by Len Deighton
The Bishop smiled. He was like some down-at-heel Father Christmas, his beard stained with nicotine and his teeth long and yellow. And yet he did not smell: for a tramp, that was quite an achievement 'Either of you two want a smoke?' he said. He rolled them carefully, thin tubes of white paper,' marked with the Bishop's grey dabs, and spilling dried tobacco.
'Thanks, Bish,' I said. But Fuller did not smoke. Even before the Bishop had given me a light, Fuller was beginning to snore.
'First today,' said the Bishop proudly, holding the roll-up in the air.
'My first for six days,' I said.
'You want to give it up, son,' he said. As he inhaled, the burning cigarette lit up his arthritic knuckles and watery eyes. 'Money going up in smoke: my old mother said it, and she was right.'
'And what did your mother do with her bread?' I said. 'Play the stock exchange?'
'You've been in nick, haven't you, son?'
'I was working the North Sea oil rigs. I told you that.'
'Yeah, you told me that,' said the Bishop. 'But I'm saying you've been doing porridge!'
I pinched out the cigarette and pushed it into the top pocket of his tattered overcoat.
'Naw, no offence, son.'
'Get stuffed,' I said.
'No need to get nasty.'
Think yourself lucky I didn't poke it down your throat,' I said.
'I'm old enough to be your father.'
'But not bright enough.' I turned over and closed my eyes.
I only dozed for a moment or two before I heard the old man's voice again. He was leaning out of the window. 'They're raking everybody out,' he said. 'Like they did last week. It must be another bloody bomb warning.'
We scattered before the police reached the front carriage. I evaded the half-asleep porters and ticket men, and shuffled off down the freight road that bisects the station layout.
'In here.' I was too tired to recognize the voice. For a moment I thought it was the Bishop, or Fuller.
'In here.' It was not any of the layabouts from the station. It was a short thickset man named Pierce, who was from the department, and behind him I saw Schlegel. They were crowded into a phone booth. I moved fast. I bit Schlegel first, and he reeled. There was a crunch as his elbow bit a metal panel. I saw the look of open-mouthed bewilderment on Pierce's face, and then I slammed two body punches into him and hooked him as he doubled up. The two of them were jammed tight into the corner of the phone booth; neither stood much chance against me, for I had room to swing my elbows. I hit Schlegel again, and tapped blood from his nose. I gave him a moment to collect himself. 'Easy, easy,' he grunted. He was tucking his chin in and holding up his hands in a gesture that was neither defence nor surrender, but had a measure of both.
Pierce was huddled almost on the floor, and Schlegel was twisted into a corner, with the phone jammed into his backside. 'What did I tell you, that day in the Scrubs,' I said.
Schlegel stared at me. I not only looked different: I was different The world had worn me shiny. Prodded awake by cops, cursed by screws, threatened by yobs who wanted your coat, or thought you might have cash. How did a man survive it, except by violence. The world was at your knees, or at your throat. Or so it seemed at the time. But the look in Schlegel's eyes made me realize how far I'd come down the long road.
'You got the passport and everything?' said Schlegel. 'You should be in France.'
'You stupid sod. You people never learn, do you? Champion is one of ours-or was once-he knows all that departmental crap. Our Swiss passports would never fool him for thirty seconds. It went into the furnace along with the letters of credit. Me and Champion set up that payment line back in 1941. It was his idea.' I straightened up, and pushed my fist into the small of my back, to ease the aches and pains of sleeping on the hard floor of the guard's van.
But I kept them both pinned tight into the booth, with Pierce on the floor. Schlegel tried to move, but I forced him back into the corner with my forearm, and he only retained his balance by treading on Pierce's leg. 'Champion is going to come and find me,' I told them. 'He won't buy it any other way. And I'm not sure he'll swallow it, even without you stupid bastards trying to hurry things along.' I stopped. I was so tired I could have lain down on the street and sobbed myself to sleep. But I rubbed my face, and blinked, and shook my brains from side to side until I heard a reassuring rattle. 'And if he doesn't buy it,' I said. 'I get dead. So forgive me, girls, if I'm a little bit sensitive. Because I've got a whole lot of dances on my programme, I don't need a hand up my skirt.'
'O.K.,' Schlegel. 'You're right.' He found a handkerchief and dabbed his bloody nose.
'You'd just better believe it, Schlegel, because next time I won't be just tweaking your nose. You want to give me credentials for Champion? Great! 'I'll kill you, Schlegel. And I'll cool any of the boys you bring along, and not even Champion will think that was a set-up.'
'You don't talk to me like that,' growled Schlegel, and he coughed as he sniffed his own blood. I had him, and he knew it, and I leaned across and with the knuckle of my left I tapped his jaw, as one might when playing with a baby. And he didn't take his eyes off my right fist, that was all set to drive him into the wall.
'Give me some money,' I said.
He reached into his inside pocket and found three crumpled five-pound notes. I took them from him, and then I stepped backwards and I felt Pierce's feet sprawl out. I almost ran down the slope towards York Road.
