London Match

by Len Deighton

  ‘We need a break,’ said Bret. He’d put a drink in my hand and then devoted a lot of time to getting a second log burning in the fireplace. I crouched over it. I was cold.

  ‘Yes, we need a rise in the price of beer or a bus drivers’ strike to grab the headlines,’ I said. ‘But don’t worry; a small explosion in the back streets of Cambridge isn’t exactly front-page stuff, Bret.’

  Bret pulled a little wheeled trolley over to the fire. On it there was a bottle of single-malt whisky that he’d brought out of the cupboard for me and a full jug of iced water. He sat on the fender seat and warmed his hands. The curtains were closed now, but I could hear the rain still beating on the glass, as it had been not many hours before when I’d sat here with Ted Riley, listening to Bret explaining how easy it was all going to be. ‘A booby trap,’ said Bret. ‘What bastards!’

  ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions,’ I said. I sat on the other side of the fender. I don’t like perching on fender seats; it was like trying to get warm on a barbecue – you cooked one side and froze the other. ‘Maybe it wasn’t intended to kill.’

  ‘You said it was a booby trap,’ said Bret.

  ‘It was a slip of the tongue.’

  ‘So what was it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It might have been no more than a device to destroy the secret papers. But a heavy-steel filing cabinet makes it into a bomb.’

  ‘They put a lot of explosive into it. Why not use an incendiary device?’ asked Bret.

  ‘We had an explosion like it in Berlin back in the old days. They’d only used a small charge, but the cabinet had some special fireproofing liner. When it went, it blew the side of the building out. It was worse than this one.’

  Why is he bugging me about all these details? I thought. Who cares about how big the explosive charge was? Ted Riley was dead.

  ‘There’s no chance that…’

  ‘No chance at all. Two dead. You said the wire services had the story.’

  ‘They get it wrong sometimes,’ said Bret. ‘Will they be identified?’

  ‘I didn’t go in and look around,’ I said.

  ‘Sure, sure,’ said Bret. ‘Thank Christ it wasn’t you.’

  ‘Riley’s an old-timer. He emptied his pockets and his clothes had no laundry marks. He made me check it with him. The other man I don’t know about.’

  ‘The locksmith came from Duisburg. It was a German make. He was the expert on that sort of safe.’

  ‘They’d changed the inside of the lock,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ said Bret. He drank some of his tonic water.

  ‘How could you know unless you had a monitor on the radio?’

  Bret smiled. ‘I had someone monitoring the radio. There’s no secret about that.’

  ‘Then why ask me the questions?’

  ‘The old man is going to ask me a lot of questions and I want to know the answers. And I don’t want to read the transcript to him; he can do that for himself. I need to hear what you’ve got to say.’

  ‘It’s simple enough,’ I said. ‘Stinnes told the interrogator that there was some good stuff in that office. You sent Ted Riley in to get it. The filing cabinet was wired to destroy the evidence – bang. What difficult questions can the D-G ask, except why?’

  ‘I don’t blame you for feeling bitter,’ said Bret. ‘Ted Riley was a friend of your father, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Ted Riley was good at his job, Bret. He had the instinct for it. But the poor sod spent his life checking identity cards and making sure the burglar alarms were in working order. Just for one little lapse.’

  ‘He wasn’t material for London Central, if that’s what you are suggesting.’

  ‘Wasn’t he? Who do you have to know to be material for London Central?’ I said. ‘Jesus, Bret, Ted Riley had more intelligence skills in his little finger than…’

  ‘Than I have in my whole body? Or was it going to be Dicky? Or maybe the D-G?’

  ‘Can I have another drink?’

  ‘You won’t bring Ted Riley back to life by pouring that stuff down your throat,’ said Bret. But he reached for the bottle of Glenlivet and uncapped it before handing it to me. I poured a big one for myself. I didn’t offer Bret any; he was quite content with his tonic water.

  ‘I had a talk with Ted Riley last night,’ I said. I stopped. The red lights came on in my skull. Everything warned me to be cautious.

