The Ipcress File hp-1

by Len Deighton

  When I got into the office Alice was guarding the portals. ‘Keightley has been ringing,’ she said. If she’d just do something about her hair and put on some make-up Alice could be quite attractive. She followed me into Dalby’s room. ‘And I said you’d be at the War Office cinema at five. There’s something special on there.’

  I said OK, and that Ross’s memoranda sheet would be over later, and would she deal with it. She said that her clearance wasn’t high enough but when I didn’t reply, she said she’d check it and add our stuff. Alice couldn’t hold a conversation with me without constantly arranging the pens, pencils, trays and notebooks on my desk. She lined them up, sighted down them and took away each pencil and sharpened it.

  ‘One of these days I’ll come in and find my desk set white-washed.’

  Alice looked up with one of those pained expressions with which she always greeted sarcasm. It beat me why she didn’t ever tell me that it was the lowest form of wit. I could see the words forming a couple of times.

  ‘Look, Alice, surely with your vast knowledge of the screened personnel available to us you must be able to locate a sexy little dark number to do these things of everyday for me. Unless you’re getting a crush on me. Alice, is that it?’

  She gave me the ‘turn-to-stone’ look.

  ‘No kidding, Alice, rank has its privileges. I don’t ask for much out of this life but I need someone to précis the intelligence memoranda, watch my calorie count, and sew up tears in my trousers.’

  Just to show I wasn’t kidding I typed out a requisition of the sort for ‘Goods to the value of £700 or over,’ and wrote, ‘Additional Personnel. One female assistant to temp. OC as discussed. Earliest.’

  I gave it to Alice, who read it without her expression changing. She picked up a couple of files from my ‘Out’ tray and marched to the door. She turned to face me and said, ‘Don’t use military nomenclature on civilian stationery, and don’t leave your trays unlocked.’

  ‘Your seams are crooked, Alice,’ I said. She went out.

  As you go into the basement at the War Office the décor of drab light-green and cream paint is enlivened by the big square sectioned air-conditioning plant, painted a wild bolshie red. I turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs to find a dour Scots sergeant of military police standing outside the cinema. Talking in the corner were Carswell, Murray and Ross. With them was a heavily built civilian with long black hair combed straight back. He wore a Guards Armoured Div tie, and a white handkerchief folded as a rectangle in his top pocket. His complexion was ruddy, almost unnaturally so, and given the slightest opportunity, he threw back his head to reveal his very even, perfect, white teeth. Nearer to the handkerchief-sized screen was Chico, his bright eyes anxiously darting about to detect a joke coming so he could laugh, and thereby prove he had a sense of humour. He was conversing with a slim elderly major who had half a dozen strands of hair artistically arranged across his head. If they had to have a major here to project the film it might be worth watching.

  Ross seemed to be running the show, and when I arrived nodded as though I hadn’t seen him for weeks. He addressed the nine of us (two of Ross’s people had just arrived):

  ‘There’s no more information on this one, chaps, but any recognition, of location even, would be much appreciated.’ He leaned through the door. ‘That’s the lot, sergeant. No one else now.’

  ‘Sir!’ I heard the sergeant growl.

  ‘Oh,’ said Ross, turning back to his audience, ‘and I’m sorry, chaps, no smoking as of last week.’

  The lights dimmed down and we had a few hundred feet of unedited 16mm silent cine-film.

  Some of the shots were out of focus and some were under-exposed. They mostly showed men indoors. The ages ran from about thirty to fifty. The men were well-dressed and in the main clean shaven. It was hard to be quite sure if they were filmed with or without the subjects knowing. The lights came on. We all looked at each other blankly. I called to Ross, ‘Where did it come from? I mean, what’s it about?’

  ‘To be frank,’ said Ross — I waited for the lie—‘we are not quite sure for the time being. It’s possible there is more to come.’ The thickset character nodded satisfaction. Anyone who found that explanation satisfactory was easy to please. I felt sure he belonged to Ross and I hoped Carswell and Murray hadn’t been indiscreet. I didn’t want to join in with Ross’s idiot game of cloak and dagger stuff between departments, but in view of Ross’s most recent move the less he was told the better.

