Billion-Dollar Brain (7 page)

Pit, pat, well-a-day, Little Robin flew away; Where can little Robin be? Gone into the cherry tree.

NURSERY RHYME

Under the armpit of Scandinavia, Finland fits like a gusset; and if this gusset was a piece of rotten calico then it would rip in the ragged shredded way that Finland has done. The rips are lakes. They are large and numerous and they contain islands that contain lakes that contain islands until the tatters of the coastline fray into the cold northern sea. But at this time of year there is no sea. For miles and miles the shadow of the aeroplane has flitted across hard shiny ice. It is only when a glimpse of brown forest is seen through the snow that one can be sure that the coast has been crossed.

I saw Signe standing among the red-roofed airport huts even before we landed, and while we taxied in she was running and waving and smiling a gigantic smile. As we walked towards an ancient Volkswagen she took my arm and rested too heavily upon it and asked if I’d brought her anything from London.

‘Only trouble,’ I said. She made me get in the driver’s side and we followed a Volga police car and did a careful legal speed all the way into town.

‘Did Harvey tell you to meet me?’ I asked.

‘Certainly not,’ said Signe. ‘He doesn’t tell me whether to go to meet my friends. Anyway he is in America. Conferring.’

‘Conferring about what?’

‘I don’t know. That’s what he said. Conferring.’ She grinned. ‘Turn left here and pull up.’

We entered that same comfortable flat off Siltasaarenk where I had met Harvey the previous week. Signe stood behind me and helped me off with my coat.

‘Is this Harvey Newbegin’s place?’

‘It is an apartment house that my father bought. He installed a mistress here. The girl was a White Russian of an aristocratic family. My father loved my mother but this girl Katya he loved foolishly; as she indeed loved him. Last year my father…’

‘How many fathers do you have?’ I said. ‘I thought he died of a broken heart when the Russians bombed Long Bridge.’

‘That wasn’t true about him dying.’ She ran the tip of her tongue along her upper lip as she concentrated. ‘He asked me to circulate the story of his death. Really, he and Katya…you’re not listening.’

‘I can listen and pour a drink at the same time.’

‘He went with this girl Katya who is so beautiful that it would hurt you to touch her…’

‘It wouldn’t hurt me to touch her.’

‘You must listen more seriously. They are living at an address that only I know. Even my mother thinks they are dead. They were in a train crash, you see…’

‘It’s a little early in the day for a train crash,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you take off your overcoat and relax?’

‘You don’t believe me.’

‘I do,’ I said. ‘I am your credulous court buffoon and I hang upon every syllable, but how about fixing a cup of coffee?’

When she brought the coffee—elegant little cups on an embroidered tray cloth—she knelt on the floor and put the cups upon the low coffee table. She was wearing a man’s sweater back to front, and under her hair—cut high and short now at the back—there was a triangle of white skin as soft and fresh as a newly broken bread-roll.

I fought down an impulse to kiss it. ‘You have a lovely trapezius,’ I said.

‘Have I? How nice.’ She said it automatically. She poured out the coffee and presented it to me like John the Baptist’s head. ‘I have a flat in New York,’ she said. ‘It’s much nicer than this. I spend a lot of time in New York.’

‘Really,’ I said.

‘Well, this flat’s not mine.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘When your old man and Katya come back…’

‘No, no, no.’

‘You’ll spill the coffee,’ I said.

‘You are just being nasty.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘If we are telling stories, we are telling stories. If we are not telling stories, we tell the truth.’

‘That’s a good arrangement.’

‘Do you think a woman should be able to smile with her eyes?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve never thought about it.’

‘I think they should.’ She covered her mouth with her hand. ‘You tell me when I’m smiling just from watching my eyes.’

It’s not easy to describe Signe, for she left you with a memory out of all relation to her true appearance. She was strikingly pretty, but her features were not regular. Her nose was too small to balance her high flat cheekbones, and her mouth was made for a face at least two sizes larger. When she laughed and giggled it stretched from ear to ear, but half an hour after leaving her you found yourself remembering Harvey’s claim that she was the most beautiful girl in the world.

‘Now?’ she said.

‘Now what?’ I said.

