by Len Deighton
'Just take your pocket-books, and the cameras,' Mann told anyone who was listening. 'They'll send someone out for the baggage.'
'You always lock the car,' said Bessie Mann. 'He's so suspicious,' she announced to a world that already knew.
We went into the lobby of the hotel and I thought for a moment that Mann must have chosen it to make the Bekuvs feel at home. The furniture was massive and there were old-fashioned floral curtains and cracked lino on the stairs. Behind the reception counter there was a framed photo of Franklin Roosevelt and a litho reproduction of U.S. Marines raising the flag on Iwo. The receptionist might have been chosen to match: she was a cheerful little woman with carefully waved grey hair and a chintzy dress. 'There's still time to catch the second half of the movie,' she said.
Mann picked up the menu from the desk. 'I think we'd rather eat,' he said.
'He changes the reel at the half-hour. The lights go on; you'll not disturb the show.'
'You want to send some food up to the rooms?'
'Whatever you say,' agreed the old lady.
'The home-made soup and steak — rare — and salad,' said Mann. 'And give us a bottle of Scotch and a bottle of vodka with a few mixes and ice.'
'I'll do it right away. Everyone the same?' She smiled. 'There's an ice-box in your rooms.'
We mumbled agreement, except for Mrs Bekuv who wanted her steak well done.
'The best steak this side of Texas,' said the old lady. 'That's what they all tell me.'
The two single rooms, booked for Red and me, were at the far end of the corridor. One had a shower and the other a bathroom. 'Shower or bath?' I asked as we looked into the rooms.
'I hate showers,' she said going into the room that was equipped with it. 'Especially these tin-sided contraptions. They make such a racket.'
She went over to the single bed and prodded it to see if it was soft. Then she pulled the blankets back and pummelled the pillows. 'No,' she said coming back to where I was standing and putting her arm through mine. 'I think we'll use the room with the tub.' She took me to the other room.
She sat on the bed and pulled off the silly little woollen hat she liked to wear. Then she undid the buttons of her dress. Her long red hair tumbled down over her pale shoulders. She smiled. She was the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen and her happiness warmed me. She kicked off her shoes. I picked up the phone. 'Can I have a bottle of champagne?' I asked. 'Yes, French champagne. On second thoughts, better make that two bottles.'
It was a long time before we got back to the sitting-room that the Bekuvs shared with the Manns. There was a boy in starched apron and black bow-tie smoothing the tablecloth and setting out the cutlery.
'Thought you two were hungry enough to give dinner a miss,' said Mann archly.
'Mickey!' said his wife. 'You haven't ordered the wine.'
'You got red wine?' Mann asked the young waiter.
'Only Californian,' said the boy.
'I like Californian,' said Major Mann. He put a flattened hand over his heart, as if swearing to it.
The proprietor's wife had fixed the dinner. The homemade soup was clam chowder and the steaks were delicious. Mann praised the buttered corn. 'You can keep all that lousy French chow,' Mann offered. 'You give me American cooking every time.'
Mrs Mann said, 'You like it; you got it.' The Bekuvs smiled but said nothing.
From downstairs the louder parts of the film's soundtrack were sometimes audible. We heard exploding bombs and wartime melodies.
I suppose Bekuv must have been anticipating the pep-talk that Mann decided was due. When Mann produced a box of cigars and suggested that we smoke them down the hall, rather than wake up to the aroma of stale tobacco, Bekuv readily agreed, and I went with them.
The lounge was furnished in the same down-beat way that the lobby had been. There were several large sepia photographs of men with goggles, standing round old racing cars and grinning at each other. I guessed that Pierce, the proprietor, was a vintage-car freak, and probably owned the finely preserved Packard outside, and maybe the vintage bus, too.
Bekuv chose the dilapidated sofa. Mann leaned over him to light his cigar. There have been a lot of new developments since you arrived Stateside,' said Mann.
'What kind of developments?' said Bekuv cautiously.
'At first we were asking you to tell us about the scientific data you were handling before you defected.'
