The Crossing

by Ted Allbeury

  “That’s all very useful stuff.”

  The man read the column that consisted of nothing more than routine published information on ship movements and naval promotions and postings. He pushed the newspaper to one side and turned in his seat to look at Houghton.

  “Is this meant to be some sort of joke?”

  Houghton shrugged. “That’s all I can do for you, mate.”

  “Maybe you don’t believe my warning about what could happen to you and your woman.”

  “You can’t do anything in this country. You’d never get away with it.”

  The man looked at him with half-closed eyes as he spoke. “I’m going to give you one more chance, comrade. If you don’t respond sensibly you’re going to be in very deep trouble.”

  And without further words the man pushed aside the table and walked out of the pub.

  For the first time Harry Houghton wondered if they really would dare to try something. For a couple of days he thought about it from time to time. But he was getting ready to move his belongings from the repository and the trailer he had moved into while he and Ethel decorated the cottage. It had taken months but it would be ready for Christmas and there was a lot to sort out now that he was on his own.

  But when another Hoover brochure arrived in the post the first week in December he decided to ignore it. When in doubt do nothing was Harry Houghton’s motto.

  11

  The small shop in a side-street just off the Strand had shelves from floor to ceiling with row on row of books. Books were piled high on half a dozen tables and books were stacked on shelves up the stairs to the small second storey. In the small untidy inner office a glass-fronted bookcase held the really expensive volumes.

  They were books of all kinds except fiction and the majority were about the Americas. The United States, Canada, South America and the Polar Regions. History, geography, economics, politics, flora and fauna, the arts, anything related to the Americas.

  When the bell on the street door clanged a small white-haired man came down the rickety stairs and walked over to the man who had come in.

  “Don’t let me disturb you if you want to browse. You’re very welcome to look around but if I can help you …”

  “Maybe you can. Have you ever heard of a guy named Moore, a poet?”

  “You must mean Clement C. Moore, died about 1860 or thereabouts.”

  “That’s pretty good. Yes, he’s the guy. He had a book published called Saint Nicholas, something like that.”

  “Ah yes. Actually A Visit from Saint Nicholas.”

  “That’s the one. You got it by any chance?”

  “No. I could get you a copy maybe, if you’re not in a hurry.”

  “How long would it take?”

  “Oh, that’s very hard to say. Months rather than weeks, I’m afraid. Especially if you wanted the original edition.”

  “Yep. That’s what I wanted. Well maybe I’ll leave you my card. I’m at the US Embassy. I’ll give you a call in a few months’ time.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, sir.”

  When the customer had left the white-haired man went back up to his small office and sat looking at the visiting card. The American was the naval attaché at the US Embassy. He reached for the telephone, hesitated, then slid the card into the drawer of his desk. He was fifty, a spry, healthy-looking man with a ready smile and already well-respected in London’s antiquarian book world. It was known that he was a New Zealander and only just established, but he knew his subject and had a reputation for fair dealing. He didn’t deal in the areas that most dealers covered, he was a genuine specialist and he passed on leads to other booksellers for a small commission. And even apart from business he was a likeable man. He didn’t talk about his past but that was understandable. He was a Jew and he had been in Europe before he became a refugee to New Zealand. People assumed that he had a background of persecution and concentration camps as many others did who were now in London. Nobody wanted to open old wounds, neither his nor theirs.

  He and his wife lived in a typical London suburb in a modest bungalow. 45 Cranley Drive, Ruislip, was quite small. Mock Tudor with white-washed walls and fake beams with a small front garden and a drive up to the garage. His wife, Helen, was forty-seven, also white-haired and with alert eyes that were always on the edge of a smile. Obviously well-educated and capable she looked a very compatible wife for her bookseller husband.

  The bookshop didn’t open on Saturdays. It wasn’t worth it, and apart from that he needed his weekends free.

  He was up in the attic when his wife called up to him.

  “The phone, Peter. For you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Our friend.”

