Billion-Dollar Brain (5 page)
When I got back to London I put spots in telephone directories and went through the rest of Harvey Newbegin’s party games for the under-fives. A stuffy voice on the phone said, ‘Don’t worry about that twenty hours nonsense that they told you at the other end. You get along here now. I’m waiting to go down to my boat for a couple of days.’
So I went to King’s Cross; Bed and Breakfast cards jammed into grimy windows and novelty shops that sell plastic faeces and musical toilet-roll holders. There was a brass plate outside number fifty-three: ‘Surgery. Dr Pike.’ The plate was garnished with qualifications. Near the front door there were two dented dustbins and about thirty old milk bottles. A cold wet sleet was beginning to fall.
The door was unlocked, but a small buzzer sounded as I pushed it open. The waiting-room was a large Victorian room with a decorated
ceiling. There was a wide selection of slightly broken furniture with disembowelled copies of
Woman’s Own
strategically placed under notices about ante-natal clinics and repeat prescriptions. The notices were penned in strange angular lettering and held in place by crisp pieces of ancient sticking plaster.
In one corner of the waiting-room, painted white with the word ‘Surgery’ on it, was a hardboard box. It was large enough to contain a desk and two chairs. One chair was large, leather-covered and swivelled smoothly on ball-bearings; the other was narrow, sickly and lame in one leg. Dr Pike counted his fingertips methodically and revolved towards me. He was a large, impeccably groomed man of about fifty-two. His hair was like a black plastic swimming cap. His suit was made of thin uncreasable blue steel and so was his smile.
‘Where’s the pain?’ he said. It was a joke. He smiled again to put me at my ease.
‘In my hand.’
‘Really? You really have a pain in your hand?’
‘Just when I put it in my pocket.’
Pike looked at me carefully and remembered that there are some people who mistake a friendly word for an invitation to be familiar. ‘I’m sure you were the life and soul of the sergeants’ mess.’
‘Let’s not exchange war experiences,’ I said.
‘Let’s not,’ he agreed.
On Pike’s desk there was a pen set, a large dog-eared desk-diary, a stethoscope, three prescription
pads and a shiny brown ball about as big as a golf ball. He fingered the shiny sphere.
I said, ‘We will be working together for a long time, so why don’t we decide to get along with each other?’
‘That’s a remarkably intelligent idea.’
Pike and I loathed each other on sight, but he had the advantage of breeding and education, so he swallowed hard and went out of his way to be nice to me.
‘This package of…’ He waited for me to finish the sentence.
‘Eggs,’ I said. ‘Package of eggs.’
‘It may take a day or so to come through.’
‘That doesn’t tally with my instructions,’ I said.
‘Perhaps not,’ he said in a restrained way, ‘but there are complex reasons why the timing is unpredictable. The people involved are not the sort to whom one can give a direct order.’ He had the precise, accentless English that only a diligent foreigner can produce.
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘and why not?’
Pike smiled while keeping his lips pressed together. ‘We are professional men. Our livelihood depends upon a code of conduct; it’s essential that we do nothing unethical.’
‘Are discovered doing nothing unethical, you mean,’ I said.
Pike did that tricky smile again. ‘Have it your way,’ he said.
‘I will,’ I said. ‘When will the package be ready?’
‘Not today certainly. There are some benches near the children’s sand-pit in St James’s Park. Meet me there at four forty-five P.M. on Saturday. Ask me if my paper has the stock-market prices and I’ll have a
Financial Times.
I’ll say, “You can read this for a few minutes.” If I’m carrying a copy of
Life
magazine don’t make contact: it will indicate danger.’ Pike fingered his yellow bow tie and nodded my dismissal.
My God, I thought, what have these boys been smoking? They’re all doing it. I nodded as though these charades were a regular part of my working day and opened the door.
Pike said, ‘…carry on with the tablets and come back and see me in about a week,’ for the benefit of a couple of old flower-pots who were sitting in the waiting-room. He needn’t have bothered because he was shouting at the top of his voice as I left, trying to get them to look up.
In view of the razzle-dazzle these boys were going through it was reasonable to suppose they were having me followed, so I took a cab and waited till we got into a traffic jam, paid off the driver quickly and hailed a cab moving in the opposite direction. This tactic, well handled, can throw off the average tail if it’s using a private car. I was back in the office before lunch time.
I reported to Dawlish. Dawlish had that timeless, ageless quality that British Civil Servants develop to spread confidence among the natives. His only interest in life, apart from the antiques
which littered the office and the department which he controlled, was the study and cultivation of garden weeds; perhaps they weren’t unrelated interests.