'And I did that,' said Bekuv.
'Up to a point you did it," said Mann. 'But you must have realized that there was another motive too.'
'No,' said Bekuv, drawing on his cigar and facing Mann quite calmly.
'For God's sake, Bekuv! You must see by now that our work on masers is way ahead of anything being done in the Soviet Union. We don't need you to tell us about masers.'
Bekuv had no intention of admitting anything like that. 'Then why ask me?'
'No one can be as dumb as you pretend to be at times,' said Mann.
I interrupted them before Mann blew his top. 'We know that American scientific data is being betrayed to the Soviet Union.'
Bekuv turned to look at me. He frowned and then gave a despairing shrug. 'I don't understand,' he said. 'You will have to explain.'
'We are hoping to recognize the form in which you recall the material. It might help us to trace the source of it. We might be able to find where it's coming from.'
'Much of it came from published work,' said Bekuv.
'Now don't get smart,' said Mann. He stood up, and there was a moment when I thought I was going to have to step between them. 'We are not talking about the kind of stuff that Greenwood and his committee are giving away. We are talking about military stuff.'
'What began as a scientific leak has now become a flood of material,' I said. 'Some of it is intelligence data. There is British material too, which is why I am involved.'
'I wondered about that,' said Bekuv.
'I'm being squeezed,' said Mann, 'and when I get squeezed, you go through the wringer.'
'I'm giving you the material as fast as I can recall it,' said Bekuv.
'And that's not fast enough,' said Mann. There was an element of threat there.
'I can't go any faster,' said Bekuv. I watched his face. Perhaps this was the time he started to realize that his assistants at N.Y.U. had been trying to interrogate him.
Mann straightened and threw his head back. He held the cigar to his lips and put the other hand in the small of his back. It was a gesture both reflective and Napoleonic, until he scratched his behind. He strode slowly across the carpet in front of the log fire, staring all the time at the ceiling and puffing smoke. 'It was July of 'seventy-one. Berlin was stinking hot… you know the way it can get in that town, Bekuv. We'd included one of our kids in a party of trade union officials who were being given the treatment: that apartment block on the Alice that they pretend is full of workers' families, and the creche near the Wannsee and the banquet where they drink the dudes under the table with endless toasts to the unity of the proletariat. Silly to put one of our boys into a scrum like that. It was an American trade union lawyer from Pittsburgh who reported him to the Russians. When we got him back, his arse was raw with untreated cigarette burns, and his bloodstream was full of pentathol. We flew him back to the best surgeon in the States but he never got the full use of his right hand again…' Mann smiled one of his cold smiles at Bekuv.
Bekuv had never taken his eyes off Mann as he paced up and down. Now he said, 'It's not so simple to recall the details.'
'I was trying to help,' said Mann.
'I need more time,' said Bekuv.
Mann smiled again. He consulted his watch. 'Just look at the time. We'd better finish these cigars and join the ladies.' He threw his cigar away and ushered us out.
'It's a beautiful place,' said Red Bancroft. She was looking out of the window, cupping her hands to keep out the reflections. 'The moon is coming out. It is a wonderful evening for a walk.'
'It's fre
ezing,' I said 'Wrap up well, Pop,' she said scornfully. 'You can put on that nice new leather overcoat.'
I nodded my agreement, and I saw Red and Mrs Mann exchange that sort of knowing look with which women greet the downfall of a male.
The film show ended at ten minutes past ten. Red and I were walking through the cobbled yard at the rear of the house to get a closer look at the vintage bus and the old Packard. We'd heard 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes' and 'Change Partners' coming faintly through the heavily curtained room where the movie was playing. As the finale music swelled, the back door opened, and some men came out into the cold air. One of them coughed and another slapped his back helpfully. Two more of the men lit cigarettes.
'London!' said one of the men. "That's where I first saw that movie. I was a gunner, nineteen — youngest top-kick in the group — and I'd met this shy English kid. We went to a movie with her mother; can you imagine… with her mother! I was crazy about her.'
