Billion-Dollar Brain (20 page)

‘You shift the blame of betrayal to protect a betrayer.’

‘Right,’ said Midwinter. ‘Newbegin had already done a deal with the Communists, but he could escape blame for a short extra period by setting you up as a patsy. You got that eh? You suspected Newbegin?’

‘That’s it,’ I said.

‘I get a blast out of you son. You can really sort the mustangs from the broncos.’ He flashed me a friendly smile.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I don’t see what you expect me to do.’

‘I want you to bring this guy Harvey Newbegin back here.’ Midwinter pointed to an empty chair by the window to tell me exactly where he wanted him put. ‘I don’t care what it costs. Cuff the tabs for anything you want. Use any of my people, I can get you full co-operation of the police anywhere in the States…’

‘But he’s not in the States,’ I said patiently.

‘Well you dope it out,’ said Midwinter. ‘All I know is that you are maybe the only living person who knows Harvey Newbegin as a close friend. There are plenty of people who can find him but the guy who finds him has got to be able to talk some sense into the guy. What’s more,’ added Midwinter archly, ‘I figure you’ve got a motive not to be too well disposed to him.’

‘When you hook a sucker, reel him in slowly,’ I said. ‘Being the archetype Judas is not my kind of image.’

‘No offence son,’ said Midwinter. ‘Maybe you can get yourself more than half killed and still be tolerant and professional. If you can, I admire that, I admire it. There are no personality failures here either, the organization is paramount. That organization means more to me than anything else in the world. If Harvey Newbegin takes the sort of information he has to the Russians I’ll never forgive myself.’

I said, ‘And you’ll probably have the CIA squeezing you to death as a security risk.’

Midwinter nodded nervously. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Expect I’ll fall down and go boom.’ He hammered
the edge of his false hand against the table like a karate expert warming up.

‘There’s another factor,’ said Midwinter. ‘There is this girl named…’ He pretended to search his memory.

‘Signe Laine,’ I supplied.

‘Right,’ said Midwinter. ‘Is she reliable?’

‘She’s reliable for some things,’ I said.

‘She’s emotionally entangled with Harvey Newbegin,’ Midwinter pronounced. ‘The Laine girl is a member of our organization. In the ordinary way of things I would have given her the task of contacting Harvey, but under the circumstances…’ he tapped his hand again, ‘you are the only person. Don’t let him fall into the hands of the Russians.’

‘He’s already been in the hands of the Russians,’ I said.

‘You know what I mean,’ Midwinter said. ‘I mean predicting, analysing our movements and decisions. You know what I mean. They mustn’t have him as an adviser.’

‘What you want is Harvey Newbegin dead,’ I said.

‘Down boy,’ said Midwinter. ‘I’ve loved Harvey Newbegin and his wife for many years. Harvey is a vain, neurotic personality. I’ve spoken to his analyst already this morning. He agrees with me, Newbegin lives in a fantasy world; sexually, romantically, politically and socially. Already he’s having doubts about what he’s doing. Speak to
him. Tell him…’ The old man’s soft mottled face wrinkled as though it was about to fall off. ‘Tell him he’s forgiven. We won’t mention it again and he can have a year or so taking it easy in the sun. Tell him I’ll even speak to Mercy. I’ll tell her to take the heat off him.’

‘Perhaps you should have told her that a long time ago,’ I said.

‘I should,’ said Midwinter. He buttered a piece of toast with the wrist action of a swordsman and then bit a corner from it. ‘She just wanted the best for her husband.’

‘So did Lady Macbeth,’ I said. Out on the grey water the harbour patrol boat had anchored while a cop in zipper jacket stabbed at a floating bundle. Midwinter chewed at his toast. ‘I should have,’ he said again.

I finished eating and put the hand-embroidered napkin on the table.

The cops fixed the bundle to the boat and chugged away.

‘You’ll bring home the groceries all right,’ said Midwinter.

‘Perhaps,’ I said.

