East of Suez, West of Charing Cross Road

by John Lawton

  Afterward, she said, “You gotta do what I have to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Fake it.”

  George took this on board with a certain solemnity and doubt.

  She shook him by the arm vigorously.

  “Leave it out, captain. I’d never fake one with you.”

  THE BEST PART of a week passed. He was due to meet Boris that evening and sat at his desk in the day trying to do what the nameless whore had suggested. Fake it.

  He had in front of him a shipping docket for frying pans.

  FP1 Titanium Range 12 inch. Maximum heat dispersal.

  116 units.

  It was typical army-speak that the docket didn’t actually say they were frying pans. The docket was an FP1, and that was only used for frying pans, so the bloke on the receiving end in Singapore would just look at the code and know what was in the crate. There was a certain logic to it. Fewer things got stolen this way. He’d once shipped thirty-two kettles to Cyprus, and somehow the word kettle had ended up on the docket and only ten ever arrived at their destination.

  He could see possibilities in this. All he needed was a jar of that newfangled American stuff, Liquid Paper, which he bought out of his own money from an import shop in the Charing Cross Road, a bit of jiggery-pokery, and access to the equally newfangled, equally American Xerox machine. Uncle Sam had finally given the world something useful. It almost made up for popcorn and rock ’n’ roll.

  Caution stepped in. He practiced first on an interoffice memo. Just as well—he made a hash of it. “Staff Canteen Menu, Changes to: Subsection Potato, Mashed: WD414” would never be the same again. No matter, if one of these yards of bumf dropped onto his desk in the course of a day, then so did a dozen more. He’d even seen one headed “War Office Gravy, Lumps in.”

  He found the best technique was to thin the Liquid Paper as far as it would go and then treat it like ink. Fortunately, the empire had only just died—or committed hara-kiri—and he had in his desk drawer two or three dip pens, with nibs, and a dry, clean, cut-glass inkwell that might have graced the desk of the assistant commissioner of Eastern Nigeria in 1910.

  And—practice does make perfect. And a copy of a copy of a copy—three passes on the Xerox—makes the perfect into a pleasing blur.

  “Titanium” was fairly easily altered to “Plutonium.”

  A full stop was added before “Range.”

  “12 inch” became “120 miles.”

  He stared, willing something to come to him about “Maximum heat dispersal,” and when nothing did concluded it was fine as it was. And 116 units sounded spot-on. A good, healthy number, divisible by nothing.

  He looked over his handiwork. It would do. It would . . . “pass muster,” that was the phrase. And it was pleasingly ambiguous.

  FP1 Plutonium. Range 120 miles. Maximum heat dispersal.

  116 units.

  But what if Boris asked what they were?

  BORIS DID, BUT by then George was ready for him.

  “FP means Field Personnel. And I’m sure you know what plutonium is.”

  “You cheeky bugger. You think I’m just some dumb Russki? The point is, to what aspect of Field Personnel does this document refer?”

  George looked him in the eye, said, “Just put it all together. Add up the parts and get to the sum.”

  Boris looked down at the paper and then up at George.

  Whatever penny dropped, George would roll with it.

  “My God. I don’t believe it. You bastards are upping the ante on us. You’re putting tactical nuclear weapons into Singapore!”

  “Well,” George replied in all honesty. “You said it, I didn’t.”

  “And they shipped in January. My God, they’re already there!”

  George was emboldened.

  “And why not—things are hotting up in Vietnam. Or did you think that after Cuba we’d just roll over and die?”

  And then he kicked himself. Was Vietnam, either bit of it, within 120 miles of Singapore? He hadn’t a clue.

  Mouth, big, shut.

  But Boris didn’t seem to know either.

  He pushed the Polaroid across the table to him. This time he took his hand off it.

  “You will understand. We keep our word.”

  George doubted this.

  And then Boris reached into his pocket, pulled out a white envelope, and pushed that to George.

  “And I am to give you this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Five hundred pounds. I believe you call it a monkey.”

  Good God—here he was betraying his country’s canteen secrets, and the bastards were actually going to pay him for it.