It was a full moon. 'Hello, son,' said the Bishop, as I overtook him. He was hurrying down the traffic ramp, with his bundle of belongings slung over his back. 'A regular purge tonight, eh?' He chuckled.
'Looks Eke,' I said. 'But I can buy us a night's kip, and a plate of eggs and sausage.' I brandished the money.
'You shouldn't have done it,' said the Bishop. He was not looking at the notes in my hand, but at Schlegel's blood on my cuff and knuckles.
'We've been together all evening,' I said.
'Portsmouth train, platform eighteen,' said the Bishop.
'Near the front,' I agreed happily, 'hi a non-smoker.'
* * * The next day, I tried for job number eighteen on my list. It was a small private bank off Fetter Lane. It specialized in everything from sanction-breaking to fraud. I'd chosen my list of jobs with great care. A man with my qualifications, booted into the street, isn't going to apply for a trainee's job with I.C.I. These were all dodgy concerns, who knew how to double the five or six grand salary I was asking. But they put a hatchet-man with a big carnation alongside the drinks cabinet, and gave me two glasses of dry sherry and economic-recession talk. I was expecting it, because I had spent nearly five hours on the memo that ensured that each of these companies had a visit from a Special Branch officer at least a week before I arrived.
'Thank the Lord for Saturday,' said the Bishop late Friday night as we sat in our local, nursing one glass of warm beer, and taking simulated swigs at it whenever the landlord glared at us.
'What's the difference?' I said. As far as I was concerned, it simply meant that I couldn't approach the next on the list of prospective employers until the weekend was passed. I leaned back and watched the colour TV on the bar. It was tuned to a comedy show but the sound was turned off.
Fuller said, 'We go to the coast tomorrow.'
Do you?' I said.
'The Bishop has this fiddle with the National Assistance...'
'I told you not to tell him,' said the Bishop. He found a half-smoked cigarette in his hat.
'Everybody knows, you old fool.' Fuller turned to me. There's a friendly clerk on the paying-out counter. He calls your name, pays you unemployment money, and then later you give him half of it back. He can't do it more than once a month, or they'd tumble to him.' Fuller produced his matches and gave just one of them to the old man to light his cigarette end. 'Bloody disgusting, isn't he?' said Fuller.
'The Phantom Army, they call it,' said the Bishop. He took a deep drag of the cigarette smoke, and then a swig of the bit
ter, to celebrate the next day's payment.
'We can row you in on that one,' Fuller offered. 'Can't we, Dad?'
'I suppose so,' said the old man grudgingly.
'You're on,' I said. 'How do you get to the coast? You don't pay the train fare, do you?' v 'Couldn't make it pay then, could you?' said Fuller defensively. 'We fiddle the tickets from one of the booking clerks.'
'It's a complicated life,' I remarked.
'You don't have to come,' said the Bishop.
'I wasn't complaining,' I said.
'You went after a job today,' said the Bishop.
That's it,' I admitted.
Fuller looked me up and down with interest. He paid special attention to my newly washed shirt and carefully brushed coat. 'You wouldn't catch me poncing off the capitalist system,' said Fuller finally.
'Same again?' I said. Tints of bitter?'
'I wouldn't say no,' said Fuller.
'Thanks, son,' said the Bishop.
Saturday morning. The Southampton train was not full. We caught it with only a few seconds to spare. Fuller led the way, through the buffet car and a luggage van. Even while the train was still stumbling over the points outside the station, I knew that this was the sort of way Champion would make contact.
'Go ahead,' said the Bishop. He indicated the door leading to the next coach and the first-class compartments.
I went forward.
In the corridor, outside his compartment, two men in lumpy raincoats took exceptional interest in the dilapidated back yards of Lambeth and did not give me a glance. Champion looked up from The Financial Times and smiled.
'Surprised?' said Champion.
'Not very.'
'No, of course not. Come and sit down. We've got a lot to talk about.' Beyond him the cramped slums became high-rise slums, and then semi-detached houses and sports fields.
In my hand I was holding one of the Bishop's roll-ups. I put it in my mouth as I searched my pockets for matches.
'Been having a rough time?' said Champion.
I nodded.
He leaned forward and snatched the cigarette out of my mouth. He clenched his fist to screw it up, and threw the mangled remains of it to the floor. 'Balls,' he said.
I looked at him without anger or surprise. He brought a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands on it. 'Sleeping on railway stations: it's balls. I know you of old. You can't pass through a big town without dropping a few pounds here, and a gun there, and some bearer bonds in the next place. You of all people-sleeping on railway stations-crap, I say.' He looked out at the factories of Weybridge, and the streets crowded with weekend shoppers.
'You're losing your cool, Steve,' I said. He didn't answer or turn his head. I said, 'Certainly. I've got a few quid stashed away, but I'm not leading the band of the Grenadier Guards there for a ceremonial opening?'
