Len Deighton - Spy Line

Brody looked at me but said nothing.

Harry said, 'If you want the Brits to help they have to know the way it really happened.'

Brody, speaking very slowly and deliberately, said, 'We think Thurkettle killed Johnson and then blew his head off to destroy evidence. But the guy who told you he was Johnson was really Thurkettle.'

'The hell it was!' I said softly as the implications hit me.

Brody enjoying my consternation added, The dead body you saw in the bathroom was the man who spoke with you on the terrace.'

'I see.'

'You don't see much, Samson old buddy,' said Brody. I'd earned that rebuke: I should have looked more closely at the dead body on the floor.

Posh Harry said, Thurkettle changed identity with his victim on a previous occasion. It had us real puzzled for ages.'

'So what are you going to do about it, Bernard?' said Brody.

'I'll stick with the soap and water shaves,' I said. Brody scowled. I got to my feet to show them that I wanted to leave. He turned away and leaned across the sink to prise open the slatted blind and look out of the window. There was a minuscule yard and a white-washed wall and large flower-pots in which some leafless stalks struggled for survival. From the front of the house, through the double-glazing, came the traffic noise: worse now that the end of the working day was so close.

'Don't forget the Kalashnikov,' said Posh Harry.

Joe Brody was still looking at the yard. He seemed not to have heard.

I went upstairs to get my parcel. Harry came with me and added a few snippets to what I knew about Thurkettle. Other US government departments, resentful at the way the CIA had got Thurkettle released from prison and provided with false documentation, had proved singularly uncooperative now that he had in Harry's words 'run amok'. The CIA had sought a secret indictment from a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia and had it thrown out of court on the grounds of lack of identification. An application to the Justice Department had also failed and so had the attempt to have Thurkettle's citizenship revoked. Harry explained that there was now a desperate need to link Thurkettle with a crime. Everyone – by which I suppose he meant Brody – had been hoping that my evidence would supply the needed link. Until it was obtained Thurkettle was thumbing his nose at them and walking free.

'I still don't get it,' I said. 'If you find out why Thurkettle blew Johnson away things might become clearer.'

'We know why,' said Posh Harry smoothly. 'Johnson had the goods on him.'

'On Thurkettle?'

'That was Johnson's assignment. They were buddies. Joe Brody told Johnson to find him and get pally. Last week Johnson phoned Brody and confirmed that Thurkettle was peddling narcotics. He couldn't say much on the phone but he said he had enough evidence to put Thurkettle in front of a grand jury.'

'But Thurkettle was a jump ahead of all concerned.'

'Joe Brody blames himself.'

'Narcotics.'

'The prevailing theory in Grosvenor Square,' said Harry, 'is that Thurkettle blew poor old Kleindorf away too.'

'Why would he do that?'

'I was hoping you'd tell me. We think Thurkettle is doing business with London Central.' He laughed in a way that said it might be a joke. I decided not to get angry: I was too old to get angry twice in one day.

I nodded and thanked him for lunch and felt pleased that I hadn't mentioned Tessa's new friend with his rim beard and no moustache. They would have been all over George and Tessa. Anyway by now he might have shaved it off.

We talked for a few minutes more and then I said goodbye to Posh Harry, and went home. I hadn't brought the car into town that day, I was using the train. Standing all the way in the shabby compartment I had a chance to reflect on what had happened. Had I been set up, I wondered? Brody's fury had been all too convincing and Posh Harry's reaction to it could not have been entirely feigned. But had the powerful Martinis, and the big lunch with lots to drink, been a way of getting me softened up for Brody's grilling? And to what extent had Dicky guessed what I was walking into?

I'd known 'Uncle' Silas all my life. He'd been my father's boss from a time before I was born. I remembered him in Berlin when I was a child. He was young Billy's godfather and distantly related to my mother-in-law.

He had long since retired from the Department and he now lived at his farm in the Cotswold hills. He was old and becoming more exasperating every time I saw him but I knew there had been times when I'd exasperated him more than he ever had me. To look truth right in the eye I suppose I'd only kept my job this long because my father had made good friends; and Uncle Silas was one of them.

So when I had a phone call from an agitated Mrs Porter, his housekeeper, and was told that Silas Gaunt was seriously ill and asking for me, I went to him. I didn't ask for permission, or tell Dicky I needed a day off, or even send a message to the office. I went to him.

The day began with unabating heavy rain and the wet roads persuaded me to drive cautiously. It was a long drive and so I had plenty of time to reflect upon this precipitate action during the journey. As I got to the Cotswolds the hills were lost in grey silken skeins of mist, and the trees on the estate were entangled in it. 'Whitelands' consisted of about six hundred acres of fine agricultural land and an incongruous clutter of small buildings. There was a magnificent tithe barn, large enough to hold the parson's tribute of corn, and stabling for six horses. The tan-coloured stone farmhouse itself had suffered a couple of hundred years of depredations by philistine occupiers, so that there was a neo-Gothic tower and an incongruous wing that housed the large billiards room.

I was used to arriving here to find a dozen cars scattered in the front drive and – on sunny days – parked in the shade of the three tall elms that marked the limits of the lawn. On such days the house was noisy with appreciative guests. It was not like that today. The front drive was empty except for a muddy Land-Rover from which three young men in faded denim were unloading equipment including, I noticed, three bright red hard-hats and three sets of earmuffs. The rain had stopped but the water dripped from the drenched trees and the lawn squelched underfoot.

As I stepped on the metal grating in the porch it rattled reminding me to scrape the mud from my shoes. I pushed open the front door and went in to the hallway. The house was silent, and like all such farmhouses, dark. The tiny windows, set in the thick stone walls, allowed only small rectangles of daylight to cut coloured rugs out of the oriental carpet. Suddenly from the drawing room, through several closed doors, Lohengrin began singing 'In fernem Land'.

Mrs Porter, his ever-cheerful, ever-dependable cook, house-keeper and general factotum, came from the kitchen to say hello and take my coat. Still holding it she went past me to look out of the front door. She sniffed the air with relish, as a submarine commander might savour the night after a long spell submerged. Over her shoulder I saw that one of the forestry men had donned a red helmet and ear covers and was climbing one of the trees. He was getting very wet.

She came back to me. 'Yes, I thought I heard your car,' she said. 'I'm so pleased you are here, Mr Samson. I was worried… I still am. He becomes so listless when he is ill.'

'Really?' I said. I didn't find it easy to visualize a listless Uncle Silas.

'He got up and dressed when he heard that you were coming. I phoned the doctor about it but he said it would be all right as long as he stayed indoors, rested and kept warm.'

'That sounds like the doctor,' I said.

She smiled uncertainly. Women like Mrs Porter become alarmed if their faith in medicine comes under attack. 'The doctor said that Mr Gaunt could be taken from us any time,' she said in a voice that seemed intended to remind me of the leading role Silas' physician played in a drama where I was no more than a walk-on. I assumed a suitably sober face and she said, 'He's writing his memoirs. Poor soul! He seems to know his time is coming.'