by Len Deighton
‘No more for me, Frank,’ I said, ‘or I’ll fall asleep over my desk.’
‘Quite right. What was I saying? Yes, need to know.’
‘You were telling me not to put my nose into matters not my concern.’
‘Not at all. I was simply explaining to you the policy of the Department. I heard that you were on another of your crusades. I’m just trying to convince you that there’s nothing personal about it. Any extra-curricular activities of that sort, by any employee, worries Internal Security.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re not still trying to find a mole?’ He smiled again. Frank had a resolute faith in his superiors, providing they had attended the right schools, or done well in the army. For him any such suspicions were genuinely comical.
‘No, Frank. No, I’m not.’
‘I’m on your side, Bernard.’
‘I know you are, Frank.’
‘But you do have enemies – or perhaps more accurately rivals – and I don’t want them to be given an excuse to clobber you.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re what…’ he paused no more than a moment, ‘forty-four last birthday.’ So Frank even had my birthdays registered in his memory.
I grunted an affirmative.
‘With those two lovely kids you should be thinking more about your career, not seeing how many different ways you can upset the chaps on the top floor.’ Another pause while that sank in. ‘That’s just a word to the wise, Bernard.’ He dropped his napkin on the table and got to his feet to show me that his little lecture was at an end.
‘Okay, Frank,’ I said. ‘Strictly need to know, from now onwards and for ever more.’
‘That’s a sensible fellow,’ said Frank. ‘Think of the children, Bernard. They rely on you now that Fiona’s gone.’
‘I know they do, Frank.’
I hadn’t promised Frank Harrington anything I hadn’t already promised myself. It seemed as if everyone in the Western world was keen to tell me that Bret Rensselaer was clean-cut, upright and true. It would have been stupid in the light of so many reassurances to continue poking and probing into the work he was doing before my wife Fiona defected.
That afternoon I went back to work with renewed vigour. By Thursday my desk – despite a second onslaught from Dicky’s out-tray – was virtually clear. To celebrate my new freedom from extra-curricular detective work I took Gloria and the children for a weekend in the country. It was the new girl’s first weekend off, having worked for us for no less than six days. We started early Saturday morning. In a ten-acre field near Bath we visited a ‘Steam Engine Rally’, a collection of ancient steam-powered machines: harvesters, roundabouts, tractors and rollers. All working. The children adored every moment of it. Gloria seemed to become even younger and more beautiful. Despite the constant presence of the children she kept saying how wonderful it was to have me to herself. I think it was the first time that all four of us discovered that we were a family, a happy family. Even twelve-year-old Sally, who’d hitherto shown a certain reserve about Gloria, now embraced her in a way I’d almost stopped hoping for. Billy – usually so prosaic and self-contained – took Gloria for a walk and told her the story of his life, and gave her a few hints and tips on handling the new girl’s ‘ratty’ moods, which seemed to be frequent and varied. I was not optimistic about the girl. Doris, I now realized, wasn’t so bad after all.
On Saturday evening we found Everton, a pretty little village. We had dinner in the hotel. It was a long drive back to London, so on impulse we stayed there overnight. Gloria with feminine foresight had put some overnight things, including the children’s toothbrushes and pyjamas – and even the spare elastic bands Billy had to put on his wired teeth – into a bag in the back of the car. I remembered that weekend for ever afterwards. Gloria’s future education was not discussed. On Sunday morning we all went for a walk across the fields without seeing another living soul. We followed a stream that was filled with fish and ended up in a tiny riverside pub decorated with photos, theatre programmes, playbills and other mementoes of Maria Callas. We drank a bottle of Pol Roger. Billy got very muddy and Sally picked flowers. Gloria told me that it could be like this for ever and ever, and I allowed myself to believe her.
The children were growing up so fast that I could hardly reconcile this tall young fellow walking alongside me with the child that Billy had been only a few months ago. ‘Girls don’t understand about moving,’ he said, as if continuing a conversation we’d already started, although in fact we’d been giving all our attention to the prospect of scrambling across a stream.
