The Chill Factor

by Richard Falkirk

  ‘I’ll have a Scotch,’ I said. ‘A large one. And you ladies?’

  They both giggled and ordered large vodkas. ‘Don’t forget yourself,’ I said to Jefferey.

  He ordered himself a small Scotch and said: ‘I suppose you think this is bloody funny.’

  ‘It’s not without its moments.’ I nodded towards his neighbour. ‘Look out, old man, I think she’s trying to undo your trousers.’

  He moved away, brushing at her hand as if it were a mosquito. ‘The situation in Iceland is getting pretty tense,’ he said. ‘This girl and the airman they’re holding at Keflavik. And all this trouble over Hafstein. Do you realise that they hardly know the meaning of murder in this country?’

  ‘There hasn’t been a murder,’ I said. ‘Hafstein was shot by an Icelandic policeman and the girl choked herself to death.’

  ‘Nevertheless the situation is very grave.’ He leaned forward and I could smell a faint hyacinth scent on his glossy hair. ‘We want to keep out of it as much as possible.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Britain,’ he breathed.

  ‘Would you like to dance?’ I said to the girl with the short yellow hair. As we walked to the dance floor the older woman was staring meaningfully at Jefferey.

  The girl was stocky but light on her feet, having spent her adult life dodging sailors’ sea-legs. She said: ‘My name is Anna. What is your name?’

  ‘Charlie,’ I said.

  ‘I like the name Charlie.’

  The girl on the platform was singing Raindrops keep falling on my head. My partner moulded her thick little body with mine; her yellow hair was dark at the roots, her stomach felt hard; she managed to slide one leg in between mine with adroit professionalism. Beside us a drunk young seaman was dancing in slow-motion a few feet away from a pretty girl in pigtails; his arms flailed ponderously knocking a bottle off a table. He winked an apology, belched painfully and sat down on the floor, waiting to be hauled away. An old sea-dog jogged around with a woman in her fifties; they smiled happily at each other and she caressed the grey stubble at the back of his neck with a strong hand.

  When we returned to the table Jefferey had shed his diplomatic training. His face and voice were petulant; his partner had gone.

  ‘Where’s mama gone?’

  ‘I told her to piss off. Now look here, Conran – this is serious You don’t realise just how serious. But it affects you. That’s why I came round to see you. At least you can have the bloody decency to listen to what I’ve got to say.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ I said. The usual lock of hair had fallen across his damp forehead. His grey suit with its elegant lapels and his Brigade of Guards tie did not blend happily with the surroundings.

  ‘Can’t you get rid of that bloody girl?’

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘What’s happened to all that education on how to behave in Moscow and Washington?’

  ‘This isn’t Moscow or Washington and you aren’t Brezhnev or Nixon. Now get rid of that girl. If you don’t, I will.’

  The girl looked unhappily at us. We were all saved by a middle-aged seaman wearing a navy-blue sweater and grey slacks. He asked if we would mind if he danced with her. Jefferey said: ‘For God’s sake take her away.’ The seaman looked puzzled. I nodded at him and squeezed the girl’s wrist.

  ‘Right,’ Jefferey said. ‘Now I want to know what the hell you think you’re up to?’

  ‘Do you?’ I said.

  ‘You cocked everything up in Moscow. Now you seem hell-bent on doing the same thing in Iceland. Are you out of your mind poking an Icelandic girl while you’re on this sort of mission?’

  ‘I would be out of my mind if I didn’t.’ Anger spurted like a splash of acid inside me. I contemplated throwing the dregs of my Scotch in his face, or punching him straight on his aquiline nose. ‘You know, Jefferey, I feel sorry for you. You will never be able to enjoy yourself no matter where you are or who you’re with. You’ve been trained not to. I think it’s rather sad.’

  ‘Are you mixed up in this business of the dead girl?’

  ‘I wanted to try and save the airman from being crucified. But there’s nothing I can do. I know that now. That’s why I’ve got time to have a drink with you.’ I pushed my empty glass across the table. ‘I’ll have another large Scotch, please.’

