by Len Deighton
My right sock had wrinkled underfoot. I raised my leg and found I could lean forward on the water. I walked two steps but the density prevented me making progress. I bobbed. I leaned forward again and made a paddling motion. I noticed how clear my hands were. They and everything else around me had taken on a new interest and wonder. I studied the small scar on the palm of my right hand. It was like seeing a colour transparency of it. I looked up at the surface of the water and tried to guess how deep I was. It was difficult to judge shape, size or distance down here.
I wondered what the time was and walked back to the glass panel to try to see the dockyard clock. Two ‘art divers’ were standing in the way. I decided to ‘guff up’ again and gave the bypass valve a little twist. It was a better attempt and although I bounced a couple of feet off the bottom little or no air came out of the relief valve. The other trainees were making a lot of noise. The clatter of them around the tank competed with the noise of my breathing. It was the hooky tapping a spanner upon the top rung of the ladder. A signal for me to ascend. I remembered what Edwards had said; men become forgetful and complacent under water.
As my head broke the surface the light was dazzling and the reflections from the water almost painful to my eyes, which had adjusted to the gentle green underwater conditions. A hooter sounded somewhere across the harbour and I was suddenly aware of all the noisemakers. I dragged my heavy body and its three oxygen bottles out of the water. Down below G-Plan had a large medicine bottle. It contained rum. Watching until Edwards had gone across the jetty he passed it to me.
‘Gulpers,’ he said and I thanked him sincerely. The gentle warmth raced around my veins like a hot-rod Ford.
In the hut there were warm towels and dry clothing and C.P.O. Edwards. I could hear his voice while I dressed. ‘… practical working. Theory five: the physiology of diving and Artificial Respiration. Wednesday, Theory six: recognizing an under-charged set – it’s dangerous to risk an almost empty bottle – and then the practical at Horsea Island in the afternoon. Thursday: Symptoms of CO2 poisoning, of Oxygen poisoning (or anoxia) – what the Navy call “Oxygen Pete”, of Air Embolism or what divers call “chokes”, of Decompression Sickness – what we call “staggers” but what you’ve probably heard them in films calling “bends”. And lastly Shallow Water Blackout – what the quack calls “syncope” just fainting really but it’s more frequent when you are on Oxygen.’
It made me feel like I’d just had all of them.
‘That leaves Friday,’ Edwards’s voice continued, ‘for a morning of diving and a simple revision and written test in the afternoon.’
G-Plan said, ‘We will have learnt it all by then, chief? What are you going to find us to do on Monday morning?’
‘Monday morning you start all over again,’ said Edwards. He stepped outside the door and raised his powerful voice. ‘They’re spending too much time on the ladder, Barker. They aren’t on the steps of the Prince Regent’s bathing machine.’ Then turning back into the hut again his voice lowered. ‘Yes, you’ll be starting all over again on Monday. Theory seven: Preparation and service of Swimmers’ Air Breathing Apparatus. That’s the aqua-lung works with a demand valve and compressed air – quite different to these oxygen sets. And by the way, Stewart,’ that was G-Plan’s name, ‘if the officer of the watch comes round, you’ll keep that medicine bottle of yours out of sight. I wouldn’t like him to think any of my divers were not well.’
‘Yes Chief,’ said Stewart. He had eyeballs in his buttons that Edwards.
4 Man with a tail
Some heavy lorries making smoke at Horndean, a sharp rainstorm rolling across Hindhead, grass as green as crème de menthe, and then bright sunshine as I came on to the Guildford by-pass. I watched my mirror, then tuned the radio to France III.
Putney Bridge and into King’s Road; shiny, shoddy and deep-frozen. Bald men with roll-neck pullovers. Girls with bee-swarm hair-dos and trousers that left nothing to the imagination. Left, up Beaufort Street, past the Forum cinema and on to Gloucester Road. Men with dirty driving gloves and clean copies of Autosport, and landladies weighed down with shillings from insatiable gas-meters. Left again, on to Cromwell Road Clearway. Now I was quite sure. The black Anglia was following me.
