by Len Deighton
‘Not very good. He’s a dabbler.’
‘Did he join the class after you joined it?’
‘Yes, he’s a newcomer. Never tried to paint or draw before. I’ve been helping him.’
Shit! I tried to smile. ‘Well, let me drink to your health, Daphne,’ I said.
We drank.
‘Does he know what Dicky does for a living?’
‘I told him Dicky works in the Foreign Office.’
‘Good. You can’t be too careful.’ Already I was planning the next move. Would it be possible to get into this situation and maybe neutralize it before telling Dicky? Should I even try?
‘You’d better go back to the drawing-room,’ said Daphne. ‘They’ll wonder what’s happened to you.’
When I got back to the other room, they were all sitting round the fire, watching the gas flames with everyone saying how like burning coal it was. Dicky looked up at me and said: ‘Well, well. Here’s the microwave engineer. Stay and have a drink, old chap. We have to suck up to the workers.’
I smiled and went and sat on the sofa next to Fiona. She was wearing her best black Chanel outfit and the gold Cartier watch her father had given her when she arrived from California. She touched my hand and quietly said: ‘Are you all right, Bernard?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘Just a spook,’ I said.
She smiled.
By that time Bret was saying: ‘The people in Washington have long since abandoned all that telephone garbage. It takes for ever to translate and analyse it and, at the end of the day, what have you got? Junkmail. Know what I mean? It’s all effort and no reward.’
‘So what are the people in Washington concentrating on?’ Dicky asked, with no trace of curiosity in his voice.
Bret said: ‘It’s all top-secret but it’s been going on for years now, so I guess I can tell you. They are buying Soviet weapons technology. I’m talking about hardware: state-of-the-art Soviet electronics, Soviet air defence systems and advanced Soviet weaponry, and Uncle Sam is paying for it in greenbacks.’
‘From Poland?’ I said.
‘Good boy, Bernard. Yes, Poland is the major supplier. But other Warsaw Pact countries are also trading in their weaponry. Helicopters, radar, torpedoes and self-propelled artillery. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being shelled out. But I’m telling you, when they open the crates they see what they are getting for their money. Not a lot of telephoned chit-chat.’ Bret looked at Dicky, waiting for him to start arguing. But when Dicky held his fire, Bret said: ‘When the Pentagon examine that material they figure how they can save billions of dollars. Billions are being saved by not developing weapons we’d never need.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Dicky. ‘Who is getting this money? Crooks?’
‘No one is sure. The payments go through foreign intermediaries. They even send us price lists. The Pentagon experts and scientists go through the lists and select what they want.’
Dicky said: ‘Shipped how? I don’t understand.’
‘Shipped by ship,’ said Bret. ‘By freighters. That’s why Poland is the main supplier: direct access to the sea. Of course it couldn’t happen without top officials in the Polish Defence Ministry giving it the okay. Some CIA studies theorize that the idea comes from the very top of the Warsaw government – General Jaruzelski himself – but we can’t verify that. A lot of this Soviet weaponry is shipped to okay countries – such as Middle East states – and then on to the US. We have established letters of credit in overseas accounts so it all looks really kosher. There’s an agency called Cenzin that handles Poland’s military sales, and the money paid to them has to go to the government. It could be the whole scam is a way of easing the cash crisis in Poland’s economy.’
‘Have you been involved in any of this, Bret?’ I asked.
‘Just on the banking side. Some members of my family could help with the overseas commercial agents, foreign letters of credit and so on.’
‘And now you’re looking for another job?’ said Dicky.
‘Well there’s not much more for me to do on that one. The lines of payment are all in position and working smoothly. And anyway I miss London. You guys just take it for granted, but I have this city deeply in my bones.’
Bret’s little speech had completely pre-empted the pitch that I could see Dicky had been about to make on behalf of his telephone-tapping scheme.
Perhaps Bret could see that too, because he said: ‘Why are we targeting East Germany anyway? Okay, so the country is governed by a lot of crooked bastards. But the Soviet Union is a basket case, dying cell by cell, Hungary has seen the light, Poland is on a life-support machine, and we’re not about to invade Germany to teach them the error of their ways. At least Uncle Sam isn’t; so you Brits are on your own if you have that kind of ambition.’