‘Sally you mean?’
‘Yes, she had these special friends at her school in Marylebone.’
‘More special than your friends?’ I said.
‘It’s all right now. She likes it at the new place. Girls only want to talk about clothes,’ said Billy, ‘so it hardly matters where she is.’
‘And what about you?’
‘I’m going to join the Vintage Car Club.’
I concealed my surprise. ‘Are you old enough? Don’t you have to have a car?’
‘They will probably let me help…fixing the engines and pumping up the tyres.’ He looked at me. ‘I like our new house, Dad. So does Sally. So don’t worry about us.’
‘I’ll go first,’ I said and I took his arm and swung him across the water. He was heavy, damned heavy. I would never carry him on my shoulder again.
Now it was Billy’s turn to extend a hand to me. And when I’d negotiated the steep muddy bank he said, ‘I saw Grandpa the other day.’
‘Grandpa?’
‘He’s got a new car, a Bentley turbo, dark blue. He came to the school.’
‘You spoke to him?’
‘He drove us home.’
‘I thought nanny met you.’
‘She came too.’
‘I should have taken you to see him,’ I said.
‘He said we could have a holiday with him. He’s going to Turkey. He might drive there: drive all the way.’
‘Grandpa? You’re not making this up, Billy?’
‘Could we go, Daddy? Perhaps in the Bentley.’
‘Did you tell Auntie Gloria about this?’
Billy looked contrite. He stared down at his muddy shoes and spoke quietly. ‘She said I wasn’t to tell you. She said you’d worry.’
‘No, it’s all right, Billy. I’ll have to see about it. Maybe I’ll talk to Grandpa.’
‘Thank you, Daddy. Thank you, thank you!’ Billy hugged me and said, ‘Do you think Grandpa would let me sit up front?’
‘Turkey is a long way away,’ I said.
‘There’s Sally and Auntie Gloria,’ he shouted. ‘They must have found a way across the stream.’
So it had started. If it was simply a matter of going on holiday, why hadn’t Fiona’s father come to me and asked? Turkey: the USSR just a stone’s throw away. The idea of my children being there with my meddlesome father-in-law filled me with dread.
Billy’s little story cast a grey shadow across our idyll, but it was that bloody old fool Dodo who caused all the trouble to start again for me. At our first meeting in France I’d seen him as an amiable eccentric, a cultured old man who occasionally took too much to drink. Now I was to encounter the malicious, self-aggrandizing, belligerent old drunk that was really him.
Although it was never confirmed, I have no doubt that Gloria’s mother had spoken on the phone with him and poured her heart out about being neglected and lonely. Gloria said that at some unspecified time in the distant past the old man had always been fond of her mother. Dodo however told everyone he met in London that he was ‘on business’. Whatever the reason, Dodo suddenly appeared in London, dressed up in an old but beautifully cut Glen Urquhart suit, and for the first week he was staying in the Ritz; a room with a view across the park.
He had contacts of course. Not only expatriate Hungarians and the people he’d known during his time in Vienna, but ‘departmental’ people
too. For Dodo had been one of Lange’s ‘Prussians’ and for some people that was commendation beyond compare. He’d also played some unrevealed part in the Budapest network of which Gloria’s father had been a member before escaping across the border. And Dodo was a man who could be relied upon to keep in touch, so ‘old pals’ from the Treasury and the Foreign Office took Dodo to lunch at the Reform and the Travellers.
He liked to go to parties. He went to embassy parties, show-biz parties, ‘society’ parties and literary parties. How much time he spent with Gloria’s parents, and whether they talked about me, and speculated upon the work I did, was never established. But by the time I encountered him again, Dodo was disturbingly well informed about me.