I turned again and pulled up by the phone box on the corner. The Anglia came past me slowly as I searched for a threepenny piece. I watched out of the corner of my eye until it stopped perhaps seventy yards up the one-way street, then I got quickly back into my car and backed around the corner on to Cromwell Road again. This left the black Anglia seventy yards up a one-way street. Now to see how efficient they were.
I drove on past Victorian terraces behind which un-painted bed-sitters crouched, pretending to be one grand imperial household instead of a molecular structure of colonial loneliness.
I stopped. From under the front passenger seat I reached for the 10 × 40 binoculars that I always store there. I wrapped a Statesman around them, locked the car and walked over to Jean’s flat. Number 23 had peach curtains and was a maze of corridors down which the draught got a running start at the ill-fitting doors. I let myself in.
A fan heater provided a background hum while Jean tinkled around the kitchen fixing a big jug of coffee. I watched her from the kitchen doorway. She was wearing a dark-brown woollen suit; her tan had not faded and the hair that hung across her deep forehead was still golden from the summer sun. She looked up; calm, clear and as still as a three-quarter-grain Nembutal.
She said, ‘Did you straighten out the Navy?’
‘You make me sound pragmatic,’ I said.
‘And it’s not true, is it?’ She poured the coffee into the big art-pottery cups. ‘You were followed here, you know.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said quietly.
‘Don’t do that,’ said Jean.
‘What?’
‘You know very well. It’s your Oreste Pinto voice. You say things to provoke a fuller reply.’
‘All right. All right. Relax.’
‘You don’t have to tell …’
‘I was followed by a black Anglia, BGT 803, maybe all the way from Portsmouth, certainly from Hindhead. I’ve no idea who it is, but it could be the Electrolux company.’
‘Pay them,’ said Jean. She stood well back from the window still looking down towards the street. ‘They could be from the refrigerator company; one of them has an icepick in his hand.’
‘Very funny.’
‘You have a wide circle of friends. The gentlemen across the road feature an azure Bristol 407. It’s rather dreamy.’
‘You’re joking, of course.’
‘Come and see, child of Neptune.’
I walked to the window. There was a Bristol 407 of brilliant blue, sufficiently muddied to have done a fast journey down the A3. It was awkwardly parked amid the dense mortuary of vehicles in the street below. On the pavement a tall man in a flat peaked cap and short bold-patterned overcoat looked like a wealthy bookmaker. I focused the Zeiss and studied the two men and their car carefully.
I said, ‘They aren’t working for any department we know, judging from the tax bracket they’re in. Bristol 407 indeed.’
‘Do I detect a faint note of envy?’ asked Jean, taking the binoculars and looking down upon my would-be companions.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You wouldn’t join the enemies of democracy and threaten the existence of freedom-loving western capitalism for a Bristol 407, would you?’
‘What colour?’
Jean was looking out of the tall narrow window. ‘He’s getting back into it again. They are going to park outside 26.’ She turned back to me. ‘Do you think they are Special Branch?’
‘No: only West End Central cops have big cars.’
‘Do you think they’re friends?’*
‘No, they wouldn’t let an overcoat like that through the front door of the H.O.’
Jean put down the field-glasses and poured out the coffee in silence.
‘Go on,’ I said, ‘there are plenty more security departments.’ Jean handed me the big cup of black coffee. I sniffed it. ‘It’s Continental roast.’
‘You like Continental roast, don’t you?’
‘Sometimes,’ I said.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’ll drink it.’
‘About the men.’
‘I’ll find out who they are.’
‘How?’ asked Jean.
‘Well, I shall go upstairs, climb out along the roofs, find another skylight, go down through the house. You, meanwhile, put on my overcoat and move about near the window so that they catch sight of what they think is me. At a prearranged time-lapse, say twenty minutes, you will go across and start up the engine of my VW. They will have to pull out the Bristol in order to have any chance of catching my car before it disappears. Got it?’
