The Spy Quartet. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘Can I have another cigarette?’ I gave him one.

      ‘We’re early,’ complained Hudson. ‘That’s a sure way to attract attention.’

      ‘Hudson fancies his chances as a secret agent,’ I said to Kuang.

      ‘I don’t take to your sarcasm,’ said Hudson.

      ‘Well that’s real old-fashioned bad luck, Hudson,’ I said, ‘because you are stuck with it.’

      Grey clouds rushed across the salient. Here and there old windmills – static in spite of the wind – stood across the skyline, like crosses waiting for someone to be nailed upon them. Over the hill came a car with its headlights on.

      They were thirty minutes late. Two men in a Renault 16, a man and his son. They didn’t introduce themselves, in fact they didn’t seem keen to show their faces at all. The older man got out of the car and came across to me. He spat upon the road and cleared his throat.

      ‘You two get into the other car. The American stays in this one. Don’t speak to the boy.’ He smiled and gave a short, croaky, mirthless laugh. ‘In fact don’t speak to me even. There’s a large-scale map in the dashboard. Make sure that’s what you want.’ He gripped my arm as he said it. ‘The boy will take the camionette and dump it somewhere near the Dutch border. The American stays in this car. Someone will meet them at the other end. It’s all arranged.’

      Hudson said to me, ‘Going with you is one thing, but taking off into the blue with this kid is another. I think I can find my own way …’

      ‘Don’t think about it,’ I told him. ‘We just follow the directions on the label. Hold your nose and swallow.’ Hudson nodded.

      We got out of the car and the boy came across, slowly detouring around us as though his father had told him to keep his face averted. The Renault was nice and warm inside. I felt in the glove compartment and found not only a map but a pistol.

      ‘No prints,’ I called to the Fleming. ‘Make sure there’s nothing else, no sweet wrappers or handkerchiefs.’

      ‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘And none of those special cigarettes that are made specially for me in one of those exclusive shops in Jermyn Street.’ He smiled sarcastically. ‘He knows all that.’ His accent was so thick as to be almost unintelligible. I guessed that normally he spoke Flemish and the French was not natural to him. The man spat again in the roadway before climbing into the driver’s seat alongside us. ‘He’s a good boy,’ the man said. ‘He knows what to do.’ By the time he got the Renault started the camionette was out of sight.

      I’d reached the worrying stage of the journey. ‘Did you take notes?’ I asked Kuang suddenly. He looked at me without answering. ‘Be sensible,’ I said. ‘I must know if you are carrying anything that would need to be destroyed. I know there’s the box of stuff Hudson gave you.’ I drummed upon it. ‘Is there anything else?’

      ‘A small notebook taped to my leg. It’s a thin book. I could be searched and they would not find it.’

      I nodded. It was something more to worry about.

      The car moved at high speed over the narrow concrete lanes. Soon we turned on to the wider main road that led north to Ostend. We had left the over-fertilized salient behind us. The fearful names: Tyne Cot, St Julien, Poelcapelle, Westerhoek and Pilckem faded behind us as they had faded from memory, for fifty years had passed and the women who had wept for the countless dead were also dead. Time and TV, frozen food and transistor radios had healed the wounds and filled the places that once seemed unfillable.

      ‘What’s happening?’ I said to the driver. He was the sort of man who had to be questioned or else he would offer no information.

      ‘His people,’ he jerked his head towards Kuang, ‘want him in Ostend. Twenty-three hundred hours tonight at the harbour. I’ll show you on the city plan.’

      ‘Harbour? What’s happening? Is he going aboard a boat tonight?’

      ‘They don’t tell me things like that,’ said the man. ‘I’m just conducting you to my place to see your case officer, then on to Ostend to see his case officer. It’s all so bloody boring. My wife thinks I get paid because it’s dangerous but I’m always telling her: I get paid because it’s so bloody boring. Tired?’ I nodded. ‘We’ll make good time, that’s one advantage, there’s not much traffic about at this time of morning. There’s not much commercial traffic if you avoid the inter-city routes.’

      ‘It’s quiet,’ I said. Now and again small flocks of birds darted across the sky, their eyes seeking food in the hard morning light, their bodies weakened by the cold night air.

      ‘Very few police,’ said the man, ‘The cars keep to the main roads. It will rain soon and the cyclists don’t move much when it’s raining. It’ll be the first rain for two weeks.’

      ‘Stop worrying,’ I said. ‘Your boy will be all right.’

      ‘He knows what to do,’ the man agreed.

      33

      The Fleming owned an hotel not far from Ostend. The car turned into a covered alley that led to a cobbled courtyard. A couple of hens squawked as we parked and a dog howled. ‘It’s difficult,’ said the man, ‘to do anything clandestine around here.’

      He was a small broad man with a sallow skin that would always look dirty no matter what he did to it. The bridge of his nose was large and formed a straight line with his forehead, like the nose metal of a medieval helmet. His mouth was small and he held his lips tight to conceal his bad teeth. Around his mouth were scars of the sort that you get when thrown through a windscreen. He smiled to show me it was a joke rather than an apology, and the scars made a pattern around his mouth like a tightened hairnet.

      The door from the side entrance of the hotel opened and a woman in a black dress and white apron stared at us.

      ‘They have come,’ said the man.

      ‘So I see,’ she said. ‘No luggage?’

      ‘No luggage,’ said the man. She seemed to need some explanation, as though we were a man and girl trying to book a double room.

      ‘They need to rest, ma jolie môme,’ said the man. She was no one’s pretty child, but the compliment appeased her for a moment.

      ‘Room four,’ she said.

      ‘The police have been?’

      ‘Yes,’ she said.

      ‘They won’t be back until night,’ said the man to us. ‘Perhaps not then even. They check the book. It’s for the taxes more than to find criminals.’

      ‘Don’t use all the hot water,’ said the woman. We followed her through the yellow peeling side door into the hotel entrance hall. There was a counter made of carelessly painted hardboard and a rack with eight keys hanging from it. The lino had the large square pattern that’s supposed to look like inlaid marble; it curled at the edges and something hot had indented a perfect circle near the door.

      ‘Name?’ said the woman grimly as though she was about to enter us in СКАЧАТЬ