Mexico Set. Len Deighton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ of fingers through curly hair. ‘The worst difficulty is that the Data Centre showed that Stinnes has an eighteen-year-old son. That might prove sticky.’

      ‘Christ, Dicky,’ I said, as I came to terms with this bombshell. ‘Did you know all this when we left London?’

      ‘Enrolling Stinnes, you mean?’

      ‘Yes, enrolling Stinnes I mean.’

      ‘It looked as if it might go that way.’ That was Dicky on the defensive. He’d known all along, that was obvious. I wondered what else he knew that he was not going to tell me about until it happened. ‘London Central put out a departmental alert for him, didn’t they?’ We had reached the carnitas stand by now. He selected a chair that didn’t wobble and sat down. ‘I’ll have mine wrapped in a tortilla; pork skin is very fattening.’

      ‘London Central puts out departmental alerts for clerks who make off with the petty cash.’

      ‘But they don’t send senior staff, like us, to identify them when they are spotted,’ said Dicky.

      ‘Enrolled,’ I said, considering all the implications. ‘A hotshot like Stinnes. You and me? It’s madness.’

      ‘Only if you start thinking it’s madness,’ said Dicky. ‘My own opinion …’ Pause. ‘For what’s it’s worth …’ A modest smile. ‘… is that we stand an excellent chance.’

      ‘And when did you last enrol a KGB major?’

      Dicky bit his lip. We both knew the answer to that one. Dicky was a pen-pusher. Stinnes was the first KGB officer Dicky had ever come this close to, and he hadn’t seen Stinnes yet.

      ‘Isn’t London proposing to send someone over here to help? This is a complicated job, Dicky. We need someone who has experience.’

      ‘Nonsense. We can do it. I don’t want Bret Rensselaer breathing down my neck. If we can pull this one off, it will be a real coup.’ He smiled. ‘I didn’t expect you to start asking London for help, Bernard. I thought you were the one who always liked to do everything on his own.’

      ‘I’m not on my own,’ I said. ‘I’m with you.’ The stallholder was stirring his cauldron of pork and arranging suitable pieces on a large metal platter.

      ‘And you’d prefer to work with your friend Werner, eh?’

      I could hear danger signals. ‘We were at school together,’ I said. ‘I’ve known him a long time.’

      ‘Werner Volkmann isn’t even employed by the department. He hasn’t been employed by us for years.’

      ‘Officially that’s right,’ I said. ‘But he’s worked for us from time to time.’

      ‘Because you give him jobs to do,’ said Dicky. ‘Don’t try to make it sound as if the department employs him.’

      ‘Werner knows Berlin,’ I said.

      ‘You know Berlin. Frank Harrington knows Berlin. Our friend Stinnes knows Berlin. There is no great shortage of people who know Berlin. That’s no reason for employing Werner.’

      ‘Werner is a Jew. He was born in Berlin when the Nazis were running things. Werner instinctively sees things in people that you and I have to learn about. You can’t compare his knowledge of Berlin and Berliners with anything I know.’

      ‘Calm down. Everyone knows Werner is your alter ego, and so mustn’t be criticized.’

      ‘What do you want? You can have “lean meat”, “pure meat”, “meat without fat” or “a bit of everything”.’

      ‘What’s the difference between …’

      ‘Don’t let’s get into semantics,’ I said. ‘Try surtido, that’s a bit of everything.’ Dicky nodded his agreement.

      Dicky, who always showed a remarkable aptitude for feeding himself, now discovered that a carnitas stand is always conveniently close to those that sell the necessary accompaniments. He provided us with salsas and marinated cactus, and was now discovering that tortillas are sold by the kilo. ‘A kilo,’ he said as the tortilla lady disappeared with the payment and left him with a huge pile of them. ‘Do you think they’ll keep if I take them back for Daphne?’ He wrapped some of the pork into the top tortilla. ‘Delicious,’ he said as he ate the first one and took a second tortilla to begin making another. ‘What are all those pieces?’

      ‘That’s ear, and those pieces are intestine,’ I said.

      ‘You just wait until Daphne hears what I’ve been eating; she’ll throw up. Our neighbours came out to Mexico last year and stayed in the Sheraton. They wouldn’t even clean their teeth unless they had bottled water. I wish I had my camera so you could photograph me eating here in the market. Now what is it again – carnitas? I want to get it exactly right when I tell them.’

      ‘Carnitas,’ I said. ‘Surtido.’

      Dicky wiped his mouth on his handkerchief and stood up and looked round the market square. Just from where we were sitting I could see people selling plastic toys, antique tables and gilt mirrors, cheap shirts, brass bedsteads, dog-eared American film magazines and a selection of cut-glass stoppers that always survive long after the decanters. ‘Yes,’ said Dicky. ‘It’s really quite a place, isn’t it? Fifteen million people perched at seven thousand feet altitude with high mountain tops all round them and thick smog permanently overhead. Where else could you find a capital city with no river, no coastline and such lousy roads? And yet this is one of the oldest cities the world has ever known. If that doesn’t prove that the human race is stone-raving mad, nothing will.’

      ‘I hope you don’t think I’m going to walk right up to Stinnes and offer him a chance to defect,’ I said.

      ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Dicky. ‘The Volkmanns already know him. Shall we let them make the first overtures?’

      ‘Werner doesn’t work for the department. You just told me that.’

      ‘Correction,’ said Dicky. ‘I said that Werner’s knowledge of Berlin is not sufficient reason for using him in Berlin. Let’s remember that Werner has had a “non-critical employment only” tag on his file.’

      ‘You can be a spiteful bastard, Dicky,’ I said. ‘You’re talking about that signals leak in 1978. You know very well that Werner was completely cleared of suspicion.’

      ‘It was your wife who did it,’ said Dicky. Suddenly he was angry. He was angry because he’d never suspected Fiona of leaking secrets, and now I realized that Dicky saw me as someone who had helped to deceive him rather than as Fiona’s principal victim.

      The sky was darkening with clouds now and there was the movement of air that precedes a storm. I never got used to the speedy effects of the heat and humidity. The sweet smell of fresh fruits and vegetables had filled the air when we first arrived at the market. Now it was already giving way to the smells of putrefaction as the spoiled, squashed and broken produce went bad.

      ‘Yes, it was my wife who did it. Werner was innocent.’

      ‘And if you’d listened you’d have heard me СКАЧАТЬ