Billion-Dollar Brain

by Len Deighton

  The restaurant was like many of its kind throughout the Soviet Union, although perhaps better cared for than most. The parquet was shined, the table-cloths starched and the waiters had clean shirts. At a table near the window sat a delegation of Africans, and another table nearer to the dance floor had South-East Asian faces that nodded every time their Russian host spoke. Here and there sat groups of army officers in baggy trousers and boots, with enamel medals on their chests. Each time the music began half a dozen unsteady men wandered through the restaurant asking the women to dance. More often than not the women declined, but this did not discourage the tipsy men. I ordered red caviare and black bread and butter and two hundred grams of vodka. I ate slowly and watched the dance floor. I tried to guess which of the women were the Russian wives of men stationed here and which were Latvian girls.

  An unkempt man with a torn shirt-collar and a large bundle sat down opposite me. He asked me for a light and I offered him one of my Gauloises. He inspected it carefully, thanked me and lit it. He asked me if I was English, and I told him Irish. He told me that this was not a good time of the year to see Riga. June, he said, was the time to come here. He ordered another two hundred grams of vodka.

  One of the army officers at the next table called across to my companion, ‘Businessman?’

  He leaned over to me. ‘They want pineapples,’ he said.

  ‘Is that so?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and I have the best ones in town.’

  We watched one of the army officers get to his feet. He was a short fair-haired man with gold epaulettes and the black flashes of the tank units. The other officers were teasing him, but he did not smile. He walked across the restaurant to the long table near the dance floor, where the delegation sat. He clicked his heels and bowed briefly towards a beautiful Eurasian girl. She got up and they completed a rather formal foxtrot amid the strange gyrations of the more experimental couples. After the dance he escorted her back to the rest of the delegation, and returned across the floor to us. He whispered something into the ear of my dishevelled companion, who produced a bundle wrapped in old copies of Pravda. It was a large pineapple. Roubles changed hands.

  My companion winked at me. ‘Are pineapples difficult to get in your country?’ I watched the officer present the pineapple to the girl.

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ I said. ‘Why can you get them when no one else can?’

  He put an index finger alongside his nose. ‘I fly them up from Djakarta,’ he said. ‘I’m an Aeroflot pilot.’

  The band played ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’. ‘This is my favourite song,’ said the man from Aeroflot. ‘I shall find a girl to dance with.’ He indicated dancing by making a stirring motion with his index finger and nearly knocking the vodka flask over, and then he lurched off towards the music. ‘Guard my pineapples,’ he called.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Latvia—or at least Riga—is more sophisticated than Leningrad or Moscow. If you ask for breakfast in your room they have difficulty in understanding the idea, but they will do it. A suggestion like that in Leningrad is subversive. In Riga the waitresses wear clean uniforms with white starched caps in the Mrs Beeton tradition; in Leningrad they wear greasy black suits. So when, late that night as I was just about to go to bed, I heard a discreet knock at the door, I was not amazed to find a waiter in a claw-hammer coat pulling a heavily laden food trolley into my room.

  ‘I didn’t order anything,’ I said.

  His broad back just kept coming through the door as if he was laying a cable. Once inside he turned and smiled.

  ‘I didn’t know you could get KGB* men from room service,’ I said.

  Colonel Stok said, ‘I would be obliged if you would speak more quietly.’ He went across to the wash-basin, picked up a drinking-glass and, putting the top of it against the wall, applied his ear to the base. I held up a bottle of Long John that I had brought from Helsinki. Stok looked at me blankly—still listening through the wall—and nodded. By the time I walked across to him Stok had the glass in the drinking position. The evening suit was not a good fit and he looked as though he was part of a Marx brothers film.

  He said, ‘Within the next hour you will receive a phone call.’

  Stok sipped his drink and waited as though he expected a round of applause.

  ‘Is that what you call revolutionary consciousness?’

