Len Deighton - XPD

‘And found all the things you’ve been asking for,’ said Stuart.

‘You might at least have let me open it myself. Did you force the lock?’

‘It was unlocked,’ said Stuart. ‘You complain about losing the things, and you complain about my finding them. What the hell does make you happy?’

She swept out of the changing booth and brushed past him, flaring her skirt with the side of her hand and striding up and down in front of the mirrors while turning her head as if to catch her reflection unawares.

‘Not you, my darling. You are far too clever for me.’ She looked to see if the salesgirl had heard her but she gave no sign of having done so. She was standing, arms folded, head tilted, eyes unseeing: the sort of pose that only women who work in dress shops adopt. Jennifer turned on her heel to swirl the thin silk of the dress, then she posed with arms akimbo. Her arms and legs were long and slim, her hands so elegant that she flaunted them, holding them against her cheek and splaying them on her hips.

‘I’ll try the green one again,’ she called loudly to the salesgirl, who gathered an armful of dresses from the chair and went downstairs.

Jennifer looked at herself carefully, smiling distantly as if at some joke she would never reveal. ‘Did you tell daddy?’ she asked quietly now that they were alone.

‘Tell him what?’ So that was it. She simply wanted to be sure that Boyd had not told her father of the night when he came home unexpectedly from Rostock in East Germany. He had found her in his bed with the husband of a girl she had been at school with. ‘Tell him what?’

‘That silly business with Johnny.’ She went back inside the booth, pulled the dress off and dropped it to the floor.

‘What silly business?’

‘Would madam like to try the striped one?’ The salesgirl had reappeared. She was still standing with folded arms, but now half a dozen long dresses were draped over them.

‘Just the green silk,’ said Jennifer. But the girl reached inside the booth and hung all the dresses on the hook and then went back to the storeroom.

‘Me and Johnny… that night,’ said Jennifer in a loud whisper. ‘Did you talk to daddy about that? He’s been in a filthy temper the last few days,’ she said, flicking at her hair with the ends of her fingers.

‘I didn’t tell your father that I returned unexpectedly early from a departmental fiasco in Germany and found you testing the mattress with our dear old friend Johnny,’ said Boyd Stuart. ‘I’m saving it up for the day I resign from the service.’

She smiled. It was the same mirthless smile that her father used to punctuate his dialogue. ‘That’s good,’ she said, looking at herself in the mirror, and holding the belt tight so that it emphasized her hips. ‘But daddy has been frightfully short-tempered lately. And it can’t be simply because I lost his beastly pocket-watch, can it?’ She looked at him in the mirror, caught his eye and smiled archly, moving her hips slightly, as if to remind him of what he had forsaken. Then she returned to the changing booth and put on her own woollen dress.

‘The watch inscribed to Elliot?’

‘I thought it must be something you’d said.’ To the girl somewhere in the storeroom she called. ‘I’ll have my hair done, and come back again. I simply can’t decide on a dress when I’m not looking my best.’

The salesgirl said, ‘Yes, madam,’ in a voice like an answering machine. She came upstairs and began picking up the dresses.

Jennifer Ryden came out of the booth with two Harrods carrier bags and some other packages wrapped in the coloured papers of Knightsbridge stores. She gave everything to Boyd Stuart, who could carry them only with some difficulty. Together they went out of the shop and stood for a moment on the pavement while Jennifer adjusted the Liberty silk scarf she wore on her head.

‘There was a message for you, Boyd,’ she said. She watched him dispassionately as he waved at passing taxi cabs.

Boyd Stuart said, ‘What sort of message? A bill, you mean?’ A cab passed them with its ‘For Hire’ sign lighted; the cabbie did not see them because he was busy shouting at the driver of a double-decker bus. ‘If those people at Barclaycard say the computer went wrong just one more time… ’

‘It was a phone message about your work.’ She had grown up in a household where the comings and goings of shadowy visitors were commonplace. She was used to finding pistols in the wardrobe and bags of golden sovereigns on the mantelpiece, and hearing soft foreign voices and the slam of car doors in the middle of the night. This aspect of Boyd Stuart’s life she found easy to accept. ‘A man calling himself Shumuk wants to meet you at Widewater, Sollerod, near Copenhagen, on Sunday. I told daddy about it.’

‘And what did daddy say?’

She looked at him calmly and chose to ignore the sarcasm in his tone. ‘Daddy said pass the message on to you.’

Boyd Stuart nodded. The Shumuks and Rydens of this world were careful not to commit themselves to any action that might go wrong; careful, too, not to have anything in writing.

‘Mr Shumuk seemed certain that daddy would want you to go. And Boyd! How the devil did this fellow guess that I would be seeing you today?’

‘Shumuk is a KGB general. I imagine he knows a great deal about all of us. His job in Moscow corresponds to your father’s position here.’

‘You sound as if you admire him.’

‘I hate the evil old bastard,’ said Boyd Stuart.

Jennifer shivered and moved away; she had forgotten such frightening glimpses of the cold violence within him.

‘You mustn’t go, Boyd. It sounds dangerous.’ She said it too quickly, too automatically for it to have been a measure of her love.

‘Daddy wants me to go, Jennifer. And what daddy wants, daddy gets.’

‘That’s loutish, Boyd,’ She waved her hand and a taxi, turning the corner at Pont Street, immediately flashed its headlights to acknowledge her summons.

Sollerod is a village on the Danish island of Sjaelland. The old coast road runs close to the large house that is called Widewater. Here the Baltic Sea narrows to the Kattegat and from the garden of the large house there is a view of the Swedish coastline.

General Shumuk’s attempt to appear inconspicuous had resulted in a slightly absurd mixture of western garments. A bright green shirt hung limply on his thin frame, and from its short sleeves his arms emerged like sticks. His trousers were of corduroy and his shoes had gilt buckles. The effect was of a man rescued from a disaster at sea and clothed by an over-worked charity.

The house was large and of modern design, with floor-to-ceiling glass and interior walls of white-painted rough brickwork. The furniture was light-coloured teak of that sort of uncomfortable Scandinavian design that aspires to being art. And the walls were hung with large abstract paintings in primary colours and spotlit by polished steel lamps. To alleviate the bleak interior, there were colourful oriental carpets strewn across the polished wood-block floors. From the windows there was a clear view of the water and of clouds combed thinly across the blue scalp of the sky.

‘The Americans abducted Kleiber,’ said General Shumuk, his voice not revealing his attitude to this event. His hand waved impatiently in front of his face to disperse the strong-smelling Russian tobacco. ‘But London has designated Kleiber XPD. Did you know that?’

‘So where is Kleiber now?’ said Stuart. He was amazed that news of something so secret could have reached Shumuk already. The XPD directive for Kleiber had only been signed a day ago. He wondered if Shumuk’s phone call had actually been to Sir Sydney Ryden.