by Len Deighton
‘Who arranged it?’ asked Jean.
‘A hoodlum that worked for Jay’s network. We’ll pick him up,’ I said.
‘Not Jay himself?’
‘No, certainly not. On the contrary. As soon as he got wind of Charlie’s connection with C-SICH he rushed down to talk to Dalby, which is where I came in.’
‘He hoped Dalby could black it out?’ Jean said.
‘Yes, but Dalby hadn’t a chance with C-SICH. It’s got too many direct government connections via industry, as well as the combined services side of it.’
‘They must have had a fit when you arrived,’ said Jean.
‘Well, Jay hadn’t arrived then, but Dalby knew he was coming. His infra-red detectors gave him a few minutes to get ready for me. I would have left it there if this private eye that I had with me hadn’t mentioned a Chinese. It was a long shot, but I took it, and it paid off. Murray, passing Dalby’s study, heard the detectors buzzing and switched them off before coming to find me. After Murray found me in the garden he was worried that I would spoil the whole thing by precipitate action.’
‘How could he think that?’ asked Jean.
‘That’s what I thought, but anyway, he knew I had little to lose, so he phoned Ross.’
‘After he came conscious?’ said Jean.
‘After he came conscious.’
‘Murray is exclusively Ross’s man?’
‘Not normally, but for the IPCRESS business he was. After talking to Ross he turned around, went back into the house and arrested Dalby. The Chinese man…’
‘Who really is Lithuanian, dear,’ said Jean.
‘So I hear,’ I said. ‘That was what Murray just phoned in about. He picked him up near Liphook. I don’t know the story.’
‘Ross must have acted quickly after Murray phoned.’
‘Well, he certainly did, but don’t forget that he’d had the Home Secretary prepared for days. They knew it would come suddenly when it came.’
‘Why did Jay give up so easily when Ross arrived?’ Jean asked. ‘It’s not like him, somehow.’
‘I’m not sure about that. Either because he thought Dalby would pull him out of the fire, in spite of the struggle for power that was obviously going on between them.’
‘Or?’ said Jean.
‘Or it’s something to do with the phone call from someone named Henry. Time will tell.’
‘More questions,’ said Jean.
‘Very well,’ I said.
‘Why did Jay let you find Raven in that club the day you were nearly arrested?’
‘Simple. Jay and Dalby had the “thought reform” going well by then, but they needed a neat punctuation mark to account for the series of kidnappings. If they could find a scapegoat, there the matter would end, and they could happily go forward with their new plan.’
‘Until they quarrelled.’
‘Perhaps, but they might not have quarrelled. Anyway, Dalby and Jay set me up to be found alongside Raven, with a hypodermic in my pocket, police raid and all.’
‘But,’ said Jean.
‘But instead of waiting a few more minutes, when I would have been organized into the gaming room, I got impatient…’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Jean. ‘So out of character. The man from US Naval Intelligence was only trying to help, then?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ I said.
‘We must get back,’ said Jean, ‘or Alice will grumble.’
‘The devil with Alice,’ I said. ‘I’m the boss, aren’t I?’
‘Not when Alice gives the orders,’ Jean said.
‘You know, there’s something different about that office lately,’ I said, and we both returned to it, although I was still thinking about the ear-ring.
* * *
*See Appendix: Detention Centres, p. 341.
*See Appendix: TAP, p. 341.
Chapter 32
[Aquarius (Jan 20—Feb 19) By the week-end you will be free to follow new interests. Unexpected action brings happiness to all.]
Back at the office the cables were beginning to flood in from Washington and Calcutta and Hong Kong. Alice was coping very well, and only a few required a decision from me. Murray flew up to a little country town near Grantham and brought Chico back in an army helicopter. He looked very ill when I saw him at the Millbank Military Hospital. Ross put a couple of men on a twenty-four-hour watch at Chico’s bedside, but they got nothing from him, except that he’d seen a friend of his cousin in the piece of film he’d seen at the WO. Instead of telling Ross, he went to visit the man. Needless to say he was in the IPCRESS network, and Chico was at Millbank, and his friend in Ross’s bag.
