Faith

by Len Deighton

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

  ‘You’re not fine. Several people have remarked that you are not looking well.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t discuss my apparent state of health with all and sundry.’

  ‘With your friends,’ she said. There was still a measure of teasing.

  ‘I’ve never felt better,’ I said. ‘How would you like me to start an inquiry into how you spend your weekends?’

  ‘I told you what I was going to do. I was on a car rally in Shropshire. We came ninth out of fifty-three cars.’

  ‘Why weren’t you first? Have trouble starting?’

  ‘That’s a mean gibe, Bernard. I’m not the driver; I’m the navigator.’

  ‘I forgot.’

  ‘The competition’s fierce. Some of the teams do almost nothing other than rallies; some of them were professionals. I think we did fine.’

  ‘You did, Gloria. I was only kidding.’

  ‘You’ve got to have a good driver; I just sit there and shout directions.’ We were on Westminster Bridge going over the Thames now. ‘Where are you heading?’

  ‘I’m meeting someone in that safe house at Notting Hill Gate.’

  ‘Is there a safe house there?’

  ‘We were there. Don’t you remember that night? The radio was on and we danced together.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t remember the date. A nice apartment up at the top of the building. There’s a view right across London. It was moonlight. You said how wonderful it would be to live in a penthouse like that.’

  ‘Do you know, Bernard, I think I must be getting prematurely senile or something. I can’t remember anything these days. My mother says I should take one of these memory courses that she sees advertised in her kitchen and bathroom magazines. Do you think they do any good?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t go bitter and twisted, Bernard. I can’t help it if I can’t remember going to a safe house in Notting Hill with you.’ She jammed her foot hard on the gas pedal and the engine roared as we streaked down the wrong side of the road while she was tapping the clock to see if it was still working. ‘Is that the time? I have to just call in to a garage in Bayswater, Bernard. Two minutes. Would that make you awfully late?’

  ‘That’s okay.’ I had been looking out for a cab, but all the ones I’d seen were either carrying passengers or too far away to intercept. In the circumstances, accepting Gloria’s offer seemed like the only way to reach my appointment on time.

  ‘I have to collect the rally maps for next week. We’re going to drive the route and do a reconnaissance before the rally.’ She turned off Bayswater Road and, after going round a leafy square, found a narrow arched entrance. It gave on to a street of crippled little two-storey dwellings that had once been coach houses for the grand mansions they backed on to. The street was dark, its cobbled surface lit only by a couple of low-powered orange-coloured street lights. She pulled up in front of one of a row of lock-up garages. Discreet painted signs and brass plates indicated that the coach houses now housed repair and maintenance specialists for drivers of high-powered cars or fussy owners of ordinary ones. ‘Come in if you want.’

  Gloria got out and, using a key she took from her handbag, unlocked a brass padlock to enter one of the garages through a wicket-door that was part of a larger one.

  Ducking my head I followed her through the door and waited until she had switched the lights on. Half a dozen blue fluorescent tubes pinged into life to reveal the sloping back of a turbo-engined Saab 900 of indeterminate age, painted with all the numbers and adverts that rally cars wear. On the far side of the garage stood a work bench and metal-working lathe. On the wall there were spanners, wrenches, saws and other tools. Shelving held tins of various spare parts, labelled and arrayed with commendable order across the width of the wall. A locker was decorated with a coloured photo of a shapely oiled nude hugging a spark-plug; the sort of calendar without which no workshop is complete. Impaled on the nail from which the calendar was suspended there was a sheet of oil-stained paper and scrawled upon it: ‘Gloria darling, maps in kitchen. Take one set and the application form. I will deal with the insurance queries – It will be a tough one – Love P.’ Gloria took the message and folded it carefully before throwing it into the waste-bin. She smiled at me.

  ‘Whose workshop is this?’

  ‘My driver owns the place. A really good fitter works here full-time. He pays his rent by fixing the car without charge.’