  He clambered down the ladder, brushing the dust from his clothes and in the hall he picked up the phone. It was only a short conversation and then he walked into the kitchen.

  “He’ll be here at mid-day. I’d better finish the attic. I’ll need the vacuum cleaner.”

  The three of them ate together. Borsch and pirozhki followed by lemon sorbet. When the woman left the two men together they got straight down to business.

  “When can you take the radio?”

  “Now if you want.”

  “Where are you putting it?”

  “Under the kitchen floor.”

  “Isn’t that risky?”

  “No. It’s the last place anyone would look.”

  “And the aerial?”

  “I’ve already fitted one in the attic.”

  “Don’t forget to give me that American’s visiting card. That could be very useful.”

  He smiled, patting his jacket pocket. “I haven’t forgotten it.”

  12

  There had been a Hipcress farming on the Romney Marshes long before Napoleon contemplated invasion, and one of the early Hipcresses had helped dig out the channel for the Military Canal. They were none of them good farmers although they were financially quite successful. They had a hunger for land that outran their husbandry. All farmers complain about the weather and the crops but Albert Hipcress didn’t complain. He seethed silently with anger against the government, the tax office, the National Farmers’ Union and neighbours with more than his five hundred acres.

  Hipcress was a bachelor of forty-five, and with his unprepossessing appearance and his country bumpkin manners seemed likely to remain one. But he assumed that every woman on the marshes, single or otherwise, saw him as a prime target because of his five hundred acres. His farming was simple and primitive. Potatoes, beans, and sheep. His lambing record was poor, but his feed costs were minimal.

  The farmhouse itself was a pleasant, rambling old house alongside two disused oasts, and beyond the oasts were two large metal-clad barns. The shepherd’s cottage was a hundred yards away, barely visible from the farmhouse itself.

  Albert Hipcress sat in the farm kitchen next to the Rayburn solid-fuel cooker, reading a week-old copy of the Kent Messenger. He wore a pair of old felt slippers and a pair of shiny blue serge trousers held up by a pair of army braces. He looked up at the old clock on the mantelpiece. There was half an hour yet. He used the tool to lift the hotplate, spat into the fire and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He walked through to his tiny office that had once been a larder and switched on the light. Taking a bunch of keys from his trouser pocket he unlocked the bottom drawer in the ancient roll-topped desk, took out a blue folder and turned over the pages until he came to the balance sheet. He had not only read it many times before in the past month but he could have recited the figures blindfolded. The farm itself was valued at £672,000. The stock was written down to £7,000 and the plant and machinery at £24,320. Albert Hipcress used contractors to avoid capital expenditure. But the last figure was the one that pleased him most. Cash at bank. £943 on current account and £34,000 on deposit. The scattered cottages that he owned were not included in the farm accounts.

  He walked through to the bedroom. The light at the side of the bed was already
on, the bottle of whisky and the two glasses were on the cast-iron mantelpiece over the gas-fire. The corner of the sheets was turned down neatly on the bed. And then he saw the lights of the car as it went over the hump-backed bridge across the feeder to the canal. He was downstairs, waiting at the back door as it swept in to draw up between the oasts where nobody could see it. He heard her high heels as she hurried across the concrete yard. Then he saw her and she was the one he’d asked for.

  “Hello, Mr. H. How are you?”

  He nodded. “Not bad. How are you?”

  The girl laughed softly. “Rarin’ to go, honey.”

  Upstairs he sat on the edge of the bed watching as she took off her sweater, chatting to him, her firm young breasts swinging and bouncing as she struggled with the zip of her skirt. And then she was naked, standing smiling at him as he stared at her body.

  “There you are, Mr. H. That’s what you’ve been waiting for all the week isn’t it?”

  It was seven o’clock the next morning when she left the farmhouse and hurried over to the cottage.