A frown passed across Midwinter’s face as he wondered whether to tell me the penalty of failure. I imagine most of Midwinter’s meetings ended with the penalty of failure. We stared at each other, then Midwinter said, ‘You’ll bring home the groceries,’ through gritted teeth, determined to end on a note of encouragement.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘You’ve been frank with me and now I’ll be frank with you. First of all you had better learn that your organization in northern Europe is pretty thin on the ground…’

Midwinter said, ‘I’ll tell you exactly…’

‘Hear ME out,’ I said. ‘Newbegin has been feeding you phantom agents for a long time. He operates a swindle with your money. He pays a package of money to one of your agents, who then passes it on to a second real agent who passes it on to a third agent who just happens to be Harvey Newbegin dressed up in fancy disguise. Harvey then puts the money in the bank for himself. He probably does that for every network to which he has access. The rest of the network is just a lot of fancy paperwork.’

‘A month ago I wouldn’t have believed it,’ said Midwinter.

‘Well, you had better be believing now,’ I said, ‘because a lot depends on it. I know some of those phoney networks and where he puts the money, but to be sure of getting Newbegin I shall have to know them all and there’s no time to waste.’

Midwinter said, ‘What are you getting at?’

I said, ‘I shall need to collect from the Brain the details and photos of all your agents who had access to Harvey Newbegin.’

‘That’s Finland and Great Britain. Two key areas,’ said Midwinter. ‘Our whole pilot operation.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Just clear me to have that information and show me the telephone codes to get it.’

‘It’s rather complex,’ said Midwinter, playing for time. ‘And what’s more you could smash our whole operation.’

‘It’s smashed already,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t use any of those agents if Harvey Newbegin is spitting blood.’

‘Perhaps that’s true,’ said Midwinter, ‘but the normal procedure would be to keep them abgeschaltet
*
until the Russians surface Newbegin or we find him.’

‘That’s my deal,’ I said. ‘When you first said that I was the only man who could get close to Newbegin I didn’t believe you. But you’re right. I’m the only person.’

‘You could smash up my whole scheme.’ He stared at me blank and unblinking. ‘It’s too much.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’ll give you a bonus.’

‘What’s that?’ said Midwinter.

‘Most of the money that Harvey Newbegin stole from you was paid into the Bexar County National Bank, 235 North Saint Mary’s, San Antonio, to the account of Mrs Mercy Newbegin.’

The old man crumpled as if I had hit him in the face. I knew I’d won and the ethics didn’t trouble me one bit.

‘OK,’ said Midwinter. ‘You don’t have to buffalo me. You knew I had to agree.’

So I let him come to terms with his betrayal by Mercy Newbegin—keeper of his left hand—as
slowly as he wished to. He put the binoculars over his eyes and stood immobile staring out across the sea. When he spoke it was without looking round.

‘Be here at noon, ask for the chief technical manager of Midwinter Mining. He’ll be on the Midwinter Science Foundation floor waiting for you. He’ll tell you everything you want to know.’

‘Thanks for the suit,’ I said. ‘Take it out of my wages.’

‘I shall,’ said Midwinter. He hammered his false hand against the table edge very, very gently, as though exercising tremendous restraint. As I walked out I heard the buzzer on Midwinter’s communication box. Caroni’s voice said, ‘There’s a hawk now, General Midwinter, on the bell tower.’

The foyer of Midwinter’s building was crowded with neat, slim young men with short hair and faces dusted with talc. Each one was labelled with his name and rank on a conference badge. They moved through the foyer as though spilled from a tin. A uniformed guard said, ‘Are you with the Frozen Juice Convention?’ but the man with squeaky shoes said, ‘It’s OK Charlie. He’s been to see the General.’ Outside the morning was freezing cold and getting darker.