Jean said, ‘Yes,’ very slowly and doubtfully.
‘By that time I shall be in the porch of, say, Number 29. When they get their car started I will take a potato, which I shall have taken from your vegetable basket and, running forward, crouching very low, I shall jam the raw unpeeled potato on to their exhaust pipe and hold it there. It’s only a matter of moments before the pressure builds up enough to blow the cylinder head off with a tremendous crash.’ Jean giggled. ‘There they will be with an expensive disabled car. They will never get a taxi at this time of day at Gloucester Road cab rank, so they will have to ask for a lift in the VW, which by this time will have had the heater going long enough to make it warm and comfortable. On the way to wherever they wish to go I shall say – quite casually, mark you – “what are you two young fellows doing in this neck of the woods on a Saturday midday?” and from one thing and another I shall soon find out who they work for.’
Jean said, ‘It’s not had a good effect on you, that Naval Depot.’
I dialled the Ghost exchange number and switchboard answered. I put a hand over the mouthpiece while asking Jean, ‘What is the code word for the week-end?’
‘Fine pickle you’d be in without me,’ she said from the kitchen.
‘Don’t carp, girl. I haven’t been in to the office for a week.’
‘It’s “cherish”.’
‘Cherish,’ I said to the switchboard operator, and he connected me to the W.O.O.C.(P) duty officer, ‘Tinkle’ Bell.
‘Tinkle,’ I said, ‘cherish.’
‘Yes,’ said Tinkle. I heard the click of the recording machine being switched into the circuit. ‘Go ahead.’
‘I have a tail. Anything on W.M.?’ Tinkle went to look at the Weekly Memoranda sheets that came from the Joint Intelligence Agency at the Ministry of Defence. I heard Tinkle’s outsize brogue shoes pad lightly back to the desk. ‘Not a sausage, old boy.’
‘Do me a favour, Tinkle.’
‘Anything you say, old boy.’
‘You have someone you could leave in charge if you nipped down to Storey’s Gate for me?’
‘Certainly, old chap, pleasure.’
‘Thanks, Tinkle. I wouldn’t bother you on Saturday if it wasn’t important.’
‘Precisely, old boy. I know that.’
‘Go up to the third floor and see Mrs Welch – that’s W-e-l-c-h – and tell her you want one of the C-SICH* files. Any one. I tell you what, make it a file we’re already holding. You with me?’
‘Sinking fast, old boy.’
‘Ask her for some file we already have and she’ll tell you we already have it, but you say we haven’t. She will show you the receipt book. If she doesn’t offer to, raise hell and insist that she does. Get a good eyeful of all the receipt signatures down the right-hand column. What I want to know is who receipted file 20 W.O.O.C.(P) 287.’
‘That’s one of our personal dossiers,’ said Tinkle.
‘Mine, to be precise,’ I said. ‘If I know who’s handled my file lately I have a lead on who might be tailing me.’
‘Very crafty,’ said Tinkle.
‘And, Tinkle,’ I added, ‘I want a quick check on two car registrations, a black Anglia and a Bristol 407.’ I waited while Tinkle read back the numbers.
‘Thanks, Tinkle, and ring me back at Jean’s.’
Jean poured me a third cup of coffee and produced some pancakes with sugar and cream. ‘You are a bit careless on an open line, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘C-SICH and file numbers and all that.’
I said, ‘If anyone listening isn’t in the business it will be gibberish, and if they are, they were taught that stuff in Dzerzhinski Street.’
‘While you were on the phone your Anglia arrived.’
I walked to the window. Four men were talking, well down the road. Soon two of them got into the Bristol and drove away, but the Anglia remained outside.
Jean and I spent a lazy Saturday afternoon. She washed her hair and I made lots of coffee and read a back issue of the Observer. The TV was just saying ‘… a Blackfoot war party wouldn’t be using a medicine arrow, Betsy …’ when the phone rang.
