Len Deighton - Spy Hook

To me it didn't. At least it didn't until I recalled Werner's threat to go into the office this morning, and tackle the D-G head-on.

'They can't make you go,' said Gloria, who had leaned over my shoulder to read the note.

'No,' I agreed. 'I can always start drawing unemployment benefit.'

'It doesn't even say how long you'll be away,' she said, in such a way as to leave me in doubt about how she would respond to such a peremptory command.

I'm sorry,' I said.

'You promised to look at the garage door.'

'It just needs a new hinge,' I told her. 'There's a place near Waterloo Station. I'll get it next week.'

'I'll pack your bag.' She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. 'It's not worth going back to bed.'

'I said I'm sorry,' I reminded her.

'The weekends are the only time we have together,' she said. 'Why couldn't it wait till Monday?'

'I'll try and find something exciting for Billy's birthday.'

'Bring yourself back,' said Gloria and kissed me tenderly. 'I worry about you… when they send you off on these urgent jobs with that damned "Briefing on Arrival" rubber stamp, I worry about you.'

'It won't be anything dangerous,' I said. 'I'll be sitting beside a pool all weekend.'

'They've specifically asked for you, Bernard,' she said.

I nodded. It was not a flattering assumption but she was right. They hadn't asked for me on account of my social contacts or my scholarship. 'I'll wear the water-wings and stay away from the deep end,' I promised.

'What will you do when you get there?'

'It's "Briefing on Arrival", sweetheart. That means they haven't yet decided.'

'Seriously. How will you recognize them?'

'It doesn't work like that, darling. They'll have a photo of me. I won't know them until they come up to me and introduce themselves.'

'And how will you know that person is the genuine contact?'

'He'll show me my photo.'

'It's all carefully arranged,' she said with a note of approval in her voice. She liked everything to be well arranged.

'It's all in the Notes and Amendments,' I said.

'But always the same airline, Bernard? That seems bad security.'

'There must be a reason,' I said. 'How about making me a cup of coffee while I pack my bag?'

'Everything's clean. Your shirts are on hangers in the wardrobe, so don't start shouting when you find the chest of drawers empty.'

'I won't shout about shirts,' I promised, and kissed her. 'And if I do, rip more buttons off.'

'I do love you, Bernard.' She put both arms round me and hugged me tight. 'I want to have you for ever and ever.'

'Then that's the way it will be,' I promised with the sort of unthinking impetuosity that I am prey to when rudely awakened in such early hours of the morning.

For a moment she just held me, crushing me so that I could hardly breathe, then into my ear she said, 'And I love the children, Bernard. Don't worry about them.'

The children missed their real mother, of course, and I knew how hard Gloria worked to replace her. It wasn't easy for her. Cambridge, just unremitting hard work, must have been an attractive prospect at times.

Almost every seat was taken in First Class. Wide-awake young men, with well cut suits and large gold wristwatches, were shuffling papers that came from pigskin document cases, or tapping at tiny portable computers with hinged screens. Many of them declined the champagne and worked right through the meal service: reading reports, ticking at accounts and underlining bits of 'projections' with coloured markers.

The man in the next seat to mine was from the same mould but considerably less dedicated. Edwin Woosnam – 'a Welsh name although I've never been there: can you believe it?' – an overweight fellow with thick eyebrows, thin lips and the sort of nose they create from putty for amateur productions of Julius Caesar . My desire to catch up on lost sleep was frustrated by his friendliness.

He was, he told me, the senior partner of a 'development company' in Glasgow. His firm was building eight 600-room hotels in towns around the world and he told me all about it. 'Outdoor pool, that's important. The hotel owners need a picture on the brochure that makes it look like the weather is good enough for swimming all year round.' Throaty chuckle and a quick sip of champagne. 'Penthouses at the top, leisure centres in the basement and en-suite bathrooms throughout. Find a big cheap site – I mean really big – and after the hotel is up, shops and apartment blocks will follow. The neighbourhood is upgraded. You can't go wrong on an investment like that. It's like money in the bank. As long as the local labour is cheap, it doesn't matter where you site the hotel, half these idiot tourists don't even know which country they're in.'

But otherwise Mr Woosnam proved a congenial companion, with an endless supply of stories. '…You can't tell the Greeks anything. I showed this foreman – Popopopolis, or something, you know what those names are like – I showed him the schedule, and told him the eighth floor should be all complete by now. And he got angry. It was complete, he shouted. He shook his fist and waved his arms and went rushing along the girders, jumped through a doorway and fell all the way into the basement. Eight storeys! Killed of course. We had terrible trouble getting a new foreman at that time of year. Another month and it wouldn't have mattered so much.' He took a drink.

'Ha ha ha. Some people just won't listen. Perhaps you find that in your business too,' said Woosnam, but before I could agree he was off again. 'I was with one of our site surveyors in Bombay and he was laughing and making jokes about the way the Indians build their lashed-up wooden scaffolding. I told him that he'd be laughing on the other side of his face when he put up steel scaffolding and the heat of the sun twisted it into a corkscrew and his project collapsed. Bloody architects! They come straight from college, and they know it all. That's the trouble nowadays. I'll give you another example…' And so it went on. He was good entertainment but his affability precluded all chance of slumber.

'Travel much?' he said as I began to doze.

'No,' I said.

'I travel all the time. Flying across the Atlantic is exciting for you of course, but it's just a bore for me.' He looked at me to see my reaction.

'Yes,' I said and tried to look excited.

'And what line are you in? No, don't tell me. I'm good at guessing what people do for a living. Insurance?'

'Chemicals.' I usually say that because it's so vague and also because I have a prepared line of chat about pharmaceuticals should my bluff be called.

'All right,' he said, reluctant to admit to error. 'Not a salesman though. You haven't got the pushy temperament you need for the Sales side.'

'No, not Sales,' I agreed.

'Keep an eye on my briefcase while I go to the toilet will you? Once they start the meal service everyone will jump up and want to go. It's always like that.'

The toy meal came and went. The captain's carefully modulated voice recited the names of places that were hidden far beneath the clouds. The great aluminium tube droned on, its weary cargo of unwashed, red-eyed travellers numbed with alcohol and crippled with indigestion. Duty-free baubles were interminably hustled by stewardesses who went, eyes averted, past bawling babies and harassed mothers. Over the public-address system came more names of equally invisible towns. The shutters were closed against the daylight and the cabin darkened. Blurred ghosts of tiny unrecognizable actors postured on the pale screens while their strident voices assaulted the inner ear from plastic tubes. We raced after the sun and chased a never-ending day. Tortured by the poker-red glare of the sun, dazzled by the white clouds, one by one the heads of the passengers lolled and bent as they succumbed to their misery, and sought escape in fitful sleep.