Len Deighton - Spy Sinker

'I'm not afraid of being alone,' said Bret smugly. He pushed the shrimp salad aside. His wife was always complaining of being alone and today he had an answer ready: 'Lots of people have been: Descartes, Kierkegaard, Locke, Newton, Nietzsche, Pascal, Spinoza and Wittgenstein were alone for most of their lives.'

She laughed. 'I saw that in the letters column of the Daily Telegraph . But those people are all geniuses. You're not a thinker… not a philosopher.'

'My work is important,' said Bret. He was put out. 'It's not like working for a biscuit factory. A government job is a government job.'

'Oh, sure, and we all know what governments do.'

'What do you mean by that?' said Bret, with an uncertainty that was almost comic.

'They make the rules for you, and break them themselves. They hike your taxes and give themselves a raise in pay. They take your money away and shower it on all kinds of lousy foreign governments. They send your kids to Vietnam and get them killed. They fly in choppers while you're stuck in a traffic jam. They let the banks and insurance companies shaft you in exchange for political campaign money.'

'Is that what you really think, Nikki?' Bret was shocked. She'd never said anything like that before. He wondered if she had been drinking all morning.

'You're damn right it's what I think. It's what everybody thinks who hasn't got a hand in the pork barrel.'

Alarm bells rang. 'I didn't know you were a liberal.' He wondered what the security vetting people had made of her. Thank goodness he was getting rid of her; but had any of this gone down on his file?

'I'm not a goddamned Democrat or a Liberal or a Red or anything else. It's just that smug guys like you doing your "important work for governments" make me puke.'

There's nothing to be gained from a slanging match,' said Bret. 'I know you must be disappointed about the house but that's outside my control.'

'Damn you, Bret. I must have somewhere to live!'

He guessed that Joppi was getting rid of her: suddenly he felt sorry for her but he didn't want her back. 'That apartment in Monte Carlo is empty. You could lease it from the trustees for a nominal payment.'

'Lease it from the trustees for a nominal payment,' she repeated sarcastically. 'How nominal can you get? Like a dollar a year, do you mean?'

'If it would end all this needless wrangling, a dollar a year would be just fine. Shall we agree on that?' He waved a hand to attract a waiter, but it was no use. The staff were all standing round a table in the corner smiling at a TV newsreader who was being photographed cuddling a smooth-coated chihuahua. 'Do you want coffee?'

'Yes,' she said. 'Yes to both questions: but I want furniture – good furniture – in the first, and cream and sugar in the second.'

'You've got a deal,' said Bret. He was relieved. Had Nikki resolutely pressed for the Thameside house it would have put him in a difficult position. He would have had to resign. There was no way that the Department would have tolerated him getting into a divorce action, and the risk of its attendant publicity. And yet if he resigned, where would that leave Fiona Samson? He was the only person who knew the whole story, and he felt personally responsible for her mission. There were many times when he worried about her.

Bret looked up to see his chauffeur Albert Bingham easing his way through the crowded dining room. 'What now?' said Bret. Nicola turned round to see what he was looking at.

'Good afternoon, Mrs Rensselaer,' said Albert politely. He reasoned that ex-wives sometimes resumed their authority as employers, and should not be slighted. I'm sorry to interrupt you, sir, but the hospital came through on the car phone.'

'What did they say?' Bret was already on his feet. Albert wouldn't interrupt the lunch unless it was something very important.

'Could you be early?'

'Could I be early?' repeated Bret. He found his credit card in his wallet.

'They said you would know what it was,' said Albert.

'I'll have to go,' said Bret to his wife. 'It's an old friend.' He flicked the plastic card with his fingernail so that it made a snapping noise. She remembered it as one of his many irritating habits.

'That's all right,' said Nicola, in the brisk voice that proclaimed her annoyance.

'Let's do it again,' said Bret. He bent forward – the hand holding his credit card extended like a stage magician palming something from the air – and kissed his wife on the cheek. 'Now it's all settled, let's do it again.' He heard the terrier growl as he trod too near its food.

She nodded. He didn't want to have lunch with her again, she could see that as clearly as anything. She saw how relieved he was at this opportunity to escape from her. She felt like crying. She was pleased to be separating from Bret Rensselaer but she found it humiliating that he seemed pleased about it too. She got out her compact and flipped up the mirror to look at her eye make-up. She could see Bret reflected in it. She watched him while he paid the bill.

Bret's original appointment with the Director-General had been for drinks at six o'clock at his house in the country. Now the Director-General had phoned to suggest that they meet at Rensselaer's mews house in London. That was the call on the car phone that Albert had reported. The Department's calls were always described by Albert as being calls from an anonymous hospital, school or club, according to Bret's company and the circumstances in which the message was delivered.

'Are you sure he said the mews house?' Bret asked his driver.

'Quite sure,' said Albert.

'What a memory he has,' said Bret with grudging admiration.

Back at the turn of the century, the mews house had been the stables and coach house for Cyrus Rensselaer's grand London home. The first time Bret saw the big house in the square it was an Officers' Club run by the American Red Cross. After the war it had been sold but the uncomfortable little mews house had been retained. Just a couple of rooms with kitchen, bathroom and garage, it was used by various members of the Rensselaer family, and sometimes by lawyers and agents coming to London on the family's behalf. But because Bret lived in England, he had a key and, by the generous consent of other members of the family, he could use it when he wanted. In return Bret kept an eye on the place and had the leaky roof fixed from time to time. He hadn't slept there for years.

Bret was surprised that the D-G should remember that he had access to the house and was annoyed that he should suggest it for their meeting. He had no consideration; the place was terribly neglected now that there was no permanent tenant to maintain it. 'Go to the mews right away,' Bret told his driver. 'We'll try and get it straightened out before Sir Henry arrives.'

'We'll have half an hour or so,' said Albert, 'and Sir Henry might be late: he said that.'

'It's just as well I remained in London,' said Bret. 'You never know where Sir Henry will turn up.'

'No, sir,' said Albert Bingham.

Bret settled back in the leather seat of his Bentley. He had been tempted to spend the weekend with some horsy friends near Newmarket, and make a sidetrip to the D-G's house in Cambridgeshire. Then his wife had insisted that they met for Saturday lunch and he'd stayed in town. It was just as well. A sudden dash back to London at short notice, just to satisfy the old man's whim, was the kind of thing that gave Bret indigestion pains.

'I'm sorry if this was an inconvenient meeting place,' said Sir Henry Clevemore when he arrived in the tiny upstairs room above the garage. He had knocked his head against the door frame but now, having fitted his huge bulk into a big, somewhat dilapidated armchair, he seemed quite content. 'But it was a matter of some urgency.'