скачать книгу бесплатно
‘Not unless you’re standing on your own neck; the hottest thing on this island is you. You’re bugged, you’re strapped down, you’re pickled. “The friends”
(#ulink_7e20269f-2493-50f2-b942-c38948ca7fea) have the word that you’ve walked away. Have you walked away, just a little way? Did you put a down payment on a dacha with some old stuff you knew they had anyway? Just tell me.’
‘Just tell you?’ I said. ‘Just tell you? So the friends fling me half-way around the world for you to finger me on a bomb platform. But before that happens I just tell you? Are you crazy?’
‘Am I crazy? Are you crazy? One of us probably is but there’s a wild little chance that we are both smarter than anyone else around here.’ Barney’s hot glistening face was three inches from mine. And time stopped in a frozen minute of suspended silence. My mind photographed a wave in mid splash; Danny Kaye far below me, helmet off, wiping his brow on a white handkerchief. ‘I’ll be DED if anyone knows I’ve even spoken to you. Why do you think that they have that creep fixed on Skip as firmly as a scar, and that blonde cow welded to me? I’m greasing the skids to the morgue just coming within loudhailer distance of you.’
‘So why aren’t you buying a subscription for my funeral?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know why. I suppose because after a little while in this business you start getting egoistic about judging character.’
‘Thanks.’ It seemed a pretty lame thing to say. We stood looking at each other and Barney went across to the lift and jammed a glove into the handle so that it couldn’t be controlled from the ground. Barney spoke quietly – ‘I’m the only character around here who’d give you half a whirl, the only one.’ He paused. ‘Even that girl is half-way convinced.’ He flapped a hand. ‘Never mind how I know; I know. But on the other hand I’ve seen a few coloured guys given the heave-ho. I’m difficult to convince when it comes to concerted action against a guy who maybe doesn’t know what it is tiptoeing up behind him. Afterwards it tends to be too late to find out if anyone made a mistake.’
I started to speak. I don’t know whether I was going to argue, thank him or apologize, but he waved his heavy pink palm across his chest.
‘Don’t thank me. Skip didn’t have the opportunity I had. It’s my sergeant you should be thanking. He’s out there on one of those generator trucks making like he’s me. We’re just relying on the fact that most tall niggers look alike to pale-faces.’ Barney opened his mouth in a symbol of a grin; there was no mirth in it whatsoever. ‘Anything he gets will really be for nothing.’
‘Wait a minute – let me fasten on to all this,’ I said.
‘You haven’t got the time, fella. Just forget you ever saw me and light out, especially both those things.’
My mind was dizzy trying to think. Maybe, I kept thinking, Barney had slid off his trolley. But I knew Barney was right. It made sense from too many puzzling things to be anything but true.
‘We daren’t be seen here, man. I must bend the shoes!’
‘Will you let me have the gun, Barney?’
‘The heater, man. You ain’t going to shoot your way out of this installation. If you want to do yourself a favour, start talking, and talk your way on to a fast plane OUT.’
‘The gun.’
‘Okay. Be a nut.’ Barney threw me the gun and a small metal reel all prepared for me. I raised the leg of my trousers and using the reel of sticking-plaster, stuck the gun to the outside of my right leg. When I covered it again, Barney passed me a dark-blue thin canvas belt. It was about five inches deep and similar to the ones used by gold smugglers. I undid my trousers and strapped the heavy, sweaty belt, full of automatic clips, under my shirt. Barney having retrieved his glove, climbed out over the rim of the platform. He swung down the narrow ladder and paused as his neck came level with my feet. I guess he was wondering whether I might not kick him into oblivion. He looked at the toe of my shoe reflectively, and hammered his fist softly against it in a gesture of farewell. As he looked up, I once more found my mind committing the details to memory. I remember his wide handsome face like we all remember the rivets on our dentist’s spectacles.
‘And don’t go sobbing to your new boss, paleface.’
‘Dalby’s convinced, too, huh?’ I paraded all Dalby’s words and attitudes over the last few days through my mind.
‘Him speak with knife-and-forked tongue, man.’
