Billion-Dollar Brain

by Len Deighton

  ‘What do you want?’ said Pike. There was a knock at the door and then it burst open. The white-jacketed man said, ‘The house next door, sir, a chimney on fire.’ The woman with mauve hair was right behind him. ‘It’s blazing, Felix,’ she said. ‘Shall I waken Nigel?’ The music downstairs stopped abruptly. The white-jacketed man tried to reassure the woman. ‘They look worse than they are, madam. It’s not dangerous.’ He looked round at us, awaiting instruction. ‘Call the fire brigade,’ said Pike. ‘That’s what they’re paid for.’ Pike turned back to the books. ‘Big sparks,’ said the woman, ‘falling on to the lawn, but I’ve only just got Nigel to sleep.’ She went out. Soon the music began again. Harriman said, ‘This man says he collected the stolen items from you.’

  ‘What stolen items?’ said Pike.

  ‘Eggs. Fertile hens’ eggs containing a live virus. These same articles being received by you knowing that they were stolen public stores.’ Pike turned back to his bookcase. We all looked at each other. Quiet. The tick of the clock seemed very loud. The woman’s voice called, ‘Felix. It’s getting worse and they haven’t arrived yet.’ Pike was standing immediately behind me. It was so quiet in the room that I could hear Pike breathing even though the music still continued downstairs. The woman called again but Pike still didn’t answer.

  I said to Harriman, ‘I’ll tell you about it.’ I turned to look up at Pike. I said, ‘If you want to pretend you laid the eggs that’s up to you.’

  Pike stared at me but said nothing. I turned to Harriman. ‘We’re caught, so that’s all there is to it. Pike’s brother…’ I felt a stunning blow against the side of the head, my teeth clanged together and the room seemed to go soft for a moment like a movie dissolve. I shook my head, half expecting it to fall off and roll under the bookcase so we’d have to prod around with sticks to get it back. I pressed my hand against my head. There was a discordant noise in my ears and the room was rippling in waves of bright blue light. Harriman had Pike in an arm-lock and Chico was holding an antique pistol that was red and shiny at the muzzle end. The woman called again. The klaxon noise and blue flashes filled the room.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Pike was saying to me. ‘Haven’t you got any self-respect?’

  Outside there was the hoo-haw of a fire-engine klaxon and through the window I could see a Pump Water Tender moving cautiously into the drive, its flashing blue light making a pattern on the ceiling.

  ‘If you want to pretend you laid the eggs,’ I said to Pike again and rubbed my head. Pike made a movement but it wasn’t a serious attempt to get free. The woman downstairs called, ‘Felix dear. You’d better come and speak to the firemen.’ Then I heard her say, ‘Perhaps he can’t hear.’

  Harriman said, ‘I was hoping for a little more cooperation. Doctor.’

  ‘I’m busy, darling,’ Pike called. The gramophone began to play ‘When I Fall in Love’ and there was a sound of dignified clapping as the guests continued to demonstrate the never-say-die spirit.

  ‘I suppose you are going to deny you met me in the park and brought me here to meet your brother,’ I said.

  Harriman said, ‘I’d be interested to hear your answer to that, sir.’

  ‘I’ve nothing to say,’ Pike said.

  Harriman looked round the room as though checking how many of us there were. Chico was wrapping up the antique pistol in a grubby handkerchief. ‘Assault with firearm,’ I said. ‘That’s a felony.’ Harriman let go of Pike and spoke very quietly to him. ‘Quite honestly, sir, I’ve no respect for people like this.’ He moved his head towards me. ‘Scum of the earth, just out for what they can get. But they know the way the law works, you’ve got to give them that. He knows the Public Stores Act isn’t so serious and he could well have only a misdemeanour charge for receiving. I would have liked your story on paper first. I wanted to use your evidence to nail him. But he’s determined to have it the other way round. He’ll come out unscathed. You’ll see. It’s idealists like you that suffer. They always do.’ There was a brief knock at the door and it swung open. ‘You’ve got to come, Felix,’ said the woman’s voice desperately. She pushed a red-faced fireman into the room ahead of her. ‘Tell him he’s got to come downstairs,’ she said. With the door open the gramophone music was much louder and I could hear the radio-phone of the fire-engine and the noise of the pump idling.

