Mexico Set

by Len Deighton

  ‘So why write it?’

  ‘Current theory has it that we must look for the motives behind the huge Soviet military build-up. Why are the Russkies piling up these enormous forces of men, and gigantic stockpiles of armaments? My master feels that an answer can be found by looking at the detailed tactical preparations made by Russian army units in the front line, units that are facing NATO ones.’

  ‘How will you do that?’ I asked. Lisl’s record was now playing for the third time.

  ‘It’s a long and arduous process. We have people who regularly talk with Russian soldiers – on day-to-day matters – and we interrogate deserters and we have reports from cloak-and-dagger outfits.’ He bared his teeth. ‘Have some more brandy, Samson. I heard you’re quite a drinker.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. I wasn’t sure I liked having that reputation but I wasn’t going to spare his brandy to disprove it. He poured a large measure for both of us and drank quite a lot of his.

  ‘I’m mostly with your people,’ he said. ‘But I’ll be spending time with other outfits too. Dicky arranged all that. Awfully good fellow, Dicky.’ A lock of ginger hair fell forward across his face. He flicked it back as if annoyed by a fly. And when it fell forward again pushed it back with enough force to disarrange more hair. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘What will you be doing with them?’ I said.

  He spoke more slowly now. ‘Same damn thing. Soviet Military Power and Western…what did I say it was called?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I said. I poured out more brandy for both of us. We were near the bottom of the bottle now.

  ‘I know what you’re doing, Samson,’ he said. His voice was pitched high, as a mother might speak to a baby, and he raised a fist in a joking gesture of anger. ‘At least…I know what you’re trying to do.’ His words were slurred and his hair in disarray.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get me drunk. But you won’t do it, old chap.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll drink you under the table, old fellow.’

  ‘I’m not trying to make you drunk,’ I said. ‘The less you drink the more there is for me.’

  Henry Tiptree considered this contention carefully and tried to find the flaw in my reasoning. He shook his head as if baffled and drained the brandy bottle, dividing it between us drip by drip with elaborate care. ‘Dicky said you were cunning.’

  ‘Then here’s to Dicky,’ I said in toast.

  ‘Cheers to Dicky,’ he responded, having misheard me. ‘I’ve known him a long time. At Oxford I always felt sorry for him. Dicky’s father had investments in South America and lost most of his money in the war. But the rest of Dicky’s family were well off. Dicky had to watch his cousins dashing about in sports cars and flying to Paris for weekends when Dicky didn’t have the price of a railway ticket to London. It was damned rotten for him, humiliating.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.

  ‘Chaps at Oxford said he was a social climber…and he was, and still is…But that’s what spurred Dicky into getting such good results. He wanted to show us all what he could do…and, of course, having no money meant he had a lot of time on his hands.’

  ‘He has a lot of time on his hands now,’ I said.

  Henry Tiptree looked at me solemnly before giving a sly grin. ‘What about another bottle of this stuff?’ he offered.

  ‘I think we’ve both had enough, Henry,’ I said.

  ‘On me,’ said Henry. ‘I have a bottle in my room.’

  ‘Even if it’s on you, we’ve had enough,’ I said. I got to my feet. I was in no hurry. I wasn’t drunk but my response times were down and my coordination poor. What time in the morning would Werner phone, I wondered. It was stupid of me to tell Werner that he would be going on the payroll. Now he’d be determined to show London Central what they’d been missing for all those years. With Werner that could be a surefire recipe for disaster. I’d seen Werner when he wanted to impress someone. When we were at school there had been a pretty girl named Renate who lived in Wedding. Her mother cleaned the floor at the clinic. Werner was so keen to impress Renate that he tried to steal an American car that was parked outside the school. He was trying to force the window open with wire when the driver, an American sergeant, caught him. Werner was lucky to get away with a punch in the head. It was ridiculous. Werner had never stolen anything in his life before. A car – Werner didn’t have the slightest idea of how to drive. I wondered if he’d had trouble in the Sector or out in the Zone. If anything happened to him I’d blame myself. There’d be no one else to blame.

