Len Deighton - XPD

‘We lost your dad,’ Stuart told Billy Stein.

‘What in hell does that mean; you lost him?’

The three men were in the sitting room of the Steins’ home. The case officer was in an armchair near the window, pretending to be fully occupied by the view across the city of Los Angeles. Without turning round he said, ‘Your dad was in his underclothes-bright blue shorts and singlet-he came out of the house holding on to a towel round his neck. We thought he was jogging.’

‘You thought he was jogging!’ said Billy Stein. ‘I hear you talking about guns going off, and girls screaming. You wreck the car, ramming the gates. You thought my dad was jogging! You told me you were going to rescue him.’

‘We did rescue him,’ said the case officer. ‘But he scrambled over the fence and came out through the front lawn of the house next door.’

‘Jesus,’ said Billy Stein. ‘You’ve got to hand it to the old man. Concussed in a car accident, kidnapped by the Russians, held prisoner until you rescue him and then he takes off up the road in his underpants… ’

‘We’re laying it all on the line for you,’ said Stuart, ‘because we need to know where he’s likely to go.’

Billy Stein smiled. ‘He won’t come here. He’s not so dumb that he’ll come home where you are waiting for him.’

‘Does he have an apartment anywhere?’

‘What the tabloids call a love-nest; is that what you mean? No, that’s not him at all. My dad was never that subtle, or extravagant. If he had some kind of affair going he’d have brought the girl right back here to the house. You can forget that one.’

‘Clubs?’

Billy Stein shook his head. ‘Only his regular poker game.’

‘We’re going to leave one of our people here in the house,’ said Stuart.

‘That’s OK,’ said Billy Stein. ‘There’s lot of food and stuff.’ He looked at Stuart for a moment before continuing. ‘You’re not kidding about the Russians? Did they really kidnap the old man?’

‘Your dad will tell you all about it, once we find him,’ said Stuart.

Encouraged by the friendly tone in Stuart’s voice, Billy Stein said, ‘It was a frame-up in London, wasn’t it, Mr Stuart? Your people know I didn’t kill anyone?’

The case officer turned his head to see how Stuart handled this question.

‘It was a frame-up,’ Stuart replied. ‘But they could make it stick if you don’t cooperate with us.’

‘I’ll cooperate,’ said Billy, ‘but I wanted to get it clear between you and me.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Is it OK for me to phone Mary Breslow?’

‘You phoned her this morning,’ the case officer said over his shoulder.

Stuart nodded his approval. ‘But Billy… nothing about your dad, or about the murder charge in London. Just sweet nothings, OK?’

‘Sure thing,’ said Billy.

‘You know Max Breslow was a Nazi?’ said the case officer.

‘You sound like my dad,’ Billy told him. ‘Are you another one of these guys who can’t stop fighting the war?’

‘Go and make your call,’ Stuart said. ‘But remember that the guy in the hall will be listening on the extension.’

‘You’re too damned soft with that kid,’ the case officer said after Billy’s departure.

‘I think he’s a good sort,’ said Stuart. ‘No grudges, no tantrums, no smart-ass remarks. Hell, even when I admit that he was framed in London he practically thanks me.’

‘Rich kids,’ said the case officer. ‘They’re all like that.’

‘Are they?’ said Stuart. ‘Then let’s hope I meet more of them.’

The case officer got up from Charles Stein’s favourite armchair, and took out his cigarettes so that he could light a fresh one from the stub in his ringers. ‘Chain-smoking,’ he said after it was alight. ‘Does that disgust, you?’ Stuart didn’t reply. ‘Because it disgusts me.’ He stubbed the old cigarette out with unnecessary vigour. ‘OK, so I’m hard on the kid. You’re right; he’s OK.’

The case officer sat down again and watched the sun put on its act of dying. Finally, when the room had darkened, he said, ‘You were the one who got those two agents out of Rostock two years or so back?’

It was a breach of regulations to talk of such things but the two men had got to know each other by now.

‘What a cock-up,’ said Stuart. He could remember only arriving back in London to discover Jennifer’s bed companion.

‘The way I heard it you should have got a medal,’ said the case officer.

‘I didn’t even get paid leave,’ said Stuart.

‘I knew one of them,’ said the case officer. ‘A little Berliner with a high-pitched laugh… liked to wear a blade in his hat. He escaped from a prison in Leipzig back in the fifties when they broke up one of our networks.’

‘I remember him,’ said Stuart. Both the men he had rescued were old timers, men who had worked for London for many years. If they had been younger and stronger he might have left them to save themselves, but for these two he had gone back through the road blocks and brought them out again with him. Looking back he wondered at the madness of it.

‘You were the big hero of the department at the time,’ said the case officer. ‘There were guys in East Germany who would have had you canonized.’

Stuart laughed. ‘You have to be dead to be canonized.’

‘I didn’t know before,’ said the case officer apologetically. ‘I wouldn’t have kidded around with you if I’d known you were the agent who brought those two guys out of Rostock -that was really something!’

The two men sat in silence for a while. Then the case officer said, ‘I heard a rumour that these Hitler Documents-or whatever they are-have been destroyed.’

‘I heard the same thing,’ said Stuart.

‘But the department will keep the file open?’

‘The department will keep the file open,’ said Stuart. ‘That’s one thing you can be sure about. My orders are unchanged; I’ve got to locate Stein and Kleiber, then ask London for instructions. Kleiber is now the centre of all London ’s queries.’

‘We’ll find Stein,’ said the case officer, as if reading Stuart’s mind. ‘I’ve put every last man I can spare onto it. I’ll locate him, I promise you. It wasn’t such a fiasco tonight. At least it will make the Russians run for cover and maybe think again before kidnapping anyone else at the airport. When Stein does show up we’ll have a free hand to work on him.’

‘I like Stein,’ said Stuart.

‘He’s a crook,’ said the case officer. ‘And from what I hear the concussion has made him a little crazy.’

‘But I like him,’ said Stuart. ‘And this is not the sort of business where one can be too choosy about the crazies.’

To the casual observer, Charles Stein might have appeared a little drunk, but the uniformed studio policeman scarcely gave him a glance. The suit he wore was an old one; it had been in his locker at the club in Roscoe ever since he’d played squash there many years ago. They had had all shapes and sizes going through the studio gates that morning. Goodness knows how many actors must have attended those earlier downtown auditions, he wondered, when so many had been selected for these screen tests with make-up and costume.

Charles Stein’s concussion had produced many of the symptoms of drunkenness and yet, like those people who gain a reputation for being able to hold their drink, Stein learnt how to disguise and hide those symptoms. But he could not shake off the belief that Aram was still alive and well, and events following his accident on the autoroute were confused and somewhat hazy in his mind.

Find Max Breslow. It was as if this was the coherent, rational, all-consuming motive for everything that Charles Stein did. It had been in his mind when he fought his way back to consciousness after the car crash. It had troubled the dreams he had had in the upstairs lounge of the jumbo and screamed in the voice of its engines. Now his lips moved as he gave himself that same instruction and clasped it to his mind as fiercely and as lovingly as he cradled the gun in his arms.