  He took it round to Henrietta Street.

  He didn’t mention it until after they’d made love.

  And she said, “Bloody hell. That’s more’n I make in a month,” and George said, “It’s more than I make in three months.”

  They agreed. They’d stash it in the bottom of her wardrobe and think what they might do with it some other time.

  As he was leaving for Waterloo, George said, “Do you realize, I don’t know your name.”

  “You din’ ask. And it’s Donna.”

  “Is that your real name?”

  “Nah. S’my workin’ name. Goes with my surname, Needham. It’s like a joke. Donna Needham. Gettit?”

  “Yes. I get it. You’re referring to men.”

  “Yeah, but you can call me Janet if you like. That’s me real name.”

  “I think I prefer Donna.”

  IT BECAME PART of the summer. Part of the summer’s new routine.

  He would ring home about once a week and tell Sylvia he would be working late.

  “The DDT to the DFC’s in town. The brass want me in a meeting. Sorry, old thing.”

  Considering that she had been married to a serving army officer for twenty years before she met George, Sylvia had never bothered to learn any army jargon. She expected men to talk bollocks, and she paid it no mind. She accepted it and dismissed it simultaneously.

  George would then keep an appointment with Boris in the Berwick Street caff, sell his country up the Swanee, and then go round to the flat in Henrietta Street.

  Even as his conscience atrophied, or quite possibly because it atrophied, love blossomed. He was absolutely potty about Donna and told her so every time he saw her.

  Boris didn’t use the Berwick Street café every time, and it suited both to meet at Kempton Park racecourse on the occasional Saturday, particularly if Sylvia had gone to a whist drive or taken herself off shopping in Kingston-upon-Thames. Five bob each way on the favorite was George’s limit. Boris played long shots and made more than he lost. It was, George thought, a fair reflection of both their characters and their trades.

  As the weeks passed, George doctored more dockets, pocketed more cash—although he never again collected five hundred pounds in one go (Boris explained that this had been merely to get his attention), every meeting resulted in his treachery being rewarded with a hundred or two hundred pounds.

  Some deceptions required a bit of thought.

  For example, he found himself staring at a docket for saucepans he had shipped to Hong Kong from the makers in Lancashire.

  SP3 PRESTIGE Copper-topped 6 inch. 250 units.

  Prestige was probably the best-known maker of saucepans in the country. He couldn’t leave the word intact—it was just possible that even old Boris had heard of them.

  But once contemplated, his liar’s muse came to his rescue, and it was easily altered to read

  FP3 P F T Cobalt-tipped 6 inch. 250 units.

  He’d no idea what this might mean, but, once in the caff with two cups of frothy coffee in front of them, as ever, Boris filled in most of the blanks.

  Yes, FP meant what it had always meant. He struggled a little with P F T, and George waited patiently as Boris steered himself in the direction of Personal Field Tactical, and as he put that together with cobalt-tipped, his gr
eat Russian self-righteousness surfaced with a bang.

  “You really are a bunch of bastards, aren’t you? You’re fitting handheld rocket launchers with missiles coated with spent uranium!”

  Oh, was that it? George knew cobalt had something to do with radioactivity, but quite what was beyond him.

  “ Armor-piercing, cobalt-tipped shells? You bastards. You utter fockin’ bastards. Queensberry rules, my Bolshevik arse!”

  Ah . . . armor-piercing, that was what they were for. George hadn’t a clue and would have guessed blindly had Boris asked.

  “Bastards!”

  After which outburst Boris slipped him a hundred quid and called it a long ’un.

  Midsummer, George got lucky. He was running out of ideas, and somebody mentioned that the army had American-built ground-to-air missiles deployed with NATO forces in Europe. A truck-mounted launcher that went by the code name of Honest John. It wasn’t exactly a secret, and there was every chance Boris knew what Honest John was.

  It rang a bell in the great canteen of the mind. A while back, he was almost certain, he had shipped fifty large stew pots out to Aden, bought from a firm in Waterford called Honett Iron. It was the shortest alteration he ever made, and lit the shortest fuse in Boris.

  “Bastards!” he said yet again.

