The Dust and the Heat

by Michael Gilbert

  “All right,” said Oliver. “I’m not arguing. How long do you think it’ll take? Half an hour? You’ll find us in the bar when you’ve finished.”

  “He doesn’t look as if he’s got a guilty conscience,” said the first officer.

  “Hardened criminal,” said the second. “It’s the one we’re looking for all right. You can see the place where the tank’s been cut open and sealed up again.”

  9

  “Of course it was a put-up job,” said Oliver. “And, of course, the Customs at Lydd had been tipped off about it. We could hear them licking their lips half a mile before we came in to land.”

  “If you hadn’t spotted them,” said Dumbo, “what would have happened? They’d have confiscated the photographs, I suppose, and you’d have been fined.”

  “I should have been bust,” said Oliver. “Bust, flattened and finished. Can’t you see the headlines? ‘Company Director Held at Airport. Smuggling Filthy Pictures’.”

  “It wouldn’t have been very happy,” said Blackett.

  “It was worse than a bomb,” said Oliver. “If I’d been blown up, at least I’d have got some sympathy. This I should never have lived down.”

  “How did they organize it?” said Harrap. He sounded more interested than shocked. “They were taking a pretty long chance, weren’t they?”

  “I asked for it,” said Oliver. “I walked into it like an innocent child. I forgot my Kipling. Remember the girl who tells a soldier, ‘My mother always warned us when we went out on a trek not to come back the same way’? We not only came back to the hotel I stayed at on the way out, but I actually signalled my intentions. I booked the room for the last night in a loud clear voice in the foyer of the hotel after breakfast that first day. Anyone could have picked it up. There was one chap who looked a bit too like an English commerical traveller to be true. He arrived after us and could easily have been tailing us.”

  “One thing I can’t see,” said Dumbo. “Suppose you had been caught, couldn’t you have explained what happened? There were plenty of witnesses.”

  “Certainly I could have explained,” said Oliver. “And I might even have brought over witnesses. The only person I shouldn’t have been able to get hold of would be the mechanic. He’s back in Germany by now.”

  “Then wouldn’t it have proved–?”

  “All that it would have proved was that I was a damned clever smuggler. So clever that they would probably have assumed that I’d been working the racket for years. I arrange to meet my confederate with a petrol tank full of filthy pictures, or cocaine, or the plans of the latest French atom bomber. I make a hole in my own petrol tank. He appears like a good fairy and installs a substitute tank in the presence of lots of impeccable witnesses. If I get past, fine. If I get caught, blame him. Too easy.”

  “All the same,” said Harrap, “it was a long shot. You might have changed your mind. You might have insisted on sending your car to a garage. You might have jibbed at having the tank changed.”

  “What if I did? What had they got to lose?”

  “The money and effort they’d put into it.”

  “The man who is now head of the Westfälische Gesellschaft is prepared, I would guess, to expend a greal deal more effort than that, and a lot more money for the pleasure of putting me down.”

  “Look here,” said Blackett, “who is this chap? Don’t you think you ought to tell us? I mean – suppose someone pushed you under a bus. It’s been done before.”

  “It wouldn’t make any difference. Bolus has got all the facts. He’d take the file to the police. It probably wouldn’t do much good because if there’s one thing this crowd is absolutely expert at it’s covering their tracks.”

  “All the same,” said Harrap, “I think you ought to put us in the picture.”

  Oliver thought about it. Then he said, “All right. It’s not a story I’m a hundred per cent proud of, but perhaps you ought to know about it. Dumbo here and Challen were in at the start in the SS Camp near Klagenfurt.”

  He told them about the night on which he had shot Kurt Engelbach and two of his companions, and wounded Steyr.

  “In retrospect I could wish it had been the other way round,” he said. “Kurt was a genius. If he was alive now he’d probably be a Nobel prizewinner with three rows of letters after his name. Steyr, on the other hand, is a prime bastard.”

  “Fascinating,” said Harrap. “I wish you’d told us this before.”

