‘What’s the difference?’ I said. As far as I was concerned, it simply meant that I couldn’t approach the next on the list of prospective employers until the weekend was passed. I leaned back and watched the colour TV on the bar. It was tuned to a comedy show but the sound was turned off.
Fuller said, ‘We go to the coast tomorrow.’
‘Do you?’ I said.
‘The Bishop has this fiddle with the National Assistance …’
‘I told you not to tell him,’ said the Bishop. He found a half-smoked cigarette in his hat.
‘Everybody knows, you old fool.’ Fuller turned to me. ‘There’s a friendly clerk on the paying-out counter. He calls your name, pays you unemployment money, and then later you give him half of it back. He can’t do it more than once a month, or they’d tumble to him.’ Fuller produced his matches and gave just one of them to the old man to light his cigarette end. ‘Bloody disgusting, isn’t he?’ said Fuller.
‘The Phantom Army, they call it,’ said the Bishop. He took a deep drag of the cigarette smoke, and then a swig of the bitter, to celebrate the next day’s payment.
‘We can row you in on that one,’ Fuller offered. ‘Can’t we, Dad?’
‘I suppose so,’ said the old man grudgingly.
‘You’re on,’ I said. ‘How do you get to the coast? You don’t pay the train fare, do you?’
‘Couldn’t make it pay then, could you?’ said Fuller defensively. ‘We fiddle the tickets from one of the booking clerks.’
‘It’s a complicated life,’ I remarked.
‘You don’t have to come,’ said the Bishop.
‘I wasn’t complaining,’ I said.
‘You went after a job today,’ said the Bishop.
‘That’s it,’ I admitted.
Fuller looked me up and down with interest. He paid special attention to my newly washed shirt and carefully brushed coat. ‘You wouldn’t catch me poncing off the capitalist system,’ said Fuller finally.
‘Same again?’ I said. ‘Pints of bitter?’
‘I wouldn’t say no,’ said Fuller.
‘Thanks, son,’ said the Bishop.
Saturday morning. The Southampton train was not full. We caught it with only a few seconds to spare. Fuller led the way, through the buffet car and a luggage van. Even while the train was still stumbling over the points outside the station, I knew that this was the sort of way Champion would make contact.
‘Go ahead,’ said the Bishop. He indicated the door leading to the next coach and the first-class compartments.
I went forward.
In the corridor, outside his compartment, two men in lumpy raincoats took exceptional interest in the dilapidated back yards of Lambeth and did not give me a glance. Champion looked up from The Financial Times and smiled.
‘Surprised?’ said Champion.
‘Not very.’
‘No, of course not. Come and sit down. We’ve got a lot to talk about.’ Beyond him the cramped slums became high-rise slums, and then semi-detached houses and sports fields.
In my hand I was holding one of the Bishop’s roll-ups. I put it in my mouth as I searched my pockets for matches.
‘Been having a rough time?’ said Champion.
I nodded.
He leaned forward and snatched the cigarette out of my mouth. He clenched his fist to screw it up, and threw the mangled remains of it to the floor. ‘Balls,’ he said.
I looked at him without anger or surprise. He brought a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands on it. ‘Sleeping on railway stations: it’s balls. I know you of old. You can’t pass through a big town without dropping a few pounds here, and a gun there, and some bearer bonds in the next place. You of all people – sleeping on railway stations – crap, I say.’ He looked out at the factories of Weybridge, and the streets crowded with weekend shoppers.
‘You’re losing your cool, Steve,’ I said. He didn’t answer or turn his head. I said, ‘Certainly I’ve got a few quid stashed away, but I’m not leading the band of the Grenadier Guards there for a ceremonial opening.’
Champion looked at me for a moment, then he threw his packet of cigarettes. I caught them. I lit one and smoked for a minute or two. ‘And I’m not even taking you there,’ I added.
Champion said, ‘I’m offering you a job.’
I let him wait for an answer. ‘That might turn out to be a bad move,’ I told him. ‘A bad move for both of us.’
