Len Deighton - Twinkle Twinkle Little Spy

‘How far was that last drum?’ asked Mann.

‘A couple of hundred metres.’

‘Right and I don’t see another ahead. You stay here. I’ll mosey around a little.’

‘What about these tyre tracks?’ I asked.

‘Famous last words,’ pronounced Mann. ‘Tracks like those can lead you out there into that sand-sea, and finally you get to the place where they turn around and head back again.’

‘Then why tracks?’

‘An old disused camp for oil prospectors, or a dump for road gangs.’ He kicked at one of the tyre marks.

‘These tracks look fresh,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ said Mann. He kicked one of the ridges of impacted sand. It was as hard as concrete. ‘So do the tank tracks you find in southern Libya – and they’ve been there since Rommel.’

I looked at my watch.

Mann said, ‘I hope the diversion is well marked on the highway to the south of here, or that Russian cat will come wheeling past us while we’re stuck out here in this egg-timer factory.’

It was then that Percy Dempsey got out of the Land Rover and limped back to join us. He was a curious figure in his floppy hat, cardigan, long baggy shorts and gaiters.

‘Jesus!’ said Mann. ‘Here comes Miss Marple.’

‘I say – old chap,’ said the old man. He had difficulty remembering our names. Perhaps that was because we changed them so often. ‘Mr Antony, I mean. Are you wondering about the road ahead?’

‘Yes,’ I said. My name was Antony; Frederick L. Antony, tourist.

Dempsey blinked. His face was soft and babyish as old men’s faces sometimes are. Now that he had taken off his sun-glasses, his blue eyes became watery.

Mann said, ‘Don’t get nervous, Auntie. We’ll dope it out.’

‘The oil-drum markers continue along this track,’ said the old man.

‘How do you know that?’ said Mann.

‘I can see them,’ said the old man.

‘Yeah!’ said Mann. ‘So how come I can’t see them, and my buddy here can’t see them?’

‘I used my binoculars,’ said the old man apologetically.

‘Why the hell didn’t you say you had binoculars?’ said Mann.

‘I offered them to you just outside Oran. You said you weren’t planning a trip to the opera.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Mann. ‘I want to make camp before the sun gets high. And we have to find a place where the Russkie can spot us from the main road.’

Dempsey’s Desert Tours VW bus was equipped with two tent sides that expanded to provide a large area of shade. There was also a nylon sheet stretched across the roof, and held taut above it, which prevented the direct sunlight striking the top of the bus and so making it into the kind of oven that metal car bodies became.

The bright orange panels could be seen for miles. The Russian spotted them easily. He had driven non-stop from some prospecting site along the river Niger east of Timbuktu. It was a gruelling journey over poor tracks and open country, and he’d ended it in the fierce heat of early afternoon.

The Russian was a hatchet-faced man in his early forties.

He was tall and slim with cropped black hair that showed no sign of greying. His dark suit was baggy and stained, its jacket slung over his brawny shoulder. His red check shirt was equally dirty, and the gold pencil clipped into its pocket was conspicuous because of that. Pale blue eyes were almost sealed by fine desert sand, and his face was lined and bore the curious bruise-like marks that come with exhaustion. His arms were muscular and his skin was tanned very dark.

Major Mann opened the nylon flap and indicated the passenger seats of the VW bus and the table-top fixed between them. In spite of the tinted windows the plastic seat covering was hot to the touch. I sat opposite the Russian and watched him take off his sun-glasses, yawn and scratch the side of his nose with his car-key.

It was typical of Mann’s cunning, and of his training, that he offered the Russian no chance to rest. Instead he pushed towards him a glass and a vacuum flask containing ice-cubes and water. There was a snap as Mann broke the cap on a half-bottle of whisky and poured a generous measure for our guest. The Russian looked at Mann and gave him a thin smile. He pushed the whisky aside and from the flask grabbed a handful of ice-cubes and rubbed them on his face.

‘You got ID?’ Mann asked. As if to save face he poured whisky for himself and for me.

‘What are ID?’

‘Identification. Passport, security pass or something.’

The Russian took a wallet from his hip pocket. From it he brought a dog-eared piece of brown cardboard with his photo attached. He passed it to Mann, who handed it to me. It was a pass into the military zone along the Mali frontier with Niger. It described the Russian’s physical characteristics and named him as Professor Andrei Mikhail Bekuv. Significantly the card was printed in Russian and Chinese as well as Arabic. I gave it back to him.

‘You have the photo of my wife?’

‘It would have been poor security to risk it,’ said Mann. He sipped at his drink but when he set it down again the level seemed unchanged.

Professor Bekuv closed his eyes. ‘It’s fifteen months since I last saw her.’

Mann shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘She will be in London by the time we get there.’

Bekuv spoke very quietly, as if trying to keep a terrible temper under control. ‘Your people promised a photo of her – standing in Trafalgar Square.’

‘It was …’

‘That was the agreement,’ said Bekuv, ‘and you haven’t kept to it.’

‘She never left Copenhagen,’ said Mann.

Bekuv was silent for a long time. ‘Was she on the ship from Leningrad?’ he said finally. ‘Did you check the passenger list?’

‘All we know is that they didn’t come in on the plane to London,’ said Mann.

‘You lie,’ said Bekuv. ‘I know the sort of people you are. My country is filled with such men as you. You had men there waiting for her.’

‘She will come,’ said Mann.

‘Without her I will not come with you.’

‘She will come,’ said Mann. ‘She is probably there already.’

‘No,’ said Bekuv. He turned in his seat, to see the road that would take him a thousand miles back to the Russians in Timbuktu. In spite of the tinted windows, the sand was no more than a blinding glare. Bekuv picked up the battered sun-glasses that he’d left on the table alongside his car keys. He toyed with them for a moment and then put them into the pocket of his shirt. ‘Without her I am nothing,’ said Bekuv reflectively. ‘Without her life is not worth living for me.’

Mann said, ‘There is urgent work to be done, Professor Bekuv. Your chair of Interstellar Communication at New York University will give you access time on the Jodrell Bank radio telescope – and, as you well know, that has a 250-foot steerable paraboloid. The university is also arranging time on the 1,000-foot fixed radio telescope they’ve built in the Puerto Rican mountains near Arecibo.’

Bekuv didn’t answer but he didn’t leave either. I glanced at Mann and he gave me the sort of glare that was calculated to shrivel me to silent tissue. I realized now that Mann’s joke about little men in flying saucers was no joke.

‘There is no one else doing this kind of cosmology,’ Mann said. ‘Even if you fail to make contact with life in other solar systems, you’ll be able to give it a definitive thumbs down.’

Bekuv looked at him scornfully. ‘There is already enough – proof to satisfy any but the most stupid.’

‘If you don’t take this newly created chair of Interstellar Communication there will be another bitter fight … and next time the cynics might get their nominee into it. Professor Chataway or old Delahousse would jump at such an opportunity to prove that there was no life anywhere in outer space.’