‘Am I smiling with my eyes?’

‘To play this game fairly,’ I said, ‘you would need to have a hand that was bigger than your mouth.’

‘Stop it, you are spoiling it.’

‘Don’t hit me,’ I said. ‘You’re spilling my coffee.’

For two days Signe and I waited for Harvey Newbegin to return. We saw a gangster film of New York during which Signe kept saying, ‘That’s near where I live.’ We had dinner on top of a tall building in Tapiola and looked out across the ice-locked offshore islands. I almost learned to ski at the cost of a torn jacket and a twisted elbow.

On the evening of the second day we were back in the flat near Long Bridge. Signe had cooked a fish with a sloppy skill which enabled her to read a pulp magazine and prepare dinner simultaneously without having anything burn or boil over. When dinner was over she brought a plate of petit fours in silver wrappers and a bottle of schnapps.

‘Have you known Harvey a long time?’

‘I’ve seen him on and off over the years.’

‘He runs things here, you know.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘Yes. He’s in sole charge in this part of Europe. He’s gone back to New York for a conference.’

‘So you said.’

‘I don’t think he’s the sort of man who is good at controlling a whole…’

‘Network?’

‘Yes, network. He’s too…emotional.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ She bit into one of the little cakes with her ice-white teeth. ‘He’s madly in love with me. Do you think that’s good?’

‘It’s OK as far as I’m concerned.’

‘He wants to marry me.’

I remembered all kinds of girls whom Harvey had wanted to marry at some time or other. ‘Well, you’re young yet. I imagine you’ll want to think about that for a little while.’

‘He’s going to divorce his present wife.’

‘He said that?’

‘No, his analyst told me at a party in New York.’ She folded the silver square of wrapping paper in half and made it into a little boat.

‘Then he’s going to marry you?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘There are lots of men in love with me. I don’t think a girl should be rushed into bedding down.’

‘I think they should,’ I said.

‘You’re wicked.’ She put the little silver-paper boat on to her fingertip like a hat and wiggled it. ‘He’s wicked,’ she said to the finger, and the finger nodded. ‘Harvey’s wife is awful.’

‘You are probably a little biased.’

‘No, I’m not biased. I know her. We were all at a party at Mr Midwinter’s. You don’t know Mr Midwinter, do you?’

‘No.’

‘He’s a dear. You’ll meet him. He’s Harvey’s boss.’ She fingered a coffee mark on my shirt. ‘I’ll remove that before it stains. Give me the shirt. You can borrow one of Harvey’s.’

‘OK,’ I said.

‘At this party everyone was wearing really pretty dresses. You know, with jewels and silver
things in their hair and some really great shoes. All the women had really great shoes. Sort of that shape.’ She took off her shoe and put it on the table and modified it with her two index fingers. ‘You can get them in Helsinki now, but at that time…anyway I had only been in New York for a couple of days and I only had the clothes I had taken with me. You understand.’

‘Sure, it’s a real problem.’

‘No, it really is a problem if you are a woman. Men can have one dark suit and wear it all day and no one will even notice, but women are expected to have the right clothes for lunch and afternoon tea and working in and then have some stunning outfit for evening. Then next day people think you should have things they haven’t seen before. If you…’

‘You were telling me about a party.’

‘Yes. Well I’m telling you. I went to this party at Mr Midwinter’s and it’s a wonderful house with footmen and things, and I went in just the sort of clothes I’d wear for a party here in Helsinki. I mean just a friendly little party. So there in the middle of all these men in tuxedos and women in three-hundred-dollar dresses…’

‘Didn’t Harvey tell you what they would be wearing?’

‘No. You know what he’s like. He daren’t go near me when his wife’s around. Anyway I’m standing there like a creep. Creep?’

‘Creep, yes. That will do.’