‘You mean the department will be breathing down my neck because I’ve given you a job,’ he nodded. ‘Well, you let me worry about that, Charlie, old son.’ He watched me with the care and calculation that a nightclub comic gives a drunk.
‘If you say so, Steve,’ I said.
‘You found out what those bastards are really like now, eh?’ He nodded to himself. I believe he really thought they had framed him for the murder of Melodie Page. That was the sort of man Champion was, he could always convince himself that his cause was right and remember only the evidence he selected.
‘Remember when you arrived – that night? Me, and young Pina, and little Caty and the bottle of champagne?’
‘I remember,’ I said.
‘I told you that it would be up to you to keep me convinced you were loyal, not my job to prove you weren’t. It’s the same now, Charlie.’
I smiled.
‘Don’t think I’m joking, Charlie. It wouldn’t need more than a wave to a stranger, or an unexplained phone call, for you to lose your job … you know what I mean.’
‘I can fill in the blank spaces, Steve.’
‘Can you?’
‘We’re not going to be distributing food parcels to old-age pensioners.’
‘No one distributes food parcels to old-age pensioners, and soon I’m going to be one, Charlie. I’m past retiring age: ex-Major, DSO, MC, and I’m cold and hungry, at least I was until a few years ago. I’ve done my bit of villainy for God, King and country. And now I’m doing a bit for my own benefit.’
‘And where would I fit in?’ I asked.
‘I need an assistant,’ he said. ‘And you’d be perfect. Nothing to trouble your conscience; nothing to ruin your health.’
‘It sounds a bit boring, Steve.’
‘I have a lot of Arabs working for me. They do the tricky jobs. They are good workers, and I pay enough to take the pick of the workforce, from botanists to butlers. But there are jobs that they can’t do for me.’
‘For instance?’
‘I’ve got to get a school for Billy. I can’t send an Arab to take tea with a prospective headmaster. I need someone who can take a suitcase full of money somewhere, talk his way out of trouble, and forget all about it afterwards. I talk Arabic as fluently as any Arab, but I don’t think like one, Charlie. I need someone I can relax with.’
‘Sounds like you need a wife,’ I said, ‘not an assistant.’
He sighed, and held up his gloved hand in a defensive gesture. ‘Anything but that, Charlie.’ He let the hand fall. ‘You need a job, Charlie; come and work for me. I need someone from our world.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I appreciate it.’
‘There’s a Latin tag – “Render a service to a friend … to bind him closer”, is that how it goes?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘“and render a service to an enemy, to make a friend of him”. You wrote that on the report to London, and told the pilot to make sure the old man got it personally. And we got that reprimand with the next night’s radio messages. You remember!’
He shook his head to show that he didn’t remember, and was annoyed to be reminded. It was difficult for Champion to appreciate how impressionable I had been in those early days. For him I’d just been another expendable subaltern. But, like many such eager kids, I’d studied my battle-scarred commander with uncritical intensity, as an infant studies its mother.
‘Well, you didn’t sign up for a course in elementary philosophy, did you?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘for one million dollars.
When can I start?’
‘Right now.’ He pointed to a canvas two-suiter on the floor. ‘That’s for you. Use the battery shaver in the outside pocket, and change into the suit and shirt and stuff.’
‘All without leaving your sight?’
‘You catch on quick,’ said Champion. The train gave a throaty roar as we rushed into the darkness of a tunnel and out again into blinding rain.
‘And at Southampton: a false passport, a false beard and a boat?’
‘Could be,’ he admitted. ‘There’s no going back, Charlie. No farewell kisses. No notes cancelling the milk. No forwarding address.’
‘Not even a chance to get a newspaper,’ I said, reminding him of a device we’d used at Nice railway station one night in 1941, when Pina passed back through a police cordon to warn us.
‘Especially not a chance to get a newspaper,’ he said. I sorted through the clothes he’d provided. They’d fit me. If Schlegel had a tail on me, in spite of my protests, they’d need a sharp-eyed man at Southampton to recognize me as I left the train. I was about to vanish through the floor, like the demon king in a pantomime. Well, it was about what I expected. I was changed within five minutes.