Painter, the thin-faced tall fellow who’d been with us on the Lebanon job, turned out to be a psychiatrist of some standing who had brought our captive Raven, who was half-way ‘brainwashed’, back to something approaching normalcy. I gave him a room with Carswell on the top floor at Charlotte Street. If we couldn’t break Jay down everything would depend on those two.
By Thursday I was able to take a full night’s sleep. Until then I’d kept going mainly on coffee and cigarettes and an aspirin sandwich, but Thursday I took some sleeping pills Painter gave me and didn’t wake until midday. I swore off coffee for a couple of days and stepped into a cold shower. I put on Irish tweed with Veldtshoen, cotton shirt, and wool tie. At three o’clock I was summoned to the presence of an exalted military personage at the WO.
I was a minute or so late and Ross and Alice were both there before me. Ross was in a very stiff new uniform with crown and pip on the shoulder. His Sam Browne was as shiny as the doorman’s head and he had his bright red OBE with the Military Stripe and the India General Service and the George VI Coronation, to say nothing of a ’39—’43 Star and a Western Desert ribbon. I began to wish I’d worn the pullover with the Defence Medal sewn on it.
The EMP shook hands rather grandly and referred to me as ‘the hero of the hour’. I celebrated by helping myself to a cigar and pretended to have no matches in order to have the EMP light it for me. He thanked me and Ross and Alice, but I knew there was more to it than that. When he began the sales talk with, ‘Mr Ross is most anxious that you should hear this from me…’ I knew what it was. Ross had finally taken over Charlotte Street. What timing! No one could challenge Ross’s competence after this IPCRESS fiasco. I heard him going on about Ross going up to ‘half-colonel’ and ‘seniority’. On the walls were photos of the EMP standing with Churchill, seated with Eisenhower, receiving a medal, sitting on a horse, and reviewing an armoured brigade while standing in a jeep. There were no photos of him as an inexperienced subaltern with his foot jammed in a drainage pipe. Perhaps people like him are born as brigadiers.
But now the conversation was taking a different turn. Ross, it seemed, wasn’t taking over Charlotte Street. The purpose of my visit was an explanation to me!
As I sorted it out afterwards, it all began because Ross wanted to be quite sure that I wasn’t working for the Jay and Dalby set-up. So he asked if he could offer me the Al Gumhuria work. They calculated that if I was channelling stuff out through Jay I’d jump at it. I hadn’t. I had told Ross to keep it. From that moment ‘my future was assured’ as the old army saying has it. Now Ross wanted me to be quite clear about his hands being clean, so he had the top brass tell me in person.
The Exalted Military Personage was very keen to hear how I got out of the Wood Green house, and at one stage said, ‘Good show!’ again, and after that, something that I still consider rather foolish for a man of his experience. He said, ‘And now is there anything I can tell you?’
I told him that I had overseas and detachment pay outstanding for nearly eighteen months. He was a little shattered, and Ross didn’t know where to put his face for embarrassment. But the EMP adopted an ‘all boys together’ attitude, and promised to action it for me if I let his ADC have details in writing. Ross had the door open, and Alice was about to go through it when I leaned across the vast highly polished desk and said, ‘
When do you arrest Henry?’ Ross closed the door and came back to the desk. The EMP came around it. They both looked at me as though I wasn’t using Amplex.
At last the EMP spoke; his brown wrinkled face was close to mine. He said, ‘I should be furious with you. You’re implying a reluctance on my part to pursue the Queen’s enemies.’
I said, ‘I’m implying nothing, but I’m glad to hear that the suggestion would anger you.’
The EMP unlocked a tray on his desk and produced a slim green file; on the cover it said ‘HENRY’ in magic-marker lettering. It was about all we knew of the man who phoned Jay that night. Inside there was a note from the PM in his own handwriting, my report, and a long screed from Ross. The EMP said, ‘We are as anxious to clear it up as anyone, but we’ll have to have more facts than this.’
