LEN DEIGHTON
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

Jonathan Cape Ltd in 1976

Copyright © Len Deighton 1976

Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2012

Cover designer’s note © Arnold Schwartzman 2012

Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007458394

Version: 2017-05-23

All rights reserved under International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

‘I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night’

Epitaph on grave of unknown astronomer

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Cover designer’s note

About the Author

By Len Deighton

About the Publisher

Introduction

I was flying to southern Spain with Kevin McClory who wanted to talk to Sean Connery about a James Bond film that he was planning. (Many rewrites later it became Never Say Never Again, its title based upon a remark made by Sean’s wife after this meeting.) Persuading Sean to return to his James Bond role was going to be a hard sell, and Kevin knew it. Immediately after take-off an attractive young woman passenger came forward to where McClory was seated. She recognized him and asked if he would like a game of backgammon. Yes, he said. Small stakes, she promised, for I have never seen a game of backgammon played other than for money. It’s a game of skill but it is a gambler’s game. During the flight – while they played backgammon – she told me that she was a professional gambler. Every month there was a major tournament somewhere in the world and she attended every one of these gatherings, winning enough to provide a comfortable lifestyle. She had recognized McClory from his presence at a backgammon tournament in the Bahamas. Although I spent no more than two hours talking with this woman, I took her skills and audacious lifestyle as a background for the character Red Bancroft in this story.

For a few weeks after this chance encounter, I lived in the beachside home of Kevin and worked on a James Bond script. To research it I had gone on a trip around Florida, attended long, long, New York meetings and endured a splashy exploration of the dark Manhattan sewers for a sequence that I later deleted. (Despite persistent stories otherwise, there were no alligators living there as far as I could see.) Recovering in the sunny Bahamas, I found myself in a community of actors, writers and musicians. Backgammon was the common obsession and, until I found a ‘teach yourself backgammon’ sort of book in a local shop, I found it baffling. But once I understood the rules and skills of the game I found it to be a rewarding spectator sport. I never did play against McClory or any of his friends; they were far too skilled and far too rich. But I did learn enough to keep Red Bancroft in play in this story.

It was another entrepreneurial friend – Wylton Dickson, an Australian – who invited me to go rally driving deep into the Sahara Desert. Wylton had married an art school friend of mine and from that day of their wedding onwards he was a valuable element of my life and a treasured adviser. He was a man of many parts, many trades and countless fresh and original ideas. Restless, in a way that Australians sometimes are, he was always brimming with energy. He had offices, and the most beautiful old houses, in many parts of London. I never saw him drunk or even tipsy, but every time I entered Wylton’s office he was opening a bottle of chilled champagne to pour a glass of it for me. French Champagne? Don’t be silly; only the best of the best was good enough for Wylton’s friends. A considerable proportion of all the champagne I ever drank must have been the bottles of the Australian champagne that I consumed in Wylton’s company. During my time as a film producer I rented my wonderful Piccadilly film office from him. The old high-ceilinged room overlooked Hyde Park Corner and the view was so captivating that it was difficult to tear myself away at day’s end. I worked with him to advertise Australian wine.

In 1974 he created a World Cup Rally and invited me to participate. I drove one of the specially tuned Peugeot cars, and joined the ‘marshals’ that timed and checked the progress of the contestants. The route went hundreds of miles into the Sahara. It was an adventure, and the desert sequences in Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy faithfully reflect my time in Algeria – at that time a forbidden and little-visited nation. Pounding along on the desert tracks with these professional drivers made me realize what a complicated and scientific business rally driving is for such men and women. I learned the Arabic word for oranges, heard some new profanities and improved my driving, too.

Although I do not favour giving my fictional characters the names of real people, I inserted the name of Charlie Kelly into this story because Charlie was one of the most highly regarded Irish detectives in New York’s Police Department and a good friend who opened many doors for me. It was Charlie who secured for me my honorary membership of the NYPD. And Charlie provided a characterization that he never recognized.

Is this a Harry Palmer story I am sometimes asked, and the answer is ‘yes’. But the principal difference in the story construction is having Major Mann with him. Conan Doyle was probably not the first fiction writer to discover the advantage of giving your principal character a close friend. Comedians in the Victorian music halls had proved the rich benefits that come from having a ‘straight’ man ‘feed’ the comic. But like his predecessor – Colonel Schlegel in Yesterday’s Spy – Major Mann turned the tables on me. I had hardly started the outline when I found that my memories of my times with US servicemen – flyers in particular – were demanding a voice in the story. And, unlike Dr Watson’s passive role, Mann’s participation was a vital and dynamic one. American syntax gave the galloping Major the primary role in the story and the Harry Palmer figure (Frederick Anthony in the book), is my Doctor Watson. But it is of course Dr Watson with whom the reader identifies, and so it should be in this story.

Another distinction that followed publication of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy was that my use of ‘rat fink’ was recorded in a supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary. It was this vulgar expression that came to my mind when I heard that my American publishing house insisted upon changing the title of this book for the US market. It did not do much to warm my relationship with that concern or with the English friend who was the editor responsible.

Over the years many readers have told me that I write love stories and most of them are surprised when I agree with that verdict. Men and women share our world but do not share its rewards. Neither do they share the same dreams and pleasures. It is this fundamental mismatch that makes true love so sublime. It also makes observing the world around us so surprising, and writing about relationships so difficult and so sustaining. Twinkle is a love story but it does not celebrate the elation and unremitting joy that love is supposed to bring. Like many true love stories it is sad.

I usually feel a sense of deprivation when the writing ends. But that feeling is usually accompanied by dissatisfaction; knowledge that one might have done better in some aspect or other of the process. It is that dissatisfaction which starts us on the next book, swearing to do better. Twinkle was no exception to that sad feeling but this time I had the unusual belief that I had come near to what I started out to do.

Len Deighton, 2012

1

‘Smell that air,’ said Major Mann.

I sniffed. ‘I can’t smell anything,’ I said.

‘That’s what I mean,’ said Mann. He scratched himself and grinned. ‘Great, isn’t it?’

There’s not much to smell when you are one thousand miles into the Algerian Sahara; not much to smell, not much to do, not much to eat.

For those travellers who know the swimming-pools and air conditioning of the government hotels along the northern edge of the Sahara, Adrar comes as a shock. Here the hotel has no more than tightly drawn curtains to protect the tourist from the sun, and the staff have noisy arguments about who should siesta on the cold stone floor of the entrance hall. Only Europeans stayed awake all day, notably four bearded Austrians who, night and day, played cards in the shuttered dining-room. They were waiting for a replacement petrol pump for their truck. Between games they swigged sweet, warm cola drinks. There was no alcohol on sale, and smoking was frowned upon.

Even on this winter’s evening the stones and the sand radiated the heat of the desert day.

There was no moon but the stars were so bright that we could easily see our vehicles piled high with stores and sextant and a sign that said ‘Dempsey’s Desert Tours’. They were parked on the huge main square of Adrar. Mann walked round the vehicles just to make sure the supplies had not been plundered. It was unlikely, for they were outside the police station.

Mann stopped and leaned against the Land Rover. He took out a packet of cheroots; there were only four left. ‘Look at those stars,’ he said.

‘The Milky Way – I’ve never seen it so clearly. A spaceship travelling at 100,000 miles per hour would take 670 million years to cross the Milky Way,’ I said. ‘There’s a hundred thousand million stars there.’

‘How do you know?’ said Mann. He put the cheroot in his mouth and chewed it.

‘I read it in the Reader’s Digest Atlas.’

Mann nodded. ‘And do you know something else … the way they’re going, in another few years there will be another million stars there – enough spy satellites to put both of us out of business.’

‘Twinkle, twinkle, little spy,’ I said.

Mann looked at me to see if I was being insubordinate. ‘Let’s go back inside,’ he said finally. He decided not to light the cheroot. He put it away again. ‘I’ll buy you a bottle of Algerian lemonade.’ He laughed. Mann was like a small, neatly dressed gorilla: the same heavy brow, deep-set eyes and long arms – and the same sense of humour.

The dining-room is large, and although the big fans no longer turned it was the coolest place for hundreds of miles. The walls are whitewashed light blue, and crudely woven striped rugs are tacked to floor and walls. Overhead, the wooden flooring rattled like jungle drums as someone moved. There was the sudden roar of the shower and the inevitable violent rapping of the ancient plumbing. We helped ourselves to soft drinks and left the money on the till.

‘That Limey bastard takes a shower every five minutes.’

‘Yes, about every five minutes,’ I agreed. Major Mickey Mann, US Army Signal Corps, Retired, a CIA expert on Russian electronics and temporarily my boss, had showed no sign of discomfort during the heat of day in spite of his tightly knotted tie and long trousers. He watched me carefully, as he always did when offering criticism of my fellow countrymen. ‘That particular Limey bastard,’ I said quietly, ‘is sixty-one years old, has a metal plate in his skull and a leg filled with German shrapnel.’

‘Stash the gypsy violin, feller – you want to make me weep?’

‘You treat old Dempsey as if he’s simple-minded. I’m just reminding you that he did four years with the Long Range Desert Group. He’s lived in Algeria for the best part of thirty years, he speaks Arabic with all the local dialects and if it comes to real trouble in the desert we’ll need him to use that sextant.’

Mann sat down at the table and began toying with the Swiss army penknife that he’d bought in the souvenir shop at Geneva airport. ‘If the wind starts up again tonight …’ he balanced the knife on its end, ‘sand will make that road south impassable. And I don’t need your pal Percy to tell me that.’

‘Even in the Land Rover?’

‘Did you see that three-tonner down to the axles?’ He let go of the knife and it stayed perfectly balanced. ‘Sand that bogs down a three-ton six by six will bury a Land Rover.’

‘They were gunning the motor,’ I said. ‘You bury yourself that way.’

‘You’ve been reading the camping-in-the-desert section of the boy scout handbook,’ said Mann. Again he banged the folding knife down on to the table, and again it balanced on its end. ‘And in any case,’ he added, ‘how do we know the Russkie will be able to steal a four-wheel drive? He might be trying to get here in a Moskvich sedan for all we know.’

‘Is he stupid?’

‘Professor Bekuv’s intellect is not universally admired,’ said Mann. ‘During the time he was with the Russian scientific mission at the UN he wrote two papers about little men in flying saucers, and earned his reputation as a crank.’

‘Defecting cranks don’t get the department’s OK,’ I said.

‘Looking for messages from little men in flying saucers probably motivated his work on masers,’ said Mann. ‘And Bekuv is one of the world’s experts on masers.’

‘I’m not even sure I know what a maser is,’ I said.

‘You read the Technical Brief.’

‘Twice,’ I said. ‘But not so as to understand it.’

‘Maser,’ said Mann. ‘It’s an acronym – “m” for microwave, “a” for amplification, “s” for stimulated, “e” for emission, “r” for radiation.’

‘Do you mind if I take notes?’

‘Listen, dummy. It converts electromagnetic radiation – from a whole range of different frequencies – to a highly amplified, coherent microwave radiation.’

‘Is it anything to do with a laser?’

‘Well, a maser is a laser but a laser is not necessarily a maser.’

‘Is it anything to do with that guy looking in a mirror who says “Brothers and sisters have I none”?’

‘Now you’re beginning to get the idea,’ said Mann.

‘Well, somebody must be very interested in masers,’ I said, ‘or they wouldn’t have sent us two down here to provide Bekuv with a red-carpet reception.’