As I walked along the street, Midwinter’s chauffeur called to me from the slow-moving Cadillac. He held up the phone that rested on the car dashboard. ‘The General,’ he explained waving the handpiece. ‘He says I’m to be at your disposal.’ ‘Thank him,’ I said. ‘And then get lost. Big black
Caddies make my sort of friends nervous.’ ‘Mine too,’ said the chauffeur and shot off into the Brooklyn Tunnel traffic happily. There was a backfire and a formation of sparrows banked sharply and twittered away, unaware that hawks watched them from above.

I got a cab to Signe’s place on Eighth Street. I rang the bell and knocked at the door but there was no reply. I went down the street to the Cookery coffee shop, got some dimes and phoned the number I had been given as a contact. Midwinter’s organization was really on its toes because the number had been switched through to Midwinter’s personal phone.

‘Keep watching him, Caroni,’ I heard Midwinter say. Then his voice was close, ‘Midwinter here.’

‘Dempsey. I’m going to need someone to stake out an address in the city.’

‘Cop?’

‘A cop will do fine,’ I said.

‘I’ll have the first one there in ten minutes,’ said Midwinter. ‘Give me the address.’ A cab passed the window.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘the party I want is arriving right now.’

‘Newbegin?’

‘It’s not going to be that easy,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep in touch.’

Midwinter was saying ‘Where are you?’ as I rang off. I walked across the street and gave Signe’s cab time to get clear.

When Signe saw me she hugged me and laughed and sniffed and cried. I picked up her Braniff Airlines bag and two boxes that said ‘Shoes by Frost’ and carried them up to her apartment. She went across to the mirror. ‘Thank God you are all right,’ she said, looking in the mirror. She produced a man’s handkerchief and dabbed carefully around her eyes so that the eye make-up didn’t smudge. ‘Harvey wanted to leave you in the surgery. He wanted to have you arrested. I argued with him.’ She turned back to me from the mirror. ‘I saved you,’ she said.

‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t mention it. I only saved you, that’s all.’

‘So what do you want me to do: buy you a pair of shoes?’

‘He’s left his wife. He wanted me to go away with him, but I wouldn’t go.’

‘Go where?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think he knows. He upset me. I couldn’t leave as suddenly as that. I have books and furniture here, and more things in Helsinki. I couldn’t just leave as suddenly as that.’ She helped me off with my coat and ran her cold fingers across my face as if to assure herself that I was real.

‘What was the final arrangement?’

‘Harvey said it was now or never as far as leaving his wife was concerned. He wanted to run away with me. I don’t love him. Well, I don’t love him like that. I don’t love him enough to run off and live with him. I mean loving someone is one thing
and running off…’ She paused in order to cry but decided against it. ‘I’m so mixed up. Why do men take everything so seriously? They ruin everything by taking every little thing I say seriously.’

‘When were you due back in Helsinki?’

‘Three days’ time.’

‘Harvey knows that?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’ll write or cable you. Do whatever he says.’

‘I can handle Harvey all right,’ Signe said. ‘I don’t need lessons.’

‘I wasn’t offering you any.’

‘I can handle him. He likes stories.’ She gave a little sob. ‘That’s why I love him, because he likes my stories.’

‘You don’t love him,’ I reminded her, but she wanted to enjoy her big scene.

‘Only in a way,’ she said. ‘I love to have him around.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But you love to have all sorts of people around.’ She put her arms round my waist and gripped me tight. ‘Harvey isn’t an ambitious man,’ said Signe, ‘and in this city that’s a crime. You’ve got to be aggressive, pushing and making money. Harvey is good and kind.’ I kissed her wet eyes. She sobbed incoherently and thoroughly enjoyed it. Through the window I saw a yellow poster. The man on the poster was making a scene in a restaurant. ‘Is this someone you know?’ the poster said. ‘Trouble-maker. Troublesome people are often people in trouble. Should you help them?
Could you help them? Better mental health Box 3000 NY 1.’

When Signe spoke again her voice was quiet and very grown-up. ‘Harvey knows all about that computer machinery, doesn’t he?’ She paused. ‘If he tried to go to Russia would they want to have him killed?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How important is that machinery? Is it as vital as they say?’

