Visibility

by Boris Starling

  The air around him was thick and resistant, as though full of mushed-up bread. It seemed to be setting like glue into a strange, viscous stiffness. Fear snatched at him, a mild gnawing below his diaphragm which quickly escalated into a swarming, crawling beast.

  Herbert thought of the moment when one slipped and the earth rushed up to meet one, and realized that that was how he felt, but a sensation that usually lasted a fraction of a second persisted interminably, as if he were anticipating a terror beyond dread but never receiving the release of actually experiencing it.

  He tried to run, but within moments his lungs were burning from all the filth in the air, and he had all but turned his ankle on a sharp piece of curb.

  He stopped. It was below zero, and he was sweating heavily.

  At that very moment, Hannah’s voice came to him softly through the fog, calling in a lilting song as though he were a sailor and she a Siren.

  Herbert marveled at the power of his imagination.

  Then, with a start, he realized that the voice was becoming louder.

  She was coming toward him. No; he was walking toward her.

  And there she was, standing by her front door, her hand outstretched for his and her lips fluttering in a smile.

  “I knew you would come back,” she said.

  He had walked, unknowingly, in a vast circle. It was what people did when they were lost, Hannah said; something to do with gyroscopy and homing instinct. When the Hungarians had left—they didn’t live there, after all, did they?—they had told her how thick the fog was, and so she had waited for his return.

  “But how did you know it was me?” Herbert asked.

  “Your scent. And your footsteps.”

  “My scent? I’m not an animal.”

  “Everyone smell different.”

  “Well, I can’t smell anything through all the chemicals in the air, and I certainly couldn’t hear anything. You must have amazing senses.”

  “Not at all. I use them more than you, I believe. Blind people hear better? It’s just a myth. Many myth concerning blind people.”

  “What are the others?”

  “A hundred myth. Let’s see … Oh, yes. Blind people, their spirit is more pure. Blindness makes us saints.” Hannah laughed. “Complete lie.”

  She found Herbert blankets and a pillow, and he lay down on the sofa. When she went through into her bedroom, she left the door ajar. But before Herbert could decide what, if anything, she had meant by that, he heard the unmistakable sounds of someone going to sleep: a rustling of bed linen as she found a comfortable position, a couple of rapid snorts, and then a long, lazy rhythm of slow breathing.

  Hannah was asleep in minutes. Herbert lay awake in the darkness for hours.

  December 6, 1952

  SATURDAY

  The radio was already on when Herbert woke, giving him the fleeting sensation of being at home. The sight of Hannah preparing coffee more than erased the slight dislocation he felt when he remembered where he was. Even in this prosaic, workaday aspect of her being, hair disheveled and with the sleeves of her dressing gown rolled up as she did last night’s dishes, she almost frightened him with her beauty.

  He watched her until to have continued doing so would have felt uncomfortable.

  Every football match in London had been canceled, the newscaster said. The BBC schedule itself was having to be revised because artists and MCs were unable to get to the studios.

  Shipping in the Thames was at a standstill for a second day; quarter of a million tons of cargo sitting idle, and the owners paying by the hour in terms of maintenance, wages, and loss of earnings.

  The airports at Heathrow, Northolt, and Bovington had also suspended operations.

  Trains were running late, ones from the West Country by as much as two hours.

  “Sleep good?” Hannah said, handing Herbert a cup of coffee.

  “Yes,” he lied, feeling the steam from the cup tickle his lips. He felt absurdly, postcoitally awkward; doubly so because there had, of course, been no coitus in the first place. How did one behave when one woke up in the flat of a woman of whose existence one had been ignorant just twenty-four hours before?

  “Could I take a bath, please?” Herbert said. The fog seemed to have settled on him during the night; when he blew his nose, the mucus came out black.

  “Of course. Just let me finish there first.”

