The Harry Palmer Quartet. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ but now it covers the whole scientific programme – even non-military.’

      You could see that the non-military bit really hurt; that was below the belt.

      I said that I wouldn’t mind if it was a small one, but that then I had better go, no really – perhaps another time. We fenced off a few questions about leaks in the UK, to persuade them that we didn’t know what was happening. It wasn’t difficult. Skip saw us off down to the little white-painted fence by means of which a considerate army enabled him to feel he had never left New Jersey. He was going back to the States the next day – I said to give my regards to Barney, and he said he would, and did I have plenty of cigarettes. We shook hands and I remembered Skip Henderson as he used to be; with hair to spare for barbers, and a fund of stories upon which every barman in town would refuel. I remember him carrying his old camera, and stopping every pretty girl he saw, saying he was from Life magazine, and how he hoped they didn’t think him rude for speaking to them without being introduced. The pictures he took with that old camera, ‘And now perhaps a really sophisticated shot in case we make the cover again this week.’ I don’t think Skip knew how the film fitted into it even. Everyone in town knew that Skip was always good for a laugh and a couple of dollars.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ Skip said, ‘for not having sherry. I mean I know you hate whisky before dinner really.’ Skip kicked the toe of his elegant, hand-tooled Italian pointed non-army brogues in the sand. I knew that Skip knew that I knew who dark-eyes was.

      I gave him the two-handed pump-handle grip that in the old days we used as a joke. ‘That’s OK, Skip. You’ll find yourself in London anytime, and our liquor supply isn’t all it should be. You know?’ He brightened up a bit and as he said good-bye to Jean I saw a flash of the old technique for an instant. It was almost dusk now. Here and there in the dingy sun-charred palm trees a bird fidgeted, and the waves hit, dragged at and sank into the shingle beach and wore the pebbles smoother. We walked across the sandy compound in silence, Jean and I, and the sun was leaving us to go to India, and the sand was red and the sky was mauve and Jean was beautiful and the wind was in her hair and her hand was in mine.

      From half a mile away the juke-box in the officers’ club rubbed the smooth night sky with sandpaper sounds. Inside, the tension bubble of the hard day had burst into the inconsequent chatter of martini-lubricated relaxation. From the far corner a barbecue fire sent up spluttering spitting sounds like a thousand captive kittens to accompany the bright flashes of flame. A white-clad Mephistopheles poked, prodded and mothered the thick slabs of prime American beef, and dabbed at them with the contents of a can of ‘CHARKOL Barbecue flavor dressing’.

      A pink-faced boy in a white jacket found us a little check table-cloth in the corner. There was some very old Ellington that some very old fan like me had selected from the juke-box murmuring low. A candle in a chianti bottle flickered across Jean’s pale flat face, and I wondered how many US Officers’ Clubs in France had a Pacific-style décor. Outside, the night was clear and warm.

      ‘I like your friend Skip.’ Men’s friendships are something that women wonder at and fear slightly. ‘He seemed a little withdrawn, as though …’

      ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Say it.’

      ‘I don’t know what I was going to say really.’

      ‘You know, so say it. We can use a few extra opinions as things are.’ The candlelight swerved across Jean’s face as the candle was lifted away. We both turned to see Dalby lighting a cheroot from it. He drew deeply on the small black leaf. Dalby had changed into a red Hawaiian shirt with large blue and yellow flowers across it; put on a pair of lightweight trousers, and gone to the barber’s shop. Dalby had this knack, or art, or charm for sinking into such a combination without looking different from all the Americans wearing it.

      ‘You’re making with the native costume.’

      He dragged on the cheroot before replying, then carefully put it to rest in an ashtray. It was his claim to a seat at the table. He was just crazy about symbolism, Dalby. He finished looking casually round the room and directed his attention back to us.

      ‘Are you sure I’m not intruding?’ he said, sliding into the seat beside Jean.

      ‘Jean was going to give me her opinion of Skip Henderson.’

      ‘I would be most interested to hear it,’ said Dalby, his small bright eyes looking over the menu carefully. He gave me the creeps when he did this. It was almost Yogi the way he diverted his eyes to an object or a piece of paper to enable him to concentrate. Jean had a similar habit. I wondered if I did the same thing and I wondered if Ross had managed to get hold of him about the file.

      ‘Well, he looked frightened almost,’ I was watching Dalby; his eyes were fixed on one place on the menu. He was listening.

      At the next table I could hear a loud American voice. ‘Soldier, I said, that’s my wife’s personal baggage and you’ll move your tail back into that baggage-room …’

      ‘Frightened? Of me, you mean?’ I always seemed to get embroiled in nutty conversations when Dalby was with me. I wished Jean would drop it. She just didn’t know a thing about Skip Henderson. Skippie Henderson who went to Korea and let himself be captured just so he could find out about collaborating in the prison camps; who came back to Washington with three bayonet wounds, a lungful of TB and a dossier that put a lot of exprisoner brass into the hot-seat. In a court-martial hot-seat. Skip stayed a captain for a long time after that. Prisoners’ friends had friends. But frightened? Skip? who had the only Negro officer in the CIA as his assistant – Barney Barnes, and kept him against every sort of opposition that could be mustered. She just didn’t know what Skip was like. Smooth smiling Skip. Twenty years and they’d finally made him a major, and detailed a major to listen to his nightmares.

      ‘No,’ said Jean. ‘And I don’t mean frightened of his tame policeman either. I don’t mean frightened of anything. Sort of frightened for. He kept looking at you like he wanted to save you up, remember you very thoroughly for some reason. A last look almost.’

      ‘So you thought that he was … Skip had a strong-arm man with him,’ I said to Dalby. ‘Did your boyo have one, too, or did he have enough rank to be trusted?’

      Dalby spoke without looking up from the menu. ‘I don’t think you should get too paranoiac on Henderson’s behalf. He’s done a lot of silly things in his time. They are pretty worried about this situation and my personal opinion is that Skip Henderson’s policeman is at least there with his “OK”, and may even be his idea. They don’t want to spread the word too wide, and this way they stopper up the information without offence to old buddy buddies.’

      ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I can hear McCone laying awake all night worrying whether Skip and I have lost a beautiful friendship.’

      ‘Oh, I can understand that,’ said Jean. ‘It’s well worth a little trouble to see that valuable contacts are not lost when a little trouble could preserve them.’

      ‘I’m still not convinced. Skip would have no difficulty in closing the questioning. He’s never had any trouble with a “no” in his life.’

      ‘That’s true,’ said Dalby. ‘If he’d been just a little more parsimonious with his “no’s” he’d be a lieutenant-general by now.’

      I wondered if this meant that Dalby had said a clear unequivocal ‘yes’ to Ross’s offer of the Gumhuria file. I tried to catch Dalby’s eye, but if it was intended as a hint he was doing nothing to confirm it. Dalby was giving all his attention to landing a waiter, and СКАЧАТЬ