London Match

by Len Deighton

  The scene wobbled, my pulse raced, and my throat was suddenly dry. Only by steadying myself against the wall was I able to prevent myself fainting. Billy! Billy! Billy! I leaned close to the peephole again. The nurse moved away to get a small enamel tray from the table. She carried it carefully to the sink and took from it a hypodermic syringe. She put the needle into a glass of pink-coloured liquid. I felt ill. No matter how much my brain told me to remain calm, my emotions took over. Now I knew why men with wives and families were so seldom used as field agents.

  They are watching, they are watching you, now, at this moment, I told myself for the hundredth time. This is all a well-prepared act to disorient you and soften you up for what comes next. But it didn’t help much. I could think of nothing except my son and what these bastards might do to him. Surely to God, Fiona knows about this. Surely she would stop them hurting her own son. But suppose Fiona doesn’t know?

  There was the sudden noise of a key being inserted into the lock. Someone was entering from the corridor. There was enough time for me to get back to the bench and sit down. There was enough time for me to look relaxed and unconcerned, but I’m not sure I managed that.

  ‘Herr Samson!’ We knew each other. He was a great bull of a man, about fifty years old, with a big peasant frame upon which years of manual labour had layered hard muscle. His skull shone through close-cropped hair. His large nose was surmounted by a big broad forehead. Pavel Moskvin. The London Central computer described him as a KGB ‘political adviser’. That could mean anything. Political advisers were sometimes the brightest of bright graduates, multilingual polymaths who could quote Groucho as readily as Karl Marx. Such men used a stretch with the KGB as a finishing school. But Moskvin was long past all that. I had him marked down as the sort of untalented plodder who’d graduated from the factory floor having discovered that the Party always looks after its own. The USSR was filled with men like him; their unthinking loyalty was what held the whole creaky system together.

  ‘Where is my wife?’ I asked him. It wasn’t a textbook opening or anything that London Central would have approved, but I knew they’d have me on a tape and there seemed a good chance that Fiona would be monitoring the dialogue.

  ‘Your wife? Why would you want to know that, Herr Samson,’ said Moskvin mockingly. His German was awkward and ungrammatical but his manner said everything.

  ‘My people know I’m here, Moskvin,’ I said. ‘They’ll be putting out a red alert any time now.’

  ‘Are you trying to frighten me?’ he said. ‘Your people know nothing, and they don’t care. It is Christmas. You are all alone, Herr Samson, all alone. Your people in London will be eating pudding, watching your Queen speaking on television and getting drunk!’

  ‘We’ll see,’ I muttered ominously, but his version of what London Central might be doing sounded only too likely.

  ‘Why don’t you behave sensibly, Samson?’

  ‘For instance?’

  There were footsteps in the corridor. He half turned towards the door, his head cocked to listen. The break in his attention gave me the chance I’d been praying for. With both hands cuffed behind me, I grasped the backrest of the chair. Then, with head bowed low to counter the weight, I twisted my body and with all my force heaved the chair in his direction.

  It was too heavy for me. It hit him in the legs instead of on the side of the head, but the violence of it caught him unprepared so that he staggered back cursing and spluttering with rage.

  He kicked the chair aside. ‘I’ll teach you…’ he said and stepped forward to punch me. He didn’t aim anywhere; he hit me as an angry drunk might pound a wall. But Moskvin was a heavyweight. His blows didn’t have to be aimed; they hit like sledgehammers and I was slammed against the wall so hard that I lost my balance and slid to the floor. ‘You crazy fool!’ he growled and wiped his mouth with the reddened knuckles of his fist. ‘If you want a fight I’ll take you downstairs and kill you with my bare hands.’

  Slowly I scrambled to my feet and he kicked the chair over to me again with the side of his boot. I sat down on it and closed my eyes. I had a terrible pain inside me, as though molten lead was pouring through my lungs.

  When Moskvin spoke again, he’d recovered some of his former composure. ‘Be sensible. Face the truth. Your wife has chosen to work with us of her own free will. Do you really believe that we are holding her captive? Is that what your bosses in London have told you? Forget it. She is one of us, Samson. She does not wish to return to the West; she will never go back there. Never.’ He watched me carefully and I stared back at him. ‘Do you want a cigarette?’ he asked finally.

  ‘No,’ I said, although I needed one desperately. We both knew the way it went; you accept a cigarette, you say thank you, and the next thing you’re chatting away and reaching for the writing paper. ‘I don’t smoke.’

  He smiled. He knew all about me. With Fiona working for the KGB, there was little about me that they couldn’t find out. The pain lessened a little as I shifted my position and controlled my breathing, but one of his punches seemed to have torn a ligament and the big trapezius muscle of my back sent sharp pains right up to my neck.

  ‘Why make life miserable for both of you?’ said Moskvin in what he obviously thought a friendly manner. His German was better now; perhaps this was a text he’d prepared and practised. ‘While you are working for the German Stations Controller in London and your wife is here in Berlin, the two of you must be permanently unhappy.’