‘Or interested in flying saucers,’ said Mann.

‘If this Russian is such an idiot, what makes anyone believe that he’s capable of escaping from that Russian compound, stealing a roadworthy vehicle and getting all the way up here to meet us?’

‘Don’t get me wrong, pal. Bekuv is crazy like a fox. Maybe he is a flying-saucer freak, but when he was in New York with that UN scientific set-up he was reporting back to the KGB. He joined the 1924 Society – crackpots maybe, but they have some of the world’s top scientists as members. Bekuv was only too keen to read them long papers about gabfests through the galactic plasma by Soviet scientists, but he was listening very carefully when they told him what kind of work they were doing with their radio telescopes and electromagnetic wave transmissions.’ Major Mann ran his fingers back through his wispy hair that each day went greyer, now that he’d used up the last of his dark rinse. Almost without being conscious of what he was doing, he pushed hair over the balding patch at the back of his head. ‘Professor Bekuv was a spy. Don’t ever forget that. No matter how you dress it up as being a free exchange of scientific know-how, Bekuv was skilfully digging out a whole lot more than rumours about flying saucers.’

I looked at Mann. I’d seen plenty of such men all the world over from the Shetlands to Alaska, and all the way through Communist Algeria too: foot-loose Americans, their linen clean and their livers tormented, soft accents blunted by a lifetime of travelling. It would have been easy to believe that this wiry fifty-year-old was one of those condottieri of the oil fields – and that’s what was written in his nice new passport.

‘Where did Bekuv go wrong?’ I asked.

‘To be sent down to Mali, as part of Soviet aid to under-developed African countries … deputy head of a six-man team of Soviet scientists.’ Major Mann reached for his hip-flask. He looked round the room to be sure he was not observed before putting a shot of whisky into his sweet, fizzy Algerian cola. ‘Nobody knows for sure. The latest guess is that Bekuv’s flying saucers began to be an embarrassment for the Soviet Academy and they sent him down here for a spell to concentrate his mind on political realities.’

‘I thought the Soviet Academy were very enthusiastic about flying saucers,’ I said. ‘What about this big radio telescope they’ve built in the northern Caucasus – the RATAN-600?’

‘Now you reveal the depths of your ignorance,’ said Mann. ‘There’s a whole lot of difference between the respectable scientific work of searching deep space for signals from extra-terrestrial intelligence and the strictly infra dig. pastime of looking for unidentified flying objects, or what the sci-fi freaks call ufology.’

‘Now, I’m glad you told me that,’ I said waving away Mann’s offer of the flask. ‘And so Bekuv was kicked downstairs into the foreign aid programme, and that’s why he decided to defect. Well, that all fits together very neatly.’

Mann swallowed his drink and gave a grim smile to acknowledge that such a verdict was seldom intended as a compliment in the circles in which we moved. ‘Right,’ he said.

‘Last one in the shower is a cissy,’ I said. As I got up from the table I noticed that his knife was not balanced there after all; he’d driven its short screwdriver right into the wood.

2

The Trans-Sahara Highway is a track that goes south, through In-Salah and Tam, to the Atlantic. But we were using another trans-Sahara highway; the lesser known route that runs parallel to it, and many miles to the west. This was the way to the least known parts of Africa. This was the way to Gao and to Bamako, the capital of landlocked Mali. This was the way to Timbuktu.

It was four fifteen the next morning when we left the hotel in Adrar. Mann and Percy were in the Land Rover. I followed in the VW bus with Johnny, an extra driver from ‘Dempsey’s Desert Tours’. We drove through the market-place in the gloom of desert night. It was damned cold, and the drivers wore scarves and woolly hats. The big trucks that cross the desert in convoy, loaded with dried fish and oranges, were nearly ready to move off. One of the drivers waved us past. Desert travellers have survival in common; never knowing when you might need a friend.

We turned south. I followed the rear lights of the Land Rover. The road was hard sand, and we maintained a good speed past the roughly painted signs that pointed to distant villages. In places, loose sand had drifted on to the track, and I braked each time the Land Rover rear lights bounced; but the drift had not yet built up into the humps that tear an axle in half.

The gun-metal sky lightened and glowed red along the horizon until, like a thermic lance, the sun tore a white-hot hole in it. This road skirted the edges of the Sahara’s largest sand-seas. To the west the horizon rolled like a storm-racked ocean, but to the east the land was flat and featureless, as grey and as hard as concrete. Sometimes we passed herds of moth-eaten camels, scratching for a bite of thorn-bush or a mouthful of scrub. The route south was marked by small cairns of stones. Often there was a solitary Arab riding astride some wretched beast, so small and bowed that the rider’s feet almost touched the ground. Once an Arab family were rearranging the burdens upon the saddles of their three camels. We saw no motor traffic.

We were three hours out of Adrar by the time we reached the end of the track. Six dented oil-drums blocked the way, and a sun-bleached wooden sign indicated that we should follow the tyre tracks in a diversion from the marked route.

The Land Rover bumped off the hard verge with a flurry of sand as the wheels slipped into a soft patch. My smooth tyres took hold and then followed slowly along the pattern of tracks. I kept close behind the others, lining up our vehicles to simplify the problems of winching, for there was little doubt that I would be the one who got stuck. Their four-wheel drive would get them out of this kind of sand.

The detour was marked each hundred metres or so by an old oil-drum. Some of them had been blown over, and rolled far away from their original positions. Two were almost buried in drifting sand. It was easier to watch the tyre tracks.

After about eight kilometres the Land Rover stopped. Mann got out and walked back to me. It was fully light now and even with sun-glasses I found myself squinting into the light reflecting from the sand. It was still early morning, but now that we’d stopped I felt the heat of the sun and smelt the warm rubber, evaporating fuel and Mann’s after-shave lotion.

‘How far was that last drum?’ asked Mann.

‘A couple of hundred metres.’

‘Right and I don’t see another ahead. You stay here. I’ll mosey around a little.’

‘What about these tyre tracks?’ I asked.

‘Famous last words,’ pronounced Mann. ‘Tracks like those can lead you out there into that sand-sea, and finally you get to the place where they turn around and head back again.’

‘Then why tracks?’

‘An old disused camp for oil prospectors, or a dump for road gangs.’ He kicked at one of the tyre marks.

‘These tracks look fresh,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ said Mann. He kicked one of the ridges of impacted sand. It was as hard as concrete. ‘So do the tank tracks you find in southern Libya – and they’ve been there since Rommel.’

I looked at my watch.

Mann said, ‘I hope the diversion is well marked on the highway to the south of here, or that Russian cat will come wheeling past us while we’re stuck out here in this egg-timer factory.’

It was then that Percy Dempsey got out of the Land Rover and limped back to join us. He was a curious figure in his floppy hat, cardigan, long baggy shorts and gaiters.

‘Jesus!’ said Mann. ‘Here comes Miss Marple.’

‘I say – old chap,’ said the old man. He had difficulty remembering our names. Perhaps that was because we changed them so often. ‘Mr Antony, I mean. Are you wondering about the road ahead?’

‘Yes,’ I said. My name was Antony; Frederick L. Antony, tourist.

Dempsey blinked. His face was soft and babyish as old men’s faces sometimes are. Now that he had taken off his sun-glasses, his blue eyes became watery.

Mann said, ‘Don’t get nervous, Auntie. We’ll dope it out.’

‘The oil-drum markers continue along this track,’ said the old man.

‘How do you know that?’ said Mann.

‘I can see them,’ said the old man.

‘Yeah!’ said Mann. ‘So how come I can’t see them, and my buddy here can’t see them?’

‘I used my binoculars,’ said the old man apologetically.

‘Why the hell didn’t you say you had binoculars?’ said Mann.

‘I offered them to you just outside Oran. You said you weren’t planning a trip to the opera.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Mann. ‘I want to make camp before the sun gets high. And we have to find a place where the Russkie can spot us from the main road.’

Dempsey’s Desert Tours VW bus was equipped with two tent sides that expanded to provide a large area of shade. There was also a nylon sheet stretched across the roof, and held taut above it, which prevented the direct sunlight striking the top of the bus and so making it into the kind of oven that metal car bodies became.

The bright orange panels could be seen for miles. The Russian spotted them easily. He had driven non-stop from some prospecting site along the river Niger east of Timbuktu. It was a gruelling journey over poor tracks and open country, and he’d ended it in the fierce heat of early afternoon.

The Russian was a hatchet-faced man in his early forties.

He was tall and slim with cropped black hair that showed no sign of greying. His dark suit was baggy and stained, its jacket slung over his brawny shoulder. His red check shirt was equally dirty, and the gold pencil clipped into its pocket was conspicuous because of that. Pale blue eyes were almost sealed by fine desert sand, and his face was lined and bore the curious bruise-like marks that come with exhaustion. His arms were muscular and his skin was tanned very dark.

Major Mann opened the nylon flap and indicated the passenger seats of the VW bus and the table-top fixed between them. In spite of the tinted windows the plastic seat covering was hot to the touch. I sat opposite the Russian and watched him take off his sun-glasses, yawn and scratch the side of his nose with his car-key.

It was typical of Mann’s cunning, and of his training, that he offered the Russian no chance to rest. Instead he pushed towards him a glass and a vacuum flask containing ice-cubes and water. There was a snap as Mann broke the cap on a half-bottle of whisky and poured a generous measure for our guest. The Russian looked at Mann and gave him a thin smile. He pushed the whisky aside and from the flask grabbed a handful of ice-cubes and rubbed them on his face.

‘You got ID?’ Mann asked. As if to save face he poured whisky for himself and for me.

‘What are ID?’

‘Identification. Passport, security pass or something.’

The Russian took a wallet from his hip pocket. From it he brought a dog-eared piece of brown cardboard with his photo attached. He passed it to Mann, who handed it to me. It was a pass into the military zone along the Mali frontier with Niger. It described the Russian’s physical characteristics and named him as Professor Andrei Mikhail Bekuv. Significantly the card was printed in Russian and Chinese as well as Arabic. I gave it back to him.

‘You have the photo of my wife?’

‘It would have been poor security to risk it,’ said Mann. He sipped at his drink but when he set it down again the level seemed unchanged.

Professor Bekuv closed his eyes. ‘It’s fifteen months since I last saw her.’

Mann shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘She will be in London by the time we get there.’

Bekuv spoke very quietly, as if trying to keep a terrible temper under control. ‘Your people promised a photo of her – standing in Trafalgar Square.’

‘It was …’

‘That was the agreement,’ said Bekuv, ‘and you haven’t kept to it.’

‘She never left Copenhagen,’ said Mann.

Bekuv was silent for a long time. ‘Was she on the ship from Leningrad?’ he said finally. ‘Did you check the passenger list?’

‘All we know is that they didn’t come in on the plane to London,’ said Mann.

‘You lie,’ said Bekuv. ‘I know the sort of people you are. My country is filled with such men as you. You had men there waiting for her.’

‘She will come,’ said Mann.

‘Without her I will not come with you.’

‘She will come,’ said Mann. ‘She is probably there already.’

‘No,’ said Bekuv. He turned in his seat, to see the road that would take him a thousand miles back to the Russians in Timbuktu. In spite of the tinted windows, the sand was no more than a blinding glare. Bekuv picked up the battered sun-glasses that he’d left on the table alongside his car keys. He toyed with them for a moment and then put them into the pocket of his shirt. ‘Without her I am nothing,’ said Bekuv reflectively. ‘Without her life is not worth living for me.’