  The fireman said, ‘I don’t want to alarm your guests but it’s getting a bit of a hold, sir.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’ said Pike in a high-pitched voice.

  ‘There’s no danger, sir,’ the fireman said. ‘We’ve got our first-aid lines out but we’d like to get the appliances into the drive before we connect the main hose. We’re blocking the street at present and your guests’ cars are blocking us. There’s no danger but we’ve got to have room to move.’ He ran a finger round the chinstrap of his helmet.

  The woman said, ‘They’ve got to have room to move, Felix.’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ Pike said, ‘wait a moment.’ He pushed Mrs Pike and the fireman out through the door, closing it and turning the key.

  Harriman continued to speak to Pike as though nothing else was happening. ‘Did you know these eggs were being sent to the Soviet Union, sir?’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Pike said slowly and patiently. ‘We are all members of the Free Latvia movement. We have been working with the Americans. I am an American secret agent. All our planning is devoted to removing the Communists from Latvia.’ He explained it to Harriman as though he was becoming a new member.

  ‘The cars,’ I heard the fireman shouting outside the door.

  I said to Harriman, ‘I insist upon being allowed to write out my statement now.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Harriman. ‘Go along with him, Sergeant Arkwright,’ he said to Chico and the two of us made for the door.

  ‘No,’ said Pike loudly. ‘I must go with him.’ He pushed past the fireman and the woman and overtook us on the stairs. Behind us I heard the fireman saying, ‘But I told him he’s not in any sort of danger. He’s not in danger at all.’

  We took Doctor Felix Pike to the Ministry of Defence. Three policemen were waiting in the hall and they had cleared a couple of offices for us. Pike offered to make a statement. Harriman put a sheet of paper on the table in front of him and Pike began writing. The first paragraph gave his date and place of birth (Riga in Latvia) and the social condition of his parents. The rest of the statement was little more than a political manifesto advocating immediate armed invasion of Latvia to overthrow Communism. When Harriman told him that the immediate concern was theft of virus from the Government Research Establishment at Porton, Pike got very excited. He tore up his statement and folded his arms. He sat there gleaming in his white shirt like a man in a detergent ad.

  ‘You can’t hold me here against my will,’ said Pike.

  ‘Yes I can, sir,’ said Harriman. ‘I am holding you under Section 195 of the Army Act. A person holding Army property without explanation may be arrested without warrant. You are not under arrest but you will stay here until I get an explanation.’

  ‘I want to see my lawyer,’ said Pike.

  ‘And I want an explanation,’ said Harriman, a duologue they repeated sixteen times.

  Finally Pike said, ‘I’m a doctor. You should show me a little respect.’

  ‘Doctoring isn’t a club for supermen,’ Harriman said gently.

  ‘Oh isn’t it,’ said Pike. ‘Well sometimes I wonder. When I see some of my sub-human patients, I wonder.’

  One of the Ministry police—a thin man in his middle forties—walked across to Pike and slapped him across the face with his open hand. Three smacks seemed very loud in that room. The policeman’s hand moved faster than the eye could follow.

  ‘Don’t start arguing with them,’ the policeman said affably to Harriman. ‘You’ll go around in circles.’ The policeman looked at Harriman but Harriman’s face was blank. ‘I mean…’ said the policeman. ‘I mean. We want to get home, don�
�t we?’

  Pike had gone white and his nose was bleeding. The front of his white shirt was a polka-dot pattern of blood. Pike stared at us, then down at his stains. I don’t think he believed he’d been hit until the mottled shirt-front confirmed it. He dabbed at the blood with a handkerchief and carefully removed his tie. He folded it and put it into his pocket. His face was smudged with blood and he was sniffing loudly in an effort to stop the bleeding.