Dodo’s invitation to have drinks with ‘friends of mine –Thursday 6–8 pm or as long as people stay…’ at a smart address in Chapel Street near Eaton Square was scribbled on Ritz notepaper and arrived in the post on Wednesday morning. It was not adequate preparation for what we met there. We arrived at a small town house typical of London South West One. Outside in the street there were expensive motorcars, and a formally dressed butler opened the door. Many of the guests were in evening clothes and the women in long dresses. There was the sound of live music and loud laughter. Gloria cursed under her breath, for she was wearing a tweed suit that had been relegated to her working day, and she’d not had time to fix her hair.
The whole house was given over to the party and there were guests in every room. In the first room we entered there was a young man in evening clothes and two girls in party dresses seemingly engrossed in a large illustrated book. We left them to their reading and went to the next room, where two men were dispensing drinks from behind a trestle table. ‘Hungarian wines,’ said the barman when I asked what they were. ‘Only Hungarian wines.’ I took the biggest measure and, with drinks in hand, we went upstairs in search of the gypsy band. ‘It’s a zimbalon,’ said Gloria when she heard the strings. ‘Hungarian music. Wherever would Dodo find someone to play a zimbalon?’
‘Now’s your chance to ask him,’ I said.
Dodo was coming down the upper stairs with a drink in his hand and a happy smile on his face. His hair had been neatly trimmed but the dinner suit he wore had seen better days and with it he was wearing blue suede shoes with odd laces and red socks. He grinned even more as he caught sight of us. He was not the sort of man who felt disadvantaged by old clothes. On the contrary, he seemed to like old garments as he liked old books and old wines, and he paid no regard to Gloria’s distress at feeling so inappropriately dressed.
He’d already had a few drinks, and wasted little time on greetings before telling us about some of the distinguished guests. ‘The chap you saw me with on the stairs is the power behind the scenes with Lufthansa. He used to have a room across the hall from me when I lived in that dreadful flea-pit in Kohlmarkt. Now of course it’s one of the most fashionable streets in Vienna.’ Dodo led us into the room where the gypsy band was playing. It was dark, with only candle-light flickering on the faces of the musicians and revealing the rapt expressions on the shadowed faces of the audience.
‘Were they playing czardas?’ Gloria said with such urgency that I suddenly saw a new aspect of her revealed.
‘Of course, darling Zu,’ said Uncle Dodo.
‘How clever you are,’ she told him, all worries about her clothes and hair forgotten. She gave him a sudden kiss and said something in Hungarian. He laughed. I felt excluded.
‘Are you from Budapest?’ I asked him, more to make conversation than because I truly wanted to know.
‘All Hungarians are from Budapest,’ he said.
Gloria said, ‘Yes, we all love Budapest.’ She looked at Dodo and reflectively said, ‘You’re right: all Hungarians feel at home in Budapest.’
‘Even you gypsies,’ said Uncle Dodo as the slow gypsy music started again, and Gloria began to sway with its rhythm.
‘Did Zu ever tell you your fortune?’ he asked me.
‘No,’ I said.
‘With the tarot cards?’
‘No, Dodo,’ said Gloria. ‘Sometimes it’s better not to know what the cards say.’ The subject was closed.
‘Have you eaten?’ he asked.
When told we hadn’t he took us down to the kitchen, where two frantic cooks were slaving to produce a tableful of exotic dishes. Gloria and Dodo vied to name for me the different dishes, and disputed the authentic recipes for them. I tried everything. Veal strips in sour cream, garlicky stewed beef cubes with rich red paprika. There were breadcrumbed fried chicken pieces, boiled pork with horseradish and river fish flavoured with garlic and ginger. It was not the food I’d ever encountered in modern Hungary, a country where cooks render meat stew completely tasteless and measure each portion with government-issued 100-gram ladles.
‘So you like Hungarian food, eh?’ said Dodo. The only really good meal I’d eaten there was at a big country house near Lake Balaton. The food came from Käfer in Munich, smuggled over the border. My host was a black-market dealer who had a security colonel as the guest of honour. But when Dodo said, as everyone has to say, that the Hungarians eat damned well nowadays and that Budapest is fast becoming a place for gourmets to journey to, I nodded and smiled and gobbled my food and said yes it was.