Dawlish had sandwiches sent up from Wally’s delicatessen and asked me lots of questions about Pike and Harvey Newbegin. I thought Dawlish was taking it much too seriously, but he’s a cunning old devil; he’s apt to base his hunches upon information he hasn’t given me access to. When I said I’d told Harvey Newbegin that I only worked for WOOC(P) part-time, Dawlish said, ‘Well you certainly weren’t lying about that, were you?’ He munched into one of Wally’s salt-beef sandwiches and said, ‘You know what they’ll do next?’
‘No, sir,’ I said, and really meant it.
‘They will send you to school.’ He nodded to reinforce his theory. ‘When they do, accept. It’s got seeds in,’ he said. Dawlish was staring at me in a horrified, faintly maniacal way. I nodded. Dawlish said, ‘If I’ve told him once, I’ve told him a thousand times.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
Dawlish flipped the switch on his intercom. ‘If I’ve told him once I’ve told him a thousand times. I don’t like that bread with seeds in.’
Alice’s voice came through the box with all the unbiased dignity of a recording. ‘One round on white, one round on rye with seeds. You have eaten the wrong ones.’
I said, ‘I don’t like caraway seeds either.’ Dawlish nodded at me so I said it again at the squawk-box, louder and more defiantly this time.
‘Neither of us likes bread with seeds,’ Dawlish said to Alice in a voice of sweet reasonableness. ‘How can I get this fact promulgated?’
‘Well I can’t be expected to know that,’ said Alice.
‘I suppose,’ said Dawlish, ‘that my best plan would be to file it in a cosmic clearance file.’ He smiled at me and nodded approval at his own witticism.
‘No, sir, put it into the non-secret waste bin. I’ll have someone take it away. Would you like something else instead?’
‘No thank you, Alice,’ said Dawlish and released the switch.
I could have told him that he’d never win an argument with Alice. No one ever had.
But it would have taken more than that to upset Dawlish. He had done well that year. The January estimates had been submitted to Treasury and Dawlish had just about doubled our appropriation at a time when many people were predicting our close-down. I’d spent long enough in both the Army and the Civil Service to know that I didn’t like working in either; but working with Dawlish was an education, perhaps the only part of my education that I had ever enjoyed.
‘Pike,’ Dawlish said. ‘They never get tired of recruiting doctors, do they?’
‘I can see the advantage,’ I said. ‘The waiting-room full of people, the contact has complete privacy when talking to the doctor; very tricky to detect.’
Dawlish had second thoughts about the sandwich. He picked the seeds out of the bread with a paper-knife, then took a bite. ‘What was that?’ said Dawlish. ‘I wasn’t listening.’
‘They are tricky to detect.’
‘Not if you get them in your teeth, they’re not, beastly little things, I can’t think who likes them in bread. By the way, you were followed when you left that doctor’s surgery.’ Dawlish made a deprecating gesture with the palm of his hand. ‘But of course, you know that or you wouldn’t have taken evasive action.’
‘Who followed me?’
‘We are not sure yet. I put young Chilcott-Oates on to it, but apparently our quarry is shopping in Finchley Road and keeping the boy on his toes; he hardly had time to dial the number, Alice says.’ I nodded. Dawlish said, ‘You are making those scornful noises with your teeth. One wishes you wouldn’t do that.’
‘Chico,’ I said.
‘It’s essential he learns,’ said Dawlish. ‘You won’t let him do anything and that way he will never improve. It will be a splendid success.’
I said, ‘I’ll go downstairs and try to get a little work done.’
Dawlish said, ‘Very well, but this business with Newbegin is top priority, don’t let anything interfere with that.’
‘I’ll remind you of that remark next month when the Organization Department are making themselves unpleasant.’
I went downstairs and watched Jean touching up the paint on her fingernails. She looked up and said hello, using the warm breath to dry the paint.
‘Busy?’ I said. I settled down behind the desk and began to go through the trays.
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic. I spent all day Saturday going through the “information onlys” and making a précis on tape.’
‘I’m sorry, love. This Newbegin business has come up just at the wrong time. Without that we could probably have brought all the desk-work up to date. Have you checked out that all these files are ours, as you so cleverly suggested?’
‘Forget the flattery,’ Jean said. ‘Yes; we’ve got rid of some of them, but a lot of it comes up here because of your high security clearance. I have a new idea for that.’
‘Give.’
