'Even one week might be enough,' said Bret, sensing that his first bid was unacceptable.
'If synthetic material was the most expensive, you'd be selling that to me with the same kind of enthusiasm,' said the D-G. He waggled a finger at the tailor like a little child discovering a parent in an untruth.
'Absolutely not,' said Bony. The D-G delivered all his lines as if he'd said them many times before, but Bony responded with a fresh and earnest tone that was near to anger. The D-G seemed to enjoy the exchanges; perhaps this sort of sparring was what made the D-G order his suits from the indomitable Bony.
'I'll hold the barbarians at bay for a week,' conceded the D-G. He didn't have to explain to Bret that the barbarians were at the Home Office or that after a week Bret's head might be handed over to them.
Thank you, sir,' said Bret, and wisely ended the discussion.
But the D-G was not wholly concerned with the swatches of cloth that he was now fingering close by the window. 'Who are you briefing for this job?' he asked without looking up.
Bony handed him a second batch of materials.
'I not very keen on that,' said the D-G. He was still looking at the cloth and there were a few moments of silence while Bony and Bret tried to decide to which of them the remark was addressed. 'But you are in charge so I suppose I'll have to let you decide.'
'Yes, sir. Thank you,' said Bret.
'If you want a shiny cloth, what about that?' said Bony, tapping one of the samples.
'I've no special desire for a shiny cloth,' said the D-G testily. 'But I do want to try one of the synthetic mixtures.'
Bret was edging towards the door.
Bony said, 'They look good in the samples, but some of them don't make up very well.'
'One wool and one mixture. I told you that at the beginning . . . the first fitting.' He looked up to see Bret getting away and added, 'You'll have to take . . .' He nodded his head at me. He knew me well enough. On occasion I'd even had lunch with him. He'd seen me virtually every day at London Central for about six years, but still he couldn't remember my name. It was the same for most of the staff at London Central, yet still I found it irritating.
'Samson,' supplied Bret Rensselaer.
'Samson. Yes.' He smiled at me. 'Take him with you. He knows how these things are done,' said the D-G. The implication was that no one else present did know how such things are done, and he fixed me with a look as if to underline that that's exactly what he meant. He probably liked me; I had, after all, survived quite a few complaints from various members of the senior staff. Or perhaps he was just good at this thing they call management.
But now I wanted to protest. I looked at Bret and saw that he wanted to protest too. But there was no point in saying anything more. The D-G's audience had ended. Seeing us hesitating he waved his cloth sample at us to shoo us away. 'And keep in touch with Morgan,' added the D-G. My heart fell and Bret's jaw tightened in rage. We both knew what that meant; it would give the pasty-faced Morgan carte blanche to mastermind the operation while using the name of the D-G as his authority.
'Very well, sir,' said Bret.
And so I found myself inextricably linked to Bret Rensselaer's amateur attempt to infiltrate the Cambridge net. And I was the only person who suspected him of treason. For assistance we'd have Stinnes, whose name Bret had craftily kept out of the discussion — the only other person I couldn't trust.
'I'm sick to death of hearing what a wonderful man your father was,' said Bret suddenly. He hadn't spoken for a long time. The anger had been brewing up inside him so that even without a cue he had to let me have it.
What had I said about my father that had touched a nerve in him? Only that he hadn't left me any money — hardly a remark to produce such a passionate response.
We were in an all-night launderette. I was pretending to read a newspaper that was resting on my knees. It was 2.30 a.m., and outside the street was very dark. But there was not much to be seen through 'the windows, for this small shop was a cube of bright blue light suspended in the dark suburban streets of Hampstead. From the loudspeaker fixed in the ceiling came the soft scratchy sounds of pop music too subdued to be recognizable. A dozen big washing machines lined one wall. Their white enamel was chipped and scarred with the initials of the cleaner type of vandal. Detergent was spilled across the floor like yellow snow and there was the pungent smell of boiled coffee from a dispensing machine in the corner. We were sitting at the far end of a line of chairs facing the washing machines. Side by side Bret and I stared at the big cyclops where some dirty linen churned in suds. Customers came and went, so that most of the machines were working. Every few moments the mechanisms made loud clicking noises and sometimes the humming noises modulated to a scream as one of the drums spun.
'My father was a lush,' said Bret. 'His two brothers forced him off the board after he'd punched one of the bank's best customers. I was about ten years old. After that I was the only one to look after him.'
'What about your mother?'
'You have to have an infinity of compassion to look after a drunkard,' said Bret. 'My mother didn't have that gift. And my brother Sheldon only cared about the old man's money. He told me that. Sheldon worked in the bank with my uncles. He would lock his bedroom door and refuse to come out when my father was getting drunk.'
'Didn't he ever try to stop?'
'He tried. He really tried. My mother would never believe he tried, but I knew him. He even went to a clinic in Maine. I went in the car with him. It was a grim-looking place. They wouldn't let me past the entrance lodge. But a few weeks after he came back, he was drinking again. . . . None of them tried to help him. Not Sheldon, not my mother, no one. I hated to leave him when I went into the Navy. He died before I even went to sea.' Bret looked at his watch and at the only other person there: a well-dressed man who'd been sitting near the door reading
Le Monde
and drinking coffee from a paper cup.
Now the man tossed the paper cup onto the floor, got to his feet, and opened the glass door to empty his machine and stuff his damp underwear into a plastic bag. He nodded to us before leaving. Bret looked at me, obviously wondering if that could be their first contact, but he didn't voice this suspicion. He said, 'Maybe they won't buy it. We should have brought Stinnes inside here. Last year he made the cash delivery; that's why he knows exactly how it's done. They'd recognize him. That would be good.'
