Little Omber is only thirty-five miles from central London but it is remote, and rural in a genteel way: frozen fish fingers, and picture-window housing-estates for the young executive.
I waited at the deserted railway station. I hardly knew Charles Schlegel the third, Colonel US Marine Corps Wing (retired), so I was expecting anything from a psychedelic Mini to a chauffeured Rover. He’d taken over the Studies Centre only ten days before I’d gone off on my last sea trip, and our acquaintance had been limited to a Charles Atlas handshake and a blurred glimpse of a pin-striped Savile Row three piece, and a Royal Aero Club tie. But that didn’t mean that he hadn’t already scared the shit out of half the staff, from the switchboard matron to the night door-keeper. There was a rumour that he’d been put in to find an excuse for closing the Centre down, in support of which he was authoritatively quoted as saying we were ‘an antediluvian charity, providing retired limey admirals with a chance to win on the War Games Table the battles they’d screwed up in real life’.
We all resented that remark because it was gratuitous, discourteous and a reflection on all of us. And we wondered how he’d found out.
Bright red export model XKE – well, why didn’t I guess. He came out of it like an Olympics hurdler and grasped my hand firmly and held my elbow, too, so that I couldn’t shake myself free. ‘It must have got in early,’ he said resentfully. He consulted a large multi-faced wristwatch of the sort that can time high-speed races under water. He was wearing charcoal trousers, hand-made brogues, a bright-red woollen shirt that exactly matched his car, and a shiny green flying jacket, with lots of Mickey Mouse on sleeves and chest.
‘I screwed up your Sunday,’ he said. I nodded. He was short and thickset, with that puffed-chest stance that small athletes have. The red shirt, and the way he cocked his head to one side, made him look like a gigantic and predatory robin redbreast. He strutted around the car and opened the door for me, smiling as he did so. He wasn’t about to apologize.
‘Come on up to the house for a sandwich.’
‘I have to get back,’ I argued without conviction.
‘Just a sandwich.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He let in the clutch, and heel-and-toed like a rally driver. He gave the car the same sort of attention that I suppose he’d given his F-4 or his B-52 or his desk, or whatever it was he flew before they unleashed him onto us. ‘I’m glad it was you,’ he said. ‘You know why I say that?’
‘Man management?’
He gave me a little you’ll-find-out-buddy smile.
‘I’m glad it was you,’ he explained slowly and patiently, ‘because I haven’t had a chance of a pow-wow with you or Foxwell, on account of the mission.’
I nodded. I liked the glad-it-was-you stuff. You’d have thought the message said anyone who’d like a free train ride to Little Omber this Sunday could go.
‘Goddamned imbecile,’ he muttered as he overtook a Sunday driver tooling down the white line, chatting with his kids in the back seat.
Close to Schlegel, I could see that the sun-lamp tan was there to disguise the complicated surgery he’d had on his jaw. What from a distance might look like the legacy of acne was a pattern of tiny scars that gave one side of his face the permanent hint of a scowl. Sometimes his face puckered enough to bare his teeth in a curious lopsided humourless smile. He did one now. ‘I can imagine,’ he said. ‘Yank trouble-shooter, hundred missions in Nam. They probably are saying I’m a hatchet man.’ He paused. ‘Are they saying that?’
‘I’ve heard it whispered.’
‘What else?’
‘They are saying that you are taking the staff aside one by one and giving them a working over.’ They weren’t saying that – as far as I knew – but I wanted to get his reaction.
‘Like this?’
‘Let’s wait and see.’
‘Huh.’ He did that crooked smile again. He slowed to go through the village. This was really home-counties stuff: six shops and five of them selling real estate. It was the kind of authentic English village that only Germans, Americans and real-estate men can afford. At the far end of the village there were four locals in their Sunday clothes. They turned to watch us pass. Schlegel gave them a stiff-armed salutation like the ones in that old English war film. They nodded and smiled. He turned off the road at a plastic sign that said ‘Golden Acre Cottage. Schlegel’ in ye olde English lettering. He gunned the motor up the steep track and fired gravel and soft earth from the deep-tread tyres.