Mann said, ‘There is urgent work to be done, Professor Bekuv. Your chair of Interstellar Communication at New York University will give you access time on the Jodrell Bank radio telescope – and, as you well know, that has a 250-foot steerable paraboloid. The university is also arranging time on the 1,000-foot fixed radio telescope they’ve built in the Puerto Rican mountains near Arecibo.’

Bekuv didn’t answer but he didn’t leave either. I glanced at Mann and he gave me the sort of glare that was calculated to shrivel me to silent tissue. I realized now that Mann’s joke about little men in flying saucers was no joke.

‘There is no one else doing this kind of cosmology,’ Mann said. ‘Even if you fail to make contact with life in other solar systems, you’ll be able to give it a definitive thumbs down.’

Bekuv looked at him scornfully. ‘There is already enough – proof to satisfy any but the most stupid.’

‘If you don’t take this newly created chair of Interstellar Communication there will be another bitter fight … and next time the cynics might get their nominee into it. Professor Chataway or old Delahousse would jump at such an opportunity to prove that there was no life anywhere in outer space.’

‘They are fools,’ said Bekuv.

Mann pulled a face and shrugged.

Bekuv said, ‘I have a beautiful wife who has remained faithful, a proud mother and a talented son who will soon be at university. Nothing is more important than they are.’

Mann sipped some of his whisky and this time he really drank. ‘Suppose you go back to Timbuktu and your wife is waiting in London? What then, eh?’

‘I’ll take that chance,’ said Bekuv. He slid across the seat and stepped down from the VW into the sand. The light through the nylon side-panels coloured him bright orange.

Mann didn’t move.

‘You don’t fool me,’ said Mann. ‘You’re not going anywhere. You made your decision a long time ago and you’re stuck with it. You go back now, and your comrades will stake you out in the sand, and toss stale piroshkis at you.’

Bekuv said nothing.

‘Here, you forgot your car keys, buddy,’ Mann taunted him.

Bekuv took the keys that Mann offered but he did not step out into the sunshine. The sudden buzzing of a fly sounded unnaturally.

‘Professor Bekuv,’ I said. ‘It’s in our mutual interests that your family should be with you.’

Bekuv took out his hankerchief and wiped sand from the corners of his eyes but he gave no sign of having heard me.

‘I understand there is still work to be done, so you can bet that the American Government will do everything in their power to make sure you are happy in every respect.’

‘In their power, yes …’ said Bekuv sadly.

‘There are ways,’ I said. ‘There are official swops as well as escapes. And what you never hear about are the secret deals that our governments do. The trade agreements, the loans, the grain sales … all these deals contain hundreds of secret clauses. Many of them involve people we exchange.’

Bekuv dug the toe of his high, laced boots into the sand and traced a pattern of criss-cross lines. Mann reached forward from his seat and rested a hand upon Bekuv’s shoulder. The Russian twitched nervously.

‘Look at it this way, Professor,’ Mann said, in the sort of voice that he believed to be gentle and conciliatory. ‘If your wife is free we’ll bring her to you, so you might as well come with us.’ Mann paused. ‘If she’s in prison … you’d be out of your mind to go back.’ He tapped Bekuv’s shoulder again. ‘That’s the way it goes, Professor Bekuv.’

‘There was no letter from her this week,’ said Bekuv.

Mann looked at him but said nothing.

I had seen it before: men like Bekuv are ill fitted for the conspiracy of defection, let alone years of conspiracy that threatened the safety of his family. His gruelling journey across the Sahara had exhausted him. But his worst mistake was in looking forward to the moment when it would all be over; professionals never do that. ‘Oh Katinka!’ whispered Bekuv. ‘And my fine son. What have I done to you. What have I done.’

I didn’t move, and neither did Mann, but Bekuv pushed the nylon flap aside and stepped out into the scorching sun. He stood there for a long time.

3

The next problem was how to lose Bekuv’s vehicle. It was a GAZ 59A, a Russian four-wheel drive field-car. It was a conspicuous contraption – canvas top, angular bodywork and shiny metal springs showing through the seat covers. You couldn’t bury it in sand, and setting it ablaze would probably attract just the sort of attention we were trying to avoid.

Mann took a big wrench and ripped the registration plates off it and defaced the RMM sign that would tell even an illiterate informer that it was from Mali.

Mann didn’t trust Percy Dempsey out of his sight. And Mann certainly didn’t trust Johnny, the ever-smiling Arab driver. Only because he couldn’t come up with a better idea did he agree to Johnny heading back north with the GAZ, while we followed with Bekuv in the VW. And all the time he was turning to look at Bekuv, watching Percy in the Land Rover behind us and telling me that Percy Dempsey wasn’t half the man I’d cracked him up to be.

‘It’s damned hot,’ I said.

Mann grunted and looked at Bekuv still asleep on the bench seat behind us. ‘If we dump that GAZ anywhere here in the south, the cops will check it to make sure it’s not someone dying of thirst. But the farther we go north, the more interest the cops are going to take in that funny-looking contraption.’

‘We’ll be all right.’

‘We haven’t seen one of those heaps in the whole of Algeria.’

‘Stop worrying,’ I said. ‘Percy was doing this kind of thing out here in the desert when Rommel was in knee pants.’

‘You Limeys always stick together.’

‘Why don’t you drive for a while, Major.’

When we stopped to change seats, we stayed there long enough to let Johnny get a few kilometres ahead. The GAZ was no record-breaker. It wasn’t all that far advanced from the Model A Ford from which it evolved. There would be no problem catching up with it, even in the VW.

In fact, the old GAZ came into view within twenty-five minutes of us resuming the journey. We saw it surmounting the gentle slope of a dune and Mann flicked his headlights in greeting.

‘We’ll keep this kind of distance,’ Mann said. There was about five hundred yards between the vehicles.

Behind us Percy came into view, driving the Land Rover. ‘Is Percy a fag?’ said Mann.

‘Queer?’ I said. ‘Percy and Johnny? I never gave it a thought.’

‘Percy and Johnny,’ said Mann. ‘It sounds like some cosy little bar in Tangier.’

‘Does that make it more likely that they are queers, or less likely?’

‘As long as they do their job,’ said Mann. ‘That’s all I ask.’ He glanced in the mirror before taking a packet of Camels from his shirt pocket, extracting a cigarette and lighting up, without letting go of the wheel. He inhaled and blew smoke before speaking again. ‘Just get us up to that goddamned airstrip, that’s all I ask.’ He thumped the steering-wheel with his bony fist. ‘That’s all I ask.’

I smiled. The first hint of Bekuv’s possible defection had been made to a British scientist. That meant that British Intelligence were going to cling to this one like a limpet. I was the nominated limpet, and Mann didn’t like limpets.

‘We should have moved by night,’ I said, more to make conversation than because I’d thought about it very carefully.

‘And what do we tell the cops, that we are photographing moths?’

‘No explanation necessary,’ I said. ‘These roads probably have more traffic at night when it’s cool. The danger is running into camels or people walking.’

‘Look at tha – Jesus Christ!’

Mann was staring ahead but I could see nothing there, and by the time I realized he was looking in the rear-view mirror it was too late. Mann was wrenching the steering-wheel and we were jolting into the desert in a cloud of sand. There was a howl of fury as Bekuv was shaken off the back seat and hit the floor.

I heard the jet helicopter long before I caught sight of it. I was still staring at the GAZ, watching it disappear in a flurry of sand and white flashes. Then it became a big molten blob that swelled up, and, like a bright red balloon, the fuel exploded with a terrible bang.

The helicopter’s whine turned to a thudding of rotor blades as it came back and flew over us with only a few feet clearance, its blades chopping Indian signals out of the smoke that drifted up from the GAZ.

The Plexiglas bubble flashed in the sun as it banked so close to the desert that the blade tips almost touched the dunes. It was out of sight for a moment and by the time I heard the engine again I was fifty yards from the track full length on my face and trying to bury my head in the sand.

The pilot turned tightly as he came to the roadway. He circled the burning car and then came back again before he was satisfied about his task. He turned his nose eastwards. At that altitude he was out of sight within a second or two.

‘How did you guess?’ I asked Mann.

‘The way he was sitting there above the road. I’ve seen gun-ships in Nam. I knew what he was going to pull.’ He smacked the dust off his trousers. ‘OK, Professor?’

Bekuv nodded grimly. Obviously it had removed any last thoughts he might have had about driving back to Mali to kiss and make up.

‘Then let’s get the hell out of here, before the cops arrive to mop up the mess.’

We slowed as we passed through the smoke and the stink of rubber and carbonized flesh. Bekuv and I both turned to make sure that there was no last chance that the boy could have survived it. Then Mann accelerated, but behind us we saw the Land Rover stop.

Mann was looking in the rear-view mirror. He saw it too. ‘What’s the old fool stopping for?’

I didn’t answer.

‘You got cloth ears?’

‘To bury the kid.’

‘He can’t be that dumb!’

‘There are traditions in the desert,’ I said.

‘You mean that’s what the dummy is going to tell the cops when they get here and find him carving a headstone.’

‘Probably.’

‘They’ll shake him,’ said Mann. ‘The cops will shake Percy Dempsey, and you know what will fall out of his pockets?’

‘Nothing will.’

‘We will!’ said Mann, still watching in the mirror. ‘Goddamned stupid fruit.’

‘I make it twenty k.’s to the turn-off for the airstrip.’

‘Unless our fly-boy was scared shitless by that gunship, and went back to Morocco again.’

‘Our boy hasn’t even faked his flight plan yet,’ I said. ‘He’s only fifteen minutes’ flying time away from here.’

‘OK, OK, OK,’ said Mann. ‘I don’t need any of that Dunkirk spirit crap.’ For a long time we drove in silence.

‘Watch for that cairn at the turn-off,’ I said. ‘It’s no more than half a dozen stones, and the sand has drifted since we came down this road.’

‘There’s no spade in the Land Rover,’ said Mann. ‘You don’t think he’d bury him with his bare hands, do you.’

‘Slow a little now,’ I said. ‘The cairn is on this side.’

An aircraft came dune-hopping in from the north-west. It was one of a fleet of Dornier Skyservant short-haul machines, contracted to take Moroccan civil servants, politicians and technicians down to the phosphate workings near the Algerian border. The world demand for phosphates had made the workings the most pampered industry in Morocco.

The pilot landed at the first approach. It was part of his job to be able to land on any treeless piece of hard dirt. The Dornier taxied over to us and flipped the throttle of the port engine, so that it turned on its own axis, and was ready to fly out again. ‘Watch out for the prop-wash!’ Mann warned me.

Mann’s father had been an airline pilot, and Mann had a ten-year subscription to Aviation Week. Flying machines brought out the worst in him. He rapped the metal skin of this one before climbing through the door. ‘Great ships, these Dorniers,’ he told me. ‘Ever see a Dornier before?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My uncle George shot one down in 1940.’

‘Just make sure you lock the door,’ said Mann.

‘Let’s go, let’s go,’ said the pilot, a young Swede with a droopy moustache and ‘Elsa’ tattooed on his bicep.

I pushed Bekuv ahead of me. There were a dozen or more seats in the cabin, and Mann had already planted himself nearest the door.

‘Hurry!’ said the pilot. ‘I want to get back on to my flight plan.’

‘Casablanca?’ said Mann.

‘And all the couscous you can eat,’ said the pilot, and he opened the throttles even before I had locked the door.