I put the sole of my shoe on Barney’s knitted hair. ‘Get out of here, you bum,’ I said.
‘You could do yourself just that favour,’ Barney said. ‘Try for vertically.’
The journey down seemed faster than the journey up. The white-haired little guy had put my case out of the sun. I picked it up and we walked back towards the gate. A truck had stopped at the gate and the driver was getting out so that a policeman could drive it up to the tower. In the jeep Danny Kaye was talking to the gunner earnestly. I suppose they were discussing whether to make anti-clockwise the next time round the tower. The white-haired one and me flipped them our security cards but they didn’t seem to know that the hottest piece of merchandise on the island was padding out of their vicinity. We had a new Chev parked outside the gate. We got in to drive back to the mess.
‘Meters don’t have mercury in,’ said the old man; he had a hoarse voice like Fred Allen.
I didn’t want to argue, I was too hungry. Anyway, a hydrogen bomb tower doesn’t have a refrigeration chamber, so who cared.
So Jean was ‘half-way convinced’. I remembered her the night previous. Her hair shining and her eyes full of consolation for Barney’s obvious snub. I remembered the way she’d said, ‘He wanted you to know he was doing it under orders, that’s why he said he’d eaten. He knew you wouldn’t believe it. If he’s anything like the cool character you’ve been talking about he’d certainly be able to think up an excuse for leaving a restaurant.’ I wanted to believe that. I remember Jean damping Dalby down when she could have made a better score by agreeing with him. On the other hand perhaps they had a deal about me already, and she cooled him off when I was around to soften me up. I remembered the smell of her hair when we danced, and the soft warmth of her body as we danced. And pretending to whisper things as we danced to annoy Dalby. I remembered her concern about Skip and about Barney. I remembered her red finger-nails on the back of my hand as she asked if I couldn’t understand their position and what had they said. And I could remember not telling her a damned thing.
The Officers’ Mess was a large prefabricated building near the Administration Compound. The front was decorated with small stunted flowers in the shape of a badge of the unit that built it. ‘You are now getting indigestion through the courtesy of the Army Catering Corps.’ A blast of barbecue-chicken-hot-air hit me as I went in.
Then all was cool and calm. The long white crispy tables, the jugs of ice-water making noises like the treble end of a xylophone. The stainless steel, the low murmur of serious masculine conversation, the purr of air-conditioning units. This was reality, this was the world – not the scene through the window; that was a fable.
The vichyssoise was rich with fresh cream, through which the fugitive flavour of leek came mellow and earthy; it was cold and not too thick. The steak was tender and sanguine, dark with the charred carbon of crusted juices, and served with asparagus tips and pommes allumettes. The coffee came along with strawberry short-cake. I ate it all, drank the weak coffee, then settled back with a Gauloise Blue. Poisoning seemed an unlikely method of dealing with my defection.
(#ulink_276a30b9-823c-54e1-afd5-da43681dda0a) MI5.
20 (#ulink_e774b3a8-f6a9-58c3-af09-8bff2b377b12)
[Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) Actions by friends may seem strange but remember that your moodiness may influence them.]