Dicky said: ‘Maybe the Soviet Union is dying cell by cell. I don’t know, and we get a lot of conflicting reports. But before you get too complacent, I can tell you that no one in the Kremlin has attempted to cut back the money allotted to the Soviet armed services, still less on the money going to the KGB. And the Soviets have their greatest concentration of missiles, long-range bombers, submarines and tanks – all of them armed with nuclear missiles, shells, rockets and bombs – in East Germany. Not in Soviet Russia or Hungary or any of these places where you say communism is on the verge of being defeated. They are all packed into East Germany. And your home town, wherever you say it is, Bret, is targeted by those jokers. Don’t forget that, when you dismiss East Germany as being of no account.’
For a moment Bret was at a loss for words. ‘Okay, Dicky,’ he said, pausing to collect his wits. ‘You’ve made a point and it’s a good one. But is tapping into Russian Army landlines going to tell us what we want to know? And will we hear it soon enough?’
Before Dicky could answer, Daphne came through the door banging a saucepan with a spoon: ‘Come along all of you. Sit down where you like. The food’s ready. I told you it was pot-luck, didn’t I?’
Dicky frowned. He liked his dinner parties to be run on more formal lines. As I later noticed, there were place cards telling guests where to sit but no one sat in their allotted place.
I suppose women are, for the most part, more effective than men. My deep dislike of Dicky meant I could never resist an opportunity to spar with him. But Fiona and Gloria that night wielded rapiers with polished decorum. They made my exchanges with Dicky look like drunken brawls in the mud.
In the impromptu seating that Daphne had provoked I ended up sitting in the centre, opposite Gloria, with Fiona beside me on one side and Daphne on the other. Gloria passed the bread rolls, Fiona declined, saying she was on a diet, and Gloria said what lovely rolls they were and ate two in rapid succession, coating each bite with butter.
The first course was not bulgur wheat, it was smoked salmon, and the main course was roast chicken with baked beans and potatoes in their jackets. There was no mistaking the change of menu; this was Daphne in full rebellion. Normally she would be slaving for hours to prepare one of her dinners. Elaborate recipes from her widely travelled neighbours were re-created using rare ingredients purchased from distant ethnic speciality shops. It was at Daphne’s that I first encountered the Balinese Gado-gado, and but for Daphne, and her neighbours’ travels, I would still not know that Finland had a cuisine, let alone that Kalakukko, a fish pie incorporating spiky bones and heads, was a cherished part of it.
So serving her guests smoked salmon followed by roast chicken was a signal that any husband other than Dicky might have registered with considerable alarm. But Dicky gave no sign of alarm. He ate his salmon with gusto and made carving the chicken into a performance of considerable bravura, if not bravado.
Dicky was obviously rattled by the way that Bret had made his VERDI scheme sound like a side-show, and had done it by extolling the CIA’s skills. It was not easy to counter that without bad-mouthing the Americans, and not eve
n Dicky was stupid enough to try that. But Bret’s dismissal of the scheme that Dicky had set his heart upon was causing considerable distress. Otherwise Dicky would never have held the carving fork aloft and asked Bret if he wanted leg, breast or thigh, and then added: ‘I’ve always had you down as a thigh man, Bret,’ and laughed.
I was watching Bret at the time. His face twitched and he managed a slight smile and said: ‘I’m sure anything you choose will be delicious.’
Even through her alcoholic haze, Daphne could see that Dicky’s noisy schoolboy routine was ill-chosen in the present company. She said: ‘That’s the most stunning dress I’ve ever seen, Gloria,’ and put all her vitality into it.
Gloria’s dress was of thin crêpe de Chine, almost see-through, with a high neck and long sleeves, and printed all over with a leopardskin pattern.
‘It’s lovely,’ agreed Fiona. ‘I almost bought one myself when I was in Oxford Street the other day.’
‘It would suit you perfectly,’ replied Gloria, and waited for a moment before adding: ‘I think I’m far too skinny for it.’
