by Len Deighton
‘Why is it called find the knave?’ Dicky asked.
Stefan gave a slow smile and then leaned across to Dicky and, with a superb demonstration of palming, produced a knave of hearts from Dicky’s pocket.
‘Well…’ said Dicky, somewhat flustered. ‘How…?’
‘Someone always asks why it’s called find the knave,’ explained Stefan. His wife Lena and Aunt Mary exchanged amused smiles. It was clearly a trick designed to dismay visitors and small children.
Soon after that Uncle Nico said goodnight and the gathering broke up and everyone went to bed.
‘What’s going on here?’ said Dicky when we were upstairs, as he patted his stove to see how warm it was before deciding whether to wear his woollies in bed.
‘What?’
‘This Stefan, is he crazy or some sort of saint? I mean, they all watch him all the time. Even his wife. Are they all shit-scared of him? Or are they all enslaved? Dependence. It’s as if he is their analyst, and they are frightened of facing life without him. I don’t get it. Can you understand?’
‘He’s the breadwinner.’
‘He’s more than that, old pal. He’s the messiah. It’s almost scary. I can feel his presence. I mean it: I can feel his presence in the house. Ever since he jumped out of that cupboard and put the fear of God into you…’
‘He didn’t put the fear of God into me,’ I protested.
‘Come on, Bernard. You went white.’
‘I was surprised, that’s all.’
‘You were shit-scared. You nearly jumped out of the window.’
‘Take it easy, Dicky.’
‘Look out! Jesus!’ Dicky suddenly yelled. ‘Wow! He’s coming through the door like a spirit.’
‘Cut it out, Dicky. I’m tired.’
‘You looked round, Bernard,’ said Dicky gleefully. ‘Stefan coming through the door: that made you look round.’ Suddenly his face crumpled up and he held this grotesque expression for a moment before surrendering to a tremendous sneeze. He wiped his nose on a clean handkerchief. Dicky had an inexhaustible supply of very large clean handkerchiefs. ‘I’ve picked up some sort of bug,’ he said. ‘I’m sneezing and I have stomach cramps too. Have you been drinking the water?’
‘No.’
‘How do you clean your teeth?’
‘In booze.’
‘Red wine is a stain.’
‘But Polish vodka is bleach.’
‘Comics die younger than straight men. Have you noticed that, Bernard?’ He wiped his nose again, and then folded his handkerchief and put it away. ‘We’ll have to get out of here very soon.’
‘How soon is very soon?’
‘Maybe tomorrow.’
‘You don’t want to check out his story about George being murdered?’
‘What could we do?’
‘Go and ask the cops if they are holding these Russkies. Give the cops some money to get lost, and then grill the Russkies.’
‘Is that what you would do if I wasn’t with you?’
‘Shall I stay on?’
‘Better we keep together,’ said Dicky. ‘You’d bribe the cops?’
‘Possibly,’ I admitted. I was exaggerating a little. Dicky brought out my desire to push it.
‘We’ll keep together, Bernard. As soon as Stefan gives me a proper certified copy of the death certificate we can get out of here.’
‘I think we should check it out.’
‘Do you know what that death certificate will empower me to do? George is a British subject. I’ll get court authority to seize all his possessions. We’ll go through him with a fine-tooth comb.’
‘And is that what you really wanted all along?’
‘That’s part of what I wanted.’
‘I see.’
‘Why did Stefan stop playing cards tonight? Did I upset him earlier on when I asked if anyone around here owned an old Bugatti?’
‘No. It was nothing to do with that, Dicky.’
‘He jumped up suddenly and let the game end. And it was just as I hit a winning streak.’
‘You didn’t stand a chance, Dicky.’
‘What puzzles me – he says he loses all his money on horses but tonight he won and won and won at cards.’
‘They don’t let him shuffle the horses,’ I said.
He gave a pained smile. ‘You don’t think…?’
‘A man who can pull an ace of spades out of your ear is likely to know what you’re holding in your hand.’