‘Then, with respect, sir, I suggest that you pass it on to the appropriate authority,’ I told him. ‘To be quite frank,’ Ross began, but I refused to be interrupted. I stared the EMP full in the eye. ‘This report of mine was submitted to the Cabinet. Neither you nor Colonel Ross has any right to open a file, handle a file, or comment in any way. The sphere of activities are clearly defined by the Cabinet. I’ll take this file with me, and I must ask you to treat its contents as top secret, pending the submission of my further reports to the Cabinet.’ It wasn’t that there were reasons for suspecting the EMP of attempting to cover up for the elusive Henry, but I didn’t want this file to be mislaid. At that moment I resolved that one day I would track down Jay’s highly placed friend. Something of this must have shown on my face in spite of my training.
‘My dear fellow,’ said the EMP. ‘Nothing was further from my mind than treating you in a cavalier fashion.’ I had won. I had won so soundly that the EMP produced his XO Brandy. I allowed myself to be mollified, but not too quickly. It’s great, that Hennessy XO Brandy.
Alice and I had a car waiting to take us back to Charlotte Street. We rode in silence almost all the way, but just before Goodge Street Alice said, ‘Not even Dalby would have attempted that.’ It was as near as Alice ever came to admiration. I gave her the green file and said airily, ‘Give this one of our file numbers, Alice.’ But my triumph was short-lived, for later that afternoon she brought in the two files I’d left in Waterman’s car. You could never beat Alice.
That evening Ross rang and said he had to see me, about Jay. And Carswell, Painter, Ross and I had a conference. The end was inevitable, and it came on Saturday. Jay was paid £160,000 to open a department working directly between Ross and myself. On this same day a Jensen 541S sports car went off the Maidstone by-pass while going at an absurd speed. There was one occupant, a Mr Dalby; death, they said, was instantaneous.
There was still much work to do at Charlotte Street. K.K., late of Wood Green, wanted to claim diplomatic immunity, but failed. I put an advertisement into France-Soir, thanking Bert for his offer of help, and telling of my cancelled tour.
Alice bought an electric coffee-mill for the office, so that we could have real coffee, and I got all my back pay and allowances. I paid the pianist at the ‘Tin-Tack’ thirty shillings and sent Alf Keating an oil heater. The dispatch office was making a book on the Open; I put five shillings on Munn & Felton’s (Footwear) Brass Band. A little note from Chico thanked me for doing his requisitions the night he went to Grantham, and Jean sewed a patch into my brown worsted trousers.
On Tuesday I had a visitor; the American brigadier from Tokwe. He brought two large cardboard boxes with him, and after lunching at the ‘Ivy’ we returned to the office to watch a demonstration.
From the cardboard boxes he brought a wooden contraption, its paint chipped and faded. When fitted together it was about six feet long; attached to each end was a red automobile light. It wasn’t until he showed me photographs of the battered motor cycle they had dragged from the ocean floor that I realized Dalby’s ingenious scheme.
This wooden plank bolted to the back of a motor cycle was what I followed across Tokwe the night I was arrested. The motor bike was too small to register on the radar screen. Dalby moved the block across the road, and connected the HT wires to kill the only witness. He used the High Speed TV, then threw it into the sea nice and near my car, knowing that it would be detected by echo sounders, and that my close proximity would implicate me. Then he drove away relying on wind, a good silencer, and confusion. He dumped the bike in the sea off another part of the island, having left the road and travelled across open country. The two men that Jay’s network had working for the USMD* told the British authorities that the Americans were holding on to me, and the Americans, that the British had asked for my return. After that, Jay took over, and brought me into the UK as a hospital case.
I appreciated the work that this officer had done. He felt he owed me a debt. I told him about Dalby being killed, and he didn’t look surprised or cynical, so I left it at that.
He asked, ‘This feller, Dalby; the Reds had brainwashed the guy, huh?’
I said we weren’t sure, but perhaps we looked for motivation in the wrong places these days. We tend to forget that there are people who are simply after money and power, and they have no psychological complications at all. I said I thought Dalby and Jay were both like that, and that a feud had been not so far away when it all blew up in their faces.
‘Money and power, eh?’ said the Brigadier. ‘Just a simple case of a couple of well-informed SOBs.’
