The Ipcress File (2 page)

He was unpublic school enough to wear a small signet ring on his right hand, and whenever he pulled at his face, which was often, he dragged the edge of the ring against the skin. This produced a little red weal due to excessive acidity in the skin. It was fascinating.
He peeped at me over the toes of his suede shoes which rested in the centre of a deskful of important papers, arranged in precise heaps. Spartan furniture (Ministry of Works contemporary) punctured the cheap lino and a smell of tobacco ash was in the air.
'You are loving it here of course,' Dalby asked.
'I have a clean mind and pure heart. I get eight hours' sleep every night. I am a loyal, diligent employee and will attempt every day to be worthy of the trust my paternal employer puts in me.'
'I'll make the jokes,' said Dalby.
'Go ahead,' I said. 'I can use a laugh - my eyes have been operating twenty-four frames per second for the last month.'
Dalby tightened a shoe-lace. 'Think you can handle a tricky little special assignment?'
'If it doesn't demand a classical education I might be able to grope around it.'
Dalby said, 'Surprise me, do it without complaint or sarcasm.'
'It wouldn't be the same,' I said.
Dalby swung his feet to the floor and became deliberate and serious, 'I've been across to the Senior Intelligence Conference this morning. Home Office are worried sick about these disappearances of their top biochemists. Committees, subcommittees - you should see them over there, talk about Mothers Day at the Turkish Bath.'
'Has there been another then?' I asked.
'This morning,' said Dalby, 'one left home at 7.45 a.m. never reached the lab.'
'Defection?' I asked.
Dalby pulled a face and spoke to Alice over the desk intercom, 'Alice, open a file and give me a code-name for this morning's "wandering willie".' Dalby made his wishes known by peremptory unequivocal orders; all his staff preferred them to the complex polite chat of most Departments as especially did I as a refugee from the War Office. Alice's voice came over the intercom like Donald Duck with a head cold. To whatever she said Dalby replied, 'The hell with what the letter from Home Office said. Do as I say.'
There was a moment or so of silence then Alice used her displeased voice to say a long file number and the code-name RAVEN. All people under long-term surveillance had bird-names.
'That's a good girl,' said Dalby in his most charming voice and even over the squawk-box I could hear the lift in Alice's voice as she said, 'Very good, sir.'
Dalby switched off the box and turned back to me. 'They have put a security blackout on this Raven disappearance but I told them that William Hickey will be carrying a photo of his dog by the midday editions. Look at these.' Dalby laid five passport photos across his oiled teak desk. Raven was a man in his late forties, thick black hair, bushy eyebrows, bony nose -there were a hundred like him in St. James's at any minute of the day. Dalby said, 'It makes eight top rank Disappearances in...' he looked at his desk diary,'... six and a half weeks.'
'Surely Home Office aren't asking us to help them,' I said.
'They certainly are not,' said Dalby. 'But if we found Raven I think the Home Secretary would virtually disband his confused little intelligence department. Then we could add their files to ours. Think of that.'
'Find him?' I said. 'How would we start?'
'How would you start?' asked Dalby.
'Haven't the faintest,' I said. 'Go to laboratory, wife doesn't know what's got into him lately, discover dark almond-eyed woman. Bank manager wonders where he's been getting all that money. Fist fight through darkened lab. Glass tubes that would blow the world to shreds. Mad scientist backs to freedom holding phial - flying tackle by me. Up grams Rule Britannia.'
Dalby gave me a look calculated to have me feeling like an employee, he got to his feet and walked across to the big map of Europe that he had had pinned across the wall for the last week. I walked across to him, 'You think that Jay is master minding it,' I said. Dalby looked at the map and still staring at it said, 'Sure of it, absolutely sure of it.'
The map was covered with clear acetate and five small frontier areas from Finland to the Caspian were marked in black greasy pencil. Two places in Syria carried small red flags.
Dalby said, 'Every important illegal movement across these bits of frontier that I have marked are with Jay's O.K.
'Important movement. I don't mean he stands around checking that the eggs have little lions on.' Dalby tapped the border. 'Somewhere before they get him as far as this we must...' Dalby's voice trailed away lost in thought.
