by Len Deighton
If the Russians wanted to compromise or discredit Mann, they'd chosen a racking — dilemma for him. But they'd misjudged their target. Many would have folded under such pressure, most would have handed the file over to someone else, but not Mann. He was shaken, but not for long.
'Already it's working,' Mann said. 'Already there is a gap between us.'
The neon signs and the lights of the near-by town were turning the night sky fiery. 'No gap,' I said.
'No gap,' said Mann scornfully. 'Already you are getting nervous — worrying about your pension and trying to decide how much you can afford to play along with me.'
'No.'
'Why no?' he asked. 'Why no, Frederick Antony, old buddy?'
He deserved some warmer reassurance, something that reflected the times we'd had together. Something that told him I'd stake my life upon his judgment — be it good or bad. But I was too English for such extravagances. Coldly I said, 'Because I trust you more than I trust Mrs Bekuv. For all we know she could be planted by the K.G.B… acting on their instructions, and giving us the spielmaterial they want to feed to us.'
The phone rang but Mann made no attempt to answer it.
I said, 'That will be the girls reminding us about the dance they've dressed up for.'
Mann didn't move, and soon the phone ceased to ring. The side of his knee,' said Mann. 'His left leg, he still limps.'
Chapter Nine
That strange winter afternoon, Mann's soft voice in that darkened room, my lack of sleep, the infatuation for Red that was fast becoming love, the contrived nostalgia of the Christmas festivities, or perhaps those last three whisky-sours, accounted for the way I remember it as a hazy dream. A dream that became a nightmare.
The hotel management loaned us two old-fashioned tuxedos. My outfit included a shirt with pique front, as stiff as a board, and Mann's even had a wing-collar. The band played Glenn Miller arrangements with suitable verve and sweetness, and the brass stood up and swayed through the choruses.
The Manns were dancing to the tune of 'Sun Valley Serenade' when Red and I took the Bekuvs into town for the midnight mass. The Catholic church in Waterbridge was crowded, and an elaborate nativity scene occupied the entrance. The nave was lit by a thousand flickering candles. They made the interior warm and yellow, but the upper parts of the church were dark.
The Bekuvs sat close together, and we chose a seat behind them so that I could watch them without intruding upon their privacy. Long after the singing of the choir ended, my mind remained full of the candlelight and the resonant chords of the great organ. And, mixing with it, came the brassy riffs of the Glenn Miller arrangements and the soft whispered words of love from Red.
Outside, the first hours of Christmas Day were celebrated in an icy wind and scattered showers of sleet. At the exit people paused to wrap their scarfs tighter and button their thick overcoats. It was this that created a solid crush of worshippers at the door. We shuffled forward a step at a time.
It was exactly the right place for it.
I heard the strangled cry from Mrs Bekuv, and the scream of some other unidentified woman. Hands flailed, and hats were knocked askew. A man began to shout. The Bekuvs were no more than five yards away from me but they might have been five miles away for all the help I could give them.
I swore, and ripped at the crowd, tearing a way between the worshippers like a man demented.
By the time I got to the Bekuvs, the crowd had parted enough to let Mrs Bekuv sit on the stone steps. She was conscious but she said nothing. She looked heavy and lifeless, the way soldiers do when their battle is done. Andrei Bekuv was bending over her. Both of them had blood on the front of their clothes. Andrei was pulling at his wife's sleeve so that blood ran down her arm to form a puddle on the step.
'They've killed Katinka,' said Andrei Bekuv.
I reached for her pulse and bloodied my hands.
'Get an ambulance, Red. Ask the church to phone.'
'They've killed my Katinka,' said Bekuv, 'and it's all my doing.'
I bound my handkerchief tightly round her arm but the blood still came. It marked the cuff of my borrowed tuxedo, and dribbled on to my new leather overcoat.
There were no shadows. Everything in the room was white, and the fluorescent tubes lit it with a cold, pitiless glare. My blood-encrusted handkerchief lay coiled and discarded on the trolley, like the scaly skin of some terrible red serpent, and alongside it — carefully aligned — was the gold wristwatch and bracelet that Bekuv had bought for his wife in New York.