  Stok looked at me calmly, trying to read the small print in my eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said finally, ‘revolutionary consciousness.’ He tugged one end of his bow tie and the knot came undone. The tie tumbled down his shirt-front like a little cascade of ink. Stok proceeded with his prediction, ‘Within an hour you will receive a phone call. It will arrange a meeting somewhere along the Komsomol Boulevard, probably near the October Bridge. If you attend that meeting I shall be forced to treat you as I shall treat the others. However, I advise you strongly not to go because you will be in danger.’

  ‘Danger from whom?’

  Colonel Stok was as big as an old oak wardrobe. Maybe some of the carving had got damaged in transit, but he was as firm and heavy as ever. He walked across the floor and, although he caused little sound, the whole room vibrated with his weight. ‘Not from me or any of my men,’ Stok said. ‘I promise you that.’ Stok drank the whisky in one gulp.

  ‘You think that these other people you mentioned will do me harm?’

  Stok took off his evening-dress jacket and put it over a hanger that was lying on my open suitcase. ‘I think they will,’ said Stok, ‘I think they will do you harm.’ He arranged the coat on the hanger, wrenched at his wing-collar and unclipped the shirt-stud. The starched front of his shirt parted with a clatter, he dropped the handful of studs into an ashtray and kicked off his black patent-leather shoes. He flexed his toes on the carpet. ‘My feet,’ he said. ‘I suppose a young man like you wouldn’t understand what pleasure it gives me to remove tight shoes?’ He arched one foot like a cat’s back, and said, ‘Aahh.’

  ‘And that’s momentary interest,’* I said.

  Stock said nothing for a moment, then he looked through me and said, ‘I touched Lenin. I stood beside him in Vosstaniye Square in July 1920—the second congress—I touched him. So don’t use Lenin’s words to me. Momentary interest.’ Stok crossed his arms across his face and began to pull his shirt off, and his words were lost beneath the white cotton. Beneath his shirt was a khaki singlet. Stok’s face emerged flushed and smiling. ‘Do you know the words of the poet Burns?’ He hung his trousers on a hanger. He wore long underwear and elastic suspenders held his socks.

  ‘I know “To a Haggis”,’ I said.

  Stok nodded. ‘I read a lot of Burns,’ he said. ‘You should read him more. You would learn a lot. “We labour soon, we labour late, to feed the titled knave, man.” Burns understood. The man who taught me English could recite Burns by the hour.’ Stok went across to the window and looked through the side of the curtain like they do in gangster films. ‘Aren’t you going to offer me another drink?’ he asked.

  I poured a slug of whisky into the glass. Stok drained it without even a pause to say thanks. ‘That’s better,’ was all he said. He walked across to the food trolley, and removed the starched cloth with a flourish. Instead of metal serving-dishes there was an officer’s uniform laid out there, complete with peaked cap and well-shined high boots. Stok reached for his riding breeches, buttoned himself into them, tucked his shirt in, then walked across to where I was sitting. He flexed his toes again.

  ‘You wonder why I am warning you, instead of rounding you all up? Well, I’ll tell you. If I round up all these criminals and trouble-makers, no one will say, “What a clever man is Colonel Stok to grab these people before they could cause our country trouble.” They will say, “Look how many subversives have been working under the very nose of Colonel Stok.” You understand this, English, we have known each other before. My desire is that these criminals leave my district and abandon their fantastic dreams.’

 
; Stok tied his tie, using all the muscles of his fingers as though it was made of metal instead of cloth. He slipped into his coat and shook his arms to make his shirt cuffs appear.

  ‘What fantastic dreams do they have?’ I asked.

  Stok pinched the big knot with his fingers. Then he poured himself another drink. ‘Don’t try to make a fool of me, English.’

  ‘I just want to know.’

  ‘They think that the Soviet Union is on the verge of overthrowing its tyrannical overlords. They think the people walking on the street out there are dreaming of the moment when they can become capitalist serfs again. They think that we all lie awake dreaming of going to America. They think they can distribute pamphlets and gold and a vast army of monarchists will materialize overnight. That’s what I call fantastic dreams. You understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Stok put on his uniform cap and a thigh-length padded jacket of the sort that Russian troops wear as fatigue dress when it’s very cold. There were now no badges of rank to be seen. He walked across to the window, and producing a knife ran it round the paper sealing strip, then opened it. He opened the outer window as well, and stepped out on to the fire escape. ‘Thank you for the use of your room,’ said Stok.