‘Computers are like Scrabble games,’ I told her. ‘Unless you know how to use them they’re just a boxful of junk.’

Round and round the garden Like a teddy bear; One step, two step, Tickle you under there!

NURSERY RHYME

March. London looked like the bed of a drained aquarium. Continuous rain and frost had attacked last summer’s hastily applied paint. The white bones of the city were showing through its soft flesh, and lines of parked, dirty vehicles looked abandoned. At Charlotte Street the staff were rubbing their hands together to keep them warm and wearing that martyred expression that other nations keep for sieges.

‘Come in,’ Dawlish called. He was sitting in front of a tiny coal fire, prodding at it with an old French infantry bayonet that was bent at the sharp end. Dawlish needed the daylight from his two windows: it filtered through his collection of slightly broken antiques that he bought recklessly, then had second thoughts about. Everything smelled of mothballs and aged dust. He had an umbrella stand made from an elephant’s foot, a glass-fronted bookcase jammed with sets of Dickens, Balzac, and bright little books that told
you how to recognize a Ming vase if you found one on an old barrow in the market. Unfortunately for Dawlish, most of the people with barrows had read those same books. On the wall there were cases of butterflies and moths—one of them with a badly cracked glass—and a dozen small framed photos of cricket teams. Visitors to the office played the game of deciding which was Dawlish in each team, but Jean said he had bought the whole lot cheap on a barrow. I put my six-page memo on his desk. The dispatch department—where the duty drivers sat around drinking tea—was playing gramophone records, brass-band music, always brass-band music.

‘Want to buy an old Riley?’ Dawlish said. One large flat slab of coal was giving him trouble.

‘You’re selling it?’ He was very attached to his old car.

‘I don’t want to,’ Dawlish said, the even flow of his words distorted by the spiteful attacks he was making upon the piece of coal. ‘But it has just become impossible to carry on with it. Every time I drive it away from the repairers a new noise begins. I’m becoming a mechanical hypochondriac.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose it’s expendable.’

Dawlish abandoned the attempt to split the piece of coal. ‘Everything is expendable,’ he said. ‘Everything. When it gives more trouble than it’s worth, no matter what the sentimental attachment might be.’ He waved the red-hot poker at me.

‘That’s right,’ I said. I was looking at the case of butterflies on the wall. ‘Wonderful colours,’ I said. Dawlish grunted and prodded at the coal. He still failed to break it. He built a couple of extra pieces up on it. ‘What are the socialists going to do about the public schools?’ he asked. I was one of the few grammar-school boys that Dawlish ever came in contact with. He considered me an authority on all aspects of left-wing politics. He levered the coal up with the bayonet and left it impaled there. The rush of air through the lifted coal made the fire spit like a kitten, but it didn’t catch alight.

‘Send their sons to them,’ I said.

‘Really?’ said Dawlish without too much interest. He clapped his hands to free them of coal dirt and wiped them on a duster. ‘They will make a formidable pressure group; working-class flagellants.’

‘Oh I don’t know, “Down with the beer that is bitter, up with the wine that is sweet,” what’s more working-class than that?’

‘Eton,’ said Dawlish, ‘that’s not a public school; that’s group therapy for congenital deviates.’ Dawlish was a Harrow man.

‘Therapy?’ I said, but Dawlish was watching the fire anxiously. A down-draught filled the room with a sudden billow of smoke. ‘Damn,’ Dawlish said, but he did nothing about it, and soon the fire began to burn properly again.

He removed his spectacles and cleaned them carefully with a large handkerchief. When he was pleased with them he put them on and tucked the
handkerchief into his sleeve. It was a sign that we should begin to talk business. He read the notes. At the end of each page he sniffed. When he had finished he patted the sharp corners into alignment and stared at them as he tried to concentrate all the information known to him into one organic lump. ‘One good thing about the criminal activities of your friend Harvey Newbegin: by inventing personnel in order to pocket their wages he has left us with only a small number of Fact-free men to worry about.’ He removed one sheet of paper from my report and placed it in the very centre of his desk. I expected him to quote something from it, but he reamed out his pipe on it and the charred pieces fell exactly upon its centre. ‘Sweden. Plenty there. We’ve been comparatively lucky.’ He tipped the dirt into the waste-bin and then blew on the paper before reading it. ‘You make penetrating the Midwinter people sound too easy,’ he said.

