Spy Story (19 page)

‘You're not listening,' said Marjorie.

‘Building society,' I said. ‘Wonderful idea.'

‘
Not
have to go to one,' said Marjorie.

‘Well, there you are,' I said, ‘you've answered your own question.'

Score nothing for guessing that this was an ordinary room disguised as a cold chamber. The frozen air came out to meet me. I stepped inside. It was a normal refrigerated room, about eight feet square, with slatted shelving from floor to ceiling on all sides, except for the part of the rear wall that was occupied by the refrigeration machinery. The displacement of the air tripped the thermostat. The motor clicked on and built up the revolutions until it was wobbling gently on the sprung mounts. It was cold and I buttoned my jacket and turned up the collar. Marjorie came inside. ‘Like the mortuary,' she pronounced. Her voice echoed in the tiny space. I did my monster walk towards her, my hands raised like claws.

‘Stop it,' she said. She shivered.

Five sides of mutton were lined up along one side. Frozen fillets – fifty according to the label on the box – had been piled up on the top shelf, and crammed alongside them were three large bags of ready peeled frozen sauté potatoes and three cardboard boxes of mixed vegetables.

‘One gross individual portions:
Coq au vin, suprêmes de volaille, suprêmes de chasseur
. Mixed.' A large tin of ‘Curry anything' and a shelf crammed with frozen lamb chops. Just inside the door there were three bottles of champagne being cooled the hard way. No hollow walls, no secret com-partments, no trapdoors.

We came out of the refrigerated room and I closed the door again. I went back into the kitchen and sniffed at the saucepans in the
bain marie.
They were all empty. I cut a slice of bread. ‘Bread?'

She shook her head. ‘Where could they all be?' said Marjorie. ‘It's not early closing.'

‘There you've got me,' I admitted, ‘but I'll look down in the wine cellar. They could just be hiding.'

‘It's nearly half past.'

‘You'd better have a sausage. By the time we've finished this burglary, there won't be time for lunch.' I took another one myself and squashed it between a folded slice of bread.

She grabbed my arm. ‘Have you done this sort of thing before?' she asked.

‘Not with a partner. Sausage sandwich?'

I thought she was going to cry again. ‘Oh, Patrick!' She didn't stamp her foot exactly, but she would have done in her other shoes.

‘I was only joking,' I said. ‘You didn't think I was serious?'

‘I don't even think you are serious about the house,' she said.

There was no one in the cellar. No one in the toilet. No one in the store room upstairs.

An hour or so ago this had been a flourishing restaurant, now it was not just deserted: it was abandoned.

There was something in the atmosphere, perhaps the sound that our voices and footsteps made with all the windows and doors closed, or perhaps there really is something that happens to houses that are forsaken.

It had been hastily done and yet it was systematic and disciplined. No attempt had been made to save the valuables. There was an expensive Sony cassette player, a cellar full of wine and spirits, and two or three boxes of cigars and cigarettes in a cupboard over the serving hatch. And yet not one scrap of paper remained: no bills, receipts or invoices, not even a menu. Even the grocery order that I'd seen wedged down behind the knife rack had been carefully retrieved and taken away.

‘There's sliced ham: you like that.'

‘Do stop it,' she said.

I walked into the restaurant. The light came through the net curtains and reflected upon the marble table-tops and the bentwood chairs arranged around them. It was all as shadowy and still as a Victorian photograph. Antique mirrors, gold-lettered with advertisements for cigarettes and apéritifs, were fixed to every wall. Mirrored there were seemingly endless other dining-rooms, where red-eyed pretty girls stretched ringless hands towards tall shabby furtive men.

Reflected there, too, was a bright-red milk float, and I heard it whine to a halt outside in the street. I pulled back the bolts on the front door and let Marjorie pass me. The milkman was putting two crates of milk on the doorstep. He was a young man with a battered United Dairy cap, and a brown warehouse coat. He smiled and spent a moment or two recovering his breath. ‘You've only just missed them,' he said.

‘How long ago?'

‘Best part of half an hour, bit more perhaps.'

‘It was the traffic,' I said.

‘Poor fellow,' said the milkman. ‘How did it happen?'

‘How do any of these things happen?' I said.