  ‘One good turn deserves another,’ I said. He held up his whisky.

  ‘You speak the truth,’ said Stok. ‘Well, do as you wish. It’s a free country.’ He drank, and I took his glass.

  ‘You mustn’t believe all you read in Pravda,’ I said.

  Stok walked down into the darkness.

  I poured myself a drink and sipped it. I wondered what to do. There was no question of contacting Dawlish. I wasn’t so concerned with Midwinter’s security but it would take ages to phone New York. Perhaps Midwinter had already out-thought Stok. I didn’t think so. Stok was something no computer could deal with; perhaps that’s what I liked about him.

  * * *

  *See Appendix 2: Soviet Intelligence.

  *Momentary interest (Communist jargon): a complex idea that defined those demands by the proletariat that were short-sighted, therefore ill-advised. It means giving in for the sake of comfort.

  Chapter 13

  One hour ten minutes after Stok left the phone rang. ‘The hell with you,’ I said to the phone, but after the third or fourth ring I answered it. The phone said, ‘Western clothes. Secure; two extra shirts. Komsomol Boulevard near October Bridge.’

  ‘I’m staying right here,’ I said. ‘I’m sick.’

  ‘That’s all,’ said the phone.

  ‘Don’t wait for me,’ I said. I replaced the receiver and said it again. I walked across to the bedside table and poured myself a large, large shot of whisky. The hell with them all. An operation like this must be a write-off, the odds against it were too great to make it worth pursuing. But I didn’t drink the whisky. I sniffed it and whispered an obscene word to it, then I put on my coat and overshoes and walked out of the hotel.

  I walked through 17th June Square, and the Domsky Cathedral was shiny with moonlight and snow. Parked outside the Polytechnic there were two small taxi-vans that are hired at ten copecks per kilometre. Near by were two men talking. Each was taking an unnatural interest in a view beyond his companion’s shoulder. One of the men called to me in German as I passed them. ‘Do you want to sell any Western clothes?’ It was the bald man I had spoken with on the video trunk-call screen.

  ‘I have a couple of extra shirts,’ I said. ‘Woollen ones. I could sell those if it’s permitted.’

  ‘Good,’ said the man. He opened the door of one of the taxi-vans. I got in. The driver revved up enthusiastically and turned on to the October Bridge. On the far bank the sky was red, for the heavy industry of the Lenin region doesn’t close down at midnight. On the river bank a huge sign said, ‘The Baltic Sea is a Sea of Peace.’

  The van was crowded with men in damp overcoats, and their weight made it difficult to control over the hard bumpy ice. The wipers began to wheeze as the snowflakes built up into hard wedges of ice, and some of the men in the back were stamping feet on the floor of the van trying to improve their circulation. No one spoke. The headlights of the taxi-van behind us flashed as it hit bumps in the road and the interior lit up the faces of the men in the van with me. The bald man popped a clove of garlic into his mouth.

  ‘You like garlic?’ he asked, breathing it over me.

  ‘Not second-hand,’ I said.

  ‘I have a cold,’ said the bald man. All Russians believe that garlic cures the common cold. I picked at a crust of ice that condensation had formed upon the window. The whole world was white: a great canvas backdrop untouched by paint. Here and there a faint pencil line indicated where a line of trees or a valley would one day appear. And all the time the snow fell; not once but many times, scooped up by the wind and hurled back in huge opaque whirlpools that obliterated even the pencil lines. We drove for an hour. In the tiny villages just one or two lights still burned. Twice we nearly drove into a horse and cart and we passed three lorries. When we finally stopped the van behind slid on the hard ice and narrowly missed colliding with us. We were in open country.

  ‘Get out,’ said the bald man. I opened the door and wind flicked against my exposed flesh like steel-tipped whips. The two vans parked under the trees. The bald man offered me a cigarette.