My coffee was cold. I tore open a sachet of powdered cream, stirred the mixture and gulped it down. It was a hell of a lousy way to spend Christmas morning.
There was a rap at the door and Mann entered without waiting for a response. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair imperfectly parted.
'You talked with the surgeon?' He unbuttoned his trenchcoat to reveal a partly buttoned shirt, and a cardigan pulled down over his evening trousers.
'No arterial cuts. Her hands will be scarred for life — she grabbed at the switchblade — maybe scars on the abdomen too, but the thick coat saved her anything worse than superficial wounds. If the blade had entered her the way it was intended, she would have been dead before she hit the ground.'
Mann sniffed, walked over to the trolley and moved the wrist-watch and bangle with the tip of his finger, as if making a chess move. 'Description of the assailant?'
'At least a dozen,' I said. 'All of them different.'
'And our pal Andrei?'
'She stepped between them. It was meant for Andrei, but he wasn't scratched. He's taking it badly.'
' "My darling Katinka, what have I done to you? "'
'That's the kind of thing,' I agreed.
'No one could have known that the Bekuvs started talking,' said Mann, as much to convince himself as to convince me.
'There must be a few people in Washington suffering sleepless nights.'
There will be a few people in the Kremlin suffering worse than sleepless nights if we break this one wide open,' said Mann. They don't set up Henry Dean situations unless it's really big.'
'We should have1 expected some attempt to kill them.'
'I did expect it. But not this soon. Who the hell could have known we'd brought them to this godforsaken hole.'
'Gerry Hart?'
Mann scratched his face. His was unshaved, and he touched his beard self-consciously. 'Yes, that little bastard is certainly kept well informed. Who might be leaking to him? Any ideas?'
I shook my head.
'Well, this is the way it's going to be from now onwards,' said Mann. 'We'd better get prepared for more of the same. We'd better move the Bekuvs out of here.'
I looked at my watch. 'Merry Christmas,' I said.
The better the day, the better the deed. Isn't that what they say?'
'It might look damned funny to the local press boys.'
'A mugging?' said Mann. 'Nothing to leave the tree for.'
'Knifing at midnight mass,' I said. 'In Waterbridge that's a headline. They will go for it. You won't shake that one, Major.'
'And if I put a security guy at her bedside, it will look even more like a story.' Mann grabbed at his face and rubbed hard as if trying to wake up. 'And yet without a security guard they might try again.'
I tried to reassure him. 'It was an amateur kind of job,' I said. 'I never heard of the K.G.B. using a shiv artist who hit the wrong target, and even then let them grab the knife away.'
'It damn nearly worked, and you know it,' said Mann. 'And there was nothing amateur about the way they found out where the Bekuvs would be last night.'
'They might have followed us all the way from New York City, and then staked out the hotel, waiting for an opportunity,' I suggested.
'You know nothing followed us,' said Mann. 'Even in the back seat with Red, you've got to know nothing followed us.'
I didn't answer. He was right, nothing had followed us down the highway, and we'd had a h
elicopter to help check-out that fact.
'You get back to your girl-friend,' said Mann. 'Give me a call here in the morning. I'll have doped it out by then.'
Red was half asleep as I got into bed. She reached out for me in dreamy wantonness. Perhaps it was part of an attempt to forget the events of the previous evening that made us so abandoned. It seemed hours later before either of us spoke a word.
'Is it going to be all right?' Red asked me in a whisper.
'She's not badly hurt. Andrei isn't even scratched.'
'I didn't mean that,' she said. 'I'm glad she's not badly hurt, but I didn't mean that.'
'What then?'
'This is all part of what you're doing, isn't it?'
'Yes,' I said.
"And it's going wrong?'
'It looks like it,' I admitted. 'Mrs Bekuv will have to be kept under surveillance and that will be more difficult now she needs medical attention.'
'In London,' said Red suddenly. 'What sort of a house do you live in?'
'I don't have a whole house,' I said. 'I rent the top floor to a friend — a reporter — and his wife. It's a small Victorian terrace house, trying to look Georgian. The central heating is beginning to crack the place apart — first thing I must do when I get back is to get some humidifiers.'