‘Well, some of these files marked with secret codings are really not even confidential, but they originated in a secret file, so everything subsequently bearing that file number is automatically secret. If you will authorize me to break some of these omnibus files into sub-files with separate
numbers, a lot of them will no longer be secret and can be handled downstairs. What’s more, it’s much more efficient to have sub-files because two departments can work on two aspects of the same problem at the same time if they each have a subfile.’
‘Genius,’ I said. ‘Now I know why I love you.’
‘You don’t love anyone. Not even yourself.’
‘You know I couldn’t help it. I had to wait until the passport was ready.’
‘I spent hours cooking all your favourite things; you arrived at one
A.M.
’
‘I had all my favourite things at one
A.M.
’
She didn’t answer.
‘I’m forgiven?’
‘We can’t go on like this indefinitely.’
‘I know,’ I said. Neither of us spoke for ages.
Jean finally said, ‘I know that this sort of work…Well I wouldn’t want you to stop. Even when it’s dangerous…’
‘It’s nothing like that, lover. I’m not going to get myself hurt. I’m a cautious coward with too much survival training.’
Jean said, ‘Even good drivers get killed when amateurs ram them; I think Harvey Newbegin is a clumsy amateur. You must be very careful.’
‘Don’t make me even more neurotic. Newbegin has a good record with the Defense Department and the State Department. The Americans don’t hang on to a man that long unless he’s worth his money.’
‘I just don’t trust him,’ said Jean with that stubborn feminine intuition. She came close and I put an arm around her.
‘Just because he pinched your bottom at the White Elephant Club,’ I said.
‘And a lot of help you were. You did nothing.’
‘That’s my speciality,’ I said, ‘I always do nothing.’
I left the office at six that night. Jean’s brother was on one of his rare visits to London and they were going out to dinner, but Dawlish thought I should stay available. So I went back to my flat and cooked bacon and eggs and sat in front of the fire with Vol. 2 of Fuller’s
Decisive Battles
and read about the siege of Yorktown. It was a pleasant evening until 8.15, when the phone rang.
The Charlotte Street operator said, ‘Scramble please.’ Before I had a scrambler fitted I had to do stand-by duties at the office. I pressed the button. Dawlish said, ‘The boy has turned up trumps apparently.’
‘Why apparently?’ I said.
‘The fellow who followed you is down on the river,’ said Dawlish ignoring my question. ‘We shall have to pass your way. We will pick you up in fifteen minutes.’ Dawlish rang off abruptly. I knew he had the same doubts about Chico’s abilities as I had, but he was determined to
demonstrate to me the proper loyal attitude to one’s subordinates.
Dawlish arrived at 8.37. He was in a black Wolseley driven by one of our ex-police drivers. With Dawlish there was Bernard, one of the brighter of the public-school boys we had recruited of late, and a man named Harriman.
Harriman was a big, hard man who looked more like a doorman than a lieutenant-colonel from Special Field Intelligence. His hair was black and tight against his bony skull. His skin was wrinkled and leather-like, and his teeth were large and uneven. He was intellectual in a way that might be considered suspect in a regular officer. I guessed that the man we were after was going to be taken into custody because Harriman had special authorization from the Home Office to execute a warrant with minimum fuss and paperwork.
They wouldn’t have a drink so I climbed into a raincoat and we drove off towards the docks.
Dawlish said, ‘Young Chico has done quite a good job here.’
‘Yes,’ I said. Harriman and I exchanged a grimace. I heard the car radio-phone said, ‘OK. Switch to Channel Six for a car-to-car with Thames five.’ Then Bernard in the front seat said, ‘Are you receiving me, Thames five?’ and the police boat said it was receiving us loud and clear. Then we said we were receiving the police boat loud and clear and then Bernard asked them to
report their position and they said, ‘Tower Bridge, Pickle Herring Street side.’
Bernard said, ‘Come up to Wapping Police Station, Thames five, to take on passengers.’
Thames five said, ‘No one in small boat answering description you gave but we’ll have another dekko at Lavender Wharf on the way back.’
Information room said, ‘Have you finished your car-to-car?’ in a voice that suggested we had, and added, ‘I’ll show you still dealing Thames five,’ and Dawlish said, ‘What are those chaps doing out there, playing cards?’ He smiled.
‘This chap went all round Finchley,’ Dawlish continued imperturbably. ‘Chico kept on his tail, then about six thirty he wound up at the Prospect of Whitby. Chico has him bottled up there, so we’ll take a look at him.’