  ‘Any other questions?’ Ross said, just like he’d answered the first one. There was another silence and I stifled the impulse to clap. The jolly fat doorman said, ‘Good day, sir,’ as I left the Horseguards Avenue entrance, and walked down Whitehall to Keightley at Scotland Yard.

  Inside the entrance an elderly policeman was speaking into a phone. ‘Room 284?’ he said. ‘Hello Room 284? I’m trying to locate the tea trolley.’

  I saw Keightley in the hallway. He always looked out of place among all those policemen. His slick hair and deeply lined pale, freckled face, and white moustache gave a first impression of greater age than was really the case. He had a pair of heavy black spectacles of the sort with straight side bars. These latter facilitated his pulling his glasses half off his face just before telling or showing you something, then snapping them back on his nose to lend emphasis to what he was saying. His timing and execution were perfect. I’d never seen him miss his face yet. He came down to collect me. In his hand he had a film tin about eight inches across.

  ‘I think you’ll agree,’ he had his glasses well off his face now, and was peering over them, ‘your journey was well worth while.’ They snapped into place, little images of the doorway reflected in the lenses. He rattled the tin heavily and led the way to his office. It was cramped for space, as are so many of the offices at the Yard. I closed the door behind me. Keightley began to remove the heap of papers, files and maps from the knee-hole desk that used up most of the floor space.

  An old crone appeared from nowhere with a cup of muddy coffee on a wet tin tray. I wanted to tell her that there was a call out for her, but I resisted the impulse. Keightley got an old black crusty pipe going and finally, after we’d been through the niceties of British meetings, he leaned back and began to let me have it.

  ‘The haunted house,’ he began, and smiled, while rubbing the stem of his pipe along his moustache. ‘These people,’ Keightley always referred to the Metropolitan Police as ‘these people’, ‘did a very thorough job for you. “finger-prints”. Normally we only do a check going back five years, except for murder or treason cases; for them and you we did the whole eighteen-year collection.’ He paused. ‘Then they did all the special collections; the “scenes of crime” collections; the Indian seamen collection…’ Keightley poked a match into the bowl of his pipe and sucked his cheeks inwards…‘Of men jumping ship, and the sacrilege collection.’ He paused again. ‘Nothing anywhere. Forensic Science,’ he tapped his second finger. ‘We did the usual tests. The old bloodstains were Group “O”, but then forty-two per cent of the country is Group “O”.’

  ‘Keightley,’ I interrupted. ‘Your time is valuable, so is mine, I know all this. Just tell me what you sent the message about.’

  ‘Procedure: house exterior,’ he tapped his next finger. I knew it was no good. I’d have to go through the whole thing. Getting Keightley to tell one punch line immediately was like trying to get an aspirin without first removing the cotton wool. He gave me all the stuff — digging down to eighteen inches in the kitchen garden. Using a mine detector over floors and lath and plaster walls and in the garden. He listed the books they’d found and the oxygen cylinders, the tinned food and the complicated safety harness bolted to the tank. ‘It wasn’t till then, sir, that we found the film tin. I don’t think it was hidden at all. In fact, at first we thought it must be something the FS[12] boys had brought with them.’

  By now I guessed that it was the tin Keightley was talking about. I hel
d out my hand hoping that he’d pass it to me. But no such luck. Keightley had a captive audience and wasn’t letting go.

  ‘We checked all the equipment, then I decided that if they were carrying things out to cars in the drive and in a big hurry — and doubtless they were in a big hurry.’ I nodded. Keightley was on his feet, acting the whole thing out for me. ‘Coming out with huge armfuls of stuff.’

  ‘What sort of stuff?’ I asked. I was interested in Keightley’s fantasy life; anything would be a relief in a day like this was turning out to be.

  ‘Ah,’ Keightley laid his head on one side and looked at me. ‘Ah,’ he said again. He looked like the wine waiter at the Tour d’Argent being asked for a bottle of Tizer. ‘That’s what you’ll have to tell me, sir, what sort of stuff.’

  ‘Then let’s for a minute say “Ships in bottles”,’ I said.

  ‘Warships, sir?’

