Madrigal

by John Gardner

  ‘Sensible. Christ!’ said Griffin.

  ‘Why not? What’s wrong with getting back to London?’

  ‘If you can’t tell me, Mr. Oakes...’ Griffin trailed off. ‘No that’s not really fair is it, sir? Often a bloke on the outside sees things clearer than the bloke on the inside.’

  ‘So what’s wrong with returning to London?’

  Griffin put on a senior-master look. ‘Strikes me there are several contingencies ’ere.’ Pompous. ‘First there is nothin’ viably wrong in your returnin’ to London.’

  ‘Viably wrong,’ repeated Boysie, his face a chart. of bewilderment, gazing at the preposterous Griffin.

  ‘Yerse,’ said Griffin, posh and all la-di-da. ‘Yerse. Nothin’ viably wrong with it. But as I see things, yer might ’ave some difficulty gettin’ to London. See?’

  ‘No.’ Boysie placid.

  ‘Do I ’ave to spell it out to yer, Mr. Oakes?’ He took a long look at Boysie. ‘Yerse. I do reely, don’t I? Yer own side set yer up. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Then it is just possible, not probable I grant yer, but possible, that they may try it on before yer get ’ome like. While yer still on foreign soil.’

  ‘You mean it would not be so easy in England? Not so easy to get me?’

  ‘It’s easy anywhere, Mr. Oakes,’ said Griffin gloomily. ‘You should know that yerself. No, I felt it might be more to their taste to—well, puttin’ it in a nutshell, to dump yer over ’ere.’

  ‘Possible.’

  ‘Yerse. An’ it would also seem that yer mate Khavichev’s gone and put the boot in an’ all. ’E’s given yer money and that, helped yer escape to the West. But ’e’s also made an investment of yer. Right?’

  Boysie did not reply.

  ‘Right,’ replied Griffin for him. ‘Old Khavichev must still ’ave people over ’ere loyal to ’im. They goin’ to be watchin’ you, Mr. Oakes, you know. If you don’t get on that plane tomorrow—the right plane—then they’re not goin’ to like it.’

  ‘Suppose not.’ Boysie feeling the first twitches of the dark, doleful cramp taking hold.

  ‘’Ound you, Mr. Oakes. ’Ound you till yer dyin’ day. If you’ll pardon the expression.’

  ‘I can get the Department to take action from London.’

  ‘If they believes yer. As well they might. They just might,’ said Griffin jauntily. ‘Then there’s always the—er—the—Gorilka faction.’

  ‘Gorilka faction?’ Boysie’s mind twisting into back spirals.

  ‘May be out gunnin’ for yer. May not.’ Griffin with a hint of finality.

  ‘You’re a proper little Job’s bloody comforter.’

  ‘I do my best, Mr. Oakes, my best.’ He paused as though ready to slide a knife through Boysie’s ribs. ‘You’ll not ’ave forgotten the Chinese gentlemen either, will you, sir?’

  ‘The—the Chinese?’

  ‘We don’t really know where they stand, do we? Except that they’ve got yer Mr. Warren. Could know all about you as well. The Chinese. Damn—’

  ‘I know,’ said Boysie wearily, ‘damn clever, these Chinese.’

  Griffin chuckled. ‘My little joke, Mr. Oakes. No offence. Strikes me you’re in a certain amount of ’ot water from which we will ’ave to try and extricate yer.’

  ‘We? Extricate?’

  ‘I took the liberty o’ usin’ a sorta royal “we” like. I means I shall ’ave to extricate yer. Got any ideas?’

  ‘Friend Griffin.’ Boysie looked at the death man, somewhat moved. Griffin was loyal enough to stand by and really assist. ‘You’d help me?’

  ‘I’d try, Mr. Oakes. I mean, it wouldn’t be right for yer to pay me fare and expenses over ’ere for nothin’, would it? So while we’re workin’ together yer might as well ’ave a full service and pay me fee.’

  ‘Your fee?’ Bellow.

  ‘Me extricatin’ fee.’

  ‘I might have known. Don’t you ever do anything for love?’

  ‘Very rarely, sir. I find the times I ’ave done it for people out of—er—respect, or love as you might say, they’ve let me down somethin’ shockin’. Always try to keep things on a business level, sir. You remember that and you don’t go far wrong. Now, sir, any ideas?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I have.’ Boysie superior; his brain doing some cut-rate overtime. He drew out the American passport, tickets, and itinerary provided by Khavichev. Consulting the Itinerary, Boysie grinned. ‘I’m due to leave Tempelhof on Pan American Flight 869 at eleven tomorrow.’ (Nasty stomach drop at the thought of flying. Raising fantasies of disaster.) ‘Flight 869 takes me to Frankfurt. If you can get an independent booking on that flight and then two tickets on the first aircraft leaving Frankfurt for London after’—he examined the itinerary again ‘after mid-day, we can slip at Frankfurt and be back in London before teatime.’

