Len Deighton - Spy Line

'Max?'

'Max Busby. Lange's man.' Seeing my blank look he added, 'The one who was killed when you came over the Wall with him. He had been a captain in the American army. He was in charge of a search party, that night when the Germans were shot. You didn't know that? Max didn't ever tell you?'

It took me a little time to get over my astonishment. 'No, Max never told me that. He was a damned good friend.' It was a mealy-mouthed description of a man who had been shot dead while giving me a chance to get home safe and sound. But I didn't have to say more: Silas knew the story.

'To you he always was. Max liked you, Bernard, of course he did. But I often wondered to what extent he was trying to make up for the injustice he helped to bring upon your dad. It was Max's evidence that convinced the inquiry that your dad accidentally fired the shots. That story suited them. It enabled the soldiers to go back to civilian life almost immediately and it deprived the US newspapers of a story that they were planning to make into headlines. But your father's reputation never recovered from it. They were going to get rid of him to some rotten liaison job but I insisted that he stayed with me.'

'So that's why Dad hated Max,' I said.

'Max: yes, and Lange too. He didn't have much time for any American after that. It was a childish reaction but he felt bitter and frustrated.'

'Didn't he want the inquiry reopened?'

'Of course he did. Your father wanted that verdict quashed more than anything in his life. But the Department couldn't permit the publicity that would have come with it. And the official policy, of both us and the Americans, was to avoid anything that might engender bad feelings between the Allies.' He sat back. The memories had invigorated him for a moment but now their ghosts had invaded the room and he seemed not to know that I was there. I drank some of my lukewarm tea.

When Silas spoke his voice was strained. He said, 'I think I'd better have some of that damned medicine. Mrs Porter knows how much to give me.'

'I'll go now, Silas,' I said finally. 'You must get some rest.'

'Stay to lunch, Bernard.'

'I must get back,' I said.

He didn't put up much argument. Now that his task was done all the energy was sapped from him, he wanted to be left alone.

'I'm sorry about the elms, Silas.'

'The oaks will look fine,' he said.

I declined Mrs Porter's invitations to stay for something to eat. I had the feeling that Silas wanted me to leave the house and go away, rather than have something by my sen 0in the kitchen. Or was that my paranoia? Whatever the truth of it, I wanted to get away and think my thoughts to myself. At the quiet little church, on the narrow road that goes from Whitelands gates to the village, a line of parked cars gave notice of a service in progress. It was a funeral. Perhaps two dozen dark-garbed people were standing around an open grave, huddled under their umbrellas while the priest braved the elements, his vestment whipped by the wind and his face radiant with rain.

Crawling along behind a tractor, I was given a chance to study this solemn little ceremony. It depressed me further, reminding me that soon – very soon – Silas and Whitelands and all they meant would have vanished from my life. My mother was old and sick. Soon Lisl would be gone, and the hotel would be unrecognizable. When that happened I would no longer have any connections with the times that meant so much to me.

Perhaps Silas was right: perhaps a shelf in a museum, with all the rubbish of our lives surrounding us, would be the best end of us all.

Suffering from this somewhat irrational melancholy I stopped at the next little town for a drink. No pubs were open and the only restaurant was full of noisy housewives eating salads. I went into the grocery store and bought a half-bottle of Johnnie Walker and a packet of paper cups.

I drove down the road until I reached the main road and a lay-by where I could pull off the road and park. The rain continued. It was the ideal sort of day and place and time to commit suicide.

As soon as the windscreen wipers were switched off the glass became a confusion of dribbling rain and there was the steady patter of it on the roof. I reached for the bottle, but before I took a drink from it I relaxed back upon the head-rest and must have gone straight to sleep. I'd known such instant sleep before, but always until now it had accompanied danger or great stress.

I don't know how long I slept. I was awakened by the sound of a car pulling up alongside me. There was the buzz and slap of windscreen wipers and the resonant babble of a two-way radio. I opened my eyes. It was a police car. The uniformed cop lowered his window and I did the same.

'Are you all right, sir?' The suspicious look on his weathered face belied the courtesy of his address. I pushed the whisky bottle down between the seats but I couldn't get it completely out of sight.

'Yes, I'm all right.'

'Mechanical trouble of any kind? Shall I call the breakdown service?' The rain continued, the cop didn't get out of his car.

'I just thought I'd look at the map.'

'Very well, sir, if you're fit and well, and able to drive.' They pulled away.

When the police car was out of sight I got out of the car and stood in the rain. It refreshed me. Soon I felt better. I got back into the car and switched on the heater and the radio. It was tuned to the Third Programme: Brendel playing Schubert. I listened. After a few minutes I tossed the unopened whisky into the ditch.

I wondered if the policemen had been told to keep an eye on me but decided it was unlikely. Yet even the doubt was a measure of my distress; in the old days I would never have given it a moment's thought. Perhaps there was something wrong with me. Maybe all these people who kept telling me I looked ill were right.

I thought about everything Silas had said. I was particularly disturbed by the idea of Fiona going to ground, so that the KGB would not realize that she had been working for us all the time. It would be difficult to arrange such a deception.

There was another way for the Department to achieve the same objective; by killing Fiona while she was still working over there. It would be simple enough to arrange, there were plenty of Thurkettles around, and it would be complete and effective. Even if the KGB detected the hand of the Department in such a killing, that would only 'prove' that Fiona's defection was genuine. Expedient demise. Such a ruthless solution would be unthinkable and unprecedented but Fiona's unique position was just as unthinkable and just as unprecedented.

I didn't go in to the office that day. As I drove back from Silas Gaunt's farm the weather got worse until, near London, I found myself driving through a spectacular electrical storm that lit the sky with blue flashes, made the car radio erupt static noises and provided long drumrolls of thunder. I went straight home. It was early evening. The house was cold, empty and dark, a chastening reminder of what it would be like to live alone. The children were eating with friends. I lit the gas fire and sat down in the armchair and watched the flame changing colour until the whole grid was red. I dozed off.

I was wakened by Gloria's arrival. She switched on the light and, although she must have noticed the car outside, she raised a hand and gave a little start of surprise at seeing me sitting there. It was a very feminine action, contrived perhaps, but by some magic she could get away with such childish posturing. She was very wet. I suppose I should have gone to the station and collected her but she didn't complain. 'There's only frozen Székelygulyás, ' she said as she took off her soaking wet raincoat and got a towel to dry her hair.