by Len Deighton
‘“I know this village,” said Datt. “Sometimes I walk out as far as this. There are pheasants.”
‘I told him that walking this far from the town was dangerous. He smiled and said there could be no danger to a man of goodwill.
‘I knew that something was wrong as soon as we stopped, for usually someone will run out and stare, if not smile. There was no sound. There was the usual smell of sour garbage and woodsmoke that all the villages have, but no sound. Even the stream was silent, and beyond the village the rice paddy shone in the moonlight like spilled milk. Not a dog, not a hen. Everyone had gone. There were only men from the Sûreté there. The rifle had been found; an informer, an enemy, the chief – who knows who found it. The smiling girl was there, dead, her nude body covered with the tiny burns that a lighted cigarette end can inflict. Two men beckoned Datt. He got out of the car. They didn’t worry very much about me; they knocked me about with a pistol, but they kicked Datt. They kicked him and kicked him and kicked him. Then they rested and smoked Gauloises, and then they kicked him some more. They were both French, neither was more than twenty years old, and even then Datt wasn’t young; but they kicked him mercilessly. He was screaming. I don’t think they thought that either of us was Viet Minh. They’d waited for a few hours for someone to claim that rifle, and when we stopped nearby they grabbed us. They didn’t even want to know whether we’d come for the rifle. They kicked him and then they urinated over him and then they laughed and they lit more cigarettes and got into their Citroën car and drove away.
‘I wasn’t hurt much. I’d lived all my life with the wrong-coloured skin. I knew a few things about how to be kicked without getting hurt, but Datt didn’t. I got him back in the car – he’d lost a lot of blood and he was a heavy man, even then he was heavy. “Which way do you want me to drive?” I said. There was a hospital back in the town and I would have taken him to it. Datt said, “Take me to Comrade de Bois.” I’d said “comrade” all the time I’d spoken with Datt, but that was perhaps the first time Datt had used the word. A kick in the belly can show a man where his comrades are. Datt was badly hurt.’
‘He seems to have recovered now,’ I said, ‘apart from the limp.’
‘He’s recovered now, apart from the limp,’ said Kuang. ‘And apart from the fact that he can have no relationships with women.’
Kuang examined me carefully and waited for me to answer.
‘It explains a lot,’ I said.
‘Does it?’ said Kuang said mockingly.
‘No,’ I said. ‘What right does he have to identify thuggery with capitalism?’ Kuang didn’t answer. The ash was long on his cigarette and he walked across the room to tap it into the wash-basin. I said, ‘Why should he feel free to probe and pry into the lives of people and put the results at your disposal?’
‘You fool,’ said Kuang. He leaned against the wash-basin smiling at me. ‘My grandfather was born in 1878. In that year thirteen million Chinese died in the famine. My second brother was born in 1928. In that year five million Chinese people died in the famine. We lost twenty million dead in the Sino–Japanese war and the Long March meant the Nationalists killed two and a half million. But we are well over seven hundred million and increasing at the rate of fourteen or fifteen million a year. We are not a country or a party, we are a whole civilization, unified and moving forward at a speed that has never before been equalled in world history. Compare our industrial growth with India’s. We are unstoppable.’ I waited for him to go on, but he didn’t.
‘So what?’ I said.
‘So we don’t need to set up clinics to study your foolishness and frailty. We are not interested in your minor psychological failings. Datt’s amusing pastime is of no interest to my people.’
‘Then why did you encourage him?’
‘We have done no such thing. He financed the whole business himself. We have never aided him, or ordered him, nor have we taken from him any of his records. It doesn’t interest us. He has been a good friend to us but no European can be very close to our problems.’
‘You just used him to make trouble for us.’
‘That I will admit. We didn’t stop him making trouble. Why should we? Perhaps we have used him rather heartlessly, but a revolution must use everyone so.’ He returned my pack of cigarettes.
‘Keep the pack,’ I said.
‘You are very kind,’ he said. ‘There are ten left in it.’
