Len Deighton - Spy Hook

No one said anything. Bret's outburst had embarrassed Mrs O'Raffety, and Buddy took his cues from her. They sat there looking at the flower arrangement as if they'd not heard Bret and not noticed nun get up and leave.

It was a long time before she spoke. Then she said, 'Bret resents his infirmity. I remember him at high school: a lion! Such an active man all his life… it's so difficult for him to adjust to being sick.'

'Is he often angry like this?' I asked.

'No,' said Buddy. 'Your visit seems to have upset him.'

'Of course it hasn't,' said Mrs O'Raffety, who knew how to be the perfect hostess. 'It's just that meeting Mr Samson makes Bret remember the times when he was fit and well.'

'Some days he's just fine,' said Buddy. He reached for the coffee pot that was keeping hot on the serving trolley. 'More?'

'Thanks,' I said.

'Sure,' said Buddy. 'And some days I see him standing by the pool with an expression on his face so that I think he's going to throw himself in and stay under.'

'Buddy! How can you say such a thing?'

I'm sorry Mrs O'Raffety but it's true.'

'He has to find himself,' said Mrs O'Raffety.

'Sure,' said Buddy, hastily trying to assuage his employer's alarm. 'He has to find himself. That's what I mean.'

We took the coast road back. Buddy wasn't feeling so good and so one of the servants – Joey, a small belligerent little Mexican who'd been playing cards the previous night – was driving Buddy's jeep and leaning forward staring into the white mist and muttering that we should have taken the canyon road and gone inland to the Freeway instead.

'Buddy should be doing this himself,' complained the driver for the hundredth time. 'I don't like this kind of weather.' The fog rolled in from the Ocean and swirled around us so that sudden glimpses of the highway opened up and were as quickly gone.

'Buddy felt ill,' I said. Car headlights flashed past. A dozen black leather motorcyclists went with suicidal disregard into the white wall of fog, and were swallowed up with such suddenness that even the sound of the bikes was gone.

'Ill!' said Joey. 'Drunk, you mean.' The rain was suddenly fiercer. The grey shapes of enormous trucks came looming from the white gloom, adorned with a multitude of little orange lights, like ships lit up for a regatta.

When I didn't respond Joey said, 'Mrs O'Raffety doesn't know but she'll find out.'

'Doesn't know what?'

'That he's a lush. That guy puts down a fifth of bourbon like it's Coca Cola. He's been doing that ever since his wife dumped him.'

'Poor Buddy,' I said.

'The sonuvabitch deserves all he gets.'

'Is that so?' I said.

In response to my unasked question Joey looked at me and grinned. 'I'm leaving next week. I'm going to work for my brother-in-law in San Diego. Buddy can shove his job.'

A few miles short of Malibu we were stopped by a line of flares burning bright in the roadway. Haifa dozen big trucks were parked at the roadside. A man in a tan-coloured shirt emerged from the mist. Los Angeles County Sheriff said the badge on his arm. With him there were two Highway Patrol cops in yellow oilskins; a big fellow and a girl. They were all very wet.

'Pull over,' the cop told Joey, pointing to the roadside.

'What's wrong?' The slap and buzz of the wipers seemed unnaturally loud. 'A slide?'

'Behind the white Caddie.' The man from the Sheriffs Office indicated an open patch of ground where several patient drivers were parked and waiting for the road to be cleared. The cop's face was running with rainwater that dropped from the peak of his cap, his shirt was black with rain. He wasn't in the mood for a long discussion.

'We've got a plane to catch: international,' said Joey.

The cop looked at him with a blank expression. 'Just let the ambulance through.' The cop squeegeed the water from his face, using the edge of his hand.

'What happened?'

The ambulance moved slowly past. The cop spoke like a swimmer too, in brief breathless sentences. 'A big truck – artic – jack-knifed. No way you'll get past.'

'Any other route we can take?' Joey asked.

'Sure but you'd add an hour to your trip.' The cop squinted into the rain. 'LAX, you say? There are a couple of guys in a big old Lincoln limo. They said they were going to turn around and head back downtown. They'd maybe take your passenger.'

'Where are they?'

'Other side of the wreck. Maybe they left already but I could try.' He switched on his transceiver. There was a burst of static and the cop said, That big dark blue limo still there, Pete?'

There was a scarcely intelligible affirmative from the radio. The cop said, 'Ask them if they'd take someone in a hurry to get to LAX.'

With bag in hand I picked my way past a line of cars and the monster-sized truck that was askew across the highway and completely blocked the road both ways. I found the limousine waiting for me and by that time – despite my plastic raincoat – I was very wet too.

The man beside the driver got out into the heavy rain and opened the rear door for me, and that's the kind of thing you do only if you've got a job you are determined to keep. Now I could see the man in the back: a short thickset man with a rotund belly. He wore an expensive three-piece dark blue suit – gold pocket watch chain well evidenced – and a shirt with a gold collar pin below the tight knot of a very conservative striped tie. It was too Wall Street for the Pacific Coast Highway, where pants and matching jackets went out of fashion with laced corsets and high hats.

'Bernie. Jump in,' said the well dressed man in the back. His voice was low, soft and attractive; like his car.

I hesitated no more than a moment. Wet, stranded and without transport I was in no position to decline and Posh Harry knew that. He smiled a welcome that had an element of smug satisfaction in it, and revealed a lot of teeth and some expensive dentistry. I climbed in beside him. Or as beside him as I had to be on a soft leather seat wide enough for four.

'What's the game?' I said. I was angry at the simple trick.

'Take Mr Samson's bag,' Posh Harry told the man in the front seat.

'It's valuable,' I protested.

'Valuable,' scoffed Harry. 'What do you think is going to happen to it? You think I've got some dwarf hidden in the trunk to ransack your baggage on the way to the airport?'

'Maybe,' I said.

'Maybe!' He laughed. 'Did you hear that?' he asked the men in the front. 'This guy is a real pro. From this one you could learn a thing or two.' And then, in case they were taking him seriously, he laughed. 'So nurse the bag, Bernie, if that's the way you prefer it. Let's go, driver! This man has a plane to catch.'

'You didn't do all this just for me?' I asked cautiously. But how could they have collared me so neatly without positioning the truck as well?

'Not my style, baby,' said Posh Harry. He paused before adding, 'But my boss: it sure is her style!'

One of the men in the front laughed softly enough not to interrupt but loud enough to be heard.

'Her?' I said.

'We got a female Station Chief here. You mean you hadn't heard? Yup. We've got a "Chieftess" running things.' He laughed.

'A woman!'

He waved a manicured hand in a dismissive gesture of impatience. 'You guys in London know all that stuff. It was in the monthly briefing last September.'

'In London there were bets on which one of your LA men was calling himself Brigette,' I said.

'You bastard!' said Harry. He sniggered.

The driver said, 'Right on! Half those young guys in the office have got earrings and permanent waves. Faggots!'

'It was Brigette's idea,' insisted Harry. 'I told her I knew you. I wanted to phone Bret and keep it all cool but she had her mind all made up. She said we'd have to pay for the truck rental anyway. The ambulance was her idea: a nice touch huh? It was all fixed up by then so she insisted we go ahead. Not like the old days, eh Bernie?'