by Len Deighton
‘It’s quiet,’ I said. Now and again small flocks of birds darted across the sky, their eyes seeking food in the hard morning light, their bodies weakened by the cold night air.
‘Very few police,’ said the man, ‘The cars keep to the main roads. It will rain soon and the cyclists don’t move much when it’s raining. It’ll be the first rain for two weeks.’
‘Stop worrying,’ I said. ‘Your boy will be all right.’
‘He knows what to do,’ the man agreed.
33
The Fleming owned an hotel not far from Ostend. The car turned into a covered alley that led to a cobbled courtyard. A couple of hens squawked as we parked and a dog howled. ‘It’s difficult,’ said the man, ‘to do anything clandestine around here.’
He was a small broad man with a sallow skin that would always look dirty no matter what he did to it. The bridge of his nose was large and formed a straight line with his forehead, like the nose metal of a medieval helmet. His mouth was small and he held his lips tight to conceal his bad teeth. Around his mouth were scars of the sort that you get when thrown through a windscreen. He smiled to show me it was a joke rather than an apology, and the scars made a pattern around his mouth like a tightened hairnet.
The door from the side entrance of the hotel opened and a woman in a black dress and white apron stared at us.
‘They have come,’ said the man.
‘So I see,’ she said. ‘No luggage?’
‘No luggage,’ said the man. She seemed to need some explanation, as though we were a man and girl trying to book a double room.
‘They need to rest, ma jolie môme,’ said the man. She was no one’s pretty child, but the compliment appeased her for a moment.
‘Room four,’ she said.
‘The police have been?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘They won’t be back until night,’ said the man to us. ‘Perhaps not then even. They check the book. It’s for the taxes more than to find criminals.’
‘Don’t use all the hot water,’ said the woman. We followed her through the yellow peeling side door into the hotel entrance hall. There was a counter made of carelessly painted hardboard and a rack with eight keys hanging from it. The lino had the large square pattern that’s supposed to look like inlaid marble; it curled at the edges and something hot had indented a perfect circle near the door.
‘Name?’ said the woman grimly as though she was about to enter us in the register.
‘Don’t ask,’ said the man. ‘And they won’t ask our name.’ He smiled as though he had made a joke and looked anxiously at his wife, hoping that she would join in. She shrugged and reached behind her for the key. She put it down on the counter very gently so she could not be accused of anger.
‘They’ll need two keys, Sybil.’
She scowled at him. ‘They’ll pay for the rooms,’ he said.
‘We’ll pay,’ I said. Outside the rain began. It bombarded the window and rattled the door as though anxious to get in.
She slammed the second key down upon the counter. ‘You should have taken it and dumped it,’ said the woman angrily. ‘Rik could have driven these two back here.’
‘This is the important stage,’ said the man.
‘You lazy pig,’ said the woman. ‘If the alarm is out for the car and Rik gets stopped driving it, then we’ll see which is the important stage.’
The man didn’t answer, nor did he look at me. He picked up the keys and led the way up the creaky staircase. ‘Mind the handrail,’ he said. ‘It’s not fixed properly yet.’
‘Nothing is,’ called the woman after us. ‘The whole place is only half-built.’
He showed us into our rooms. They were cramped and rather sad, shining with yellow plastic and smelling of quick-drying paint. Through the wall I heard Kuang swish back the curtain, put his jacket on a hanger and hang it up. There was the sudden chug-chug of the water pipe as he filled the wash-basin. The man was still behind me, hanging on as if waiting for something. I put my finger to my eye and then pointed towards Kuang’s room; the man nodded. ‘I’ll have the car ready by twenty-two hundred hours. Ostend isn’t far from here.’
‘Good,’ I said. I hoped he would go but he stayed there.
‘We used to live in Ostend,’ he said. ‘My wife would like to go back there. There was life there. The country is too quiet for her.’ He fiddled with the broken bolt on the door. It had been painted over but not repaired. He held the pieces together, then let them swing apart.