  ‘Write,’ said the policeman. ‘Stop sniffing and start writing.’ He slapped the sheet of paper and left a tiny fingerprint of blood there. Pike took out his fountain pen and uncapped it, still sniffing, then he began to write in that crabby handwriting that doctors take six years to perfect.

  ‘Take Doctor Pike next door,’ Harriman said to the policeman.

  I said, ‘And no more rough stuff.’

  Pike rounded on me—he still thought I was a fellow prisoner—‘You look after yourself,’ he said angrily. ‘I don’t need people like you to protect me. I did what I did for America and for Latvia, the land of my father and of my wife.’ His nose began to bleed again.

  ‘Your nose is beginning to bleed again,’ I said. The policeman picked up the pen and paper and led Pike out of the room. The door closed. Harriman yawned and offered me a cigarette. ‘It will be all right, I think,’ Harriman said. ‘And Chico thinks you are a genius.’ He smiled to indicate that he didn’t agree. ‘No matter what I say, he’s got it fixed in his head that you set light to Pike’s brother’s chimney pot.’

  ‘That’s marvellous,’ I said gloomily. ‘The next thing we know, Dawlish will start thinking so too.’

  SECTION 9

  Helsinki and Leningrad

  Who killed Cock Robin? I, said the Sparrow, With my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin.

  NURSERY RHYME

  Chapter 24

  I landed in Helsinki with an easy task. Harvey Newbegin must be arrested by the Americans without my being involved in the business. It was a simple enough problem. Any of our most junior operators fresh from the Guildford training school would have been able to do that, see a film, have dinner and still be able to catch the next plane back to London. Within five minutes of landing I knew that Dawlish was right. A new man should have taken over, someone who hadn’t known Harvey for over ten years and who could deliver him to some pink-faced agent from the CIA like a parcel of groceries—sign here please, out-of-pocket expenses three hundred dollars -but I couldn’t do that. I’m an optimist. In the last Act of La Bohème I’m still thinking that Mimi will pull round. In spite of the evidence I didn’t completely believe that he had tried to have me killed by the hold-up men near Riga. I thought I might be able to straighten things out. Well that just goes to show that I should be in some other kind of employment, I’ve suspected it for years.

  If the Americans were looking for Harvey they weren’t doing it very well. I was half hoping that they would pick him up when we landed in Helsinki, but Harvey had travel papers that said he was a Swedish national named Eriksson, which meant he didn’t have to show a passport at all. We took the airport bus with only three other passengers and Harvey asked the driver to let us off at a bus shelter about a mile down the road from the airport. The fields were grey with a hard carapace of frozen snow. We waited there only long enough for the bus to disappear, then Signe’s VW tootled up to us. We didn’t waste much time in greetings. We threw the bags behind the rear seat and then Signe drove into town, taking a long detour so that we came in on the Turku road.

  ‘I did exactly as you asked,’ she said to Harvey. ‘I rented this apartment we’re going to, by post, using a false name and not paying anything in advance. Then I went out and made a big thing of renting a place in Porvoo. I spent every spare moment in Porvoo tidying it up and dusting it and putting in a new bed. Yesterday I ordered flowers and smoked salmon and those lasimestarin silli that you like and extra sheets and said it must all be delivered in three days from now.’ The back wheels of the VW slid a little on the icy road but Signe corrected the slide effortlessly.

  ‘You’re a sensation,’ said Harvey and he lifted her hand from the steering wheel and kissed the back of it. ‘Isn’t she the inside of a fresh breadroll?’ Harvey said over his shoulder to me.

  ‘You took the words right out of my mouth,’ I said.

  ‘We have a ménage à trois,’ said Signe; she turned to me, ‘You’ll like that?’

  I said, ‘My idea of ménage à trois has always been me and two girls.’

  Signe said, ‘But with two men you have a richer household.’

  ‘Man does not live by bread alone,’ I said. Signe kissed Harvey’s ear. When it came to handling Harvey, Signe’s European instinct was worth ten of Mercy’s New World emancipation. Signe never tried to fight Harvey or hit him head on; she gave way and agreed to anything for the sake of a temporary advantage, counting on her skill at making Harvey change his plans later. She was like an army poised to strike: probing and testing the disposition of the enemy. Signe was a born infiltrater; it was almost impossible not to be in love with her, but you’d need a guileless mind to believe half the things she said. When he was with her Harvey had a guileless mind.