The Officers’ Mess was a low building, prefabricated as everything on Tokwe was, and single-storeyed. I walked out through the restaurant, through the simple starched shirts, the uniformly short haircuts. Snatches of German and small bite-sized pieces of Hungarian ran like strands of a web across the clipped Harvard speech and the drawn-out vowels of men who had been at Oak Ridge for so long that it had become their permanent home. I moved slowly listening with my finger-tips. No eye followed me as I entered the lounge where gaunt tubular frames had large floral-patterned plastic padding impaled upon them in relentless discomfort. Near the window I saw Jean; the group of aircrew I had noticed at the bar the previous evening were flying close formation on her. I knew they were SAC lead crews. The lead crews were the ones with the higher scores at bombing and navigation. They are raised a rank when they become lead crews, and so these boys were majors and lieutenant-colonels. One of the biannual exams they had, involved the committing to memory of one complete enemy target briefing. If they fail the exam they revert to their old rank. This had been a complicated session in 1944, but now, flying these eight-engine B52s at 600 mph after a thirty-minute check over the intercom before take-off, it was cosmic! Finding the tanker aircraft whose crew, one hoped, was similarly skilled in navigation; refuelling in flight while moving at stalling speed behind a tanker only three feet away, and then moving on a town they had never seen except in photographs; to drop a thermo-nuclear bomb, was a test of mathematical skill, dexterity, memory, and of confidence in the judgement of their leaders unparalleled since Constantine’s Edict saw the last Christian share a double bill with the lions. Soviet air space was often penetrated at a time when an explosion or a launching was expected. These SAC people were going to observe this one from the air as a comparison. To know which Soviet ground targets these three-man crews had committed to memory would be a very valuable ‘intelligence sequence’. The chances of Jean unloading such an item from them was remote, but I sat down a few chairs away and busied myself with some old unchecked expense accounts and indents that Alice had slipped into my case at the last moment without my noticing. Jean was doing a thing that men agents have to learn, but most women do naturally. She stood back and let the conversation move between the others, listening or guiding as needed. I hope she didn’t do that funny stare she tended to do when concentrating, because these charácters wouldn’t miss it. They were tumbling over just to talk in front of her.
‘Yes, sir,’ a balding man of about thirty-eight was saying; his eyes were too small but his jaw strong and tanned.
‘But for me, New York is a city. I like to travel, I really do, but you just can’t beat little ole New York, boy!’
‘New York, I like, but it’s a little like Chi, I’d say. New Orleans – there is a city, there is a city!’
‘Then you’ve never been to Paris, France.’
‘Parley Fransays. I lived six months in Paris. Now there’s the last country on earth where women are subordinated to men.’
‘And that goes for India. Do you know, in Afghanistan a camel costs more than a wife? This old guy was sitting riding on his camel. I’d seen him around, I knew he spoke a little English. I pulled up by him. I had a little red English MGA at the time, went like a bird. “Why aren’t you giving your wife a lift, Chas?” I said. (We all called him Chas.) “No, there are minefields here near the aerodrome,” he said. “You let her walk then?” So he said, “Yes, it’s a very valuable camel.” Can you beat that? He said, “It’s a very valuable camel.”’
A tall fair-haired major diluted his drink with a splash of ice-water. ‘Bel Ami who was French, and knew all about women …’
‘You know he’s using the worst mix in the world?’ Jean opened her eyes an eighth of an inch.
‘Alaska, that’s the biggest state. Ask any Texan,’ said the balding one, and laughed.
‘And I’ll tell you the Texan answer – “Oil”.’
The tall major who knew Bel Ami, lifted his glass and contradicted, ‘You see this drink? If you were gonna measure the volume of this drink do you take account of the ice?’ He paused. ‘You don’t. And that’s how it is with Alaska. It’s all ice.’
The chuckling was interrupted by the lounge door opening; a plump major looked quizzically around the room, dark glasses bisecting his large globe-like face. Beside him a neatly assembled girl army secretary in khaki shirt and slacks, both a carefully chosen size or so too small, shifted uneasily before the clear, unequivocally carnal gaze from so many efficient male eyes. Hoping to break an atmosphere as thick as cooling fudge, the newcomer asked if anyone had seen his navigator. No one answered, and here and there an unkind grin clearly stated the alienation that his social success had wrought. He turned awkwardly in the doorway and someone said affably, ‘Give my love to your wife and children.’
The balding one took advantage of the time pause. He went on going on. ‘My pappy used to say, “Drink Scotch by itself; with rye mix a little water, bourbon, mix it with something strong, something really strong.”’ He laughed loudly. ‘Something really strong,’ he said again.
‘I like Germany. I like to eat there. I like to drink there. I like German girls.’
‘I was living in Scandinavia.’
‘It’s not the same. It’s different in Scandinavia.’
‘I was at school in a big town in northern Scandinavia,’ said Jean, jumping in agilely as an agent must, and speaking the truth as an agent should.
‘Narvik,’ said the balding one. ‘I know it very well. I knew every bar in Narvik this time last year. Right?’ he asked Jean.
She nodded.
‘How many’s that? Three?’ said the man who knew Bel Ami.