  Henry Tiptree was sitting rigidly in his seat, his head facing forward and his body very still. His eyes flicked to see about him; he looked like a lizard watching an unsuspecting fly. A less tidy man would not have appeared so drunk. On the impeccable Henry Tiptree such slightly disarranged hair, the tie knot shifted a fraction to one side and the jacket rumpled by his attempts to fasten the wrong button made him look comic. ‘You won’t get away with it,’ he said angrily. He was going through the various stages of drunkenness from elation to depression via happiness, suspicion and anger.

  ‘Get away with what?’ I asked.

  ‘You know, Samson. Don’t play the innocent. You know.’ This time his anger enabled him to articulate clearly.

  ‘Tell me again.’

  ‘No,’ he said. He was staring at me with hatred in his eyes.

  I knew then that Tiptree played some part in spinning the intricate web in which I was becoming enmeshed. On every side I was aware of suspicion, anger and hatred. Was it all Fiona’s doing, or was it something I had brought upon myself? And how could I fight back when I didn’t know where to find my most deadly enemies, or even who they were?

  ‘Then goodnight,’ I said. I drank the rest of the brandy, got up from the chair and nodded to him.

  ‘Goodnight, Mr bloody Samson,’ said Tiptree bitterly. ‘Champion bloody boozer and secret agent extraordinary.’

  I knew he was watching me as I walked across the room so I went carefully. I looked back when I got as far as the large folding doors that divided the salon from the bar. He was struggling to get to his feet, reaching right across to grip the far edge of the table. Then, with whitened knuckles, he strained to pull himself up. He seemed well on the way to succeeding, but when I got to the stairs I heard a tremendous crash. His weight had proved too much and the table had tipped up.

  I returned to the bar where Henry Tiptree had fallen full-length on the floor. He was breathing very heavily and making slight noises that might have been groans, but he was otherwise unconscious. ‘Come along, Henry,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of here before Lisl hears us. She hates drunks.’ I knew if he was found there in the morning Lisl would blame me. No matter what I said, anything that happened to this ‘English gentleman’ would be my fault. I put the table back into position and hoped that Lisl hadn’t heard the commotion.

  As I dragged Tiptree up on to my shoulder in a fireman’s lift, I began to wonder why he’d come here. He’d been sent, surely, but who had sent him? He wasn’t the sort who came to stay in Tante Lisl’s hotel, and went down the corridor for a bath each morning and then found there was no hot water. The Tiptrees of this world prefer downtown hotels, where everything works, even the staff – places where the silk-attired jet-setters of all sexes line up bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal Brut, and turn first to those columns of the newspaper that list share prices.

  Henry Tiptree had the glossy polish that the best English boarding schools can sometimes provide. Such boys quickly come to terms with bullies, cold showers, corporal punishment, homosexuality, the classics and relentless sport, but they acquire the hardness that I’d seen in Tiptree’s face. He had a mental agility, plus a sense of purpose, that his friend Dicky Cruyer lacked. But of the two I’d take Dicky any time. Dicky was just a free-loader, but behind all the haw haws and the schoolboy smiles this one was an expensively educated storm-trooper.

  As I crossed the salon, with Tiptree’s whole weight upon me, I swayed and so
did the mirror, the floor and the ceiling, but I steadied myself again and paused before going past the door that led to Lisl’s room.

  Her record was still playing and I could imagine her propped up amid a dozen lace pillows nodding her head to the music:

  Make my bed and light the light,

  I’ll arrive late tonight.

  Blackbird, bye-bye.

  16

  It was cold. Featureless grey cloud stretched across the flat countryside as far as the horizon. Rain continued relentlessly so that the last of those villagers who’d been huddled in cottage doorways waiting for a respite now hurried off and got wet. All the gutters were spilling and the rain gurgled down the drainpipes and overflowed the drains. Slanted sheets of it rebounded from the cobblestone village street to make a phantom field of wheat through which occasional motor cars or delivery vans slashed their way like harvesters.