'Where is it?'
'That part of Fulham where people write Chelsea on their notepaper.'
'You said there was a garden.'
'It's more like a window-box that made it. But from the front you can see a square with trees and flower-beds — in summer it's pretty.'
'And what kind of view from the back windows?'
'I never look out of the back windows.'
'That bad?'
'A used-car dealer's yard.'
She pulled a face. 'I'll bet it's the most beautiful car dealer's yard in the world,' she said.
I kissed her. 'You can decide that when we get there,' I said.
'Do I get to change the drapes and the kitchen lay-out?'
'I'm serious, Red.'
'Yes, I know,' she said. She kissed me again. 'Don't let's be too serious though — give it time.'
'I love you, Red,' I said.
'I love you too — you know that. Do you want a cigarette?'
I shook my head. She reached across me to the bedside table and found her cigarettes and lighter. I couldn't resist the chance to hug her close to me, and she tossed the cigarettes aside and said, 'Well, if I can choose.' The cigarette-lighter slid down behind the mattress, and clattered to the floor. Red giggled. 'Will you always want me?' she said.
'Always,' I said.
'Not that, you fool,' she said.
She kissed me with opened mouth. Eventually I said, 'What then?'
'Would Major Mann let me stay with you?' she asked. 'I could make the coffee, and sweep the floor, and look after Mrs Bekuv.'
I said, 'I'll ask him tomorrow, if he's in a good mood.'
She kissed me again, more seriously this time. 'If he's in a good mood,' I repeated.
'Thanks,' she mumbled.
I reached for her. 'You chatter too much,' I said.
Chapter Ten
There was no sky, no sun, no earth: until a few hundred square miles of France appeared like a smear upon the lowest layer of cloud. And as suddenly it was gone again.
'I don't want to phone from the airport,' I told Mann, 'but I'll check that there is nothing for us on the telex.'
'Worry about something else,' Mann told me, as the stewardess removed the tray containing the dried-out chicken, shrivelled peas and brightly coloured pieces of tinned fruit. 'Worry about income tax. Worry about the inflatable life-rafts. Worry about pollution. Worry about ptomaine poisoning. Worry about youth. But quit worrying about Red Bancroft.'
'I've stopped worrying about Red Bancroft,' I said.
'She's been checked by the F.B.I., by the C.I.A. and her hometown police department. That girl is O.K. There is good security: she'll be safe. It will all be O.K.'
'I've stopped worrying, I told you that.'
Mann turned in his seat so that he could see my face. He said finally, 'Bessie said you two were hitting it off, and I didn't believe her.' He leaned across and punched my arm so that my coffee spilled. 'That's just great,' he said.
There's something wrong there,' I confided. 'She's a wonderful girl and I love her — at least I think I do — but there is something in her mind, something in her memory… something somewhere that I can't reach.'
Mann avoided my eyes as he pressed his call-button and asked the stewardess to bring a bottle of champagne. 'We're getting awfully near Paris,' said the girl.
'Well, don't you worry, your pretty little head about that, honey,' Mann told her. 'We'll gulp it down.'
I saw him touch the document case beside him. It contained the paperwork that we would need if Mann decided to drag Hank Dean, screaming and swearing, back to the New World. Mann caught my glance. 'I'm not looking forward to it,' he admitted. 'And that's a fact.'
'Perhaps he will talk,' I said.
'Perhaps he knows nothing,' said Mann.
The stewardess brought the champagne. Her uniform was one size too small, and the hair-do three sizes too big. 'We'll be going down in a minute or two,' she told us.
'All three of you?' said Mann. The stewardess departed. Mann poured the champagne, and said, 'I guess everything depends upon the way you look at it. Maybe if I'd been at college with Andrei Bekuv, I could even feel sorry for that schmendrik.'
'Everything depends upon the way you look at it,' I agreed. 'But I already feel a bit sorry for Andrei Bekuv.'
Mann made a noise like a man blowing a shred of tobacco from his lips. It was a sign of his disagreement.
