Billion-Dollar Brain (4 page)

We sat down in the farthest corner staring out across a crowded car-park where every car was white with snow. With her heavy coat off the girl
was much younger than I thought. Helsinki teems with fresh-faced girls born when the soldiers returned home. Nineteen forty-five was a boom year for gorgeous Finns. I wondered whether this girl was one of them.

‘I am Liam Dempsey, a citizen of Eire,’ I said. ‘I have been gathering material for Professor Kaarna in connexion with a transfer of funds between London and Helsinki. I live in London most of the year.’ She presented her hand across the table and I shook it. She said, ‘My name is Signe Laine. I am a Finn. You work for Professor Kaarna, then we shall get along swell because Professor Kaarna works for me.’

‘For you,’ I said without making it a question.

‘Not for me personally,’ she smiled at the thought. ‘For the organization that employs me.’

She held her hands as though she’d seen too many copies of
Vogue,
picking up one hand with the other and holding it against her face and nursing it as if it was a sick canary.

‘What organization is that?’ I asked. The waitress came to our table. Signe ordered in Finnish without consulting me.

‘All in good time,’ she said. Outside in the carpark the wind was carrying the snow in horizontal streaks and a man in a woollen hat with a bobble on it was struggling along with a car battery, leaning into the wind and trying not to slip on the hard, shiny, grey ice.

Lunch was open cold-beef sandwiches, soup, cream cake, coffee and a glass of cold milk, which
is practically the national drink. Signe bit into it all like a buzz saw. Now and again she asked me questions about where I was born and how much I earned and whether I was married. She put the questions in the off-hand preoccupied way that women have when they are very interested in the answers.

‘Where are you staying?—You’re not eating your cream cake.’

‘I’m not staying anywhere and I’m not allowed cream cake.’

‘It’s good,’ she said. She dipped her little finger into the chocolate cream and held it to my lips. She put her head on one side so that her long golden hair fell across her face. I licked the cream from her finger-tip.

‘Did you like that?’

‘Very much.’

‘Then eat it.’

‘With a spoon it’s not the same.’

She smiled and looped a long strand of hair around her fingers, then asked me a lot of questions about where I was going to stay. She said that she would like to take the documents intended for Kaarna. I refused to part with them. Finally we agreed that I would bring the documents to a meeting the next day and that meanwhile I wouldn’t re-contact Kaarna. She gave me five one-hundred-mark notes—over fifty-five pounds sterling—for immediate expenses, then we got down to serious conversation.

‘Do you realize,’ she said, ‘that if the material you are carrying got into the wrong hands it could do a great deal of harm to your country?’ Signe didn’t fully understand the distinction between Eire and the United Kingdom.

‘Really?’ I said.

‘I take it…’ she pretended to be very occupied with the lock on her briefcase, ‘…that you wouldn’t want to harm your own country.’

‘Certainly not,’ I said anxiously.

She looked up and gave me a sincere look. ‘We need you,’ she said. ‘We need you to work for us.’

I nodded. ‘Who exactly is “us”?’

‘British Military Intelligence,’ said Signe. She wound a great skein of golden hair around her fingers and secured it with a wicked-looking pin. She got to her feet. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said, and pushed the bill across to me before leaving the restaurant.

I checked into the Marski that afternoon. It’s a tasteful piece of restrained Scandinavian on Mannerheim. The lights are just bright enough to glint on the stainless steel, and sitting on the black leather at the bar is like being at the controls of a Boeing 707. I drank vodka and wondered why Kaarna had been smeared with raw egg and what had happened to the egg-shells. I had a quiet little laugh about being recruited for British Intelligence, but not a big laugh, for two reasons.

First, it’s the usual practice of all intelligence organizations to tell their operatives that they are working for someone whom they will be happy to work for. A Francophile is told that his reports go to the Quai d’Orsay, a Communist is told that his orders come from Moscow. Few agents can be quite sure whom they work for, because the nature of the work precludes their being able to check back.

The second reason that I wasn’t getting a big laugh was because Signe just might be working for Ross’s department at the War Office. Unlikely but possible.

As a general rule—and all general rules are dangerous—agents are natives of the country in which they operate. I wasn’t an agent, nor was I likely to be one. I delivered, evaluated and handled information that our agents obtained, but I seldom met one except a cut-out, or go-between, like the Finn I had spoken with on the ferry. I was in Helsinki to do a simple task and now it was becoming very complex. I should follow up this strange opportunity, but I was not prepared. I had no communication arranged with London except an emergency contact that I dare not use unless world war were imminent. I had no system of contacts, for not only was I forbidden to interrupt the work of our resident people but, judging by the speed with which the grey-haired man answered the phone, that was a public call-box number.

So I had another vodka and slowly read the expensive menu and felt in my pocket the five hundred marks the girl with the wide mouth had given me. Easy come; easy go.

The next morning was blue and sunny but still a couple of degrees below. The birds were singing in the trees of the esplanade and I walked through the centre of town. I walked up the steep hill
where the University buildings are painted bright yellow like boarding-house custard, and down on to Unioninkatu and the shop full of ankle-length leather coats.

