Billion-Dollar Brain (13 page)

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Football,’ said Stok. ‘Tonight on television.’

The Luna Café on Soviet Boulevard faces the gardens and the old Liberation monument that had been built there several régimes back and—so it is said—was something of a milestone in municipal graft. Already there was a small queue of young people at the café door, for this was Saturday night and the boys had put on their one-hundred-and-thirty-rouble English wool suits and the girls had fifty-rouble pointed shoes wrapped in a parcel, for they were far too valuable to wear out on the icy streets. Everyone stood aside for the barrel-like KGB colonel in full uniform and his scruffy civilian companion. We got a small table near the orchestra, which was faking jazz music from their memories and short-wave radio.

Stok took the menu. ‘What about port wine?’ he asked.

‘I prefer vodka.’ A lot of vodka might numb the pain in my hand.

‘They don’t sell vodka,’ said Stok. ‘This is a nice cultural place.’ He had chosen a seat that faced towards the door, and he watched the young couples entering. The dance floor was crowded.

‘When I was a young man,’ said Stok, ‘we had a song called “When Tears Fall a Rose will Grow”. Do you know that song?’

‘No.’

Stok ordered two glasses of port wine. The waitress looked at the marks on my face and at Stok’s uniform. Her face was kind but rigid.

‘If it was true then this would be a land of roses. You have a word meaning unlucky people?’

‘Losers.’

‘Ah, that’s a good word. Well this is a land of losers. It’s a land where doom hangs upon the air like poison gas. You have no idea of what awful things have happened here. The Latvians had Fascists who were more vicious than even the Germans. In Bikernieki Forest they killed 46,500 civilians. In Dreilini Forest, five kilometres east of here, they killed 13,000. In the Zolotaya Gorka, 38,000 were murdered.’

While Stok was talking I had seen a familiar figure enter the door. He had left his outer clothes downstairs and he wore his cheap Latvian suit with its wide trouser bottoms as though it was from Savile Row. He sat down on the far side of the room and I caught only a brief view of him through the dancers, but it was undoubtedly Ralph Pike still at large.

‘…the old, the pregnant, the lame,’ Stok said. ‘They killed them all, sometimes with the most terrifying and prolonged torture. The Germans were so pleased to find such enthusiastic murderers that they used Riga as a clearing house for people they wanted killed. They sent them here in train loads from Germany, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Austria,
France, from all over Europe, because the Latvian-recruited SS units were the most efficient killers.’

Ralph Pike suddenly saw me. He didn’t make any sort of sign of recognition, but he gulped his drink with urgency.

‘…we have dossiers on hundreds of such Latvians. War criminals now living in Canada, America, New Zealand and all over the world. You would imagine that people guilty of such terror would remain quiet and be thankful that they have escaped justice, but no. These scum are the foremost trouble-makers. Your friend there is such a person as I describe: a war criminal with more murders of children than I would care to name upon his conscience. He thinks his crimes are forgotten, but our memories are not so short.’

Ralph Pike had taken on a strange rigidity. I glimpsed him only through dancing couples. He leaned back in his seat, casually turning his head to take in the whole room. Two tables to his left I recognized the handsome young Guards major who had just become a father.

‘You wouldn’t think that he was like that,’ Stok said. ‘He looks so respectable, so bourgeois.’

Pike was staring at me and at Stok’s uniformed back. ‘He’s wondering whether to kill himself,’ Stok said.

‘Is he?’ I said.

‘Don’t worry, he won’t. People like him are not losers. They’re survivors, professional survivors.
Even on the gallows such men would not bite a poison pellet.’

The dancers opened and my eyes met Pike’s. He was holding his glass of port wine and swallowing hard. The music was a vintage piece of Victor Herbert, ‘Sweet summer breeze, whispering trees.’

‘Warn him,’ Stok said. ‘Warn your comrade he’s in danger. You must have a pre-arranged signal and I’d like to see it in action.’

‘Who is it you are talking about?’