‘Purposely,’ I said. ‘Since the CIA and the State Department are supporting it I want them to know that, in spite of the gloss, it’s still an amateur setup and it will never be anything better.’

Dawlish shook his head, ‘You’re too ambitious, my boy, too anxious to share our secrets with the world. We’ve got Midwinter’s johnnies taped now, why alert them? Why help them improve their security? Better a devil you know than a devil you don’t.’

‘I’d like to see them discredited. I’d like to see all these privately owned outfits discredited.’

‘Discredited,’ Dawlish scoffed. ‘Discredit is a state of mind. Your mind works like that chap Kaarna’s. How much did he finally discover, by the way?’

‘He stumbled upon the network, heard their story about being British and believed it. He got his hands on some eggs, but didn’t know where they’d come from or where they were going. Being a journalist he began guessing. He was still guessing when they killed him.’

‘Is Newbegin going to defect to the Russkies?’ Dawlish wrote something on his notepad.

‘Who knows what he’s likely to do? He’s been embezzling from Midwinter’s network for ages. He must have made a fortune. Since he sent most of the same information to the Russians as well, he probably has a healthy account at the Moscow National Bank…’

‘Enterprising joker Newbegin,’ said Dawlish approvingly. ‘I rather liked the way he
stole
the virus eggs from you instead of merely receiving them from you. Terribly good that, not a likely suspect; the man who is due to take delivery.’

‘He’s good at avoiding blame,’ I agreed. ‘He did a similar sort of trick with Ralph Pike; after he went to all that trouble to send him off by plane, who’d suspect he tipped the Russians off to expect him?’

‘And to cap it all,’ said Dawlish, ‘he asks Stok not to arrest Ralph Pike until you are there to take the blame for betraying him.’ Dawlish blew through his unlit pipe. ‘Jolly good stuff. Keeps us all on our toes, stuff like that.’

‘Us?’ I said, ‘I haven’t noticed you up on the points lately.’

‘Figuratively. I was speaking figuratively.’ He filled his pipe and lit it. ‘But why—if Stok and Harvey Newbegin are so friendly—did Stok save you from a violent end at the hands of the hold-up men?’

‘Stok’s frightened of the paperwork involved in my death. The questions from Moscow. He’s frightened of the sort of retaliation his people here would get. Make no mistake, Stok is a very rough customer,’ I said. ‘The people who work with him call him Beef Strogonoff because he pours so much cream over you you don’t notice that you’re being cut into shreds. But Stok doesn’t want a mess on his doorstep any more than we do.’

Dawlish nodded and wrote a little note about it.

‘So what are you doing to locate Newbegin?’

‘I’m covering four angles. One, he might have one last go at getting this virus to Russia as his entrance fee. We know the eggs come from Porton MRE and we have a photo of Midwinter’s agent there that I had their computer send from San Antonio. The MRE security people there are watching him closely but won’t do anything except keep us informed if he tries to pinch more. Two: Newbegin might want to put his hands on some of the money he has salted away, so I have put a search through the British banks for any blocked account that has San Antonio as a base. Three: Harvey Newbegin is madly in love with this
Finnish girl Signe Laine so I have someone watching her…’

‘I wouldn’t count too much on that line of inquiry,’ Dawlish said. ‘A man doesn’t desert his wife and two children for a young girl that he’s already had an affair with.’

‘Four,’ I continued: ‘I have people checking passenger lists of aircraft destined for Leningrad, Moscow and Helsinki.’