  “Why?” said Oliver.

  “It’s such a damned fascinating story,” said Harrap with a faraway smile. He was thinking of all the opportunities which must have passed him by in six years of war. There was an old woman in the Apennines who had shown him a way of making a drink like Chartreuse out of alcohol, sugar and herbal drops.

  “That Steyr sounds like a vindictive sort of swine,” said Blackett.

  “I think he might have forgiven me for killing his brother,” said Oliver. “What he couldn’t overlook was my marrying his sister-in-law and pinching the patent rights in protomycil.”

  “It’s a good many years ago,” said Dumbo. “He’s worked himself up into a top position in German industry. I should have thought he might have forgotten about it by now.”

  “He may have cooled down a bit. I hoped he had. This last effort doesn’t look like it, though. I did wonder if I might buy him off.”

  His fellow directors stared at him.

  “You know what they say. If he’s American, offer him money. If he’s English, offer him a title. If he’s French, offer him a woman. If he’s German, offer him a formula.”

  “What formula?”

  “We could always start by offering him Handcharm.

  If Tendresse goes big, we shall be concentrating on that, anyway.”

  After a moment’s silence Dumbo said, “I take it you’re joking.”

  “That’s right,” said Oliver. “I’m joking.”

  10

  “When Lady Fortune Smiles,” said Mr Pedersen – long association with the world of advertising had conditioned him to thinking in headlines – “Why Reject her Advances?”

  “It seems almost too good to be true,” said Mallinson. “I can’t think what Bargulder’s playing at. Would you risk losing the copy head who was handling an important campaign on the eve of that campaign being launched?”

  “I shouldn’t,” said Mr Pedersen, “but I’m not Bargulder. He’s God Almighty, and he’s as obstinate as the Rock of Gibraltar. If he’d make a single move towards Wibberley, Wibberley would go trotting back to him, good as gold.”

  “Quinn & Nicholson can’t be very happy about it.”

  “I don’t suppose they are. The point is, how far can we go ethically?”

  “I didn’t know that there were any ethics in advertising.”

  “Men in Glass Houses,” said Mr Pedersen. “Advertising’s such a vulnerable job that if we started cutting each other’s throats we’d all be in a mess. We’ve got an unofficial ethical code which is a lot stricter than anything the Medes and Persians ever thought up. All the same–”

  “It isn’t as you’d seduced Wibberley away from his present employers. His employer threw him out.”

  “True.”

  “He came to you. You thought well of him as a copywriter. Is there any reason you shouldn’t have offered him a job?”

  “Caesar’s wife. We’ve got to be above suspicion. For instance, if he’d offered to bring pulls of all the proposed Tendresse advertisements with him, we’d have had to say no. That wouldn’t have been playing the game.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “On the other hand, once he is in our outfit – if he should happen to talk about them – in a general way – give us an idea of the sort of line they’ve been going on–”

  “You can’t stop someone talking,” agreed Mallinson happily.

  “It’s Derek Wibberley,” said Philippa, “and it’s the third time he’s telephoned this morning.”

  “How many t
imes did he ring up yesterday?” asked Oliver.

  “Seven times.”

  “If he keeps it up he’ll establish some sort of record.”

  “Don’t you think you ought to talk to him?” asked Dumbo.

  “What good would it do? I know what he wants, and he’s not going to get it.”

  “It would be civil,” said Dumbo.

  “It would be a waste of time.”

  “The point is,” said Dumbo, “that he thinks you encouraged him to present some sort of ultimatum to Bargulder. He duly presents it and gets kicked in the teeth. You might at least say you’re sorry.”

  “Give me one really good reason.”

  “Well,” said Dumbo. “Put it at its lowest, if he feels sore with you he’s going to be very tempted to run off to Pedersens – who’d welcome him with open arms – I can’t help thinking.”

  “He’s gone there already,” said Oliver. “He starts working there on Monday.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We’ve had a man in Pedersens for a long time. He’s the chap who carries the tea round and he hears all the gossip.”

