Billion-Dollar Brain. Len Deighton

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       4

      When I got back to London I put spots in telephone directories and went through the rest of Harvey Newbegin’s party games for the under-fives. A stuffy voice on the phone said, ‘Don’t worry about that twenty hours nonsense that they told you at the other end. You get along here now. I’m waiting to go down to my boat for a couple of days.’

      So I went to King’s Cross; Bed and Breakfast cards jammed into grimy windows and novelty shops that sell plastic faeces and musical toilet-roll holders. There was a brass plate outside number fifty-three: ‘Surgery. Dr Pike.’ The plate was garnished with qualifications. Near the front door there were two dented dustbins and about thirty old milk bottles. A cold wet sleet was beginning to fall.

      The door was unlocked, but a small buzzer sounded as I pushed it open. The waiting-room was a large Victorian room with a decorated ceiling. There was a wide selection of slightly broken furniture with disembowelled copies of Woman’s Own strategically placed under notices about ante-natal clinics and repeat prescriptions. The notices were penned in strange angular lettering and held in place by crisp pieces of ancient sticking plaster.

      In one corner of the waiting-room, painted white with the word ‘Surgery’ on it, was a hardboard box. It was large enough to contain a desk and two chairs. One chair was large, leather-covered and swivelled smoothly on ball-bearings; the other was narrow, sickly and lame in one leg. Dr Pike counted his fingertips methodically and revolved towards me. He was a large, impeccably groomed man of about fifty-two. His hair was like a black plastic swimming cap. His suit was made of thin uncreasable blue steel and so was his smile.

      ‘Where’s the pain?’ he said. It was a joke. He smiled again to put me at my ease.

      ‘In my hand.’

      ‘Really? You really have a pain in your hand?’

      ‘Just when I put it in my pocket.’

      Pike looked at me carefully and remembered that there are some people who mistake a friendly word for an invitation to be familiar. ‘I’m sure you were the life and soul of the sergeants’ mess.’

      ‘Let’s not exchange war experiences,’ I said.

      ‘Let’s not,’ he agreed.

      On Pike’s desk there was a pen set, a large dog-eared desk-diary, a stethoscope, three prescription pads and a shiny brown ball about as big as a golf ball. He fingered the shiny sphere.

      I said, ‘We will be working together for a long time, so why don’t we decide to get along with each other?’

      ‘That’s a remarkably intelligent idea.’

      Pike and I loathed each other on sight, but he had the advantage of breeding and education, so he swallowed hard and went out of his way to be nice to me.

      ‘This package of …’ He waited for me to finish the sentence.

      ‘Eggs,’ I said. ‘Package of eggs.’

      ‘It may take a day or so to come through.’

      ‘That doesn’t tally with my instructions,’ I said.

      ‘Perhaps not,’ he said in a restrained way, ‘but there are complex reasons why the timing is unpredictable. The people involved are not the sort to whom one can give a direct order.’ He had the precise, accentless English that only a diligent foreigner can produce.

      ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘and why not?’

      Pike smiled while keeping his lips pressed together. ‘We are professional men. Our livelihood depends upon a code of conduct; it’s essential that we do nothing unethical.’

      ‘Are СКАЧАТЬ