  ‘Yes, nuclear submarines, sea-borne missile platforms, floating Coca-Cola depot boats, Life magazine colour-section printing-machine barges, thinking men’s filter replacement transports, psychological-obsolescence tankers, and deep-frozen do-nut supply ships.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Keightley pretended that his pipe had gone out and clamped a match-box over the bowl to make a great show of fanning it back to red sparking life. His cheeks popped in and out. He looked up, smiled weakly and said, ‘You’d probably like to hear it, sir.’ He opened the film tin and removed a reel of ¼ in recording tape.

  ‘Remember though, sir, I’m not saying they did originate from the occupiers.’

  ‘They?’ I stared insolently. ‘You mean this tape and the film you sent Ross at the War House?’

  It wrecked Keightley. Mind you, I don’t blame him. He was just trying to keep everyone happy; but not blaming him and not preventing a future incident of the same kind is a different thing again. Keightley’s loosely captive eyeballs circuited their red bloodshot linings. We sat silently for perhaps thirty seconds, then I said, ‘Listen, Keightley, Ross’s department is all military. Anything that passes your eyeballs or eardrums and has even a sniff of civilian in it comes to Dalby, or as the situation is at present, to me, or failing that, Alice. If I ever have cause to think that you are funnelling information of any sort at all, Keightley, any sort at all, into unauthorized channels, you’ll find yourself lance-corporal in charge of restricted documents in the officers’ mess, Aden. Unless I can think of something worse. I won’t ever repeat this threat, Keightley, but don’t imagine it’s not going to be forever hanging over your bonce like Damocles’ chopper. Now let’s see what you found at the bottom of the garden. And don’t start tapping your bloody finger-tips again.’

  He played the tape through on the big grey Ferrograph. The sound was of an abstract quality. It was like a Rowton House production of the ‘Messiah’ heard through a wall and played at half speed.

  ‘Animal, vegetable or mineral?’ I asked.

  ‘Human voices, these people say.’

  I listened to the undulating and horrisonous mewl, to the bleating, braying, yelping howl, and found it as difficult to listen to as it was to label. I nodded. ‘It doesn’t do a thing for me,’ I told him, ‘but I’ll take it away and think about it. It might grow on me.’

  Keightley gave me the reel and the tin, and a quiet good-bye.

  Chapter 16

  The next day I didn’t go into the office in the morning. I drifted up to the Charing Cross Road on a number 1 bus, then cut off across Soho. I wanted to get a few groceries, some coffee, aubergines, andouillettes, some black bread, that sort of thing. The girl in the delicatessen had trimmed her eyebrows — I didn’t like them so much like that. She looked constantly surprised. With the clientele in that shop perhaps she was. I decided to have a cup of coffee in Led’s. The coffee may not be so good there — but the cheesecake was fine and I like the customers.

  It seemed gloomy inside after the hot sunshine. I kicked the threadbare section of carpeting and eased myself into one of their rickety wooden chairs. Two Cona coffee-pots were bubbling away noisily.

  My coffee came. I relaxed with the Daily Express. A hearsay report from a reliable source said that a girl featured weekly in a badly made TV series was likely to have a child.

  A policeman earning £570 p.a. attacked by youths with knives outside a cinema where a nineteen-year-old rock-an’-roll singer was making a personal appearance for £600.

  ‘Would Jim Walker play for Surrey?’ There was a picture of Jim Walker, and 600 words. It didn’t say whether he would or not.

  ‘Warm sunny weather expected to continue. Cologne and Athens record temperature for time of year.’

  ‘British heavy electrical gear still world’s best,’ some Briton in the electrical trade had said. I held a quiet requiem for so many trees that had died in vain.

  I sat there for half an hour or so. I smoked my Gauloises and thought about Keightley and Ross, and how someone smarter than I would handle Chico. Murray was the only one of the whole setup I’d want as a personal friend, and he was only in on the deal by accident. He had neither screening nor training as an operative. I thought about my desk where there would be the usual run of junk to read and initial before getting to anything important. The sight of that desk haunted me.

  Most mornings I had a rough file of material from Washington — Defense Dept DSO SD CIC.[13] Once a week I had what was called a ‘digest’ of the ‘National Intelligence Estimate’, the thing they give to the President. The ‘digest’ meant I got a copy of the parts of it that they decided to let me see.