  And then he paused, and in thinking, came close to unraveling George’s skein of lies. George had thought to impress Boris with a fake docket for a missile that really existed, and it was about to blow up in his face.

  “Just a minute. I know this thing, it only has a range of fifteen miles. Who can you nuke from Aden? It doesn’t make sense. Every other country is more than fifteen miles away. There’s nothing but fockin’ dyesert within fifteen miles of Aden.”

  George was stuck. To say anything would be wrong, but this was one gap Boris’s fertile imagination didn’t seem willing to plug.

  “Er . . . that depends,” said George.

  “On what?”

  “Er . . . on . . . on what you think is going on in the er . . . ‘fockin’ dyesert.’”

  Boris stared at him.

  A silence screaming to be filled.

  And Boris wasn’t going to fill it.

  George risked all.

  “After all, I mean . . . you either have spy planes or you don’t.”

  It was enigmatic.

  George had no idea whether the Russians had spy planes. The Americans did. One had been shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, resulting in egg-on-face as the Russians paraded the unfortunate pilot alive before the world’s press. So much for the cyanide capsule.

  It was enigmatic. Enigmatic to the point of meaninglessness, but it did the trick. It turned Boris’s inquiries inward. Meanwhile, George had scared himself shitless. He’d got cocky and he’d nearly paid the price.

  * * *

  HE LOBBED ANOTHER envelope of money into the bottom of Donna’s wardrobe. He hadn’t counted it, and neither of them had spent any of it, but he reckoned they must have about two thousand pounds in there.

  “I have to stop,” he said. “Boris damn near caught me tonight.”

  TWO DAYS LATER, George opened his copy of the Daily Telegraph on the train to work, and page one chilled him to the briefcase.

  Russian Spy Plane Shot Down Over Aden

  He had reached Waterloo and was crossing the Hungerford Footbridge to the Victoria Embankment before he managed to reassure himself with the notion that because it had been shot down, the USSR still didn’t know what was (not) going on in the “fockin’ dyesert.”

  He told Donna, the next time they met, the next time they made love. He lay back in the afterglow and felt anxiety awaken from its erotically induced slumber.

  “You see,” he said, “I had to tell Boris something. There’s nothing going on in the ‘fockin’ dyesert.’ But the Russians launched a spy plane to find out. On Boris’s say-so. On my say-so. I mean, for all I know the Vietcong are deploying more troops along the DMZ, the Chinese might be massing their millions at the border with Hong Kong. . . . This is all getting . . . out of hand.”

  Donna ran her fingers through his hair, brought her lips close to his ear, with that touch of moist breath that drove him wild.

  “Y’know, Georgie, you been luckier than you know.”

  “How so?”

  “Supposin’ there really had been something going on out in the ‘fockin’ dyesert’?”

  “Oh Christ.”

  “Don’t bear thinkin’ about, do it? But you’re right. This is all gettin’ outta hand. We need to do something.”

  “Such as?”

  “Dunno. But, let me think. I’m better at it than you are.”

  “Could you think quickly. Before I start World War III.”

  “Sssh, Georgie. Donna’s thinkin’.”

  “IT’S LIKE THIS,” she said. “You want out, but the Russkies have enough on you to fit you up for treason, and then there’s the Polaroid of you an’ me in bed an’ your wife to think about.”

  “I got the Polaroid back months ago.”

  “You did? Good. Now . . . thing is, as I see it, they got you for selling them our secrets ’bout rockets an’ ’at out east. Only you gave ’em saucepans and tea urns. So what have they really got?”

  “Me. They’ve got me, because saucepans and tea urns are just as secret as nukes. I’m still a traitor. I’ll be the Klaus Fuchs of kitchenware.”

  “No. You’re not. The other Horsfield is, ’cos that’s who they think they’re dealing with.”

  George could not see where this was headed.

  “We gotta do two things, see off old Boris and put the other Horsfield in the frame. Give ’em the Horsfield they wanted in the first place.”

  “Oh God.”