  Griffin thought about it. ‘Yerse. Not bad. Though they’ll probably be watchin’ in Frankfurt.’

  ‘We’ll be in transit. They can’t do much there. Might even take the risk and cable Mostyn to meet me.’

  Once again Griffin wrapped himself in a cocoon of cogitation. ‘Could work. Might try it. In the meantime you’ll just ’ave to ’ole up ’ere.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Boysie adamant. ‘I’ve got a date tonight and I’m not going to miss out on this one.’

  ‘Money.’ Griffin equally adamant.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Me money. Me fare and expenses. If you’re goin’ to get away with this one, Mr. Oakes, I’m not ’aving you roamin’ around Berlin playin’ alley cats with some bird. Rather ’ave nothin’ to do with it. Me, I’m for ’ome.’

  Boysie groaned, seeing, his night’s dally with Mu-lan going for the proverbial Burton. The previous strain was hitting him; suddenly he felt very tired. ‘Look, Mr. Griffin, I need company.’

  ‘Yer got me, ain’t yer?’

  ‘True, but this lady—well, I wouldn’t climb over her to get to you.’

  ‘Charmin’’

  ‘I’ve been through bloody murder. And I need relaxation. Sleep and then something to set me up.’

  ‘Make yer forget, yer mean?’

  ‘Maybe. I’ve had it. Had enough. When a man’s had enough there’re one of two things he can do. Get pissed or get a woman. Me. I prefer the latter, and I’ve had this one arranged since Saturday. It’s all laid on.’

  ‘Laid on. Appropriate,’ mouthed Griffin. ‘Who is she, this bird?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘It’s me business if I’m supposed to be ’elpin’ yer.’ Boysie let out a deep breath and a groan of resignation. ‘She works in a club.’

  ‘’Ostess?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘Don’t understand yer, Mr. Oakes. Reely don’t understand yer. Yer can get the cream in London. What yer want ter get mixed up with some club girl for?’

  ‘She’s a good girl. A nice girl.’

  ‘And yer gotta letch for ’er?’

  ‘We hit it off.’ Then lamely, ‘She’s Chinese.’

  ‘Gawd’s truth, yer do pick ’em. In yer state yer go and pick up a Chinese bird. ’aven’t yer got enough troubles?’

  ‘I’m going to see Mu-lan tonight.’

  ‘If I’m goin’ ter ’elp yer, then yer not movin’ out of this ’otel.’

  Boysie’s brain slid into some quick cunning turns. ‘All right, I’ll try to get her round here.’

  ‘Long as I can keep an eye on things. Watch her like.’

  Boysie thought again. ‘Okay. If I can get her round here, you can watch. From a distance you can watch. Outside the door from a distance. If anything goes wrong, you can be my bodyguard. Get me out of it.’

  ‘As long as the price is right I’ll foller yer to the ends of the earth,’ said Griffin as though he meant it.

  ‘No need for the ends of the earth. For crying out loud, Mr. Griffin. Look, just keep an eye on me. Make sure I don’t land up in some Russian or Chinese cooler. See me through.�
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  ‘Don’t worry, Mr. Oakes. I’ll be right.behind you.’

  ‘Well, get cracking. Me, I’m for kip. Got a long night ahead of me.’

  Griffin nodded.

  Boysie turned and spoke again. ‘Oh, and you’d better nip into my room, take the phone off the hook. You can bring my best suit and what the Scriptures call a complete change of raiment as well.’

  ‘Bloody valet now,’ commented Griffin, making for the door.

  Boysie stretched back on Griffin’s bed and lit a cigarette. One long pull on the weed and he became conscious of his aching muscles. Fatigue, mental and physical, broke over him like a series of rolling Pacific breakers. He just had time to reach out and stub the smouldering cigarette into the bedside ashtray before floating into the highly coloured dreams of unsettled sleep.

  *

  Mostyn’s reaction to Boysie’s cable was akin to the symptons produced by an attack from a nest of hornets. He grabbed at the interior telephone—the green one with a direct line to the Chief’s office. A brief conversation, with the Second-in-Command’s spirits descending into a quagmire. Without doubt the Chief had lunched well and not wisely. When, on invitation, Mostyn reached his superior’s office, he discovered a warm glow surrounding the Chief. The Chivas Regal bottle was at the ready.