‘Ah, you're right there,' he said. He took off his hat and scratched his head.

‘Looked bad, eh?' I said.

‘All drawn up – knees against his chest.'

‘Conscious?'

‘I was right down the end of the street. I saw them putting him in. They had to open both doors to get him through.'

‘What was it: Ambulance Service?'

‘No, a fancy job – painted cream with lettering and a red cross.'

‘If only I knew where they'd taken him,' I said. ‘This lady is a doctor, you see.'

He smiled at Marjorie and was glad to rest a moment. He put a boot on the crate, plucking at his trouser leg to reveal a section of yellow sock and some hairy leg. He took out a cigarette case, selected one and lit it with a gold lighter. He nodded his head as he thought about the ambulance. ‘It came right past me,' he admitted. ‘A clinic, it was.'

‘The rest of them went with him, I suppose?'

‘No, in a bloomin' great Bentley.'

‘Did they!'

‘A Bentley Model T. That's like the Rolls Silver Shadow, except for the Bentley radiator. Nice job. Green, it was.'

‘You don't miss much, do you.'

‘I made one, didn't I? Plastic – two hundred separate parts – took me months. It's on the tele, you should see it: my missus is afraid to dust it.'

‘Green?'

‘Front offside wing bent to buggery. A recent shunt, not even rusted.'

And the ambulance was from a clinic?'

‘It's gone right out of my mind. Sorry, Doctor,' he said to Marjorie. He touched the peak of his cap. ‘I've got a terrible memory these days. You'd be National Health, I suppose?'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘I suppose they can afford a private place.'

‘Oh, yes,' said the milkman. ‘Little goldmine, that place is.'

‘I'd better run,' Marjorie said to me.

‘No one here today,' I said.

‘No, well they don't do lunches,' said the milkman. He picked up two crates of empty milk bottles and staggered away.

‘How did you know about the ambulance?' Marjorie asked me.

‘Ah,' I said, feeling rather clever.

‘But who was it?' insisted Marjorie. ‘What happened here?'

‘A Russian admiral with kidney trouble,' I said.

Marjorie became angry. She stepped out into the road and hailed a cab. It stopped with a squeal of brakes. She opened the door and got in. ‘The incredible amount of trouble you will go to to avoid a serious talk! It's sick, Patrick! Can't you see that?'

The cab pulled away before I could answer.

I waited on the pavement, watching the milkman as he staggered under the weight of more crates of milk. Sometimes he put them down and caught his breath for a moment. He was a quick-witted, energetic fellow, whom any dairy would be well advised to employ, but milkmen who lavish hand-made crocodile boots upon themselves do not wear them on their rounds, especially when the boots are new and unbroken. Footwear is always the difficulty in a hasty change of dress but the gold lighter was pure carelessness. It was obvious that The Terrine was staked out, but as the bogus milkman moved down the street I wondered why he should have told me so much, unless a course of action had already been prepared for me.

I crossed the street to an upturned crate from which an old man was selling newspapers. I looked at the crate with its placard on the front, and the tin tray of loose change. I wondered if by kicking it over I might damage a few hundred pounds-worth of two-way radio. Oh yes, The Terrine was staked out all right, and they weren't bothering about the subtleties.

‘The latest,' I said automatically. It started to rain again and he pulled a plastic sheet over his papers. ‘Sports edition?'

‘I'm not sure I can tell the difference,' I said, but I took the early news, and for a few moments stood there reading it.

The woman leading the Russian delegation to the German reunification talks was fast becoming a cult figure in the West. Women's Liberation supported her nomination for chairman above any claim by British, French or American male delegates. Her brief appearance on TV news was helping the media to sell this otherwise dull conference to a public who didn't give a damn about Germany's eastern border. Now here was Katerina Remoziva in a three-column photo on the front page. She was a thin elderly spinster with an engaging smile, her hair in a bun, her hand raised in a gesture somewhere between workers' solidarity and papal blessing.

The caption said, ‘For Madame Katerina Remoziva, the Copenhagen talks represent repayment for six years' behind-the-scenes work, and nearly a hundred semi-official meetings. Next Monday we begin to tell the story of this amazing woman and her hopes for permanent European peace and prosperity.'