'Hi-jack him?' I prompted softly. Dalby's mind had raced on. 'It's January. If only we could do this in January,' he said. January was the month that the Government estimates were prepared. I began to see what he meant. Dalby suddenly became aware of me again and turned on a big flash of boyish charm.
'You see,' said Dalby. 'It's not just a case of the defection of one biochemist...'
'Defection? I thought that Jay's speciality was a high quality line in snatch jobs.'
'Hi-jack! Snatch jobs! all that gangland talk. You read too many newspapers that's your trouble. You mean they walk him through the customs and immigration with two heavy-jowled men behind him with their right hands in their overcoat pockets? No. No. No,' he said the three 'noes' softly, paused and added two more. '... this isn't a mere emigration of one little chemist,' (Dalby made him sound like an assistant from Boots) 'who has probably been selling them stuff for years. In fact given the choice I'm not sure I wouldn't let him go. It's those -- people at the Home Office. They should know about these things before they occur: not start crying in their beer afterwards.' He picked two cigarettes out of his case, threw one to me and balanced the other between his fingers. 'They are all right running the Special Branch, H.M. prisons and Cruelty to Animal Inspectors but as soon as they get into ourbusiness they have trouble touching bottom,'[The Denning report published September, 1963 revealed that the Home Secretary is in control of British Counter Intelligence.] Dalby continued to do balancing tricks with the cigarette to which he had been talking. Then he looked up and began to talk to me. 'Do you honestly believe that given all the Home Office Security files we couldn't do a thousand times better than they have ever done.'
'I think we could,' I said. He was so pleased with my answer that he stopped toying with the cigarette and lit it in a burst of energy. He inhaled the smoke then tried to snort it down his nostrils. He choked. His face went red. 'Shall I get you a glass of water?' I asked, and his face went redder. I must have ruined the drama of the moment. Dalby recovered his breath and went on.
'You can see now that this is something more than an ordinary case, it's a test case.'
'I sense impending Jesuitical pleas.'
'Exactly,' said Dalby with a malevolent smile. He loved to be cast as the villain, especially if it could be done with schoolboy-scholarship. 'You remember the Jesuit motto.' He was always surprised to find that I had read any sort of book.
'When the end is lawful the means are also lawful,' I answered.
He beamed and pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. I had made him very happy.
'If it pleases you that much.' I said, 'I'm sorry I can't muster it in dog-Latin.'
'It's all right, all right,' said Dalby. He traversed his cigarette then changed the range and elevation until it had me in its sights. He spoke slowly, carefully articulating each syllable. 'Go and buy this Raven for me.'
'From Jay.'
'From anyone who has him - I'm broadminded.'
'How much can I spend, Daddy?'
He moved his chair an inch nearer the desk with a loud crash, 'Look here, every point of entry has the stopper jammed tightly upon it.' He gave a little bitter laugh. 'It makes you laugh, doesn't it. I remember when we asked H.O. to close the airports for one hour last July. The list of excuses they gave us. But when someone slips through their little butter-fingers and they are going to be asked some awkward questions, anything goes. Anyway, Jay is a bright lad; he'll know what's going on; he'll have this Raven on ice for a week and then move him when all goes quiet. If meanwhile we make him anything like a decent offer...' Dalby's voice trailed off as he slipped his mind into over-drive, '... say 18,000 quid. We pick him up from anywhere Jay says - no questions asked.'
'18,000,' I said.
'You can go up to twenty-three if you are sure they are on the level. But on our terms. Payment after delivery. Into a Swiss Bank. Strictly no cash and I don't want Raven dead. Or even damaged.'
'O.K.' I said. I suddenly felt very small and young and called upon to do something that I wasn't sure I could manage. If this was the run of the mill job at W.O.O.C.-(P) they deserved their high pay and expense accounts. 'Shall I start by locating Jay?' It seemed a foolish thing to say but I felt in dire need of an instruction book.
Dalby flapped a palm. I sat down again. 'Done,' he said. He flipped a switch on his squawk-box. Alice's voice, electronically distorted, spoke from the room downstairs. 'Yes, sir,' she said.
'What's Jay doing?'
There was a couple of clicks and Alice's voice came back to the office again. 'At 12.10 he was in Lederers coffee-house.'
'Thanks, Alice,' said Dalby.
'Cease surveillance, sir?'
'Not yet, Alice. I'll tell you when.' To me he said, 'There you are then. Off you go.'
