Len Deighton - Spy Story

‘I screwed up your Sunday,’ he said. I nodded. He was short and thickset, with that puffed-chest stance that small athletes have. The red shirt, and the way he cocked his head to one side, made him look like a gigantic and predatory robin redbreast. He strutted around the car and opened the door for me, smiling as he did so. He wasn’t about to apologize.

‘Come on up to the house for a sandwich.’

‘I have to get back,’ I argued without conviction.

‘Just a sandwich.’

‘Yes, sir.’

He let in the clutch, and heel-and-toed like a rally driver. He gave the car the same sort of attention that I suppose he’d given his F-4 or his B-52 or his desk, or whatever it was he flew before they unleashed him onto us. ‘I’m glad it was you,’ he said. ‘You know why I say that?’

‘Man management?’

He gave me a little you’ll-find-out-buddy smile.

‘I’m glad it was you,’ he explained slowly and patiently, ‘because I haven’t had a chance of a pow-wow with you or Foxwell, on account of the mission.’

I nodded. I liked the glad-it-was-you stuff. You’d have thought the message said anyone who’d like a free train ride to Little Omber this Sunday could go.

‘Goddamned imbecile,’ he muttered as he overtook a Sunday driver tooling down the white line, chatting with his kids in the back seat.

Close to Schlegel, I could see that the sun-lamp tan was there to disguise the complicated surgery he’d had on his jaw. What from a distance might look like the legacy of acne was a pattern of tiny scars that gave one side of his face the permanent hint of a scowl. Sometimes his face puckered enough to bare his teeth in a curious lopsided humourless smile. He did one now. ‘I can imagine,’ he said. ‘Yank trouble-shooter, hundred missions in Nam. They probably are saying I’m a hatchet man.’ He paused. ‘Are they saying that?’

‘I’ve heard it whispered.’

‘What else?’

‘They are saying that you are taking the staff aside one by one and giving them a working over.’ They weren’t saying that – as far as I knew – but I wanted to get his reaction.

‘Like this?’

‘Let’s wait and see.’

‘Huh.’ He did that crooked smile again. He slowed to go through the village. This was really home-counties stuff: six shops and five of them selling real estate. It was the kind of authentic English village that only Germans, Americans and real-estate men can afford. At the far end of the village there were four locals in their Sunday clothes. They turned to watch us pass. Schlegel gave them a stiff-armed salutation like the ones in that old English war film. They nodded and smiled. He turned off the road at a plastic sign that said ‘Golden Acre Cottage. Schlegel’ in ye olde English lettering. He gunned the motor up the steep track and fired gravel and soft earth from the deep-tread tyres.

‘Nice place,’ I said, but Schlegel seemed to read my thoughts. He said, ‘When they cut my orders they said I must be within easy access of NATO/ASW down the road at Longford Magna. Your government won’t let us Yanks buy a place to live – by law, by law! And half the county is owned by the same English lord who’s got his finger in my eye.’ He slammed on the brakes and we slid to a halt inches short of his front door. ‘A goddamn lord!’

‘You haven’t started Chas off about the landlord, I hope,’ said a woman from the doorway.

‘This is my bride, Helen. There are two daughters and a son around the house someplace.’

He’d parked outside a large thatched cottage, with black cruck-frame timbers and freshly whitened plaster. Placed on the front lawn there was a very old single-furrow plough and over the front door there was a farming implement that I didn’t recognize. The daughters arrived before I was even half out of the car. Slim, fresh-faced, clad in jeans and brightly coloured lambswool sweaters, it was difficult to tell wife from teenage daughters.

‘What a wonderful thatching job,’ I said.

‘Plastic,’ said Schlegel. ‘Real thatch harbours vermin. Plastic is cleaner, quicker and longer lasting.’

Mrs Schlegel said, ‘Gee, Chas, you should have told me. I was only doing BLTs for lunch.’

‘BLTs, Helen! You want to send him into a state of shock? These Brits strike into roast beef with all the trimmings for Sunday lunch.’

‘A bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich will be fine, Mrs Schlegel.’

‘Helen, call me Helen. I sure hope Chas hasn’t been too rude about our English landlord.’

The Southern United States – its climate and terrain so suitable for training infantry and aviators – has played a part in moulding the character of American military men. And it is there that so disproportionately many of them met their wives. But Mrs Schlegel was no Southern belle. She was a New Englander, with all the crisp assurance of that canny breed.

‘He’d have to be a lot ruder before he could hope to offend me … er … Helen.’ The sitting-room had a big log fire perfuming the centrally heated air.

‘A drink?’

‘Anything.’

‘Chuck made a jug of Bloody Marys before going to meet you.’ She was no longer young, but you could have prised that snub nose and freckled face out of a Coke commercial. The teenager’s grin, the torn jeans and relaxed hands-in-pocket stance made me happy to be there.

‘That sounds just right,’ I said.

‘You Englishmen … that cute accent. That really gets to me. Do you know that?’ she asked her husband.

‘We’ll go into the den, Helen. He’s brought me some junk from the office.’

‘Take the drinks with you,’ said Mrs Schlegel. She poured them from a huge frosted glass jug. I sipped at mine and coughed.

‘Chas likes them strong,’ said Mrs Schlegel. At that moment a small child came through the sitting-room. He wore a Che Guevara sweatshirt, and, with arms outstretched, dumped small clods of garden earth upon the carpet while emitting a steady high-pitched scream.

‘Chuckie!’ said Mrs Schlegel mildly. She turned to me. ‘I suppose here in Britain any mother would beat the daylights out of a child for doing that.’

‘No, I believe there are still a few who don’t,’ I told her. We could hear the scream continue out into the garden and around the back of the house.

‘We’ll be up in the den,’ said Schlegel. He’d downed half of his drink and now he poured himself more and added some to my glass too. I followed him through the room. There were black timber beams across the ceiling, each one decorated with horse brasses and bridle fittings. I hit my head on the lowest one.

We went up a narrow wooden staircase that creaked at each step. Off the passage at the top of it there was a small box room with a ‘Do not disturb’ label from the Istanbul Hilton. He pushed the door open with his elbow. The screaming child came nearer. Once inside Schlegel bolted the door.

He sat down heavily, and sighed. He had a rubbery face, well suited to his habit of pummelling it with his hands, pushing at his cheeks, bending his nose and then baring his teeth, as if to be sure that all the muscles were in working order. ‘I hate lords,’ he said. He fixed me with an unwinking stare.

‘Don’t look at me,’ I said.

‘Aw, I don’t mean that,’ he said. ‘Hell, no one would take you for a lord.’

‘Oh well,’ I said, trying to sound indifferent.

From Schlegel’s den there was a view of the surrounding country. A clump of poplar trees were bare, except for bunches of mistletoe, and the birds that rested there before coming down to join in the feast of holly berries. The gate to the next field was open, and the cart tracks shone with ice all the way round the side of the hill over which the steeple of Little Omber church could be seen. Its bell began striking twelve. Schlegel looked at his watch. ‘Now that damned village clock is fast too,’ he said.