he said, ‘Don’t you believe it, dear. I still do.’ It was Hallam, the man from Bina Gardens, but his hair was now a rich brown colour. He scooped up the shillings and showered them into his already sagging pockets.
‘First-rate for the gas meter,’ he said. I held four half-crowns extended towards him while he spent five minutes trying to pry apart two ten-shilling notes that were only one. Reluctantly he gave it to me. Then he took his time fitting the base of a Player’s No 3 into a four-inch holder. I flicked a Swan Vesta alight with my thumbnail and he nosed his fag down into the fire and flame. He was well alight before he spoke.
‘Stok and the Gehlen boys are both being helpful?’
‘Both being very helpful,’ I said. ‘Did you ever find Confucius?’
‘Yes,’ said Hallam. ‘The fickle creature came back to me Tuesday morning, very early. So dirty; heaven knows where he had been. So independent the Siamese. I really should buy a collar for him but it seems so cruel.’ Somehow he got four syllables into ‘cruel’.
‘Yes,’ I said.
I had a street map of Berlin in my pocket. I moved a couple of ashtrays and a vase of plastic tulips and spread it across the table.
‘Stok will bring Semitsa into East Berlin somewhere within this rectangle.’ I drew a very light pencil mark just north of Alexanderplatz.
‘He will tell me where later. If I don’t like it, I can fix somewhere else in the same district.’ Hallam had his Tuborg wrapped around his face but I knew he was taking in every word.
‘Why don’t you make the Russkies bring him down to Marienborn and hand him over the West German frontier?’ he asked.
‘Not possible,’ I said.
He nodded.
‘Outside Stok’s district. How foolish of me. Very well then. You have Semitsa – or you think you have him – here.’ He stabbed the street map.
‘Now,’ I said, ‘from there the Gehlen boys will post him special delivery to West Berlin.’
‘Then what?’ asked Hallam.
‘If I know anything about the Gehlen boys they will delay the transfer at least twenty-four hours so that they can pump Semitsa for anything that might be useful to them. Then using the documents that your Home Office people are going to provide we bring him to London as a naturalized British subject returning home.’
‘How will the Gehlen people move him across the wall?’ said Hallam.
‘You know better than to ask that and so do I,’ I said. ‘If I ask, they’ll just tell me a lot of reasonably creative lies.’
‘Did you give me my change?’ he said.
‘Yes I did,’ I said, ‘four half-crowns.’
Hallam opened his wallet and counted his paper money.
‘The Home Office won’t release the documents until one of our own people actually sees Semitsa in the flesh in West Berlin.’ I could see the slack red lining of his watery eyes. He swung his chin from side to side to emphasize the negative and the jaw opened to repeat the decision.
‘You see why …’ he began.
I reached out and with my finger-tips gently closed Hallam’s mouth. ‘You wouldn’t want to see Semitsa’s flesh,’ I said. ‘You don’t like flesh, do you, Hallam? It isn’t nice.’
His face flushed like dipped litmus. I went across to the bar, bought two XO brandies and set one in front of Hallam. His face was still red.
‘Just have the papers ready, love,’ I said. ‘I’ll manage.’
Hallam poured the brandy down his throat and his eyes watered more than ever as he nodded agreement.
1 Our radio procedure is designed to make an eavesdropper think we are a taxi service. For this same reason our car pool uses radio-equipped taxi-cabs with the flags always set at ‘hired’.
Every piece has its mode of attack but only a pawn will attack en passant. Similarly only a pawn can be captured in this manner.
Thursday, October 10th
When I left Hallam I drifted north. The Saddle Room was rocking until the spurs jingled and a girl with a back-combed bouffon of red hair was twisting with obsessive grace on a table top which put her ten inches above floor level, not allowing for the back-combing. Her feet knocked the glasses to the floor with rhythmic abandon. No one seemed to mind. I walked as far as the stairs and peered into the smoke and noise. Two girls with large but tight sweaters narcissistically twisted back to back. I poured two or three double whiskies into the back of my throat, watched the floor and tried to forget what a crummy trick I had pulled on Hallam.
It was still raining outside. The doorman and I looked around for a taxi. I found one, gave the doorman a florin and climbed in.
‘I saw it first.’
‘What?’ I said.
‘I saw it first,’ said the girl with the back-combed bouffon. She said it slowly and patiently. She was about five foot ten, light in complexion, nervous of movement, dressed with skilful simplicity. She had a rather wide, full mouth and eyes like a trapped doe. Now she kneaded her face around while querulously telling me yet again that she’d seen the cab before I had.
‘I’m going towards Chelsea,’ she said, opening the door.
I looked around. The bad weather had driven cabs into hiding. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘hop in. We’ll do your journey first.’
The cab pulled into a tight lock and my new friend eased her back-combing on to the leather-work with a sigh.
‘Cigarette?’ she said and flicked the corner of a pack of Camels with a skill that I can never master. I took one and brought a loose Swan Vesta match from my pocket. I dug my thumbnail into the head and ignited it. She was impressed and stared into my eyes as I lit the cigarette. I took it pretty calmly, just like I didn’t have a couple of milligrammes of flaming phosphorus under the nail and coming through the pain threshold like a rusty scalpel.
‘Are you in Advertising?’ she said. She had a soft American accent.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m an account executive with J. Walter Thompson.’
‘You don’t look like any of the Thompson people I know.’
‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘I’m the vanguard of the button-down shirt mob.’ She gave a polite little laugh. ‘Where in Chelsea?’ the driver called. She told him. ‘It’s a party,’ she said to me.
‘Is that why you have that bottle of Guinness in your pocket?’ I asked.
She tapped it to make sure it was still there. ‘Ghoul,’ she said smiling. ‘That’s to wash my hair in.’
‘In Guinness?’ I said.
‘If you want body,’ she said patting her hair.
‘I want body,’ I said. ‘Believe me, I do.’
‘My name is Samantha Steel,’ she said politely. ‘People call me Sam.’
Roman Decoy: a piece offered as bait to save a hazardous situation.
London, Friday, October 11th
Charlotte