  Harrap said, “It reminds me very strongly of the three months I spent on Monty’s staff under Bill Williams, working out the deception plans before Alam Halfa and Alamein. There’s the same sort of atmosphere of ‘If we do “A” he’ll think we’re bluffing, but if we do “B” he’ll think we want him to think we’re doing “A” and he’ll assume we’re doing “B”’.”

  “Then we do ‘C’,” said Blackett. “Time for one more before dinner.”

  They were in the small bar of the United Services Club. In the months they had worked together on the Board of Quinn & Nicholson, they had grown to appreciate each other’s qualities. Both knew that if anything happened to Oliver they would have to carry the firm.

  “The person I’m sorriest for,” said Blackett, “is Dumbo. He’s a decent, straightforward soul. He’d be perfectly happy running a small family business. He’s out of his depth in this sort of league.”

  “I still think he ought to have been told what we’re up to. The same again, please, Bob, but don’t be shy with the pink. I’m an eight-drop man.”

  “If he’d been told he’d have jibbed.”

  “It was the lesser risk. You can’t fight a battle with half the staff thinking you’re going in one direction and half thinking you’re going in quite a different one. That’s much better, Bob. I like to taste the stuff.”

  “Do you think Mallinson will accept the gambit?” said Blackett.

  “It’s such an attractive one. Nothing to lose as far as he can see and everything to gain.”

  “The point about gambits,” said Blackett, “is that you’ve got to weigh up the person who offers them. You remember what the great Botvinnik said: ‘If Tal offers you a pawn, take it. If Petrosian offers you a pawn, decline it. If I offer you a pawn, think it over.’”

  Victor Mallinson drew a thick ring round the date Monday, May 31st. He then counted forward five weeks and drew a second ring round July 5th and a third round July 12th.

  “That’s the timetable,” he said. “Lucille explodes like a ten-ton bomb on July 5th. Tendresse goes off like a damp squib on July 12th.”

  “You’re sure about these dates?” said Pedersen.

  Mallinson looked across at Crake, who nodded.

  “I think,” he said, “we can assume that our information on that point is accurate.”

  “Because you realize that they could play the same trick on you. If they moved back their start date two weeks, they’d be a week ahead of you.”

  “Could they do it?” asked Crake.

  Pedersen considered the question. “They could do it but it’d be very difficult to do it without our finding out about it. A big advertising campaign isn’t like an earthquake. It doesn’t just happen. It’s more like a hurricane. It gives plenty of warning; that is, if you happen to be tuned in to listen for it. Extra space has to be booked well ahead in newspapers. Retailers have got to be warned about special displays and about clearing out old stock, and a lot of printing has got to be done.”

  “Quinns have got their own printing subsidiary,” said Crake. “We shouldn’t get much warning there, and they might decide to launch it without warning the shops.”

  “They’d still have to book newspaper space,” said Mallinson. “I take it you’ve checked on that.”

  “I’ve checked,” said Pedersen, “and the picture is reasonably plain. You’ve both got advance space in the glossies. That’s the normal outrider stuff. Introducing the name, tickling people’s curiosity. Standard curtain-raisers. There’s nothing big breaking in the first four weeks. There’s quite a heavy booking for Nortex, the shirt and underwear people, midweek on July 1st and 2nd. That’s the Thursday and Friday before yours comes out. I don’t see that they should conflict with you. It’s clothes, not toiletry. And it’s men, not women. The Quinn & Nicholson bookings start on July 12th. They were made in another name, incidentally, and by a small agency in the City, but we’ve traced them back to Bargulders.”

  Mallinson said, “Suppose they did jump the gun somehow and got ahead of us. It wouldn’t do us much harm. As we’ve planned it, our line is both to advertise our product and to take the steam out of their advertising.” He was looking at three pairs of advertising rough-ups which had been placed side by side on the table beside his desk.

