Len Deighton - Spy Hook

'Because she'd ask for more than you had to offer?'

'No, I don't mean that. I just think she'd be touchy. I'd worry that she might write it all down and take it to the newspapers.'

'It's just a soft job in Strasbourg,' I said. 'Not even the reporters from the tabloids could make that into a bribe, unless Cindy declared herself so incompetent that the offer was ridiculously inappropriate.'

'I suppose so.' She put the bag of Hungarian delicacies on the dressing table and began to undress.

'What is it?' I asked, for she had the sort of self-satisfied grin on her face that usually meant I'd done something careless, like locking the cat in the broom closet or absent-mindedly picking up the milkman's money and putting it in my pocket.

'Nothing,' she said, though I could tell by the wanton abandon with which she disrobed and threw aside her clothes that there was some kind of joke to share. But I thought it would be something about her parents or the latest about the egregious Dodo, who'd now been given temporary rent-free use of a comfortable little house near Kingston on Thames.

'That bank,' she said as she got between the sheets and huddled against me. 'Guess who owns that bank?'

'Bank? Schneider, von Schild…'

'And Weber,' she supplied still grinning at her cleverness and at the joke that was to come. 'Yes, that's the bank, my darling. Guess who owns it.'

'Not Mr Schneider, Mr von Schild and Mr Weber?'

'Your precious Bret Rensselaer, that's who.'

'What?'

'I knew that would bring you fully awake.'

'I was already fully awake.'

'At least, it belongs to the Rensselaer family.'

'How did you find out?'

'I didn't have to raid the Yellow Submarine darling. It's public knowledge. Even German banks have to make ownership declarations. My teacher at the Economics class got it from an ordinary data-bank listing. He phoned me back in half an hour and had its history.'

'I should have checked that out.'

'Well, you didn't; I did,' she chuckled like a baby.

'You're such a clever girl,' I said.

'So you've noticed?'

'That you're a clever girl? Yes, I've noticed.'

'Don't do that… at least, don't do it yet.'

'The Rensselaer family?'

'Are you ready for the details? Hold on to your hat, lover, here goes. Back in 1925 a man named Cyrus Rensselaer bought shares in a California bank group. Bret and his brothers worked for them, I guess they had directorships or something. I can get more details… Then, sometime in the Second World War, the old man died. Under the terms of his Will the shares went into a trust, of which Bret's mother was the beneficiary. In a complicated share issue and merger in 1953 the Californian bank became a part of Calibank (International) Serco which began large-scale buying of other banks. One shareholding they acquired gave them a majority holding in Schneider, von Schild and Weber.'

'Anything else?'

'Anything else, he says! My darling, you're insatiable. Has anyone ever told you that?'

'I plead the Fifth Amendment,' I said.

Only desperation would have provoked me to set out on a journey to see Silas Gaunt that Saturday. He'd retired from the Department many years before but he remained one of the most influential individuals in what Dicky Cruyer delicately called 'the intelligence community'. Uncle Silas knew everything and knew everyone. He had been close to my father over many years; was distantly related to my mother-in-law, and was Billy's godfather.

Perhaps I should have visited him more regularly, but he was devoted to my wife Fiona, and her departure had distanced Silas from me. He wasn't likely to appreciate my arriving arm in arm with Gloria, and yet it was a damned long journey to do alone. Now I was doing it alone, and as I drove through a pale prostrate landscape that had still not loosened the shackles of winter, I had a chance to think about what I might say to him. How did I start? Jim Prettyman was dead and Bret Rensselaer was suddenly alive, but neither metamorphosis was going to help me. Dodo was telling anyone who'd listen that I'd been conspiring with Fiona to swindle the Department; while my prime helper, Cindy Prettyman, was suffering the selective amnesia that valued promotion sometimes brings.

'Uncle' Silas lived at 'Whitelands' a middle-sized farm in the Cotswolds, a picturesque place of tan-coloured stone with ill-fitting doors, creaking floorboards and low beams that split the skulls of the tall and unwary. Silas must have been exceptionally wary, for he was a giant of a man and so fat that he was scarcely able to squeeze through some of the narrower doors. Some nineteenth-century tycoon had redone the interior to his own taste, so that there was a surfeit of mahogany and ornamental tiles, and a scarcity of bathrooms. But it suited Silas, and somehow it was difficult to imagine him in any other environment.

In the day time he kept busy. There were discussions with his farm manager, and his house-keeper Mrs Porter, and with the lady from the village who came to deal with his mail but who seemed unable to deal with any telephone caller without coming downstairs and dragging Silas upstairs to the one and only phone.

I was sitting waiting for Silas to return from upstairs. The narrow stone-framed windows let in only a thin slice of grey afternoon light. The log fire burning brightly in the big stone hearth filled the air with a smoky perfume and provided the light by which to see the drawing room with its battered old sofa and uncomfortable chairs, their shapes only vaguely apparent under the baggy chintz covers. In front of the fire there was a tray with the remains of our tea: silver teapot, the last couple of Mrs Porter's freshly made scones and a pot of jam with a handwritten label saying 'Whitelands – strawberry'. It might have been a hundred years ago but for the big hi-fi speakers that stood in the far corners of the room. This was where Silas spent his evenings listening to his opera records and drinking his way through his remarkable cellar.

'Sorry about these interruptions,' he said as he fiddled to close the ancient brass door latch. He clapped his hands and then went to warm them at the fire. 'Fresh tea?'

'I've had enough tea,' I said.

'And it's too early for a drink,' said Silas.

I didn't reply.

'You tell me a lot of things,' he said, pouring the last tepid remains of the tea into his cup. 'And you want me to make them fit together nicely, like pieces of a jigsaw.' He sipped the cold tea but pulled a face and abandoned it. 'But I don't see any causal connection.' Sniff. 'Either it's much colder today or I'm getting flu… or maybe both. So this accountant fellow, Prettyman, was killed in Washington by some hooligan, and now his wife has been promoted? Well, jolly good, I say. Why shouldn't the poor woman be promoted? I've always thought we should look after our own people to the best of our ability.'

There was a long silent rumination until I helped him remember the rest of it. 'And then there was Bret Rensselaer,' I said.

'Yes, poor Bret. An awfully good chap, Bret; injured on duty. An episode in the very best traditions of the service, if I may say so. Yet, you seem indignant that he survived.'

'I was surprised to see him arise from the dead.'

'I can't see what you're getting at,' said Uncle Silas. 'Aren't you pleased by that either?' he scratched his crotch unselfconsciously. He was a strange old devil; fat and dishevelled, with a coarse humour and biting wit that was not funny to those who found it directed at them.

'There are too many things happening… funny things.'

'I really don't follow your reasoning Bernard.' He shook his head. 'I really don't.' Uncle Silas had always been able to twist the facts to suit his hypothesis. 'It's not a bit of good, you sitting there glaring at me, dear boy.' He paused to take out a big red cotton handkerchief and blow his nose violently. 'I'm trying to prevent you making a bloody fool of yourself.'