bringing in a spring onion, a vicar, The Great Barrier Reef and Ted Dexter’s cricketing whites. The black guy that had broken up the party at Earls Court - Tony - He was mentioned. Sandie and Forsythe had their names entwined once more. Chris was involved, so were some other politicians and Frank. And other girls I’d never heard of, and Pascale.. And me.
One night I went out for a drink with a guy I knew who was now working at Reuters. He told me the latest story as he knew it. He’d got it pretty badly muddled up, to the extent where, to me, it sounded ridiculous, but he mentioned Pascale, not by name – ‘a French tart’. And Frank – ‘a redneck General’ - right neck, wrong service. ... Sandie and Forsythe, and Christopher was in there somewhere, and Cathcart House, and a story about a bust-up at an orgy where a guy went berserk and smashed up the place, and how the Krays had been paid to take care of him.
“Incredible,” I laughed weakly, “... how d’you know all this; is it true? I mean, the Krays. That sounds a bit far fetched.”
“It’s all straight down the line, believe me.”
I told Pascale about it, but she had already heard. A reporter from the Daily Sketch had rung the doorbell of her flat at two in the morning. It may have worked for the Gestapo but it hadn’t for him.
“How the hell did he get my address?” she demanded, somewhat naively I thought. When she’d slammed the door in his face he’d rung her from a call box until she’d left the phone off the hook.
“What’s the big deal anyway?”
“Sure. Communist girl meets Capitalist boy, falls in love, elicits information about potential nuclear capability of West Germany... Boy gets upset, she only loves him for his Official Secrets, relationship cools, girl and boy drift apart... It’s straight out of Woman’s Weekly.”
“Woman’s what?”
“It’s a magazine.”
“What was all that balls about West Germany?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She was really ratty, rattier than normal. It had shaken her up. I said, “You’ve got to remember, the Americans are touchy about security leaks, they haven’t got our experience.”
She lit a cigarette. I took one of hers. We poured ourselves a large scotch and shared the glass. All the others had got themselves broken over the past weeks and I hadn’t got round to replacing them.
*****
In my spare time I’d been doing some serious thinking about my new salaried position as Agent and Cut-Out. At first I had sincerely thought through my contacts for possible sub-agents. There weren’t that many. In fact after writing a list of all my current social acquaintances I discovered there wasn’t anyone whom I could be sure Frank didn’t already know, who was eligible. This line of thinking was getting so negative I would have given up if it hadn’t occurred to me that not only would failure result in no more cash but that it could also be construed as obstructionism if not hostility, resulting in positive retribution. I bent my mind to the task again, but with no greater luck. Adrian, the one guy I knew who could even begin to fit the bill was unapproachable and was meant to be seeking me out for his own unpleasant purposes. It wasn’t getting any better.
I can’t remember where I made the quantum leap - It could have been The Duke’s Head at Putney, but more probably was The Cornet Of Horse, Lavender Hill, where I had taken to drinking at the time. It was a simple idea and, although as I later discovered flawed, it came flooding through bringing great relief. It had struck me while I was toying with the title of Cut-Out and the function of that position that there was a question begging to be asked - If Frank never saw the other agents but dealt with them only through me in order to preserve his anonymity he would, by definition, never meet them, and hence would never be in a position to personally verify that they were agents. The rest came quickly, it was easy. Adrian would be my first recruit, but he would never know it. I could tell Frank all about his position, his background, and make up the data. What was it Frank had said - Most pieces were clear blue sky. That wouldn’t be too difficult. I could even give him the odd piece of cloud. Like all good plans further thinking revealed a solid structure that reinforced the original concept: I would keep Adrian’s pay. The more agents I produced, the more money I got to keep. By the time I met Frank again I had been working on the details for several days.
Frank’s face screwed up in concentration and he gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.
“Let me get this straight... This guy Adrian is some kind of muscle for Ronnie Forsythe... He has access to his papers you say, and he needs money fast?”
“Yuh. His ex-wife is bleeding him white, and his new one has expensive tastes.”
“Sounds good... I like it Alex.”
We were stuck in a traffic jam on the South Circular, somewhere near Tulse Hill. Frank had suggested we drive and talk and had also suggested the South Circular. Probably to him it had said three lane freeways elevated over the sprawling city with exits plunging down in the sort of widths we were just starting to think about for new motorways - Last Exit To Dulwich.
“This is some crummy route Alex.”
“Yeah. They thought the name up first... never did get round to building the road.” We waited another minute or two as a traf
fic light in front changed from red to green, but we still hadn’t moved before it changed back to red.
“Pull off down there,” I said, pointing out a side street. He turned the Bentley off the main road and parked it halfway up a street of terraced houses. Surrounded by three-wheeled Messerschmitt cockpits, Standard Eights and a rusting Triumph Mayflower, we looked slightly out of place.
“You sure this place is OK?” he said. “... They could have a Listening Post.” He was a changed man when talking business.
“Forget it. I’m jamming them with this secret lapel badge.”
“Who made the contact? - You or him?”
“I made the suggestion after he dropped some pretty broad hints. All he knows is, he’s getting paid. That’s all he wants to know.”
“When does he start earning?”
“He’s going to contact me.” I’d been working over a few ideas for the sort of information SMARTARSE 2 could actually deliver, but it hadn’t yet reached the presentation stage.
“That’s a good start Alex.” He reached across to open the door.
“Wait. That’s not all.... I’ve got someone else lined up. A guy at the L.S.E. He’s pretty involved in student politics.”
It hadn’t taken much rooting around at Houghton Street to come up with a name.
“A student huh?” Frank said the word as if ‘student’ was a type of precious stone.
“It’s early days yet Frank, don’t rush me on this one. I think it could be big.”
“A student huh?” He thought for a moment. You’re a student aren’t you Alex? You could join up some course...” In Frank’s mind to be student was to follow a trade, to carry around a bag of tools. He considered it, if not an honourable calling, a specialised one. Some people could never be ‘students’, no matter how hard they tried. To others it came naturally. He numbered me among this latter class. One might be in or out of official study, but one was always a student. “... Maybe we could use you and this other guy in COSEC, or WAY... Maybe even to penetrate WDFY.”
