by Len Deighton
The slope was covered with white and yellow wild flowers, and near to the house was a cluster of small trees. The house was narrow, transparent and bright with yellow light. One end was supported on steel legs and the other end bit into the rock. Under the high side there was a grey Buick that I had seen Harvey driving and a long black Lincoln Continental that looked like the President of the United States had come over for pizza and beer.
Harvey waved from the balcony and dropped ice cubes into a large glass. There was a scent of wild flowers and grass cooling after a hot day. Harvey’s two kids were chasing around the trees in their pyjamas. Mercy Newbegin called to the kids, ‘C’mon now; time for bed,’ and there were more Indian war whoops and whistles and cries of ‘Another five minutes, Mom, huh?’ Mercy Newbegin said, ‘OK, but exactly five now.’ She came through into the sitting-room where I was nursing a martini. The house had a simple luxury. It was little more than a glass-sided army hut, but there was plenty of mahogany, ebony and zebra skin, and a tall cone of polished copper in the centre of the floor became a fireplace at the touch of a switch. Harvey was lounging full length across the sheepskin seats that followed the wall around the corner. Mercy sat down next to him.
‘Did you see the Brain?’ Mercy asked me. She was wearing lacy raw silk pyjamas like people wear in drink advertisements.
‘Did he see it,’ Harvey said. ‘He had the full transfers-between-airports-taxes-tips-and-porters-included-plan-A tour. And he took it like a hero.’
Mercy said, ‘I don’t know why you have to speak like that, Harvey. Surely you’re interested in the way the Brain works. It’s your job after all.’
Harvey grunted.
Mercy called, ‘Are you children in bed yet?’
There was a jumble of children’s voices, then the smaller child looked round the door. ‘Is Simon in here, Daddy?’
Harvey said, ‘No I don’t believe so. Simon’s the cat,’ he explained to me. ‘He was a war profiteer.’
The child said, ‘He wasn’t, Daddy.’
Harvey said, ‘He was, Hank, your mother and I weren’t going to tell you.’ Harvey turned to me. ‘During the Korean war see, this cat…’
Hank said, ‘No he was not,’ very loudly; he was angry and pleased both at once.
Harvey said very reasonably, ‘Then why does he go around wearing that ankle-length overcoat with the astrakhan collar? And smoking cigars. And smoking cigars. Explain that if you can.’
Hank said, ‘He wasn’t a war profiteer, Daddy. Simon doesn’t smoke cigars.’
Harvey said, ‘Not when you are around maybe, but when he goes across to see the Wilsons’ cat…’
Mercy said, ‘Cut it out, Harvey. You’ll give my children a complex before you’re through.’
Harvey said, ‘Your mother doesn’t want you to know about Simon’s cigars.’
Mercy said, ‘Come along, Hank. Bath time.’ She marched him out. I could hear the child saying, ‘Candy cigars, Mommy, or real ones?’
Harvey said, ‘Mercy’s got a kind of thing about the old man—Midwinter—she feels she has to support him. You know what I mean?’
‘He seems to rely on her,’ I said.
‘You mean his hand. He’s a showman, Midwinter. Never lose sight of that. He’s a pitchman from way back.’
Mercy Newbegin came back into the room and closed the sliding door. ‘There are times when you make me scream, Harvey,’ she said.
‘So scream, honey,’ Harvey said.
‘You know more ways to fold up my marriage than any other man living.’
‘Well, that’s only right, honey, I’m your husband. What is it you need, a little more romance?’
‘I need a good deal less.’
Harvey said to me, ‘Women are never romantic. Only men are romantic.’
Mercy said, ‘It’s a little difficult for a woman to be romantic about her husband’s amours.’ She smiled and poured Harvey another drink. The tension was gone.
Mercy smoothed Harvey’s hair. ‘I went to a sale today, honey.’
‘Buy anything?’