  ‘You’re an American?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. There was no point in providing him with facts.

  ‘I’m a Pole,’ he said. ‘So is my son there.’ He pointed towards the driver. In Latvia Roman Catholics refer to themselves as Poles. ‘The others are Russians,’ he said, ‘I don’t like Russians.’ I nodded.

  The bald man leaned closer and spoke very quietly. ‘You, me and my son are the only ones working for Midwinter. The others are…’ He made that sign of two fingers laid across two fingers. It meant prison bars.

  ‘Criminals?’ I asked. I shivered from the cold.

  He sucked at his cigarette and then wet his lips distastefully. ‘Businessmen,’ he said. ‘That’s the arrangement.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘An Army lorry is due along this road in a few minutes. We’ll wreck it. They take the contents, we take the documents.’

  ‘What are the contents?’

  ‘Rations. Food and drink. No one here ever steals anything but food or drink. They’re the only things that you can dispose of without a permit.’ He laughed garlic at me.

  ‘What documents?’ I asked. ‘The ration strengths?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the bald man. ‘Best way to check the man-power of the units along the coast here.’ He threw the stub of his cigarette into the snow and walked into the centre of the roadway. I followed him. Two men were staring at the road. The bald man extended a toe and slid it experimentally across the glassy surface of ice. They had melted the snow with a little water from the car radiators and now it was freezing into a mirror of ice. ‘The lorry will be helpless on it,’ said the bald man. Some of his confidence rubbed off on me. Just for one moment it all seemed possible. I’d like to see those ration strengths, perhaps it would go well. I pulled my scarf tighter and shivered; who was I kidding? From the top of the rise a torch flashed twice.

  ‘Now,’ said the bald man. ‘It will have to do.’ He tapped the ice with his toe. ‘The lorry is coming.’ We all crouched behind the trees. I could hear a heavy lorry in low gear.

  ‘You don’t think we can do it,’ whispered the bald man.

  ‘You’re damn right, I don’t,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll show you. Clean, cheap, fast and not a firearm in the vicinity.’

  I nodded. The bald man looked around to make sure that none of the ‘businessmen’ were in earshot. ‘You tell Midwinter,’ he said, ‘not to send them any guns. It’s the promise of guns that makes them co-operate with Midwinter. If they ever got guns…’ He smiled. The reflected light from the snow underlit his face. His nose was red but his grin was tired, like a clown without greasepaint. Behi
nd his head the lights of the lorry were flashing as it bumped over the hard ridges of ice.

  There was something nightmarish about the slow approach of the lorry. I could help these lunatics or I could fight them on behalf of Stok; neither of those ideas appealed to me. I thought of all the warm beds that I could have been in and I kneaded my fingers that were going numb with cold. The lorry changed into a lower gear as it reached the final slope. The driver must have seen the prepared patch of ice reflected in the moonlight, for I saw his white face lean close to the windscreen. The front wheels began to slip, and then the rear wheels hit the ice patch and they too began to spin. The lorry stopped. The driver revved the motor but that only made things worse. The lorry slid sideways across the road. Eight of the men came running out of the trees and heaved at the sides of the lorry. It moved slowly towards the drainage ditch. The driver gunned the motor but that only threw off sprays of fine snow, and the motor howled until I thought it would burst. The lorry tipped gently into the ditch and wedged there, its offside front wheel clear of the ground. With appalling crudity they had disabled the lorry. The engine stopped and for a moment there was the silence that can only exist in a forest. Then there was a clang as the driver opened the door and climbed down. He showed no surprise.

  His arms were raised above his head but not raised so far that he showed any fear either. Someone brushed a hand across him for a gun, but finding none pushed him to one side. They began to untie the canvas at the rear of the lorry. There was a sudden sound of compacted ice falling from the underside of the lorry and some of the men looked startled. The soldier grinned and reached for a half-smoked cigarette behind the earflap of his fur hat. His movements were slow but his eyes were quick. I threw him my matches. He lit the cigarette, keeping both his hands high and visible.