  The message from Werner had told me to come to the Golden Bear, and I had come here, and I had waited two days. On the second day a young Oberstabsmeister had arrived at breakfast time. I recognized the dark green VW Passat station wagon. It bore the badge of the Bundesgrenzschutz. For West Germany had border guards too, and one of their jobs was investigating strangers who came to border villages and spent too much time staring eastwards at the barbed wire and the towers that marked the border where people on excursions from the German Democratic Republic got shot dead.

  The border guard NCO was a white-faced youth with fair hair that covered the tops of his ears and curled out from under his uniform hat. ‘Papers,’ he said without the formality of a greeting or introduction. He knew I’d watched him as he came in. I’d seen him check the hotel register and exchange a few words with the proprietor. ‘How long do you plan to stay?’

  ‘About a week. I go back to work next Monday.’ I’d booked the room for seven days. He knew that. ‘I’m from Berlin,’ I said obsequiously. ‘Sometimes I feel I must get away for a few days.’

  He grunted.

  I showed him my papers. I was described as a German citizen, resident in Berlin, and working as a foreman in a British army stores depot. He stood for a long time with the papers in his hand, looking from the documentation to me and then back again. I had the impression he did not entirely believe my cover story, but plenty of West Berliners came down the autobahn and took their vacations here on the easternmost edge of West Germany. And if he contacted the army my cover story would hold up.

  ‘Why here?’ said the border guard.

  ‘Why not here?’ I countered. He looked out of the window. The rain continued relentlessly. Across the road, workmen were demolishing a very old half-timbered building. They continued working despite the rain. As I watched, a wall fell with a crash of breaking laths and plaster and a shower of rubble. The bleached plaster went dark with raindrops and the cloud of dust that rolled out of the wreckage was quickly subdued. The fallen wall revealed open fields beyond the village, and a shiny strip that was a glimpse of the wide waters of the great Elbe river that divided East from West. The Elbe had always been a barrier; it had even halted Charlemagne. Throughout history it had divided the land: Lombard from Slav, Frank from Avar, Christian from Barbarian, Catholic from Protestant, and now communist from capitalist. ‘It’s better than over there,’ I said.

  ‘Anywhere is better than over there,’ said the guard with ill-humour, as if I’d avoided his question. Beyond him I saw the proprietor’s son Konrad come into the breakfast room. Konrad was a gangling eighteen-year-old in blue jeans and a cowboy shirt with fringes. He was unshaven but I had yet to decide whether this was a deliberate attempt to grow a beard or a part of the casual indifference he seemed to show for all aspects of his morning ablutions. He began setting the tables for lunch. On each he put cutlery and wineglasses, linen napkins and cruet, and finally a large blue faience pot of special mustard for which the Golden Bear was locally famous. Despite the care and attention he gave to his task I had no doubt that he’d come into the room to eavesdrop.

  ‘I walk,’ I said. ‘The doctor said I must walk. It’s for my health. Even in the rain I walk every day.’

  ‘So I heard,’ said the guard. He dropped my identity papers on to the red-checked tablecloth alongside the basket containing breakfast rolls. ‘Make sure you don’t walk in the wrong direction. Do you know what’s over there?’

  He was looking out of the window. One hand was in his pocket, the thumb of the other booked into his belt. He looked angry. Perhaps it was my Berlin accent that annoyed him. He sounded like a local; perhaps he didn’t like visitors from the big city, and whatever Berliners said it could sound sarcastic to a critic’s ear. ‘Not exactly,’ I said. Under the circumstances it seemed advisable to be unacquainted with what was ‘over there’.

  The white-faced Oberstabsmeister took a deep breath. ‘Starting from the other side you first come to the armed guards of the Sperrzone. People need a special pass to get into that forbidden zone, which is a five-kilometre-wide strip of ground, cleared of trees and bushes, so that the guards can see everything from their towers. The fields there can only be worked during daylight and under the supervision of the guards. Then comes a five-hundred-metre-deep Schutzstreifen. The fence there is three metres high and made of sharp expanded metal. The tiny holes are made so that you can’t get a hold on it, and if your fingertips are so small that they can go into the gaps – a woman’s or a child’s fingers, for instance – the metal edge will cut through the finger like a knife. That marks the beginning of the “security zone” with dog patrols – free running dogs sometimes – and searchlights and minefields. Then another fence, slightly higher.’