‘Well I’m standing there like a creep in this dress with dots on it. Dots. Can you imagine?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mrs Newbegin comes over to me. She looks like that.’ Signe narrowed her eyes to slits and sucked her cheeks in a grotesque imitation of a girl in a fashion magazine. ‘She’s wearing a fabulous black silk sheath dress and satin shoes. Satin shoes. She looks me up and down and says, “I’m Mr Newbegin’s wife.” Mr Newbegin. She turns to her friend and says, “It’s just terrible that Harvey didn’t tell her it was formal. I’m sure she has a dozen really pretty little formals she could have worn.” She’s so patronizing you’ve no idea. She’s horrid.’ Signe produced a little box and began applying bright green shadow to her eyelids. She finished, fluttered her lashes at me and smoothed the corduroy dress over her wide hips. She rested the side of her face against my legs. ‘She’s horrid,’ she repeated. ‘Terrible life she leads.’

‘She sounds a bit fierce,’ I said.

‘She’s a Leo; fire sign, sun sign. Lightning and domination. Pushing. It’s a masculine sign of driving force. Men Leos are OK, but women Leos tend to push their husbands. Harvey Newbegin is the same sign as me: Gemini. Air. Mercury. Split twins, passionate, dramatic, vicious, intelligent. Lots of movement, darting around to avoid trouble. Terrible with Leo. Geminis and Leos have an evasive relationship. It’s a bad combination.’

‘But you get on well with Harvey?’

‘Wonderfully. You’ve got nice brown arms. You’re an Aquarian.’

‘Have they all got brown arms?’

‘Air sign. Spirit and mystery. Always keep a part of themselves back. They have a high wall around them, more profound than most people, more detached and scientific. It’s my favourite sign, goes well with Gemini.’ She grasped my arm to demonstrate. Her fingers were slim and feather-like. She ran them down my arm lightly enough to make me shiver. She picked up my hand, put my fingertips into her open mouth, twisted my hand and kissed my palm noisily.

‘Do you like that?’ I didn’t answer.

She grinned and dropped my hand.

‘When I get married I’m going to keep my name. What’s your name? I never can remember.’

‘Dempsey,’ I said.

‘Well if I married you I would want to have the name Signe Laine-Dempsey.’

‘You were just about to tell me what sort of terrible life Mrs Newbegin has.’

Signe pulled a face of distaste. ‘Businessmen. Horrid wives talking about their husband’s cars. Big business, you know. It’s the women I hate, I quite like older men.’

‘Well, that gives me a chance,’ I said. ‘I’m old enough to be your father.’

‘You are not old enough to be my father,’ she said while tracing a pattern with her thumbnail into the knee of my trousers.

‘Don’t do that, there’s a good girl.’

‘Why?’

‘Well this is one of my better suits for one thing.’

‘And also it’s rather disturbing?’

‘Yes and also it’s rather disturbing.’

‘There you are: Geminis do affect Aquarians.’

‘I am old enough to be your father,’ I said to myself as much as to her.

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that. I’m nearly eighteen.’

‘Well in September eighteen and a half years ago,’ I thought for a moment, ‘I had just finished my exams. I went to Ipswich for a holiday. There was a company of ATS girls billeted in the same street.’ I paused to think hard. ‘Is your mother a blonde ATS girl with a mole on her right shoulder and a slight lisp?’

Signe giggled. ‘Yes. I swear it’s true.’

She lifted my vest at the back of my trousers. ‘You have a very nice back,’ she said. She ran a finger along the vertebrae appreciatively. ‘A very nice back. That’s important in a man.’

‘I thought you were going to remove that spot from my shirt,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m sitting here in my vest, remember?’

‘A very nice back,’ she said. ‘I should know, after all my father was one of the most famous osteopaths in the whole of Sweden.’

‘It’s a good shirt,’ I said. ‘You needn’t wash it, leave it to soak.’

‘Until he was called to set a bone in the back of the Queen of Denmark,’ she said. ‘That’s how it all began.’

She squirmed against me and suddenly we were kissing. Her mouth was clumsy and awkward like a child’s good night, and when she spoke the words vibrated inside my mouth. ‘Passionate, dramatic and vicious,’ she said. ‘Gemini and Aquarius are good in conjunction.’ She was still kissing me and kneading my leg skilfully.

‘Oh well,’ I thought. ‘I might as well see if there’s anything in this astrology lark.’

Harvey flew in the next day. We went out to meet him at the airport and Signe hugged him and told him how much she’d missed him and how she had cooked all his favourite foods for one vast homecoming meal but she had had an urgent phone call about sickness in the family and the dinner had all burned up so now we must eat in a restaurant.