  She left the door open as she cleaned her teeth, putting the top of her toothpaste tube carefully down on the flat part of the basin so that it would not roll away. When she applied lipstick, she did so with her left index finger directly above the middle of her upper lip. She parted her hair by running the same finger up from the bridge of her nose to her crown, so she knew where center was.

  She did all this fast and with flawless accuracy.

  “All yours,” she said.

  It was only when Herbert was in the bath, the taps spitting a mixture of scalding and freezing water around his legs, that he saw there was no soap.

  He stepped out of the shower and looked for a bar on the basin, then in the drawers of the bathroom cabinet. He could find none.

  Wrapping a towel round his waist—some vague sense of propriety stopped him from leaving the bathroom naked—he opened the door.

  Hannah was not in the bedroom.

  Herbert saw that her clothes drawers were arranged with meticulous care. Some were labeled in Braille and others had embroidered knots hanging from the handles, so that she would know which type of garments they held.

  He found her squatting by the fireplace, feeling with now blackened hands round the pile of coal in there. Her touch was sufficiently lingering to ensure that the stack was secure, but fleeting enough to avoid getting burned by the residual heat.

  “I can’t find the soap,” Herbert said.

  Hannah paused before answering. “No surprise. I have none.”

  If he had been more awake, the tone of her voice would probably have warned him off; but it was early and he was slow. “Why ever not?”

  Hannah turned toward Herbert and looked at him in abject, wordless despair; at last without an answer, bereft of the words in her language or anyone else’s.

  Herbert could hardly get out of Hannah’s flat fast enough after that, and with every fumbling attempt to fasten his trousers or knot his tie, he cursed his tactless stupidity.

  In a single, unconsidered sentence, he had surely undone every special thing that had happened last night. He had wanted to hold those hours forever, Hannah and him, a little bubbleskin outside of time.

  A burst balloon, more like.

  It was quarter past seven, and even at this time on a Saturday morning, in a fog so thick as to more than halfway resemble the pea soup of renown, Soho was fairly thrumming with life.

  Two gentle old ladies busied themselves with the Welsh dairy at the bottom of Frith Street; a Frenchman was buying croissants from Madame Valerie’s; soon the dirty bookshops would be wrapping customers’ purchases in plain brown paper. Italians shouted over thick sludges of black coffee at Café Torino’s on the corner where Dean Street met Old Compton; and at Richard’s on Brewer Street, blocks of ice kept Mediterranean squid and sardines fresh.

  It was the spirit of the Blitz reincarnated, Herbert thought. Londoners would not let something as mundane as a fog get them down, and for a moment he felt inordinately proud to be a resident of this city which he could love and hate pretty much in the same moment.

  Herbert found his way home as much by luck as by judgment, and ran into Stella outside his front door.

  “The wanderer returns, eh?” she laughed.

  “I’ve been taking your advice, Stella,” he said.

  “Have you? Have you, now? Good lad.” She clapped him on the shoulder, and he smelled the sweetness of fermenting alcohol on her breath. “Anything to tell me about?”

  “Maybe later.”

  She made a moue that, though exaggerated, was only half in jest. “Holding out on Aunti
e Stella?”

  “Not at all. I just haven’t got far enough to have anything specific to report.”

  It sounded clumsy, but maybe that was what convinced her of its veracity. “Good for you,” she said, with a throaty cackle. “Good night, Herbert. I’m off to bed.”

  He wondered whether she had been waiting up for him. If she had, it would not have been from the purest of motives, that was for sure. Stella’s heart was by no means gold, and Herbert liked her all the more for it. She had seen too much of life’s seedier side to be a saint. Her determination was altogether simpler; to make the best of her situation, and retain a shred of decency while doing it.

  Inside his flat, Herbert had a bath deep enough to wash away not only the smog but also the detritus that mornings could bring; things often seemed worse first thing, and the more he thought about how unique and unexpected last night had been, the longer the fall became.

  Hannah had gone out of her way to find Stensness’ overcoat, and to feed Herbert, and to let him confide in her. And what had he done for her in return? Put his foot in it about the soap, that was what; gone and reminded her of the darkest time of her life.