I stared out of the window; it faced south-west, the way we had come. The rain continued and there were puddles in the roadway and the fields were muddy and windswept. Sudden gusts had knocked over the pots of flowers under the crucifix and the water running down the gutters was bright red with the soil it carried from somewhere out of sight.
‘I couldn’t let the boy bring you,’ the man said. ‘I’m conducting you. I couldn’t let someone else do that, not even family.’ He rubbed his face hard as if he hoped to stimulate his thought. ‘The other was less important to the success of the job. This part is vital.’ He looked out of the window. ‘We needed this rain,’ he said, anxious to have my agreement.
‘You did right,’ I said.
He nodded obsequiously, as if I’d given him a ten-pound tip, then smiled and backed towards the door. ‘I know I did,’ he said.
34
My case officer arrived about 11 A.M.; there were cooking smells. A large black Humber pulled into the courtyard and stopped. Byrd got out. ‘Wait,’ he said to the driver. Byrd was wearing a short Harris tweed overcoat and a matching cap. His boots were muddy and his trouser-bottoms tucked up to avoid being soiled. He clumped upstairs to my room, dismissing the Fleming with only a grunt.
‘You’re my case officer?’
‘That’s the ticket.’ He took off his cap and put it on the bed. His hair stood up in a point. He lit his pipe. ‘Damned good to see you,’ he said. His eyes were bright and his mouth firm, like a brush salesman sizing up a prospect.
‘You’ve been making a fool of me,’ I complained.
‘Come, come, trim your yards, old boy. No question of that. No question of that at all. Thought you did well actually. Loiseau said you put in quite a plea for me.’ He smiled again briefly, caught sight of himself in the mirror over the wash-basin and pushed his disarranged hair into place.
‘I told him you didn’t kill the girl, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Ah well.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘Damned nice of you.’ He took the pipe from his mouth and searched around his teeth with his tongue. ‘Damned nice, but to tell you the truth, old boy, I did.’
I must have looked surprised.
‘Shocking business of course, but she’d opened us right up. Every damned one of us. They got to her.’
‘With money?’
‘No, not money; a man.’ He put the pipe into the ashtray. ‘She was vulnerable to men. Jean-Paul had her eating out of his hand. That’s why they aren’t suited to this sort of work, bless them. Men were deceivers ever, eh? Gels get themselves involved, what? Still, who are we to complain about that, wouldn’t want them any other way myself.’
I didn’t speak, so Byrd went on.
‘At first the whole plan was to frame Kuang as some sort of oriental Jack-the-Ripper. To give us a chance to hold him, talk to him, sentence him if necessary. But the plans changed. Plans often do, that’s what gives us so much trouble, eh?’
‘Jean-Paul won’t give you any more trouble; he’s dead.’
‘So I hear.’
‘Did you arrange that too?’ I asked.
‘Come, come, don’t be bitter. Still, I know just how you feel. I muffed it, I’ll admit. I intended it to be quick and clean and painless, but it’s too late now to be sentimental or bitter.’
‘Bitter,’ I said. ‘If you really killed the girl, how come you got out of prison?’
‘Set-up job. French police. Gave me a chance to disappear, talk to the B
elgians. Very co-operative. So they should be, with this damned boat these Chinese chappies have got anchored three miles out. Can’t touch them legally, you see. Pirate radio station; think what it could do if the balloon went up. Doesn’t bear thinking of.’
‘No. I see. What will happen?’
‘Government level now, old chap. Out of the hands of blokes like you and me.’
He went to the window and stared across the mud and cabbage stumps. White mist was rolling across the flat ground like a gas attack.
