Len Deighton - XPD

He swung off the San Diego Freeway at the Marina del Rey sign and tried to stop thinking about the documents he had seen that night. And yet he could not forget the smell of them and the way the brittle paper had crackled in his hands. ‘Outside of this room,’ Stein had told him, ‘it’s possible that there is no person still alive who has seen these documents.’ The short stretch of the Marina Freeway ended and Stuart began to count the apartment blocks. He still found it possible to get lost in this enormous city.

He left his newly rented car in the open parking lot. There had been muggings in the underground garage, and two o’clock in the morning was not the best time to be blundering round down there, worrying if the elevator was still working. He switched off the ignition and sat still for a moment. There was a full moon and he could have counted a thousand stars if he had had the time or the inclination.

Suddenly he noticed a cigarette lighter flare inside a car in one of the parking places near the yacht basin. Boyd felt a moment of panic, and cursed his foolishness in not bringing with him the pistol he had been given. Two men got out of the car but then, at a signal from the driver, the second man got back inside again. The man had walked halfway across the parking lot before Boyd Stuart was quite certain that it was his case officer.

‘Have a nice evening, Stuart?’ he asked as Boyd opened the window to greet him.

‘Have you been waiting here for me all night?’

‘No,’ said the CO. He walked round the car and got in alongside Stuart. ‘We took the liberty of putting a small device into your cassette player. It tells us where you are, give or take half a mile or so.’

‘Am I supposed to say thank you?’ Stuart said irritably.

‘It could prove a benefit to you some day,’ said the case officer. ‘Tell me what you talked about. This ex-Corporal Stein was there, wasn’t he?’

‘You are well informed,’ said Stuart.

‘But not quickly enough informed,’ said the case officer.

Boyd Stuart explained what had happened in considerable detail. The controller listened all the way through without interruptions or comment. ‘I don’t like the sound of it,’ he said finally.

‘You should have seen that stuff. It’s chilling to think what else those two might have tucked away.’

‘Are they after money?’

‘A film would focus attention upon the two of them. Stein and Breslow could spin this stuff out for years. The possibilities are endless: bestselling books to follow the film, radio and TV appearances, video cassettes-God knows what else they might have in mind. It’s not just the commercial possibilities… think of what world famous personalities Stein and Breslow would become. Can you imagine them in London on BBC TV, with the Foreign Office sending a spokesman to discuss the implications?’

‘I’ll buy it until something better comes along. Partners then, you think?’

‘Stein seems to call the shots.’

‘I wish like hell London would let us risk putting these two on the Washington computer. We know nothing about them. One glimpse of their tax returns might tell us the whole story.’ He searched his jacket pocket and then said, ‘Give me a cigarette will you? How I hate this lousy town.’

‘I’m trying to give them up,’ said Stuart.

The man cursed. ‘No matter,’ he said. Now that the air-conditioning was not going, the car’s interior was becoming stuffy. He fingered the window switch but thought better of it. ‘I dare say London will replace me very soon. It will be good to get back to Europe again.’

‘I thought you were Mexican,’ admitted Stuart.

‘You make a great secret agent, Stuart,’ said the CO mockingly. ‘I’m Hungarian. Ever heard of Györ? No, why the hell would you have heard of a dump like that? When I lived there, I’d never even heard of Los Angeles.’

‘You got out in 1956? In the revolution?’

‘Is that what it was? My appointments diary said fiasco.’

‘There are cigarettes on the boat.’

‘Screw the cigarettes, I’m a forty-a-day man already. Do you know, Stuart, there are days when I wish I’d never left home.’

It was said half in jest but the other half was suspended in the air between them. Some employees of the department would have thought it necessary to report such a remark, and both men knew it. For a moment they sat in silence. Then Stuart said, ‘Is that one of your people with you in your car?’

The CO seemed not to have heard him. ‘My father told me to get my mother and my sister across the border, and never mind him. He stayed there; my mother died six months later, in a transit camp in Vienna; my sister was so miserable that she went back to look after my father.’ He toyed with the seat-belt catch, clicking the belt, fastening it into place and releasing it. ‘1956,’ he said, ‘who can forget it? My Fair Lady got the New York Drama Critics Award, and Elvis sang “Hound Dog”. Everyone in America was reading Peyton Place and Yul Brynner shaved his head and got an Oscar playing the King of Siam in a musical movie.’

‘ London is going to replace you?’

‘ London is getting very excited about this caper,’ said the CO in a voice which suggested that he did not share their excitement. ‘The guy in my car is section head for the whole west region. Being a goddamned desk man, he’s read all the manuals and so he is sitting over there in order not to see your face. He came in person to brief me about a highly unlikely information source that London Operations have found He wants you to fly to London tomorrow and go to East Anglia to talk to some geriatric German who says he helped load this junk on board a train when they were putting it into the Kaiseroda mine.’

‘Is that what you’ve come out here in the middle of the night to tell me?’

The CO reached into his pocket for an airline ticket and gave it him. ‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘This little bastard didn’t come out here to consult me, he made it an order. Why the hell he didn’t just put it on the telex, I still don’t understand.’

‘ Southern California can be very pleasant at this time of year,’ said Stuart.

‘That’s about the size of it,’ he said. ‘A jaunt for the top brass-and it keeps us field men on our toes.’ He slapped his leg and reached for the door catch. Then he stopped. ‘The cops found Mr Lustig,’ he said. He paused.

‘And?’

‘Someone had hacked his head off. Another few minutes and they would have had his hands off, and they wouldn’t have got fingerprint identification from his alien’s registration.’

‘When?’

‘We’re not sure. The cops have been keeping it very quiet. Death on May 24 according to my source. Body found about a week later.’

‘What do you mean, keeping it very quiet?’

‘We’re trying to find out, but it’s not so easy. There’s been a lot of coming and going, with FBI and Justice Department lawyers in and out of police headquarters… CIA people too, we think. It could be connected with the Lustig killing.’

‘An official news blackout, you mean?’

‘It’s a good time for you to go to London,’ said the CO. ‘It could get hot here. Another few days will tell us what’s going to happen.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Stuart.

‘So do I,’ he confided, ‘but that’s the way this jerk from London likes to see it. Anyway, have a good time. The contact’s name is with your airline ticket and I’ve put some English money in there too: not much I’m afraid, but it will buy you the chance to use the headphones on the plane. I know you like music. Nothing covert about this one; use your own passport and credit cards and so on. I’ll keep an eye open this end. Report to London in the usual way.’