from Wedding. She smoothed her dress slowly and touched the nape of her neck. Vulkan turned to ‘Colonel Wilson’ and said, ‘OK, what’s on your mind?’
‘I want thirty-nine Praktika cameras; with the f/2 lens.’
Vulkan reached for a piece of ice from the canister on the bar. The piano-player did a fancy cadenza and stopped playing. Vulkan put his cigar in his mouth and clapped his hands. His face scowled at the ribbon of smoke. Several people joined in the applause. Vulkan said, ‘Do you?’ still looking at the piano-player.
‘Good price and in dollars,’ said Colonel Wilson. There was no reply from Vulkan.
Wilson said, ‘I know that you don’t do that kind of thing for a living; but this is a special favour for a friend of mine. It’s more of a memento – you know, a camera smuggled out of the East – these guys like that kind of thing.’
‘What guys?’ said Vulkan.
‘Trade delegation,’ said Wilson.
‘Thirty-nine,’ said Vulkan reflectively.
‘It would be no trouble to you,’ said Wilson. ‘Just bring them with you when you come back with a Russian. You are the only guy I know who ever rides through Checkpoint Charlie with a Russian.’ He laughed nervously.
‘Thirty-nine must be the delegation of American radio and TV producers. Poetsch is running that, isn’t he?’
‘Aw,’ said Wilson, ‘don’t go yelling it around. I told you in strict confidence. If you can deliver them before …’
‘You told me nothing,’ said Vulkan. ‘I told you. I’m not a camera dealer, tell Poetsch that.’
‘Leave P’s name out of this.’
Vulkan gently blew smoke at Wilson, saying nothing.
‘Don’t cross me, Vulkan,’ Colonel Wilson said. ‘You don’t want me spilling it to your British pal that I’m no longer a US Army major.’
‘No longer,’ said Vulkan gleefully, almost choking on his drink.
‘I can make plenty of trouble,’ said Wilson.
‘And you can make a one-way trip through the wire,’ said Vulkan quietly.
They stared at each other. Wilson swallowed to moisten his throat and turned back to his drink.
‘OK Johnnie,’ Wilson said over his shoulder. ‘No hard feelings, eh, pal?’
Johnnie pretended not to hear and moved along the bar calling for another bourbon.
‘Two?’ said the barman.
‘One will be enough,’ said Johnnie.
He could see Wilson’s face in the mirror; it was very pale. He could see the girl from Wedding too, touching the hair at the nape of her neck like she didn’t know she was straining her brassiere. She crossed her legs and smiled at his reflection.
‘Poetsch,’ Johnnie thought.
He had wanted to get something on Poetsch, if only to cut down his ranting at the bar. He could hear his voice now. Poetsch was saying, ‘The very same people who made the great little TV film about the tunnel. The whole thing was paid for by the TV company, NBC. And what I’m saying, folks, is that those fifty-nine people who escaped owe their very freedom to our American system of unshackled enterprise and bold corporate drive …’ There were a couple of favours Poetsch could do for Johnnie Vulkan. Johnnie relished the idea of telling Poetsch about them; even the girl from Wedding wasn’t a better prospect than that.
The lounge was beginning to fill up now. Vulkan leaned back against the bar, tensed his muscles and relaxed. It was good to feel he knew them all and that even Americans like ‘Colonel Wilson’ couldn’t take advantage of him. Johnnie Vulkan could pick out the tarts and the queens, the hustlers and the fairies. He knew all the heavies waiting assignment: from the nailers-up of notices to the nailers up of Christs. He saw the girl from Wedding trying to catch his eye. Poetsch’s crowd had grown too. There was that elderly English queer with the dyed hair, and a stupid little Dresdener who thought he was going to infiltrate the Gehlen Bureau – except that Johnnie had told them all about him last week. He wondered whether Helmut had been serious about having the Dresdener killed in a traffic accident. It was possible. King was right as a code name Vulkan decided; they acknowledged his stature by alloting it to him. Freudian. King Vulkan of Berlin.
He supposed the red-haired girl talking to Poetsch now was the one Poetsch had mentioned to him; the girl from Israeli Intelligence.
‘Boy, oh boy!’ thought Vulkan. ‘What a town this is!’ and he eased his way down the bar towards them, smiling at Poetsch.
1 Mir kann keener: you can’t fool me (a typical Berliner comment).
Zugzwang: to move a chess piece under duress.
London, Thursday, October 10th
I moved into top as I passed Parliament Square. The night was young and it had nothing much to do. Tiny moons moved across St James’s Park playing tiddly-winks with the shiny leaves, and the speedometer moved up to nudge sixty. The radiotelephone called me back to earth. It was the Charlotte Street Control Room: ‘Message for you oboe ten from Northern Car Hire.1 Do you read me? Over.’
‘Loud and clear. Let’s have it.’
‘Message from Mr D. You are to contact Mr Hallam at Betty’s Club. Is that roger? Oboe ten. Over.’
‘Only too roger.’
‘Observe your r/t procedure, oboe ten. Your customer will ask you for change of ten shillings. You will have four half-crowns ready for him. Is that roger? Over.’
‘What are you talking about? What’s Hallam want ten bob for?’
‘Oboe ten. Observe procedure please. I am giving you your introduction formality for this customer. Is that roger? Over.’
‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ I said. ‘Phone me at home later on. On the landline. OK?’
The Scots operator’s nerve broke before I got to Hyde Park Corner.
‘For Christ’s sake. Oboe ten. You know what the Home Office people are like. He wants you to give him four half-dollars so that he knows who you are.’
‘What do you mean “so that he knows who I am”? I saw Hallam only the other day. Who the hell is he going to think I am if I don’t give him four half-crowns – James Bond?’
‘Please just give him the half-crowns, oboe ten.’
‘I don’t know how many make ten bob,’ I said, but the operator didn’t come back on the air again. Inside the car the radio shone with a faint green spot of light. I turned the volume and filled the car with big band sound as a volley of raindrops spattered across the windscreen.
Betty’s was one of the small set of London clubs that have been going over twenty years on a mixed membership, face up to the financial crisis of imminent closure once a year but never get around to pasting the corners of the wallpaper back into place. Next to the magazine rack, a brown-haired man was slugging shillings into a one-armed bandit without letting go of his Tuborg lager. The crash of the machine punctuated some gentle Sinatra. Without looking at me he sensed my approach, but he continued to watch the spinning oranges and pineapples.
‘Got change of ten bob?’ he said. Before I could reply, the fruit machine gave three neat clicks and then a shudder as shillings showered