After eating we wandered off to find a place where we could sit down in comfort. The rooms had emptied as the gypsy band drew many of the guests upstairs. In the corner of this room there was a large table with posters and brochures advertising a new book called The Wonderful World of Hungarian Cooking. I realized that the egregious Dodo had simply helped us to gatecrash a particularly lavish publication party. He saw me looking at the display and he smiled without offering any explanation. He was like that.
A waiter, in a smart white jacket and gold shoulder loops, came over to us and offered coffee and small jam-filled pancakes. Dodo declined the food so that he could go on with his stories about his youth in Vienna. ‘The landlady –as mean and venal as only Viennese landladies can be – had a Schiele charcoal portrait hanging in her kitchen. Her kitchen! She’d wrung it from the poor devil for some insignificantly small debt. She didn’t even appreciate her good fortune. The old cow! She’d rather have a coloured one, she kept saying. Well, all those coloured Schiele pictures had the coloured wash applied long after the drawing was completed. Anyone with any taste at all would have preferred this delicate charcoal portrait…a young woman. It might have been Schiele’s wife Edith. That would have made it more valuable of course.’ I tried not to listen to him. Another waiter looked into the room. Dodo hurriedly downed the rest of his whisky and waved an arm for more without even looking to see if the waiter had noticed. ‘Those were the days!’ said Dodo and sat back red-faced and breathing heavily. It wasn’t clear whether he was referring to Schiele’s times in Vienna, or his own. I didn’t ask. There were not many respites from Dodo’s remorseless chatter and I was beginning to get a headache.
‘But there was little chance of him remaining quiet for more than a moment or two. In record time a double Scotch arrived and Dodo was off on another story.
He was well oiled by the time the coffee waiter returned with offers of second helpings, and Dodo’s cheerfulness had turned to his own jocular sort of sarcasm that was edged with hostility. He put a heavy hand on my shoulder. ‘We know – those of us who have had the honour to work for Her Majesty’s Government in positions of trust and danger – that fortune favours the brave. Right, Bernard, right?’
He’d made similar remarks earlier in the evening and now I decided not to let it go. ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean,’ I said. Gloria glanced at him and at me, having heard the irritation in my voice.
‘A field agent who is smart doesn’t get paid off with an MBE and a big thank you. A clever field agent knows he can get a sackful of gold sovereigns and knows there are more where they came from. See what I mean?’
‘No,’ I said.
He hit my shoulder again in a gesture that he proba
bly thought fraternal. ‘And so he should be. I’m not against that. Let the people at the sharp end make a bit of money. It’s only right and fair.’
‘Do you mean Daddy?’ Gloria asked. Her voice too had a note of warning, had he been sober enough to heed it.
He made a hissing sound and said, ‘Darling, what your dear father was paid – and what I got – was chicken feed compared with what those in the know can tuck away. If you haven’t discovered that by now, Bernard will fill in the details.’
‘I never met any rich field agents,’ I said.
‘Really, darling, no?’ A slowly expanding artful grin illuminated his whole face.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked him.
‘If you want to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, then so be it.’ He drank his whisky, spilling some down his chin, and turned his head away.
‘You’d better tell me,’ I said.
‘Damn it!’ Big smile. ‘You and that wife of yours.’
‘Me and that wife of mine…what?’
‘Come along, darling.’ A knowing grin. ‘Your wife was in Operations, right? She was a trustee for some kind of “sinking fund”. She disappeared and so did all the money. Don’t tell me that you didn’t get your hands on a few pounds, or that some of it wasn’t put away in the children’s names somewhere.’
‘Uncle Dodo, that’s enough,’ said Gloria sharply.
‘Let him go on,’ I said. ‘I want to hear more.’
Like a cunning little animal his eyes went from one to the other of us. ‘Berlin, the Ku-Damm,’ he said meaningfully.
‘What about it?’
‘Schneider, Von Schild und Weber.’
‘It sounds like a bank,’ I said.
‘It is a bank,’ said Dodo with great satisfaction, as if his argument was already won. ‘It is a bank.’