Daphne, sitting on my right, said: ‘You can’t be too skinny,’ and almost knocked over her wineglass, catching it before more than a spoonful of wine hit the tablecloth. ‘Anyway you’re young. You can wear anything when you’re young.’ She dabbed at the spilled wine but only succeeded in spreading it around. Becoming aware that I was watching her, she turned her head to me and beamed.
‘Who wants stuffing?’ said Dicky, who had noticed the wine being spilled. Dicky was angry and letting it show.
No one responded. Gloria took the antique dish with the herb and breadcrumb stuffing mixture from Dicky, delicately spooned a dollop of it on to her chicken and passed it to Bret. Bret passed it on to Daphne without saying anything. ‘Don’t you like it?’ inquired Daphne, in a voice displaying no more than scientific curiosity.
‘No,’ said Bret.
Daphne didn’t want any either. She gave it to me and I took a lot, in an effort to make her happy. ‘Look, Bernard loves it,’ she said.
Dicky had put the chicken carcass on the sideboard and, having sat down again, was starting to eat.
‘Good health,’ said Bret, taking his first taste of the wine that everyone else had started long before. There was a murmur of response from all present.
‘Are they tinned baked beans?’ said Dicky in horror, suddenly recognizing them on his plate, and probing at them with his silver fork.
‘So they are! I haven’t had baked beans since I was at boarding school,’ said Fiona. ‘And I adore them.’
‘Don’t they give you wind?’ asked Gloria.
Dicky grabbed the wine bottle and poured more wine. Getting to his feet again he went round the table to serve some to everyone, although Daphne was given a very small measure.
‘Sometime,’ said Dicky, sitting down again, ‘we are going to have to think about where we can put you.’ He bent forward in order to look past Gloria at Bret, but Bret carried on eating his meal as if he hadn’t heard.
‘I’m in your old office,’ said Fiona. ‘I will of course move … I have your glass-topped desk and everything.’
‘No, Fiona, no,’ said Dicky, feeling that his authority was being undermined, if not ignored entirely.
‘It’s all right,’ said Bret. He drank some wine. ‘Lovely wine, Dicky.’ He wiped his lips. ‘No need to worry. It’s all been arranged.’
‘Share with Fiona,’ said Dicky impulsively. I suppose he’d suddenly realized that making him share an office would not only severely limit all Bret’s activities, it would also be a tacit implication that he’d added Bret to his staff. ‘For the time being,’ Dicky added, when the look on Bret’s face made it clear that this was not an offer that would be warmly taken up.
‘It’s all fixed, Dicky. Thanks all the same.’
‘Don’t you like chicken?’ Daphne asked, leaning forward to see Bret’s plate.
‘I’m not a big eater.’ Bret had followed the official US dining code and pushed everything around on his plate after a couple of tiny bites at it.
‘That’s how he stays in such good shape,’ I told Daphne. Bret never ate much, as I knew from weeks of watching him send almost-full plates back to the kitchen.
‘Are you a vegetarian?’ Daphne asked him. ‘I’ve got bulgur wheat and cabbage dumplings if you’d like that instead. It wouldn’t take a minute.’
‘No,’ said Bret, restraining a shudder.
‘What’s fixed?’ said Dicky from the other end of the table.
‘If you’ve all finished, pass your plates,’ said Gloria, who had already piled up several dinner plates and put the used cutlery into the half-empty bowl with the stuffing. ‘We’ll help with the washing-up,’ she added in her hockey team captain manner.
‘Gloria! Please don’t,’ said Daphne. ‘Because I’m not going to even fill the dishwasher tonight. Just put it all on the sideboard. I have a woman coming to do it in the morning.’
‘I’m in the Deputy’s room,’ said Bret to Dicky, who was still leaning forward, head twisted, trying to see him.
Dicky craned forward so far that his ear touched the bowl with the jacket potatoes in it. I think I was the only person to eat a potato, so they were still piled high. ‘Ouch!’ said Dicky, and straightened up and rubbed his ear.
‘Just a temporary arrangement. By early next year they might want to replace me with a permanent Deputy.’
‘You?’ said Dicky hoarsely. ‘You are to become Deputy Director-General?’
‘As a temporary measure,’ Bret said again, as if trying to placate Dicky. But the repetition seemed only to make Dicky more distraught.