‘No, no, no. Stefan is from a fine old family… goes back two hundred years. That old man Nico told me Stefan is a duke, or the Polish equivalent.’
‘It’s not mutually exclusive, Dicky. Cheating at cards and being a duke.’
‘You haven’t answered my question. Why did Stefan stop playing cards on the stroke of midnight?’
‘Because he’s going to Mass in the morning. Playing cards after midnight would have prevented him taking communion.’
‘You’re a bloody fund of information, Bernard,’ he said, as though annoyed at having his question answered. ‘Mass. Yes, I suppose that would be it.’ Dicky went to his suitcase and got out a heavy roll-neck to wear over his pyjamas. ‘I’ll say goodnight, Bernard.’
Thus I was dismissed. ‘Goodnight, Dicky.’
It was three-thirty in the morning when I was awakened by a commotion from downstairs. I could hear men’s voices shouting and a woman sobbing. I put on my trenchcoat over my pyjamas and went downstairs. In the front hall there were two strangers in heavy overcoats, red-faced and radiating cold air. There were servant girls too, standing on the stairs with overcoats buttoned tightly over frilly night-clothes that were evident at throat and legs. Stefan was there too, but he was fully dressed in a three-piece suit complete with collar and tie.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘The alarm. They say the Russians have crossed the border,’ said Stefan calmly. ‘These two villagers are insisting that I must go with them to a meeting in the village.’
‘An invasion?’
At that moment Dicky came down the stairs behind me. ‘An invasion?’ scoffed Dicky. ‘They wouldn’t dare…’
Stefan said: ‘One of the young men has taken the short-wave radio upstairs. He’ll connect it to the big antenna on the roof. He’ll get the London overseas service. They will probably be the first to announce it if it’s true.’
‘Have these men seen anything?’ Dicky asked.
‘I will go with them. You may as well go back to bed and get some rest,’ said Stefan. ‘It’s probably not true. These rumours spread very quickly when the vodka is flowing. Both these fellows stink of booze.’ The two villagers smiled, not understanding what Stefan was saying about them in English.
A servant helped Stefan into a magnificent fur coat and he went out to where Karol the secretary was sitting at the wheel of a car, keeping the engine ticking over.
‘Go to bed!’ Uncle Nico told the servant girls, who had now grown in number, and he clapped his hands and raised his voice as he said it again.
‘Could it be true?’ Dicky asked Uncle Nico when the young women had hurried off to their beds.
‘I doubt it,’ said Uncle Nico. He lowered his voice. ‘But what he didn’t tell you is that two more bodies have been found. That’s what the two farm-hands came here for. Some drunks coming home through the forest stumbled over two dead bodies late last night. Two full-grown men thrown into the bottom of a ditch. God knows who they can be. It could be something to do with the rumours. In the village they are saying they must be Russian parachute spies.’
‘Stefan should have waited for the radio,’ said Dicky.
‘He’ll want to go to Mass,’ confided Uncle Nico. ‘There is a Mass at 5.50. Stefan likes to go early; he doesn’t meet anyone he knows.’
Still not fully awake, I returned to my room, climbed back into bed and went into a deep sleep peopled with marching men and barking dogs, arguments with Dicky and a disinterred corpse. I woke up with a
headache as I tried to distinguish dream from reality.
Dicky was already up and dressed. He was standing over me shaking me. ‘The Russians are coming. You’d better get up and shave.’ I could tell from his jokey voice that it was not true.
I got out of bed very slowly and became aware of the howling wind. When I went to the window I saw that the invasion from Russia had come, but it was in the shape of ice and snow. The blue sky had gone: snow was whipping past, the streaks of it almost horizontal in the fierce wind that was blowing all the way from the Steppes.
‘We’ve got to get out of here right away,’ said Dicky. ‘The snow is falling heavily. We must get to the main road or we’ll be snowed in until they dig us out, and that could take weeks.’