The girl Signe was standing outside the leather shop. She said good morning and fell into step beside me. At Long Bridge we cut off to the left without crossing it and walked alongside the frozen inlet. Under the bridge ducks were probing around among the debris that was scattered across the ice, soggy old cardboard cartons and dented cans. The bridge itself was pock-marked with bomb-splinter scars.

‘The Russians,’ said Signe. I looked at her.

‘Bombed Helsinki; damaged the bridge.’

We stood there watching the lorries coming into the city. ‘My father was a trade unionist; he used to look at that damaged bridge and say to me, “Those bombs were made by Soviet workers in Soviet factories in the land of Lenin, remember that.” My father had devoted all his life to the trade-union movement. In 1944 he died brokenhearted.’ She walked ahead rather quickly and I saw the quick flash of a pocket handkerchief as she dabbed at her eyes. I followed her and she climbed down towards the frozen surface of the water and began to walk out on the ice. Other tiny figures were taking the same short cut across the inlet farther to the west. Ahead of us an old woman was tugging a small sledge full of groceries. I planted my feet carefully, for the ice was
worn smooth by a winter of heavy use. I came alongside Signe and she took my arm gratefully.

‘Do you like champagne?’ she asked.

‘Are you offering some?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I just wondered. I’d never had champagne until three months ago. I like it very much. It’s almost my very favourite drink.’

‘I’m pleased,’ I said.

‘Do you like whisky?’

‘I like whisky very much.’

‘I like all alcohol. I expect one day I shall become an alcoholic.’ She picked up a handful of snow, compressed it into a snowball and threw it with great energy a hundred yards along the ice. ‘Do you like snow? Do you like ice?’

‘Only in whisky and champagne.’

‘Can you have ice in champagne? I thought that was wrong.’

‘I was just kidding,’ I said.

‘I know you were,’ she said.

We came to the other side of the frozen water and I walked up the embankment. Signe stayed on the ice and fanned her eyelashes.

‘What’s the matter?’

She said, ‘I don’t think I can make it. Could you help me?’

‘Stop fooling about. There’s a good girl.’

‘OK,’ she said cheerfully and climbed up beside me.

The city changes slightly on the north side of Long Bridge. Not in the sudden dramatic way that
London changes south of the river or Istanbul changes across the Galata Bridge; but on the north side of Long Bridge Helsinki becomes duller, the people are not so smartly dressed and lorries outnumber the cars. Signe took me to a block of flats near Helsinginkatu. She pressed a bell-push in the foyer to announce our arrival but produced a key to let us in. Few of Helsinki’s buildings have the bright newly minted shine that is associated with Finnish design; instead they are well-weathered Victorian hotels. This block was no exception, but inside the air was warm and the carpets soft. The flat we entered was on the sixth floor. There were lithographs on the walls and Artie Shaw on the turntable. The main room was light and large enough to hold a few examples of superb Finnish furniture and still leave room to practise dancing the rumba.

The man practising the rumba was a short thickset man with thinning brown hair. One hand he held in the air beating time to the music. The other hand held a tall drink. His footwork was adequate, and while we stood in the doorway he treated us to an extra few moments of expertise before looking up and saying, ‘Well, you old Limey sonuvabitch. I knew it was you.’ He took Signe into his arms with an easy movement and they began to dance. I noticed that Signe’s feet were actually standing on his toes, and he waltzed around the floor taking her weight upon his feet as though she was a rag dummy tied to his feet and
wrists. The dance ended, and he said, ‘I knew it was you’ again. I said nothing, and he swallowed the remainder of his drink and said to Signe, ‘Oh boy buttercup did you let your pants down for the wrong guy?’
*

Harvey Newbegin was a neatly dressed man; grey flannel suit, initialled handkerchief in top pocket, gold watch, and a relaxed smile. I had known him for a number of years. He had been with the US Defense Department for four years before transferring to the State Department. I had tried to get him working for us at one time but Dawlish had failed to obtain authority to do it. Under those droopy eyelids Harvey had quick, intelligent eyes. He used them to study me while going to get us all a drink. The music was still thumping out of the radiogram. Harvey poured three glasses of whisky, dropped ice and soda into two of them, then walked across to me and Signe. Halfway across the floor he picked up the beat of the music and did a brief sequence of steps the rest of the way.

‘Don’t be such a fool,’ Signe said to him. ‘He’s such a fool,’ she added. Harvey gave her the glass of whisky, let go of it before she grasped it and in mid-fall caught it with the other hand and
handed it to her without spilling it. ‘He’s such a fool,’ she said again with admiration. She shook little droplets of melted snow from her hair. Her hair was much shorter and even more golden today.

When we were all seated Harvey said to Signe, ‘Let me tell you something, doll, this guy is a hot tamale: he works for a very smart little British Intelligence outfit. He’s not as dopey as he looks.’ Harvey turned to me. ‘You’ve been tangling with this guy Kaarna.’

