by Len Deighton
She wore an expensive knitted dress of striped autumnal colours and in her ears there were small jade earrings that exactly matched her eyes. Bessie brought her over to where I was standing, near the champagne, and the food.
When Bessie moved away, the girl said, ‘Pizza is very fattening.’
‘So is everything I like,’ I said.
‘Everything?’ said the girl.
‘Well … damn nearly everything,’ I said. ‘Congratulations on your win.’
She got out a packet of mentholated cigarettes and put one in her mouth. I lit it for her.
‘Thank you kindly, sir. There was a moment when he had me worried though, I’ll tell you that.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘When you yawned.’
‘It’s nerves – I try everything not to yawn.’
‘Think yourself lucky,’ I said. ‘Some people laugh when they are nervous.’
‘Do you mean you laugh when you are nervous?’
‘I’m advised to reserve my defence,’ I told her.
‘Ah, how British of you! You want to know my weaknesses but you’ll not confide any of your own.’
‘Does that make me a male chauvinist pig?’
‘It shortens the odds,’ she said. Then she found herself stifling a yawn again. I laughed.
‘How long have you known the Manns?’ I asked.
‘I met Bessie at a Yoga class, about four years back. She was trying to lose weight, I was trying to lose those yawns.’
‘Now you’re kidding.’
‘Yes. I went to Yoga after …’ She stopped. It was a painful memory. ‘… I got home early one night and found a couple of kids burglarizing my apartment. They gave me a bad beating and left me unconscious. When I left hospital I went to a Yoga farm to convalesce. That’s how I met Bessie.’
‘And the backgammon?’
‘My father was a fire chief – Illinois semi-finalist in the backgammon championships one year. He was great. I almost paid my way through college on what I earned playing backgammon. Three years ago I went professional – you can travel the world from tournament to tournament, there’s no season. Lots of money – it’s a rich man’s game.’ She sighed. ‘But that was three years ago. I’ve had a lousy year since then. And a lousy year in Seattle is a really lousy year, believe me! And what about you?’
‘Nothing to tell.’
‘Ah, Bessie told me a lot already,’ she said.
‘And I thought she was a friend.’
‘Just the good bits – you’re English …’
‘How long has that been a “good bit” among the backgammon players of Illinois?’
‘You work with Bessie’s husband, in the analysis department of a downtown bank that I’ve never heard of. You –’
I put my fingers to her lips to stop her. ‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘I can’t stand it.’
‘Are your family here in the city with you?’ She was flirting. I’d almost forgotten how much I liked it.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Are you going to join them for Christmas?’
‘No.’
‘But that’s terrible.’ Spontaneously she reached out to touch my arm.
‘I have no immediate family,’ I confessed.
She smiled. ‘I didn’t like to ask Bessie. She’s always matchmaking.’
‘Don’t knock it,’ I said.
‘I’m not lucky in love,’ she said. ‘Just in backgammon.’
‘And where is your home?’
‘My home is a Samsonite two-suiter.’
‘It’s a well-known address,’ I said. ‘Why New York City?’
She smiled. Her very white teeth were just a fraction uneven. She sipped her drink. ‘I’d had enough of Seattle,’ she said. ‘New York was the first place that came to mind.’ She put the half-smoked cigarette into an ashtray and stubbed it out as if it was Seattle.
From the next room the piano player drifted into a sleepy version of ‘How Long Has This Been Going On?’ Red moved a little closer to me and continued to stare into her drink like a crystal-gazer seeking a fortune there.
The intruder alarm manufacturer passed us and smiled. Red took my arm and rested her head on my shoulder. When he was out of earshot she looked up at me. ‘I hope you didn’t mind,’ she said. ‘I told him my boy-friend was here; I wanted to reinforce that idea.’
‘Any time.’ I put my arm round her waist; she was soft and warm and her shiny red hair smelt fresh as I pressed close.
‘Some of these people who lose money at the table think they might get recompense some other way,’ she murmured.
‘Now you’ve started my mind working,’ I said.
She laughed.
‘You’re not supposed to laugh,’ I said.