  Then there were six to eight foolscap sheets of translations of passages from the foreign papers—Pravda, People’s Daily, the main paper of the Chinese Communist régime, and Red Flag, the theoretical organ of the Chinese Central Committee, and perhaps a few Yugoslav, Latvian or Hungarian accounts.

  All this stuff had piled up on me the last few days. I decided to let it go another day. This was a warm London summer’s day, the sooty trees were in sooty leaf, and the girls were in light cotton dresses. I felt relaxed and simple. I called for another cup of thin coffee and leaned back reflectively.

  She came into Led’s old broken doorway and into my life like the Royal Scot, but without all the steam and noise. She was dark, calm and dangerous-looking. Under her pinned-back hair her face was childishly wide-eyed as she stood momentarily blinded by the change of light.

  Slowly and unflinchingly she looked around, meeting the insolent intensity of Led’s loose-lipped Lotharios, then came to sit at my small, circular, plastic-topped table. She ordered a black coffee and croissant. Her face was taut like a cast of an Aztec god; everything that was static in her features was belied by the soft, woolly, quick eyes into which the beholder sank unprotesting. Her hair, coarse and oriental in texture, was drawn back into a vortex on the crown of her head. She drank the brown coffee slowly.

  She was wearing that ‘little black sleeveless dress’ that every woman has in reserve for cocktail parties, funerals and first nights. Her slim white arms shone against the dull material, and her hands were long and slender, the nails cut short and varnished in a natural colour. I watched her even, very white teeth bite into the croissant. She could have been top kick in the Bolshoi, Sweden’s first woman ship’s captain, private secretary to Chouen-lai, or Sammy Davis’s press agent. She didn’t pat her hair, produce a mirror, apply lipstick or flutter her eyelashes. She opened a conversation in a tentative English way. Her name was Jean Tonnesen. She was my new assistant.

  Alice, the cunning old doll, not missing a trick, had given Miss Tonnesen a file of urgent matter including a written note from Chico saying he’d ‘gone away for the day would phone in at teatime’. It was pretty infuriating, but I didn’t want to start the day’s business by getting mad.

  ‘Have another coffee.’

  ‘Black, please.’

  ‘Which department did you come to us from?’

  ‘I was already in Dalby’s — I was holding down Macao sub-office.’
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  She must have seen the ego in my face take a bend. ‘I suppose we’ll have to stop saying Dalby’s now that you’re running us.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary. He’s only temporarily detached. As far as anyone has told me, anyway.’

  She smiled, she had a nice smile.

  ‘Must be terrible to be back in Europe — even on a fine summer’s day. I remember going to a restaurant in Macao. It was built over a gambling casino. An illuminated sign reported the results at the tables downstairs. The waitresses take the bets, take the money; you eat, the sign shows the results — Bingo! Indigestion!’

  She smiled again while shaking her head. I liked sitting here watching her smile her clear white smiles. She managed to let me play at being boss without being obsequious about it. I dimly remember her being in Macao, that is to say I remembered the odd papers and reports from her.

  ‘I brought my transfer card,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s look.’ I was beginning to confirm the picture of me that Alice had sketched in roughly. Even though Led’s wasn’t the place, she passed me a pale-green filing card. It was about six by ten inches. It was a personnel-type card, such as any large commercial firm might employ, but in the space for name and address there was only an irregularly spaced series of rectangular holes. Under this in panels was information. Born twenty-six years ago in Cairo. Norwegian father, Scottish mother, probably not short of the stuff since she went to school in Zurich between ’51 and ’52, and decided to live there. Perhaps working for British Diplomatic Service in Switzerland — it wouldn’t be the first time an Embassy typist came into the department. Her brother holds Norwegian citizenship, works for a shipping firm in Yokohama — hence presumably HK then Macao — where she worked part-time for the tourist bureau there — a Portuguese set-up. The panel marked T was bursting with entries. She spoke Norwegian, English, Portuguese, German, French, ‘FSW’, that is ‘fluent in speech and writing’, and Mandarin, Japanese and Cantonese ‘SS, some speaking’. Her security clearance was GH7 ‘non stopped’ which means that nothing had been found to prevent her having a higher clearance if the department wanted to classify her higher.