I settled back into the corner of my soft first-class seat, and used the electric shaver. Between gusts of rain I glimpsed rolling green oceans of grassland. Winchester flashed past, like a trawler fleet making too much smoke. After Southampton there would certainly be no going back.
‘Have you started again?’
Champion was offering his cigars. ‘Yes, I have,’ I said.
Champion lit both cigars. ‘The bearded one – the Bishop – was one of my people,’ he said.
‘I thought he might be.’
‘Why?’ said Champion, as if he did not believe me.
‘Too fragrant for a tramp.’
‘He told me,’ said Champion. ‘Bathed every day – every day!’
‘No one’s perfect,’ I said.
Champion gave a stony smile and punched my arm.
13
‘When a senior officer, like Champion, confesses to being outwitted – that’s the time to run for your life.’ The quote originated from a German: a Sicherheitsdienst officer giving evidence to one of our departmental inquiries in 1945. Champion – like all other British SIS agents captured by the Nazi security service – faced a board after the war, and heard his ex-captors describe his interrogations. Not many came out of such investigations unscathed, and very few such men were ever employed in the field again. Champion was an exception.
‘I think it’s yours,’ said Champion. He picked up the red king and waved it at me. ‘Unless you can think of something I can do.’
‘No, it’s checkmate,’ I said. I am a poor player, and yet I had won two games out of three. Champion swept the pieces off the small magnetic board, and folded it. ‘Anyway, we must be nearly there.’
‘Nice airport have just given us permission to land,’ said the second pilot. I looked out of the window. The land below was dark except for a glittering scimitar that was the coast. We continued southwards, for even a small executive jet must obey the traffic pattern designed to leave jet-noise over the sea. Champion looked at his wristwatch. There would be a chauffeur-driven limousine at Nice airport, just as there had been at the quayside in Le Havre. There was no fuel crisis for Champion.
‘You must have questions,’ said Champion. ‘You never were the trusting type.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Why did you bring your queen forward? Twice you did that. You must have seen what would happen.’
The limousine was there. It was parked in the no-waiting area. The cop had moved a sign to make room for it. The dark-skinned chauffeur was holding a boy in his arms when we saw him. The chauffeur’s gigantic size made the child seem no larger than a baby. But he was a big boy, dressed in a denim bib and brace, with a red wool workshirt: all tailored with the sort of care that only the French expend on children’s clothes.
‘Has he been a good boy?’ said Champion.
The chauffeur stroked the child’s hair gently. ‘Have you, Billy?’
The boy just nuzzled closer into the shoulder of the dark wool uniform.
It was a starry night. The air was warm, and the white-shirted airport workers moved with a spurious grace. What had these men of the south in common with the stamping feet and placid anxiety of the bundled-up dock workers we’d seen sheltering from the driving rainstorms of northern Europe?
I sniffed the air. I could smell the flower market across the road, the ocean, the olives, the sun-oil and the money.
‘Bloody odd world,’ said Champion, ‘when a man has to kidnap his own child.’
‘And his friends,’ I said.
Champion took his son from the chauffeur. He put him on the back seat of the car. Billy woke for a moment, smiled at both of us, and then closed his eyes to nuzzle into the leatherwork. Gently Champion pushed his son along the seat to make room for us. He gave no instructions to the driver, but the car started and moved off into the traffic of the busy coast road. A roar of engines became deafening, and modulated into a scream as a jet came low across the road and turned seaward.
‘You said you’d bring Mummy,’ said the boy. His voice was drowsy and muffled by the seat. Champion didn’t answer. The boy said it again: ‘You said you’d bring her.’
‘Now, that’s not true, Billy,’ said Champion. ‘It will be a long time. I told you that.’
The boy was silent for a long time. When finally he mumbled, ‘You promised,’ it seemed as though he preferred the dispute to continue, rather than be silent and alone. ‘You promised,’ he said again.
