XPD

by Len Deighton

  ‘I wish like hell London would let us risk putting these two on the Washington computer. We know nothing about them. One glimpse of their tax returns might tell us the whole story.’ He searched his jacket pocket and then said, ‘Give me a cigarette, will you? How I hate this lousy town.’

  ‘I’m trying to give them up,’ said Stuart.

  The man cursed. ‘No matter,’ he said. Now that the air-conditioning was not going, the car’s interior was becoming stuffy. He fingered the window switch but thought better of it. ‘I dare say London will replace me very soon. It will be good to get back to Europe again.’

  ‘I thought you were Mexican,’ admitted Stuart.

  ‘You make a great secret agent, Stuart,’ said the CO mockingly. ‘I’m Hungarian. Ever heard of Györ? No, why the hell would you have heard of a dump like that? When I lived there, I’d never even heard of Los Angeles.’

  ‘You got out in 1956? In the revolution?’

  ‘Is that what it was? My appointments diary said fiasco.’

  ‘There are cigarettes on the boat.’

  ‘Screw the cigarettes. I’m a forty-a-day man already. Do you know, Stuart, there are days when I wish I’d never left home.’

  It was said half in jest but the other half was suspended in the air between them. Some employees of the department would have thought it necessary to report such a remark, and both men knew it. For a moment they sat in silence. Then Stuart said, ‘Is that one of your people with you in your car?’

  The CO seemed not to have heard him. ‘My father told me to get my mother and my sister across the border, and never mind him. He stayed there; my mother died six months later, in a transit camp in Vienna; my sister was so miserable that she went back to look after my father.’ He toyed with the seat-belt catch, clicking the belt, fastening it into place and releasing it. ‘1956,’ he said, ‘who can forget it? My Fair Lady got the New York Drama Critics Award, and Elvis sang “Hound Dog”. Everyone in America was reading Peyton Place and Yul Brynner shaved his head and got an Oscar playing the King of Siam in a musical movie.’

  ‘London is going to replace you?’

  ‘London is getting very excited about this caper,’ said the CO in a voice which suggested that he did not share their excitement. ‘The guy in my car is section head for the whole west region. Being a goddamned desk man, he’s read all the manuals and so he is sitting over there in order not to see your face. He came in person to brief me about a highly unlikely information source that London Operations have found. He wants you to fly to London tomorrow and go to East Anglia to talk to some geriatric German who says he helped load this junk on board a train when they were putting it into the Kaiseroda mine.’

  ‘Is that what you’ve come out here in the middle of the night to tell me?’

  The CO reached into his pocket for an airline ticket and gave it him. ‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘This little bastard didn’t come out here to consult me, he made it an order. Why the hell he didn’t just put it on the telex, I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Southern California can be very pleasant at this time of year,’ said Stuart.

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ he said. ‘A jaunt for the top brass – and it keeps us field men on our toes.’ He slapped his leg and reached for the door catch. Then he stopped. ‘The cops found Mr Lustig,’ he said. He paused.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Someone has hacked his head off. Another few minutes and they would have had his hands off, and they wouldn’t have got fingerprint identification from his alien’s registration.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘We’re not sure. The cops have been keeping it very quiet. Death on 24 May according to my source. Body found about a week later.’

  ‘What do you mean, keeping it very quiet?’

  ‘We’re trying to find out, but it’s not so easy. There’s been a lot of coming and going, with FBI and Justice Department lawyers in and out of police headquarters … CIA people too, we think. It could be connected with the Lustig killing.’

  ‘An official news blackout, you mean?’

  ‘It’s a good time for you to go to London,’ said the CO. ‘It could get hot here. Another few days will tell us what’s going to happen.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Stuart.

  ‘So do I,’ he confided, ‘but that’s the way this jerk from London likes to see it. Anyway, have a good time. The contact’s name is with your airline ticket and I’ve put some English money in there too: not much, I’m afraid, but it will buy you the chance to use the headphones on the plane. I know you like music. Nothing covert about this one; use your own passport and credit cards and so on. I’ll keep an eye open this end. Report to London in the usual way.’

