Len Deighton - XPD

‘Yes,’ said Breslow reluctantly.

Edward Parker was also uncomfortable. He drank more of his coffee without tasting it, his eyes still on the gold-plated desk clock. He would need help in Los Angeles. The only man he could use there was Rocky Ramon Paz, an overgrown ex-wrestler who had-with some financial aid from Parker-made money in the used-car business. Parker could always find local muscle at short notice. But Rocky Paz was not very bright, and Parker knew that direct flights into LA got the attention of customs and immigration, which inevitably meant the presence of the FBI, and often the CIA too.

Parker finished his coffee and then dialled Paz. Suddenly, before getting through, he hung up. He remembered that his latest reports said that the British were in evidence at Los Angeles International. Damn! It was risky but if Stein was walking about with the Hitler Minutes under his arm, getting hold of him was worth almost any risk. And there was the new safe house in Beverly Hills. That would be a perfect place to hold Stein while Paz and his boys worked him over, Parker looked at the clock for the hundredth time and then dialled Paz again.

In summer Los Angeles becomes as dry and as dusty as the little desert towns further inland. And yet, like an oasis in this grey urban sprawl, Beverly Hills is half hidden under a jungle of greenery-its trees so robust and leafy, its lawns so bright and green, that to go there is like entering the sharp-edged world of the hyper-realist painters.

Bronwyn is a large mansion with a fifteen-foot wall surrounding its half-acre of garden. Its heated pool is bright blue, with springboards, ladders and tiled surround so clean and new that it looks like some piece of surgical equipment. However new the pool and Jacuzzi, Bronwyn was built in the early thirties, which makes it one of the oldest houses in the neighbourhood. Following the anglophilia that was then rife, it was modelled on photos of a timber-framed Elizabethan mansion in Essex. Unfortunately, the architect had not visited England and there were no photographs of the sides or back of the original, so the part of Bronwyn that faced the pool was ‘Hollywood Spanish’. The stucco cloisters had been decorated with bright-red, patterned tiles. Huge chinaware pots overflowed with pink camellias in flower and there was blood-red, double-flowering bougainvillea and golden chrysanthemums.

All of this was reflected in the still water of the pool and there was an uncanny silence until, from the far side of the house, there was the bark of a guard dog and a curse in rapid Spanish as a man tried to quiet the restless creature. Boyd Stuart’s feeling of confidence changed to one of unease. He was watching the back of the house through a thin gap between the wall and the warped wood of the service door, which bore a neatly painted notice stating that deliveries were only accepted between eight and eleven Monday through Friday. Stuart was dressed in the same blue coveralls that the contract gardeners wore, and he had moved along the garden wall of Bronwyn snipping at the already perfectly trimmed hedge with a large pair of shears. Close inspection would have revealed that the pair of shears was not of the type normally used for topiary but was an instrument of heavier weight and finer steel which combat engineers use to dismantle wiring defences. Bending down as if to inspect the roots of the hedge, Boyd Stuart applied the jaws of the tool to the chain-link fence. He cut through it with a satisfying snick. Quickly, he continued the process until he had cut a door in the fence.

There was a shout from inside the house and a girl in a small two-piece swimsuit came out of the kitchen door. She was a short, active girl with black, shiny hair and bronze-coloured skin, for which her yellow swimsuit was a perfect foil. She turned on the controls for the steaming hot Jacuzzi and it began to boil and bubble like a witch’s cauldron. There was another call from the man inside the house, asking about the Jacuzzi. The girl did not answer. The man emerged from the house and stood almost hidden in the flowery cloisters. He was a huge, barrel-chested man; even at this distance it was easy to see that he was well over six feet tall, with hairy arms and chest and oily black hair that was long enough to grow into ringlets. ‘Someone must be upstairs always,’ said Rocky Paz angrily.

‘Then you go,’ said the girl. ‘You are always in the pool. We are not your servants.’

‘Whore,’ shouted the man.

‘Cuckold,’ shouted the girl, but she reached for a towelling coat and put it on. ‘For just one hour,’ said the girl. ‘Then I must go to Rodeo Drive; I have a hair appointment.’

‘Hair appointment,’ said the man, rubbing his hand on his chest and tossing back his head in a gesture of contempt. ‘Do you think this is a goddamn garden party?’

The girl pushed her way past him and flounced into the house. The man sighed and went after her. ‘Now don’t get into one of your moods,’ Stuart heard him say as he disappeared inside. Stuart pushed at the wire fence to bend it open and make a gap large enough for him to get through. Then, with a quick look over his shoulder at the empty streets of Beverly Hills, and a quick scan of the upper windows of Bronwyn, he was through the fence and racing-head down-for the shrubbery.

Boyd Stuart got behind a wooden alcove built as an outdoor dining space. There was a large, glass-topped table there and a dozen metal dining chairs, their bright plastic seat pads piled in the corner. He removed his blue coveralls and put them out of sight. He could hear only his own breathing; the house was quiet. The dining alcove was conveniently near to the one-storey kitchen, with another door leading directly into the main structure of the house. Stuart stepped inside. The air-conditioning was on and the air was cool, and the house shuttered and dark. The oak staircase was wide and elaborate with large carved roses at each landing.

Stuart hurried upstairs to where he could see a light burning, but as he got to the top of the stairs a man’s voice said quietly, ‘Hold it, pal, or I’ll blow you apart.’

Stuart turned to see someone he had not seen before. He was as big as the man he had seen at the pool but ten years older-a muscular man with high cheekbones and wavy grey hair. He was fully dressed in a single-breasted grey flannel suit. In his hand he held a.38 revolver very steady. It was Boyd Stuart’s first confrontation with Edward Parker, the USSR illegal.

‘Who are you?’ Parker said.

‘I’ll tell you who I am,’ said Stuart feigning anger. ‘I’m your bloody landlord, that’s who I am.’ It was a reckless improvisation but it seemed to work. He saw it in Parker’s face. ‘So you can put away that damned gun or I’ll have you thrown out.’ It was Stuart’s British accent that helped the deception-that and Stuart’s confidence and obvious lack of fear.

‘Landlord?’

It was absurd, thought Stuart, that he could be so calm and calculating when men were waving guns at him. It had been like this in the shoot-out in the bus depot in Turin, and when the Hungarians spotlit him climbing through their border wire, to say nothing of going through the police lines in Rostock. ‘Yes, landlord ,’ said Stuart. ‘I haven’t signed the agreement, you know-perhaps your lawyer hasn’t told you that… ’

Parker frowned and tried to remember whom he had asked to arrange for the use of this safe house and what the details had been.

Stuart gesticulated angrily, waving his hands and shaking his head. It was all a matter of timing, of course. Stuart was watching the gun out of the corner of his eye. It scarcely wavered but Stuart had moved closer. The closer a man is to such a weapon the safer he is, providing he is adroit and well trained, until, with a gun that actually touches the body, even a first-month trainee should be able to knock it aside more quickly than the trigger can be pulled.