The place from which the twin-engined Dornier climbed steeply was a disused site left by the road-builders. There were the usual piles of oil-drums, two tractor chassis and some stone markers. Everything else had been taken by the nomads. Now a bright new VW bus marked Dempsey Desert Tours was parked in the shallow depression of a wadi.

‘That’s screwed this one up for ever,’ said Mann. ‘When the cops find the VW they’ll be watching this airstrip for ever.’

‘Dempsey will collect it,’ I said.

‘He’s a regular little Lawrence of Arabia, your pal Dempsey.’

‘He could have done this job on his own,’ I said. ‘There was no need for us to come down here.’

‘You’re even dumber than you look.’ Mann looked round to make sure that Bekuv couldn’t hear.

‘Why then …?’

‘Because if the prof yells loud enough for his spouse, someone is going to have to go in and get her.’

‘They’ll use one of the people in the field,’ I said.

‘They’ll use someone who talked to the professor … and you know it! Someone who was here, who can talk to his old lady and make it sound convincing.’

‘Bloody risky,’ I said.

‘Yep!’ said Mann. ‘If the Russkies are going to send gun-ships here and blast cars out of the desert, they are not going to let his old lady out of their clutches without a struggle.’

‘Perhaps they’ll write Bekuv off as dead,’ I said.

Mann turned in his seat to look at the professor. His head was thrown back over the edge of the seat-back. His mouth was open and his eyes closed. ‘Maybe,’ said Mann.

Now I could see the mountains of the High Atlas. They were almost hidden behind the shimmer of heat that rose from the colourless desert below us, but above the heat haze I could distinguish the snow-capped tops of the highest peaks. Soon we’d see the Atlantic Ocean.

4

I never discovered whether New York University realized that they had acquired a chair of Interstellar Communication; certainly it was not mentioned in the press analysis. The house we used was on Washington Square, facing across the trees to the university buildings. It had been owned by the CIA – through a land-management front – for many years, and used for various clandestine purposes that included extra-marital exploits by certain senior members of the Operations Division.

Technically, Major Mann was responsible for Bekuv’s safety – which was a polite way of saying custody, as Bekuv himself pointed out at least three times a day. But it was Mann’s overt role of custodian that enabled Bekuv to believe that the interrogation team were the NYU academics that they pretended to be. The interrogators’ first hurdle was to steer Bekuv away from pure administration. Perhaps it was inevitable that a Soviet academic would want to know the floor-area his department would occupy, spending restrictions, the secretarial staff he was entitled to, his voting power in the university, his access to printing, photography and computer and his priority for student and postgraduate enrolment.

The research team was becoming more and more fretful. The reported leakage of scientific information eastwards was reflected by the querulous memos that were piling up in my ‘classified incoming’.

Pretending to be Professor Bekuv’s assistants, the interrogators were hoping to recognize the character of the data he already knew, and hoping to trace the American sources from which it had been stolen. With this in mind, slightly modified data had been released to selected staff at various government labs. So far, none of this ‘seeded’ material had come back through Bekuv, and now, in spite of strenuous protests from his ‘staff’, Bekuv declared a beginning to the Christmas vacation. He imperiously dismissed his interrogators back to their homes and families. Bekuv was therefore free to spend all his days designing a million-dollar heap of electronic junk that was guaranteed to make contact with one of those super-civilizations that were sitting around in space waiting to be introduced.

By Thursday evening the trees in Washington Square were dusted with the winter’s first snow, radio advertisers were counting Christmas shopping time in hours, and Mann was watching me shave in preparation for a Park Avenue party at the home of a senior security official of the United Nations. A hasty note on the bottom of the engraved invitation said ‘and bring the tame Russkie’. It had sent Mann into a state of peripatetic anxiety. ‘You say Tony Nowak sent your invite to the British Embassy in Washington?’ he asked me for the fourth or fifth time.

‘You know Tony,’ I said. ‘He’s nothing if not tactful. That’s his UN training.’

‘Goddamned gab-factory.’

‘You think he knows about this house on Washington Square?’

‘We’ll move Bekuv tomorrow,’ said Mann.

‘Tony can keep his mouth shut,’ I said.

‘I’m not worrying about Tony,’ said Mann. ‘But if he knows we’re here, you can bet a dozen other UN people know.’

‘What about California?’ I suggested. ‘UCLA.’ I sorted through my last clean linen. I was into my wash-and-wear shirts now, and the bath was brimming with them.

‘And what about Sing Sing?’ said Mann. ‘The fact is that I’m beginning to think that Bekuv is stalling – deliberately – and will go on stalling until we produce his frau.’

‘We both guessed that,’ I said. I put on a white shirt and club tie. It was likely to be the sort of party where you were better off English.

‘I’d tear the bastard’s toenails out,’ Mann growled.

‘Now you don’t mean that,’ I said. ‘That’s just the kind of joke that gets you a bad reputation.’

I got a sick kind of pleasure from provoking Major Mann, and he rose to that one as I knew he would: he stubbed out his cigar and dumped it into his Jim Beam bourbon – and you have to know Mann to realize how near that is to suicide. Mann watched me combing my hair, and then looked at his watch. ‘Maybe you should skip the false eyelashes,’ he said, ‘we’re meeting Bessie at eight.’

Mann’s wife Bessie looked about twenty years old but must have been nearer forty. She was tall and slim, with the fresh complexion that was the product of her childhood on a Wisconsin farm. If beautiful was going too far, she was certainly good-looking enough to turn all male heads as she entered the Park Avenue apartment where the party was being held.

Tony greeted us and adroitly took three glasses of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. ‘Now the party can really begin,’ said Tony Nowak – or Nowak the Polack as he was called by certain acquaintances who had not admired his spike-booted climb from rags to riches. For Antoni Nowak’s job in the United Nations Organization security unit didn’t require him to be in the lobby wearing a peaked cap and running metal detectors over the hand baggage. Tony had a six-figure salary and a three-window office with a view of the East River, and a lot of people typing letters in triplicate for him. In UN terms he was a success.

‘Now the party can really begin,’ said Tony again. He kissed Bessie, took Mann’s hat and punched my arm. ‘Good to see you – and Jesus, what a tan you guys got in Miami.’

I nodded politely and Mann tried to smile, failed and put his nose into his champagne.

‘The story is you’re retiring, Tony,’ said Bessie.

‘I’m too young to retire, Bessie, you know that!’ He winked at her.

‘Steady up, Tony,’ said Bessie, ‘you want the old man to catch on to us?’

‘He should never have left you behind on that Miami trip,’ said Tony Nowak.

‘It’s a lamp,’ said Mann. ‘Bloomingdales Fifty-four ninety-nine, with three sets of dark goggles.’

‘You could have fooled me,’ said Tony Nowak, ‘I thought it was a spray job.’

Behind us there were soft chiming sounds and a servant opened the door. Tony Nowak was still gripping Bessie’s arm but as he caught sight of his new guests he relaxed his grip. ‘These are the people from the Secretariat …’ said Tony Nowak.

‘Go look after your new arrivals,’ said Mann. ‘Looks like Liz Taylor needs rescuing from the Shah of Iran.’

‘And ain’t you the guy to do it,’ said Tony Nowak. He smiled. It was the sort of joke he’d repeat between relating the names of big-shots who had really been there.

‘It beats me why he asked us,’ I told Mann.

Mann grunted.

‘Are we here on business?’ I asked.

‘You want overtime?’

‘I just like to know what’s going on.’

From a dark corner of the lounge there came the hesitant sort of music that gives the pianist time for a gulp of martini between bars. When Mann got as far as the Chinese screen that divided this room from the dining-room, he stopped and lit a cheroot. He took his time doing it so that both of us could get a quick look round. ‘A parley,’ Mann said quietly.

‘A parley with who?’

‘Exactly,’ said Mann. He inhaled on his cheroot, and took my arm in his iron grip while telling about all the people he recognized.

The dining-room had been rearranged to make room for six special backgammon tables at which silent players played for high stakes. The room was crowded with spectators, and there was an especially large group around the far table at which a middle-aged manufacturer of ultrasonic intruder alarms was doing battle with a spectacular redhead.

‘Now that’s the kind of girl I could go for,’ said Mann.

Bessie punched him gently in the stomach. ‘And don’t think he’s kidding,’ she told me.

‘Don’t do that when I’m drinking French champagne,’ said Mann.

‘Is it OK when you’re drinking domestic?’ said Bessie.

Tony Nowak came past with a magnum of Heidsieck. He poured all our glasses brimful with champagne, hummed the melody line of ‘Alligator Crawl’ more adroitly than the pianist handled it, and then did a curious little step-dance before moving on to fill more glasses.

‘Tony is in an attentive mood tonight,’ I said.

‘Tony is keeping an eye on you,’ said Bessie. ‘Tony is remembering that time when you two came here with those drunken musicians from the Village and turned Tony’s party into a riot.’

‘I still say it was Tony Nowak’s rat-fink cousin Stefan who put the spaghetti in the piano,’ said Mann.

Bessie smiled and pointed at me. ‘The last time we talked about it, you were the guilty party,’ she confided.

Mann pulled a vampire face, and tried to bite his wife’s throat. ‘Promises, promises,’ said Bessie and turned to watch Tony Nowak moving among his guests. Mann walked into the dining-room and we followed him. It was all chinoiserie and high camp, with lanterns and gold-plated Buddhas, and miniature paintings of oriental pairs in acrobatic sexual couplings.

‘It’s Red Bancroft,’ said Mann, still looking at the redhead. ‘She’s international standard – you watch this.’

I followed him as he elbowed his way to a view of the backgammon game. We watched in silence. If this girl was playing a delaying game, it was far, far beyond my sort of backgammon, where you hit any blot within range and race for home. This girl was even leaving the single men exposed. It could be a way of drawing her opponent out of her home board but she wasn’t yet building up there. She was playing red, and her single pieces seemed scattered and vulnerable, and two of her men were out, waiting to come in. But for Mann’s remark, I would have seen this as the muddled play of a beginner.

The redhead smiled as her middle-aged opponent reached for the bidding cube. He turned it in his fingers as if trying to find the odds he wanted and then set it down again. I heard a couple of surprised grunts behind me as the audience saw the bid. If the girl was surprised too she didn’t show it. But when she smiled again, it was too broad a smile; and it lasted too long. Backgammon is as much a game of bluff as of skill and luck, and the redhead yawned and raised a hand to cover her mouth. It was a gesture that showed her figure to good advantage. She gave a nod of assent. The man rattled the dice longer than he’d done before, and I saw his lips move as if in prayer. He held his breath while they rolled. If it was a prayer, it was answered quickly and fully – double six! He looked up at the redhead. She smiled as if this was all part of her plan. The man took a long time looking at the board before he moved his men.

She picked up her dice, and threw them carelessly, but from this moment the game changed drastically. The man’s home board was completely open, so she had no trouble in bringing in her two men. With her next throw she began to build up her home board, which had been littered with blots. A four and a three. It was all she needed to cover all six points. That locked her opponent. Now he could only use a high throw, and for this his prayers were unanswered. She had the game to herself for throw after throw. The man lit a cigar with studied care as he watched the game going against him, and could do nothing about it. Only after she began bearing-off did he get moving again.