‘Well they had this sale of nylons twenty-eight cents below what I usually pay. Two women tore the nylons I was wearing—really good ones—another dragged a baby carriage across my ninety-dollar shoes. Net gain: one dollar sixty-eight. Net loss: one pair of two-dollar nylons and one pair of ninety-dollar shoes.’ The screen slid back. Hank said, ‘I’m washed, Mommy.’ Mercy said, ‘Say goodnight quickly then.’
Hank said, ‘Simon wasn’t really a war profiteer, was he, Daddy?’
‘No, son, of course, he wasn’t,’ Harvey said in a kindly tone. ‘He was just doing his bit towards victory.’ Harvey turned to me suddenly. ‘We have another cat named Boswell: a labour leader. He’s organized every cat in the neighbourhood except Simon. Boy is he ever a crook. He takes more kick-backs than…’
Hank got very excited. He yelled, ‘He’s not, Daddy. He’s not, Daddy. He’s not, he’s not, he’s not…’
Mercy picked Hank up and put him over her shoulder. ‘Off to bed,’ she said.
Hank yelled, ‘You’ll give me a complex, Daddy, before you’re through.’
Dinner was set on the patio. From this end of the house—the end on legs—there was a magnificent view. Through the cleavage of two low hills the lights of San Antonio rippled in the warm rising air. Harvey said, ‘I’m a city-boy, but this cow-country has a lot of magic. Imagine great herds of long-horns—perhaps three thousand head—walking across that landscape north, to where there was plenty of money and an appetite for beef. This was the starting point for those cattle drives. Tough guys like Charles Goodnight, John Chisholm and Oliver Loving pioneered routes to the railheads at Cheyenne, Dodge City, Ellsworth and Abilene. You know what sort of journey that would be?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I said.
‘I did a trip along the Goodnight Train to Fort Sumner, then took the Loving Train to Cheyenne. That was in 1946. I bought a war-surplus jeep and followed the Pecos River just like Loving did. From here to Cheyenne is nine hundred miles as the crow flies, the trail is nearer fourteen hundred. I took it real slow. I did it in ten days, but in 1867 Loving took three months to do it. Rustlers, outlaws, storms that had rivers breaking their banks, Indians, droughts. These trail bosses…’
‘Is Harvey playing cowboys and Indians again?’ Mercy said. ‘Help me with the trolley, Harvey.’
‘It’s interesting,’ I said.
‘Don’t let him hear you say that,’ she said, ‘or he’ll get his guns out and demonstrate the “Border spin” and the “Road Agent’s shift”.’
‘The Border shift and the Road Agent’s spin,’ Harvey corrected wearily. ‘Get it right.’
We sat down and Harvey speared fried chicken on to the three plates. ‘Yes sir,’ he said. ‘The end of the trail was little old Dodge where Earp would challenge any man wearing his plough-handles north of the railroad tracks.’
‘Look what you’re doing, Harvey. Serve the food properly or let me do it.’
Harvey said, ‘Yes mam. The kinda hombres who’d raise hell and put a plank under it…’
‘You haven’t opened the wine, Harvey. The chicken will be cold if you don’t stop it.’
‘Let me open the wine,’ I said.
‘I wish you would, Mr Dempsey. Harvey gets so excited sometimes. He’s just like a big child. But I love him.’
I opened the wine carefully; it was a very fine Chambertin.
‘Quite a wine,’ I said.
‘We made sure it was a good one. Harvey said you knew about Burgundies.’
‘I said he liked them,’ Harvey corrected.
‘What’s the difference?’ said Mercy without wishing an answer.
Mercy Newbegin was a good-looking woman who looked even better in the light of the flickering candles. Her frame was small, her arms looked frail and very white against the raw silk. Women would say she had ‘good bones’. Her skin was tight across her ivory face and although one suspected tha
t the tautness was maintained by a beauty parlour, it didn’t lessen the harmony of the face, in which brown eyes seemed bigger than they really were, like a sun at sunset. She was a silk-and-satin girl; it was hard to imagine her in denim and cotton.
