Mexico Set. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ stared at me, his mouth pursed, his eyes narrowed. ‘Is it right or not?’ He smiled. ‘Or do you think they might have some other Englishwoman running the KGB office in Berlin.’

      ‘Probably Fiona,’ I said.

      ‘Well, I’m glad we agree on that one,’ said Dicky sarcastically. It was only when I heard the contempt in his voice that I realized that he hated working on this job with me as much as I did with him. In the London office our relationship was tolerable; but on this type of job every little difference became abrasive. Dicky turned away from me and took a great interest in the various pots of stew. One of the stallholders opened the lids so that we could sniff. ‘Smell that,’ I said. ‘There’s enough chilli in there to put you into orbit.’

      ‘Obit, you mean,’ said Dicky, moving on quickly. ‘Put you into the Times obit column.’ His dinner with the Volkmanns had lessened his appetite for the chilli. ‘Our friend Paul Biedermann is going soggy on them. He starts making up stories about British spies telephoning him, and who knows what other sort of nonsense he’s been telling them. So they get nervous and Stinnes is sent over here to kick arses and get Biedermann back into line.’

      ‘Is that also what Frank says?’

      ‘No, that’s what I’m saying. It’s obvious. I don’t know why you are being so baroque about it. Maybe it’s not a very big deal. But these KGB people like a nice little jaunt to Mexico, fresh lobster salad and a swim in the Pacific to brighten up their working days. Stinnes is no different.’

      ‘It doesn’t feel right. Biedermann is rich and successful; he is woolly-minded and flabby with it. He doesn’t have the motivation, and he certainly doesn’t need the money.’

      ‘So what? Biedermann was frightened for his family. Shall we eat here? Some of this food looks really good. Look at that.’ He read the sign. ‘What are carnitas?’

      ‘Stewed pork. He’s serving it on chicharrones: pork crackling. You eat the meat, then eat the plate. Biedermann wouldn’t give that plate of pork for his family, and especially not for distant relatives in Rostock.’

      ‘We’ll walk to the end and see what else there is and then come back here and try some,’ Dicky suggested. Dicky could always surprise me. Just as I had decided he was the archetypal gringo tourist, he wanted to have lunch at a fonda. ‘So what’s your theory?’

      ‘I have no theory,’ I said. ‘Agents come in many shapes and sizes. Some are waiting for the socialist millennium, some hate their parents, some get angry after being ripped off by a loan company. Some simply want more money. But usually it begins with opportunity. A man finds himself handling something secret and valuable. He starts thinking about using that opportunity to get more money. Only then does he become a dedicated communist agent. So how does Biedermann fit into that? Where are his secrets? What’s his motivation?’

      ‘Guilt,’ said Dicky. ‘He feels guilty about his wealth.’

      ‘If you’d ever met Paul Biedermann you’d know what a good joke that is.’

      ‘Blackmail, then?’

      ‘About what?’

      ‘Sex.’

      ‘Paul Biedermann would pay to have people say he was a sex maniac. He thinks of himself as a rich playboy.’

      ‘You let your acute dislike of Paul Biedermann spill over into your judgements, Bernard. The fact of the matter is that Biedermann is an agent. You heard the two KGB people talking. He is an agent; it’s no good your trying to convince yourself he’s not.’

      ‘Oh, he’s an agent,’ I said. ‘But he’s not the sort of agent that a man such as Stinnes would be running. That’s what puzzles me.’

      ‘Your experience makes you over-estimate what qualities an agent needs. Try and see it from their point of view: rich US businessman – someone the local cops would be reluctant to upset – isolated house on a lonely stretch of beach in western Mexico, not too far by road from the capital. And not too far by sea from Vladivostok.’

      ‘Landing guns, you mean?’

      ‘A man with a reputation for drinking who gets so rough with his servants that he’s left all alone in the house. Wife and children often away. Convenient beach, pier big enough for a big motor boat.’

      ‘Come along, Dicky,’ I said. ‘This is just a holiday cottage by Biedermann’s standards. This is just a place he goes to read the Wall Street Journal and spend the weekend dreaming up a quick way to make a million or two.’

      ‘So for half the year the house is completely empty. Then Stinnes and his pals have the place all to themselves. We know guns go from Cuba to Mexico’s east coast and onwards by light plane. So why not bring them across the Pacific from the country where they are manufactured?’ We’d got to the end of the food stalls and Dicky became interested in a stall selling pictures. There were family group photos and coloured litho portraits of generals and presidents. All of the pictures were in fine old frames.

      ‘It doesn’t smell right,’ I said. But Dicky had put together a convincing scenario. If it was the house they were interested in, it didn’t matter what kind of aptitude Biedermann had for being a field agent. Yes, London Central would love a report along those lines. It had the drama they liked. It had the geopolitic that called for maps and coloured diagrams. And, as a bottom line, it could be true.

      ‘If it doesn’t smell right,’ said Dicky with heavy irony, ‘I’ll tell London to forget the whole thing.’ He stood up straight as he looked at the selection of pictures for sale, and I realized he was studying his reflection in the glass-fronted pictures. He was too thin for the large, bright-green safari shirt. It made him look like a lollipop. ‘Is it going to rain?’ he said, looking at the time. He’d bought a new wrist-watch too. It was a multi-dial black chronometer that kept perfect time at 50 fathoms.

      ‘It seldom rains in the morning, even during the rainy season.’

      ‘It will bucket down on the stroke of noon, then,’ said Dicky, looking up at the clouds that were now turning yellowish.

      ‘I’m still not sure what London wants with Stinnes,’ I said.

      ‘London want Stinnes enrolled,’ he said, as if he’d just remembered it. ‘Shall we walk back to where the pork is? What did you say it’s called – carnitas?’

      ‘Enrolled?’ It could mean a lot of things from persuaded to defect, to knocked on the head and rolled in a carpet. ‘That would be difficult.’

      ‘The bigger they are the harder they fall,’ said Dicky. ‘You said yourself that he’s forty years old and passed over for promotion. He’s been stuck in East Berlin for ages. Berlin is a plum job for Western intelligence but it’s the boondocks for their people. A smart KGB major left to rot in East Berlin is sure to be fretting.’

      ‘I suppose his wife likes it there,’ I said.

      ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ said Dicky. ‘Would I take an intelligence job in Canada because my wife liked ice hockey?’

      ‘No, Dicky, you wouldn’t.’

      ‘And this fellow Stinnes will see what’s good for him. Frank СКАЧАТЬ