  ‘That must have been interesting,’ said Bret, keeping his voice just level enough for me not to get up and bust him in the nose.

  ‘Ted told me that Stinnes is tuned to Moscow every morning at eight-thirty. Ted thought he was getting his instructions from them. Maybe one of the instructions they gave him was to tell us about the Cambridge cell and get Ted Riley blown into little pieces.’

  ‘Why are you telling me what Riley thought? Riley was just a security man. I don’t need the opinions of security men when the interrogator is doing so well.’

  ‘So why didn’t you send the goddamned interrogator to do the break-in last night?’

  Bret held up a hand. ‘Ah, now I’m reading you loud and clear. You’re trying to link the two events. Riley – despite the interrogator’s satisfaction – sees through Stinnes and his misinformation scheme. So Riley has to be removed by a Kremlin-planned bomb. Is that what you’re trying to sell me?’

  ‘Something along those lines,’ I said.

  Bret sighed. ‘You were the one who’s been hyping Stinnes as if he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Now your friend is killed and everything goes into reverse. Stinnes is the villain. And since Stinnes is virtually under house arrest, Moscow has to be the heavy. You really try my patience at times, Bernard.’

  ‘It fits,’ I said.

  ‘So do a million other explanations. First you tell me the bomb was just to destroy the paperwork. Now you want it to be a trap to kill Riley. Make up your mind.’

  ‘Let’s not play with words, Bret. The important question is whether Stinnes is playing a double game.’

  ‘Forget it,’ said Bret.

  ‘I’m not going to forget it, Bret,’ I told him. ‘I’m going to pursue it.’

  ‘You landed Erich Stinnes for us. Everyone says that without you he wouldn’t have come across to us.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s true,’ I said.

  ‘Never mind the modest disclaimers. You got him and everyone gives you the credit for that. Don’t start going around the office telling everyone they’ve got an active KGB agent in position.’

  ‘We’ll have to take away the shortwave radio,’ I said. ‘But that will warn him that we’re on to him.’

  ‘Slow down, Bernard. Slow right down. If you’re blaming yourself for Ted Riley’s death because you agreed to letting Stinnes have the radio, forget it.’

  ‘I can’t forget it. It was my suggestion.’

  ‘Even if Stinnes is still active, and even if tonight’s fiasco was the result of something arranged between him and Moscow, the radio can’t have played a big part in it.’

  I drank some of the whisky. I was calmer now; the drink had helped. I resolved not to fight with Bret to the point where I flounced out and slammed the door, because I didn’t feel I was capable of driving back to London.

  When I didn’t reply, Bret spoke again. ‘He couldn’t send any messages back to them. Even if by some miracle he smuggled a letter out and posted it, there’d be no time for it to get there and be acted upon. What can they tell him that’s worth knowing?’

  ‘Not much, I suppose.’

  ‘If there’s any conspiracy, it was all arranged before we got him, before he flew out of Mexico City. The use of that radio means nothing.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ I said.

  ‘There’s a spare bedroom upstairs, Bernard. Have a sleep; you look all in. We’ll talk again over breakfast.’

  What he said about the radio made sense and I felt a bit better about it. But I noted the way he was going to bat for Stinnes. Was that because Bret w
as a KGB agent? Or simply because he saw in Stinnes a way of regaining a powerful position in London Central? Or both?

  16

  As always lately, the D-G was represented by the egregious Morgan. It was a curious fact that although Morgan couldn’t always spare time to attend those meetings at which the more banal aspects of departmental administration were discussed, he could always find time to represent the D-G at these Operations discussions. I had always been opposed to the way the top-floor bureaucrats gate-crashed such meetings just to make themselves feel a part of the Operations side, and I particularly objected to pen pushers like Morgan listening in and even offering comments.

  We were in Bret Rensselaer’s room. Bret was sitting behind his glass-topped desk playing with his pens and pencils. Morgan was standing by the wall studying The Crucifixion, a tiny Dürer engraving that Bret had recently inherited from some rich relative. It was the only picture in the room and I doubt if it would have got there if it hadn’t fitted in with Bret’s black-and-white scheme. Morgan’s pose suggested indifference, if not boredom, but his ears were quivering as he listened for every nuance of what was being said.