‘Doesn’t that General Midwinter have style?’ she said. ‘He has his own train. He has houses in Paris, London, Frankfurt and Hawaii. They say the servants prepare food and set his table every day in each of these houses just in case he arrives. Isn’t that something? And the plane—you came down in it—did you ever know anyone with two four-motor jet planes for private use?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘It makes me discontented, the life he lives. Here I am stuck in Texas for weeks on end. The droughts make the chiggers unbearable and the floods bring out the rattlesnakes and copperheads…’
‘Grab some chicken,’ Harvey said, ‘while it’s still hot.’
Mercy handled the porcelain and silver with her elegant hands and measured out the wild rice and caesar salad. Mercy gave me a chance to stare deep into her limpid brown eyes. ‘I’ll bet even your Queen doesn’t have two four-motor jet planes for her private use. One of them with interior décor of a nineteenth-century sailing clipper. Even your Queen…’
‘You’d better not get into a hassle with this guy,’ Harvey interrupted. ‘Maybe he doesn’t know a squeeze play from a loud foul, but once he senses he’s being got at he can be a vicious SOB.’
Mercy gave me a smile made of homogenized gossamer, ‘I’m sure it’s not true.’
‘That’s just the two of us then,’ I said and Harvey laughed.
‘You British are such clever losers,’ Mercy said.
‘It comes with practice,’ I said.
‘Let me tell you about this guy,’ said Harvey pointing a thumb at me. ‘The first time I ever saw him was in Frankfurt. He was sitting in a new white Jensen sports car that was covered in mud, with a sensational blonde, sensational. He was wearing very old clothes, smoking a Gauloise cigarette and listening to a Beethoven quartet on the car radio, and I thought, “Oh boy, just how many ways can you be a snob simultaneously.” Well this guy…’ he paused for a moment to remember the name I was using, ‘well this guy Dempsey knew.’
‘I can never remember names,’ Mercy said. ‘I remember when I was at college men would phone me and I wouldn’t have any idea who they were. So I would say, “What kind of car do you have now?” and that would help me to remember. It would also help me to decide whether I should go out with them.’ Mercy laughed delicately.
‘Husbands are a by-product of marriage,’ said Harvey.
‘A waste product,’ corrected Mercy Newbegin. She laughed and touched Harvey’s arm to show that she didn’t mean it.
‘I keep telling Harvey to sell that Buick. Can you imagine what people think, with him in a Buick? Especially with General Midwinter thinking so highly of him. A Buick just isn’t us, Harvey.’
‘It isn’t you, you mean,’ said Harvey.
‘You could go to work in my Lincoln,’ said Mercy. ‘That has style.’
‘I like the Buick,’ said Harvey.
‘Harvey is so anxious that we live on his income. Why, it’s so foolish. It’s sinful pride. I’ve told him: sinful pride and it’s me and my children who suffer.’
‘You don’t suffer,’ Harvey said. ‘You still buy your Mainbocher dresses, you still have your horses…’
‘On Long Island,’ said Mercy. ‘I don’t have them here.’
‘So you go home to Long Island once a month,’ said Harvey. ‘You go to St Moritz every February, Paris for the Spring collections, you are in Venice in June, at Ascot in July…’
‘With my money, darling. I don’t take it out of your housekeeping.’ She laughed. She had perfectly proportioned features and perfectly proportioned hands and feet and small even teeth that flashed as she smiled. When the conversation deserved to be punctuated she threw back her head and gave a perfectly proportioned peal of carefully modulated laughter. She turned to me, ‘I don’t take it out of his housekeeping,’ she said and laughed again.