  ‘What are you proposing?’ I said. I tried not to look at the glass-panelled door but it was difficult. Moskvin watched me carefully. He knew I’d seen into the next room. His arrival was too prompt to be anything but a reaction from a man watching what I did. Yes, I could see it now; the camera was behind that damned anti-nuke poster. A circular patch of the lettering was dull – open-weave cloth through which a focused camera could see clearly.

  ‘There would be nothing for you here, Samson. We know everything you could tell us.’

  I nodded. Had they really given up hope of enrolling me, or was this some subtle way of trying to get me to prove I knew more than they thought. ‘You’re right,’ I said.

  ‘So why not an overseas posting?’ said Moskvin. He had both hands in the pockets of his greatcoat, fidgeting with something metallic that clanked. When he brought his hands into view there were three clips of pistol ammunition in his fingers. He fiddled with them. When he saw me looking at him he said, ‘Don’t have any more of those stupid ideas, Samson. The gun is downstairs in my safe.’ Lots of bullets; it was characteristic of this violent primitive.

  ‘Overseas?’

  ‘You know Washington; you like Americans.’

  ‘Lots of people want to go to Washington,’ I said to gain time. ‘Who knows when a vacancy will come.’

  Moskvin continued to play with the clips. ‘Washington gossip says London Central will fill two vacancies in the next month or two. Two senior jobs – that’s what our Washington office tells us.’

  Through the blur of pain my memory said he was right: sickness and a promotion had created two unexpected vacancies in the Washington Embassy. I’d seen the signal on Bret’s desk. I was senior enough to apply for either. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Think about it,’ said Moskvin. Under his silky voice I could hear the hatred and contempt that he was trying to hide.

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘No threats,’ said Moskvin. ‘But surely it would be more civilized?’

  ‘More civilized than staying in London to undo some of the harm of my wife’s treachery?’

  ‘Be more sophisticated and less arrogant, Herr Samson. Can you really believe that your contribution to the work at London Central will make any difference?’

  I shrugged – but it hurt.

  ‘What are you trying to prove, Samson? We’ve got an operations file on you that’s that thick.’ He indicated with finger and thumb. ‘And that’s without all the dangerous tricks you’ve done undetected. How lon
g can you go on trying to prove you’re a field agent? Until you get yourself killed, is that it?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘Because I’m a desk man?’ He almost lost control over his rage. ‘Vanity, is that it? Prove yourself over and over again so you can be sure you’re not a coward? Just as the repressed homosexual becomes a womanizer to prove he’s really a man?’ Was that some reference to his ex-colleague Stinnes? If it was, he gave no further evidence of it. He put away his playthings and stood, hands on hips, his long black greatcoat open to reveal an ill-fitting grey suit and dark roll-neck sweater. He looked like someone who’d dressed in response to a fire alarm.

  ‘Start life again, Herr Samson. Forget the pain of the past.’ He saw me glance towards the door. ‘What do I have to do to persuade you?’ He smiled and I could see the sadistic glee in his face. He knew I’d seen into the next room.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ I told him. Was Billy still there, I wondered? It was torture carrying on this conversation.

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ said Moskvin softly. His voice rose to a shout as he added, ‘Do it!’

  ‘I said I’d think about it.’

  ‘Then think about this too,’ he yelled. He snatched the door open and stood in the doorway. With hands cuffed, I’d stand no chance against him – he’d already proved that. But I pushed close to see over his shoulder.

  ‘Billy!’ I called but the bundled figure made no response. ‘Why drug the child?’ I said. I couldn’t keep the weariness and defeat from my voice. The doctor and nurse had gone. Even the disinfectant, the hypodermic and the enamel tray had gone. ‘Where’s the doctor?’ I asked.

  ‘Doctor?’ said Moskvin. ‘What doctor? Are you mad?’ He went striding across the room to the bunk bed. ‘Think about this, Samson,’ he yelled over his shoulder. He raised his arm, his massive fist clenched over the bed.

  ‘No, don’t!’ It was a plea now, the fight had gone out of me. But he paid no heed to my call. His punch almost broke the wooden frame of the bed, with such force did it descend. The terrible blow swept everything across the room: blankets, the pathetic wollen hat, the boots and anorak. It all clattered to the floor in a heap.

  Moskvin laughed. ‘What did you think, Samson? Did you think we had your son in here?’ Now I could see that these were not Billy’s clothes: just clothes like them.

  I leaned against the wall. I felt the bile rising in my throat. I closed my lips tight, determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing me throw up. But it was not possible. I leaned forward and vomited my breakfast across the floor along with a generous measure of Mrs Koby’s homemade wine.

  Moskvin really laughed then. It was the first spontaneous human reaction I’d ever seen from him. He unlocked my handcuffs. ‘We’ll get a car and take you back to the West, Samson. Where would you like to go, Frau Hennig’s hotel?’

  I nodded and used a handkerchief to wipe my face and my clothes. The sweet-sour smell of the vomit was in my nostrils.