‘They won’t go far among seven hundred million of you,’ I said.
‘That’s true,’ he said, and lit another.
36
I was awakened at nine thirty. It was la patronne. ‘There is time for a bath and a meal,’ she said. ‘My husband prefers to leave early, sometimes the policeman calls in for a drink. It would be best if you were not here then.’
I supposed she noticed me look towards the other room. ‘Your colleague is awake,’ she said. ‘The bathroom is at the end of the corridor. I have put soap there and there is plenty of hot water at this time of night.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. She went out without answering.
We ate most of the meal in silence. There was a plate of smoked ham, trout meunière and an open tart filled with rice pudding. The Fleming sat across the table and munched bread and drank a glass of wine to keep us company through the meal.
‘I’m conducting tonight.’
‘Good,’ I said. Kuang nodded.
‘You’ve no objection?’ he asked me. He didn’t want to show Kuang that I was senior man, so he put it as though it was a choice between friends.
‘It will suit me,’ I said. ‘Me too,’ said Kuang.
‘I’ve got a couple of scarves for you, and two heavy woollen sweaters. We are meeting his case officer right on the quayside. You are probably going out by boat.’
‘Not me,’ I said. ‘I’ll be coming straight back.’
‘No,’ said the man. ‘Operations were quite clear about that.’ He rubbed his face in order to remember more clearly. ‘You will come under his case officer, Major Chan, just as he takes orders from me at this moment.’
Kuang stared impassively. The man said, ‘I suppose they’ll need you if they run into a coastguard or fisheries protection vessel or something unexpected. It’s just for territorial waters. You’ll soon know if their case officer tries something.’
‘That sounds like going into a refrigerator to check that the light goes out,’ I said.
‘They must have worked something out,’ said the man. ‘London must …’ He stopped and rubbed his face again.
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘He knows we are London.’
‘London seemed to think it’s okay.’
‘That’s really put my mind at rest,’ I said.
The man chuckled. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes,’ and rubbed his face until his eye watered. ‘I suppose I’m blown now,’ he said.
‘I’m afraid so,’ I agreed. ‘This will be the last job you’ll do for us.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll miss the money,’ he said sadly. ‘Just when we could most do with it too.’
37
Maria kept thinking about Jean-Paul’s death. It had thrown her off balance, and now she had to think lopsidedly, like a man carrying a heavy suitcase; she had to compensate constantly for the distress in her head.
‘What a terrible waste,’ she said loudly.
Ever since she was a little girl Maria had had the habit of speaking to herself. Many times she had been embarrassed by someone coming close to her and hearing her babbling on about her trivial troubles and wishes. Her mother had never minded. It doesn’t matter, she had said, if you speak to yourself, it’s what you say that matters. She tried to stand back and see herself in the present dilemma. Ridiculous, she pronounced, all her life had been something of a pantomime but driving a loaded ambulance across northern France was more than she could have bargained for even in her most imaginative moments. An ambulance loaded with eight hundred dossiers and sex films; it made her want to laugh, alm
ost. Almost.
The road curved and she felt the wheels start to slide and corrected for it, but one of the boxes tumbled and brought another box down with it. She reached behind her and steadied the pile of tins. The metal boxes that were stacked along the neatly made bed jangled gently together, but none of them fell. She enjoyed driving, but there was no fun in thrashing this heavy old blood-wagon over the ill-kept back roads of northern France. She must avoid the main roads; she knew – almost instinctively – which ones would be patrolled. She knew the way the road patrols would obey Loiseau’s order to intercept Datt, Datt’s dossiers, tapes and films, Maria, Kuang or the Englishman, or any permutation of those that they might come across. Her fingers groped along the dashboard for the third time. She switched on the wipers, cursed, switched them off, touched the choke and then the lighter. Somewhere there must be a switch that would extinguish that damned orange light that was reflecting the piled-up cases, boxes and tins in her windscreen. It was dangerous to drive with that reflection in the screen but she didn’t want to stop. She could spare the time easily but she didn’t want to stop. Didn’t want to stop until she had completed the whole business. Then she could stop, then she could rest, then perhaps she could be reunited with Loiseau again. She shook her head. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to be reunited with Loiseau again. It was all very well thinking of him now in the abstract like this. Thinking of him surrounded by dirty dishes and with holes in his socks, thinking of him sad and lonely. But if she faced the grim truth he wasn’t sad or lonely; he was self-contained, relentless and distressingly complacent about being alone. It was unnatural, but then so was being a policeman unnatural.