‘Very good,’ said Stok admiringly. Pike had noticed Guards Major Nogin now. Stok waved to the waitress and said, ‘Two more port wines.’

I said, ‘If you are going to arrest him, do it. Don’t play cat and mouse like a sadist.’

Stok said, ‘He killed over two hundred people. Six of my men taken prisoner in 1945 were tortured by this man personally.’ Stok’s face had gone rigid and he didn’t look like himself, just as those mathematically accurate waxworks never look like the people they portray. ‘Do you think he should go free?’ Stok said.

I said, ‘I happen to be in custody, remember?’

Stok shook his head in disagreement. ‘You are a casualty, not a prisoner. Now answer my question.’ Stok’s mouth was tense with hatred, he could hardly force the words through it.

‘Take a hold on yourself,’ I said.

‘I could walk across there and kill him very slowly,’ Stok said. ‘Very slowly, just as he killed them.’

Major Nogin was looking expectantly towards our table and Ralph Pike couldn’t take his eyes off the major. He knew that he was just awaiting Stok’s signal.

‘You’d better get a grip of yourself,’ I said. ‘Major Nogin is awaiting orders.’

The music played.

Stars shining softly above; Roses in bloom, wafted perfume, Sleepy birds dreaming of love.

Pike was talking to a waitress and gripping her wrist very tightly. It was impossible to witness Pike’s terror without identifying with it. The waitress stepped back from him and wrenched her arm free. Ralph Pike was positively radiating doom by now and in a country like Latvia such radiations are quickly picked up. I wondered if Pike had a Latin tag for this moment; perhaps
bis peccare in bello non licet
—in war two blunders aren’t permitted.

Stok said, ‘Do you seriously and honestly tell me that such a man should go free? Truth now.’

‘What’s truth,’ I said, ‘except a universal error?’

Stok’s huge hand leaned across the table and tapped my chest. ‘Shooting is too good for him,’ Stok said. The music played, ‘Safe in your arms, far from alarms.’

I said, ‘You’ve done your piece and said it nicely.’ I brushed his hand away. ‘You’ve made sure that
I am seen talking to you at the time of this man’s arrest in a public place. You will now release me: the resulting implication being that I bought my freedom at the expense of his. My organization will write me off as unreliable.’ I nursed my hand. It was swollen now like a blue boxing glove.

‘Are you frightened?’ asked Stok, without delighting in it. Perhaps he was being sympathetic.

I said, ‘I’m so afraid that the motor areas are taking over; but at least reflex actions are true to oneself, which is more than I can say for blind hatred.’ And that’s when I waved at the Guards major Nogin and set in motion the arrest of Ralph Pike.

Daylight shall come but in vain, Tenderly pressed close to your breast, Kiss me, kiss me again.

Now he acts the Grenadier, Calling for a pot of beer.

Where’s his money? He’s forgot: Get him gone; drunken sot.

NURSERY RHYME

There are three styles in cities. There are river cities—London and Paris—and waterfront cities like Chicago, Beirut and Havana; and there are island cities. Stockholm and Venice are island cities. So are Helsinki and Leningrad, and so is Manhattan that sparkled in the dust like a wet finger dipped into the caster sugar of electricity. The plane dropped a wing towards Brooklyn and the dark water of Jamaica Bay and nosed gently down the traffic pattern of Kennedy Airport.

Kennedy Airport is the keyhole of America. You peer into it and glimpse the shiny well-oiled pieces, the bright machine-finished gleaming metal; it’s clean and safe and operates smoothly. It’s a great keyhole.

I got off the Air India jet spitting betel nut and nursing a swollen hand. The airport was crowded with hurrying people, men in stetsons or tartan jackets, men carrying suits in bright polythene bags. I found myself hurrying too, until I realized
that I had no destination: I wondered how many people around me had fallen into the same trap. A woman with all her baggage and a raucous infant in a wire buggy wheeled it over my foot, and a woman in a yellow overall rushed out of a shop yelling, ‘Did you just buy a Scrabble game?’

‘No.’

‘You forgot your instructions,’ she said. ‘They didn’t enclose the instructions.’