I had completed most of the indents for the typewriter ribbons, recording tape and assorted junk of every day by the time the airmen had ‘holycowed’ and ‘go-go-goed’, ‘see you latered’, ‘izz at the timed’ out of the lounge. She came up behind me and touched the top of my head. I found the unexpected intimacy of her physical contact as shocking as if she’d undressed in public. As she moved into view and sat down opposite me I reappraised her attitude. She was anxious to let me know, to reassure.
The sheer effectiveness of her reassurance precluded my trusting it. Perhaps she was my Dolobowski. She offered me one of those menthol cigarettes that taste like paint remover. I declined.
She said, ‘SAC lead crews flying B52s working out of Bodo, Norway and the new field near Herat.’ She took her time to light it with a small silver cigarette lighter. ‘I’d say committed targets; those launching sites West South West of Lake Balkach and the underwater nuclear submarine harbours in eastern Novaya Zemlya that Bobby did the work on. You probably already saw the modified bomb-bays on two of the planes.’
I nodded.
‘Two of the crews have ex-Navy bombardiers; probably a delay device operating by water pressure.’ She tilted her chin as high as possible and exhaled a stream of smoke vertically at the ceiling in an unusually theatrical way. From somewhere she had obtained a WAC officer’s summer dress, and like Dalby she had this quality of looking right in whatever she wore. She waited for praise as a small child does; posturing and preparing declaimers of skill or virtue. The days of Pacific sunshine had made her face a deep shade of gold, and her lips were light against the dark skin. She sat there studying the evenness of her finger-nail polish for a long time, and then without looking up said, ‘You went to Guildford?’
I nodded without moving my head.
‘In the first week when it’s all physical exercises and IQ tests and you mostly sit around waiting to be interviewed and talked out of staying on for a second week, there’s one lecture about cell construction and cut outs?’
I knew that she knew that this isn’t the sort of thing anyone ever talks about. I hoped that the lounge wasn’t bugged. I didn’t stop her.
‘Well, Alice is my only official contact, through her you were my permanent contact. As far as I’m concerned …’ she paused. ‘Since then I have used no other as the man in the Pears soap advertisement said.’
I sat saying nothing.
‘The complexities of my job are greater than they were in Macao. Greater than I suspected they could be,’ Jean said very quietly. ‘I didn’t see myself doing that.’ She moved her head towards where she’d been sitting. ‘But I’ll go along with it OK. But there has to be a limit as far as personalities are concerned. I am a woman. I can’t switch allegiances easily, and I am biologically incapable of answering to a group.’
‘You may be making a big mistake,’ I said, more in order to gain time than because it meant anything.
‘I don’t think so, and I’ll show you why,’ she said, ‘if you’ve an hour or so to spare.’
I had. I followed her out and across to the car park. She climbed behind the wheel of a Ford convertible, the metal and leather hot enough to produce a sickly smell. Attached to the sunshield on the driver’s side was a grey painted metal box. One face of it was perforated; it was a little larger than an English packet of twenty. This was a monitoring radio sending conversation to a receiver up to three miles away, and by means of a compass device sending a signal to show the direction and travel of the vehicle. It was a compulsory fitting to all cars on Tokwe. It was attached by means of two magnets, and I pulled it off the metal of the sunshield and buried it deep in a big box of Kleenex in the rear seat of a pink Chevrolet parked alongside. I hoped no one would bother to tune us in. If they did without a visual check we’d be just another silent vehicle in a car park outside the Mess.
The tyres made an ugly noise on the gravel as Jean let in the clutch and swung the power steering into a fierce lock. Neither of us spoke until a mile down the road we stopped to fold back the hood. I took a close look around the windscreen and door tops.
‘I think we are probably clean now but let’s be careful just the same – you were smart to take the convertible,’ I told her.
‘It cost me a four-ounce bottle of Arpège perfume to find out not to pet in any other sort of vehicle.’
‘Put it on expenses,’ I said.