  He gave Stuart the brown envelope. ‘And stop worrying about that boy from Washington. It wasn’t your fault.’ Stuart didn’t answer. He knew only too well that it was his fault and that all the reports and reviews would say so.

  The man got out. Stuart watched him walk across the park to his own car. It was a hot night and the case officer took his time. There was a moment or two before the headlights were switched on and another delay before they drove away. Stuart supposed that the section head from London was taking off his false beard.

  Chapter 13

  East Anglia is the lost continent of Great Britain. Windy and rainy, it is not a part of the industrialized north nor of the more prosperous south. This is fenland, some of it below sea level, drained by elaborate dykes and ditches built by Dutchmen whose names can still be found in every local telephone directory. No great motorway networks serve this part of England, and grass grows through the train tracks. Here are endless fields of potatoes and peas, ducks and turkeys – all the bounty of the freezer – with rainswept holiday trailers huddled together as if sheltering from the elements. Its horizons are little changed since medieval times, the blunt towers of its flint churches buttressing the turbulent clouds. And yet a short walk off the roadway in almost any direction will bring you to derelict control towers, ruined operations blocks and cracked hardstands. For long, long ago, this was ‘Little America’. From here the great bomber fleets went out to attack Hitler’s Germany, and young men from Tacoma to Tallahassee called these East Anglian villages home.

  Boyd Stuart saw the spire long before he found the road sign for Little Ashfield. He turned off the Thetford road and went through the villages of Elmstone and Great Wickmondgate. He felt happier in his own car; better an ancient dented Aston, he reasoned, than a factory-fresh Datsun. The village he sought was no more than a dozen small box-framed houses with a flint rubble church. The sky above it was slate grey and there was a trace of rain in the air.

  ‘I’m looking for Franz Wever’s house,’ Boyd called to an old woman in a floral-patterned pinafore. She was hanging over her garden gate watching her small mongrel puppy gnaw a bone.

  ‘He’ll be in the church,’ she said. ‘What do you want him for?’

  ‘In the church?’

  She laughed. It was a shrill laugh. ‘The church. Polishing, not praying,’ she said. ‘Every week, regular as clockwork, old Mr Wever is in the church, polishing the pews and sweeping the floor. He’s a dark horse, that one!’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Stuart, and drove to the end of the village street and parked by the lych gate. It was a fine old church, its great roof a maze of king posts, hammer beams and rafters. Wever was there: a small bespectacled man with a bony pointed nose and thinning fair hair which had still not gone completely white. His eyes were bright blue and his skin untanned but leathery – it was the face of a man who had spent his life outdoors.

  ‘Mr Wever?’

  ‘Is it the eggs for the Rendezvous des Gourmets?’

  ‘Is it what?’

  Wever resumed sweeping the floor. ‘I thought you were from the new restaurant on the main road. I had trouble starting my van this morning.’

  ‘I’m from London, Mr Wever. I was told that you could help me with an inquiry we
have about a wartime movement of German archives.’

  Wever raised his eyes quickly, his movement frozen. ‘So they sent you,’ he said wearily. ‘Is there no end to their questions?’

  ‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ said Stuart.

  ‘1945 again. That’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve told you all I know, over and over again.’ Wever picked up the dustpan and his jacket. ‘Will it take long?’

  ‘I can’t tell at this stage.’

  Wever sighed. Stuart followed him through a vestry door and along a corridor to a broom closet. He watched him collect together his polishing rags and dusters and pack them away. ‘I came here as a prisoner of war in 1945,’ said Wever. ‘I have been here ever since. Always a prisoner, in a manner of speaking.’

  ‘You regret it now, do you?’ Stuart asked. ‘Prefer the old country?’

  Wever looked at him contemptuously. ‘I’ve never been back there, Mr …?’ The German accent was easier to hear now that he was angry.

  ‘Stuart. Boyd Stuart.’

  ‘Mr Stuart.’ Wever washed his hands at a small washbasin, dried them carefully and put on an old green tweed jacket and a soft cap.