  ‘And this Saab belongs to your driver?’

  ‘It’s getting old,’ she said. ‘In summer the Porsches can make rings around us, but in winter a Saab stands a good chance of winning.’

  ‘It’s serious, this rally business, is it?’

  She smiled. ‘I’m not giving up the day job, if that’s what you mean. Wow!’ she said as she looked at the bench. ‘Look at what he’s doing.’ She switched on a bench light.

  The car’s engine was totally eviscerated; its oily entrails scattered piecemeal along the benches. Pistons, connecting rods, nuts and bolts were arrayed in such a way that they would go back in the same places from which they had come. Mysterious springs and small metal objects had been placed in tin lids and immersed in oily marinades.

  It was a strange old place. Marks on the walls showed where the horse stalls had been fitted, and there was damaged brickwork from which the troughs had been removed. The floor was made from bricks worn smooth, with a gutter going to an ornamental central drain. Everything was almost exactly as it had been when these same premises held a coach and a couple of horses.

  ‘I’ll get the maps. Do you want to see upstairs?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, and followed her up the steep wooden stairs which creaked under our combined weight. These houses were getting on for 150 years old. The kitchen was just big enough to hold an unpainted table, two chairs and a square-shaped ‘butler’s sink’ with a fearsome-looking gas water-heater above it.

  ‘Does your friend live here?’

  ‘Of course not. It’s just store-rooms for engine spares and so on.’ She picked up the maps that were arranged on the table together with a big envelope holding letters and application forms from the rally organizers. ‘Have you got time for a perfectly foul cup of coffee?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘It won’t take a minute,’ said Gloria. As she filled the kettle with water from the gas heater it gave a soft bang and then roared into life with a furnace of blue and orange flames. She reached into the cupboard for an opened tin of thick gooey condensed milk, a jar of powdered coffee and two decorated pottery mugs. Then she sat down and waited for the electric kettle to boil. ‘You didn’t talk to anyone – Silas Gaunt or Dicky or anyone – about what I told you … about Daddy?’ She began spooning the treacle-like milk into the cups.

  ‘Mind your coat,’ I said. ‘Suede coats and condensed milk don’t go well together.’

  ‘Because it all worked out all right.’

  ‘In what way?’ I asked.

  ‘For Daddy. They voted him a prestigious job at the university. He’s leaving in a day or so.’

  ‘Leaving? To go where?’

  ‘Budapest. The university in Budapest. It’s what he’s always wanted, Bernard. He’s so happy.’

  ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘They sent the official letter a month ago. The wrong address. It was returned to them. Luckily one of the Senior Fellows … a man Daddy used to know, decided to phone. They haven’t got used to making international phone calls for things like that. He’ll have a lot of things to adjust to.’

  ‘They phoned?’

  ‘Last night. They tracked him down.’

  ‘That’s wonderful.’

  ‘Just think: they might have simply asked someone else when their letter came back to them undelivered.’

  ‘It’s dentistry?’

  ‘Yes. Research, teaching and so on. He’s part of a programme the Americans are financing. He’ll have
control of his own budget, they said on the phone. Of course it won’t be much of a budget, but that doesn’t matter.’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Not when you think you are all washed up. You should have seen him.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘She’s pretending it’s what she always wanted too. I know she’s a little scared of going back, but she can see how much it means to Daddy.’

  ‘You’ll miss them.’

  ‘It’s not so far away as once it was. And they won’t sell the house here until they’re quite sure.’

  The kettle boiled. Gloria poured hot water on to the milk and coffee powder, and stirred the mixture furiously before passing one mug to me.

  I sniffed at it. ‘It’s delicious,’ I told her.

  ‘Do they still XPD people?’ she said without warning.

  I stiffened. It was one of those taboo questions that I thought everyone at London Central knew better than to ask. Expedient Demise, the deliberate killing of an enemy operative, is an action never officially acknowledged or referred to in spoken word or writing. ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘That all ended many years ago, if it ever happened at all.’

