Len Deighton - Spy Line

One evening at dinner she spilled a couple of drips of barbecue sauce on the tablecloth – the kind of thing I do all the time – and she slumped back in her chair and closed her eyes. No one round the table gave any sign of noticing it but I knew she was close to screaming, close perhaps to breaking point. The trouble was that she'd confide nothing to me, no matter how I tried to get her to talk. Finally she accused me of harassing her, so then I stopped and left it all to Bret.

Two days later Bret asked me to sit in with them for the morning session. 'There are a few things unexplained,' said Bret.

'From where I'm sitting there are a lot of things unexplained,' I said.

Fiona sat slumped in a big armchair. Bret was behind a table – an elaborate modern design of pink marble with polished steel legs – with his back to the tinted window. The garden was packed with colour. Against the whitewashed wall of the yard there were orange and lemon trees, jasmine, roses and bougainvillaea. There was no perfume from them, for the window was tightly closed and the air-conditioning fully on. Bret looked at me for a long time and finally said, 'For instance?'

'The traces of heroin in the Ford van.' It was a bluff and it didn't work.

'Let's not get side-tracked,' Bret said. 'We're supposed to be establishing the identities of the other people there.'

'Fiona can tell you that,' I said. 'She was in the car with them.'

'Erich Stinnes,' said Fiona somewhat mechanically. 'Plus a Russian liaison man. And there was a man I had never seen before. He arrived on a motor cycle.'

'Good! Good!' murmured Bret as he laboriously wrote it down in case he forgot. He looked up. 'Three men,' he said and gave a quick nervous smile. Bret Rensselaer was one of those slim elegant Americans who, whether sick or healthy, always look well cared for: like a vintage Bugatti or a fifty-carat diamond. Sitting behind his desk, golden pen in hand, he looked like a carefully posed photo in a society magazine. He was wearing tailored white designer slacks and a white tennis shut with a red stripe at the collar. It all went well with his white hair and made his tanned face seem very brown.

I wondered if the mysterious 'extra man' was going to be identified as Thurkettle. I didn't volunteer that idea, and I noticed that Fiona said nothing of his American accent.

'Have the monitors picked up anything?' Fiona asked.

'Nothing in any of the newspapers or periodicals and certainly nothing on the radio.' He gave another of his crisp little smiles and fidgeted with his signet ring, 'It would be surprising if there was,'

'And even more surprising if you told us about it,' I said.

Bret wasted no more than a moment on that one. He grunted and turned to Fiona again. 'Why would they burn the car, Fiona?'

'Bernard says it was to destroy the evidence,' she replied.

'I was asking you, Fiona.'

'I really have no idea. It might have been an accident. There was still one man there.'

'Ah! The man on the bike?'

'Yes,' she said.

'I wish you could tell me more about him.' He waited in case Fiona said something. When she didn't he said, 'And you didn't talk with Stinnes or this liaison guy during the car journey?'

'No, I didn't.'

'Did they talk together?'

'I don't think there's much to be gained in this line,' said Fiona. 'I've told you all I know about them.'

Bret nodded sympathetically. He looked at his yellow legal pad and said, This "other man" came by motorcycle? Unusual that, don't you think?'

'I really don't know how unusual it was, Bret.'

'But if the car was set on fire after you left, it has to be the biker who did it?'

'I assume so,' said Fiona.

'So do I,' said Bret. 'Now we come to the final stage of this strange business – him letting you get away so easily.'

Fiona nodded and wet her lip as if she was distressed to think about it. 'Strange, yes.'

'What would be the motive for that? Bernie here had just shot his two buddies. Then he let you go. Does that sound a little crazy?'

Fiona said, 'It was a stalemate. He couldn't move without getting shot. He knew Bernard couldn't get to the van without offering a target. Some kind of compromise had to be reached.'

'No, it didn't, honey,' said Bret. 'These people were in their own country. Let's say Mr X holds out until it's daylight. Passing traffic will see what's happening. The construction workers will arrive. Just about anything that happens will resolve things his way. Right?'

'I don't know who he was,' said Fiona, as if she hadn't listened to Bret's question.

'What does that mean?' said Bret.

Fiona looked at me needing support. I said, 'Fiona means that if some CIA agent was in a shoot-out on the Pacific Coast Highway, along the road from here, how keen would he be to have himself discovered by the local cops and passers-by when daylight comes?'

'Well, okay,' said Bret in a voice that conceded nothing. 'But this is the U.S. of A. Liberal newspapers who are looking for ways to take a swipe at the government, crackpot Senators ditto. In a situation like that, maybe some CIA agent might want to keep a low profile at whatever cost. But in the DDR… I don't see it.'

'Why don't you just tell us what you want us to say, Bret?' I said.

'Come again,' said Bret, the frayed edge of his temper showing through.

'We all know you're writing a fairy story,' I said. 'It's a scenario that was probably all settled months, maybe years, ago. You don't want to know what really happened: you just want to find excuses for saying everything went as planned. I know what the report will be: fifty pages patting all the desk men on the back, and saying what a wonderful job they did. The only decisions still to be made are who gets the knighthood and who will have to make do with an MBE or a CBE.'

'You're a rude bastard, Bernard,' he said softly.

'Yes. I know. Everyone tells me the same thing. But what I say is true, all the same.'

He looked at me and conceded just a fraction. 'Wasn't it Goethe who said, Der Ausgang giebt den Taten ihre Titel – how's that? The outcome decides what the title will be? Sure. This is a phenomenal success story. It's Fiona's success. She won't ever get a proper credit for it because that's not the way the Department handles these things: we all know that. What she will get is the report. Would you rather I write it up as some kind of turkey? You want me to say she screwed up?'

'No,' I said. Bret could always find a way of putting his opponents in the wrong.

Fiona said nothing. Her contribution to the talking was minimal and yet she was not uncooperative: she was like a sleep-walker. She knew her sister was dead – Bret had told her – but she avoided mention of Tessa. It was as if Tessa had never been there, and Bret left it like that. There were a lot of things that Fiona would not talk about, she seldom even mentioned the children. I didn't envy Bret his task.

Bret looked at his watch. 'Well, let's move on to a few easier questions. We'll get some of those rare roast beef sandwiches sent in, and break early. How about that?'

The sandwiches were lousy too.

A couple of days later we had a visitor. James Prettyman was an Americanized Englishman who used to work alongside me. Since then London Central had sent him to Washington in some deep cover plan that enabled him to do things for them at arm's length. Atone time we'd been close friends. Now I wasn't so sure, although I suppose I owed him a favour or two.

Jim was in his early thirties. He had the wiry form and presence of mind that are associated with the pushier type of door-to-door salesmen. His complexion was pale and bloodless. His head was domelike and he was losing his silky hair but sometimes a strand of it fell across his eyes. I think he was glad to see it.