  He pursed his lips and closed his eyes as if remembering the details from a picture or a diagram. He was speaking as a child recites a difficult poem, prompted by some system of his own rather than because he really understood the meaning of what he said. But for me his words conjured a vivid memory. I’d crossed such a border zone one night in 1978. The man with me had been killed. Poor Max, a good friend. He’d screamed very loudly so that I thought they’d be sure to find us but the guards were too frightened to come into the minefield and Max took out the searchlight with a lucky shot from his pistol. It was the last thing he did; the flashes from the gun showed them where he was. Every damn gun they had was fired at him. I’d arrived safely but so shattered that they took me off the field list and I’d been a desk man ever since. And now, listening to the guard, I did it all again. My face felt hot and there was sweat on my hands.

  The guard continued. ‘Then a ditch with concrete sides that would stop a tank. Then barbed wire eight metres deep. Then the Selbstschussgeräte which are devices that fire small sharp pieces of metal and are triggered by anyone going near them. Then there is a road for patrol cars that go up and down all the time. And on each side of that roadway there’s a carefully raked strip that would show a footmark if anyone crossed it. Only then do you get to the third and final strip: the Kontrollstreifen with another two fences, very deep barbed wire, more minefields and observation towers manned by machine-gunners. I don’t know why they bother to man the towers in the Kontrollstreifen; as far as we know, no escaper along this section has ever got within a hundred metres of it.’ He gave a grim little chuckle.

  I had continued to butter my bread roll and eat it during this long litany, and this seemed to annoy him. Now that his description had finally ended I looked up at him and nodded.

  ‘Then of course there is the river,’ said the guard.

  ‘Why are you telling me all this?’ I said. I drank some coffee. I desperately needed a drink, a proper drink, but the coffee would have to do.

  ‘You might as well understand that your friend will not be coming,’ said the guard. He watched me. My hand trembled as I brought the cup down from my mouth and I spilled coffee on the tablecloth.

  ‘What friend?’ I dabbed at the stain.

  ‘We’ve seen your sort before,’ said the border guard. ‘I know why you are waiting here at
the Golden Bear.’

  ‘You’re spoiling my breakfast,’ I said. ‘If you don’t leave me in peace I’ll complain to the Tourist Bureau.’

  ‘Walk west in future,’ he said. ‘It will be better for your health. No matter what your doctor might prescribe.’ He grinned at his joke.

  After the guard had departed, the proprietor’s son came over to me. ‘He’s a bastard, that one. He should be “over there”, that one.’ Drüben; over there. No matter which side of the border it was, the other side was always drüben. The boy spread a tablecloth on the table next to mine. Then he laid out the cutlery. Only when he got to the cruet did he say, ‘Are you waiting for someone?’

  ‘I might be,’ I said.

  ‘Nagel. That’s his name. Oberstabsmeister Nagel. He would make a good communist guard. They talk to the communists every day. Do you know that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘One of the other guards told me about it. They have a telephone link with the border guards on the other side. It’s supposed to be used only for river accidents, floods and forest fires. But every morning they test it and they chat. I don’t like the idea of it. Some bastard like Nagel could easily say too much. Your friend won’t try swimming, will he?’

  ‘Not unless he’s crazy,’ I said.

  ‘Sometimes at night we hear the mines exploding,’ said Konrad. ‘The weight of a hare or a rabbit is enough to trigger them. Would you like more butter, or more coffee?’

  ‘I’ve had enough, thanks, Konrad.’

  ‘Is he a close friend, the one you’re expecting?’

  ‘We were at school together,’ I said.

  Konrad crossed himself, flicking his fingers to his forehead and to his shoulders with a quick gesture that came automatically to him.

  Notwithstanding Oberstabsmeister Nagel’s warning, I strolled along the river that morning. I was buttoned into my trench-coat against the ceaseless rain. It is flat this land, part of the glaciated northern lowlands. To the west is Holland, to the north an equally flat Denmark, to the south the heathland of Lüneburg. As to the east, a man could walk far into Poland before finding a decent-sized hill. Except that no man could walk very far east.