‘It’s not cold enough for snow to build up. It has to be colder than two degrees centigrade for it to survive and build up on the ground…’
‘I’m not in the mood for another of your science lectures,’ said Dicky with unaccountable fury and stomped out of the room.
‘And the ground is still too soft for heavy tanks and artillery,’ I called after him.
There was no hot water by the time I got into the bath. The hot tap of the shower produced a blizzard of cold rusty water and then spluttered and stopped altogether. I’d given up on the bath and was starting to shave in cold water when Stefan appeared at the door of the bathroom.
‘Did you sleep?’
‘Yes, I did,’ I said.
‘There is no truth in the invasion rumours. We get these crazy panics frequently and we are used to them. One day it will be true, of course, but by that time we will have grown accustomed to the notion and be ready to submit.’ He said it with a bitterness that I’d not seen in him before.
Dicky came bearing three cups of hot sweet coffee from the kitchen. I interrupted my shaving to drink a mouthful and used the rest for shaving.
Stefan watched me without commenting. ‘Everyone in Warsaw was complaining about the sudden shortage of black-market booze,’ he confided. ‘There’s not a drop of the really good stuff to be had anywhere. You can name your own price for a case of Scotch whisky or real French cognac. Foreign gangsters are moving in to take over from our own people. Two brothers from Cracow had the monopoly until now, but they have stopped trading. I heard they were enticed up into an apartment in Praga and nearly killed by American gangsters sent here specially to murder them. One of the brothers is in hospital with multiple fractures and the other is back home on crutches, and with his jaw in wires. Meanwhile all the tourist bars and illegal dives in the Old Town are desperate for supplies.’
‘Umm,’ said Dicky.
‘Any guesses who they are?’ Stefan asked me. ‘They must have arrived about the time you did. Did you see anyone suspicious in the Europejski Hotel?’
‘Me?’ I said. ‘No.’ I dipped the razor in my coffee and continued dragging it through my beard.
‘The underworld has put a price on their heads: fifty thousand zlotys for delivering either of these American killers to the black-market people. At least that’s what I heard.’
‘That’s only about fifteen hundred dollars apiece,’ said Dicky. ‘I’d have thought two top-notch hit men were worth more than that.’
‘I’m sorry you are departing so soon,’ said Stefan. ‘But winter is not the best time to show you Polish hospitality. And we Poles enjoy providing a show for visitors.’
We were back on the road by noon, our bellies filled with hot potato soup and our gas-tank with precious fuel. But we were still on the estate – and only three miles from the house – when we found the road ahead blocked by two army trucks and a bulldozer. There was a huddle of men: some soldiers were talking to two men hefting a 16mm film camera and recording equipment. Father Ratajczyk, the priest who had exorcized the rooms, was there too, together with Tadeusz, the technician who had assisted him.
A young officer of the Polish army, in sheepskin overcoat and military-style fur hat, detached himself from the group and walked towards us through the fast-falling sleet. He saluted and then leaned in to the car window.
‘You’re the two Englishmen from the Kosinski house?’
‘Yes,’ said Dicky. There was little point in denying it.
‘I’m sorry to delay you. You can’t get through. It will take about half an hour.’ He spoke good English. ‘We have to bring a big earth-moving machine up the road and there is only just enough clearance to get it between the trees.’
‘What’s happening?’ said Dicky.
‘We have to work quickly. By tomorrow the snow could be making it very difficult.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘You don’t know? Another mass grave. Trees have grown over a part of it and we can’t estimate the size of it yet.’
‘My God,’ said Dicky. ‘A mass grave?’
‘At least five hundred bodies. My own guess is that there might be anything up to a thousand poor souls buried here.’ He made the sign of a cross.
‘They said they found two bodies last night,’ said Dicky. ‘Are they a part of it? When do they date from?’
‘Yes, it’s from the war,’ said the young officer.
‘Murdered by the Russians or by the Nazis?’
‘Who knows?’ said the officer, and wiped the wet snow from his face. ‘They are Polish and they are dead, that’s probably all we’ll ever be sure about.’
