Billion-Dollar Brain. Len Deighton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Just us.’

      ‘I’m taking no chances. Tonight I’m cooking you a birthday feast at the flat. I’ll give you all your favourite things.’

      ‘You will?’

      ‘To eat.’

      ‘I’ll be there,’ I said.

      ‘You’d better be.’ She gave me a perfunctory kiss – ‘Happy birthday’ – and leaned across and put a glass of water and two Alka Seltzer tablets on my blotter.

      ‘Why not put the tablets into the water?’ I asked.

      ‘I wasn’t sure if you could bear the noise.’

      She unlocked my trays and began to work steadily through the great pile of paper-work. By midday we hadn’t made much impression upon it. I said, ‘We aren’t even keeping up with the incoming.’

      ‘We can start a “pending” tray.’

      ‘Don’t be so female,’ I said. ‘All that does is call some of it another name. Why can’t you go through it and handle some of it without me?’

      ‘I already did.’

      ‘Then sort out the “information onlys”, mark them for return to us and pass them on. That would give us a breathing space.’

      ‘Now who’s kidding himself?’

      ‘Can you think of something better?’

      ‘Yes. I think we should get a written directive from Organization to be sure we’re handling only files that we should handle. There may be things in this tray that are nothing to do with us.’

      ‘There are times, my love, when I think none of it is anything to do with us.’

      Jean stared at me in an expressionless way that might have indicated disapproval. Maybe she was thinking about her hair.

      ‘Birthday lunch at the Trat,’ I said.

      ‘But I look awful.’

      ‘Yes,’ I said.

      ‘I must do my hair. Give me five minutes.’

      ‘I’ll give you six,’ I said. She had been thinking about her hair.

      We lunched at the Trattoria Terrazza: Tagliatelle alla carbonara, Osso buco, coffee. Pol Roger throughout. Mario complimented me on having a birthday and kissed Jean to celebrate it. He snapped his fingers and up came Strega. I snapped my fingers and up came more Pol Roger. We sat there, drinking champagne with Strega chasers, talking, snapping fingers and discovering ultimate truth and our own infinite wisdom. We got back to the office at three forty-five and I realized for the first time how dangerous that loose lino on the stairs can be.

      As I entered my office the intercom was buzzing like a trapped bluebottle. ‘Yes,’ I said.

      ‘Right away,’ said Dawlish, my boss.

      ‘Right away, sir,’ I said, slowly and carefully.

      Dawlish had the only room in the building with two windows. It was a comfortable room, although overcrowded with pieces of not very valuable antique furniture. There was a smell of wet overcoats. Dawlish was a meticulous man who looked like an Edwardian coroner. His hair was grey moving towards white and his hands long and thin. When he read he moved his fingertips across the page as though getting a finer understanding from the sense of touch. He looked up from his desk.

      ‘Was that you falling down the stairs?’

      ‘I stumbled,’ I said. ‘It’s the snow on my shoes.’

      ‘Of course it is, my boy,’ said Dawlish. We both stared out of the window; the snow was falling faster, and great white snakes of it were wriggling along the gutter, for it was still dry enough to be lifted by the wind.

      ‘I’m just sending another 378 file to the PM. I hate this clearance business. It’s so easy to slip up.’

      ‘That’s true,’ I said, and was pleased that I didn’t have to sign that file.

      ‘What do you think?’ asked Dawlish. ‘Do you think that that boy is a security risk?’

      The 378 file was a periodic review of the loyalty of S.1s – important chemists, engineers etc. – but I knew that Dawlish just wanted to think aloud, so I grunted.

      ‘You know the one I’m worried about. You know him.’

      ‘I’ve never handled his file,’ and as long as choice was concerned I’d make damned certain I didn’t. I knew that Dawlish had another nasty little bomb called the 378 file sub-section 14, which was a file about trade-union officials. At the slightest show of intelligent interest I would find that file on my desk.

      ‘Personally: what do you feel about him personally?’ asked Dawlish.

      ‘Brilliant young student. Socialist. Pleased with himself for getting an honours degree. Wakes up one morning with a suede waistcoat, two kids, job in advertising and a ten-thousand-quid mortgage in Hampstead. Sends for a subscription to the Daily Worker just so that he can read the Statesman with a clear conscience. Harmless.’ I hoped that reply carried the right blend of inefficient glibness.

      ‘Very good,’ said Dawlish, turning the pages of the file. ‘We should give you a job here.’

      ‘I’d never get on with the boss.’

      Dawlish initialled a chit at the front of the file and tossed it into the out tray. ‘We have another problem,’ he said, ‘that won’t be solved as easily as that.’ Dawlish reached for a slim file, opened it and read a name. ‘Olaf Kaarna: you know him?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Journalists who have well-placed, indiscreet friends call themselves political commentators. Kaarna is one of the more responsible ones. He’s Finnish. Comfortable.’ (Dawlish’s word for a private income.) ‘He spends a great deal of time and money collecting his information. Two days ago he spoke to one of our embassy people in Helsinki. Asked him to confirm a couple of small technical points before an article is published next month. He’s thinking of sending it to Kansan Uutiset, which is the left-wing newspaper. If it was something harmful to us, that would be a good place to set the fuses. Of course we don’t know what Kaarna has up his sleeve, but he says he can show that there is a vast British Military Intelligence operation covering northern Europe and centred in Finland.’ Dawlish smiled as he said this and so did I. The thought of Ross at the War Office master-minding a global network was a little unreal.

      ‘And the clever answer is …?’

      ‘Heaven knows,’ said Dawlish, ‘but one must follow it up. Ross will no doubt send someone. The Foreign Office have been told; O’Brien can hardly ignore the situation.’

      ‘It’s like one of those parties where the first girl to leave will have everyone talking about her.’

      ‘Quite so,’ said Dawlish. ‘That’s why I want you to go tomorrow morning.’

СКАЧАТЬ