‘He can’t be that dumb!’
‘There are traditions in the desert,’ I said.
‘You mean that’s what the dummy is going to tell the cops when they get here and find him carving a headstone.’
‘Probably.’
‘They’ll shake him,’ said Mann. ‘The cops will shake Percy Dempsey, and you know what will fall out of his pockets?’
‘Nothing will.’
‘We will!’ said Mann, still watching in the mirror. ‘Goddamned stupid fruit.’
‘I make it twenty k.’s to the turn-off for the airstrip.’
‘Unless our fly-boy was scared shitless by that gunship, and went back to Morocco again.’
‘Our boy hasn’t even faked his flight plan yet,’ I said. ‘He’s only fifteen minutes’ flying time away from here.’
‘OK, OK, OK,’ said Mann. ‘I don’t need any of that Dunkirk spirit crap.’ For a long time we drove in silence.
‘Watch for that cairn at the turn-off,’ I said. ‘It’s no more than half a dozen stones, and the sand has drifted since we came down this road.’
‘There’s no spade in the Land Rover,’ said Mann. ‘You don’t think he’d bury him with his bare hands, do you.’
‘Slow a little now,’ I said. ‘The cairn is on this side.’
An aircraft came dune-hopping in from the north-west. It was one of a fleet of Dornier Skyservant short-haul machines, contracted to take Moroccan civil servants, politicians and technicians down to the phosphate workings near the Algerian border. The world demand for phosphates had made the workings the most pampered industry in Morocco.
The pilot landed at the first approach. It was part of his job to be able to land on any treeless piece of hard dirt. The Dornier taxied over to us and flipped the throttle of the port engine, so that it turned on its own axis, and was ready to fly out again. ‘Watch out for the prop-wash!’ Mann warned me.
Mann’s father had been an airline pilot, and Mann had a ten-year subscription to Aviation Week. Flying machines brought out the worst in him. He rapped the metal skin of this one before climbing through the door. ‘Great ships, these Dorniers,’ he told me. ‘Ever see a Dornier before?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My uncle George shot one down in 1940.’
‘Just make sure you lock the door,’ said Mann.
‘Let’s go, let’s go,’ said the pilot, a young Swede with a droopy moustache and ‘Elsa’ tattooed on his bicep.
I pushed Bekuv ahead of me. There were a dozen or more seats in the cabin, and Mann had already planted himself nearest the door.
‘Hurry!’ said the pilot. ‘I want to get back on to my flight plan.’
‘Casablanca?’ said Mann.
‘And all the couscous you can eat,’ said the pilot, and he opened the throttles even before I had locked the door.
The place from which the twin-engined Dornier climbed steeply was a disused site left by the road-builders. There were the usual piles of oil-drums, two tractor chassis and some stone markers. Everything else had been taken by the nomads. Now a bright new VW bus marked Dempsey Desert Tours was parked in the shallow depression of a wadi.
‘That’s screwed this one up for ever,’ said Mann. ‘When the cops find the VW they’ll be watching this airstrip for ever.’
‘Dempsey will collect it,’ I said.
‘He’s a regular little Lawrence of Arabia, your pal Dempsey.’
‘He could have done this job on his own,’ I said. ‘There was no need for us to come down here.’
‘You’re even dumber than you look.’ Mann looked round to make sure that Bekuv couldn’t hear.
‘Why then …?’
‘Because if the prof yells loud enough for his spouse, someone is going to have to go in and get her.’
‘They’ll use one of the people in the field,’ I said.
‘They’ll use someone who talked to the professor … and you know it! Someone who was here, who can talk to his old lady and make it sound convincing.’
‘Bloody risky,’ I said.
‘Yep!’ said Mann. ‘If the Russkies are going to send gun-ships here and blast cars out of the desert, they are not going to let his old lady out of their clutches without a struggle.’
‘Perhaps they’ll write Bekuv off as dead,’ I said.
Mann turned in his seat to look at the professor. His head was thrown back over the edge of the seat-back. His mouth was open and his eyes closed. ‘Maybe,’ said Mann.
Now I could see the mountains of the High Atlas. They were almost hidden behind the shimmer of heat that rose from the colourless desert below us, but above the heat haze I could distinguish the snow-capped tops of the highest peaks. Soon we’d see the Atlantic Ocean.
4
I never discovered whether New York University realized that they had acquired a chair of Interstellar Communication; certainly it was not mentioned in the press analysis. The house we used was on Washington Square, facing across the trees to the university buildings. It had been owned by the CIA – through a land-management front – for many years, and used for various clandestine purposes that included extra-marital exploits by certain senior members of the Operations Division.
Technically, Major Mann was responsible for Bekuv’s safety – which was a polite way of saying custody, as Bekuv himself pointed out at least three times a day. But it was Mann’s overt role of custodian that enabled Bekuv to believe that the interrogation team were the NYU academics that they pretended to be. The interrogators’ first hurdle was to steer Bekuv away from pure administration. Perhaps it was inevitable that a Soviet academic would want to know the floor-area his department would occupy, spending restrictions, the secretarial staff he was entitled to, his voting power in the university, his access to printing, photography and computer and his priority for student and postgraduate enrolment.
The research team was becoming more and more fretful. The reported leakage of scientific information eastwards was reflected by the querulous memos that were piling up in my ‘classified incoming’.
Pretending to be Professor Bekuv’s assistants, the interrogators were hoping to recognize the character of the data he already knew, and hoping to trace the American sources from which it had been stolen. With this in mind, slightly modified data had been released to selected staff at various government labs. So far, none of this ‘seeded’ material had come back through Bekuv, and now, in spite of strenuous protests from his ‘staff’, Bekuv declared a beginning to the Christmas vacation. He imperiously dismissed his interrogators back to their homes and families. Bekuv was therefore free to spend all his days designing a million-dollar heap of electronic junk that was guaranteed to make contact with one of those super-civilizations that were sitting around in space waiting to be introduced.