  ‘I imagine you have a car, Mr Stuart? My wife is using our vehicle. Friday is a busy day for her. The restaurants, hotels and boarding houses all want our chickens and eggs before the weekend business.’

  Wever followed Stuart out to the elderly sports car. He made no comment until the engine started. ‘It has a roar like a tank. Is that what you like?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Stuart. ‘Which way do we go?’

  ‘We have twenty-three acres on the back road to Elmstone. Follow this road and turn right after the Red Fox.’

  ‘Chickens?’

  ‘Rhode Islands. We get fine brown eggs from them. People prefer them to white ones but there is no difference really.’ Wever seemed talkative, as if he could keep 1945 at bay by discussing the present day. ‘Nearly lost the whole lot when we began.’ Wever sat silent for a moment. ‘They peck each other to death, you know. We have to chip the beaks off.’

  ‘Right at the Red Fox, you said?’

  Wever did not answer him. ‘We’ve got them in proper batteries now. Factory farming they call it; over two thousand of them, that’s nearly five thousand eggs a week. Then we’ve got a bit of barley. It’s hardly worth the price we get, but it’s insurance. You can be ruined overnight by one of these diseases that the hens get.’

  Stuart turned off after the Red Fox, a dilapidated old pub with a broken billboard depicting girls in swimsuits drinking Martini. The countryside was more rolling now: a promise of the sort of landscape that Constable and Cotman found here.

  ‘A hard life,’ said Stuart after another long silence. He wanted to keep him talking.

  ‘We have milk from a cow and vegetables from the garden, while a pig provides us with the only meat we get.’ Wever’s English, although imperfect, was precise and sometimes pedantic.

  ‘He goes to the butcher?’

  Wever snorted. ‘Why should I share my meat with a butcher? I kill them myself. I kill all the pigs hereabouts. With four children and only a few acres from which to scratch a living, you cannot be squeamish about killing pigs, mister.’

  The Wevers lived in an isolated timber-frame house separated from the road by a quarter of a mile of muddy cart track. The bottom half of the building was of flint rubble construction; the upstairs part was covered in stained and broken weatherboarding. At the back some new brickwork showed where two extra rooms had been added but the toilet was an outdoor shack; there was no mains sewer.

  Boyd Stuart parked his car on a gravel patch just off the lane, and they walked up the muddy path between some stunted apple trees and a line of freshly erected beanpoles. Chicken wire was nailed to the front wall so that sweet peas could climb it; their bright pinks and reds made the only colour in the drab landscape. Just outside the front door, there was a collection of rubber boots and a large toy tractor with its front wheels missing. A dog barked at the sound of their footsteps. Wever shouted to it but the barking continued.

  Mrs Wever was already at home. She was a muscular woman; ruddy cheeked and bucolic, she was about ten years younger than her husband. Her dark hair was drawn tightly back into a bun, and her eyes were quick and clear. She was making pastry on the kitchen table, measuring flour and chopping butter with the speed that comes with boredom and impatience.

  ‘This is Mr Stuart,’ said Wever. ‘He’s come down from London to talk to me.’ The grey, overcast sky and the tiny windows made it dark inside the kitchen. Wever pulled up a chair for Stuart and it screeched on the lino. The woman reached for the kettle. It made a loud roaring noise as she filled it from the brass tap. She placed it on the solid-fuel cooking range, lifting the stove lid so that the hot coals let a red glow strike the ceiling. She set three mugs down on the fresh newspaper which covered the big table, and dumped an almost empty bag of sugar alongside.

  ‘Take off your coat and sit down, Mr Stuart,’ said Wever. His voice was soft, as if he were embarrassed at the silent hostility which filled the room. The only other sound was the tick-tock of an old long-case clock.

  ‘Where are your children then?’ said Stuart. It was an attempt to be friendly. He took off his blue anorak and put it over the back of the chair.

  ‘The eldest is the second engineer on a super-tanker,’ said Wever. ‘Two daughters are married and live locally. Only the youngest is still here with us.’

  ‘He must have seen young Johnny’s tractor,’ said the woman, as if the visitor were not present. Her voice was hard and marked with a strong local accent.

