The Harry Palmer Quartet. Len Deighton

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      ‘Haven’t the faintest,’ I said. ‘Go to laboratory, wife doesn’t know what’s got into him lately, discover dark almond-eyed woman. Bank manager wonders where he’s been getting all that money. Fist fight through darkened lab. Glass tubes that would blow the world to shreds. Mad scientist backs to freedom holding phial – flying tackle by me. Up grams Rule Britannia.’

      Dalby gave me a look calculated to have me feeling like an employee, he got to his feet and walked across to the big map of Europe that he had had pinned across the wall for the last week. I walked across to him. ‘You think that Jay is master minding it,’ I said. Dalby looked at the map and still staring at it said, ‘Sure of it, absolutely sure of it.’

      The map was covered with clear acetate and five small frontier areas from Finland to the Caspian were marked in black greasy pencil. Two places in Syria carried small red flags.

      Dalby said, ‘Every important illegal movement across these bits of frontier that I have marked are with Jay’s OK.

      ‘Important movement. I don’t mean he stands around checking that the eggs have little lions on.’ Dalby tapped the border. ‘Somewhere before they get him as far as this we must …’ Dalby’s voice trailed away lost in thought.

      ‘Hi-jack him?’ I prompted softly. Dalby’s mind had raced on. ‘It’s January. If only we could do this in January,’ he said. January was the month that the Government estimates were prepared. I began to see what he meant. Dalby suddenly became aware of me again and turned on a big flash of boyish charm.

      ‘You see,’ said Dalby. ‘It’s not just a case of the defection of one biochemist …’

      ‘Defection? I thought that Jay’s speciality was a high-quality line in snatch jobs.’

‘Hi-jack! Snatch jobs! all that gangland talk. You read too many newspapers that’s your trouble. You mean they walk him through the customs and immigration with two heavy-jowled men behind him with their right hands in their overcoat pockets? No. No. No,’ he said the three ‘noes’ softly, paused and added two more. ‘… this isn’t a mere emigration of one little chemist,’ (Dalby made him sound like an assistant from Boots) ‘who has probably been selling them stuff for years. In fact given the choice I’m not sure I wouldn’t let him go. It’s those—people at the Home Office. They should know about these things before they occur: not start crying in their beer afterwards.’ He picked two cigarettes out of his case, threw one to me and balanced the other between his fingers. ‘They are all right running the Special Branch, HM prisons and Cruelty to Animal Inspectors but as soon as they get into our business they have trouble touching bottom.’¹ Dalby continued to do balancing tricks with the cigarette to which he had been talking. Then he looked up and began to talk to me. ‘Do you honestly believe that given all the Home Office Security files we couldn’t do a thousand times better than they have ever done?’

      ‘I think we could,’ I said. He was so pleased with my answer that he stopped toying with the cigarette and lit it in a burst of energy. He inhaled the smoke then tried to snort it down his nostrils. He choked. His face went red. ‘Shall I get you a glass of water?’ I asked, and his face went redder. I must have ruined the drama of the moment. Dalby recovered his breath and went on.

      ‘You can see now that this is something more than an ordinary case, it’s a test case.’

      ‘I sense impending Jesuitical pleas.’

      ‘Exactly,’ said Dalby with a malevolent smile. He loved to be cast as the villain, especially if it could be done with schoolboy-scholarship. ‘You remember the Jesuit motto.’ He was always surprised to find I had read any sort of book.

      ‘When the end is lawful the means are also lawful,’ I answered.

      He beamed and pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. I had made him very happy.

      ‘If it pleases you that much,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t muster it in dog-Latin.’

      ‘It’s all right, all right,’ said Dalby. He traversed his cigarette then changed the range and elevation until it had me in its sights. He spoke slowly, carefully articulating each syllable. ‘Go and buy this Raven for me.’

      ‘From Jay.’

      ‘From anyone who has him – I’m broadminded.’

      ‘How much can I spend, Daddy?’

      He moved his chair an inch nearer the desk with a loud crash. ‘Look here, every point of entry has the stopper jammed tightly upon it.’ He gave a little bitter laugh. ‘It makes you laugh, doesn’t it. I remember when we asked HO to close the airports for one hour last July. The list of excuses they gave us. But when someone slips through their little butter-fingers and they are going to be asked some awkward questions, anything goes. Anyway, Jay is a bright lad; he’ll know what’s going on; he’ll have this Raven on ice for a week and then move him when all goes quiet. If meanwhile we make him anything like a decent offer …’ Dalby’s voice trailed off as he slipped his mind into over-drive, ‘… say 18,000 quid. We pick him up from anywhere Jay says – no questions asked.’

      ‘18,000,’ I said.

      ‘You can go up to twenty-three if you are sure they are on the level. But on our terms. Payment after delivery. Into a Swiss bank. Strictly no cash and I don’t want Raven dead. Or even damaged.’

      ‘OK,’ I said. I suddenly felt very small and young and called upon to do something that I wasn’t sure I could manage. If this was the run of the mill job at WOOC(P) they deserved their high pay and expense accounts. ‘Shall I start by locating Jay?’ It seemed a foolish thing to say but I felt in dire need of an instruction book.

      Dalby flapped a palm. I sat down again. ‘Done,’ he said. He flipped a switch on his squawk-box. Alice’s voice, electronically distorted, spoke from the room downstairs. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said.

      ‘What’s Jay doing?’

      There was a couple of clicks and Alice’s voice came back to the office again. ‘At 12.10 he was in Lederer’s coffee-house.’

      ‘Thanks, Alice,’ said Dalby.

      ‘Cease surveillance, sir?’

      ‘Not yet, Alice. I’ll tell you when.’ To me he said, ‘There you are then. Off you go.’

      I doused my cigarette and stood up. ‘Two other last things,’ said Dalby. ‘I am authorizing you for 1,200 a year expenses. And,’ he paused, ‘don’t contact me if anything goes wrong, because I won’t know what the hell you are talking about.’

¹ The Denning report published September, 1963 revealed that the Home Secretary is in control of British Counter Intelligence.

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      [Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) New business opportunities begin well in unusual surroundings that provide chance of a gamble.]

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