  ‘This is a time to keep our heads down,’ said Dicky. He was wearing his faded jeans and open-necked checked shirt and was sprawled on Bret’s black-leather chesterfield, while Frank Harrington was sitting hunched up at the other end of it. ‘We’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest and Five will be swarming all over us if they think we’re doing any sort of follow-up operation.’

  Dicky, of course, had been left out of the fiasco in which Ted Riley was killed and he wasn’t happy at the way he’d been bypassed, but Dicky was not a man to hold grudges, he’d told me that a million times. He’d be content to watch Bret Rensselaer crash full length to the floor and bleed to death, but it wouldn’t be Dicky who put his dagger in. Dicky was no Brutus; this was a drama in which Dicky would be content with a non-speaking role. But now that Rensselaer wanted to organize a follow-up operation and possibly salvage some measure of success out of the mess, Dicky found his voice. ‘I’m against it,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a perfect opportunity,’ said Bret. ‘They’ve lost their records. It would be natural for Moscow to make contact.’ He rearranged the pens, pencils, paper clips, and the big glass paperweight like a miser counting his wealth.

  ‘Is this what Stinnes is saying?’ I asked.

  Bret looked at me and then at the others. ‘I should have told you…’ he said. ‘Bernard has suddenly decided that Stinnes is here to blow a hole in all of us.’ He smiled, but the smile wasn’t big enough to completely contradict this contention. He left that to me.

  I was forced to modify that wild claim just as Bret knew I would be. ‘I didn’t exactly say that, Bret,’ I said. I was sitting on the hard folding chair. I always seemed to be sitting on hard folding chairs; it was a mark of my low status.

  ‘Then what?’ said Frank Harrington. He folded his arms and narrowed his shoulders as if to make himself even smaller.

  ‘I’m not happy with any of it,’ I said. I felt like telling them that I had enough evidence to support the idea that Bret should be put straight into one of the Berwick House hard-rooms pending an interior enquiry. But in the present circumstances any attempt to describe my reasoning, and my evidence, could only result in me being put there instead. ‘It’s just a feeling,’ I said lamely.

  ‘So what’s your plan?’ said Frank, looking at Bret.

  ‘Stinnes says that a courier takes cash to pay the network. We know the KGB rendezvous procedure. We’ll contact the network and I’ll take them some money.’

  ‘Money? Who’ll sign the chit for it?’ said Dicky, suddenly sitting up and taking notice. Dicky could be very protective about German-desk funds being spent by anyone other than himself.

  ‘It will come from Central Funding,’ said Bret, who was ready for that one.

  ‘It can’t come direct from Central Funding,’ said Morgan. ‘It must have the appropriate signature.’ He meant Dicky, of course, and technically he was right.

  Bret wiggled his feet a little – his shoes were visible through the glass-topped desk – and ignored him. To the rest of us he said, ‘There’s sure to have been cash and valuables lost in the explosion. And even if there wasn’t, they’ll want dough to cover their extra expenses. It’s a perfect chance to crack them wide open.’

  ‘It sounds like bloody madness to me,’ said Morgan, angry at getting the cold shoulder.

  ‘Do we know any of them?’ said Frank vaguely.

  Bret had been saving this one, of course, and Frank had fed him just the right cue. ‘Damn right we do! We know three of them in considerable detail; one is on the computer. I had a long session with Stinnes yesterday and I know exactly how it should be done.’

  Frank still had his arms folded. I realized that he was fighting the temptation to get out his pipe and tobacco; Frank found thinking difficult without the pipe in his hand, but the last time he’d smoked his pungent Balkan Sobranie here, Bret had asked him to put it out. Frank said, ‘You’re not thinking of trying this yourself, are you, Bret?’ He kept his voice level and friendly, but it was impossible to miss the note of incredulity and Bret didn’t like it.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Bret.

  ‘How can you be sure that Bernard’s wrong?’ said Frank. ‘How can you be sure that Stinnes didn’t send your two men into that booby trap? And how can you be sure he hasn’t got the same kind of thing planned for you?’