The loudspeaker was calling, ‘Skycap to the information centre.’

The woman in the yellow overall said, ‘It’s not like you didn’t pay for it. A Scrabble game is complicated.’

‘I didn’t buy it,’ I said. A lady with a lot of packages marked ‘Shannon duty-free shop’ said, ‘I’d just love chicken-burger and French fries. I haven’t had real good French fries since I left San Francisco.’

The woman with the Scrabble game rules waved them in the air. ‘Unless you know how to use it,’ she sighed, ‘a Scrabble game is just a boxful of junk.’

‘Yes,’ I said. I turned away from her. ‘It’s not like you didn’t pay for it,’ she said again.

The lady with the duty-free packages said, ‘Not even in Paris. Not real good French fries.’

A man in an Air India uniform said, ‘Are you Mr Dempsey? Air India passenger?’ A transistor radio was playing so loud that he had to shout. I nodded. He looked at my passport, then handed over a large envelope. Inside there was three hundred dollars in
bills, two dollars in small change sealed into a plastic bag labelled ‘small money’, and a thick bundle of political literature. One pamphlet said that eighty per cent of all US psychiatrists were Russian, educated in Russia and paid by the Communists to indoctrinate Americans. As a first step they tend to make sexual attacks on their female patients. Another booklet said that the mental health programme was a Communist-Jewish conspiracy to brainwash the USA. Two booklets said that the President of the USA was a Communist and suggested that I should ‘…buy a gun now and form a secret minuteman team’. The last thing was a bright blue bumper-sticker, ‘Are you a Commie without knowing it?’ I stuffed the whole wad back into the envelope and phoned the Brain. The metallic voice said, ‘No instructions. Call tomorrow at this same time. Have you read the literature? Record your reply then ring off.’

‘I read it,’ I said. It was all very well for Dawlish to tell me to take orders from the Brain, he didn’t have to obey them.

I threw my baggage into a battered cab. ‘Washington Square,’ I said.

Tunnel or bridge?’ said the driver. ‘I always ask ’em. Tunnel or bridge?’

‘Bridge,’ I said. ‘Let’s keep the East River where we can see it.’

‘You bet,’ said the driver. ‘Six bucks.’

‘Could we find a doctor somewhere on the way in?’ I asked him. ‘I think I’ve got a broken finger.’

‘You’re British aintcha, fella, well I’ll tell ya sumpin. Just one thing dough don’t buy ya in this town, fella; total silence. Know what I mean? Total silence.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘Total silence.’

I joined the cast of the relentless 3D movie that calls itself Manhattan, where it’s always night and they keep the lights on to prove it. I prefer to arrive in New York at night, to lower myself into the city gradually, like getting into a bathful of very hot water. The rusty taxi-cab clattered down the spine of the city and the driver told me what was wrong with Cuba, and we went past the silent skyscrapers, kosher pizzerias, glass-fronted banks, bagel factories, Polish gymnasiums with belt-vibrators for rent, pharmacies selling love-potions and roach-killers, and all-night supermarkets where frail young men were buying canned rattlesnake. New York, New York; where the enterprise is free if nothing else is.

From my hotel at the foot of Fifth Avenue I made short forays into the neon between soaking my cuts, counting my abrasions and nursing anxiety to sleep. On the third night in New York I settled down to watch one of those TV programmes where relaxed, informal chatter had been perfected by hours of intensive rehearsal. Outside I could hear rain falling upon the fire-escape and bouncing back against the window. I closed the window tight and turned up the heat.

I seemed to have spent most of my life in hotel rooms where room service wanted money in
advance and the roller towels were fixed with a padlock. Now I had graduated to the Birmingham-rug and Dufy-print circuit, but I wondered what I had sacrificed to do it. I had few friends. I stayed well clear of the sort of people who thought I had a dead-end job in the Civil Service, and those who knew what the job was stayed clear of me. I poured myself a drink.