  He had seen with his own eyes, while in Belsen, the commodities made in the extermination camps—the lampshades and book bindings, and the more prosaic, too.

  Brilliant, Herbert. Sheer genius.

  When he was out of the bath, dry, and dressed, he rang the Yard. This time, it was Connolly who answered the phone.

  “What a dreadful day, Smith,” Connolly said, when Herbert had identified himself. “I wonder whether this fog isn’t the wrath of God, or something like that.”

  “Any messages for me?” Herbert asked, as much to cut Connolly off as anything else. Connolly could tumble into melancholy at the drop of a hat, and was too deep a thinker for a member of the Murder Squad.

  Herbert saw a lot of himself in Connolly, truth be told.

  “Tyce left something for you,” Connolly said. “He tried to ring you at home last night, but you weren’t there.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” Herbert said, sidestepping the implicit question. “What did Tyce say?”

  “Hold on.” Herbert heard rustling as Connolly hunted through papers. “Here we are. He said if you haven’t got anything out of the Russian by tonight, you’re to bring him in, and that’s an order.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No. But he means it.”

  “I’m sure he does.”

  Herbert hung up, and then, since he was thinking about the case—when had he not, apart from the time he had spent with Hannah?—he took out the Times article about the Coronation, and puzzled once more over the handwritten code.

  XXX CCD GVD RCC DPA XXX CDK S.

  He had been thinking in crossword clues, where every answer was a trick of the language, a clever piece of wordplay.

  But what if this code had little or nothing to do with English?

  He looked at it again, without trying to impose words over the top.

  Still nothing.

  He was stumbling over the threefold divisions, he realized.

  So he took them out.

  XXXCCDGVDRCCDPAXXXCDKS

  Too many Xs running together. They made the whole thing seem lopsided.

  More to keep his brain turning over than anything more purposeful, he reversed the whole lot.

  SKDCXXXAPDCCRDVGDCCXXX.

  And just like that, the answer hit him.

  Well, one part hit him, anyway; four letters near the end. RDVG.

  Richard de Vere Green.

  It was too unlikely to be a coincidence.

  If there was a Richard de Vere Green, there might be an AK, Alexander Kazantsev.

  No AK. But an SK, near the end.

  Russians were forever shortening names, Herbert remembered; nine out of ten men were known to their friends by their diminutive. What was Alexander shortened to?

  Sasha.

  SK: Sasha Kazantsev.

  Herbert put in his own spaces now. SKDCXXX. APDCC. RDVGDCCXXX.

  Grammar school had given him a classical education, so he had no problem recognizing what the strings of letters after the initials meant. Roman numerals.

  SK, 630. AP, 700. RDVG, 730.

  Herbert remembered that Kazantsev’s rendezvous with Stensness had been scheduled for six thirty. The first of three, Herbert now saw, with AP, whoever he was, slotted in at seven. And de Vere Green at seven thirty.

  De Vere Green had told Herbert that Stensness and he had arranged no meeting. De Vere Green had lied; here was the evidence, in black and white.

  It had been prearranged, that was for sure. Stensness could not have had time to return home between leaving the conference and going on to Kensington Gardens, which in turn meant that the latest he could have placed this in the Cholmeley Crescent cistern was on Thursday morning, before he left home for the conference, which in turn meant either that he had organized the meetings by then—in which case Kazantsev was lying about only having met him at the conference—or, at the very least, that he had known he would see the three men involved at the conference to inform them of their appointments.

  Which meant that AP would almost certainly have been at the conference too.

  Herbert opened the list of delegates, scanned rapidly through, and there he was, the only AP on the list—Ambrose Papworth, Embassy of the United States of America.

  Or more precisely, as Herbert knew from his days at Five, a ranking CIA officer under embassy cover.