The story about the dinner was a fantasy, but I envied Harvey his welcome just the same. She ran across the airport like a newly born antelope unsteady on its legs, and stood with elbows bent and legs apart as though afraid of toppling through her fantasies into womanhood.

The first thing I did was tell Harvey that the eggs and all my baggage had been stolen at the airport, but Harvey Newbegin was in one of his rich-busyman moods and went bustling around making tutting noises for a couple of days. He took the idea of the package being stolen with studied anger and
said the people concerned ‘really took a flyer. It was booby-trapped like crazy.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That would have been nice if the customs had asked me to open it.’

Harvey gave me a heavy-lidded glance. ‘Customs were fixed.’

Then he slammed off into his office. Any room into which Harvey put his typewriter he called his office.

Harvey spent a lot of time in the office and apart from asking me if I’d spoken to Dawlish—a suggestion which I impassively denied—he didn’t say much to me until the morning of the third day, which was a Tuesday. Harvey took me out to a sauna club he belonged to. It was a short drive from the city. Harvey had always had a mania for showers and baths and he had taken to the sauna ritual with great enthusiasm. This club was on a small island off the coast; it was reached by a causeway. There was little to show that we were on an island, for the snow covered everything from horizon to horizon. The clubhouse was tucked into a line of fir trees, a low building rich with the reds and browns of natural wood. The snow made horizontal lines of white where it had lodged between the timbers.

We undressed and walked right through the shiny white-tiled shower room where a woman attendant was scrubbing someone with a loofah. Harvey opened a heavy door. ‘This is the smoke room,’ Harvey said. ‘Typically Finnish.’

‘Good,’ I said. I don’t know why I said that.

Inside it was the size and shape of a cattle truck. Two slotted benches occupied most of the space and they were high up so that you had to sit with neck bent or smash your head against the ceiling. All the inside surfaces were wood, the fire smoke had blackened them and the heat produced a rich resinous smell of burning pine.

We sat on the bench looking out of the window that was the size of a very large letter-box. The thermometer was reading over 100° Centigrade, but Harvey had fiddled with the stove and said it would get hot in a moment. ‘That’s nice,’ I said. I felt as if someone was pressing my lungs with a steam-iron. Through the double glazing the trees were heavy with snow, and when the wind blew handfuls of it away it looked as though the trees were breathing on the cold air.

Harvey said, ‘You’ve got to understand that we are a very special little outfit. That’s why I wanted to make sure that you didn’t say anything about it to Dawlish.’

I nodded.

‘You didn’t say anything to him. On your honour?’

What a strange medieval mind you have, I thought. ‘On your honour’ is calculated to make me break down and confess.

‘On my honour,’ I said.

‘Good,’ said Harvey. ‘Because New York were giving me hell about employing you and I’ve gone
out on a limb. You see, we have a special operation coming our way tomorrow.’

It was getting very hot in the room. Even Harvey—who had a dark complexion—had gone the colour of a boiled lobster. Outside in the snow two men had climbed out of a Renault van with saws and ropes and were tapping one of the trees.

‘I didn’t want to handle it,’ Harvey said. ‘Are you getting too hot?’

‘No, I’m fine. Why didn’t you?’

‘Wrong time of year for one thing.’ He smacked his legs with a birch branch. The smell of the leaves was suddenly very strong. I wondered how they preserved branches complete with leaves until this time of year. ‘Oh, there are a thousand reasons why I wanted them to wait.’

‘They wouldn’t?’

‘They have their reasons. They want him in and out within a month at the very outside. He’s a technician taking a look at some technical stuff. Machinery or something. It’s Pike’s brother: you met him?’

‘I see,’ I said. I didn’t see anything except a man tying a rope around the large upper branch of a tree.

‘It’s dangerous,’ Harvey said. Even Harvey was feeling a little discomfort now. He was sitting very still and his breathing was shallow.

‘In what way?’

‘These drops. I hate them.’