Champion looked at me for a moment, then he threw his packet of cigarettes. I caught them. I lit one and smoked for a minute or two. 'And I'm not even taking you there,' I added.
Champion said, 'I'm offering you a job.'
I let him wait for an answer. 'That might turn out to be a bad move.' I told him. 'A bad move for both of us.'
'You mean the department will be breathing down my neck because I've given you a job,' he nodded. "Well, you let me worry about that, Charlie, old son.' He watched me with the care and calculation that a night-club comic gives a drunk.
'If you say so, Steve,' I said.
'You found out what those bastards are really like now, eh?' He nodded to himself. I believe he really thought they had framed him for the murder of Melodic Page. That was the sort of man Champion was, he could always convince himself that his cause was right and remember only the evidence he selected.
'Remember when you arrived-that night? Me, and young Pina, and little Caty and the bottle of champagne?'
'I remember,' I said.
'I told you that it would be up to you to keep me convinced you were loyal, not my job to prove you weren't. It's the same now, Charlie.'
I smiled.
'Don't think I'm joking, Charlie. It wouldn't need more than a wave to a stranger, or an unexplained phone call, for you to lose your job... you know what I mean.'
'I can fill in the blank spaces, Steve.'
'Can you?'
"We're not going to be distributing food parcels to old-age pensioners.'
'No one distributes food parcels to old-age pensioners, and soon I'm going to be one, Charlie. I'm past retiring age: ex-Major, D.S.O., M.C., and I'm cold and hungry, at least I was until a few years ago. I've done my bit of villainy for God, King and country. And now I'm doing a bit for my own benefit.'
'And where would I fit in?' I asked.
CI need an assistant,' he said. 'And you'd be perfect. Nothing to trouble your conscience; nothing to ruin your health.'
'It sounds a bit boring, Steve.'
'I have a lot of Arabs working for me. They do the tricky jobs. They are good workers, and I pay enough to take the pick of the work-force, from botanists to butlers. But there are jobs that they can't do for me.'
'For instance?'
'I've got to get a school for Billy. I can't send an Arab to take tea with a prospective headmaster. I need someone who can take a suitcase full of money somewhere, talk his way out of trouble, and forget all about it afterwards. I talk Arabic as fluently as any Arab, but I don't think like one, Charlie. I need someone I can relax with.'
'Sounds like you need a wife,' I said, 'not an assistant.'
He sighed, and held up his gloved hand in a defensive gesture. 'Anything but that, Charlie.' He let the hand fall. 'You need a job, Charlie; come and work for me. I need someone from our world.'
'Thanks,' I said. 'I appreciate it.'
There's a Latin tag-"Render a service to a friend... to bind him closer", is that how it goes?'
'Yes,' I said,' "and render a service to an enemy, to make a friend of him". You wrote that on the report to London, and told the pilot to make sure the old man got it personally. And we got that reprimand with the next night's radio messages. You remember!'
He shook his head to show that he didn't remember, and was annoyed to be reminded. It was difficult for Champion to appreciate how impressionable I had been in those early days. For him I'd just been another expendable subaltern. But, like many such eager kids, I'd studied my battle-scarred commander with uncritical intensity, as an infant studies its mother.
'Well, you didn't sign up for a course in elementary philosophy, did you?'
'No,' I said, 'for one million dollars. When can I start?'
'Right now.' He pointed to a canvas two-suiter on the floor. 'That's for you. Use the battery shaver in the outside pocket, and change into the suit and shirt and stuff.'
'All without leaving your sight?'
'You catch on quick,' said Champion. The train gave a throaty roar as we rushed into the darkness of a tunnel and out again into blinding rain.
'And at Southampton: a false passport, a false beard and a boat?'
'Could be,' he admitted. 'There's no going back, Charlie. No farewell kisses. No notes cancelling the milk. No forwarding address.'
'Not even a chance to get a newspaper,' I said, reminding him of a device we'd used at Nice railway station one night in 1941, when Pina passed back through a police cordon to warn us.
'Especially not a chance to get a newspaper,' he said. I sorted through the clothes he'd provided. They'd fit me. If Schlegel had a tail on me, in spite of my protests, they'd need a sharp-eyed man at Southampton to recognize me as I left the train. I was about to vanish through the floor, like the demon king in a pantomime. Well, it was about what I expected. I was changed within five minutes.
I settled back into the comer of my soft first-class seat, and used the electric shaver. Between gusts of rain I glimpsed rolling green oceans of grassland. Winchester flashed past, like a trawler fleet making too much smoke. After Southampton there would certainly be no going bac
k.
'Have you started again?'
Champion was offering his cigars. 'Yes, I have,' I said.
Champion lit both cigars. The bearded one-the Bishop-was one of my people,' he said.
'I thought he might be.'
'Why?' said Champion, as if he did not believe me.
'Too fragrant for a tramp.'
'He told me,' said Champion. 'Bathed every day-every day!'
'No one's perfect,' I said.
Champion gave a stony smile and punched my arm.