She remembered the first time she’d met Loiseau. A village in Périgord. She was wearing a terrible pink cotton dress that a friend had sold her. She went back there again years later, You hope that the ghost of him will accompany you there and that some witchcraft will reach out to him and he will come back to you and you will be madly in love, each with the other, as you were once before. But when you get there you are a stranger; the people, the waitress, the music, the dances, all of them are new and you are unremembered.
Heavy damned car; the suspension and steering were coarse like a lorry’s. It had been ill treated, she imagined, the tyres were balding. When she entered the tiny villages the ambulance slid on the pavé stones. The villages were old and grey with just one or two brightly painted signs advertising beer or friture. In one village there were bright flashes of a welding torch as the village smith worked late into the night. Behind her, Maria heard the toot, toot, toot of a fast car. She pulled over to the right and a blue Land-Rover roared past, flashing its headlights and tooting imperious thanks. The blue rooftop light flashed spookily over the dark landscape, then disappeared. Maria slowed down; she hadn’t expected any police patrols on this road and she was suddenly aware of the beating of her heart. She reached for a cigarette in the deep soft pockets of her suede coat, but as she brought the packet up to her face they spilled across her lap. She rescued one and put it in her mouth. She was going slowly now, and only half her attention was on the road. The lighter flared and trembled, and as she doused the flame, more flames grew across the horizon. There were six or seven of them, small flaring pots like something marking an unknown warrior’s tomb. The surface of the road was black and shiny like a deep lake, and yet it couldn’t be water, for it hadn’t rained for a week. She fancied that the water would swallow the ambulance up if she didn’t stop. But she didn’t stop. Her front wheels splashed. She imagined the black water closing above her, and shivered. It made her feel claustrophobic. She lowered the window and recoiled at the overwhelming smell of vin rouge. Beyond the flares there were lamps flaring and a line of headlights. Farther still were men around a small building that had been built across the road. She thought at first that it was a customs control hut, but then she saw that it wasn’t a building at all. It was a huge wine tanker tipped on to its side and askew across the road, the wine gushing from the split seams. The front part of the vehicle hung over the ditch. Lights flashed behind shattered glass as men tried to extricate the driver. She slowed up. A policeman beckoned her into the side of the road, nodding frantically.
‘You made good time,’ the policeman said. ‘There’s four dead and one injured. He’s complaining, but I think he’s only scratched.’
Another policeman hurried over. ‘Back up against the car and we’ll lift him in.’
At first Maria was going to drive off but she managed to calm down a little. She took a drag on the cigarette. ‘There’ll be another ambulance,’ she said. She wanted to get that in before the real ambulance appeared.
‘Why’s that?’ said the policeman. ‘How many casualties did they say on the phone?’
‘Six,’ lied Maria.
‘No,’ said the policeman. ‘Just one injured, four dead. The car driver injured, the four in the tanker died instantly. Two truck-drivers and two hitch-hikers.’
Alongside the road the policemen were placing shoes, a broken radio, maps, clothes and a canvas bag, all in an impeccably straight line.
Maria got out of the car. ‘Let me see the hitch-hikers,’ she said.
‘Dead,’ said the policeman. ‘I know a dead ’un, believe me.’
‘Let me see them,’ said Maria. She looked up the dark road, fearful that the lights of an ambulance would appear.