‘So you’ll be in Sir Percy’s office?’ Dicky said, but as the office arrangements settled into his mind, he saw the implications of Bret’s attitude. Bret was likely to throw a spanner into everything that Dicky was planning for Operation VERDI. ‘Congratulations, Bret! I think this calls for a bottle of my best champagne.’ But, belying his words, his voice slowed and deepened like an old wind-up record-player coming to a stop.
‘Thank you, Dicky.’ Everyone repeated the congratulations. Bret nodded modestly to each and every one of us.
Dicky got to his feet. ‘I’ll look in the cellar,’ he said. ‘I’m sure there are a few bottles of vintage champagne in the rack.’
18
When we were driving home from the Cruyers’ that Saturday night Fiona said: ‘All that smooth chatter. All that modesty and charm. It makes me sick. It really does.’
‘Dicky, you mean?’ I asked innocently.
Fiona struck me with her fist in a playful show of aggression. But I knew her well enough to know that she’d spent the evening seething more with indignation about Bret’s opposition than with anger about Gloria.
‘He’s going to stop VERDI. YOU see that, don’t you?’
‘It sounds likely,’ I agreed.
‘He more or less said so.’
‘I don’t know that he did that, Fi. But getting it past Bret will challenge all Dicky’s well-known powers of intrigue and influence.’
‘For Dicky the evening was a disaster,’ pronounced Fiona. It was an epitaph, and it came from someone who had spent many gruelling hours with Dicky and listened to his confident plans to get Bret safely tucked away in obscurity.
‘There’s a car following us,’ I said. ‘It’s been with us for at least five minutes.’
‘Which one?’
‘You’ll see him in a moment. He’s not keeping close.’
‘Is not keeping close a bad sign, darling?’ said Fiona in a sweetly mocking voice. She had had sufficient wine before Dicky suddenly decided to serve the vintage Dom Pérignon and then stand around consuming it in a celebration that was more like a wake.
‘Maybe,’ I said.
Fiona twisted round in her seat to peer out through the rear window. ‘Where?’
‘With the dipped headlights. The big one.’
‘That’s Bret, darl
ing. That’s Bret’s Bentley.’
‘Are you sure? Did he come in a Bentley?’
Fiona tutted. ‘Where is your boy detective outfit tonight, darling? Didn’t you see the turbo Bentley and the chauffeur in full uniform and cap?’
‘I can’t say I did.’
‘I wondered if Gloria would go home with him, didn’t you?’ said Fiona. I didn’t respond. I’d seen Gloria arrive in her own car. It was obvious from watching Bret and Gloria that evening that they would not be going anywhere together that night. Fiona must have seen that too. She said: ‘I watched them both when they said goodnight. That’s how I noticed the Bentley. That’s who it is. Bret. You can relax, darling.’
‘Where is he staying?’
‘His cousin has a big house in Marylebone.’
‘That Bret is amazing. Wherever he goes in the world, he always has a relative with a big house in the most fashionable neighbourhood, countless servants and a chauffeur-driven car or two.’
‘Or was it Belgravia?’ said Fiona, still turning to look at the traffic behind us. ‘A cousin in Belgravia.’
‘That sounds more like it. We’ve come right through Marylebone. Look, he’s flashing the lights at us.’
‘What does he want?’ said Fiona. ‘Don’t invite him up, Bernard. I’m absolutely dead, and we’re going to Daddy’s to see the children tomorrow. I want to get there early before they go off on some damned trip.’
‘I promise,’ I said.
We were almost outside the entrance to our block of flats by that time. I stopped the car and Bret’s Bentley pulled alongside us. With the window down, he called: ‘Sorry to bother you, Bernard. I wonder if you could clear up a few points that came up this evening?’
‘I’ll park the car,’ Fiona offered, and I got out and climbed into the back seat of the Bentley.
‘I won’t keep him more than five minutes, Fiona,’ Bret called.
But once I was inside the car, Bret’s mood was more businesslike. ‘I must talk to you, Bernard.’ The driver pulled the car closer to the kerb and then got out and paced up and down smoking a cigarette and left us alone. ‘Timmermann’s dead.’