'I feel sorry for him,' I said. 'He's crazy about his wife, but she's wrong for him.'
'Everybody is wrong for that jerk,' said Mann. 'Everybody and everything.' He picked up his champagne. 'Drink up,' he commanded.
'I don't feel like celebrating,' I said.
'Neither do I, my old English buddy, but we are pals enough to drink together in sorrow — right?'
'Right,' I said, and we both drank.
He said, 'Mrs Bekuv is the best thing that ever happened to that creep. She's one of the most beautiful broads I've ever seen — and I'm telling you, pal, if Bessie wasn't around, I'd be tempted. Bekuv doesn't deserve a doll like that. And she wet-nurses that guy: wipes his bottom, checks his haircuts, demands more dough from us. And she even takes a blade that's coming his way. No wonder he's in a constant sweat in case she kisses him goodbye.'
'Well, everything depends upon the way you look at it,' I said.
'Don't tell me you haven't felt some stirring of carnal lust for Mrs Bekuv,' said Mann. 'Don't tell me you haven't fancied it.'
'I've got Red,' I said smugly.
Mann repeated his tobacco noise. 'You know something,' he said scornfully. 'You can be very, very British at times.'
I smiled, and pretended to think that it was a compli ment. And I returned to him the Biographical Abstract I'd been reading. He locked it away in his case.
'Drink up. We'll be landing any minute,' he said. But, in fact, we joined the stack, somewhere over the great wooded region of Compiegne, and circled to await landing permission which did not come until forty minutes later.
It gave me time to think about Hank Dean. It was the new format BIO-AB, dressed-up to look like a report from a particularly energetic personnel manager. This one was typed on onion-skin paper, carrying the logo of a small furniture factory in Memphis, Tennessee. Attached to it was an employee-record punchcard and a photo. It had been 'styled' to provide a cause-and-effect view of Hank Dean's life, instead of being, as the earlier sheets were, a list of dates and a terse summary.
And yet these sheets are always a poor substitute for sight and sound of the real person. What use was it to know that his middle name was Zacharias, and that some schoolfriends call him Zach. How many schoolfriends remain for a man who is ne
arly fifty years old? Dean had 'a drinking problem'. That had always struck me as an inappropriate euphemism to apply to people who had absolutely no problem in drinking. What Dean had was doubtless a sobriety problem. I wondered if that was anything to do with the break-up of his marriage. The wife was a New Yorker of German extraction, a few years younger than Dean. There was one child — Henry Hope Dean — who lived in Paris and spent his vacations fishing with his father.
I closed the file. Henry Zacharias Dean, Ph.D., 210 pounds at last dossier revision, soldier, company executive, failed C.I.A. agent, failed husband but successful father… here we come. And won't you wish you were back in that village near Cleveland, getting punched in the head by the local kids.
'Did you say something?' asked Mann.
'The no-smiling sign is on,' I said.
Mann poured the last of the champagne into our glasses.
One Christmas — so many decades ago that I can't remem ber when exactly — an aunt gave me a book about some children who were captured by the crew of a pirate ship. The pirate captain was a huge man, with a hooked nose and a magnificent beard. He drank rum in copious amounts, and yet was never obviously drunk. His commands could be heard from fo'c's'le to crow's-nest, and yet his footsteps were as deft, and as silent, as a cat's. That pirate captain's mixture of bulk and dexterity, cruelty and kindness, shouts and whispers, drinking and sobriety were also the make-up of Hank Dean.
He would need only a Savile Row suit, some trimming of the beard and a glass of sherry in his hand to be mistaken for a wealthy gynaecologist or a stockbroker. And yet, in this shaggy sweater, that reached almost to his knees, denim trousers washed to palest blue, and swilling Cahors, the local wine, round and round in the plastic cup that had once contained Dijon mustard, he would have had trouble thumbing a ride to Souillac.
'Should have done it years ago. Should have done it when I was eighteen. We both should have done it, Mickey.' Hank Dean swigged his wine and poured more. He closed the typescript of his comic detective novel Super-dick, put it into a manila envelope and shut it away in a drawer. 'That's just my excuse for staring into space,' he explained.