For a mile or so the road was first-rate, and except for a couple of police jeeps, quite clear. Jean moved the accelerator firmly down and I heard the faint snickering noises from the gear-box as the ratios automatically changed until the road wavered under us like a heat haze, and the roar of the wind dragging across the spotlight and aerial produced an unbearable battering on the eardrums. Small flying creatures hit the windscreen and burst in ugly blotches. Jean, her head tilted back, held the wheel in a confident, loose hold, unusual in women drivers. I watched the coast flash by until we began to lose speed. I felt her foot lift from the accelerator. She’d judged the distance nicely and scarcely used the brakes. Instead of following the road where it curved left inland, to the Administration Centre, we turned off the road to the right. The wide over-sprung car lurched into the soft edges of the road and its big blue nose lifted as the tyres engaged the soil of a rough pathway. Now the going was much slower and it took nearly an hour to reach the cluster of undergrowth to which we had seen the track leading from the hard road. Jean pulled us well in under the low vegetation, and cut the motor. We had left the desiccated sectors upon which both the Administration Centre, the Mess and Living Quarters were built. This lee side of the island, shielded from the prevailing wind, was cloaked in luxuriant vegetation and punctuated by razor-sharp layers of volcanic rock. Here and there large cone-shaped mustard-yellow flowers were beginning to close their fleshy petals.
The sun was low towards the west by now, and the spiky leaves of the palms sliced the heavy blue sky. Jean took a rubber-covered torch out of the glove compartment and we continued along the same pathway on foot. Through the undergrowth we passed the cheap-wristwatch sounds of a thousand insects kicking the heavy air.
‘I don’t want to pry or appear paranoiac,’ I said, ‘but what’s the deal?’ She took her time about answering and I supposed that she had as many doubts and puzzlements as any of us at that time.
‘Last night I was up here with Dalby. He took me along so that if anyone found us off the road it would just look like a petting party. I’m returning on my own account. You’re along for the ride. OK?’
I said ‘OK.’ What else could I say? We went on in silence.
Then she said, ‘Last night I was left in the car. Now I want to see the part I missed.’
I helped her over a rusting coil of barbed wire. We went out of sight of the road, and unless anyone looked very closely, the car was well hidden, too. Over to the right, the shore line, away from the new road, had been left littered with World War II debris. Golden-brown rust patterns grew over the broken landing craft. One on the far side gaped with rectangular holes, as though someone had attempted to salvage the metal with a cutter, but had found the market price out of proportion to the work. The one nearest me, a Tank Landing Craft, was charred at the front. The heat had bent the steel doors like a tin toy under a child’s foot. Below the water-line rich wet greenery busied itself in the lapping, clear movement of the water. The land was at its most uneven here and had clearly provided opportunities for a tenacious defensive. So well had the Japanese engineers merged their defence works into the terrain that I wasn’t aware of the enormous Japanese blockhouse until I saw Jean standing in its doorway. It was nearly twenty-five feet high and built of tree trunks with steel rail supports here and there. The weather had eaten at the poor-quality cement, and the vegetation had run riot. The entrance was low even for a Japanese, and waist-high scarlet flowers followed the great burnt scars along the timbers as though the plant gained a special nutriment from the carbonized wood.
Jean’s rubber-soled shoes left waffles in the sand, and where the ground was damper I noticed Dalby’s. His were deeper, especially at the heel.
‘Was it heavy –’ I said.
‘The box he carried? Yes, it looked heavy. How did you know?’
‘I guessed he didn’t drop by for the view, and something kept him too busy to notice you behind him.’
She stood aside as I climbed up the partly blocked entrance. ‘He told me to wait by the car, but I was curious. I came after him as far as the entanglement.’ Her voice changed and echoed mid sentence as we moved into the fort. It was a well-made one. The island had been one of the well-prepared outer-perimeter island bases bypassed until the latter days of the war. Through the entrance a narrow passage led down a gentle slope into a pitch-dark little room about twelve feet square. The air was cold and moist. We stood there in silence hearing the steady crunch and whoosh of breakers on the shore, and the constant rasping of insects. I’d taken off my dark glasses and slowly my range of vision increased.