‘Look at that light,’ said Byrd. ‘Look at it. It’s positively ethereal and yet you could pick it up and rap it. Doesn’t it make you ache to pick up a paintbrush?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Well it does me. First of all a painter is interested in form, that’s all they talk about at first. But everything is the light falling on it – no light and there’s no form, as I’m always saying; light’s the only thing a painter should worry about. All the great painters knew that: Francesca, El Greco, Van Gogh.’ He stopped looking at the mist and turned back towards me glowing with pleasure. ‘Or Turner. Turner most of all, take Turner any day …’ He stopped talking but he didn’t stop looking at me. I asked him no question but he heard it just the same. ‘Painting is my life,’ he said. ‘I’d do anything just to have enough money to go on painting. It consumes me. Perhaps you wouldn’t understand what art can do to a person.’
‘I think I’m just beginning to,’ I said.
Byrd stared me out. ‘Glad to hear it, old boy.’ He took a brown envelope out of his case and put it on the table.
‘You want me to take Kuang up to the ship?’
‘Yes, stick to the plan. Kuang is here and we’d like him out on the boat. Datt will try to get on the boat, we’d like him here, but that’s less important. Get Kuang to Ostend. Rendezvous with his case chappie – Major Chan – hand him over.’
‘And the girl, Maria?’
‘Datt’s daughter – illegitimate – divided loyalties. Obsessed about these films of her and Jean-Paul. Do anything to get them back. Datt will use that factor, mark my words. He’ll use her to transport the rest of his stuff.’ He ripped open the brown envelope.
‘And you’ll try to stop her?’
‘Not me, old boy. Not my part of the ship those dossiers, not yours either. Kuang to Ostend, forget everything else. Kuang out to the ship, then we’ll give you a spot of leave.’ He counted out some Belgian money and gave me a Belgian press card, an identity card, a letter of credit and two phone numbers to ring in case of trouble. ‘Sign here,’ he said. I signed the receipts.
‘Loiseau’s pigeon, those dossiers,’ he said. ‘Leave all that to him. Good fellow, Loiseau.’
Byrd kept moving like a flyweight in the first round. He picked up the receipts, blew on them and waved them to dry the ink.
‘You used me, Byrd,’ I said. ‘You sent Hudson to me, complete with prefabricated hard-luck story. You didn’t care about blowing a hole in me as long as the overall plan was okay.’
‘London decided,’ Byrd corrected me gently.
‘All eight million of ’em?’
‘Our department heads,’ he said patiently. ‘I personally opposed it.’
‘All over the world people are personally opposing things they think are bad, but they do them anyway because a corporate decision can take the blame.’
Byrd had half turned towards the window to see the mist.
I said, ‘The Nuremberg trials were held to decide that whether you work for Coca-Cola, Murder Inc. or the Wehrmacht General Staff, you remain responsible for your own actions.’
‘I must have missed that part of the Nuremberg trials,’ said Byrd unconcernedly. He put the receipts away in his wallet, picked up his hat and pipe and walked past me towards the door.
‘Well let me jog your memory,’ I said as he came level and I grabbed at his chest and tapped him gently with my right. It didn’t hurt him but it spoiled his dignity and he backed away from me, smoothing his coat and pulling at the knot of his tie which had disappeared under his shirt collar.
Byrd had killed, perhaps many times. It leaves a blemish in the eyeballs and Byrd had it. He passed his right hand round the back of his collar. I expected a throwing knife or a cheese-wire to come out, but he was merely straightening his shirt.
‘You were too cynical,’ said Byrd. ‘I should have expected you to crack.’ He stared at me. ‘Cynics are disappointed romantics; they keep looking for someone to admire and can never find anyone. You’ll grow out of it.’
‘I don’t want to grow out of it,’ I said.
Byrd smiled grimly. He explored the skin where my hand had struck him. When he spoke it was through his fingers. ‘Nor did any of us,’ he said. He nodded and left.