  ‘C’min, James. Seat. Take a pew, you old ram. A pew what’s to do?’

  The Chief rarely called Mostyn by his Christian name. When he did either it was the forerunner of disaster or the old boy was sloshed. Mostyn diagnosed the latter.

  ‘Trouble, Chief. Big trouble. I think you should look at this.’ He slid the cable across the table, almost upsetting the bottle on the way.

  ‘Watch me pixilatin’ Chiv-arse Regal. Fortnums. Three-and-a-half quid a blasted bottle y’have to pay for the damn stuff now.’ The Chief gently turned the cable form to face him, moved his head to one side, and closed an eye to get decent focus. ‘Client?’ he mumbled, reading with the undue care of one highly alcoholised. ‘Your way? Rotten resign? Help immediate? Red and yellow lines? Donkey from forearm? Stop stop stop help? Oldcorn? Dunno a feller called Oldco—’ Realisation pulled him into a near sober condition. ‘Your boy, Mostyn.’ He was shouting. ‘Your bloody, half-baked, lecherous, loud-mouthed, bungling, beatnik, cretinous boy. The Oakes boy. Boy Boysie.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Mostyn, granite risen from his soul and produced hard from the vocal chords.

  ‘Damned idiot’s out.’

  ‘Yes.’ A chip of quartz this time.

  ‘Whash it all mean? Bloody elusive cable. Chap off his crumblin’ chump? Gone Doolali Tap?’

  Mostyn looked down his nose, an action that normally made people uncomfortable (his other trick was staring at a victim’s shoes, most off-putting). ‘It’s a perfectly normal sub-text cable.’ Sharp, speaking like one who knows he holds a royal flush in. hearts. ‘It means, Chief, that something has gone horribly wrong. Iris is dead—we knew that this morning. Thing is—’

  ‘Thing ish—’ started the Chief, still under the weather. ‘Thing ish we knew Oakes was in the bag s’mornin’.’

  ‘True.’ Patient. ‘Now he’s obviously out of the bag. Done a deal by going double—or at least pretending to. A deal for Redland against the Chinese, and he’s out of his depth.’ The truth was like a right hook from Mohammed Ali. ‘Oh my God! Boysie among the Chinese. Something terribly wrong there. Boysie fighting the Red Guard and the PLA on his own. Rabbit abducted. Something very weird.’

  ‘Get ’im,’ said the Chief.

  ‘Kill him?’

  ‘No, you bloody fool. Try to do it subt-subtl—Tried to do it cunnin’ and failed. Get ’im back here. If the feller’s had the nous to get away, deserves ’nother chance. Go down to Ops and raise Warbler. Oakes back in London, fast.’

  Mostyn left the room without replying. He returned fifteen minutes later, face grave as a tomb. A glass bearing traces of Alka-Seltzer stood on the Chief’s table. The Chivas Regal had disappeared, and the Chief looked a shade more presentable.

  ‘Well?’ from the Chief.

  Mostyn’s visage immobile, trouble crouching behind each word. ‘Warbler has not been seen since Friday, and there’s no reply from Oakes’s suite at the Bristol Kempinski.’

  ‘Who else’ve we got in Berlin ?’ Delivered with a hint of despotism.

  Mostyn read the danger signs. ‘Warbler’s stringer. Man called Gazpacho. Poses as an American sergeant. Been missing since Friday as well. Only the radio man left, and he’s no blasted good.’

  ‘Snookered behind the yellow,’ remarked the Chief with an air of resigned turmoil. ‘Keep tryin’ to raise ’em. We’ll have to wait. See what happens next. Someone’ll have to move, that’s certain. One side’ll break cover. May even have to go to MI6. Give it twenty-four hours and see.’

  The Chief turned and leaned on the windowsill, watching the gloom gather outside. Across the road a young man was having a Jew’s friendly with an obstinate traffic warden. The pigeons were doing their stuff on the building opposite; they were probably doing it on the Special Security building as well. The Chief reflected that everything was heading their way disastrously. Nasty things dropping in the Department’s direction. Descending from a great height. The Chief used a word rarely heard off the bridges of Her Majesty’s warships.

  *

  Gorilka was coming at him, close, so close that the ghastly wrinkles of burnt skin showed up like deep fissures on cracked flagstones. He held a P38 the size of a bazooka. Gorilka’s mouth split open, a smile like a jagged, wide surgical incision. The giant P38 burped flame. Boysie felt the thud as the bullet hit hard on his shoulder. There was a death-wish longing for an accurate shot that would put him out of his misery. The one-way ticket to oblivion. Another bang on the same shoulder. Then a voice.