‘I like you,’ she said and laughed again. But now it was a nice throaty chuckle rather than the nervous teeth-baring grimace that I’d seen at the backgammon table.
‘Yes, you guessed right,’ she said. ‘I ran from a lousy love-affair.’ She moved away but not too far away.
‘And now you’re wondering if you did the right thing,’ I said.
‘He was a bastard,’ she said. ‘Other women … debts that I had to pay … drinking bouts … no, I’m not wondering if I did the right thing. I’m wondering why it took me so long.’
‘And now he phones you every day asking you to come back.’
‘How did you know.’ She mumbled the words into my shoulder.
‘That’s the way it goes,’ I said.
She gripped my arm. For a long time we stood in silence. I felt I’d known her all my life. The intruder alarm man passed again. He smiled at us. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said.
There was nothing I would have liked better but Mann had disappeared from the room, and if he was engaged in the sort of parley he’d anticipated, he’d be counting on my standing right here with both eyes wide open.
‘I’d better stay with the Manns,’ I told her. She pursed her lips. And yet a moment later she smiled and there was no sign of the scarred ego.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I understand,’ but she didn’t understand enough, for soon after that she saw some people she knew and beckoned them to join us.
‘Do you play backgammon?’ one of the newcomers asked.
‘Not so that anyone would notice,’ I said.
Red smiled at me but when she learned that two one-time champions were about to fight out a match in the next room she took my hand and dragged me along there.
Backgammon is more to my taste than chess. The dice add a large element of luck to every game, so that sometimes a novice beats a champion just as it goes in real life. Sometimes, however, a preponderance of luck makes a game boring to watch. This one was that – or perhaps I was just feeling bad about the way Red exchanged smiles and greetings with so many people round the table.
The two ex-champions were into the opening moves of their third game by the time that Bessie Mann plucked my sleeve to tell me that her husband wanted me.
I went down the hall to where Tony Nowak’s driver was standing on guard outside the bedroom. He was scowling at the mirror and trying to look like a cop. I was expecting the scowl but not the quick rub down for firearms. I went inside. In spite of the dim lighting, I saw Tony Nowak perched on the dressing-table, his tie loosened and his brow shiny.
There was a smell of expensive cigars and after-shave lotion. And seated in the best chair – his sneakers resting upon an embroidered footstool – there was Harvey Kane Greenwood. They had long ceased to refer to him as the up-and-coming young Senator: Greenwood had arrived. The long hair – hot-combed and tinted – the chinos and the batik shirt, open far enough to reveal the medallion on a gold neck-chain, were all part of the well-publicized image, and many of his aspirations could be recognized in Gerry Hart, the lean young assistant that he had recently engaged to help him with his work on the Scientific Development Sub-Committee of the Senate Committee of International Cooperation.
A
s my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I saw as far as the Hepplewhite sofa, upon which sat two balding heavyweights, comparing wrist-watches, and arguing quietly in Russian. They didn’t notice me, and nor did Gerry Hart, who was drawing diagrams on a dinner napkin for his boss Greenwood, who was nodding.
I was only as far as the doorway, when Mann waved his hands, and had me backing-up past Nowak’s sentry, and all the way along the corridor as far as the kitchen.
Piled up along the working surfaces there were plates of left-over party food, dirty ashtrays and plastic containers crammed with used cutlery. The remains of two turkeys were propped up on the open door of a wall oven, and as we entered, a cat jumped from there to the floor. Otherwise the brightly lit kitchen was unoccupied.
Major Mann opened the refrigerator and took a carton of buttermilk. He reached for tumblers from the shelf above and poured two glassfuls.
‘You like buttermilk?’
‘Not much,’ I said.
He drank some of it and then tore a piece of paper from a kitchen-roll and wiped his mouth. All the while he held the refrigerator door wide open. Soon the compressor started to throb. This sound, combined with the interference of the fluorescent lights above our heads, gave us a little protection against even the most sophisticated bugging devices. ‘This is a lulu,’ said Mann quietly.
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘I will have some buttermilk.’
‘Do we want to take delivery of Mrs B?’ He did not conceal his anger.