Now the bidding cube was in her hands – and that too was a part of the strategy – she raised it. The man looked at the cube, and then up to the faces of his friends. There had been side wagers on his success. He smiled, and nodded his agreement to the new stakes, although he must have known that only a couple of high doubles could save him now. He picked up the dice and shook them as if they might explode. When they rolled to a standstill there was a five and a one on the upper side. He still hadn’t got all his men into the home board. The girl threw a double five – with five men already beared-off, it ended the game.

He conceded. The redhead smiled as she tucked a thousand dollars in C notes into a crocodile-skin wallet with gold edges. The bystanders drifted away. The redhead looked up at Bessie and smiled, and then she smiled at Major Mann too.

But for that Irish colouring she might have been Oriental. Her cheekbones were high and flat and her mouth a little too wide. Her eyes were a little too far apart, and narrow – narrower still when she smiled. It was the smile that I was to remember long after everything else about her had faded in my memory. It was a strange, uncertain smile that sometimes mocked and sometimes chided but was nonetheless beguiling for that, as I was to find to my cost.

She wore an expensive knitted dress of striped autumnal colours and in her ears there were small jade earrings that exactly matched her eyes. Bessie brought her over to where I was standing, near the champagne, and the food.

When Bessie moved away, the girl said, ‘Pizza is very fattening.’

‘So is everything I like,’ I said.

‘Everything?’ said the girl.

‘Well … damn nearly everything,’ I said. ‘Congratulations on your win.’

She got out a packet of mentholated cigarettes and put one in her mouth. I lit it for her.

‘Thank you kindly, sir. There was a moment when he had me worried though, I’ll tell you that.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘When you yawned.’

‘It’s nerves – I try everything not to yawn.’

‘Think yourself lucky,’ I said. ‘Some people laugh when they are nervous.’

‘Do you mean you laugh when you are nervous?’

‘I’m advised to reserve my defence,’ I told her.

‘Ah, how British of you! You want to know my weaknesses but you’ll not confide any of your own.’

‘Does that make me a male chauvinist pig?’

‘It shortens the odds,’ she said. Then she found herself stifling a yawn again. I laughed.

‘How long have you known the Manns?’ I asked.

‘I met Bessie at a Yoga class, about four years back. She was trying to lose weight, I was trying to lose those yawns.’

‘Now you’re kidding.’

‘Yes. I went to Yoga after …’ She stopped. It was a painful memory. ‘… I got home early one night and found a couple of kids burglarizing my apartment. They gave me a bad beating and left me unconscious. When I left hospital I went to a Yoga farm to convalesce. That’s how I met Bessie.’

‘And the backgammon?’

‘My father was a fire chief – Illinois semi-finalist in the backgammon championships one year. He was great. I almost paid my way through college on what I earned playing backgammon. Three years ago I went professional – you can travel the world from tournament to tournament, there’s no season. Lots of money – it’s a rich man’s game.’ She sighed. ‘But that was three years ago. I’ve had a lousy year since then. And a lousy year in Seattle is a really lousy year, believe me! And what about you?’

‘Nothing to tell.’

‘Ah, Bessie told me a lot already,’ she said.

‘And I thought she was a friend.’

‘Just the good bits – you’re English …’

‘How long has that been a “good bit” among the backgammon players of Illinois?’

‘You work with Bessie’s husband, in the analysis department of a downtown bank that I’ve never heard of. You –’

I put my fingers to her lips to stop her. ‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘I can’t stand it.’

‘Are your family here in the city with you?’ She was flirting. I’d almost forgotten how much I liked it.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Are you going to join them for Christmas?’

‘No.’

‘But that’s terrible.’ Spontaneously she reached out to touch my arm.

‘I have no immediate family,’ I confessed.

She smiled. ‘I didn’t like to ask Bessie. She’s always matchmaking.’

‘Don’t knock it,’ I said.

‘I’m not lucky in love,’ she said. ‘Just in backgammon.’

‘And where is your home?’

‘My home is a Samsonite two-suiter.’

‘It’s a well-known address,’ I said. ‘Why New York City?’

She smiled. Her very white teeth were just a fraction uneven. She sipped her drink. ‘I’d had enough of Seattle,’ she said. ‘New York was the first place that came to mind.’ She put the half-smoked cigarette into an ashtray and stubbed it out as if it was Seattle.

From the next room the piano player drifted into a sleepy version of ‘How Long Has This Been Going On?’ Red moved a little closer to me and continued to stare into her drink like a crystal-gazer seeking a fortune there.

The intruder alarm manufacturer passed us and smiled. Red took my arm and rested her head on my shoulder. When he was out of earshot she looked up at me. ‘I hope you didn’t mind,’ she said. ‘I told him my boy-friend was here; I wanted to reinforce that idea.’

‘Any time.’ I put my arm round her waist; she was soft and warm and her shiny red hair smelt fresh as I pressed close.

‘Some of these people who lose money at the table think they might get recompense some other way,’ she murmured.

‘Now you’ve started my mind working,’ I said.

She laughed.

‘You’re not supposed to laugh,’ I said.

‘I like you,’ she said and laughed again. But now it was a nice throaty chuckle rather than the nervous teeth-baring grimace that I’d seen at the backgammon table.

‘Yes, you guessed right,’ she said. ‘I ran from a lousy love-affair.’ She moved away but not too far away.

‘And now you’re wondering if you did the right thing,’ I said.

‘He was a bastard,’ she said. ‘Other women … debts that I had to pay … drinking bouts … no, I’m not wondering if I did the right thing. I’m wondering why it took me so long.’

‘And now he phones you every day asking you to come back.’

‘How did you know.’ She mumbled the words into my shoulder.

‘That’s the way it goes,’ I said.

She gripped my arm. For a long time we stood in silence. I felt I’d known her all my life. The intruder alarm man passed again. He smiled at us. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said.

There was nothing I would have liked better but Mann had disappeared from the room, and if he was engaged in the sort of parley he’d anticipated, he’d be counting on my standing right here with both eyes wide open.

‘I’d better stay with the Manns,’ I told her. She pursed her lips. And yet a moment later she smiled and there was no sign of the scarred ego.

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I understand,’ but she didn’t understand enough, for soon after that she saw some people she knew and beckoned them to join us.

‘Do you play backgammon?’ one of the newcomers asked.

‘Not so that anyone would notice,’ I said.

Red smiled at me but when she learned that two one-time champions were about to fight out a match in the next room she took my hand and dragged me along there.

Backgammon is more to my taste than chess. The dice add a large element of luck to every game, so that sometimes a novice beats a champion just as it goes in real life. Sometimes, however, a preponderance of luck makes a game boring to watch. This one was that – or perhaps I was just feeling bad about the way Red exchanged smiles and greetings with so many people round the table.

The two ex-champions were into the opening moves of their third game by the time that Bessie Mann plucked my sleeve to tell me that her husband wanted me.

I went down the hall to where Tony Nowak’s driver was standing on guard outside the bedroom. He was scowling at the mirror and trying to look like a cop. I was expecting the scowl but not the quick rub down for firearms. I went inside. In spite of the dim lighting, I saw Tony Nowak perched on the dressing-table, his tie loosened and his brow shiny.

There was a smell of expensive cigars and after-shave lotion. And seated in the best chair – his sneakers resting upon an embroidered footstool – there was Harvey Kane Greenwood. They had long ceased to refer to him as the up-and-coming young Senator: Greenwood had arrived. The long hair – hot-combed and tinted – the chinos and the batik shirt, open far enough to reveal the medallion on a gold neck-chain, were all part of the well-publicized image, and many of his aspirations could be recognized in Gerry Hart, the lean young assistant that he had recently engaged to help him with his work on the Scientific Development Sub-Committee of the Senate Committee of International Cooperation.

As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I saw as far as the Hepplewhite sofa, upon which sat two balding heavyweights, comparing wrist-watches, and arguing quietly in Russian. They didn’t notice me, and nor did Gerry Hart, who was drawing diagrams on a dinner napkin for his boss Greenwood, who was nodding.

I was only as far as the doorway, when Mann waved his hands, and had me backing-up past Nowak’s sentry, and all the way along the corridor as far as the kitchen.

Piled up along the working surfaces there were plates of left-over party food, dirty ashtrays and plastic containers crammed with used cutlery. The remains of two turkeys were propped up on the open door of a wall oven, and as we entered, a cat jumped from there to the floor. Otherwise the brightly lit kitchen was unoccupied.

Major Mann opened the refrigerator and took a carton of buttermilk. He reached for tumblers from the shelf above and poured two glassfuls.

‘You like buttermilk?’

‘Not much,’ I said.

He drank some of it and then tore a piece of paper from a kitchen-roll and wiped his mouth. All the while he held the refrigerator door wide open. Soon the compressor started to throb. This sound, combined with the interference of the fluorescent lights above our heads, gave us a little protection against even the most sophisticated bugging devices. ‘This is a lulu,’ said Mann quietly.

‘In that case,’ I said, ‘I will have some buttermilk.’

‘Do we want to take delivery of Mrs B?’ He did not conceal his anger.

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘Here!’ said Mann indignantly. ‘Right here in schlockville.’

I smiled. ‘And this is an offer from gentleman-Jim Greenwood and our friend Hart?’

‘And the two vodka salesmen from downtown Omsk.’

‘KGB?’

‘Big-ass pants, steel-tipped shoes, fifty-dollar manicures and big Cuban cigars – yes, my suspicions run that way.’

‘Perhaps Hart got them through central casting.’

Mann shook his head. ‘Heavy,’ he said. ‘I’ve been close to them. These two are really heavy.’

Mann had the mannerism of placing a hand over his heart, the thumb and forefinger fidgeting with his shirt-collar. He did it now. It was as if he was taking an oath about the two Russians.

‘But why?’

‘Good question,’ said Mann. ‘When Greenwood’s goddamned committee is working so hard to give away all America’s scientific secrets to any foreigner who wants them – who needs the KGB?’

‘And they talked about B.?’

‘I must be getting senile or something,’ said Mann. ‘Why didn’t I think about those bastards on that Scientific Cooperation Committee – commie bastards the lot of them if you ask me.’

‘But what are they after?’

Mann threw a hand into the air, and caught it, fingers splayed. ‘Those guys – Greenwood and his sidekick – are lecturing me about freedom. Telling me that I’m just about to lead some kind of witch-hunt through the academic world …’

‘And are we?’

‘I’m sure going to sift through Bekuv’s friends and acquaintances … and not Greenwood and all his pinko committeemen will stop me.’

‘They didn’t set up this meeting just to tell you not to start a witch-hunt,’ I said.

‘They can do our job better than we can,’ said Mann bitterly. ‘They say they can get Bekuv’s wife out of the USSR by playing footsie with the Kremlin.’

‘You mean they will get her a legal exit permit, providing we don’t dig out anything that will embarrass the committee.’

‘Right,’ said Mann. ‘Have some more buttermilk.’ He poured some without waiting to ask if I wanted it.

‘After all,’ I said in an attempt to mollify his rage. ‘It’s what we want … I mean … Mrs B. It would make our task easier.’

‘Just the break we’ve been waiting for,’ said Mann sarcastically. ‘Do you know, they really expected us to bring Bekuv here tonight. They are threatening to demand his appearance before the committee.’

‘Why?’

‘To make sure he came to the West of his own free will. How do you like that?’

‘I don’t like it very much,’ I said. ‘His photo in the Daily News, reporters pushing microphones into his mouth. The Russians would feel bound to respond to that. It could get very rough.’