35
I found it difficult to get to sleep after Byrd had gone and yet I was too comfortable to make a move. I listened to the articulated trucks speeding through the village: a crunch of changing gears as they reached the corner, a hiss of brakes at the crossroads, and an ascending note as they saw the road clear and accelerated. Lastly, there was a splash as they hit the puddle near the ‘Drive carefully because of our children’ sign. Every few minutes another came down the highway, a sinister alien force that never stopped and seemed not friendly towards the inhabitants. I looked at my watch. Five thirty. The hotel was still but the rain hit the window lightly. The wind seemed to have dropped but the fine rain continued relentlessly, like a long-distance runner just getting his second breath. I stayed awake for a long time thinking about them all. Suddenly I heard a soft footstep in the corridor. There was a pause and then I saw the door knob revolve silently. ‘Are you asleep?’ Kuang called softly. I wondered if my conversation with Byrd had awakened him, the walls were so thin. He came in.
‘I would like a cigarette. I can’t sleep. I have been downstairs but no one is about. There is no machine either.’ I gave him a pack of Players. He opened it and lit one. He seemed in no hurry to go. ‘I can’t sleep,’ he said. He sat down in the plastic-covered easy chair and watched the rain on the window. Across the shiny landscape nothing moved. We sat silent a long time, then I said, ‘How did you first meet Datt?’
He seemed glad to talk. ‘Vietnam, 1954. Vietnam was a mess in those days. The French colons were still there but they’d begun to realize the inevitability of losing. No matter how much practice they get the French are not good at losing. You British are skilled at losing. In India you showed that you knew a thing or two about the realities of compromise that the French will never learn. They knew they were going and they got more and more vicious, more and more demented. They were determined to leave nothing; not a hospital blanket nor a kind word.
‘By the early ’fifties Vietnam was China’s Spain. The issues were clear, and for us party members it was an honour to go there. It meant that the party thought highly of us. I had grown up in Paris. I speak perfect French. I could move about freely. I was working for an old man named de Bois. He was pure Vietnamese. Most party members had acquired Vietnamese names no matter what their origins, but de Bois couldn’t bother with such niceties. That’s the sort of man he was. A member since he was a child. Communist party adviser; purely political, nothing to do with the military. I was his secretary – it was something of an honour; he used me as a messenger boy. I’m a scientist, I haven’t got the right sort of mind for soldiering, but it was an honour.
‘Datt was living in a small town. I was told to contact him. We wanted to make contact with the Buddhists in that region. They were well organized and we were told at that time that they were sympathetic to us. Later the war became more defined (the Vietcong versus the Americans’ puppets), but then the whole country was a mess of different factions, and we were trying to organize them. The only thing that they had in common was that they were anti-colonial – anti-French-colonial, that is: the French had done our work for us. Datt was a sort of soft-minded liberal, but he had influence with the Buddhists – he was someth
ing of a Buddhist scholar and they respected him for his learning – and more important, as far as we were concerned, he wasn’t a Catholic.
‘So I took my bicycle and cycled sixty kilometres to see Datt, but in the town it was not good to be seen with a rifle, so two miles from the town where Datt was to be found I stopped in a small village. It was so small, that village, that it had no name. Isn’t it extraordinary that a village can be so small as to be without a name? I stopped and deposited my rifle with one of the young men of the village. He was one of us: a Communist, in so far as a man who lives in a village without a name can be a Communist. His sister was with him. A short girl – her skin bronze, almost red – she smiled constantly and hid behind her brother, peering out from behind him to study my features. Han Chinese11 faces were uncommon around there then. I gave him the rifle – an old one left over from the Japanese invasion; I never did fire a shot from it. They both waved as I cycled away.
‘I found Datt.
‘He gave me cheroots and brandy and a long lecture on the history of democratic government. Then we found that we used to live near each other in Paris and we talked about that for a while. I wanted him to come back and see de Bois. It had been a long journey for me, but I knew Datt had an old car and that meant that if I could get him to return with me I’d get a ride back too. Besides I was tired of arguing with him, I wanted to let old de Bois have a go, they were more evenly matched. My training had been scientific, I wasn’t much good at the sort of arguing that Datt was offering me.
‘He came. We put the cycle in the back of his old Packard and drove west. It was a clear moonlit night and soon we came to the village that was too small even to have a name.