  Before Jefferey could protest a lurking waiter whipped the empty glasses over to the bar.

  Jefferey said: ‘The death of that girl is none of your bloody business. Just keep your nose out of it. Leave it to the Americans – it’s their pigeon.’

  ‘Do you want me to convey that message to Commander Martz?’

  ‘Just stop stirring up trouble. Britain has established itself very nicely here after all that trouble about fishing rights. We can’t afford to get ourselves involved in other people’s troubles.’

  ‘I rather thought we were all members of NATO. What’s the matter, Jefferey? Does this sort of thing interfere with your bridge evenings and dinner parties with H.E.?’

  A young Icelandic seaman sat down beside us and said: ‘My name is Harald and my father is an archbishop.’ Perhaps he had been drinking the altar wine. ‘Are you American?’

  Jefferey looked indignant and flapped his Guards tie with one finger. ‘No; he said. ‘We’re English and we’re very busy at the moment.’

  The archbishop’s son was delighted. ‘Ah, good evenings, Englishmen. I like Englishmen. My father have many fights with you Englishmen over cod and he say he like Englishmen wery much.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Jefferey said.

  ‘Yes,’ the seaman said. ‘That is right – my father is an archbishop.’

  ‘Don’t be rude to him,’ I said to Jefferey. ‘He likes Englishmen. You want things kept like that, as I understand it.’

  Jefferey leaned across the table to speak to the seaman. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘But we are having rather an important discussion.’

  The young seaman beamed. ‘I will have a wodka,’ he said. And added confidentially: ‘I like your Scotch whisky wery much. But I also like the wodka. Sometimes I have the two of them mixed.’

  ‘Let’s go to the bar,’ Jefferey said. ‘I haven’t finished what I want to say. It’s very important.’

  The seaman said: ‘After here we will go round the corner and have our drinks in a teapot.’

  The prospect was intriguing. ‘Why in a teapot?’ I asked.

  ‘Because they do not allow you to drink liquors. But if it is in the teapot they don’t mind. A lot of us have our liquors in the teapot.’ He blessed us with a choirboy smile. ‘A lady plays the violin there too.’

  The band swung into an old-fashioned waltz and several ladies whose way of life was far from old-fashioned were being swung dizzily round the floor. It was all very good-natured.

  Suddenly the primate’s son stood up and said: ‘Now I have the dance. Then I shall see you over the teapots.’ He grabbed a plain and grateful girl and pulled her into the mêlée.

  I took my drink from the waiter and waited for Jefferey to pay. ‘Clearly,’ I said, ‘you’ve been sent here by someone. Otherwise you wouldn’t be putting up with all this. Now let me ask a few questions. Why the hell were you following me in that Mercedes from Keflavik?’

  Jefferey reached for the remaining tatters of his training and said in his old bored voice: ‘Absit ividia. I wasn’t following you, old boy, I wanted to speak to you at the airport but you were with that awful fellow Magnusson all the time. Then your dolly-bird turned up.’

  ‘You should tell your driver to learn the difference between a telescope and a rifle.’

  ‘Very droll,’ he said. ‘But there wasn’t the slightest need to follow you because I knew exactly where you would go.’

  ‘You make it sound as if I were going to a brothel.’

  ‘Well?’

  I tossed the whisky into his face. He dried his face with a folded white handkerchief and searched for the ice inside his jacket. Now all his training had evaporated bec
ause it didn’t embrace such behaviour. ‘That was a shitty thing to do,’ he said.

  ‘That was a shitty thing to say.’

  No one took much notice of us.

  Jefferey said: ‘It’s just the sort of behaviour I would expect from a creep like you.’ He took a piece of melting ice from inside his shirt. ‘I’m pleased to say that I have some extremely bad news for you.’

  ‘You mean we’re going to see each other again?’

  He took a tiny comb from his breast pocket and combed the front of his hair, now pomaded with Scotch.

  ‘Worse even than that,’ he said.

  ‘What could possibly be worse?’

  ‘The Russians are on to you, old man. That’s what.’