‘With all this entourage? I thought you were going to cordon off the area.’
Dawlish gave me a twitch of a smile. ‘Bernard here is night duty officer. Harriman is handling a river-traffic job. We all have good reasons for being here,’ Dawlish said.
I said, ‘And I have some great reasons for staying home but no one will listen to them.’
As we crossed Tower Bridge I saw the police-boat heading down river through the grey choppy water. We passed the Tower of London, went round the one-way traffic system as far as the Mint, then turned into Thomas More Street: twenty-feet-high walls that twist and turn
relentlessly. Each turn of the road fails to reveal the end of the street and the walls seem to get higher and higher; it was like the last reel of
Dr Caligari.
Along Wapping High Street and Wapping Wall the wharves and cranes were high, dirty and silent. The car headlights ignited the green flickering eyes of stray cats and shiny cobblestones. The Wolseley bounced over the tiny bridges of the dock entrances and under the grimy catwalks. Just behind the fences there were sudden expanses of dark water where passenger boats were twinkling with yellow lights and white-coated waiters, like the Hilton laid on its side, carved into sections and ready to tow out to sea. We dropped Bernard off at Wapping Police Station, where two policemen in waterproofs and waders were waiting for him.
Chico was standing outside the pub. The Prospect of Whitby is a bow-fronted tourist attraction. In summer they throng here like harbour rats. But this was winter, and the window was opaque with condensation and the door shut tight against the cold. We tumbled out like the Keystone cops. Anxious excitement plastered Chico’s hair against his damp pink forehead.
‘Hello, sir,’ he greeted each of us in turn. Chico led the three of us inside the pub and made a big operation of buying us drinks as if he was a sixth-form boy with three house-masters. He got so excited that he was calling the barman sir.
The interior of the Prospect is dark with artful knick-knacks and inglenooks, and the big kick is that the customers leave thousands of visiting cards, theatre tickets and associated paper pinned to the antlers, so that you feel like a bug in a litter basket. I walked right through the bar and out to the balcony that overlooks the Pool of London. The water was as turbid as oil. The waterfront was still and deserted. I heard Dawlish trying to prevent Chico from sending down to the cellar for the type of sherry that Dawlish liked. Finally, to ease the agony of the whole thing, Harriman said, ‘Four big bitters’ to the barman, who was as relieved as anyone. They followed me on to the balcony. When we were finally standing in a small Druidian circle with ritualistic foaming glasses Chico said, ‘He’s away across the river.’
I said nothing; Harriman said nothing; so finally Dawlish said, ‘Tell them how you know.’
Chico said, ‘I proceeded as instructed…’
Dawlish said, ‘Just explain…’
Chico said, ‘I watched him go inside. I followed him through to this balcony, but by that time he had gone down this iron ladder to a rowing boat and rowed towards the far bank. I phoned the office and suggested that they alert the river police. My informant says that he was making for a large grey boat standing off Lavender Wharf. I have identified it as a Polish vessel.’
Dawlish and Harriman looked at me, but I wasn’t keen to make a fool of myself, so I looked
at Chico and wondered why he was wearing a tie with fox-heads on it.
Dawlish and Harriman looked across the water towards the Polish ship, and Dawlish said they would leave Chico with me. They took the car and visited the Port of London Authority Police.
Chico produced a large leather cigar-case. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ he said.
‘As long as you don’t tell me about an amusing little claret you discovered last night.’
‘I won’t, sir,’ Chico agreed.
The sky was as red as an upturned hull and propping it up were great forests of cranes. From Lavender Wharf came the oily smell that pilots are said to navigate by on foggy days. Chico said, ‘You don’t believe me?’
‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ I said. ‘Grannie has come along to show us how to do our job, so let him handle it.’ We drank beer and watched the slow movement of the water. A police launch came round the bend and turned towards the Rotherhithe side. I could see Bernard, Dawlish and Harriman in the rear talking to a policeman and being careful not to point at the Polish boat.
‘What do you think?’ Chico asked.
‘Let’s take it very slowly,’ I said. ‘You followed this man here. How were you travelling?’
‘We were each in separate taxis.’
‘You saw this man enter by the bar entrance?’
‘Yes.’
‘How far behind him were you?’
‘My cab gave his cab space to turn round, then I paid my cab and told him to wait. I was a minute behind him.’
‘A full minute?’
‘Yes, at least,’ Chico agreed.
‘You followed him right through the pub out to this balcony?’