5
Kent, England.
‘You haven’t told me what it’s like in Warsaw these days,’ said Harry Strang, newly retired and relaxed in his baggy roll-neck sweater and worn corduroy trousers. I was used to him in suits and stiff collars, and with his hair combed to conceal the bald patch that I now noticed for the first time.
‘I haven’t told you that I’ve been to Warsaw.’
‘You can’t keep a secret from an old agent. Isn’t that what they say?’ Harry Strang was one of the few pen-pushers who could legitimately claim to have been an agent. I’d first met Harry in Berlin. I was very young, and too insensitive to see how miserable and out of place he felt in that city. It was my father who persuaded him not to resign from the service altogether. Harry was posted to Spain and made his reputation infiltrating Catalonian communist networks at a time when the Franco government had made communism a hazardous faith. Despite his remarkable Spanish, Harry couldn’t look anything but what he is: a middle-class English gent, but he moved easily amongst an assortment of Spanish reds: terrorists, apparatchiks, opportunists, theorists and politicians. Then with Franco on his death-bed, Harry went to Argentina and worked for a shipping company, and was there working for us right through the Falklands war. Apart from the fingernails that never grew straight after being torn off, malfunctioning kidneys damaged during a series of beatings in Franco’s police stations, and a liver that was the casualty of cheap Rioja and inferior sherry, he had survived intact. Eventually he had been given a position in Operations in London and stayed there long enough to collect his pension. Not many field agents managed that.
‘The kids are climbing around your Peugeot,’ I warned him.
‘It’s an old wreck. Come away from the window. Let them alone, they can’t hurt it, Bernard.’
‘You haven’t left the keys in?’
‘Why kidnap your kids if you’re going to spend every minute worrying about them?’
‘I didn’t kidnap them; I told my father-in-law I was collecting them from school.’
‘You said you left a message on his telephone recording machine,’ he corrected me. ‘You didn’t actually tell him.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘If he doesn’t monitor his messages before he collects the kids from school himself, you’ll find out what the difference is,’ he said grimly. ‘He’ll tell the cops, and the TV news will say they are hunting for a tall child-molester with wavy hair and glasses.’
‘Very funny.’
‘It wasn’t a joke, Bernard.’
‘My father-in-law monitors his
bloody messages every five minutes. He was born with a telephone in his ear and right now he’s frantically picking up the pieces after the stock-market crash.’
Without moving from his chair, Harry looked out of the window at the full extent of his property. No doubt he saw five acres of root vegetables, soft fruit and a dozen plump pigs, but winter had all but eliminated the vegetation, and left only a ramshackle shed in a sea of shiny mud. With only a scrawny youngster to help him it was too much work, but Harry seemed to be content.
‘They are nice kids, Bernard. The boy is the image of you.’ We had eaten lunch, squelched through the mud in borrowed boots, been shown round the pigsties by a soft-spoken amiable farm-hand, and come back inside to drink tea and inspect every last one of Harry’s collection of Japanese swords.
‘I hear Dicky is very active lately,’ said Harry, keeping his tone neutral.
‘Very active,’ I said. ‘He’s fighting with Daphne so he tries to get away every weekend. And he drags me with him. Then he gives me odd days off. But what good is that when Fiona is at work and my kids at school?’
Harry ran his hands together, pushing the fingers of his white cotton gloves tighter on his fingers. ‘The children should be living at home with you,’ he said. He rescued a sword which was precariously balanced on the sofa, and held it up to admire the engraving on its blade. There were swords everywhere; on the floor, on the sofa and on the dining-table. Glittering blades and shiny scabbards were exploding out of the little box-room where he stored his collection, protruding through the door as if some huge metallic hedgehog was trying to break out from hibernation there.
‘I know,’ I said.
‘But Fiona is keeping busy at work eh?’ He slashed the air with the sword and then slid it into its scabbard. He found a place for it on the sideboard which had been until then the only place free of edged weaponry.
‘She’s Dicky’s Deputy,’ I said.