Brainfire (11 page)

Dubbs moved to the stairs. He climbed, paused on the first landing, and saw Malcolm's shadow along the corridor. He went in the other direction, opening the door of his own office, turning on the lamp, seeing the giant shadows of his ferns loom suddenly upward against the pale-green walls. Dubbs did not care for this room. Too impersonal, too officious—but, God knows, you did what you could with what the Government gave you. He gazed at the ferns a moment. In good health, considering—and he went to his desk, unlocked it, removed a file, opened the file; no sooner had he begun to read than there was a light knock on his door and he thought: Malcolm, fucking Malcolm.

But when the door opened it was Evans who stood there.

“Burning the midnight oil?” Evans said.

What does it look like to you, my dear? Dubbs thought.

When they had been handing out cloaks and daggers, someone had quite forgotten to give Evans his cloak. He stood in the doorway, grinning stupidly. He gave Dubbs the odd feeling that he was not of this world, that he had simply dropped in from outer space to pass the time of day. What could you hope for anyway from somebody who
chose
to live in Esher? Dubbs shuddered: Evans had actually elected to buy a house out there.
There
was a good argument against free will.

“I'm on nights this month,” said Evans, by way of explanation. “Manning the old wires.”

“Ah,” Dubbs said.

“Not much happening. Ha ha.” Sometimes, as if it were a form of punctuation, Evans would drop “Ha ha,” quite without mirth, at the end of sentences.

Dubbs stared at the file in front of him.

“What's happening with you?” Evans asked.

Dubbs flapped a hand limply in the air, a gesture he knew would irritate Evans. Later, in his little house in Esher, Evans would say to his little wife, I'm sure he's queer, you know. Quite the poove.

“Oh,” Evans said. “I just remembered.”

“Remembered?” Dubbs stared at the other man. Those clothes—shapeless Burton suits that began to shine in the seat of the trousers before you could say Jack Straw. If Evans was an argument against freedom of the will, he was also a portable display of the banalities, the inadequacies, of English taste. Dubbs longed for sunlight all at once. Portofino. Sobranie cigarettes and a couple of fast Negronis. But here he was, stuck in a world of mild-and-bitters, chain-store clothing, little houses out in Esher.

Evans stepped farther into the room, his hands hanging at his sides as if he had forgotten them, left them behind in some other place. “I just remembered about Richard Rayner,” he said. “It came over this afternoon.”

Dubbs shut his eyes briefly.

“Isn't John Rayner your man over in Grosvenor Square?” Evans said.

Dubbs imagined he could hear glass breaking, things splintering, bulls rampant in china shops. He wished he had wings and could fly from the window out over Manchester Square; but where would you go in the rain?

“And Richard's the brother?” said Evans. He raised both eyebrows, waiting, still smiling.

Sometimes, Dubbs thought, bad news is the only pleasure in a person's life. Now Evans could say, Sorry, I meant to say
was
the brother. Dead, don't you know? “I heard,” Dubbs said.

“Oh.”

“I heard he took his own life,” Dubbs said. Took his own life. What an odd phrase that was. Took his own photograph. Took his own pulse. People were forever taking things that were their own.

“Ye-es,” said Evans, fingering his necktie. It was Ardingly, Dubbs remembered. Those minor-public-school types still dreamed of Empire: it was something to do with education, he was sure. “Day before yesterday. Did you know that?”

“You know the time of death too?” Dubbs said, whistling in false surprise. He stared at the file in front of him, wishing Evans would disappear. The strange thing about Evans, though, was how he managed to linger without purpose—until eventually you forgot he was in the room. Dubbs flipped the pages of his file.

“Our man confirmed suicide,” Evans said. “I daresay the Americans will ship the body out. They're awfully good at that kind of thing.”

Sensitivity, Dubbs realized, was a gift. It was something you got at birth, something the Old Architect injected into your genes. Evans clearly had a severe
want
in that department. Ship the body back. What was it? Luggage? Bric-a-brac? Sign here, Mr. Customs Man: one dead item of flesh, formerly human? Irritated, Dubbs saw Evans prowl around the room.

Evans looked at the collar of the black coat. “I say, is that astrakhan?”

