Len Deighton - The Ipcress File

About Guildford the stewardess offered us the free alcohol that together with six extra inches of seat space makes the cost of a first-class ticket worth while, if you are on expenses. Gravel Gertie, of course, wanted something odd – ‘A port and lemon.’ The hostess explained they didn’t have such a thing. He decided to ‘Leave it to you, love, I don’t do much travelling.’

Our drinks arrived. He passed me my glass of sherry and insisted upon bumping our glasses together like mating tortoises, and saying, ‘Cheerio, Chin-chin.’

I nodded coolly as the spilt sherry pioneered its sticky route down my ankle.

‘Over the teeth, over the gums, look out stomach, here she comes,’ he chanted, and was such a helpless roistering jelly of merriment at his own wit that only a small fraction of his drink did in fact complete the journey. I wrote ROUNDELAYS into the crossword. ‘I’m going to Rome,’ said Gertie. ‘Have you ever been there?’

I nodded without looking up.

‘I missed the 9.45 plane. That’s the one I should have been on, but I missed it. This one doesn’t always go to Rome, but that 9.45 goes direct to Rome.’

I crossed out ROUNDELAYS and wrote RONDOLETTO. He kept saying ‘I’ll go no more a-roaming,’ and laughing a little high-pitched laugh, his great floppy face crouching behind his pink-tinted rimless spectacles. I was into the competition page of the Statesman when the stewardess offered me a selection of pieces of toast as large as a penny garnished with smoke salmon and caviare. Fatso said, ‘What are we ’aving to eat, luv, spaghetti?’ A thought that drove him wild with hysterical mirth, in fact he repeated the word to me a couple of times and roared with laughter. A toy dinner came along on a trolley; I declined the fat man’s thick sausage sandwiches. I had frozen chicken, frozen pomme parisienne and frozen peas. I began to envy Fatso his sausage sandwiches. By the time we were crossing the suburbs of Paris the champagne appeared. I felt mollified. I crossed out RONDOLETTO and wrote in DITHYRAMBS which made twenty-one down AWE instead of EWE. It was beginning to shape up.

We skimmed our way into the clouds like a nose into beer froth. ‘We are approaching Rome – Fiumicino Airport. Transit time is forty-five minutes. Please do not leave small valuable articles in the aircraft. Passengers may remain aboard but smoking is not permitted during refuelling. Please remain seated after landing. Light refreshments will be available in the airport restaurant. Thank you.’

I accidentally knocked Fatso’s glasses out of his hand on to the floor, one pane suffered a crack but held together. While we apologized together we came in over the eternal city. The old Roman aqueducts were clearly visible, so was Fatso’s wallet, so I lifted it, offered him my seat – ‘Your first view of Rome.’

‘When in Rome …’ he was saying as I took off to the forward toilet, I heard his high-pitched laugh. ‘Occupied.’ Damn. I stepped into the bright chromium galley. No one there. I leaned into the baggage recess. I flipped through Fatso’s wallet. A wad of fivers, some pressed leaves, two blank postcards with views of Marble Arch, a five-shilling book of stamps, some dirty Italian money and a Diner’s Club card in the name of HARRISON B J D and some photos. I had to be very quick. I saw the stewardess walking slowly down the aisle checking passengers’ seat belts, and the lights were up. ‘NO SMOKING, FASTEN SEAT BELTS.’ She was going to give me the rush. I pulled the photos out – three passport pictures of a dark-haired, smooth stockbroker type, full, profile and three-quarter. The photo was different but the man was my pin-up, too – the mysterious Raven. The other three photos were also passport style – full face, profile and three-quarter positions of a dark-haired, round-faced character; deep sunk eyes with bags under horn-rimmed glasses, chin jutting and cleft. On the back of the photos was written ‘5ft 11in; muscular inclined to overweight. No visible scar tissue; hair dark brown, eyes blue’. I looked at the familiar face again. I knew the eyes were blue, even though the photograph was in black and white. I’d seen the face before; most mornings I shaved it. I realized who Fatso was. He was the fat man sitting at the bar in the strip-club when the cigarette girl told me to ‘Go home.’

I stuffed them back, palmed the wallet, said ‘OK’ to the protesting hostess. I got back to my seat as the flaps went down, the plane shuddered like Gordon Pirie running into a roomful of cotton wool. Fatso was back in his own seat; my cardigan had fallen to the floor over my brief-case. I sat down quickly, strapped in. I could see the Railway Junction now and as we levelled off for the approach the G glued me to the seat springs. I could see the south side of the perimeter as we came in, and beyond the bright yellow Shell Aviation bowsers I noticed a twin-engined shoulder wing Grumman S2F-3. It was painted white and the word ‘NAVY’ was written in square black letters aft of the American insignia.

The tyres touched tarmac. I leaped forward to pick up my mohair cardigan. As I did so I flipped Fatso’s wallet well under his seat. Now I saw the clean knife cut along the back of my new brief-case – still unopened. Not one of those long, amateur sorts of cuts, but a small, professional, ‘poultry-cleaning’ one. Just enough to investigate the contents. I leaned back. Fatso offered me a peppermint. ‘Do as the Romans do,’ he went on, eyes smiling through the cracked lens.

Fiumicino Airport, Rome, is one of those straight-sided ‘Contemporary Economy’ affairs. I went into the main entrance; to the left was the restaurant but up the stairs to the right a post office and money exchange. I was killing a minute with the paperbacks when I heard a soft voice say, ‘Hello, Harry.’

Now my name isn’t Harry, but in this business it’s hard to remember whether it ever had been. I turned to face the speaker – my driver from London. He had a hard bony skull, with hair painted across it in Brylcreem. His eyes were black and counter-sunk deep into his face like gun positions. His chin was blue and hardened by wind, rain and monsoon and forty years of shaving hard against the bone. He wore black tie and white shirt and navy blue raincoat with shoulder straps. If he was a crew member he had removed his shoulder badges and taken care to leave his uniform cap elsewhere. If he wasn’t, it was little wonder that he chose to wear the undress uniform of all the world’s airline crews.

His eyes moved in constant watchfulness over my shoulder. He ran the palm of his right hand hard across the side of his head to press down his already flattened hair. ‘Seat nineteen …’

‘Is trouble,’ I completed it in the phraseology of the department. He looked a little sheepish. ‘Now you tell me,’ I said peevishly. ‘He’s already shivved my hand baggage.’

‘As long as there is still a tin inside,’ he said.

‘There’s a tin inside,’ I told him.

As I thanked him I heard the Italian voice on the loudspeaker saying, ‘British Overseas Airways Corporation denunca che departe dela Comet volo BA712 a Beirut, Bahrain, Bombay, Colombo, Singapore, Jakarta, Darwin and Sydney a tutto passagere …’

He rubbed the side of his jaw pensively, and finally said, ‘Be last out at Beirut. Leave that,’ we both eyed the case, ‘for me to take through customs.’ He said good-bye then turned to go, but came back to cheer me up. ‘We’re doing seat nineteen’s hold baggage now,’ he said.

The Colosseum – Rome’s rotten tooth – sank behind us, white, ghostly and sensational. I slept till Athens. Fatso hadn’t re-embarked. I felt tired and out-gambited. I slept again.

I woke for coffee as we crossed the brown coast of Lebanon. Thin streaks of white crests buffered in from the blue Med. I noticed that there were many tall white buildings built since my first visit here in the days of Medway II. fn1The circuit over the coast-side airport is generally a bumpy passage, for immediately after the airport the ground rises in blunt green mountains. Everything is hot, foreboding and very old.