‘Perhaps that’s about it,’ I said.
‘I asked Dalby for you at Tokwe,’ he told me, and I said I knew.
‘I just had a hunch, you know what I mean,’ he said.
I knew what he meant.
And he said, ‘Can I ask you just one more thing?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘How were your people so sure that Colonel Ross and Miss Bloom (that was Alice’s other name)—I mean to give no offence, you understand.’
I said I understood.
‘But how were they so sure that Ross and Miss Bloom couldn’t be…well, reached?’
I said that there were people who were very difficult to brain-wash.
‘Is that so?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘Obsessional neurotics; people who go back twice to make sure the door is locked, who walk down the street avoiding the joins in the paving, then become sure they’ve left the kettle on. They are difficult to hypnotize and difficult to brain-wash.’
‘No fooling,’ he said. ‘It’s a wonder we had so much trouble in the US then.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Don’t quote me about Alice and Ross.’
‘Not a chance,’ he said. But from a couple of things Alice said next day, I think he must have done.
The ‘Henry File’? It’s still as slim as the day I brought it from the War House. Everyone in the department has theories of course, but whoever tipped off Jay is keeping his head well down. Mind you, as Jean said the other day, when we do identify him, it’s sure to turn out to be some relation of Chico.
Another thing we never did finally work out was how Dalby got my prints on to the HS TV camera, but I think he must have screwed the handles on to something (perhaps a door) at Charlotte Street, then taken them with him to Tokwe, and fixed them to the camera before dumping it.
Jean had been back to the Japanese blockhouse the day after I was arrested, but the cathode tube, slip of information and pistol had all gone. She had then sat down with a map of the area and worked out Dalby’s motor cycle trick by sheer brain-power. When the Brigadier heard Jean’s story he had the three places she’d marked, dragged. With no result. She told me it was a terrible moment; but they hadn’t allowed for the undertow. The motor cycle was finally found quite a long way out.* Luckily the wooden gimmick was still attached (Dalby couldn’t risk it floating) and by now the Americans were really convinced. Skip Henderson was recalled to Tokwe (it seems the death of Barney was a bona fide accident) and Ross flew to the Pentagon. From then on the skids were under Dalby, but it wasn’t doing me a lot of goo
d.
That’s about all of the IPCRESS story. There has been a lot of work go through Charlotte Street since; some interesting, but mostly boring. Painter has a whole medical research lab working with him, but so far they have found no way of ‘debrain-washing’ people, and many of the original network are still under the threat of the Treason Act, while some still forward reports under the impression that they are going via Jay to some foreign power. Of course I don’t let Jay handle them, just in case he gets ideas. I see Jay at the monthly conference with Ross, when we prepare the Army Intelligence Memoranda Sheet. He seems happy enough, and he’s certainly efficient. I remember another thing about Jays—they store food for winter. ‘Moving in from opposite ends to the same conclusion,’ Dalby said once, and every time I am with Jay I think about it. But I doubt if this was what Dalby meant.
Anytime I want Jay I know I can find him at the ‘Mirabelle’, and last Saturday morning I bumped into him at Led’s. He wants Jean and me to go to dinner with him. He said he would cook it himself. I’d like to go but I don’t think I will. It’s not wise to make too many close friends in this business.
* * *
*United States Medical Department.
*(It’s my theory that Dalby had it going at high speed towards the water to take it as far as possible, but Jean says it’s the undertow.)
Epilogue
It’s a dead sure way of getting into trouble putting too much information down on paper, but I suppose having got this far I had better tell you the true end of the IPCRESS fiasco.
The Minister just wanted to know how to evade questions, as all Ministers do. He asked me a few searching questions like, ‘Any good fishin’ in the Lebanon?’ and ‘Have another?’ and ‘D’you know young Chillcott-Oakes?’ After leaving the Minister I drove down to a house near Staines. I knocked on the door in a rather strange series of rhythms, and a woman with a moustache opened it. In the back room there was an old man standing amid three partly packed suitcases. I gave him sixty crumpled five-pound notes, which were genuine, and two mediumquality forged UK passports.