‘Well…’

‘OK, OK, OK, you don’t have to tell me. Kaarna is dead.’

‘Dead?’

‘DED dead. It’s here in the newspaper. You found him dead. You know it, pal.’

‘I give you my word I didn’t,’ I said.

We looked at each other for a minute, then Harvey said, ‘Well anyway he’s joined the major leagues, there’s nothing we can do about that. But when Signe was hustling you yesterday it was because we urgently need someone to carry between here and London. Could you take on a part-time job for the Yanks? The pay is good.’

‘I’ll ask the office,’ I said.

‘Ask the office,’ he said scornfully. He tapped his toe on the carpet. ‘You’re a big boy with a mind of your own. Why ask anyone?’

‘Because your smart organization might just let the word slip, that’s why.’

Harvey put a finger across his throat. ‘So help me God, they won’t. We are a very neat, tight-fitting department. Guaranteed no snafus. Cash on the barrel-head. What sort of deal have you got with your London set-up anyway?’

I said, ‘I work on a freelance basis. They pay me a fee per assignment; it’s a part-time job.’ I paused. ‘I could handle some extra tasks if the money was right and if you’re quite sure London won’t find out from your own people.’ It wasn’t true but it seemed a suitable answer.

Harvey said, ‘You’ll like working with us and we’d be tickled to have you.’

‘Then it’s a deal,’ I said. ‘Explain my duties, as they say in domestic circles.’

‘Nothing to it. You’ll be carrying materials between here and London. It’ll seldom be anything you can’t declare…’

‘So what’s the catch?’

‘Valuables. We must have somebody who won’t walk off with the consignment. You’ll have your first-class airfare paid. Hotel and expenses. A retainer and a fee per trip. As one pro to another I’ll tell you it’s a good deal.’ Signe gave us drinks, and as she turned towards the kitchen Harvey gave her an affectionate pat on the bottom. ‘The fat of the land,’ he said. ‘I’m living on the fat of the land.’

Signe wrenched Harvey’s hand away from her, snorted and walked out with a beguiling movement of the
glutaeus maximus.

Harvey moved his armchair nearer to me. ‘We don’t normally tell our operatives anything about the organization, but I’ll make an exception for you under the old pals’ act. This is a private intelligence unit financed by an old man named Midwinter. Calls himself General Midwinter. He’s from one of those old Texan families that have a lot of German blood. Originally the family came from one of the Baltic states—Latvia or Lithuania—that the Russians now have and hold. This old guy Midwinter has dreams of liberating the territory. I guess he’d like to install himself as a king or something.’

‘Sounds great,’ I said. ‘It’s a long time since I worked for a megalomaniac.’

‘Hell, I’m exaggerating, but he has got an oversimplified mind. Brilliant men often have. He likes to hear that those poor bastards across there are all set to start a revolution…’

‘And you help his illusions,’ I supplied.

‘Look, the guy’s a multi-millionaire, a multibillionaire maybe. This is his toy. Why should I spoil his fun? He made his money from canned food and insurance; that’s a dull way to make a billion, so he needs a little fun. The CIA siphon a little money to him…’

‘The CIA?’

‘Oh, they don’t take us seriously, but you know how their minds work; stealing hubcaps in Moscow is the CIA’s idea of a blow for freedom. And some of the stunts we pull are pretty good. He
has two radio stations on ships that beam into the Baltic states. You know the sort of thing: “Stand by for freedom and coke.” They have a mass of computer equipment and a training school back in the States. Maybe they will send you for training, but if they do I’ll make sure it’s kept plushy for you. And the money.’ Harvey poured me a huge drink to demonstrate that aspect of my new employer. ‘When do you plan to return to London?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘That’s great. This is your first task: stay to lunch.’ Harvey Newbegin laughed. ‘When you get to London go to the phone booth in Trinity Church Square, South-east one, take the L to R book and make a small pencil dot beside the Pan American entry. Go back next day and on the same page margin there will be a phone number written in pencil. Phone that number. Say you are a friend of the people at the antique shop and you have something you would like to show them. If anyone at the other end asks who you want to speak to, you don’t know, you were given this number and told there was someone there interested in buying antiques. When the people at the other end make an appointment, be there twenty hours later than that time. Got that?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘If there is any kind of snarl up, ring off. Standard control meeting procedure: that is to say, return and do the whole thing again twenty-four
hours later. OK?’ Harvey held up his glass of vodka and said, ‘This is something those Russkies do damn well. Pip, pip, down the hatch.’ He swallowed the rest of the vodka in one gulp, then clutched at his heart and pulled a pained face. ‘I have heartburn,’ he explained. He took his wallet out, removed a five-mark note and ripped it into two pieces in a very irregular tear. He gave half of it to me. ‘The man you meet will want your half of this before he parts with his package, so look after it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you will explain what it is I have to collect.’

‘It’s simple,’ said Harvey Newbegin. ‘You go empty-handed. You bring back half a dozen eggs.’