  We stayed inside the house all the time except for a visit to an old Ingrid Bergman film and a short trip Harvey made to buy two dozen roses at 4FM each for Signe. Harvey never mentioned the fact that the Americans might be looking for him. We had a lot of fun in that apartment even though it was an ugly place where every room smelled of new paint. On the second night there I discovered what lasimestarin silli were. They were sweet pickled raw herring. Harvey ate six of them, followed by steak, fried potato and apple pie; then we sat around and talked about whether Armenians were always short and dark, whether Marlboro cigarettes taste different when made in Finland, would my broken finger heal up as good as new, the sort of sour cream you put into borsch, can workers in America afford champagne, was a Rambler as fast as a Studebaker Hawk, judging a horse’s age by its teeth and should America adopt the metric system. When we had exhausted Signe’s search for knowledge we sank back with reading matter. I was reading an old copy of The Economist, Harvey was picking his way through the Finnish captions in the newspaper and Signe was holding a copy of an English woman’s magazine. She wasn’t reading it, she snatched items from it at random and threw them at us like hoops on a hoopla stall.

  ‘Listen,’ Signe said and began reading aloud, ‘“She saw Richard, his misty green eyes and smile were reserved for her alone and held a strange exciting promise. She knew that somewhere in the lonely corners of his heart he had found a place for her.” Isn’t that lovely?’

  ‘I think it’s wonderful,’ I said.

  ‘Do you?’ said Signe.

  ‘Of course he doesn’t,’ said Harvey irritably. ‘When are you going to get it through your skull that he is a professional liar? He’s a deceit artist. What iambic pentameter was to Shakespeare, so lying is to him.’

  ‘Thanks, Harvey,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of him,’ Signe said. ‘He gets mad because Popeye speaks in Finnish.’

  ‘Rip Kirby,’ said Harvey. ‘That’s the only comic strip I read.’

  About midnight Signe made cocoa and we all went to bed in our various rooms. I left my door ajar and at eleven minutes past one I heard Harvey walking across the living-room. There was a gurgling as he took a swig from one of the bottles on the trolley. He let himself out of the front door as quietly as he could. I watched him from the window; he was alone. I walked to the door of Signe’s room and I could hear her moving restlessly in bed. I decided that it was likely that I would foul matters up by trying to follow Harvey through the empty streets, so I went back to bed and smoked a cigarette and backed my judgement that Harvey would come back for Signe before disappearing for good. I heard footsteps across the living-room and there was a tap at my door. I said, ‘Come in.’

  Signe said, ‘Want a cup of tea?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

 
She went to the kitchen. I heard the sound of the matches and the kettle being filled. I didn’t move from the bed. Soon Signe appeared with a tray crowded with teapot, milk jug, sugar, toast, butter, honey and some off the gold cups that were marked ‘Special’ on the inventory we had signed.

  ‘It’s not even two o’clock,’ I protested.

  Signe said, ‘I love eating in the middle of the night.’ She poured the tea. ‘Milk or lemon? Harvey’s gone out.’ She was wearing Harvey’s old pyjamas, the jacket fastened by only two buttons. Over it she had a silk housecoat.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Milk.’

  ‘He’ll be back though. He won’t be long.’

  ‘How do you know? No sugar.’

  ‘He didn’t take that old typewriter. He never goes anywhere without that. He wants to marry me.’

  ‘That’s lovely,’ I said.

  ‘Of course it isn’t lurvelee,’ she said. ‘You know it isn’t lovely. He doesn’t love me. He’s dotty about me but he doesn’t love me. He said he’d wait for me. What girl would want to waste time with a man who could bear to wait for her? Anyway he’s going to live in Russia.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Russia, do you hear that? Russia.’

  ‘I heard it,’ I said.

  ‘Can you imagine me—a Finn—going to live among the Russians?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.