Len Deighton - Mexico Set

'You're right,' said Tiptree, with a sudden smile. Luckily the adrenalin was marring his judgement and his self-esteem did the rest. 'I'll take care of this. Tell London that my report will follow in due course.'

'I'll tell them,' I said.

I went downstairs and out into the backyard, climbing over a tall stack of beer-crates to surmount a wall and from there jumping down into the alley, just in case Moskvin had another friend waiting in the bar. Stinnes was waiting in a cab on the corner. He opened the door for me and I slid in beside him. I was expecting him to ask immediately where Zena was but he said, 'What was the delay?' He leaned forward to the driver. 'Airport,' he told him. The driver started the engine.

'Freight side,' I said. I dropped the box of money on to Stinnes's knees but, after taking a moment to recognize what it was, he put it aside without opening it.

'I don't want the money,' he said, as if he'd been thinking about it for a long time. 'I didn't do it for the money.'

'I know you didn't,' I said. 'But take it anyway. You'll have no trouble getting rid of it.'

The taxi pulled away from the curb, slowly at first to avoid hitting the strolling musicians and the revellers. Stinnes sank back into his seat. To think that I'd been getting ready to prevent him at pistol point from racing up there to his beloved Zena.

'Freight side,' said Stinnes. 'Another change of plan. And when we get to the airport freight-yard, what new idea then? A bus to Los Angeles?'

'Maybe,' I said.

'You're late,' he said, looking at his watch.

'Your man Moskvin turned up. Apparently he couldn't bear to be parted from you.'

'Moskvin,' said Stinnes. 'Yesterday I found him rifling through my desk. He found nothing, of course, but I should have told you about him.'

'Your lady friend was reporting everything back to Moskvin. Everything.'

'She was talking to Moskvin?'

'How else did she come to be there?' There were other answers to that question but Stinnes didn't know them. And this wasn't the right time to tell him that Zena had risked her life to save him,

He was silent as we drove through Garibaldi Square. At the intersection he leaned aside and ducked his head to see the 'bank'. Perhaps he needed to see the building, and the lights behind the drawn blinds, to come to terms with Zena's treachery. 'You were right about her,' he said sadly. 'I could tell from your face when you said what a fool I was. You made me see sense.'

There was heavy traffic, but I'd allowed for some delay; I'd even allowed time for the traffic jam. The traffic slowed and then came to a complete standstill. The fire-eater was still at work. He blew a fierce tongue of flame,into the air. It was darker now and the flame lit up all the cars, rippled in the paintwork and shone in all the windows. 'It's fantastic the things some people do for a living,' said Stinnes. He wound down the car window and gave the child collecting the money 200 pesos.

When the traffic had started moving again, he got a small black cheroot from his pocket and put it in his mouth. When he searched his pockets for a light I watched him carefully, but it was only matches that he brought from his pocket.

'Tell me,' I said, 'as well as the boy with the message, did you also send that old woman?' I appreciated such extreme caution. It was what any real pro would do.

He lit the little cigar with the studied care a man might lavish upon a fine double Corona. 'Yes, I sent the old woman too.' He blew smoke, and the car filled with a strong smell of the over-fermented tobacco leaf that Stinnes seemed to like. 'Yes,' he said. 'I wanted to know what was happening. I had no intention of going up there all on my own. The blinds were down; narrow stairs, crowded bar. It didn't look healthy. What happened?'

'Nothing much,' I said. 'Moskvin's a desk man, is he?'

'Yes,' said Stinnes. 'And I hate desk men.'

'So do I,' I said feelingly. 'They're bloody dangerous.'

Len Deighton was born in London in 1929. He worked as a railway clerk before doing his National Service in the RAF as a photographer attached to the Special Investigation Branch.

After his discharge in 1949, he went to art school – first to the St Martin's School of Art, and then to the Royal College of Art on a scholarship. It was while working as a waiter in the evenings that he developed an interest in cookery – a subject he was later to make his own in an animated strip for the Observer and in two cookery books. He worked for a while as an illustrator in New York and as art director of an advertising agency in London.

Deciding it was time to settle down, Deighton moved to the Dordogne where he started work on his first book, The Ipcress File. Published in 1962 , the book was an immediate and spectacular success. Since then he has published twenty books of fiction and non-fiction – including spy stories, and highly-researched war novels and histories – all of which have appeared to international acclaim.