  Jennie, who was sitting quietly in her chair, couldn’t help reflecting that Pedersen had swallowed his scruples pretty quickly. She seemed to remember his saying that he couldn’t ask Wibberley to bring across “pulls” of the Tendresse advertising when he joined Pedersens, but it was apparent that this was precisely what he had done.

  On the left were three rough drafts for Tendresse advertisements. Each showed an exquisitely gowned and heavily bejewelled lady smiling at a man in full evening dress with decorations. Underneath, a peeress, an Olympic swimmer and a well-known film heroine were presenting a plug for Tendresse, “the upper-class perfume on sale at last at a price within your reach”.

  “To be fair to him,” said Pedersen, “Wibberley disclaimed any responsibility for them. They were Nugent’s brainchildren, and no amount of talking would shift him. Twenty years ago they might have been quite effective.”

  “People haven’t stopped being snobs in twenty years,” said Crake. “It’s the sales line that’s all wrong. What they’re really saying is ‘An upper-class perfume at a lower-class price’. People stop believing that when they stop believing in fairies.”

  “I agree,” said Pedersen. “What you’ve got to say to them nowadays is ‘All right, it is expensive, but it’s well worth the extra money’.”

  “I think we’ve struck the right note throughout,” said Mallinson. He was looking at the Lucille advertisements.

  THE BOY NEXT DOOR

  Don’t bother what the Duchess thinks. It’s when HE turns his nose up that you want to watch it because, let’s face it, HE’s the one whose opinion really matters. May we suggest a simple method of making sure that he looks at you twice – etc. etc.

  The second one said:

  ARE YOU A NAME-DROPPER?

  People who talk about the great only succeed in making themselves small. Why not be yourself? YOU’RE the most important person in YOUR life. And when you want to be yourself, plus something, might we make a suggestion – etc. etc.

  The third one simply said:

  FIRST IMPRESSIONS COUNT

  What did HE think when he met you for the first time last night? If it didn’t go quite as well as you’d hoped, here’s a hint–

  “It’s the right line,” agreed Pedersen.

  Crake was examining the advertisements side by side. “I should call it anti-advertising,” he said. “Are you sure we can get away with it?”

  “Get away with what?”

  “It’s quite obvious we’re taking the piss out of ’em, isn’t it? They come out with a line of duchesses and film stars and
such and a week later we come along – using the same size and type of print in our headlines, incidentally – and say, ‘Don’t take any notice of duchesses and celebrities – ’”

  “Our legal department examined that aspect of it,” said Pedersen. “They don’t think that any action could lie. Quinns would only make fools of themselves if they tried it.”

  “There’s nothing to prevent us getting out headlines in the same print, surely?” said Mallinson. “Goudy Bold has been used for years.”

  “They’ll be bloody angry all the same,” said Crake.

  Back in his own room he rang for Mr Rowland. Mr Rowland suffered from a permanent head-cold, but was a careful and experienced operator. Mr Crake referred to him, in moments of affection, as his truffle-hound. He said, “Hop down to the companies’ registry and see if you get a line on Nortex, the shirt people. It’s at the back of my mind that they had some trouble about five years ago and had to go to the City in a hurry. They weren’t actually taken over, but someone’s got a big hook in them.”

  Mr Rowland snuffled and said he would see what he could root out.

  The City Carlton Club, despite its three-hundred-guinea entrance fee and fifty-guinea annual subscription, has a five-year waiting list. Saul Feinberg and Jacob Naumann often shared a table there at lunchtime.

  Feinberg said, “I met Wilfred Harrap at Lathams the other day.”

  “I thought he’d left them.”

  “He doesn’t work there now. I had the impression that he was there to pass the hat round for Quinn & Nicholson.”

  Naumann stared suspiciously at the smoked trout on his plate and said, “I thought Quinns had been doing all right. Their last accounts looked as healthy as – waiter!”

  “Sir.”

  “This isn’t a smoked trout at all. It’s a buckling.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right, sir.”

  “Take it away. It looked pretty healthy to me.”