‘Nice place,’ I said, but Schlegel seemed to read my thoughts. He said, ‘When they cut my orders they said I must be within easy access of NATO/ASW down the road at Longford Magna. Your government won’t let us Yanks buy a place to live – by law, by law! And half the county is owned by the same English lord who’s got his finger in my eye.’ He slammed on the brakes and we slid to a halt inches short of his front door. ‘A goddamn lord!’
‘You haven’t started Chas off about the landlord, I hope,’ said a woman from the doorway.
‘This is my bride, Helen. There are two daughters and a son around the house someplace.’
He’d parked outside a large thatched cottage, with black cruck-frame timbers and freshly whitened plaster. Placed on the front lawn there was a very old single-furrow plough and over the front door there was a farming implement that I didn’t recognize. The daughters arrived before I was even half out of the car. Slim, fresh-faced, clad in jeans and brightly coloured lambswool sweaters, it was difficult to tell wife from teenage daughters.
‘What a wonderful thatching job,’ I said.
‘Plastic,’ said Schlegel. ‘Real thatch harbours vermin. Plastic is cleaner, quicker and longer lasting.’
Mrs Schlegel said, ‘Gee, Chas, you should have told me. I was only doing BLTs for lunch.’
‘BLTs, Helen! You want to send him into a state of shock? These Brits strike into roast beef with all the trimmings for Sunday lunch.’
‘A bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich will be fine, Mrs Schlegel.’
‘Helen, call me Helen. I sure hope Chas hasn’t been too rude about our English landlord.’
The Southern United States – its climate and terrain so suitable for training infantry and aviators – has played a part in moulding the character of American military men. And it is there that so disproportionately many of them met their wives. But Mrs Schlegel was no Southern belle. She was a New Englander, with all the crisp assurance of that canny breed.
‘He’d have to be a lot ruder before he could hope to offend me … er … Helen.’ The sitting-room had a big log fire perfuming the centrally heated air.
‘A drink?’
‘Anything.’
‘Chuck made a jug of Bloody Marys before going to meet you.’ She was no longer young, but you could have prised that snub nose and freckled face out of a Coke commercial. The teenager’s grin, the torn jeans and relaxed hands-in-pocket stance made me happy to be there.
‘That sounds just right,’ I said.
‘You Englishmen … that cute accent. That really gets to me. Do you know that?’ she asked her husband.
‘We’ll go into the den, Helen. He’s brought me some junk from the office.’
‘Take the drinks with you,’ said Mrs Schlegel. She poured them from a huge frosted glass jug. I sipped at mine and coughed.
‘Chas likes them strong,’ said Mrs Schlegel. At that moment a small child came through the sitting-room. He wore a Che Guevara sweatshirt, and, with arms outstretched, dumped small clods of garden earth upon the carpet while emitting a steady high-pitched scream.
‘Chuckie!’ said Mrs Schlegel mildly. She turned to me. ‘I suppose here in Britain any mother would beat the daylights out of a child for doing that.’
‘No, I believe there are still a few who don’t,’ I told her. We could hear the scream continue out into the garden and around the back of the house.
‘We’ll be up in the den,’ said Schlegel. He’d downed half of his drink and now he p
oured himself more and added some to my glass too. I followed him through the room. There were black timber beams across the ceiling, each one decorated with horse brasses and bridle fittings. I hit my head on the lowest one.
We went up a narrow wooden staircase that creaked at each step. Off the passage at the top of it there was a small box room with a ‘Do not disturb’ label from the Istanbul Hilton. He pushed the door open with his elbow. The screaming child came nearer. Once inside Schlegel bolted the door.
He sat down heavily, and sighed. He had a rubbery face, well suited to his habit of pummelling it with his hands, pushing at his cheeks, bending his nose and then baring his teeth, as if to be sure that all the muscles were in working order. ‘I hate lords,’ he said. He fixed me with an unwinking stare.
‘Don’t look at me,’ I said.
‘Aw, I don’t mean that,’ he said. ‘Hell, no one would take you for a lord.’