  ‘You’ll need to wash and change,’ said Moskvin. ‘But you just remember this, clever Mr Field Agent: any time we want you, we’ll pick you up as easily as we did today. And not just you, Samson; your children, your mother, your friend Volkmann…any time we want you. You remember that, my friend.’ He laughed again. I could hear him laughing as he marched off down the corridor and shouted for the driver. I looked back at the TV monitor. Was Fiona watching? And did she feel proud of herself?

  When I got back to Tante Lisl’s I took a long hot bath and examined my cuts and bruises. Then I changed my clothes to take Lisl to the Volkmanns’ for what we both thought was to be a quiet sit-down meal. We were wrong.

  It was a ferocious event; the sort of frantic party you find only in Berlin and New York. The hi-fi was playing ‘Hello, Dolly!’ as I went in, and the guests were in that restrained sort of fancy dress that provides a chance to wear jewellery and expensive hair-dos. It was noisy and crowded and the air was blue with tobacco smoke and there was the fragrance of French perfumes and Havana cigars.

  Tante Lisl showed little surprise at the mad scene to which I’d brought her. She’d brought up little Werner after his parents died, and she felt for him that compassionate condescension that motherhood brings. She sat in the corner on the thronelike chair that Werner had thoughtfully placed there for her. She sipped her champagne and surveyed the antics of the guests with a wry superiority, like a tribal chief watching the sort of ceremonial dances that end in human sacrifice. She’d prepared carefully for the party: false eyelashes and real pearls; Tante Lisl’s ultimate accolade.

  I went to the buffet table in the dining room to assemble a plate of food for her. The room, like every other room in the apartment, was crowded. In front of me there was a tall thin Mephistopheles. He was engaged in earnest conversation with a man in a white-silk roll-neck sweater. He said in uncertain English, ‘We Germans are so very like you Americans! That’s why there is this constant friction. Both our countrymen respond to ideology, both seek always to improve the world, and both often want to improve it by means of military crusades.’

  ‘And both like clean toilets,’ said the American in the roll-neck sweater. ‘Germany is the only goddamned country in Europe that doesn’t have filthy bathrooms.’

  ‘Anal oriented, we psychiatrists say,’ Mephistopheles told him. ‘In other countries people just want to get in there, do what has to be done, and get out again as soon as possible. But you Americans and we Germans like to have toilets we can spend time in. One glance in any of these home-improvement magazines will confirm that.’

  A movement of the crowd around the buffet allowed me to push forward to the table near the window and reach the stack of empty plates and silverware. I looked round me. Only in Berlin would they have a party like this in daylight. Outside it was gloomy, but to the west there was even a little sunlight breaking through the clouds. The food was disorienting too. It was not exactly what I’d think of as Christmas Day lunch, but it was a magnificent display of luxuries. Although a great deal had already been eaten, new plates of food kept appearing, brought by waitresses in neat black dresses and fancy lace aprons. This was a Fresserei, a feast where people gobble like animals. There were lobster tails in mayonnaise and crab claws in wine sauce. There was caviar and cold salmon, foie gras with truffles, and a dozen types of sliced sausage.

  ‘There’s blood on your face,’ said a woman with diamond-studded spectacles, reaching past me to get more Leberwurst and potato salad. ‘Naughty boy. You look as if you’d been fighting.’

  ‘I have,’ I said. ‘I found Santa Claus in my sitting room helping himself to my whisky.’ In the Tiergarten the bearded man’s sleeve buttons had cut my cheek, and when I dabbed the place, I found it had been bleeding again.

  The diamond spectacles discovered a dish of smoked eel garnished with jelly. Uttering a whoop of joy she heaped her plate with eel and black bread and moved away.

  I put a selection of food onto two plates and, balancing them carefully, moved off through the crowd. Enough space had been cleared in the centre of the floor for a dozen or more people to dance, but they had to hug really close. Berliners give themselves wholeheartedly to everything they do: Berlin opera and concert audiences cheer, boo, jeer or applaud with a mad tenacity unknown elsewhere. And so it was with parties; they sang, they danced, they gobbled and guzzled, hugging, arguing and laughing as if this party were the final expression of everything they’d ever lived for.

  A very handsome young black man, dressed in the shiny silk shorts and brightly coloured singlet of a boxer – and with gloves suspended from his neck in case anyone missed the point – was talking to Zena Volkmann, his hostess, while both were picking at one plate of food.

  Zena Volkmann was wearing glittering gold pants and a close-fitting black shirt upon which a heavy gold necklace and a gold flower brooch showed to good effect, as did her figure. Her face was still tanned dark from her recent trip to Mexico and her jet-b
lack hair was loose and long enough to fall over her shoulders. She saw me and waved a fork.

  ‘Hello, Zena,’ I said. ‘Where’s Werner?’

  ‘I sent him to borrow ice from the people downstairs,’ she answered. And immediately turned back to her companion, saying, ‘Go on with what you were saying.’

  I saw other people I knew. In the corner there was Axel Mauser who’d been at school with me and Werner. He was wearing a beautifully tailored white-silk jacket with black pants, bow tie and frilly shirt. He was talking to a woman in a silver sheath dress and waving his hands as he always did when telling a story. ‘Tante Lisl’s here,’ I told him as I went past. ‘She’d love you to say hello, Axel.’