  ‘Is that your way of saying Shut up?’

  ‘What’s worrying you, Gloria?’

  ‘Nothing. Why should you think that anything is worrying me?’

  ‘This business with your father … You don’t seem so pleased about it.’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘I know you too well, Gloria. There’s something on your mind.’

  ‘Did you speak to anyone about Daddy?’

  ‘Yes. Entirely by chance I saw Silas on Saturday evening. I mentioned your father. Perhaps I tackled Silas in a bad mood, because I got no change out of him.’

  ‘Saturday evening?’ she said. Her face stiffened.

  ‘And your father got the phone call on Sunday evening?’

  ‘From the university in Budapest, yes. Just time enough for Silas Gaunt to make the arrangements,’ she said cynically.

  ‘What do you mean? You think there wasn’t any letter that went back to them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘But what’s bothering you?’

  ‘I’m frightened for him, Bernard. If he was in some remote spot in Hungary … It can be desolate there. And they said it would involve travelling and lecturing.’

  ‘You’ve got to tell me what this is really about, Gloria. What are you keeping from me?’

  ‘I know I’m not supposed to use the computer for anything but assigned tasks, but I was worried about Daddy. That day I saw you down there, I brought his file up on the screen and it all looked normal at first: the usual listing of operational files and continuity files and cross-referred “personals” and so on. So then I began looking at all his files, one after the other. It was all in order until I got to an operational reference dated this summer … It had been cleared, Bernard.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So what? Bernard, files are never cleared. This file has been emptied. And the file number has been entered on the list for re-use.’

  ‘Why should that worry you so much?’

  ‘You don’t understand what I’m saying, Bernard. If you worked with those computers in the Data Centre you’d realize that that is unprecedented. And you’d know how much work is involved in wiping the files, and every single cross-referred file too. They’ve even wiped each numbered message referred to in each and every file.’

  ‘If they are wiped, how can you tell? You can’t see them, can you?’

  ‘Because all the reference numbers – file, personals and so on – have been listed for reassigning.’ She sipped some coffee. ‘Let me explain this to you, Bernard. When you open a file, or even send a simple message, the machine provides a number automatically. Automatically; you don’t select it. At present I can see what they’ve been up to, because I can call up the empty files on the screen. I load the file but there is nothing to be seen but a number; the screen is blank, all the back-ups are blank, including the master back-ups in the mainframe. But the worrying thing is the way in which those file numbers are listed for reassigning. One by one the computer will provide those numbers to new documents, and there will be no way of telling that anything has ever been wiped.’

  ‘Okay, I don’t know anything about computers. But doesn’t each file number have a date? These newly assigned file numbers will have dates that are not chronological.’

  ‘That won’t mean anything. Lots of files are opened prematurely. They are dated as from the time that money was allotted, that someone gets permission to start work. No operator ever goes down into the Yellow Submarine trying to trace anything by means of a date; it would be hopeless. Nothing is chronological. No, once those files are reassigned there will be no way to see the join.’

  ‘But how does this concern your father?’

  ‘Three of his operational numbers are wiped.’

  ‘Why are you telling me all this, Gloria?’

  She hesitated and opened one of the maps on the table. ‘You’re not going to report me, are you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Four of your files are wiped too. One of them was an on-going operational file with a Category A prefix. The same reference as one of Daddy’s files, so it was something you and Daddy did together.’

  ‘Except that I’ve never worked with your father.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have told you.’

  ‘Perhaps there is a rational and innocent explanation,’ I said. ‘Maybe they are just weeding the electronic data, the way they do with paperwork. Maybe it’s just an error; there are plenty of those.’

  ‘Forget it, Bernard. Forget I ever said anything to you.’ She stood up and drank her coffee hurriedly.