  He enjoyed my consternation with schoolboy pleasure. I could tell from his suppressed eagerness that there was more to come. He was so absorbed with the effect of his statement that I thought he might even buy another drink to replace the one I had thrown over him.

  ‘What Russians?’ I said. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You’ve been recognised, old boy. Spotted, rumbled. Someone who knew about your little contretemps in Moscow must be over here.’ He almost giggled. ‘Perhaps all Russian diplomats were issued with those photographs.’

  ‘And perhaps you would like a punch in the mouth?’

  But no crude threats could spoil his pleasure. ‘That’s why I had to see you. H.E. is treating it very seriously.’

  ‘Is he?’ I said. ‘You realise of course that I don’t come under the jurisdiction of the Ambassador?’

  ‘You jolly soon come running to the embassy if you get into trouble as I recall it.’

  ‘How do you know that the Russians are “on to me”?’

  ‘I am not at liberty to disclose that.’

  I pulled his tie into a tight knot like a Brussels sprout ‘I give you your liberty. How do you know the Russians are “on to me”?’

  ‘It was at a lunch given today for the delegates to that marine conference. One of the Russian diplomats made it his business to let me know that you had been identified.’

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t let them know?’

  ‘I’m not that stupid. I don’t like you but I put my country before personal considerations.’ He removed my hand from his tie; his grip was surprisingly strong.

  The archbishop’s son reappeared and asked if we were going round the corner to drink out of a teapot. We said we weren’t.

  ‘All right.’ I said. ‘So the Russians know who I am. So what? Nothing was ever proved against me in Moscow. Nothing political, that is. I have to pop up somewhere, don’t I? Why not Iceland? My cover in Russia was scientific: my cover here is scientific. What the hell does it matter if the Russians have identified me? If I materialised in Mauritius they might recognise me. And, let’s face it, someone was aware of the purpose of my visit before I’d even boarded the plane at London Airport. They did, after all, take a pot shot at me the evening I arrived. So, you see, it’s not so much a question of me being recognised. It’s a question of whether they know whom I suspect. And at the moment I think they’ve got it all wrong.’ I sat back and beckoned the waiter. ‘So you see, Jefferey old son, it doesn’t really matter a monkey’s toss whether or not the Russians have recognised me. Sorry to disappoint you and all that.’

  ‘That isn’t quite the way they see it at the embassy.’

  I was so pleased with my spiel that I bought Jefferey a drink. ‘To hell with the embassy,’ I said.

  ‘No one was very pleased when they heard you were coming in the first place.’

  ‘I bet they weren’t – not after you’d had your little say. Did you show them the photographs?’

  He fiddled with the knot in his tie. ‘They thought you were a bit of a security risk.’

  ‘So are the Russians being infiltrated into this country?’

  A girl in a trouser suit with a neckline down to her navel asked us for a light. Jefferey obliged, trying not to look at her chest and succeeding in looking furtive. ‘You dance?’ she said.

  ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘Not just now.’ He smiled politely.

  I said: ‘In any case, why the urgency? Couldn’t it have waited until tomorrow?’

  ‘We’ll all be very busy tomorrow. Their National day and everything. We have to show the flag.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the day after?’

  ‘We wanted to be sure that you understood if you were recalled.’

  I put down my glass and stared at Jefferey. He patted his shiny hair and stared back. He wasn’t the one to dodge a fray. ‘Just what the bloody hell are you talking about now?’

  ‘We sent a message back to the F.O. when we heard that the Russians were on to you. Obviously they had to know. I expect you’ll be getting a cable or something soon recalling you. Despite what you say you can’t continue to operate once your front has been blown. You’d be followed everywhere. And in any case it wouldn’t help us at the embassy if the Russians thought we’d brought an agent in.’

  ‘That’s really it, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘You don’t want to be embarrassed. You’ve got over your little cod war and now you don’t want any more bloody trouble. You don’t want the Russians complaining to the Icelandic Government that we’re spying on them. You don’t want me nosing about in the investigation into this girl’s death irrespective of whether it had anything to do with my assignment or not. And you certainly don’t want a fellow who’s been photographed in bed with a Russian bird around the place. It’s all too much for your cosy little set-up, isn’t it, Jefferey? And now you’ve found a way to get rid of me. Well, just don’t count on it, my fine friend. Don’t count on it at all. H.E. is not my boss and you. are most certainly my subordinate.’