‘Drops?’ I said. I had a nasty little feeling in my inside that was nothing to do with the sauna. I
hoped very much that Harvey didn’t mean what I thought he might. He stood up and went across to the stove. I watched him dip into a bucket and throw a scoopful of water on to the hot stones of the fire. He looked up at me. ‘Drop from a plane,’ he said.

‘Parachute into the Soviet Union?’ The man at the base of the tree had begun to operate the electric felling-saw even before the other one began to descend.

‘They don’t use a ’chute. They drop them from a light plane into snowdrifts.’

‘You had me worried for a minute.’

‘I’m not kidding. I’m serious,’ Harvey said, and I could see that he was.

The bottom end of the rope was fixed to the back of the van and it took up the slack and held the tree in tension to give the saw ease of movement. Suddenly I felt the change of temperature. A thousand pinpricks of scalding steam grew to knife-points and the knives twisted. I opened my mouth and felt the scalds on the mucous membrane inside my throat. I closed my mouth and felt as though I had gargled with barbed wire. Harvey watched me closely. He said, ‘It’s only fifty miles to the coast of the USSR. If we went high enough to use a ’chute we’d be picked up on radar immediately after taking off.’

It was still hot, but the pinpoints of scalding water had changed to steam. My skin was burning. I avoided looking at the thermometer.

‘What’s the difference?’ I asked. ‘If you are really dropping people anywhere along that coast I wouldn’t give them forty-eight hours before they are signing a statement for the public prosecutor. That’s the Baltic Military District
*
over there: one of the most sensitive areas in the world. It’s full of missiles, airfields, sub-bases, the lot; and what’s more it’s full of guards and patrols.’

Harvey squeezed the sweat from his face with the edge of his hand and then he looked at his hand as though trying to tell his own fortune. He stood up. ‘You’re probably right,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’ve been too long with this screwy outfit; I’m beginning to believe that stuff they are handing out from the New York office. Let’s get out of here, huh?’ But neither of us moved. Outside the van revved up. The spine of the tree curved like a man stretching tall after a heavy sleep. Its arms flicked snow loose in a final fastidious gesture of contempt, and then the whole thing began to tilt. It was a slow graceful fall. There was no sound through the double-glazing. I watched the tree hit the ground in a cloud of snow. ‘Just like that,’ said Harvey. ‘You’re right. Just like that.’ And I knew that he had been watching the death of the tree too.

Harvey opened the heavy door of the smoke room. The central room was urgent and noisy like a front-line dressing station. Old women in white
coats were clattering around with loofahs and stainless-steel buckets and throwing water over motionless pink men on slabs.

I followed Harvey outdoors into the snows-cape. We walked naked along the path that led across the ice-covered sea. Harvey walked along in an envelope of white steam. I suppose I did too for I didn’t feel even slightly cold. Harvey dropped through a large hole in the ice. I followed, and tasted the salty sweet taste of the Baltic.

I opened my eyes under water and saw the ghost-like shape of Harvey against the darkness all around. For one terrifying moment I fancied what would happen to someone carried under the ice by the current. Perhaps not another break in the ice for…what? One hundred miles? Two hundred miles?

My head bobbed out into the cold dry air. Harvey’s face was near, his fair hair plastered close to the skull like golden syrup. I noticed a small bald patch on the crown of his head. I still didn’t feel the cold.

‘You’re right,’ Harvey said. ‘Right about this hunky we’re dropping tomorrow. The poor bastard is a write-off.’

‘Can’t you…’

‘No, no,’ said Harvey. ‘Not even if I wanted to. Just make sure he doesn’t get too close a look at me, that’s all I can do. Self-preservation: the first law of intelligence.’

Harvey swam towards the ladder. On the shore one of the men was tying a rope to another tree.

I was keen to stay close to Harvey while he made preparations for the dispatch of this agent, but Harvey left the flat before breakfast. Signe brought me coffee in a pot with a felt cover that had eyes and a nose, then she sat on the edge of my bed holding a silly conversation with the felt cover while I drank my coffee.

‘Harvey’s given me a job to do,’ she said, tiring of her game.

‘Really.’

‘Rilly. All Englishmen say rilly like that.’

‘Give me a break. I’ve only been awake three minutes.’

‘Harvey’s jealous of us.’