I thought for one moment that Champion was going to strike the child, but the arm he stretched out went round him, and pulled him close. ‘Dammit, Billy,’ said Champion softly. ‘I need you to help your Dad, not fight with him.’
By the time we got to Cannes, the child’s slow breathing indicated that he’d gone back to sleep.
You won’t find the Tix mansion in any of those coffee-table books about the houses and gardens of the rich families of France. But the Tix fortune was once a notable one, and the house had been built without regard to cost. The quarry, two miles from it, had been the basis of the Tix empire, and even now in the summer, when there had been no rain for a couple of weeks, the yellow quarry-dust could be seen on the marble steps, the carved oak door and on the half-timbered gables.
A century earlier, the wealth from the quarry had built this great house, and created the village that had housed the men who worked there. But the riches of the quarry had diminished to seams that had to be mined. Eventually even the honeycomb of the mine’s diggings yielded so little that it was closed. The village languished, and finally became a training ground where French infantry learned house-to-house fighting. But the mansion survived, its paintings and furnishings as intact as three great wars permitted.
The builder had made it face the entrance to the drive, a track nearly a mile long. It was a gloomy house, for the dramatic siting of this solitary building on the desolate limestone plateau condemned it to dim northern light.
The electricity was provided by a generator which made a steady hum, audible throughout the house. The hall lights dimmed as we entered, for the power it provided was fitful and uncertain. The entrance hall was panelled in oak, and a wide staircase went to a gallery that completely surrounded the hall. I looked to the balcony but could see no one there, and yet I never entered the house without feeling that I was being observed.
‘Make yourself at home,’ said Champion, not without some undertones of self-mockery.
The tiled floor reflected the hall table, where the day’s papers were arrayed, undisturbed by human hand. The roses were perfect, too, no discoloured leaf disfigured them, nor shed petal marred their arrangement. It was as homely as a wax museum, its life measured by the pendulum of the longcase clock that ticked softly, and tried not to chime.
A servant appeared from a room th
at I later learned was Champion’s study. This was Mebarki, Champion’s Algerian secretary. He was about fifty years old, his eyes narrow, skin pigmented, and his white hair cropped close to the skull. He pulled the door closed behind him and stood in the recessed doorway like a sentry.
Champion carried his son, sound asleep, in his arms. A man in a green baize apron helped the chauffeur with Champion’s cases. But my attention was held by a girl. She was in her early twenties. The dark woollen dress and flat heels were perhaps calculated to be restrained, as befits the station of a domestic servant who does not wear uniform. But in fact the button-through knitted dress clung to her hips and breasts, and revealed enough of her tanned body to interest any man who knew how to undo a button.
‘Anything?’ said Champion to the white-haired man.
‘Two Telex messages; the bank and the confirmation.’
‘In gold?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. It’s a pity they have to learn the hard way. In that case tell the warehouse, and let them collect them as soon as they like.’
‘And I confirmed lunch tomorrow.’ Mebarki turned his cold eyes to me. There was no welcome there.
‘Good, good, good,’ said Champion, as his mind turned to other matters. Still holding his son, he started up the stairs. ‘I’ll put Billy to bed, Nanny,’ he said. ‘Come along, Charles. I’ll show you your room.’
The servants dispersed, and Champion took me along the dark upstairs corridors of the house to my room.
‘There’s a phone in your room: dial two for my room, one for my study, and ten for the kitchen. They’ll get you coffee and a sandwich, if you ask.’
‘It’s a plush life, Steve.’
‘Goodnight, Charlie. Sleep well.’
My ‘room’ was a suite: a double-bedroom, ante-room and sitting-room, with a fully stocked cocktail cabinet and a balcony that overlooked a thousand acres of scrub. There were books too: carefully chosen ones. I was flattered by the care shown in choosing them, and affronted by the assurance that I’d arrive.
I picked up the phone and asked for tea and ham sandwiches. ‘Tea with milk,’ I said again. It was the nanny who answered. She replied in English. It was English English. ‘Have cold chicken,’ she suggested. ‘They don’t eat ham here – they’re Arabs.’