“And no mistake, my love,” said Dubbs. “I use it when I haunt Shaftesbury Avenue. Draws attention to me, dear. You
know
how it is.”

Evans smiled uncertainly. He lingered a few more moments, apparently embarrassed. Then he turned and went back to the door. He made a little wave of his hand. “Back to the grind,” he said.

Dubbs, stretching the palm of his hand out in front of him, blew a kiss across the room. “Sweet dreams, old chap,” he said.

The door was closed quickly. Dubbs, sighing, gazed at his file, flicking the pages, wondering why they always seemed to have such impossible names—these people who somehow or other had contrived to find their way from the wilder shores of Europe to the sinking ship of Old Blighty. Bembenek. Bzoski. Dworakowski. Gaalaas. Four
a
's, for God's sake. What did you do with four
a
's? Hochhalter, Hrbhar. How did one pronounce that?

He felt weary, closing the file, closing his eyes. They came, and they continued to come, swimming rivers, zigzagging through minefields, ducking gun towers, crawling under barbed wire. Driven by some notion of freedom, of human dignity, they kept on coming. The driftwood of Eastern Europe, the dross of humanity, the poor suffering souls who saw the nature of the risk and were prepared to take the chance anyhow—and they became his responsibility. He was the one who had to keep track of them, who had to
listen
to them; and who had to find if, beneath their enraged stories, their insane relief, their bitterness, there lay anything of value to what, for want of any better expression, was called the intelligence community.

He opened the file. He skipped the Czechs, the Poles, the Hungarians. Begin with the Soviets, he thought. Where else? He lifted the receiver, dialed a number, waited. After a time he heard a dense European accent answer angrily.

“Paul? Paul, my dear fellow. This is Dubbs.”

“Dubbs, you crazy? You know what is the time of day?”

“Better a polite little call, my dear fellow, than someone hammering your door down in the middle of the night, no?”

“Crazy. You're crazy, Dubbs.”

“The day before yesterday a man, an American, died in Moscow,” Dubbs said.

“So? What you want that I should know? American? I don't know no American. Let me sleep, you crazy bastard.”

“It seems to have been a suicide.”

“Hey. Moscow's a depressing town, Dubbs. It sometimes has that effect on a man's head.”

Dubbs, sighing, reached out to stroke a fern. It was feathery, lovely; an amazing thing—something growing in this rotten little place. “I understand Moscow is not absolutely delightful, Paul. This I can comprehend. However, it's important—”

“Important? I know nothing. I know damn nothing.”

“The American was called Richard Rayner,” Dubbs said. Best to press on, ignore their interruptions. Best simply to
glide
over things. “Richard Rayner. You understand? Now I want you to mention the name amongst the members of your little group—”

“Group? What group? Dubbs, you sound like a dog that goes on barking up wrong trees. I don't know no group.”

“My dear fellow, your little group that calls itself The Estonian Alliance, and which pretends to be a social club, and which,
incidentally
, meets every Thursday night at Number Eighty-five Roper Place in some sleazy part of Kilburn. I want you, Paul, to mention the name of this man—
Richard Rayner
—to the nice chums you have in this group. Savvy?”

“You're dreaming, Dubbs—”

“I am not dreaming, Paul. I am most certainly
not
dreaming about the fact that it is quite against the law of the United Kingdom to store hand grenades in a garage behind Number Eighty-five Roper Place, Kilburn. Am I coming through, my dear?”

There was a silence on the line. Dubbs could hear a woman's voice whining in the background, a Cockney accent. '
Ere, what time o' night's 'e call this
?

“How you spell Rayner?” the man asked finally.

Dubbs hung up. The Estonian Alliance. It was pathetic. The little groups, the so-called social clubs, the clandestine gatherings: as if it might ever amount to anything. They belonged in caves hidden high up in mountains, fighting a war that no longer existed. Dead and sorry men. The Estonian Alliance. How many more of them existed? How many more with those strangely innocuous names? He gazed at his papers, blinked. Weary again. The Friends of Tallinn. The Kalmuck Club. The Vilna Brigade Brotherhood. And the amusing ones—The Southwest London Polka and Dance Society. The Lovers of Accordion Music. The Hungarian Sunday Football League—madmen exorcising their patriotic rage with a leather football under dreary skies on Hackney Marshes. Pathetic, sad, Dubbs thought. The meetings in the back rooms of pubs, the front parlors of small suburban houses; here and there—like souvenirs, mementos of other incarnations—a handful of old guns, a rifle or two, a six-pack of grenades; perhaps some sporadic pamphleteering, or irregularly produced newspapers, perhaps some restless gathering at Speaker's Corner, where you could not separate the nuts from the zealots, the truth from the madness.