‘Did he find out?’

‘No, it’s his Slavic melancholy.’

It was true that Harvey Newbegin’s family had come from Russia but there was nothing Slavic about him that anyone but Signe could detect.

‘Did Harvey tell you he was Slavic?’

‘He didn’t have to, he has a typical moujik face. A Finn can recognize a Russian at a thousand metres across open sights. That faint reddish tinge in his fair hair—did you notice that? And those orange-brown eyes. Beer-coloured, we say. Look at my face. I am a typical Tavastian. Broad head, broad face, fair complexion, blonde hair, blueish-grey eyes and this
funny concave nose I have.’ She stood up. ‘Look at my structure. Big bones, wide hips. We are Tavastian people from the south and centre of Finland. You will see no one like Harvey among us.’

‘It’s a great structure.’

‘You say things like that and Harvey will guess.’

‘I don’t give a damn what he guesses,’ I said.

She poured me a second cup of coffee. ‘Today he told me to deliver a packet and I was not to tell you. Pooooffffff. I’ll tell you if I want to, he thinks I am a child. When you have showered and shaved we shall deliver it together.’

Signe drove the old VW carefully—she was a good driver—and insisted upon taking me the prettiest way to Inkeroinen, which meant through the little side roads around Kouvola. It was a sunny day and the sky was like a new sheet of blotting paper with blue ink tipped into the middle of it. The road curved and climbed and went through all the antics of a mountain pass to persuade you that the land wasn’t rather flat, and small clumps of trees and farmhouses aided the illusion. It was lonely, and small groups of children going to school on skis waved to us as we passed.

I had the feeling that Signe hadn’t dismissed Harvey’s words of caution about me as completely as she professed and I carefully refrained from asking about the parcel. At Kouvola where the railway line divides, we took the southern road which still follows the railway. A long train of timber wagons and oil tanks was being shunted around a
siding and the locomotive laid a coil of black smoke across the white landscape.

Signe said, ‘What do you think’s in the parcel? It’s in the glove compartment.’

‘Hell,’ I said. ‘Let’s not waste a wonderful trip talking business.’

‘I want to know. Tell me what you think.’

I took a small brown-paper parcel from the glove compartment.

‘This?’

‘Money, eh?’

‘It’s not the shape of any money I ever saw.’

‘But if I told you that Harvey borrowed two paperback books from me last night.’

‘Got you,’ I said. If you allowed for the shape of two paper-backs, between them and jutting from the end was a two-inch pack of what could be paper money.

‘Dollar bills.’

‘Could be.’

‘What do you mean “could be”? You know it is.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve got to leave them in a taxi-cab in Inkeroinen.’

Inkeroinen is a scattering of shops and houses clustered around a small railway junction. The main street looks like the approach to a village. In the shops there are refrigerators from West Germany, jazz records and detergents. Across the road is a small wooden kiosk selling cigarettes and newspapers; the back portion of it is a taxi-drivers’
den. Outside there were three bright new taxis. Signe stopped the VW on the far side of the road and killed the motor. ‘Hand me the packet,’ she said.

‘What will you give me for it?’ I asked.

She looked at her watch for the fourth time in two minutes.

‘My virtue,’ she said.

‘None of us has that any more,’ I said.

She smiled tightly and took the packet. I watched her walk across the road to the Ford taxi. She opened the rear door and looked in as though looking for something she had mislaid. When she closed the door again the packet wasn’t in her hand. A white Porsche came along the road from the direction of Kotka. It was travelling fast and wobbled as it hit the bumpy piece of road under the railway bridge. It lost speed and pulled up outside the kiosk with a squeal of brakes. The police highway patrols use white Porsche cars.

I moved into the driving seat and started the motor of Signe’s VW. It was warm and sprang to life immediately. A policeman got out of the Porsche, putting on his peaked cap as he did so. Signe saw the policeman just as I pulled away from the kerb. He touched his peaked hat and began to say something to her. Along the road behind me came the country bus from Kouvola. I drove twenty yards ahead so that the bus would not be blocking my way when it stopped at the bus stop, then I stopped and looked back. On the window
of the cabmen’s room a hand was wiping a small area of condensation clear.