I doused my cigarette and stood up. Two other last things,' said Dalby. 'I am authorizing you for 1,200 a year expenses. And,' he paused, 'don't contact me if anything goes wrong, because I won't know what the hell you are talking about.'
CHAPTER TWO
[Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) New business opportunities begin well in unusual surroundings that provide chance of a gamble.]
I WALKED down Charlotte Street towards Soho. It was that sort of January morning that has enough sunshine to point up the dirt without raising the temperature. I was probably seeking excuses to delay; I bought two packets of Gauloises, sank a quick grappa with Mario and Franco at the Terrazza, bought a Statesman, some Normandy butter and garlic sausage. The girl in the delicatessen was small, dark and rather delicious. We had been flirting across the mozzarella for years. Again we exchanged offers with neither side taking up the option.
In spite of my dawdling I was still in Lederers coffee-house by 12.55. Leds is one of those continental style coffee-houses where coffee comes in a glass. The customers, who mostly think of themselves as clientele, are those smooth-rugged characters with sun-lamp complexions, half a dozen 10 in. by 8 in. glossies, an agent and more time than money on their hands.
Jay was there, skin like polished ivory, small piggy eyes and a luxuriant growth of facial hair. Small talk ricocheted around me as reputations hit the dust.
'She's marvellous in small parts,' an expensive gingery-pink rinse was saying, and people were dropping names, using one word abbreviations of West End shows and trying to leave without paying for their coffee.
The back of Jay's large head touched the red flock wallpaper between the notice that told customers not to expect dairy cream in their pastries and the one that cautioned them against passing betting slips. Jay had seen nib, of course. He'd priced my coat and measured the pink-haired girl in the flick of an eyelid. I waited for Jay to stroke his eyebrow with his right index finger and I knew that he would. He did. I'd never seen him before but I knew him from the flick of the finger to the lopsided way he walked downstairs. I knew that he'd paid sixty guineas for each of his suits except the flannel one, which by some quirk of tailor's reasoning cost fifty-eight and a half guineas. I knew all about Jay except how to ask him to sell me a biochemist for œ18,000.
I sat down and burnt my raincoat on the bars of the fire. An unassisted thirty-eight with a sneer under contract eased her chair three-sixteenths of an inch to give me more space, and nosed deeper into Variety. She hated me because I was trying to pick her up, or not trying perhaps, but anyway, she had her reasons. On the far side of Jay's table I saw the handsome face of Housemartin, his co-star in the Charlotte street film library. I lit a Gauloise and blew a smoke ring. The thirty-eight sucked her teeth. I noticed Housemartin lean across to Jay and whisper in his ear while they both looked at me. Then Jay nodded.
The waitress - a young fifty-three with imitation pastry cream on her pinafore - came across to my table. My friend with Variety stretched out a hand, white and lifeless like some animal that had never been exposed to daylight. It touched the glass of cold coffee and dragged it away from the waitress. I ordered Russian tea and apple strudel.
Had it been Chico sitting there he would have been making time with the MINOX camera, and dusting the waitress for Jay's prints, but I knew we had more footage on Jay than M.G.M. have on Ben Hur, so I sat tight and edged into the strudel.
When I had finished my tea and bun I had no further excuse for delay. I searched through my pockets for some visiting cards. There was an engraved one that said 'Bertram Loess -Assessor and Valuer', another printed one that said 'Brian Serck Inter News Press Agency', and a small imitation leather folder that gave me Right of Entry under the Factories Act because I was a weights and measures inspector. None of those suited the present situation so I just went across to Jay's table, touched a forelock and said the first thing that came into my head - 'Beamish,' I said, 'Stanley Beamish.' Jay nodded. It was the head of a Buddha coming unsoldered. 'Is there somewhere we can talk?' I said. 'I have a financial proposition to put to you.' But Jay was not going to be hurried; he took out his thin wallet, produced a white rectangle and passed it to me. I read - 'Henry Carpenter - Import Export'. I'd always favoured foreign names on the ground that there is nothing more authentically English than a foreign name. Perhaps I should tell Jay. He picked up his card and delicately with his big scarred finger-tips on the points returned it to his crocodile-skin wallet. He consulted a watch with a dial like the control panel of a Boeing 707, and eased himself back in his chair.