Billion-Dollar Brain. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ sledge full of groceries. I planted my feet carefully, for the ice was worn smooth by a winter of heavy use. I came alongside Signe and she took my arm gratefully.

      ‘Do you like champagne?’ she asked.

      ‘Are you offering some?’

      ‘No,’ she said. ‘I just wondered. I’d never had champagne until three months ago. I like it very much. It’s almost my very favourite drink.’

      ‘I’m pleased,’ I said.

      ‘Do you like whisky?’

      ‘I like whisky very much.’

      ‘I like all alcohol. I expect one day I shall become an alcoholic.’ She picked up a handful of snow, compressed it into a snowball and threw it with great energy a hundred yards along the ice. ‘Do you like snow? Do you like ice?’

      ‘Only in whisky and champagne.’

      ‘Can you have ice in champagne? I thought that was wrong.’

      ‘I was just kidding,’ I said.

      ‘I know you were,’ she said.

      We came to the other side of the frozen water and I walked up the embankment. Signe stayed on the ice and fanned her eyelashes.

      ‘What’s the matter?’

      She said, ‘I don’t think I can make it. Could you help me?’

      ‘Stop fooling about. There’s a good girl.’

      ‘OK,’ she said cheerfully and climbed up beside me.

      The city changes slightly on the north side of Long Bridge. Not in the sudden dramatic way that London changes south of the river or Istanbul changes across the Galata Bridge; but on the north side of Long Bridge Helsinki becomes duller, the people are not so smartly dressed and lorries outnumber the cars. Signe took me to a block of flats near Helsinginkatu. She pressed a bell-push in the foyer to announce our arrival but produced a key to let us in. Few of Helsinki’s buildings have the bright newly minted shine that is associated with Finnish design; instead they are well-weathered Victorian hotels. This block was no exception, but inside the air was warm and the carpets soft. The flat we entered was on the sixth floor. There were lithographs on the walls and Artie Shaw on the turntable. The main room was light and large enough to hold a few examples of superb Finnish furniture and still leave room to practise dancing the rumba.

      The man practising the rumba was a short thickset man with thinning brown hair. One hand he held in the air beating time to the music. The other hand held a tall drink. His footwork was adequate, and while we stood in the doorway he treated us to an extra few moments of expertise before looking up and saying, ‘Well, you old Limey sonuvabitch. I knew it was you.’ He took Signe into his arms with an easy movement and they began to dance. I noticed that Signe’s feet were actually standing on his toes, and he waltzed around the floor taking her weight upon his feet as though she was a rag dummy tied to his feet and wrists. The dance ended, and he said, ‘I knew it was you’ again. I said nothing, and he swallowed the remainder of his drink and said to Signe, ‘Oh boy buttercup did you let your pants down for the wrong guy?’^fn1

      Harvey Newbegin was a neatly dressed man; grey flannel suit, initialled handkerchief in top pocket, gold watch, and a relaxed smile. I had known him for a number of years. He had been with the US Defense Department for four years before transferring to the State Department. I had tried to get him working for us at one time but Dawlish had failed to obtain authority to do it. Under those droopy eyelids Harvey had quick, intelligent eyes. He used them to study me while going to get us all a drink. The music was still thumping out of the radiogram. Harvey poured three glasses of whisky, dropped ice and soda into two of them, then walked across to me and Signe. Halfway across the floor he picked up the beat of the music and did a brief sequence of steps the rest of the way.

      ‘Don’t be such a fool,’ Signe said to him. ‘He’s such a fool,’ she added. Harvey gave her the glass of whisky, let go of it before she grasped it and in mid-fall caught it with the other hand and handed it to her without spilling it. ‘He’s such a fool,’ she said again with admiration. She shook little droplets of melted snow from her hair. Her hair was much shorter and even more golden today.

      When we were all seated Harvey said to Signe, ‘Let me tell you something, doll, this guy is a hot tamale: he works for a very smart little British Intelligence outfit. He’s not as dopey as he looks.’ Harvey turned to me. ‘You’ve been tangling with this guy Kaarna.’

      ‘Well …’

      ‘OK, OK, OK, you don’t have to tell me. Kaarna is dead.’

      ‘Dead?’

      ‘DED dead. It’s here in the newspaper. You found him dead. You know it, pal.’

      ‘I give you my word I didn’t,’ I said.

      We looked at each other for a minute, then Harvey said, ‘Well anyway he’s joined the major leagues, there’s nothing we can do about that. But when Signe was hustling you yesterday it was because we urgently need someone to carry between here and London. Could you take on a part-time job for the Yanks? The pay is good.’

      ‘I’ll ask the office,’ I said.

      ‘Ask the office,’ he said scornfully. He tapped his toe on the carpet. ‘You’re a big boy with a mind of your own. Why ask anyone?’

      ‘Because your smart organization might just let the word slip, that’s why.’

      Harvey put a finger across his throat. ‘So help me God, they won’t. We are a very neat, tight-fitting department. Guaranteed no snafus. Cash on the barrel-head. What sort of deal have you got with your London set-up anyway?’

      I said, ‘I work on a freelance basis. They pay me a fee per assignment; it’s a part-time job.’ I paused. ‘I could handle some extra tasks if the money was right and if you’re quite sure London won’t find out from your own people.’ It wasn’t true but it seemed a suitable answer.

      Harvey said, ‘You’ll like working with us and we’d be tickled to have you.’

      ‘Then it’s a deal,’ I said. ‘Explain my duties, as they say in domestic circles.’

      ‘Nothing to it. You’ll be carrying materials between here and London. It’ll seldom be anything you can’t declare …’

      ‘So what’s the catch?’

      ‘Valuables. We must have somebody who won’t walk off with the consignment. You’ll have your first-class airfare paid. Hotel and expenses. A retainer and a fee per trip. As one pro to another I’ll tell you it’s a good deal.’ Signe gave us drinks, and as she turned towards the kitchen Harvey gave her an affectionate pat on the bottom. ‘The fat of the land,’ he said. ‘I’m living on the fat of the land.’

      Signe wrenched Harvey’s hand away from her, snorted and walked out with a beguiling movement of the glutaeus maximus.

      Harvey moved his armchair nearer to me. ‘We don’t normally tell our operatives anything about the organization, but I’ll make an exception for you under the old pals’ act. This is a private intelligence unit financed by an old man named Midwinter. СКАЧАТЬ