  “No . . . listen . . . Boris thinks he’s been dealing with Lieutenant Col. Horsfield. What we gotta do is make the colonel think he’s dealing with Boris . . . swap him for you and then blow the whistle.”

  “Or let the whistle blow,” said George.

  “How do you mean?”

  “If I understand that cunning little mind of yours aright, you mean to try and frame Horsfield.”

  “S’right.”

  “I know HG. He’s a total bastard, but he can’t be scared or intimidated. We make any move against him, he catches even a whiff of Russian involvement, he’ll blow the whistle himself.”

  “Y’know. That’s even more than I hoped for. Let me try for the full house then. Is he what you might call a ladies’ man?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, no offense, Georgie, but you was easy to pull. If I was to try and pull HG, what would he do?”

  “Oh, I see. Well, if office gossip is to be believed, he’d paint his arse blue and shag you under a lamppost in Soho Square.”

  “Bingo,” said Donna. “Bingo bloody bingo!”

  THEY DIPPED INTO the wardrobe money for the first time.

  “I can’t do this myself, and I can’t use the room in Bridle Lane. I’ll pay a mate to do HG, and I know a house in Marshall Street that’s going under the wrecking ball any day now. It’ll be perfect. I’ll get a room kitted out so it looks like a regular pad and then we just abandon it. The gray area is knowing when we might get to HG.”

  “It’s Ted’s birthday next week. Bound to be a pub and club crawl. I could even predict that at some point we’ll all be in the same club you found me in.”

  “What would be HG’s type?”

  “Now you mention it . . . not you. He goes for blondes, blondes with big . . . ”

  “Tits?”

  “Quite.”

  “Okay, that narrows it down. I’ll have to ask Judy. She’ll want a ton for the job and another for the risk, but she’ll do it.”

  TED’S BIRTHDAY BASH coincided with George’s Boris night at the Berwick Street caff. Something was going right. God knows, they might even get away with this. “This”—he wasn’t at all sure what “this” was. He knew his own part in this, but the
initiative had now passed to Donna. She had planned the night’s activity like a film script.

  He slipped away early from Ted’s party. Ted was three sheets to the wind anyway. HG was in full flight with a string of smutty stories, and the only risk was that he might get off with some woman before Judy pulled him. As he was leaving, a tall, busty blonde, another Jayne Mansfield or Diana Dors, cantilevered by state-of-the-art bra mechanics into a pink lamb’s wool sweater that showed plenty of cleavage and looked as solid as Everest, came into the club. She winked at George and carried on down the stairs without a word.

  George went round to Bridle Lane.

  It was a tale of two wigs.

  Donna had a wig ready for him.

  “You and Boris are about the same size. It’s just a matter of hair color. Besides, it’s not as if HG will get a good look at you.”

  And a wig ready for herself. She was transformed into a pocket Marilyn Monroe.

  He hated the waiting. They stood at the corner of Fouberts Place, looking down the length of Marshall Street. It was past nine when a staggering, three-quarters pissed HG appeared on the arm of a very steady Judy. They stopped under a lamppost. He didn’t paint his arse blue, but he groped her in public, his hand on her backside, his face half-buried in her cleavage.

  George watched Judy gently reposition his hand at her waist and heard her say, “Not so fast, soldier, we’re almost there.”

  “We are? Bloody good show.”

  George hated HG.

  George hated HG for being so predictable.

  Donna whispered.

  “Ten minutes at the most. Judy’ll pull a curtain to when he’s got his kit off. Now, are you sure you know how to work it?”

  “It’s just a camera like any other, Donna.”

  “Georgie—we only got one chance.”

  “Yes. I know how to work it.”

  When the curtain moved, George tiptoed up the stairs, imagining Boris doing the same thing all those months ago as he prepared to spring the honey trap.

  At the bedroom door he could hear the baritone rumble of HG’s drunken sweet nothings.

  “S’wonderful. S’bloody amazing. Tits. Marvelous things. If I had tits . . . bloody hell . . . I’d play with them all day.”

  Then kick, flash, bang, wallop . . . and HG was sprawled where he had been, and George was uttering Boris’s lines in the best Russian accent he could muster.