I'd insisted that Stinnes remain in the second car. I said, 'It's better this way. I want Stinnes where he can be protected. If we need him, we can get him in two minutes. I put Craig in to mind him. Craig's good.'
'I still say we should have used Stinnes to maximum advantage.'
'I don't want him sitting in here under the lights; a target for anyone driving past. I don't want him in here with a bodyguard. And we certainly don't want to give Stinnes a gun.'
'Maybe you're right.'
'If they're on the level, it will be okay.'
'If they think we're on the level, it will be okay,' Bret corrected me. 'But they're bound to be edgy.'
'They're breaking the law and you aren't; remember that. They'll be nervous. Stay cool and it will go smoothly.'
'You don't really believe that; you're just trying to convince yourself,' said Bret. 'You've argued against me all the way.'
'That's right,' I said.
Bret leaned forward to reach inside the bag of laundry that he'd placed between his feet. He was dressed in an old raincoat and a tweed cap. I can't imagine where he'd found them; they weren't the kind of thing Bret would normally consider wearing. It was his first attempt to handle any sort of operation and he couldn't come to terms with the idea that we weren't trying to look like genuine launderette customers; we were trying to look like KGB couriers trying to look like launderette customers.
'Stinnes has been really good,' said Bret. 'The phone call went perfectly. He had the code words — they'll call themselves "Bingo" — and amounts . . . four thousand dollars. They believed I was the regular contact coming through here a week early. No reason for them to be suspicious.' He bent lower to reach deep enough in the bag to finger the money that was in a little parcel under the laundry. According to Stinnes, it was the way it was usually done.
I said nothing.
Bret straightened up and said, 'You don't get too suspicious of a guy who's going to hand you four thousand bucks and no questions asked, right?'
'And that's what you're going to do?'
'It's better that way. We give them the money and say hello. I want to build them up. Next meeting I'll get closer to them.'
'It's very confidence-building, four thousand dollars,' I said.
Bret was too nervous to hear the sarcasm in my voice. He smiled and nodded and stared at the dirty laundry milling round in the machine.
'He got violent, my father. Some guys can drink and just get happy; or amorous. But my father got fighting drunk or else morose. Sometimes, when I was just a child, he'd sit up half the night telling me that he'd ruined my life, ruined my mother's life, and ruined his own life. "You're the only one I've got, Bret," he'd say. Then the next minute he'd be trying to fight me because I was stopping him having another drink. He took no account of my age; he always talked to me the way you'd talk to an adult.'
A man came in through the door. He was young and slim, wearing jeans and a short, dark pea jacket. He had a bright-blue woollen ski mask on his head, the sort that completely hides the face except for eye slots and a hole for the mouth. The pea jacket was unbuttoned and from under it he brought out a sawn-off shotgun. 'Let's go,' he said. He was excited and nervous. He waggled the gun at us and moved his head to show that he wanted us to get going.
'What's this?' said Bret.
'Bingo,' said the man. This is Bingo.'
'I've got it here,' said Bret. He seemed to be frozen into position, and because Bret wouldn't move, the boy with the gun was becoming even more agitated.
'Go! go! go!' shouted the boy. His voice was high-pitched and anxious.
Bret got to his feet with the laundry bag in his hand. Another man came in. He was similarly masked, but he was broader and, judging from his movements, older, perhaps forty. He was dressed in a short bulky black-leather overcoat. He stood in the doorway looking first at the man with the shotgun and then back over his shoulder; there must have been three of them. One hand was in his overcoat pocket, in his other hand he had a bouquet of coloured wires. 'What's the delay? I told you . . .'
His words were lost in the muffled bang that made the shop window rattle. Outside in the street there was a blast of flame that for a moment went on burning bright. It was across the road. That could be only one thing; they'd blown up the car. The second man tossed the bundle of coloured wires to the floor. My God! Stinnes was in that car. The bastards!
Bret was standing when the car blew up. He was directly between me and the two men. The explosion gave me the moment's distraction I needed. I leaned forward enough to see round Bret. My silenced pistol was on my lap wrapped in a newspaper. I fired twice at the youngest one. He didn't go down, but he dropped the shotgun and slumped against the washing machines holding his chest. 'Get down, Bret!' I said, and pushed him to the floor before the other joker started firing. 'Hold it right there,' I shouted. Then I ran along the machines, and past the wounded man, kicking the shotgun back towards Bret as I went. I couldn't wait around and play nursemaid to Bret, but if he was a KGB man he might pick up the shotgun and let me have it in the back.
The older one didn't wait to see what I wanted. He went through a door marked
staff
before I could shoot at him. I followed. It was an office — the least amount of office you could get: a small table, one chair, a cheap cashbox, a vacuum flask, a dirty cup and a copy of the
Daily Mirror
.
I went through the next door and found myself at the bottom of a flight of stairs. The door banged behind me and it was suddenly dark. There was a corridor leading to a street door. He hadn't had time to get out into the street that way, but he might have been waiting there in the darkness. Where was he? I remained still for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the dark.
While I was trying to decide whether to explore the corridor, there was a sound of footsteps from the floor above. Then there was a loud bang. The flash lit the staircase, and lead shot rattled against the wallpaper. So this bastard had a shotgun too. The gun must have been under his buttoned coat; difficult to get at, that's why he'd had to run for it. That shot was just a warning, of course — something to show what was waiting for me if I climbed the stairs.