Len Deighton - Twinkle Twinkle Little Spy

‘They are fools,’ said Bekuv.

Mann pulled a face and shrugged.

Bekuv said, ‘I have a beautiful wife who has remained faithful, a proud mother and a talented son who will soon be at university. Nothing is more important than they are.’

Mann sipped some of his whisky and this time he really drank. ‘Suppose you go back to Timbuktu and your wife is waiting in London? What then, eh?’

‘I’ll take that chance,’ said Bekuv. He slid across the seat and stepped down from the VW into the sand. The light through the nylon side-panels coloured him bright orange.

Mann didn’t move.

‘You don’t fool me,’ said Mann. ‘You’re not going anywhere. You made your decision a long time ago and you’re stuck with it. You go back now, and your comrades will stake you out in the sand, and toss stale piroshkis at you.’

Bekuv said nothing.

‘Here, you forgot your car keys, buddy,’ Mann taunted him.

Bekuv took the keys that Mann offered but he did not step out into the sunshine. The sudden buzzing of a fly sounded unnaturally.

‘Professor Bekuv,’ I said. ‘It’s in our mutual interests that your family should be with you.’

Bekuv took out his hankerchief and wiped sand from the corners of his eyes but he gave no sign of having heard me.

‘I understand there is still work to be done, so you can bet that the American Government will do everything in their power to make sure you are happy in every respect.’

‘In their power, yes …’ said Bekuv sadly.

‘There are ways,’ I said. ‘There are official swops as well as escapes. And what you never hear about are the secret deals that our governments do. The trade agreements, the loans, the grain sales … all these deals contain hundreds of secret clauses. Many of them involve people we exchange.’

Bekuv dug the toe of his high, laced boots into the sand and traced a pattern of criss-cross lines. Mann reached forward from his seat and rested a hand upon Bekuv’s shoulder. The Russian twitched nervously.

‘Look at it this way, Professor,’ Mann said, in the sort of voice that he believed to be gentle and conciliatory. ‘If your wife is free we’ll bring her to you, so you might as well come with us.’ Mann paused. ‘If she’s in prison … you’d be out of your mind to go back.’ He tapped Bekuv’s shoulder again. ‘That’s the way it goes, Professor Bekuv.’

‘There was no letter from her this week,’ said Bekuv.

Mann looked at him but said nothing.

I had seen it before: men like Bekuv are ill fitted for the conspiracy of defection, let alone years of conspiracy that threatened the safety of his family. His gruelling journey across the Sahara had exhausted him. But his worst mistake was in looking forward to the moment when it would all be over; professionals never do that. ‘Oh Katinka!’ whispered Bekuv. ‘And my fine son. What have I done to you. What have I done.’

I didn’t move, and neither did Mann, but Bekuv pushed the nylon flap aside and stepped out into the scorching sun. He stood there for a long time.

The next problem was how to lose Bekuv’s vehicle. It was a GAZ 59A, a Russian four-wheel drive field-car. It was a conspicuous contraption – canvas top, angular bodywork and shiny metal springs showing through the seat covers. You couldn’t bury it in sand, and setting it ablaze would probably attract just the sort of attention we were trying to avoid.

Mann took a big wrench and ripped the registration plates off it and defaced the RMM sign that would tell even an illiterate informer that it was from Mali.

Mann didn’t trust Percy Dempsey out of his sight. And Mann certainly didn’t trust Johnny, the ever-smiling Arab driver. Only because he couldn’t come up with a better idea did he agree to Johnny heading back north with the GAZ, while we followed with Bekuv in the VW. And all the time he was turning to look at Bekuv, watching Percy in the Land Rover behind us and telling me that Percy Dempsey wasn’t half the man I’d cracked him up to be.

‘It’s damned hot,’ I said.

Mann grunted and looked at Bekuv still asleep on the bench seat behind us. ‘If we dump that GAZ anywhere here in the south, the cops will check it to make sure it’s not someone dying of thirst. But the farther we go north, the more interest the cops are going to take in that funny-looking contraption.’

‘We’ll be all right.’

‘We haven’t seen one of those heaps in the whole of Algeria.’

‘Stop worrying,’ I said. ‘Percy was doing this kind of thing out here in the desert when Rommel was in knee pants.’

‘You Limeys always stick together.’

‘Why don’t you drive for a while, Major.’

When we stopped to change seats, we stayed there long enough to let Johnny get a few kilometres ahead. The GAZ was no record-breaker. It wasn’t all that far advanced from the Model A Ford from which it evolved. There would be no problem catching up with it, even in the VW.

In fact, the old GAZ came into view within twenty-five minutes of us resuming the journey. We saw it surmounting the gentle slope of a dune and Mann flicked his headlights in greeting.

‘We’ll keep this kind of distance,’ Mann said. There was about five hundred yards between the vehicles.

Behind us Percy came into view, driving the Land Rover. ‘Is Percy a fag?’ said Mann.

‘Queer?’ I said. ‘Percy and Johnny? I never gave it a thought.’

‘Percy and Johnny,’ said Mann. ‘It sounds like some cosy little bar in Tangier.’

‘Does that make it more likely that they are queers, or less likely?’

‘As long as they do their job,’ said Mann. ‘That’s all I ask.’ He glanced in the mirror before taking a packet of Camels from his shirt pocket, extracting a cigarette and lighting up, without letting go of the wheel. He inhaled and blew smoke before speaking again. ‘Just get us up to that goddamned airstrip, that’s all I ask.’ He thumped the steering-wheel with his bony fist. ‘That’s all I ask.’

I smiled. The first hint of Bekuv’s possible defection had been made to a British scientist. That meant that British Intelligence were going to cling to this one like a limpet. I was the nominated limpet, and Mann didn’t like limpets.

‘We should have moved by night,’ I said, more to make conversation than because I’d thought about it very carefully.

‘And what do we tell the cops, that we are photographing moths?’

‘No explanation necessary,’ I said. ‘These roads probably have more traffic at night when it’s cool. The danger is running into camels or people walking.’

‘Look at tha – Jesus Christ!’

Mann was staring ahead but I could see nothing there, and by the time I realized he was looking in the rear-view mirror it was too late. Mann was wrenching the steering-wheel and we were jolting into the desert in a cloud of sand. There was a howl of fury as Bekuv was shaken off the back seat and hit the floor.

I heard the jet helicopter long before I caught sight of it. I was still staring at the GAZ, watching it disappear in a flurry of sand and white flashes. Then it became a big molten blob that swelled up, and, like a bright red balloon, the fuel exploded with a terrible bang.

The helicopter’s whine turned to a thudding of rotor blades as it came back and flew over us with only a few feet clearance, its blades chopping Indian signals out of the smoke that drifted up from the GAZ.

The Plexiglas bubble flashed in the sun as it banked so close to the desert that the blade tips almost touched the dunes. It was out of sight for a moment and by the time I heard the engine again I was fifty yards from the track full length on my face and trying to bury my head in the sand.