Mann pulled a face and reached for the wall telephone extension. He capped the phone and listened for a moment to be sure the line was not in use. To me he said, ‘I’m going back in there, to tug my forelock for ten minutes.’ He dialled the number of the CIA garage on 82nd Street. ‘Mann here. Send my number two car for back-up. I’m still at the same place.’ He hung up. ‘You get downstairs,’ he told me. ‘You go down and wait for the back-up car. Tell Charlie to tail the two Russian goons and give him the descriptions.’

‘It won’t be easy,’ I warned. ‘They are sure to be prepared for that.’

‘Either way it will be interesting to see how they react.’ Mann slammed the refrigerator door. The conversation was ended. I gave him a solemn salute, and went along the hall to get my coat.

Red Bancroft was there too: climbing into a fine military-styled suede coat, with leather facings and brass buttons and buckles. She winked as she tucked her long auburn hair into a crazy little knitted hat. ‘And here he is,’ she said to the intruder alarm manufacturer, who was watching himself in a mirror while a servant pulled at the collar of his camel-hair coat. He touched his moustache and nodded approval.

He was a tall wiry man, with hair that was greying the way it only does for tycoons and film stars.

‘The little lady was looking everywhere for you,’ said the intruder alarm man. ‘I was trying to persuade her to ride up to Sixtieth Street with me.’

‘I’ll look after her,’ I said.

‘And I’ll say good night,’ he said. ‘It was a real pleasure playing against you, Miss Bancroft. I just hope you’ll give me a chance to get even sometime.’

Red Bancroft smiled and nodded, and then she smiled at me.

‘Now let’s get out of here,’ I whispered.

She gripped my arm, and just as the man looked back at us, kissed my cheek. Whether it was nice timing, or just impulse, was too early to say but I took the opportunity to hold her tight and kiss her back. Tony Nowak’s domestic servants found something needing their attention in the lounge.

‘Have you been drinking buttermilk?’ said Red.

It was a long time before we got out to the landing. The intruder alarm man was still there, fuming about the non-arrival of the elevator. It arrived almost at the same moment that we did.

‘Everything goes right for those in love,’ said the alarm man. I warmed to him.

‘You have a car?’ he asked. He bowed us into the elevator ahead of him.

‘We do,’ I said. He pressed the button for ground level and the numbers began to flicker.

‘This is no city for moonlight walks,’ he told me. ‘Not even here in Park Avenue.’

We stopped and the elevator doors opened.

Like so many scenes of mortal danger, each constituent part of this one was very still. I saw everything, and yet my brain took some time to relate the elements in any meaningful way.

The entrance hall of the apartment block was brightly lit by indirect strip-lighting set into the ceiling. A huge vaseful of plastic flowers trembled from the vibration of some subterranean furnace, and a draught of cold wind from the glass entrance door carried with it a few errant flakes of snow. The dark brown floor carpet, chosen perhaps to hide dirty footmarks from the street, now revealed caked snow that had fallen from visitors’ shoes.

The entrance hall was not empty. There were three men there, all wearing the sort of dark raincoats and peaked hats that are worn by uniformed drivers. One of them had his foot jammed into the plate-glass door at the entrance. He had his back to us and was looking towards the street. The nearest man was opposite the doors of the elevator. He had a big S & W Heavy-Duty .38 in his fist, and it was pointing at us.

‘Freeze,’ he said. ‘Freeze, and nobody gets hurt. Slow now! Bring out your bill-fold.’

We froze. We froze so still that the elevator doors began to close on us. The man with the gun stamped a large boot into the door slot, and motioned us to step out. I stepped forward carefully keeping my hands raised and in sight.

‘If it’s money you want,’ said the alarm manufacturer, ‘take my wallet, and welcome to it.’ He was frantically reaching into the breast pocket of his camel-hair overcoat.

The alarm manufacturer’s voice was such a plaintive whine of terror that the man with the gun smiled. He turned his head so that the third gunman could see him smiling. And then his friend smiled too.

There were two shots: deafening thumps that echoed in the narrow lobby and left behind a whiff of burned powder. The man with the gun screeched. His eyes popped wide open, he gasped and coughed blood. There was a brief moment before the pistol hit the carpet with a thump, and its owner slid slowly down the wall, leaving a long smudge of blood. Red Bancroft gripped my arm so hard that it hurt. The second shot hit the man watching the stairs. It went in at the shoulder, and smashed his clavicle. He threw his gun down and grabbed his elbow. They say that’s the only way you can ease the pain of a fractured collar-bone. He couldn’t run very fast with that sort of wound. That’s why the alarm manufacturer had time enough to put his gun up to eye level. He got him in the spine with the third shot. It was enough to tumble him full length on to scattered particles of impacted snow and the plastic sheet that had been put down in the outer lobby to protect the carpet. He died with his head resting on the word ‘Welcome’. There wasn’t much blood.

It was the body of that second man that obstructed me as I opened the glass door. It had an electric solenoid lock. I had to push the override.

The intruder alarm man collided with me in the doorway but we both scrambled out into the street in time to see the third man running. He was hatless now and halfway across the avenue. I heard a car being started. The alarm man raised his gun for a shot at him but slid on the ice and lost his balance. He tumbled. There was a clatter and a curse as he fell against a parked car. I ran out into the empty roadway. On the far side of the avenue the door of a black Mercedes opened to receive the gunman. The Mercedes leapt forward while the door was still open. I saw a flurry of arms, and one leg trailed, and cut a pattern in the snow, before the man was inside and the door closed. As the Mercedes reached the cross-street intersection, the driver switched his lights on.

‘Fulton County plate,’ said the voice of the intruder alarm man. ‘Did you see that? It was a car from Fulton County. Did you get the number?’

He was breathless from the tumble he’d taken, and I was breathless too.

‘Three digits and FC,’ I said. ‘It was too dirty to get it.’

‘Goddamned weather,’ said the man. ‘I would have plinked him but for that damned patch of ice.’ He turned and we walked back to the lobby.

‘I think you would,’ I said.

He slapped me on the back. ‘Thanks for taking his attention, young feller,’ he said.

‘Is that what I did?’

‘Raising your hands and acting scared … that took his attention. And that was cool.’ He stepped over the body that was sprawled in the doorway. I followed him.

‘Spread that around,’ I said. ‘But just between the two of us – I wasn’t acting.’

The alarm man laughed. It was the strangled sort of laugh that releases a lot of suppressed tension. He toyed with the .38 revolver that was still in his hand. It was a blue-finish Colt Agent, with the hammer shroud that prevented it from snagging when drawn from a pocket. He must have thumb-cocked the hammer, for there had been no time for double action between the movement of his hand and the sound of his shots.

‘I’d put that away,’ I said. ‘Put it out of sight before the cops arrive.’

‘I’ve got a permit,’ he said indignantly. ‘In fact, I’m president of my local gun club.’

‘They come down the street and see you standing over two corpses with a hot shooter in your hand they are likely to shoot first and check the permits afterwards.’

He put the gun away but not before bringing the next loaded chamber into position. He unbuttoned his overcoat and jacket, to place his gun into a highly decorative Berns-Martin spring-grip shoulder-holster. As we got back to the lobby Mann arrived with Tony Nowak.

‘You stupid bastard,’ said Mann to the alarm manufacturer although I had the feeling that some overfill was intended to splash on to me.

‘What am I supposed to do,’ said the alarm man, looking in a mirror and combing his hair, ‘let those punks drill me? I’d be the laughing-stock of the whole intruder alarm business.’

‘They’re both dead,’ said Mann. ‘You shot to kill.’

The alarm man turned to look at Mann. Then he looked at the two corpses and back to Mann again. For a moment I thought he was going to express satisfaction at what he’d done but he knew too much about the law to do that. ‘Well, that’s something you’d better talk about with my lawyer,’ he said finally. Some of the bubbly elation that always follows such danger was now fading, leaving him flat and a little frightened.

Mann caught my eye. ‘No, I’m getting out of here,’ he said.

‘I’m not Wyatt Earp,’ said the man. ‘I can’t shoot guns out of guys’ hands.’

I took Red Bancroft’s arm. ‘I’d better get you home,’ I said.

‘The police will want to talk to me,’ she said.

‘No. Tony will fix that,’ I said.

Tony Nowak nodded. ‘You get along home, Red. My driver will take you. And don’t lose any sleep about those guys … we’ve had a whole string of muggings here over the past month. These are rough customers. I know the Deputy Inspector – I’ll get him to keep you out of it.’

I thought the girl was taking it all with a superhuman calmness. Now I realized that she was frozen with fear. Her face was colourless and as I put my arm round her, I felt her body twitch violently. ‘Take it easy, Red,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to stay on here.’

‘They’re both dead,’ she said, and stepped high over the body of the man in the doorway, without looking down at him. Outside in the swirling snowstorm she stopped and wound her knitted scarf round her head. She reached up for me and planted a sisterly kiss on my lips. ‘Could it work out to be something special … you and me?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said. While we stood there a police car arrived, and then a car with a doctor’s registration.

Tony Nowak’s driver opened the door of the Lincoln for her. I waved, and stood there a long time until the car could no longer be seen. By the time I got back to the lobby the cops were there. They were stripping the dead gunmen naked, and putting the clothes into evidence bags.

5

Tony Nowak’s apartment is in the seventeenth police precinct, but dead bodies from those plush addresses go down to the Twenty-First Street Morgue and are put in the chilled drawers alongside pushers from Times Square and Chinese laundrymen from the Tenderloin.

‘Can we smoke?’ I asked the attendant. The cold room had an eerie echo. He nodded and pulled the drawer open, and read silently from the police file. Apparently satisfied, he stepped back so that we could get a good look at the hold-up man. He came out feet-first with a printed tag on his toe. His face had been cleaned of blood and his hair combed, but nothing could be done about the open mouth that made him look as if he’d died of surprise.

‘The bullet hit the windpipe,’ said the attendant. ‘He died gasping for air.’ He closed the file. ‘This has been a heavy night for us,’ he explained. ‘If it’s OK with you guys, I’ll go back to the office. Put him away when you’re through with him.’ He put the clip-board under his arm and took a look at his pocket-watch. It was 2.15 A.M. He yawned and heaved the big evidence bag on to the stainless steel table.

‘Medical examiner had them stripped at the scene of the crime – just so Forensic can’t say we lost anything.’ He prodded the transparent bag that contained a peaked hat, dark raincoat, cheap denim suit and soiled underwear. ‘You’ll find your paperwork inside.’ He twisted the identification tag that was on the dead man’s toe so that he could read from the UF6 card. ‘Died on Park Avenue, eh. Now there’s a goon with taste.’ He looked back at the body. ‘Don’t turn him over until the photographer has finished with him.’

‘OK,’ I said.

‘Your other one is in drawer number twenty-seven – we keep all the gunshot deaths together, at this end of the room. Anything else you want and I’ll be in the ME’s office through the autopsy room …’

Mann opened the bag and found the shirt. There was a bullet nick in the collar.

‘A marksman,’ I said.

‘A schmuck,’ said Mann. ‘A marksman would have been satisfied with the gun arm.’

‘You think this hold-up might have a bearing on the Bekuv situation?’ I said.

‘Put a neat litle moustache on Bekuv and send him up to Saks Fifth Avenue for a 400-dollar suit, grey his temples a little and feed him enough chocolate sodas to put a few inches on his waistline, and what have you got?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’ve got nothing. What are you trying to say?’

