Len Deighton - Spy Story

‘Great!’ said Schlegel, with enough enthusiasm to make some of the Welsh Rugby club stop singing.

He looked at the two of us and gave a big smile. ‘There’ll be Admiral Cassidy and Admiral Findlater: top brass from CINCLANT. Well, I’ve got a lot to do before they arrive.’ He looked around the pub as if to check on our associates. ‘Don’t be late in the morning.’

Ferdy watched him all the way to the door. ‘Well at least we know how to get rid of the bastard,’ said Ferdy. ‘Ask him to buy a round of drinks.’

‘Give it a rest, Ferdy.’

‘Oh, don’t think I don’t see what’s going on. You come out and buy me a drink and soften me up for him.’

‘OK, Ferdy,’ I said. ‘You have it your way.’ Just for a minute I was about to blow my top, the way I would have done in the old days. But I had to admit, I was Schlegel’s assistant, and it could have looked like that. I said, ‘Just four beats to the bar, Ferdy. Remember?’

‘Sorry,’ said Ferdy, ‘but it’s been a bloody awful week.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘I’m sure they are watching the house again.’

‘Who?’

‘Our burglary last May; could be the same people.’

‘Oh, burglars.’

‘Oh yes, I know you all think I go on about it.’

‘No, Ferdy.’

‘You wait until you’ve been burgled. It’s not so damned funny.’

‘I never said it was.’

‘Last night there was a taxi outside the house. Driver just sat there – nearly three hours.’

‘A taxi?’

‘Say it was waiting for a fare. Ask me if the meter was on – it was on. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a burglar. What’s a cab doing out there in the mews at three o’clock in the morning?’

It was a good moment to tell Ferdy about my visit to number eighteen. I’d have to tell someone sooner or later and so far I’d not even told Marjorie. It was then that I remembered that I’d not seen Mason – the one who’d identified me – in the office lately. ‘Do you remember that little creep named Mason? Did the weather printouts. Had that tiny dog in his office some days, the one that crapped in the hall and that Italian admiral trod in it.’

‘Mason, his name was.’

‘That’s what I said: Mason.’

‘He’s gone,’ said Ferdy. ‘Doubled his salary, they say. Got a job with some German computer company … Hamburg or somewhere … good riddance if you ask me.’

‘How long ago?’

‘While we were on the trip. A month or so. You didn’t lend him any money did you?’

‘No.’

‘That’s good, because I know he went off only giving personnel twenty-four hours’ notice. Personnel were furious about it.’

‘They would be,’ I said.

‘He came to us from Customs and Excise,’ said Ferdy, as if that explained everything.

The best way was probably to mention the number eighteen business to Ferdy like this, over a drink. What was the alternative: suspect everyone – paranoia, madness, sudden death, and into the big King Lear scene.

‘Ferdy,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

I looked at him for a full minute but didn’t speak. Confiding is not one of my personality traits: it’s being an only child, perhaps. That’s Marjorie’s theory, anyway. ‘Brandy and soda, wasn’t it, Ferdy?’

‘That’s it, brandy and soda.’ He sighed. ‘You wouldn’t want to come back while I look at that programme again?’

I nodded. I’d already told Marjorie that I’d have to stay. ‘It will be quicker if both of us do it.’

When I finally left the Centre I didn’t drive directly home. I went over to Earl’s Court and cruised past my old flat. At the end of the road I parked and thought about it for a minute or two. For a moment I wished I had confided in Ferdy and perhaps brought him here with me, but it was too late now.

I walked back on the other side of the street. It was a fine night. Above the crooked rooftops there was a pattern of stars. The crisp polar air that had driven away the low clouds made the traffic noises, and my footsteps, abnormally loud. I trod warily, moving past each of the parked cars as if looking for my own. I need not have been so cautious. I saw them fifty yards ahead and long before they might have seen me. It was an orange Ford: black vinyl top, rear-window slats and that absurd spoiling device to stop the rear wheels lifting at speeds above Mach One. Frazer. There were undoubtedly others like it, but this was Frazer’s car. The long whip aerial and finally the silhouetted triangle of the Admiralty permit on the windscreen confirmed it. It would be just like Frazer to want a mileage allowance instead of using a car from their pool.

There was a girl with him. They were smoking and talking, but they were situated perfectly to watch the entrance to number eighteen.

They say that on his deathbed, Voltaire, asked to renounce the devil, said, ‘This is no time to be making new enemies.’ That’s how I felt about Frazer, and whoever and whatever was behind him. I turned the ignition key and thought about home.

I wanted the end of the live concert on Radio 3 but got the news on Radio 4. On Monday the car workers would strike for a thirty-five per cent wage increase, and a six-week paid holiday. The Russians had announced the six-man team that would go to Copenhagen for the German reunification talks. Two of the Russian team were women, including its leader, who was in the running for chairman of the whole circus. (A proposal energetically supported by Women’s Liberation, who planned to march to Westminster on Sunday afternoon.) There’d been a fire in a Finsbury Park hairdresser’s, and a stick-up in a pay-office in Epsom. The weather forecast was frost, overcast skies and rain following. And I’d missed the best part of the concert.

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