‘It was the Director of Naval Intelligence,’ I said into the phone before he could speak.”
‘Blimey,’ said Tinkle, ‘how did you know?’
‘I thought D.N.I. would screen a visiting civilian pretty thoroughly before letting him into their diving school.’
Tinkle said, ‘Well, good thinking, old boy. Central Register* and C-SICH both booked your files out to D.N.I. on September 1st.’
‘What about the car registrations, Tinkle?’
‘The Anglia belongs to a man named Butcher, initials I. H., and the Bristol to a Cabinet Minister named Smith. Know them?’
‘I’ve heard the names before. Perhaps you would do an S6 report on both of them and leave it in the locked “in” tray.’
‘O.K.,’ said Tinkle and rang off.
‘What did he say?’ Jean asked.
‘I’m riding shotgun on the noon stage,’ I said. Jean made a noise and continued to paint a finger-nail flame orange.
Finally I said, ‘The cars belong to a Cabinet Minister named Henry Smith and to a little thug named Butcher who does a cut-price service in commercial espionage on the “seduced secretary” system.’
‘What a lovely system,’ Jean said.
‘You haven’t seen Butcher,’ I said. ‘My file, incidentally, went to D.N.I. on September 1st.’
‘Butcher,’ Jean said. ‘Butcher. I know that name.’ She painted another nail. Suddenly she shouted, ‘The ice-melting report.’
What a memory she had. Butcher had sold us an old German laboratory report about a machine to melt ice at an amazing speed. ‘What can you remember of that report?’ I asked her.
‘I couldn’t understand it properly,’ she said, ‘but the rough idea was that by rearranging the molecular structure of ice it would instantaneously become water. Or vice versa. That’s something the Navy might be keen on now that there are missile submarines that have to find a hole in the polar ice-pack before they can fire them.’ She held her hand at arm’s distance and studied the orange nails for a minute.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Butcher had the report. Navy want the report … That’s the connexion. I’m a genius.’
‘Why are you a genius?’ Jean asked.
‘For getting myself a secretary like you,’ I said. Jean blew me a kiss.
‘What about Mr Smith the Cabinet Minister?’ Jean asked.
‘He’s just having his car borrowed,’ I said. But I wasn’t sure about that. I looked at Jean and stubbed out my cigarette.
‘My nails are still wet,’ Jean said, ‘you mustn’t.’
5 No toy
My two weeks at Portsmouth passed quickly and I came home with a small Admiralty shallow-water certificate suitable for framing, and incipient pneumonia, although Jean said it was a sore throat. Monday I stayed in bed all day. Tuesday was a cold bright morning in September that warned you that winter was all set to pounce.
A letter from the Admiralty arrived authorizing me to take possession of the R.N. underwater gear from
the school and charged it to me! The same post brought me another bill for the repair of the refrigerator and a final demand for the rates. I nicked my chin while shaving and bled like I’d sprung a leak. I changed into another shirt and arrived at Charlotte Street to find Dawlish in a quiet rage because I had made him late for the Senior Intelligence Conference that takes place in that strange square room of the C.I.G.S. the first Tuesday in each month.
It was a terrible day and it hadn’t even begun yet Dawlish went through all the rigmarole of my new assignment: radio code words and priorities for communicating with him.
‘I’ve persuaded them to give you the equivalent authority to Permanent Under-Secretary, so don’t let them down. It might be useful if you deal with Denning* or the Lisbon Embassy. You’ll remember that after last year they said they would never give us a rank above Assistant Secretary again.’
‘Big deal,’ I said, eyeing the papers on his desk. ‘P.U.S. and they send me on a Night Tourist aeroplane.’
‘All we could get,’ said Dawlish. ‘Don’t be so class-conscious, my boy, you don’t want us to demand that they off-load some unfortunate taxpayer; why, you’d have the whole of Gibraltar polishing its blanco – or whatever soldiers do.’