  ‘Just the same,’ Jefferey said, ‘I think you’ll be leaving here pretty soon.’ He smiled. ‘Nil desperandum.’

  ‘You make me sick,’ I said. ‘Do you know that? Physically sick. The Russians have got you all just where they want you and you can’t see it.’

  ‘I’m already acquainted with your views on the British Diplomatic service,’ Jefferey said. He was really enjoying himself.

  ‘The Hammer and Sickle have only got to be raised a fraction of an inch and you’re all hopping around like blue-arsed flies. Don’t you realise that there are more important things at stake than keeping the embassy out of trouble? Don’t you realise that this girl’s death and the people I’m investigating are all part of a plan to end Western dominance here? To bring the Americans into disrepute, ultimately to get rid of NATO. Don’t you realise that you’re just playing into their hands – as always? They know that I’m on to something, they know I constitute a threat, so they bleat to you about it.’

  ‘Aren’t you rather overestimating your importance, old man?’

  ‘If it wasn’t me it would have been another agent. They would have bleated about him and you would have said “yes sir, sorry sir, three bags full, sir”.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, really, does it?’ Jefferey buttoned his jacket, straightened his tie and combed at the hair about his ears with his fingers: his departure, he was telling me, was imminent.

  ‘What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?’

  ‘You’ll be able to brief your successor, won’t you, old man?’

  ‘Then the Russians will protest about his arrival and you’ll cable the F.O. again and everything will be back to square one.’

  ‘I rather think not,’ he said, waiting for me to ask why not.

  ‘Why not?’ I said.

  ‘I rather think I might be taking over,’ he said.

  He had to be joking. Surely they hadn’t sunk to this.

  He enjoyed his triumph for a few moments, then let it fade. Now he wanted to be taken seriously, wanted to conspire. He decided not to leave and looked around with theatrical caution before speaking.

  One of the guitarists was singing Wandrin’ Star in a fair imitation of Lee Marvin. Slivers of light through the curt
ains reminded us that night was day in Iceland.

  Jefferey said: ‘Can I get you another drink?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Then he said: ‘No one thinks that you’ve made any wrong moves in this assignment. It’s just bad luck that the Russians have spotted you.’ He searched for acceptable words. ‘It seems that I’m the only possible successor because no one else at the F.O. has good enough Icelandic.’

  ‘What about the night watchman at the embassy?’

  The drinks came and Jefferey paid for them. Some of the girls still waiting for partners looked at us with puzzlement mingled with resentment. If we were queer what were we doing here?

  Jefferey said: ‘Of course, I will have to have your assessment of the situation here.’ I was pleased to see that the whisky had left a light stain on his shirt.

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  He looked furtively around again like a drug pedlar. ‘What part did Hafstein play in all this?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said with refreshing honesty.

  ‘Come on, Conran. You must know. After all you followed him to the Westman Islands and you were there when he died.’ He paused to consolidate his position. ‘Look here, we’ve got to work together on this. After all, the issues involved are far greater than private animosity. Surely you will agree with that?’

  ‘It’s a question of priorities,’ I said. ‘Certainly the issues involved are more important than us bickering. But what I have to decide is this: Would it be more disastrous for the Western Alliance to give you information or to withhold it? In my opinion it would be more disastrous to give it to you. In fact it would be catastrophic.’

  His handsome face tightened. ‘In that case I shall have to request your people in London to order you to hand it over.’

  ‘You can try,’ I said. ‘As far as I’m concerned I’m still working here until I hear to the contrary.’ I finished my drink. ‘And I have no intention whatsoever, now or at any other time, of handing over any information to an amateur.’

  ‘One wishes your competence matched your arrogance,’ he said. ‘I was in Chancery in Moscow, you know. And I was attached to intelligence in the Army.’