‘He could slip past all that,’ said Dawlish. ‘He’s an actor, remember that. You can’t apply normal standards to people whose greatest ambition is to listen to hands smacking together.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But I think we have to keep a sense of perspective on this thing. If he does defect to the Russians, as long as he doesn’t have the virus it’s not going to be the most terrible thing that ever happened.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘It’s something I learned when ordered to give those gents from the Foreign Office their airline tickets and whisk them away from the Special Branch boys.’

‘Ah,’ said Dawlish, ‘but had they faced trial it was a matter that would have embarrassed the Government. There are such things as elections, you know.’

I knew that Dawlish was just provoking me because we had enjoyed this argument at least twice before. It wasn’t that Dawlish disagreed strongly, he liked to see me angry.

Dawlish read down the rough notes again. ‘This fellow in the dentist’s chair: how do you know he was dead?’

‘The policeman said so.’

‘The policeman said so,’ Dawlish nodded. ‘And you of course believed him. Why, you can’t even be sure that he was a policeman. He wasn’t in uniform.’

‘He was working there with policemen all around him,’ I said patiently.

Equally patiently Dawlish said, ‘And I am working here with imbeciles all around me but that doesn’t make me an imbecile.’

‘Do you want a second opinion?’

‘Leave it all out of the report. If the Minister thinks I have people here who can’t even recognize a corpse when they see one…’ he tutted. It all looked so damn easy if you sat in Dawlish’s chair and read the reports; it was useless to explain that there were always loose ends unless you faked the report up.

Dawlish said, ‘I’ve an official request on the teleprinter. I’m to locate Newbegin and hold him and inform the Americans. On no account, this message says, must Newbegin fall into the hands of the Russians. On no account, you know what that means?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Right,’ said Dawlish. ‘Well that’s official. That’s not your Free-fact-men or whatever they call themselves. That’s the US State Department speaking through the Cabinet. That’s your orders.
That’s official.’ Dawlish took off his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose while closing his eyes as tightly as possible. When he opened them he seemed mildly surprised that I, and the whole office, hadn’t disappeared. We looked at each other deadpan for a moment or so. When he spoke again he spoke very slowly. ‘Speaking personally,’ Dawlish said, ‘I hope that Harvey Newbegin isn’t found anywhere in my territory. I hope Newbegin stays well away from here and gets arrested somewhere like Helsinki. I’ll then arrange that his playmates—Dr Pike and company—are put into the bag by someone like the Porton Security people. All nice and quietly parochial. But if it’s done the other way, with us arresting Harvey Newbegin and the story about these Pike brothers stealing viruses from Porton being told to an American interrogator, the whole thing will blow up into a big front-page sensation. We can’t serve D notices to newspapers in America, my boy.’

‘Your point is well taken, sir,’ I said.

‘That’s why I would like you to come off this case,’ said Dawlish. ‘At the next stage you are going to come up against all manner of problems because you are too close to the personalities involved.’

‘I must stay on it for exactly that reason.’

‘The authorities in their infinite wisdom have decreed that I run this department,’ Dawlish said in a good-natured way. ‘So don’t cast me as Don Quixote to your Sancho.’

I said, ‘Then perhaps you would stop casting me as Sam Weller to your Pickwick.’

Dawlish nodded wisely. ‘Are you sure that you could do all that might be needed?’ he asked. ‘It could mean a bit of brute strength and ignorance. I mean…Newbegin, well, you know. He can be a rough customer.’

‘I’ll see to it,’ I said. ‘Satisfaction guaranteed.’

‘My satisfaction has precedence.’

‘Yes,’ I said. Dawlish picked up the shiny brown sphere that the Midwinter organization gave each of its graduates.

‘Soil of Freedom,’ I explained.

‘Yes,’ Dawlish shook it, sniffed it and listened to it. ‘I thought someone had been soiling it.’

‘It’s American dirt,’ I said.

Dawlish put it back on the desk. ‘Well we don’t want any of that,’ he said. ‘We’ve got enough dirt of our own.’