  Papworth had a tanned, well-fed face bursting with vitality, eyes of cornflower blue, teeth which flashed white when he spoke, and a thatch of blond hair. If Herbert had not known better, he would have wagered the house on Papworth not having been in London long; but Papworth had been in London for three or four years, of that Herbert was sure.

  “Been away?” Herbert asked.

  “California,” Papworth replied, with a smile that spoke volumes for the charms of the Golden State.

  The metal inserts on the heels of Papworth’s shoes clicked loudly as he led Herbert through the marbled corridors of the embassy, an elegant town house on the north side of Grosvenor Square. Not just shoes, Herbert saw; Church’s brogues, immaculate, the best a man could buy. Papworth was evidently one of those foreigners who, in certain areas, liked to be more British than the British.

  “Man, you Brits sure know how to put on a fog,” Papworth said. “That’s a serious goddamn mist you got out there. Could hardly find my way in this morning, so I guess it’s lucky you caught me here. Place is normally deserted weekends. That’s why I like to come in; too damn cramped in the week. Can’t wait till we move.”

  A vast site on the west side of the square had been earmarked for a new embassy, Herbert remembered. It would be many times the size of the existing one, and doubtless as ugly as it was sizeable.

  Papworth ushered Herbert into a drawing room, all buttoned leather sofas and open fires. “Can I have someone get you something?” he asked. “Coffee? Tea?”

  Herbert shook his head. “Thank you, no.”

  Have someone get you something, Papworth had said; he had not offered himself, as most people would have, even if someone more menial had actually been doing the bringing.

  Elkington had rung just as Herbert was leaving the house, having persuaded New Scotland Yard to disclose Herbert’s home number, and had begged to be part of whatever Herbert was doing today.

  Herbert had refused. The disappointment in Elkington’s voice had cut him unexpectedly deep, but he knew it was the right thing to do. The waters of the case were becoming murkier, and the last thing he wanted was to have to watch out for someone else. Elkington had demurred, and Herbert had cut him off.

  Now Herbert sat, and Papworth spread his hands wide; the gesture, Herbert thought, of a man keen to show he had nothing to hide. “Shoot.”

  “A man named Max Stensness was drowned in the Long Water on Thursday.”

  Papworth furrowed his brow. “Max S
tensness?” He pulled the name into a singsong. “Max Stens-ness?” And then: “Gee, I remember. I met him at a conference on—Thursday, you said? Yeah, on that very day.”

  At last, Herbert thought; someone who was up front about where they had been and who they had met, someone who wasn’t going to play silly buggers.

  “That’s terrible,” Papworth added.

  “That would have been the biochemical conference at the Festival Hall?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Looking after Professor Pauling.”

  It took Herbert a moment to place the name; L. C. Pauling, on the front of the pamphlet Rosalind had given him.

  “The honorary chairman?”

  “And the keynote speaker. Except he didn’t speak, in the end. He contracted food poisoning the night before and was laid flat out for a day and a half. Probably some divine retribution for his pinko leanings.”

  Like many things said half in jest, the last line gave away more of Papworth’s feelings than he might have wanted.

  “You don’t approve of Pauling’s politics?” Herbert asked.

  Papworth sighed. “Herbert, I’ll level with you. When I say that I’m here to look after Professor Pauling, that’s a slight euphemism. The job is more like babysitting: keeping an eye on him, making sure he doesn’t get into trouble, or attract the wrong sort of attention. That’s why I had to go to California—to collect him. He’s a professor at Caltech, the Californian Institute of Technology. When it’s over I’m going to deliver him all the way home, too. How much do you know about him?”

  “Not much.”

  “OK. As a person, he’s perfectly pleasant, though he can be a bit awkward—comes with the territory, absent-minded scientist, mind on higher things, all that. As a scientist, he’s awesome. Awesome. Totally focused. He was once shown a picture of a beautiful woman, completely naked, standing on a large rock in the middle of a rushing mountain stream. Pauling peers intently at the photograph for a few seconds and then exclaims: ‘Basalt!’”