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘Here!’ said Mann indignantly. ‘Right here in schlockville.’
I smiled. ‘And this is an offer from gentleman-Jim Greenwood and our friend Hart?’
‘And the two vodka salesmen from downtown Omsk.’
‘KGB?’
‘Big-ass pants, steel-tipped shoes, fifty-dollar manicures and big Cuban cigars – yes, my suspicions run that way.’
‘Perhaps Hart got them through central casting.’
Mann shook his head. ‘Heavy,’ he said. ‘I’ve been close to them. These two are really heavy.’
Mann had the mannerism of placing a hand over his heart, the thumb and forefinger fidgeting with his shirt-collar. He did it now. It was as if he was taking an oath about the two Russians.
‘But why?’
‘Good question,’ said Mann. ‘When Greenwood’s goddamned committee is working so hard to give away all America’s scientific secrets to any foreigner who wants them – who needs the KGB?’
‘And they talked about B.?’
‘I must be getting senile or something,’ said Mann. ‘Why didn’t I think about those bastards on that Scientific Cooperation Committee – commie bastards the lot of them if you ask me.’
‘But what are they after?’
Mann threw a hand into the air, and caught it, fingers splayed. ‘Those guys – Greenwood and his sidekick – are lecturing me about freedom. Telling me that I’m just about to lead some kind of witch-hunt through the academic world …’
‘And are we?’
‘I’m sure going to sift through Bekuv’s friends and acquaintances … and not Greenwood and all his pinko committeemen will stop me.’
‘They didn’t set up this meeting just to tell you not to start a witch-hunt,’ I said.
‘They can do our job better than we can,’ said Mann bitterly. ‘They say they can get Bekuv’s wife out of the USSR by playing footsie with the Kremlin.’
‘You mean they will get her a legal exit permit, providing we don’t dig out anything that will embarrass the committee.’
‘Right,’ said Mann. ‘Have some more buttermilk.’ He poured some without waiting to ask if I wanted it.
‘After all,’ I said in an attempt to mollify his rage. ‘It’s what we want … I mean … Mrs B. It would make our task easier.’
‘Just the break we’ve been waiting for,’ said Mann sarcastically. ‘Do you know, they really expected us to bring Bekuv here tonight. They are threatening to demand his appearance before the committee.’
‘Why?’
‘To make sure he came to the West of his own free will. How do you like that?’
‘I don’t like it very much,’ I said. ‘His photo in the Daily News, reporters pushing microphones into his mouth. The Russians would feel bound to respond to that. It could get very rough.’
Mann pulled a face and reached for the wall telephone extension. He capped the phone and listened for a moment to be sure the line was not in use. To me he said, ‘I’m going back in there, to tug my forelock for ten minutes.’ He dialled the number of the CIA garage on 82nd Street. ‘Mann here. Send my number two car for back-up. I’m still at the same place.’ He hung up. ‘You get downstairs,’ he told me. ‘You go down and wait for the back-up car. Tell Charlie to tail the two Russian goons and give him the descriptions.’
‘It won’t be easy,’ I warned. ‘They are sure to be prepared for that.’
‘Either way it will be interesting to see how they react.’ Mann slammed the refrigerator door. The conversation was ended. I gave him a solemn salute, and went along the hall to get my coat.
Red Bancroft was there too: climbing into a fine military-styled suede coat, with leather facings and brass buttons and buckles. She winked as she tucked her long auburn hair into a crazy little knitted hat. ‘And here he is,’ she said to the intruder alarm manufacturer, who was watching himself in a mirror while a servant pulled at the collar of his camel-hair coat. He touched his moustache and nodded approval.
He was a tall wiry man, with hair that was greying the way it only does for tycoons and film stars.
‘The little lady was looking everywhere for you,’ said the intruder alarm man. ‘I was trying to persuade her to ride up to Sixtieth Street with me.’
‘I’ll look after her,’ I said.
‘And I’ll say good night,’ he said. ‘It was a real pleasure playing against you, Miss Bancroft. I just hope you’ll give me a chance to get even sometime.’