The greater part of the room was taken up by olive-coloured metal boxes, upon which the faint English words like ‘Factory’ and some numbers could be read. In the far corner bars of sunlight revealed broken wooden boxes, large metal cartridge clips and some rotting leather straps. On a level with the top of my head a platform extended the width of the blockhouse, and provided slots for the machine-gunners and riflemen. Jean’s torch made yellow ovals as it splashed over the emplacement walls, and held in one spot almost over the entrance door. She’d seen Dalby’s torch shine through that particular port. I moved the green metal boxes to make a step. The paint on the underside where they had been packed together was fresh with stencilled lettering: ‘.5 Machine-Gun. US Army. 80770/GH/CIN/1942’. I moved a second box to put on the first, and fifteen inches of brightly coloured lizard flashed away under my feet. I climbed up on the platform and edged slowly along the crumbling earth ledge. Close to, the sand was almost black, and stank of death and the things that lived on it.
There was not room to stand upright, and I went slowly on my hands and knees. The bright daylight burned my eyes through the narrow slot, and I could see a small traverse of beach. The largest of the grey landing craft was directly in line with me, and from this angle I was able to see a burnt and battered tank jammed into the open doors like a squashed orange in the mouth of a barbecued sucking-pig. A red and yellow butterfly entered the white chalky bars of light from the aperture. Slowly I moved towards the corner position. It was darker and damper there. Jean threw the torch to me without switching it off. Its beam described a curious parabola. I used it to probe the thick roof timbering above me. Part of the ceiling had given way when the flame-thrower had poured its jet of flaming petrol into the firing position. The timber supports were charred, and under my hands, only the metal parts of a heavy bolted-down machine-gun remained. I could see nothing that looked recently disturbed. I moved the light a little to the left. There was a wooden crate with writing on it. It said, ‘Harry Jacobson, 1944, 24 DEC. OAKLAND. CALIF. USA.’ and was empty. Jean said why didn’t I try the box underneath. I’m glad I did. It was a new cardboard box and carried the words ‘General foods. One gross 1 lb packets Frozen Cranberries’. Under that was printed a small certificate of purity, and a long serial number. Inside was a brand new short pattern seven-inch cathode ray tube, about a dozen transistors, a white envelope and a yellow duster containing a long-barrelled machine-pistol shiny with fresh oil. There were no cranberries. I opened the envelope, and inside was a small slip of paper about 2 in by 6 in. On it were written about fifty words. There was a VLF (very low frequency) radio wave-length, and a compass bearing and some mathematical symbols that were a bit too post-graduate for me. I held it up for Jean to read. She looked up and said, ‘Can you read Russian?’
I shook my head.
‘It’s something about …’
I interrupted her. ‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘Even I know the Russian script for “Neutron Bomb”.’
‘What are you going to do with it?’ she asked.
I took the paper, still carefully holding it by the edge and dropped it back into the cranberry box. The envelope I burned, and ground up the ash under my heel. ‘Let’s go,’ I said.
We scrambled down the steep approach to the beach. The sun was a two-dimensional magenta disc, and the sunset lay in horizontal stripes like finger-nails and torn golden lacerations across the ashen face of the evening. I wanted to be away from something – I don’t know from what. So we walked along the water-line, stepping around crates full of death, Coca-Cola and Band-Aids.
‘Why would anyone,’ Jean didn’t like to say Dalby, ‘take a cathode ray tube up there?’
‘He didn’t want anyone to know that he can’t bear to miss “Wagon Train”.’
Jean didn’t even contract her lip muscles.
‘I don’t want to pry,’ I said, ‘but I’d find this whole thing more simple if you’d tell me what he said about me.’
‘That’s easy – he said that one of the departments of the “friends” is sure you are working for the KGB.
(#ulink_23f3cb9b-f36f-5fb4-90c3-162ccbab8f11) They told the CIA direct and everyone is pretty steamed up. Dalby said he wasn’t sure one way or the other but that the CIA are keen to believe it since you killed a couple of their Navy people a long while ago.’
‘Dalby said it’s not him that laid the complaint?’ I asked.
‘No – he said that one department gives you a higher clearance than he has at present – him working away from the office caused that of course – he didn’t seem very happy about that, by the way.’
She paused, and said apologetically, ‘Did you kill those men?’