  ‘Come on, Mr. Oakes, sir. Wakey wakey, ’ands orf the joystick. Lovely evenin’, moon scorchin’ yer eyeballs out. Come on, you lucky lad. Upsey-daisy.’

  Boysie emerged from the semi-insensibility of nightmare land, sweat rolling from brow to navel. He raked his fingers, spread wide, through his hair. Soaking with perspiration. His mouth felt like a dungeon, possibly the lower regions of the Bastille circa 1789.

  ‘What the? Christ!’ Looking at the Navitimer. It was nine o’clock.

  Griffin stood over him, smirking.

  ‘Nine?’ said Boysie sleepily, still concentrating on the watch, which was giving him double-vision trouble. ‘Nine! You haven’t let me sleep the whole bloody night?’

  ‘Nine in the evenin’, Mr. Oakes. Sleepin’ like a babe yer were. Snorin’ yer ’ead orf.’ Griffin gave his creepy smile. ‘I “feex” everythin’.’ A pseudo-Mexican accent tinged with Griffin’s native cockney.

  The phoniness incensed Boysie. ‘You “feex”!’ Nitric acid flexing through the words. ‘Such as?’

  ‘Tickets. We go on the scheduled flight. The Pan Am. There is a connecting BEA to London from Frankfurt. BE 603. Leaves 12.05, waits for through bookings if there is any delay. Waits up to half an hour. ’Ow about that for organisation? Got yer cannon too.’ He threw the P38 on to the bed. It hit the coverlet with a bump and rolled with a spectacular crash to the floor.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, go easy.’ Nervous—about sixty decibels too high. ‘Damn thing’s loaded.’ Boysie leaned off the bed and picked the weapon from the floor as though handling nitro-glycerine.

  ‘Brought yer suit and change of raimon.’

  ‘Raiment.’

  ‘Raiment,’ repeated Griffin.

  Boysie gazed at him quizzically. ‘Don’t think I’ll need the suit really if I’m going to lure me little lustrous Chinese lady into Room 504.’ Thought wave switching. ‘You took the phone off the hook?’

  ‘Personally, as I said.’ All very haughty.

  ‘Good. Think I’ll ring the club from here.’ Boysie slid his legs off the bed and rummaged in his pockets for the telephone number. The paper was crumpled. He had to iron it out on his thigh before dragging a
chair to the telephone. This time he got results. The signal buzzed a couple of times, then a voice throaty at the other end.

  ‘Gut evening. Ritz Kursal.’

  ‘Good evening.’

  ‘You are English? Or American perhaps?’ Obviously hoping for a GI to fleece.

  ‘English,’ Boysie curt. ‘Can I speak to Miss Puberty, please?’

  Boysie waited. In the background he could hear the beat group. At this distance through the telephone they sounded like a distorted psychedelic LSD record. Scraping as the phone was picked up. Fast, regular breathing, followed by the voice.

  ‘Boysie? You a’right? You safe? It is you, Boysie?’

  ‘Mu-lan?’ Dead sentimental.

  ‘Oh, thank God. Ver’ much thank God. You a’right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Soft, mellow, talking as though caressing the erogenous zones: lower lip, throat, waist, ear, inside of elbow. Boysie could not allow himself to think any further.

  ‘I glad, Boysie. I been ver’ troubled last two, three days.’

  ‘It’s all right now.’

  ‘So worried. In your palm I saw—I saw—most terrible.’

  ‘You saw something else as well?’ Boysie throaty.

  A long pause. He could almost see the beautiful Chinese girl running her pink tongue lightly across the magnetic lips, moist cosmetic, invitation to more than a dance.

  ‘Yes.’ Whisper, a combination of larynx, luxurious shudder, and the still sliding tongue. ‘Yes, Boysie. Truth what I tol’ you. I not bad girl, but I see in hand.’ Hesitation, fire in the telephone mouthpiece. ‘I see you and—and myself. You come down to club?’

  Boysie’s brow crinkled. ‘No, Mu-lan. Not the club. I couldn’t.’ Deeper ridges in the brow, realising he meant it. ‘I couldn’t watch. Couldn’t watch you—your—’

  ‘My performance?’

  ‘Yep.’ Quiet. ‘The way I feel I couldn’t watch you.’

  Intake of breath from Mu-lan Tchen. ‘That is good. Nicest thing said ever to me.’ Silence again before she continued, ‘Can we? Can we’—constriction—‘can we meet? To—?’

  ‘Be together?’

  ‘I will be good for you, I promise. Strange. Short meeting, but I never feel this with other man.’ Hardly audible. ‘Never. Never.’ Fading into emotional inaudibility.