‘Mister snap-shooting goddamn intruder alarm – that’s who you’ve got, stupid.’

I considered for a moment. There was a faint superficial resemblance between Bekuv and the intruder alarm man. ‘It’s not much,’ I said.

‘But it might be enough, if you were a trigger-happy gorilla, waiting in the lobby there – very nervous – and with just an ancient little snapshot of Bekuv to recognize him by.’

‘Who’d think Bekuv would be with us at Tony Nowak’s party?’

‘Greenwood and Hart: those guys wanted him there,’ said Mann.

I shook my head.

Mann said, ‘And if I told you that thirty minutes after we left Washington Square last night Andrei Bekuv was in his tux and trying to tell the doorman that I had given him permission to go out on his own?’

‘You think they got to him? You think they gave him a personal invitation to be there?’

‘He wasn’t duding-up to try his luck in the singles bars on Third Avenue,’ said Mann.

‘And you agreed?’ I asked him. ‘You told Hart and Greenwood and Nowak that you’d bring Bekuv to their party?’

‘It’s easy to be wise after the event,’ said Mann defensively. He used his tongue to find a piece of tobacco that was in his teeth. ‘Sure I agreed but I didn’t do it.’ He removed the strand of tobacco with a delicate deployment of his little finger. ‘These guys in the lobby: they didn’t ask for cash, wrist-watch or his gold tie-pin, they asked for his wallet. They wanted to check – they were nervous – they wanted to find something to prove he was really Bekuv.’

I shrugged. ‘Wallet … bill-fold … a stick-up man is likely to ask for any of these things when he wants money. What about the Fulton County number plate?’

‘Do you know how big Fulton County is?’

‘On a black Mercedes?’

‘Yes, well we’re checking it. We’ve got the guy from the Department of Motor Vehicles out of his bed, if that makes you feel any better.’

‘It does,’ I said. ‘But if we’d found that “ancient little snapshot of Bekuv” amongst these personal effects that would make me feel even better still. Until we’ve got something to go on, this remains a simple old-fashioned New York hold-up.’

‘Just a heist. But tomorrow, when we tell our pal Bekuv about it, I’m going to paint it to look like they are gunning for him.’

‘Why?’

‘We might learn something from him if he thinks he needs better protection. I’m going to tuck him away somewhere where no one’s going to find him.’

‘Where?’

‘We’ll get him out of here for Christmas, it’s too dangerous here.’

‘Miami? or the safe house in Boston?’

‘Don’t be a comedian. Send him to a CIA safe house! You might as well take a small-ad in Pravda.’ Mann rolled the body back into the chilled case. The sound set my teeth on edge. ‘You take the back-up car,’ Mann told me. ‘I’ll drive myself.’

‘Then where will you put Bekuv?’

‘Don’t make it too early in the morning.’

‘You’ve got my sworn promise,’ I said. I watched him as he marched through the rows and rows of cold slabs, his shoes clicking on the tiled floor and a curious squeaky noise that I later recognized as Mann whistling a tune.

I suppose Mann’s insouciant exit attracted the attention of the mortuary attendant. ‘What’s going on, Harry?’ He looked at me for a few seconds before realizing that I wasn’t Harry. ‘Are you the photographer?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Then who the hell are you?’

‘Seventeenth Precinct know about me,’ I said.

‘And I’ll bet they do,’ he said. ‘How did you get in here, buster?’

‘Calm down. I saw your colleague.’

‘You saw my colleague,’ he mocked in shrill falsetto. ‘Well, now you’re seeing me.’ I noticed his hands as he repeatedly gripped his fists and released them again. I had the feeling he wanted to provoke me, so that he had an excuse for taking a poke at me. I was keen to deprive him of that excuse.

‘It’s official,’ I said.

‘ID, feller,’ he said and poked a finger at my chest.

‘He’s all right, Sammy.’ We both turned. The other mortuary attendant had come in by the centre door. ‘I talked to Charlie Kelly about him. Charlie says OK.’

‘I don’t like guys creeping around here without my permission,’ said the pugnacious little man. Still murmuring abuse, he studied his clip-board and wandered back upstairs with that twitchy walk one sees in punchy old prize-fighters.

‘Sorry about that,’ said the first attendant. ‘I should have told Sammy that you were here.’

‘I thought he was going to put me on a slab,’ I said.

‘Sammy’s all right,’ he said. He looked at me before deciding that I should have a fuller explanation. ‘Sammy and me were cops … we joined the force together, we were both wounded in a gun battle near Delancey, way back in the ’sixties. Neither of us was fit enough to go back into the force. He’s a good guy.’

‘You could have fooled me,’ I said.

‘Saw his fifteen-year-old kid brought in here one day – hit by a truck coming out of school – that happens to you once and you remember. You start getting dizzy every time you unzip a body bag.’ He turned away. ‘Anyway, it was all OK for you, was it? I hear you were right in the middle when the shells started flying.’

‘I was lucky,’ I said.

‘And the third guy took off in a black Merc.’ He was reading it all on the report. ‘You get the plate number?’

‘FC,’ I said. ‘They tell me that’s a Fulton County registration.’

‘Well, at least you didn’t get suckered by the Fulton County plate.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, any cop who’s been in the force a few years will tell you the way those people from Fulton County used to come into the city and double-park all over Manhattan. And no cop would ever give them a ticket. Jesus, the number of times I saw cars … would you believe treble-parked on Madison, jamming the traffic … and I just walked on and forgot about it.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Well you wouldn’t, being from out of town, but a Fulton County plate is FC and then three numerals. Not many cops noticed any difference between that and three numbers followed by FC … I mean, a cop’s got a lot on his mind, without getting into that kind of pizzazz.’

‘And what is it about a car with a registration plate that has three numbers followed by FC? What is it that makes it OK for him to treble-park on Madison Avenue?’

The mortuary attendant looked at me sorrowfully. ‘Yeah, well you’ve never been a patrolman, have you. Three digits FC, means a car belonging to a foreign consul … that’s an official car with diplomatic immunity to arrest, and I mean including parking tickets. And that’s what all those smart-ass drivers from Fulton County were betting on.’

‘Got you,’ I said.

He didn’t hear me; he was staring into the ’sixties and watching one of those nice kids we all used to be. ‘Midnight to eight,’ he said. ‘I liked that shift – no dependants, so what’s the difference – and you make more money, overtime and payments for time in court. But it was a rough shift for a cop in those days.’

‘In those days?’ I said.

‘This was an all-night city back in the early ’sixties – bars open right up to the legal 4 a.m … all-night groceries, all-night dancing, all-night you-name-it. But the city got rougher and rougher, so people stayed home and watched TV … You go out there now, and the streets are dark and empty.’ He picked up a piece of cloth and wiped his hands. His hands looked very clean but he wiped them anyway. ‘Streets are so empty that a perpetrator can take his time: no witnesses, no calls to the cops, no nothing. Midnight to eight used to be a tough shift for a cop …’ He gave a humourless little laugh. ‘Now it’s a tough shift here at the morgue.’ He threw the rag aside. ‘You should see some of them when we get them here … kids and old ladies too … ahh! So you’re from out of town, eh?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Three thousand miles out of town.’

‘You got it made,’ he said.

Outside the night was cold. The sky was mauve and the world slightly tilted. Around the access points for the city’s steam supply the crust of snow had melted so that the roadway shone in the moonlight, and from the manhole covers steam drifted as far as the cross-street, before the wind whipped it away. A police car siren called somewhere on the far side of the city. It was a pitiful sound, like the repeated cries of a thrashed animal crawling away to die.

6

The Washington Square house is ‘twinned’ in the CIA style – divided vertically – so that the back of the house, shuttered against telescopes and double-glazed against focusing microphones, is all offices, while the front half provides apartments for the staff, and so presents all the outward appearance of domesticity.

I lived on the second floor. Bekuv lived above me. Bekuv’s appearance had changed during those few days in New York City. His hair had been cut by some fancy barber, and he’d had enough sleep to put some colour back into his cheeks. His clothes were transformed too: tailored trousers, a blue lambswool shirt and bright canvas shoes. He was sitting on the floor, surrounded by loudspeakers, records, amplifier components, extra tweeters, a turntable, a soldering iron and hi-fi magazines. Bekuv looked despondent.

‘Andrei was screwed,’ Mann told me as I went in. I found it hard to believe that Mann was sorry about it.

‘In what way?’

‘Coffee on the warmer,’ said Bekuv.

I poured myself a cup and took a blini.

‘All this damned hi-fi junk,’ said Mann.

Bekuv applied the pick-up to one of his records and suddenly the whole room was filled with music.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Mann shouted angrily.

Delicately Bekuv lifted the pick-up and the music ceased. ‘Shostakovich,’ he said to anyone who was seeking that information.

Mann said, ‘Andrei spent nearly two thousand dollars on all this stuff, and now he’s been reading the discount-house adverts.’

‘I could have got it for five hundred dollars less,’ Bekuv told me. I noticed that several of the hi-fi magazines were marked with red pentel, and there were little sums scribbled on the back of an envelope.

‘Well, perhaps we can do something about that,’ I said vaguely, while I drank my coffee and thought about something else.

‘Andrei is not going downtown,’ said Mann, ‘and that’s that.’ I realized they had been arguing about whether Bekuv was allowed to go out on the street again.

‘Now this loudspeaker is buzzing,’ said Bekuv.

‘Listen, dummy,’ Mann told him, bending forward from his chair, so that he could speak close to Bekuv’s ear. ‘There are citizens out there waiting to ice you. Didn’t you hear what I told you about the shooting last night? We spent the small hours downtown in the city morgue – I don’t recommend it, not even for a stiff.’

‘I’m not frightened,’ said Bekuv. He put the pick-up arm back on the record. There was a loud hissing before he reduced the volume a little. It was still very loud. Mann leaned forward and lifted the pick-up off the record. ‘I don’t give a good goddamn whether you are frightened or not frightened,’ he said. ‘In fact I don’t give a damn whether you are alive or dead, but I’m going to make sure it happens after you are moved out of here, and I’ve got a receipt for you.’

‘Is that going to happen?’ asked Bekuv. He began looking through his loose-leaf notebook.

‘It might,’ said Mann.

‘I can’t go anywhere for the time being,’ said Bekuv. ‘I have work to do.’

‘What work?’ I said.

Bekuv looked at me as if only just realizing that I was present. ‘My work on interstellar communication,’ he said, sarcastically. ‘Have you forgotten that I have a chair at New York University?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘I’ve calculated for the initial programme of transmissions. It would cost very little money, and it will focus attention on the work we are doing.’

‘Transmissions?’ said Mann.

‘In space there are clouds of hydrogen. They vibrate to make a hum of radio noise. You pick it up on any radio set at 1,420 megacycles. My theory is that this would be the best frequency to use for our first messages to outer space. Other civilizations are certain to notice any change in that hum of hydrogen vibrations.’

‘Sure to,’ said Mann.

‘Not on that exact wavelength,’ added Bekuv. ‘They would be obliterated. We must transmit near to the wavelength, not on it.’

‘Near to it; not on it,’ said Mann. He nodded.

‘It would cost very little,’ said Bekuv. ‘And I could have it working inside six months.’

‘That’s well before the flying-saucer men go to summer camp,’ said Mann.

Bekuv looked up at Mann. His voice was harsh, and it was as if he was answering a long list of unspoken questions when he shouted, ‘Twice I have attended meetings of the 1924 Society. Only twice! The last time was nearly five years ago. Science is not the cosy little club you believe it is. Don’t keep pressurizing me. I recognized no one, and we did not exchange names and addresses, for obvious reasons.’