'What was her mother like?' said a second man. The first man laughed politely.
'I saw it with my Daddy and Ma,' said another voice. 'I was a shavetail, just out of pilot training. I was on leave before joining a bomb group in England. My folks just smiled and listened to me tell them how I couldn't wait to get into the fighting… and all the time they were figuring the odds against my getting killed.. it's only now, when I've got kids of my own, that I understand what that cost them.'
'We all came back,' said another man. 'Sometimes I wonder why.'
'Not all of us,' said the man who'd been in pilot training. 'I lost a lot of real good buddies.'
'They shipped the squadron from England to France without warning,' said the first man. 'I forgot how to find the house in Manchester where she lived, and I never took down the address. I went back twice and walked the streets… but it was no use.'
'Wartime romance,' said the second man.
'It was more than that,' said the first man. 'I still think about her. Every week or so I remember her. That proves it, doesn't it.'
The door opened again and some women came out into the yard. 'What are you doing out here?' one of them asked shrilly. 'It's so cold!'
A second woman said, Telling dirty stories; I know what they were doing. Admit it now, Norm, you were telling dirty stories.'
'That's right,' said the man from pilot training. 'That's what we were doing.'
The proprietor's son was taking down the shutters from the room in which they'd been watching the film. As he did so, the light from inside lit up the yard. It was bright enough to see the men and women standing there. They were all in their late forties or early fifties. The women wore old-fashioned party dresses, arid the men were in army uniforms. But the uniforms were not those of the modern army, they were the pink trousers, olive-drab jackets and soft-topped flyers' caps of the U.S. Army Air Force, circa 1943..
Chapter Eight
It was breakfast-time on Christmas Eve. Low-angled winter-morning sunshine made slatted patterns on the wallpaper. 'Nostalgia isn't what it used to be,' pronounced Mann. He'd been reading aloud from the brochure that was included on our breakfast-table in the sitting-room. 'Nostalgia Inn' said the headline and there was a photograph of the hotel taken the previous summer when a vintage-car club used it for a convention. The furnishings, the recorded music, the film shows and even the menus had been chosen to give the clientele a chance to wallow in their memories and their illusions.
'This month and next month is the World War Two period,' Mann said. 'But last Christmas they did a 1914 week, and I hear it was terrific.' He was wearing a tweed jacket, white roll-neck sweater and khaki cotton trousers. It would do for World War Two.
'All we're saying,' repeated Bessie Mann patiently, 'is that you should have told us.'
'And had you buying special gowns and hair-dos.'
'Well, why not?' said Bessie.
'It would have loused up the security,' said Major Mann. 'This is supposed to be a way for our Russian friends to stay incognito. You telling every store clerk in Blooming-dales about it would have blown us all wide open.'
'You never trust me,' said Bessie Mann.
'Damn right,' agreed Mann cheerfully.
'Give me the car keys,' she said.
'Where are you going?' said Mann.
'I'm getting a 1940 hair-do and a party dress.'
'Don't curb those new radials,' said Mann. Bessie Mann aimed a playful blow at her husband's head. He ducked and grinned.
Red touched my hand across the table. 'Shall I go too? I need cigarettes.'
'Buy a dress and give me the bill,' I said. 'Happy Christmas.'
Red leaned over and kissed me.
'Break it up, you two,' said Mrs Mann.
'Listen, honey,' said Mann. 'Take a cab into town just in case I need the car.'
Soon after Mrs Mann and Red departed to go to town, Mrs Bekuv emerged through the connecting door. She was dressed in a blue silk pants-suit. It was a little flashy for my taste but it showed her blonde hair, and full figure, to advantage. Major Mann poured coffee for her, and offered her the butter. Only two warm rolls remained under the starched cloth in the basket. Mrs Bekuv broke one of them open and chewed a piece of its crust. She was still looking down at the plate as she spoke. 'You'll never get anywhere with my husband by threats, Major Mann.'