  ‘Look, Gloria. If what you’ve found out proves there is a plot to kill your father, then wouldn’t it also mean there is a plot to kill me too?’

  The effect of my question was dramatic. ‘Oh, go to hell, Bernard!’ she said, with a flash of that truly terrible self-righteous wrath she could muster. Then she picked up a map from the table and quietly said: ‘Look at this route.’ She spread it across the table. It was one of the large-scale Ordnance Survey maps showing all the contours, footpaths and every last cottage. ‘We’ll drive over the whole route next weekend. Then perhaps do it again the following weekend. Knowing the course is what makes the difference.’

  ‘Will that Saab be put together in time?’

  ‘In my car, silly.’ She got out her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose. ‘I’ll get you to Notting Hill Gate,’ she said, picking up the maps and forms.

  Before I went downstairs I used the bathroom. With its ancient taps, stained bath and cracked linoleum it was as cramped and timeworn as the rest of the little house. But Gloria had left her unmistakable mark here. The mirror was spattered with make-up, there was a long grey smear of mascara in the sink, and half a dozen balls of cotton marked with eye-shadow and rouge. But any last doubt I might have had that this was a habitat Gloria shared was removed by the perfume hanging faintly in the air. What reached so deeply into my memory was the almost comical absurdity of the heavy, spicy and totally unsuitable fragrance that she insisted upon wearing on special occasions – she called it her Arabian Nights perfume.

  ‘Let’s go, Bernard,’ I heard her call from outside the building, and by the time I got down to the cobbled street she was standing with the brass padlock in one hand and the key in the other, waiting to lock up.

  The short drive along Bayswater Road took only a few minutes. We talked banalities until she pulled up at the front door of the apartment block. ‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘You are delivered safe and sound.’ We sat in the car for a moment. I could smell the Arabian Nights perfume now. I wanted to kiss her but I knew I would not.

  ‘Thanks for the lift, Gloria.’

  She looked at the entrance to the apartment block. ‘I told you a lie; I�
�ll never forget that night. We danced. I remember every note of the music. I was only pretending when I said I’d forgotten.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘You’d better be getting along,’ said Gloria. ‘Take care of yourself, Bernard.’ Like a small child, she reached out and slowly ran a finger down the sleeve of my coat. We both watched it moving as if it had a life of its own. I shivered as it was about to touch my wrist, but she lifted it away.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’d better be getting along.’ But neither of us moved. ‘Good luck with the rallying. Good luck to you both.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Samson. That’s very sweet of you.’ She smiled a brief nervous smile and I opened the door and got out. I slammed the door shut and waved goodbye. But she couldn’t have seen me; she was five blocks away by then.

  I’d collected the key to the Notting Hill apartment, so I let myself in. I suppose that someone had tried to decorate the place in a style that was warm and comforting but there was an all-pervading theme of kitsch, from the gilded mirrors in the hall to the electric candle wall-lights and the tassels on the curtains.

  When I went into the drawing-room, Fiona was standing by the window wearing a mink coat. It was a legacy from her sister Tessa. ‘I didn’t see the car arrive,’ she said.

  ‘The car didn’t show up. I got a lift.’

  ‘That was lucky,’ said Fiona. ‘I had to get a cab from Hampstead; I had terrible trouble getting here. Is it still raining?’

  I hung up my raincoat, sank down into an armchair and sighed. Fiona looked at me quizzically. ‘No,’ I said. ‘It stopped raining a long time ago. Where’s Dicky?’

  ‘The meeting is cancelled. Our man couldn’t make it. I hung on for you. I thought you’d have a car.’

  ‘He’s nervous,’ I said. ‘We’re going to lose him.’ The man we had been due to meet was described on the Diplomatic List as a Third Secretary of the East German embassy. But his real job was assistant to the codes and ciphers chief. He was a good catch but he wasn’t landed yet. I’d been in at the previous meeting and I could tell he was having second thoughts.