‘Well I couldn’t see him at the bar, so the only explanation was that he walked right through and on to the balcony here.’
‘So that’s what you think?’
‘Well, I wasn’t sure until I spoke to the witness on the balcony.’
‘And he said?’
‘He said that a man had walked through and down the ladder and rowed away.’
‘Now tell me what he really said.’
‘That’s what he said.’
‘What did you ask him?’ I said wearily.
‘I asked him if a man had done that and he said, “Yes, there he is, across the river. There.”’
‘But you couldn’t see him?’
‘No, I just missed seeing him.’
‘Go and find this joker who saw him.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Chico. He came back with a potbellied man in a brown whipcord suit and a matching flat cap. He had a large nose and heavy lips and his complexion was raw and pink. He had the hoarse, full-chested voice that men acquire when they address small crowds. I guessed him to be a bookie or a tic-tac man, especially since
whipcord—which doesn’t attract animal hair—is favoured by race-track men. He extended a large hand and shook mine in over-hearty friendliness.
‘Tell me what you told him,’ I said.
‘About the feller climbing down the ladder and rowing off out to sea?’ He had a loud beery voice and was delighted with any opportunity for using it. ‘I could see he was up to no good right from…’
‘I’ve got a hot meal waiting,’ I said, ‘so let’s make it quick. This man went down on to the mud. How deep into it did he sink?’
The big-nosed man thought for a moment. ‘No, he had the boat under the foot of the ladder.’
‘So his shoes didn’t get dirty?’
‘That’s right,’ he boomed. ‘Hand the gentleman a coconut, Bert. Ha ha.’
‘So he sat in the row boat while it traversed twenty foot of mud, to the river. Would you care to explain that a little more fully?’
He grinned an ugly gap-toothed grin. ‘Well, squire…’
‘Look. Having a joke with Little Lord Fauntleroy here is one thing, but making a false statement to a police officer is a criminal offence punishable by…’ I paused.
‘You mean?’ He pushed a large thumb towards Chico, ‘…and you?’
I nodded. I guessed he had a licence to lose. I was glad he had interrupted because I didn’t know what it was punishable by.
‘I was just sending him up. No harm meant, squire.’ He turned to Chico. ‘Nor to you, squire. Just my fun. Just my fun.’
A little grey corrugated woman behind him said, ‘Just his fun, sir.’ The big-nosed man turned to her and said, ‘All right, Florrie, I’ll handle this.’
‘I understand the temptation involved,’ I said. Big-nose nodded solemnly. I tapped Chico’s shoulder. ‘This young man,’ I said to Big-nose, ‘will be back in a moment or so to buy you some beer until a couple of other gentlemen arrive. Then if you will be kind enough to explain your joke to them…’
‘Certainly. Certainly,’ said Big-nose.
I walked back through the bar to the street. Chico said, ‘What do you think happened?’
‘There’s no thinking involved. You followed this man here. He isn’t inside the bar, therefore he either went upstairs—unlikely—or he left. There is no evidence that he left via the balcony as your funster friend suggested, so it seems likely that he turned round at the rear of the bar and walked down that alley and out of the side entrance. If I had been him I would have had my own taxi waiting—I remember you said it was turning round—but before driving away I would have given the driver of your cab a quid and told him that you wouldn’t need him any more.’
‘That’s right,’ said Chico. ‘My taxi wasn’t here when I came out again. I thought it was odd.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Well when Mr Dawlish and Mr Harriman have completed their activities perhaps you would explain those details to them.’
I beckoned the driver of the Wolseley and he drove over to me. I got in. ‘I’ll go back to my flat now,’ I said to the driver.
The police radio was still tuned in and it was saying, ‘…he’s a flasher Gulf one one. Ends. Origin Information Room. Message timed at two one one seven.’
‘How will Mr Dawlish and the rest of us get back?’ asked Chico. The driver turned the volume down but it was still audible, like the voices of a gang of midgets jammed somewhere in the engine. I said, ‘You see, Chico, Mr Dawlish likes these opportunities for a little vicarious high living; I personally prefer an evening by the fire. So next time you feel like creating an international incident complete with night boat trips and Polish ships, try and give me advance warning. To make me even happier next time you are given a surveillance task’—heaven forbid, I thought—‘just take a short length of movie that I can view in comfort.’
‘I will, sir.’
‘Splendid,’ I said in reasonable likeness of Dawlish’s voice.
The car moved slowly forward.
‘It was good practice anyway,’ said Chico.
‘“A” for effort,’ I said and went home.