Chapter 19
At six forty-five the following morning my visit to the Brain began in earnest. In the mess hall I had orange juice, cereal, ham and eggs and coffee. There was scarcely any time for a cigarette before we were hustled over to the equipment store. We each got six khaki shirts and pants, one belt, one knife with knuckle-duster handle, socks and sets of underwear and a lightweight stetson. We changed into these outfits and assembled in classroom IB at seven forty-five A.M. Each uniform shirt had a large red shoulder patch with a white grid like three capital Fs jammed together. On my shirt Harvey had arranged that I wore the word ‘observer’, which meant I was able to remember a prior appointment when the going got rough. The badge meant ‘Facts for Freedom’, the instructor explained. He was a crew-cut Harvard man with sleeves rolled up and collar buttoned down. Around the room there were signs that said ‘Think Tall’. Every classroom had at least one of those signs in it. The foreign students spent a lot of time having the meaning of that slogan explained to them. I don’t know if they ever fully understood it. I didn’t. In other parts of the building there were signs saying ‘50% of the USA is Communist dominated’, ‘Pornography and titillation are the weapons of Communism’ and ‘Without you the USA will become a province of a worldwide Soviet system’.
Neither the instructors nor the other students knew anyone’s real name, or even what they were giving as their name. We were given numbers. The first nine days of instruction (there were no days off—‘Communism doesn’t stand down on Sundays’) were devoted to desk learning. Geography, with special attention to the disposition of the Communist bloc and the Free World. History of the Communist Party, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Materialism inside the USSR. Class Structure of foreign countries. Strength of Communist Party in various foreign countries.
On the tenth day eight of the men on my course went to spend three days studying photography, four did locks and keys and seven went to study Roman Catholicism. (They were agents who would find their work easier if they posed as Catholics.) The rest of us had a series of lectures on Russian and Latvian etiquette, literature, architecture, religion and recognition of uniforms and fighting vehicles of the Soviet Army. We were then given a simple exam which consisted of crossing out stupid answers in order to leave the least stupid one.
On the fourteenth day we moved to a different section of the training building. This was to be Active Training. I nursed my damaged finger, and showed it to anyone who wanted me to join in the rough stuff. Each course had a ‘conduction officer’ who stayed with it all through the training. The training included knife work, cliff-climbing, gun-firing, plastic explosive, railway-destruction, night exercises, map-reading and five parachute drops: three by daylight and two at night. Apart from a Negro and a brace of Bavarians all the students were on the best side of thirty and they could run rings round us older men who saw only dubious advantages in agents who could run, jump and do forward rolls.
I had three days of Active Training. I had strained a muscle in my back, one of my toes looked septic, my finger was worse, and I was fairly certain that one of my jacket crowns was loose. Mind you, I’m always fairly certain that one of my jacket crowns is loose. I was probing around with my tongue and trying to decide about this when the phone by my bed rang. It was Signe calling from downtown San Antonio.
‘You won’t forget our dinner date tonight?’
‘Of course not,’ I said, although I had forgotten.
‘The Burnt Potato Club at nine thirty. We’ll have a drink and decide where to go. Right?’
‘Right.’
The Burnt Potato is a bar on Houston Street, in downtown San Antonio. Outside there is a scrollwork of pink neon that says ‘Striptease. Show now on. Twelve girls’. In the doorway there is a royal flush of girlie-pictures. I opened the door. The long room was dark, but a tiny light behind the bar showed the bartender which shot-glass held a full mea
sure. I took a seat at the bar and a girl with sequin nipples nearly trod on my hand. The music ended and the girl took a bow and disappeared behind some plastic curtains. The barman said, ‘S’it gonbee?’ and I ordered a Jack Daniels. There were two girls near the juke-box but neither was Signe. My drink came, and a girl’s head came through the plastic curtains and shouted, ‘Nineteen jay’ to one of the girls at the juke-box. The record player moved convulsively and loud beat music began. The stripper gyrated slowly upon the tiny square of painted hardboard at the end of the bar. She unzipped her dress and hung it decorously on a coat-hanger. Then she removed her underwear without overbalancing—a feat for which she was applauded—and did a mammary swivelling walk along the bar-top. I moved my hand away. The rhythm and movement became more orgiastic until both ended in a sudden breathless silence. Another girl stepped out.