The policeman walked over to a heap in the centre of the road. There from under a tarpaulin that police patrols carry especially for this purpose stuck four sets of feet. He lifted the edge of the tarpaulin. Maria stared down, ready to see the mangled remains of the Englishman and Kuang, but they were youths in beards and denim. One of them had a fixed grin across his face. She drew on the cigarette fiercely. ‘I told you,’ said the policeman. ‘Dead.’
‘I’ll leave the injured man for the second ambulance,’ said Maria.
‘And have him ride with four stiffs? Not on your life,’ said the policeman. ‘You take him.’ The red wine was still gurgling into the roadway and there was a sound of tearing metal as the hydraulic jacks tore the cab open to release the driver’s body.
‘Look,’ said Maria desperately. ‘It’s my early shift. I can get away if I don’t have to book a casualty in. The other ambulance won’t mind.’
‘You’re a nice little darling,’ said the policeman. ‘You don’t believe in work at all.’
‘Please.’ Maria fluttered her eyelids at him.
‘No I wouldn’t darling and that’s a fact,’ said the policeman. ‘You are taking the injured one with you. The stiffs I won’t insist upon and if you say there’s another ambulance coming then I’ll wait here. But not with the injured one I won’t.’ He handed her a little bundle. ‘His personal effects. His passport’s in there, don’t lose it now.’
‘No, I don’t parle,’ said a loud English voice. ‘And let me down, I can toddle myself, thanks.’
The policeman who had tried to carry the boy released him and watched as he climbed carefully through the ambulance rear doors. The other policeman had entered the ambulance before him and cleared the tins off the bed. ‘Full of junk,’ said the policeman. He picked up a film tin and looked at it.
‘It’s hospital records,’ said Maria. ‘Patients transferred. Documents on film. I’m taking them to the other hospitals in the morning.’
The English tourist – a tall boy in a black woollen shirt and pink linen trousers – stretched full length on the bed. ‘That’s just the job,’ he said appreciatively. The policeman locked the rear doors carefully. Maria heard him say, ‘We’ll leave the stiffs where they are. The other ambulance will find them. We’ll get up to the road blocks. Everything is happening tonight. Accident, road blocks, contraband search and the next thing you know we’ll be asked to do a couple of hours’ extra duty.’
‘Let the ambulance get away,’ said the second policeman. ‘We don’t want her to report us leaving the scene before the second ambulance arrived.’
Maria turned around in her seat and looked for the switch for the interior light. She found it and switched off the orange lamp. The policeman leered in through the window. ‘Don’t work too hard,’ he said.
‘Policeman,’ said Maria. She said it as if it was a dirty word and the policeman flinched. He was surprised at the depth of her hatred.
He spoke softly and angrily. ‘The trouble with you people from hospitals,’ he said, ‘you think you’re the only normal people left alive.’
Maria could think of no answer. She drove forward. From behind her the voice of the Englishman said, ‘I’m sorry to be causing you all this trouble.’ He said it in English hoping that the tone of his voice would convey his meaning.
‘It’s all right,’ said Maria.
‘You speak English!’ said the man. ‘That’s wonderful.’
‘Is your leg hurting you?’ She tried to make it as professional and clinical as she knew how.
‘It’s nothing. I did it running down the road to find a telephone. It’s hilarious really: those four dead and me unscratched except for a strained knee running down the road.’
‘Your car?’
‘That’s done for. Cheap car, Ford Anglia. Crankcase sticking through the rear axle the last I saw of it. Done for. It wasn’t the lorry driver’s fault. Poor sod. It wasn’t my fault either, except that I was going too fast. I always drive too fast, everyone tells me that. But I couldn’t have avoided this lot. He was right in the centre of the road. You do that in a heavy truck on these high camber roads. I don’t blame him. I hope he doesn’t blame me too much either.’
Maria didn’t answer; she hoped he’d go to sleep so she could think about this new situation.
‘Can you close the window?’ he asked. She rolled it up a little, but kept it a trifle open. The tension of her claustrophobia returned and she knocked the window handle with her elbow, hoping to open it a little more without the boy’s noticing.