  The Romney Marshes are not dairy country, its bleakness and its terrain can only support sheep, and the Romney Marsh sheep were bred to withstand the biting winds and the soggy marshland. On the marshes shepherds had always been known as “lookers” and on the Hipcress farm the “looker’s” cottage was almost hidden from the farmhouse by a mild slope of the ground and a small copse of beech trees.

  There had been no “looker” on the Hipcress farm for the last twenty years and the cottage had stood empty for most of the time. Albert Hipcress had often wondered if there wasn’t some way he could make some cash out of the “looker’s” cottage. He spoke to the estate agents in Rye and a few weeks later they had sent a man to see him. The estate agents suggested that he could possibly get seven to ten pounds a week rent for the cottage provided it was tidied up a bit.

  Hipcress took an instant dislike to the man the agents sent to look at the cottage. He was a city man, smiling, confident and condescending. But when Hipcress said ten pounds a week the man had accepted. When they looked over the cottage together Hipcress said that it was up to a tenant to put it in order and bear the cost. The man had agreed to this too and Hipcress took him back to the farmhouse and wrote out a rental agreement from a tattered copy of Every Man His Own Lawyer. He asked for three months’ rent in advance and was amazed when the man not only agreed but paid in cash.

  He had watched the “looker’s” cottage being cleared out and furnished and wondered why a man would go to so much trouble when he only used the place at weekends and once or twice a month on weekdays just for the night. Slowly he changed his opinion of the man who was always so amiable and who frequently brought him a few bottles of beer. Two or three times on Saturday nights the man walked over to the farmhouse and chatted with him in the kitchen. He couldn’t remember how they’d got on to the subject of girls and sex. From the way the man talked he obviously expected that Hipcress had a girl now and again. He seemed amazed when Hipcress said that he’d never been able to find a girl to oblige him that way.

  The following weekend the man had shown him photographs of two girls and asked him which he liked best. Albert Hipcress studied the two photographs as carefully as if he were judging the Miss World contest and finally pointed at the picture of the young blonde. The man smiled. “You’ve got a good eye for a girl, Albert. She’s a real goer that one.” He looked at the farmer, “She’s a friend of mine. How about I fix for her to come down with me in the week and give you a nice time?” Albert Hipcress was torn between the embarrassment of letting an outsider know his innermost thoughts and his desire for the girl. “Just try her, Albert. I’d like to know what you think of her.” Albert Hipcress put up only token resistance and it was obvious that he was eager to take advantage of the man’s offer.

  Twice a month the girl had been brought down to the farmhouse. It cost Hipcress nothing and he was an enthusiastic and willing learner. When a visit was due, his mind as he worked around the farm was obsessed by thoughts of what they would do on the ramshackle bed in his room upstairs. His tenant never asked him if he liked the sessions with the girl and he never mentioned them himself. But he wondered how the man persuaded the girl to do it. He guessed it must be money. It wasn’t the man’s looks. His face had not even one good feature and his sallow complexion was especially unattractive. His eyes were always half-closed as if he was watching carefully; his nose was shapeless and his small mouth was mean. When Hipcress had asked him what he did he’d said he was a businessman but he didn’t say what business he was in. Most men would have wondered why, if it was money that made it possible, a stranger should spend money on him. But Albert Hipcress never wondered what the man’s motive might be.

  13

  When the reception clerk phoned through to Joe Kimber he listened with no great interest. At least once a week some nutter came to the US Embassy in Paris, offering the innermost secrets of the Politburo or his services to the CIA.

  “Can he hear you talking to me now?”

  “No. I’ve shoved him in the annexe.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Pretty rough. Tensed up and tanked up.”

  “Did he speak French or English?”

  “English. But real bad English. A heavy accent.”

  “Tell me again what he said?”

  “He said he was an officer in the KGB. He’d just come from his assignment in the US and he wants to defect.”

  Kimber sighed. “OK. I’d better have a look at him. Tell one of the guards to bring him in.” He cleared everything off his desk except the two telephones and drew the curtains over the map on the wall. He didn’t get up from his desk when the Marine brought in the visitor. He pointed to the single chair.