Why did you have to jump, Richard?

He picked up the telephone and dialed another number and waited for the irritated voice he knew would come, fresh from sleep, to answer.

4.

There was sunlight coming into the room and he woke, fully dressed, where he had fallen the night before—not making it to the bed, managing only to get his shoes off, to read Richard's letter, to crumple it with drunken annoyance between the palms of his hands, then to lie down on the sofa. His eyes hurt. The sunlight was bright, a February sun predominantly white, anemic, as if all color and warmth had been bleached out of it. He got up, staggered toward the kitchen, stared at the mess—empty beer bottles, the refrigerator door hanging open, something smelling spoiled, rancid. He picked up the coffeepot, lit the gas, not knowing how many days ago he had brewed the stuff. Hot and warm, something to get the heart started. Something to get things going. Today—today was when he would pull himself together, distance himself from grief, set it aside. Today was when you gritted your teeth and put a new shine to old platitudes:
Life goes on. Life is for the living. Let the dead rest
. It was going to be like that.

He waited until the coffee boiled, poured some, carried it into the front room. Tasteless and bitter. He went to the window. Sunlight in dead trees, burning on bare branches. He turned away from the light and went back to the sofa and picked up Richard's letter from the floor. He read it and thought: Study this if you will. Study this, show me the signs, the clues of self-destruction. Last night when he had stumbled in, when he had torn the letter open—what? Had he expected some kind of last will and testament? an apology? But goddammit, this wasn't a suicide note, this wasn't what the sad cases left behind when they locked themselves in garages and left the motor running or sat by their desks with a pistol to the brain. This was pure Richard, the whole letter was pure unadulterated Richard. The mild sarcasm, the flashes of political observation, the underlying iconoclasm. It was Richard.

Between you and me and the old gatepost, Kimby Lindholm is a sure candidate for his own Vegas show. Or maybe a guest spot on Bowling for Dollars. At worst, a quick tour of the Borscht Belt. And he doesn't even need a stooge.

The weather in Moscow, a mention of Maksymovich, a reference in passing to Isobel—“she can't make up her mind if she prefers Washington to Moscow, but then she can't make up her mind much about anything”—and that was it. That was the whole nine yards. The ball game. You'd better face it, he thought. What was the point in indulging further in sorrow or anger or whatever? It was a hard fact, forged out of ice.

He put the letter down, rose, walked to the window. He squinted into the harsh sun, remembering Dubbs now. Had Dubbs brought him home? Jigsaw pieces. Little splinters of yesterday. They didn't add up and he didn't even want to try.

Now his telephone was ringing. It was Sally. She said she had read about it in
The Times
. She said she was sorry. She wondered if there was anything she could do. He listened to the crisp, perfect English voice: it was as if she spoke with a fresh apple in her mouth. He speculated on whether sex might be a means of forgetting: orgasmic amnesia, say? The orgasm as a tiny form of temporary death? He could hear typewriters in the background somewhere and a voice saying,
Where's the bloody coffee then
? What was the name of that school Sally had gone to? Roedean? Now she did something in a publisher's office, something editorial which he didn't entirely understand: it had all seemed so vague when she had tried to explain once. But then Sally was a vague girl in her way, seeming to float through her life, as if even the simplest of things were indefinable.

“I'll come over if you like,” she was saying. “I can get away. Do you want some company?”

“The sun's shining,” he said.

“Funny. I noticed it too,” she said.

“Super day for a spot of lunch?”

“You'll never get the accent right.”

“Now you're being beastly,” he said.

She laughed, but there was an edge to the sound, a cautious edge: it was how people laughed in cathedrals. Like walking on eggshells.