On the TV a man in an open convertible was saying, ‘It’s sunny and hot here in Florida. Why not fly down tonight? You can take twenty-four months to pay.’ My broken finger hurt like hell. I soaked it in hot water and antiseptic and I drank a little more whisky. By the time the phone rang I was well beneath the label.

‘Stage Delicatessen,’ the voice on the phone said. ‘Eight three four, seventh. Immediate. Secure. Are you waiting to go in?’ I wondered what would happen if I ignored the call or pretended it wasn’t me, but I had a strong feeling that they knew it was me. I had a feeling that if I had been somewhere in the midst of a mob at Madison Square Garden they would have still got that metallic voice to talk to me. So I put my head under a cold shower and climbed into my raincoat and the doorman whistled up a cab for the Stage Delicatessen. The schlock-shops were afire with sale signs and smiling suckers, and the cops were buttoned tight and growling. A man in a blue poplin raincoat was standing outside the Delicatessen waving a bundle of show-biz newspapers. He ignored the code introduction.

‘OK slim,’ he said as I arrived. ‘Let’s go.’

I said, ‘I’m going nowhere till I’ve had a hot pastrami sandwich.’ We crowded into a mêlée like the Eton Wall Game. We both had a sandwich, the man in the blue raincoat saying ‘We’d better make it snappy’ between every bite. Waiting for us was a black Ford Falcon with a DPL (diplomats’) licence plate. We got in and the Negro driver gunned it away without a word. He passed Columbus Circle. Blue raincoat buried himself into an article headlined ‘Bliz Boffs Borscht Biz’ and chewed on a toothpick. The car radio was saying, ‘…New Jersey Turnpike traffic moderate, Lincoln Tunnel, heavy. Route twenty-two moderate, Holland Tunnel moderate. Folks this is the time of year to think about buying a new car…’ The driver tuned to another station.

‘Where are we heading?’ I asked.

The blue raincoat said, ‘You follow your orders, feller. I’ll follow mine, right?’ The driver said nothing, but we were in Broadway and the seventies and still heading north. Suddenly the driver turned left and pulled up before one of those little medieval castles on the West Side that are owned by people who like to stare tall buildings in the toenails. The car stopped. The chauffeur reached for the car phone.

‘Let’s go, bud,’ said blue raincoat. He stuffed the bundle of papers into his pocket and pulled a face, as if the toothpick was causing him some sort of pain. ‘The old man’s as touchy as sweating
gelignite tonight,’ he said. The bottom half of the building was towers, balconies and metal grilles, and the top half was very Flemish merchant. He didn’t ring the bell so we just stood there looking at the massive door.

‘What are we waiting for?’ I asked. ‘Won’t they lower the drawbridge?’

The blue raincoat looked at me like he was mapping the course of my jugular vein. There was a lot of chain-rattling, then the door opened with a faint buzz. Blue raincoat pointed at the open door, then went back to the car. The driver and blue raincoat waited until I entered, then they drove away south. Maybe they were going for another pastrami sandwich.

The fittings and furnishings inside the old house were old. In America that either means you made it, or you just got off the boat. Just in case there should be any mistake about it, these old items were spot-lit by Swedish lamps.

The door had been opened by some sort of electric release, but two Negro footmen in grey silk—complete with stockings—stood inside the door and said, ‘Good evening, sir,’ in unison. A tall man walked into the hall to greet me. He was dressed in a red coat, cut-away from chest to knee, with long yellow lapels that became a cape collar. His breeches were made of white shiny silk and so was his waistcoat. His hair was white and powdered and long enough to be tied in a small black silk bow. It was the uniform of an eighteenth-century
soldier. I followed him along the marble hall. Through a doorway to the right I saw two more soldiers opening a crate of champagne with their bayonets. I was ushered into a high-ceilinged room dark with oak panelling. There was a long refectory table round which sat seven young men, all in the same red-coat uniform. They were drinking from pewter tankards. Their hair was uniformly white and long. A young girl in a long, low-cut dress with a sash and apron sat on a settle beyond the table. The whole scene looked like something soaked off a box of chocolates. The man who had shown me in reached a pewter tankard down from the Welsh dresser and filled it with champagne. He handed me the tankard and said, ‘I won’t be a minute.’