‘For obvious reasons,’ said Mann. ‘Because those sons of bitches were betraying the whole of America’s military electronics programme.’

‘And will it get your secrets back if you keep me a prisoner here?’ yelled Bekuv. ‘Not allowed to go out … Not allowed to make phone calls.’

Mann walked quickly to the door, as if frightened he would lose his temper. He turned. ‘You’ll stay here as long as I think fit,’ he said. ‘Behave yourself and I’ll send you a packet of phonograph needles and a subscription to Little Green Men Monthly.’

Bekuv spoke quietly. ‘You don’t like cosmology, you don’t like high-fidelity, you don’t like Shostakovich, you don’t like blinis …’ Bekuv smiled. I couldn’t decide whether he was trying to needle Mann or not.

‘I don’t like Russians,’ explained Mann. ‘White Russians, Red Russians, Ukrainians, Muscovite liberals, ballet dancers or faggy poets – I just don’t like any of them. Get the picture?’

‘I get it,’ said Bekuv sulkily. ‘Is there anything more?’

‘One thing more,’ said Mann. ‘I’m not an international expert on the design of electronic masers. All I know about them is that a maser is some kind of crystal gimmick that gets pumped up with electronic energy so that it amplifies the weakest of incoming radio signals. That way you get a big fat signal compared with the background of electronic static noise and interference.’

‘That’s right,’ said Bekuv. It was the first time he’d shown any real interest.

‘I was reading that your liquid helium bath technique, that keeps the maser at minus two hundred and sixty-eight degrees centigrade, will amplify a signal nearly two million times.’

Bekuv nodded.

‘Now I see the day when every little two-bit transistor could be using one of these gadgets and pulling in radio transmissions from anywhere in the world. Of course, we know that would just mean hearing a DJ spinning discs in Peking, instead of Pasadena, but a guy collecting a royalty on such a gadget could make a few million. Right, Professor?’

‘I didn’t defect for money,’ said Bekuv.

Major Mann smiled.

‘I didn’t defect to make money,’ shouted Bekuv. If Mann had been trying to make Bekuv very, very angry, he’d discovered an effective way to do it.

Mann took my arm and led me from the room, closing the door silently and with exaggerated care. I didn’t speak as we both walked downstairs to my sitting-room. Mann took off his dark raincoat and bundled it up to throw it into a corner. From upstairs there came the sudden crash of Shostakovich. Mann closed the door to muffle it.

I walked over to the window, so that I could look down into Washington Square. It was sunny: the sort of New York City winter’s day when the sun coaxes you out without your long underwear, so that the cross-town wind can slice you into freeze-dried salami. Even the quartet echo-singing under the Washington arch had the hoods of their parkas up. But no street sounds came through the double-glazing; just soft Shostakovich from upstairs. Mann sat in my most comfortable chair and picked up the carbon of my report. I could tell that he’d already been to his office and perused the overnights. He gave my report no more than a moment or two, then he lifted the lid of my pigskin document case and put a fingertip on the Hart and Greenwood files that had arrived by special messenger in the early hours. They were very thin files.

‘The car had a foreign consul plate?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘And you read that stuff on the telex?’

‘The two Russians are staying in a house leased to the Second Secretary of the Soviet Trade Delegation … Yes, I read it, but that doesn’t make them KGB or even diplomatic. They might just be visiting relatives, or subtenants or squatters or something.’

Mann said, ‘I’d like to bring in the owners of that car and sweat them.’

‘And what would you charge them with? Leaving the scene of an accident?’

‘Very funny,’ said Mann. ‘But the foreign consul plate on that car ties them to the stick-up artists.’

‘You mean KGB heavies lend their official car to three hoods?’

Mann pouted and shook his head slowly, as if denying a treat to a spoiled child. ‘Not the way you’d arrange it, maybe,’ he said. ‘But there was no reason for them to think it would all foul up. They figured it would be a pushover, and the official car would provide them with the kind of getaway that no cop would dare stop. It was a good idea.’

‘That went wrong.’

‘That went wrong.’ He ran his fingers through the urgent paperwork inside my document case. ‘Are we going to get some of this junk down the chute today?’

‘Does that “we” mean you’re about to break the seal on a new box of paper-clips?’

Mann smiled.

I put the case beside me on the sofa and began to sort it into three piles: urgent, very urgent and phone.

Mann leaned over the sofa back. He lifted a corner of the neatly stacked documents, each one bearing a coloured marking slip that explained to me what I was signing. Mann sucked his teeth. ‘Those typewriter commandos downstairs don’t know a microdot from a Playboy centrefold but give them a chance to bury you in paperwork and – goddamn, what an avalanche!’ He let the paperwork slip out of his hands with enough noise to illustrate this theory.

I moved the trayful of papers before Mann decided to repeat his demonstration; already the slips and paper-clips were falling apart.

‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ Mann said. ‘I’ve got to catch an airplane. Anybody wants me tell them to try the Diplomat Hotel, Miami, Florida.’

‘Don’t use your right name,’ I said.

‘I won’t even be there, bird-brain. That’s just being set up.’

I reached for the first pile of paperwork.

‘Before I go,’ Mann said still standing in the doorway watching me, ‘Bessie says will you spend Christmas with us.’

‘Great,’ I said without looking up from my desk work.

‘I’d better warn you that Bessie is asking that girl Red Bancroft along … Bessie is a matchmaker …’

‘You’re checking out a place to hide Bekuv, aren’t you?’ I said.

Mann bared his teeth in the sort of fierce grimace that he believes is a warm and generous smile.

I worked on until about noon and then one of the I-Doc people looked in. ‘Where’s Major Mann?’

‘Out.’ I continued to go through the documents.

‘Where did he go?’

‘No idea,’ I said without looking up.

‘You must know.’

‘Two little guys in white coats came in and dragged him out with his feet kicking.’

‘There’s a phone call,’ said the man from downstairs. ‘Someone asking for you.’ He looked round the room to be sure I wasn’t hiding Mann anywhere. ‘I’ll tell the switchboard to put it through.’

‘There’s a caller named Gerry Hart coming through on the Wall Street line,’ the operator told me. ‘Do you want us to patch it through to here, and connect you?’

‘I’ll take it,’ I said. If it had taken Hart only twenty-four hours to winkle-out the phone number of the merchant bank in Wall Street that I was using as my prime cover, how long would it take to prise open the rest of it? I pushed the police documentation to one side. ‘Let’s have lunch,’ suggested Hart. His voice had the sort of warm resonance contrived by men who spend all day speaking on the telephone.

‘Why?’

‘There’s a development.’

‘Talk to my boss.’

‘Tried that, but he’s in Miami.’ Hart’s tone of voice made it clear that he didn’t believe that Mann was in Miami.

‘You could just make that flight where they serve free champagne in tourist,’ I suggested.

‘You really in Wall Street? Or are they patching this to some number in Langley, Virginia?’ He gave a little chuckle.

‘What’s on your mind, Gerry?’

‘Listen! I wanted to avoid Mann. It’s you I want to talk to. Spare me thirty minutes over a cream-cheese sandwich. You know the Cookery? – University Plaza? Say one o’clock? Don’t tell Mann – just you alone.’

He had chosen a restaurant about as close to the CIA safe house in Washington Square as it was possible to get. It could have been a coincidence – the Cookery was one of my favourite haunts, and Gerry Hart might well know that – but I had a feeling that he was trying to cut me down to size before hitting me with his proposition. ‘OK,’ I said.

‘I wear a moustache nowadays. Will you be able to recognize me?’ he said. ‘I’ll be reading today’s New York Times.’

‘You mean with two peep-holes cut in the front page?’

‘Just make sure you don’t bring Captain America with you,’ said Hart and rang off.

Gerry Hart pinched his trousers at the knees, so that he wasn’t putting any strain on his twelve-ounce wool-and-mohair suit. That done, he eased his shirt sleeves far enough to reveal his cufflinks, but not so far that his black-faced Pulsar wrist-watch was hidden. The file said he was an authority on New Orleans jazz. ‘Can’t be all bad,’ Mann had remarked at the time.

‘I’m in politics now,’ Hart said. ‘Did you know that?’

‘I thought perhaps you were playing the horses.’

‘You always had a great sense of humour.’ He smiled for just a fraction of a second. ‘I’m not so touchy as I used to be in the old days,’ he said. He fingered his new moustache self-consciously. I noticed the manicured fingernails. He’d come a long way from that nervous, opinionated State Department clerk that I remembered from our first meeting.

The drinks came. I put extra Tabasco into my Bloody Mary and then offered the same to Gerry. He shook his head. ‘Plain tomato juice doesn’t need flavouring,’ he said primly. ‘And I’m certainly surprised you need it with all that vodka.’

‘My analyst says it’s a subconscious desire to wash my mouth out with disinfectant.’

Hart nodded. ‘Well, you have a lot of politician in you,’ he said.

‘You mean I approach every problem with an open mouth,’ I said. I drank quite a lot of my Bloody Mary. ‘Yes, well, if I decide to run, I’ll come and talk to you.’

I knew it would be foolish to upset Hart before I knew what was in his mind. His file said he was a 31-year-old lawyer from Connecticut. I regarded him as one of the first of that growing army of young men who had used a few years’ service in the CIA as a stepping-stone to other ambitions, as at one time the British middle classes had used the Brigade of Guards.

Hart was short and saturnine, a handsome man with curly hair and the sort of dark circles under deep-set eyes that made you think he was sleepy. But Gerry Hart was a tough kid who didn’t smoke and didn’t drink, and if he was sleepy it was only because he stayed up late at night rewriting the inaugural address he’d deliver to Congress on the day he became President.

Hart sipped a little of his tomato juice, and wiped his mouth carefully before speaking. ‘I handle more top-secret material now than I did when I was working for the company – would you believe that?’

‘Yes,’ I said. Gerry Hart liked to refer to the CIA as ‘the company’ to emphasize that he had been on the inside. His file didn’t mention service in the CIA but that didn’t mean a thing.

‘Did you ever hear of the 1924 Society?’ he asked me.

‘I’d rather hear about it from you,’ I said.

‘Right,’ said Hart.

The waitress came to the table with the menus. ‘Don’t go away,’ he told her. He ran his eye quickly down the list. ‘Club sandwich, mixed salad with French dressing, regular coffee, and I’ll take the check. OK?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the waitress.

‘The same,’ I said. That made Gerry Hart feel very secure, and I wanted him to feel very secure.

The waitress closed her pad and took the menus from us. She came back with our order almost immediately. Hart smiled at her.

‘We have penetrated the 1924 Society. That’s why we can do it,’ Gerry Hart explained when she had gone.

‘What’s inside a club sandwich?’ I said. ‘Do what?’

‘Bring Mrs Bekuv here.’

‘Is it like a triple-deck sandwich?’

‘Bring Mrs Bekuv out of the USSR, officially or unofficially.’

‘How?’

‘What do you care how?’

I took the top off my sandwich and examined the filling. ‘We don’t have club sandwiches in England,’ I explained.

‘Even Greenwood hasn’t been told that this is a CIA operation,’ Hart said. ‘Sure, we’ll try to get Bekuv’s wife by asking the Russians through the Senate Scientific Development sub-committee but if they won’t play, we’ll make it work some other way.’

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