  ‘Because I’m taking Stinnes with me,’ said Bret.

  There was a silence broken only by the sound of the D-G’s black Labrador sniffing and scratching at the door. It wanted to get in to Morgan, who took it for walks.

  ‘Whose idea was that?’ said Dicky. There was a faint note of admiration and envy there. Like so many of the armchair agents up here on the top floor, Dicky was always saying how much he’d like to do some sort of operational job, although, like all the rest of them until now, he’d never done anything about it.

  ‘Mine,’ said Bret. ‘It was my idea. Stinnes was doubtful, but my American accent will give me the cover I need. With Stinnes alongside me to give all the usual guarantees they won’t possibly suspect me as an agent working for British security.’

  I looked at him. It was a good argument. Whatever Bret Rensselaer looked like, it was not one of the ill-groomed spook hunters from MI5, and certainly not one of the Special Branch heavy-glove mob they took along to make their arrests legal.

  ‘It might work,’ said Frank Harrington, without putting his heart and soul into it, ‘providing Moscow haven’t put out an alert for Stinnes.’ He looked at me.

  ‘Nothing so far,’ I said.

  Dicky shifted his weight and nodded. Then he ran his fingers back through his dry curly hair and smiled nervously. I don’t know what Dicky was thinking except that anything that kept Bret busy was also keeping him off Dicky’s back.

  Only Morgan was upset at the idea. He scowled and said, ‘There’s no chance of the D-G approving this one. Hell, Bret, the phone is still red hot with Five enquiring about the explosion.’ The dog, its scent of Morgan supplemented by the sound of Morgan’s voice, renewed its scratching at the door. Morgan ignored it.

  ‘You should never have told them,’ said Dicky, who could always be relied upon for excellent advice long after it was any use.

  But Bret was desperate. He knew his career was at stake. He needed a scalp, and breaking this network was the only scalp on offer. ‘I don’t need any special permission. I’m going ahead anyway.’

  ‘I’d not advise that, Bret,’ said Morgan. He had both hands in his trouser pockets, and now he slowly walked across the room, staring reflectively at the toes of his shoes.

  Bret resented the way in which Morgan used his position as the D-G’s hatchet man to address all senior staff by their first name. It wasn’t just the use of the first name, but the casual and overfamiliar way in which Morgan spoke that was so annoying. The Welsh accent could be a deli
ght for reciting poetry, but it was an accent that could make even the friendliest greeting sound like a jeer. Bret said, ‘I had the backing of the old man for breaking into the law office. This is all part of that same job.’

  Morgan swung around and smiled. He had good teeth, and when he smiled he displayed them like someone about to brush them for a dental hygiene demonstration. Or someone about to bite. ‘And I say it isn’t,’ he said.

  There was only one way to settle it and Bret knew it. After a little give and take and a phone call, we all trooped down the corridor and into the Director-General’s office. He was not very keen to see us, but Bret gently insisted.

  The old man’s office was in its usual muddle, though some of the clutter had been tidied away. Despite the improvement we all had to stand, for there were books on the chairs and more piled on the floor.

  Sir Henry Clevemore, the Director-General, was seated behind a small desk near the window. There wasn’t much working space, for its top was occupied by photos of his family, including grown-up children with their offspring, and a vase of cut flowers. The D-G murmured his greetings to all of us in turn and then he listened solemnly to Bret: He didn’t invite Morgan to comment although Morgan was bouncing up and down on his toes, as he often did when agitated.

  Bret took it very slowly. That was the best way with the D-G, if not to say the only way; he only understood when you explained everything very slowly. And if you could go on long enough you could wear him down until he agreed with whatever the request was, just to get rid of you. In all fairness, the old man needed a guardian like Morgan, but he didn’t deserve Morgan. No one did.

  It was while Bret was in full flow that a man came in through the door with a bundle of cloth under his arm. The D-G stood up, solemnly removed his jacket, and gave it to the newcomer who hung it on a hanger and put it into the wardrobe that was built into one wall.