‘Take your time,’ I said.

The door at the far end opened and a girl in a similar serving-wench dress but of silk and with a richly embroidered apron came in carrying a small cardboard box. Mozart wafted through the door. The girl with the box said, ‘Has he broken his hand?’

The first wench said, ‘Not yet,’ and the second wench tittered.

One of the soldiers said, ‘A new boy,’ and waved a thumb at me over his shoulder.

‘He’s come to talk with the General.’ He said it like I had aisle seats for the Day of Judgement.

The wench with the box said, ‘Welcome to the Revolutionary War.’ A couple of the soldiers
grinned. I swilled down the half-pint of champagne as if it was bitter lemon.

She said, ‘Where you from?’

‘I’m from Sci-Fi Anonymous,’ I said. ‘I’m selling subscriptions to the twentieth century.’

‘Sounds awful,’ she said. Then the first soldier returned and said, ‘The General will see you now,’ with awesome regard for the word ‘General’. He reached a cocked hat from the Welsh dresser and put it on carefully.

I said, ‘Do you think I should pipeclay my alligator shoes?’ but he just led the way into the hall and up the stairs. The music was louder here. It was the second movement of the Mozart A Major Concerto. The soldier walked ahead of me, holding his sword in his left hand so that it didn’t clatter against the stairs. At the top, a long red-carpeted corridor was lit by antique oil lamps. We walked past three doors, then he opened the next and showed me into the study. There was an inlaid desk upon which silver ornaments had been placed with that carefully posed look that photos in
House and Garden
have. On one wall there were ancient documents—some merely signatures—framed in modest elegance, but apart from that the walls were plain. If that’s what you call walls lined in silk. There was a communicating door in one corner of the room and from behind it came the third movement of the Mozart, which was working itself up to that frantic minor-key Turkish routine which I’ve never thought a good enough ending for such
a great beginning; but then that complaint went for just about everything in my life.

The music ended, there was applause and then the door opened. Another one of these antique soldier boys came into the room and said, ‘General Midwinter,’ and both the red-coats went into a state of paralysed rigidity. The applause continued.

Midwinter came into the frame of the door and turned back to the room beyond to clap gently with his white-gloved hands. He was speaking to someone and beyond them I could see a brightly lit room with vast chandeliers and women in white dresses. From the dark study it was like glimpsing daylight through a manhole.

‘This way,’ the General said. He was a tiny man, dapper and neat like most small men, and he wore a gold-encrusted eighteenth-century English general’s uniform with its complex aiguillette and thigh-length boots. He pointed with his general’s baton and said, ‘This way, men,’ again. His voice was soft but with a hard mechanical edge like a speak-your-weight machine, and he said ‘men’ like his friends said ‘General’.

The General tucked the baton under his armpit and clapped his hands softly as the small orchestra walked through his study. When the last violin and cello had disappeared the General switched on the desk light and settled down behind his tidy desk. He rearranged a couple of silver paperweights and brushed his long white hair with his hand. A large emerald ring flashed a spot of light into a dark
corner of the room. He motioned me to a chair and said,’ Tell me about yourself, boy.’

I said, ‘Can we cut the crowd scene?’ and he said, ‘Sure; beat it, you two.’ The two sentries saluted and left the room. General Midwinter said, ‘What’s your phone number?’

I said, ‘I’m at One Fifth Avenue, that’s Spring 7-7000.’

‘Five million, nine hundred and twenty-nine thousand,’ said Midwinter. ‘That’s the square of it. The square root of it is two hundred and seventy-seven point four nine. I can do that with any number you name,’ he said. ‘So could my father; it’s a knack, I guess.’

‘Is that why they made you a general?’ I asked.

‘They made me a general ’cause I’m old. Old age is an incurable disease, see. People think they ought to do something for you. Me they made a general. OK?’ He winked at me and then scowled as though he had thought better of it.