‘Oh well,’ I said, trying to sound indifferent.
From Schlegel’s den there was a view of the surrounding country. A clump of poplar trees were bare, except for bunches of mistletoe, and the birds that rested there before coming down to join in the feast of holly berries. The gate to the next field was open, and the cart tracks shone with ice all the way round the side of the hill over which the steeple of Little Omber church could be seen. Its bell began striking twelve. Schlegel looked at his watch. ‘Now that damned village clock is fast too,’ he said.
I smiled. That was the essence of Schlegel, as I was to find out.
‘Bring good stuff this time?’
‘I’ll let you know when we see the analysis.’
‘Can’t you tell when you’re out there monitoring it?’
‘One trip last year they found the Russians working a new Northern Fleet frequency. The monitor leader got permission to change the cruise route to get cross-bearings. They brought in forty-three fixed-position Russian radio stations. There was talk of some kind of citation.’
‘And … ?’ said Schlegel.
‘Buoys. Meteorological stations, some of them unmanned.’
‘But it wasn’t you.’
‘I’ve always been on the cautious side.’
‘It’s not a word you’d want on your fitness report in the Marine Corps.’
‘But I’m not in the Marine Corps,’ I said.
‘And neither am I any longer – is that what you were about to say?’
‘I wasn’t going to say anything, Colonel.’
‘Drink up. If your new stuff is anything like the analysis I’ve been reading, I want to War Game the results and submit them for next summer’s NATO exercises.’
‘It’s been suggested before.’
‘It’s a hardy annual, I know that. But I think I might do it.’
If he was expecting a round of applause he was disappointed.
He said, ‘You’ll see some dough pumped into the Centre if they agree to that one.’
‘Well, that’s just fine for the controller of finance.’
‘And for the Studies Director, you mean?’
‘If we ever use the stuff we’re picking up on these trips as a basis for NATO fleet exercises, you’ll see the Russians really light up and say tilt.’
‘How?’ He bit into a cigar and offered them. I shook my head.
‘How? For starters the C-in-C will recognize the NATO movements as their alert scheme, and he’ll guess that these sub trips must be collecting! He’ll hammer the First Deputy who will get the War Soviet into a froth … bad news, Colonel.’
‘You mean this is all something we should be at pains to avoid.’
‘Then you are reading me correctly,’ I said. ‘They’ll know for certain that we have subs on the ocean floor outside Archangel, they’ll surmise about the Amderma and Dikson patrols. And then maybe they’ll guess what we are doing in the River Ob. Bad news, Colonel.’
‘Listen, sweetheart, you think they don’t already know?’ He lit the cigar. ‘You think those babies aren’t sitting on Norfolk, Virginia, taping our signals traffic from under our water?’
‘Colonel, I think they are sitting outside Norfolk. For all I know they are up the Thames as far as Stratford, and sending liberty crews ashore to see Ann Hathaway’s cottage. But so far, both sides have kept stumm about these operations. You base NATO exercises on a real Russian Fleet alert, and Russian Northern Fleet are going to get roasted. And the price they’ll have to pay for returning life to normal will be nailing one of our pig-boats.’
‘And you like it cosy?’
‘We’re getting the material, Colonel. We don’t have to rub their noses in it.’
‘No point in getting into a hassle about something like this, son. The decision will be made far above this level of command.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You think I’ve come into the Centre to build an empire? …’ He waved a hand. ‘Oh, sure. Don’t deny it, I can read you like a book. That’s what riles Foxwell too. But you couldn’t be more wrong. This wasn’t an assignment I wanted, feller.’ The athletic Marine Colonel sagged enough to show me the tired old puppeteer who was working the strings and the smiles. ‘But now I’m here I’m going to hack it, and you’d just better believe.’
‘Well, at least we both hate lords.’
He leaned forward and slapped my arm. ‘There you go, kid!’ He smiled. It was the hard, strained sort of grimace that a man might assume when squinting into the glare of an icy landscape. Liking him might prove difficult, but at least he was no charmer.