  ‘My grandson,’ explained Wever. ‘He spends the day with us sometimes.’ In another voice, ‘You delivered the eggs to the Rendezvous des Gourmets, did you?’

  ‘They want to pay by the month. I said they would have to talk to you about it.’ She smiled. ‘They’ll never make a go of that place. They’ll be the third owners it’s had in three years. Trying to make it fancy,’ she said spitefully. ‘Trying to call it French names and serve wine. They’ll run up a bill with us and leave us without a penny if we’re not careful, Franz.’

  ‘They paid you?’ Wever leaned forward, loosened the laces in his heavy boots and then twisted each foot to make more space for his toes.

  ‘I said I’d take the eggs back if they didn’t.’ She smiled. ‘They knew I meant it. And the chickens too.’ She opened the purse which was on the table in front of her and selected some pound notes. She folded them into a tight packet and put them on the dresser. ‘That will be for the last payment on the rotovator,’ she said.

  The kettle began to sing. She put water into the brown teapot, cradled it to feel its warmth and then tossed the water into the sink. The tea was measured into the pot: three people, three level spoons of tea. The boiling water sizzled as it passed over the hot metal of the kettle spout. She put a knitted cover on the teapot and reached for a jug of milk from the pantry. ‘Would you like a piece of toast, Mr Stuart?’ she said. The anticipation of the tea seemed to put her in a better mood. ‘We don’t have biscuits or any fancy cake in this house.’

  ‘Just tea,’ said Stuart.

  The woman tipped some water into the bowl of flour and fat, and pummelled it fiercely. Then she sprinkled flour over the clean newspaper and tipped the soft pastry on to it with a loud plop. She reached for a rolling pin and began rolling the pastry. Her movements were energetic and determined, like someone completing physical exercises that she didn’t enjoy. She pursed her lips and stared down at the ever expanding sheet of cream-coloured pastry.

  ‘I never heard a shot fired in anger,’ said Franz Wever suddenly. ‘I wore a uniform and saluted my superiors and drew my rations, but most of the work I did in the army could have been done by a civilian.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘I am a Berliner,’ said Wever. ‘I left school when I was fifteen. I learned
shorthand and typing and worked in the Berlin office of the Hamburg–Amerika shipping line until I was drafted into the army. After basic training I went to the army signals school in Halle and became a teleprinter operator with Army Group 6 HQ in Hanover. I worked in that communications room for about a year. I was the only professional operator in the place – most of those kids had never even seen a teleprinter until they went to the signals school; they had to use me for anything important. Naturally I wanted to be near my parents and eventually I got a posting to the signals company of Wehrkreis III (Berlin-Brandenburg). Then I went to Zossen …’ He raised his eyes quizzically, to see if Stuart had heard of Zossen.

  ‘The general staff headquarters. Its communications room handled every order the German army ever got.’

  Wever nodded. ‘It was a boring job. Everything was in code … meaningless jumbles of letters and numbers. Even working for the Hamburg-Amerika line was more interesting than that.’ Wever spooned three large spoons of sugar into his empty cup. ‘Pour out the tea, Lucy. It’s brewed.’

  The woman finished rolling out the pastry. Briskly she rubbed the flour from her red-knuckled hands. Then she slapped the pastry on to a dish of cooked rhubarb, cutting the overhanging edges away with deft movements of the knife. ‘Why can’t you men pour out your own tea?’ she muttered, but she did it for them. Stuart realized that what he had at first thought was hostility to him was really her response to their talk of war. It was a part of her husband she could never share – like the happy moments of some previous marriage.

  ‘I’ll do the milking,’ said the woman accusingly. She put the teapot back on to the warm stove. ‘Someone will have to do it before it gets dark, and you’ll be talking about the war.’ Wever did not reply. The woman climbed into a battered sheepskin coat, her movements jerky and violent as if to demonstrate her anger. She turned up her collar before facing the bad weather, and banged the door after her.

  ‘Sugar?’ said Wever.

  ‘I’m trying to lose weight,’ said Stuart.