  “Sit down, Mister … I didn’t get your name.”

  The man shrugged. “Is Maki or Hayhanen—whichever you like.”

  The American smiled. “Which one do you like?”

  “My real name is Hayhanen but I use Maki name in New York.”

  “Tell me about New York.”

  “I work there for KGB.”

  “So what are you doing in Paris?”

  “I was recalled by Moscow. I don’t wish to go. I am afraid.”

  “Why are you afraid?”

  “I think they discipline me. Punish me.”

  “Why should they do that?”

  “I don’t know. I think the man in New York gives bad report on me.”

  “Which man is that?”

  “Is two men. Sivrin at United Nations and an older man named Mark. He never liked me from the beginning.”

  “Why not?”

  “He was old-fashioned. No friendliness. Just orders. All the time he criticise everything I do.”

  “And who is this Mark fellow?”

  “He is top illegal in United States.”

  “Where did you have meetings with him?”

  “All over. Central Park; RKO Keith’s Theatre in Flushing, a cinema; Riverside Park; a place on Bergen Street in Newark.” He paused and shrugged. “Many places.”

  “What nationality are you?”

  “Russian-Finnish.”

  “You speak Russian?”

  “Of course.”

  “What about Sivrin?”

  “I work at first for Sivrin. Then Mark.”

  “Where did you meet Sivrin?”

  “Was not much meeting—was mainly drops.”

  “Where were the drops?”

  “A hole in the wall in Jerome Avenue in the Bronx, a bridge over a path in Central Park and a lamp-post in Fort Tryon Park.”

  “What was your address in New York?”

  “We’ve got a cottage at Peekskill.”

  “You mean Peekskill up the Hudson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “You said we’ve got a cottage. Who else is involved?”

  “Just my wif
e. She lives there with me.”

  “You mean she’s still living there?”

  “Of course.”

  Kimber sat looking at his visitor, uncertain how to deal with him. He needed to check on at least some of the items in his story before he decided what to do with him. It was such a ragbag of a story but it had that faint smell of truth. There was one fact he could check on easily. And it was worth a call to the States.

  Kimber looked across the desk. “I’m going to get one of our people to take you to have a meal downstairs. He’ll bring you back to me when you’ve finished. OK?”

  Hayhanen nodded and stood up. Reaching into his jacket pocket he took out a Finnish five-mark coin and, as Kimber watched, the man prised the coin open with the nail of his thumb. The coin was hollowed out to take a single-frame negative from a Minox camera.

  Half an hour later, after Kimber had phoned New York for a check on Sivrin and the cottage in Peekskill, it was Washington who came back to him. Seats had been booked on the night-flight from Paris for him and his visitor. He was not to interrogate him further himself. Just deliver him safely at Idlewild. He was to stay behind on the plane with Hayhanen until all the other passengers had left and a CIA deep interrogation team would come on board and take over.

  When they arrived at Idlewild Kimber was amazed at the group that poured into the empty aircraft. Six or seven top men and Allan Dulles himself in the private room in the terminal building. It seemed that Hayhanen was the break they had been looking for for the last four years. He was congratulated as if it were some skill on his part that had pulled in the KGB man. There was apparently no doubt in their minds that Hayhanen really was genuinely KGB.

  Two hours after his arrival in New York Hayhanen was officially handed over to the FBI and four Special Agents had interrogated him through the night to mid-afternoon. By that time he had signed a document giving his permission for the house in Peekskill to be searched.

  They had to use Russian-speaking agents in the following days because Hayhanen’s poor English became unintelligible under pressure. Apart from the language problem it became obvious that Hayhanen had a very disturbed personality as well as being a heavy drinker. Questioning Hanna his wife and several local tradesmen who knew him was like cleaning an old painting. As a layer of paint or varnish came off a different picture was revealed, and another and another. Hayhanen’s life had been a strange, wild nightmare of drunken wife-beating, bizarre outbursts of public violence and then the secret life controlled by the man called Mark.