Red Bancroft smiled and nodded, and then she smiled at me.
‘Now let’s get out of here,’ I whispered.
She gripped my arm, and just as the man looked back at us, kissed my cheek. Whether it was nice timing, or just impulse, was too early to say but I took the opportunity to hold her tight and kiss her back. Tony Nowak’s domestic servants found something needing their attention in the lounge.
‘Have you been drinking buttermilk?’ said Red.
It was a long time before we got out to the landing. The intruder alarm man was still there, fuming about the non-arrival of the elevator. It arrived almost at the same moment that we did.
‘Everything goes right for those in love,’ said the alarm man. I warmed to him.
‘You have a car?’ he asked. He bowed us into the elevator ahead of him.
‘We do,’ I said. He pressed the button for ground level and the numbers began to flicker.
‘This is no city for moonlight walks,’ he told me. ‘Not even here in Park Avenue.’
We stopped and the elevator doors opened.
Like so many scenes of mortal danger, each constituent part of this one was very still. I saw everything, and yet my brain took some time to relate the elements in any meaningful way.
The entrance hall of the apartment block was brightly lit by indirect strip-lighting set into the ceiling. A huge vaseful of plastic flowers trembled from the vibration of some subterranean furnace, and a draught of cold wind from the glass entrance door carried with it a few errant flakes of snow. The dark brown floor carpet, chosen perhaps to hide dirty footmarks from the street, now revealed caked snow that had fallen from visitors’ shoes.
The entrance hall was not empty. There were three men there, all wearing the sort of dark raincoats and peaked hats that are worn by uniformed drivers. One of them had his foot jammed into the plate-glass door at the entrance. He had his back to us and was looking towards the street. The nearest man was opposite the doors of the elevator. He had
a big S & W Heavy-Duty .38 in his fist, and it was pointing at us.
‘Freeze,’ he said. ‘Freeze, and nobody gets hurt. Slow now! Bring out your bill-fold.’
We froze. We froze so still that the elevator doors began to close on us. The man with the gun stamped a large boot into the door slot, and motioned us to step out. I stepped forward carefully keeping my hands raised and in sight.
‘If it’s money you want,’ said the alarm manufacturer, ‘take my wallet, and welcome to it.’ He was frantically reaching into the breast pocket of his camel-hair overcoat.
The alarm manufacturer’s voice was such a plaintive whine of terror that the man with the gun smiled. He turned his head so that the third gunman could see him smiling. And then his friend smiled too.
There were two shots: deafening thumps that echoed in the narrow lobby and left behind a whiff of burned powder. The man with the gun screeched. His eyes popped wide open, he gasped and coughed blood. There was a brief moment before the pistol hit the carpet with a thump, and its owner slid slowly down the wall, leaving a long smudge of blood. Red Bancroft gripped my arm so hard that it hurt. The second shot hit the man watching the stairs. It went in at the shoulder, and smashed his clavicle. He threw his gun down and grabbed his elbow. They say that’s the only way you can ease the pain of a fractured collar-bone. He couldn’t run very fast with that sort of wound. That’s why the alarm manufacturer had time enough to put his gun up to eye level. He got him in the spine with the third shot. It was enough to tumble him full length on to scattered particles of impacted snow and the plastic sheet that had been put down in the outer lobby to protect the carpet. He died with his head resting on the word ‘Welcome’. There wasn’t much blood.
It was the body of that second man that obstructed me as I opened the glass door. It had an electric solenoid lock. I had to push the override.
The intruder alarm man collided with me in the doorway but we both scrambled out into the street in time to see the third man running. He was hatless now and halfway across the avenue. I heard a car being started. The alarm man raised his gun for a shot at him but slid on the ice and lost his balance. He tumbled. There was a clatter and a curse as he fell against a parked car. I ran out into the empty roadway. On the far side of the avenue the door of a black Mercedes opened to receive the gunman. The Mercedes leapt forward while the door was still open. I saw a flurry of arms, and one leg trailed, and cut a pattern in the snow, before the man was inside and the door closed. As the Mercedes reached the cross-street intersection, the driver switched his lights on.