Mann put his coffee down and turned on his full unabated charm. 'Threats?' he said as if encountering the word for the first time. 'Is that what he told you, Mrs Bekuv? Perhaps he misunderstood. A long drive… all the strain of the last few days… he is looking a little tired.'
'Neither of us like threats, Major Mann,' she said. She buttered her roll.
Mann nodded his agreement. 'No one does, Mrs Bekuv. No one I've ever met.'
'That's why we left the Soviet Union.'
Mann raised his hand as if to shield his eyes from a bright light. 'Now that's not quite true, Mrs Bekuv. You know it's not quite true. Your husband defected because he'd been passed over for promotion on four successive occasions, and because he was finally posted to that lousy little job in Mali, where he didn't get along with his boss.'
'That boss,' said Mrs Bekuv with great distaste, 'was a junior assistant to my husband only five years ago.'
'Exactly,' said Mann. 'And that's why your husband defected — nothing to do with living in a police state, or being threatened, or wanting to read Solzhenitsyn in the original Swiss.'
'You have my husband's defection all worked out, Major,' said Mrs Bekuv. 'So what about me? Why do you think I defected?'
'I'm not sure,' said Mann warily. 'But you certainly look like a million dollars in that Saks Fifth Avenue pants-suit, and Tiffany's gold wrist-watch and bangle.'
'You were having me followed?' She seemed very surprised.
She turned to see him better. The sunlight made her screw up her eyes, but even squinting into the light she was still a shapely and beautiful woman.
'Just making sure you weren't accosted by any strange men, Mrs Bekuv.' Mann leaned over and moved the slats a fraction to close the sun's rays out.
'Men from the Soviet Government, you mean?'
'Any kind of men, Mrs Bekuv.'
'It's not me you need to watch,' she said. She drank her coffee and put butter on the last piece of roll as if to signal that the conversation had ended.
'You mean I should be watching your husband?'
'He will not respond to pressure, Major Mann. Andrei is a gentle person. If you bully him, he will run from you.'
'You're asking me to do business through you, Mrs Bekuv?' Mann had hit it, and she was disconcerted.
'It would be worth trying,' she said.
'Well, you must get your husband to co-operate, Mrs Bekuv.'
'But he already writes millions of words for you.'
'He has given us a great deal of scientific material — as close to verbatim as his memory will allow — but that's not what I call real co-operation, Mrs Bekuv.'
'What more do you want?'
Mrs Bekuv drank some coffee.
Mann continued his thesis. 'No Soviet scientist has been allowed more freedom than your husband has over the last few years. He has attended nearly thirty scientific conferences, lectures, seminars and symposiums, outside the Soviet Union — now that's unusual, Mrs Bekuv, you must admit. It's tempting to guess that he's been getting a lot of his material on a person-to-person basis, while talking with other scientists at these international conferences.'
'I'll talk to Andrei,' she promised.
'Me and my friend here,' said Mann pointing at me with his spoon as I poured another cup of coffee. 'We are an easy-going couple of kids. You know we are. But we've got to start scribbling a few picture postcards for the fellows in the front office. Otherwise they are going to start wondering if we are on some sort of fun-fest down here. They'll assign us to permanent night duty guarding the Lincoln Memorial. You get me, Mrs Bekuv?'
From the floor below us someone switched on the radio to hear a Christmas carol service, 'While shepherds watched their flocks…" came softly to us at the breakfast-table.
'I get you, Major Mann,' she said. I watched her carefully, but the slight smile she gave him revealed nothing but good-natured amusement. Mann picked up his orange juice and sipped some. 'You know something, Mrs Bekuv. It's getting so that freshly squeezed orange juice is just not available for love nor money. You'd be amazed at how many five-star hotels serve canned juice.'
'In the Soviet Union every hotel and restaurant serves freshly squeezed orange juice,' said Mrs Bekuv.
For a moment I thought Mann was going to challenge that contention but he smiled his most ingratiating smile and said, 'Is that so, honey. Well, I always knew there must be something good about that crummy wasteland.'