He swivelled in his chair and clattered the ice cubes in the jug, using a plastic swizzle stick with a bunny design on the end. ‘How did you get into the Studies, anyway?’ he asked me, while giving all his attention to pouring drinks.
‘I knew Foxwell,’ I said. ‘I saw him in a pub at a time when I was looking for a job.’
‘Now straighten up, son,’ said Schlegel. ‘No one looks for a job any more. You were taking a year off to do a thesis and considering a lot of rather good offers.’
‘Those offers would have to have been damn near the bread line to make Studies Centre the best of them.’
‘But you’ve got your Master’s and all those other qualifications: maths and economics; potent mixture!’
‘Not potent enough at the time.’
‘But Foxwell fixed it?’
‘He knows a lot of people.’
‘That’s what I hear.’ He gave me another fixed stare. Foxwell and Schlegel! That was going to be an inevitable clash of wills. No prizes for who was going to buckle at the knees. And what with all this lord-hating stuff … Ferdy wasn’t a lord, but he’d no doubt do for Schlegel’s all-time hate parade until a real lord came by in a golden coach. ‘And Ferdy fixed it?’
‘He told Planning that I’d had enough computer experience to keep my hand from getting jammed in the input. And then he told me enough to make it sound good.’
‘A regular Mr Fixit.’ There was no admiration in his voice.
‘I’ve earned my keep,’ I said.
‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Schlegel. He gave me the big Grade A – approved by the Department of Health – smile. It wasn’t reassuring.
From the next room there came the shouts of children above the noise of the TV. There was a patter of tiny feet as someone screamed through the house, slammed the kitchen door twice and then started throwing the dustbin lids at the compost heap. Schlegel rubbed his face. ‘When you and Ferdy do those historical studies, who operates the computer?’
‘We don’t have the historical studies out on the War Table, with a dozen plotters, and talk-on, and all the visual display units lit up.’
‘No?’
‘A lot of it is simple sums that we can do more quickly on the machine than by hand.’
‘You use the computer as an adding machine?’
‘No, that’s overstating it. I write a low-level symbolic programme carefully. Then we run it with variations of data, and analyse the output in Fer
dy’s office. There’s not much computer time.’
‘You write the programme?’
I nodded, and sank some of my drink.
Schlegel said, ‘How many people in the Studies Group can write a programme and all the rest?’
‘By all the rest, you mean, get what you want out of storage into the arithmetic, process it and bring it out of the output?’
‘That’s what I mean.’
‘Not many. The policy has always been …’
‘Oh, I know what the policy has been, and my being here is the result of it.’ He stood up. ‘Would it surprise you to hear that I can’t work the damn thing?’
‘It would surprise me to hear that you can. Directors are not usually chosen because they can work the computer.’
‘That’s what I mean. OK, well I need someone who knows what goes on in the Group and who can operate the hardware. What would you say if I asked you to be a PA for me?’
‘Less work, more money?’
‘Don’t give me that stuff. Not when you go in to do Ferdy’s historical stuff for free nearly every Saturday. More money maybe, but not much.’
Mrs Schlegel tapped on the door and was admitted. She’d changed into a shirt-waist dress and English shoes and a necklace. Her dark hair was tied back in a tail. Schlegel gave a soft low whistle. ‘Now there’s a tribute, feller. And don’t bet a million dollars that my daughters are not also in skirts and fancy clothes.’
‘They are,’ said Helen Schlegel. She smiled. She was carrying a tray loaded with bacon, lettuce and tomato toasted sandwiches, and coffee in a large silver vacuum jug. ‘I’m sorry it’s only sandwiches,’ she said again.
‘Don’t believe her,’ said Schlegel. ‘Without you here we would have got only peanut butter and stale crackers.’
‘Chas!’ She turned to me. ‘Those have a lot of English mustard. Chas likes them like that.’
I nodded. It came as no surprise.
‘He’s going to be my new PA,’ said Schlegel.
‘He must be out of his mind,’ said Mrs Schlegel. ‘Cream?’
‘There’s a lot more money in it,’ I said hurriedly. ‘Yes, please. Yes, two sugars.’