Nice work, comrades, a propaganda triumph in the making. It was raining faster now and I put the paper over my head.

Global commitment negative:
A game with global commitment negative is restricted to the military forces on the board
. Global commitment positive:
A game in which either or both sides will be reinforced by land sea or air forces from other theatres of war. E.g. during a Northern Fleet war game Soviet naval units might be reinforced by elements of Baltic Fleet or Polish naval units. NB – Such introduced elements can be larger than the sum of forces available at game opening
.

GLOSSARY
. ‘
NOTES FOR WARGAMERS
'.
STUDIES CENTRE
.
LONDON

If you measure power and success by the time taken to move in comfort to or from a city centre – and many use that criterion – then the next couple of hours was the pace-setter by which all London's tycoons and politicians must measure themselves.

The police car stopped outside The Terrine at one forty-five. ‘Mr Armstrong?' He was a man of about forty. His coat was unbuttoned and revealed a police uniform that had been tailored to put the top button high. His shirt was white linen, its collar fastened with a gold pin. Whoever he was, he didn't have to line up on parade each morning and be checked by the station sergeant. The driver also was wearing a civilian coat, and only his blue shirt and black tie suggested that he was a constable.

‘Perhaps,' I said. I held the newspaper over me to keep the rain off.

‘Colonel Schlegel's compliments, and we are to take you to Battersea. There is a helicopter waiting to connect with the airport.' He didn't get out of the car.

‘Do you come with a book of instructions?'

‘I beg your pardon, sir?'

‘Why would I want to go to London airport … Why would anyone?'

‘It's something to do with this restaurant, sir,' he said. ‘It's a Special Branch matter. I was just the nearest available spare bod.'

‘And if I don't want to go with you?'

‘The helicopter has been there an hour, sir. It must be urgent.' He looked up at the sky. The rain continued.

‘Suppose I was afraid of heights?'

He began to understand. He said, ‘We were just told to bring you the message, and give you a lift if you wanted it. As long as you identify yourself, that will get me out of trouble …' He lifted a hand awkwardly to show that he had no instructions about collaring me.

‘OK,' I said. ‘Let's go.' He smiled and unlocked the passenger door for me.

The helicopter was a museum piece: a Westland Dragonfly painted in the Royal Navy livery of dark steel blue. There were no roundels on it, and no lettering except for a civil registration number painted no larger than the ‘Beware of the Rotor' sign at the back.

The pilot's appearance was similarly discreet. He wore military flyer's overalls, with maggots of cotton outlining clean patches from which the badges had been removed. He was in the left-hand seat by the time the car was parked, and as I climbed aboard the main rotor was spinning. The noise of the blades, and the old piston engine, inhibited conversation. I contented myself with looking out at the tall chimneys of Fulham making billowing white gauze curtains that closed across the river behind us. We passed over Wandsworth Bridge, keeping to the course of the river, as the safety regulations specify for everyone except royalty.

From the private aircraft park at London Heathrow, the same pilot took a Beagle Pup. Within an hour of leaving Marjorie outside The Terrine I was over Rugby at eight thousand feet and still climbing. We were heading north-west and, according to the gauges, sufficiently fuelled to get to the last landfall of the Outer Hebrides. The map on the pilot's knee bore an ancient wax pencil mark that continued in that direction and ended only on the margin. Now and again he smiled and stabbed a finger at the map and at the Plexiglass, to show me the M1 Motorway, or the dark-grey smear on the horizon behind which Coventry coughed. He offered me a cigarette but I declined. I asked him where we were going. He slid his headset back off his head and cupped his ear. I asked again but he shrugged and smiled as if I'd asked him to predict the outcome of the next general election.

A winter's sun was a carelessly sprayed yellow patch on the hard cumulus clouds that were building up over Ireland. Liverpool – and a Mersey crowded with ships – slid beneath our starboard wing, and ahead the Irish Sea glittered like a cheap brass tray. Flying over the ocean in single-engined light planes could never become a pleasure for me but the pilot smiled, pleased to get clear of the Control Zone and reporting areas, and off the confluence of airways through which came traffic jams of commercial jets. He climbed again, now that he was no longer forced down under the lanes, and that comforted me.