By Thursday evening the trees in Washington Square were dusted with the winter’s first snow, radio advertisers were counting Christmas shopping time in hours, and Mann was watching me shave in preparation for a Park Avenue party at the home of a senior security official of the United Nations. A hasty note on the bottom of the engraved invitation said ‘and bring the tame Russkie’. It had sent Mann into a state of peripatetic anxiety. ‘You say Tony Nowak sent your invite to the British Embassy in Washington?’ he asked me for the fourth or fifth time.
‘You know Tony,’ I said. ‘He’s nothing if not tactful. That’s his UN training.’
‘Goddamned gab-factory.’
‘You think he knows about this house on Washington Square?’
‘We’ll move Bekuv tomorrow,’ said Mann.
‘Tony can keep his mouth shut,’ I said.
‘I’m not worrying about Tony,’ said Mann. ‘But if he knows we’re here, you can bet a dozen other UN people know.’
‘What about California?’ I suggested. ‘UCLA.’ I sorted through my last clean linen. I was into my wash-and-wear shirts now, and the bath was brimming with them.
‘And what about Sing Sing?’ said Mann. ‘The fact is that I’m begin
ning to think that Bekuv is stalling – deliberately – and will go on stalling until we produce his frau.’
‘We both guessed that,’ I said. I put on a white shirt and club tie. It was likely to be the sort of party where you were better off English.
‘I’d tear the bastard’s toenails out,’ Mann growled.
‘Now you don’t mean that,’ I said. ‘That’s just the kind of joke that gets you a bad reputation.’
I got a sick kind of pleasure from provoking Major Mann, and he rose to that one as I knew he would: he stubbed out his cigar and dumped it into his Jim Beam bourbon – and you have to know Mann to realize how near that is to suicide. Mann watched me combing my hair, and then looked at his watch. ‘Maybe you should skip the false eyelashes,’ he said, ‘we’re meeting Bessie at eight.’
Mann’s wife Bessie looked about twenty years old but must have been nearer forty. She was tall and slim, with the fresh complexion that was the product of her childhood on a Wisconsin farm. If beautiful was going too far, she was certainly good-looking enough to turn all male heads as she entered the Park Avenue apartment where the party was being held.
Tony greeted us and adroitly took three glasses of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. ‘Now the party can really begin,’ said Tony Nowak – or Nowak the Polack as he was called by certain acquaintances who had not admired his spike-booted climb from rags to riches. For Antoni Nowak’s job in the United Nations Organization security unit didn’t require him to be in the lobby wearing a peaked cap and running metal detectors over the hand baggage. Tony had a six-figure salary and a three-window office with a view of the East River, and a lot of people typing letters in triplicate for him. In UN terms he was a success.
‘Now the party can really begin,’ said Tony again. He kissed Bessie, took Mann’s hat and punched my arm. ‘Good to see you – and Jesus, what a tan you guys got in Miami.’
I nodded politely and Mann tried to smile, failed and put his nose into his champagne.
‘The story is you’re retiring, Tony,’ said Bessie.
‘I’m too young to retire, Bessie, you know that!’ He winked at her.
‘Steady up, Tony,’ said Bessie, ‘you want the old man to catch on to us?’
‘He should never have left you behind on that Miami trip,’ said Tony Nowak.
‘It’s a lamp,’ said Mann. ‘Bloomingdales Fifty-four ninety-nine, with three sets of dark goggles.’
‘You could have fooled me,’ said Tony Nowak, ‘I thought it was a spray job.’
Behind us there were soft chiming sounds and a servant opened the door. Tony Nowak was still gripping Bessie’s arm but as he caught sight of his new guests he relaxed his grip. ‘These are the people from the Secretariat …’ said Tony Nowak.
‘Go look after your new arrivals,’ said Mann. ‘Looks like Liz Taylor needs rescuing from the Shah of Iran.’
‘And ain’t you the guy to do it,’ said Tony Nowak. He smiled. It was the sort of joke he’d repeat between relating the names of big-shots who had really been there.
‘It beats me why he asked us,’ I told Mann.
Mann grunted.
‘Are we here on business?’ I asked.
‘You want overtime?’
‘I just like to know what’s going on.’
From a dark corner of the lounge there came the hesitant sort of music that gives the pianist time for a gulp of martini between bars. When Mann got as far as the Chinese screen that divided this room from the dining-room, he stopped and lit a cheroot. He took his time doing it so that both of us could get a quick look round. ‘A parley,’ Mann said quietly.
‘A parley with who?’
‘Exactly,’ said Mann. He inhaled on his cheroot, and took my arm in his iron grip while telling about all the people he recognized.
The dining-room had been rearranged to make room for six special backgammon tables at which silent players played for high stakes. The room was crowded with spectators, and there was an especially large group around the far table at which a middle-aged manufacturer of ultrasonic intruder alarms was doing battle with a spectacular redhead.
‘Now that’s the kind of girl I could go for,’ said Mann.
Bessie punched him gently in the stomach. ‘And don’t think he’s kidding,’ she told me.
‘Don’t do that when I’m drinking French champagne,’ said Mann.
‘Is it OK when you’re drinking domestic?’ said Bessie.
Tony Nowak came past with a magnum of Heidsieck. He poured all our glasses brimful with champagne, hummed the melody line of ‘Alligator Crawl’ more adroitly than the pianist handled it, and then did a curious little step-dance before moving on to fill more glasses.
‘Tony is in an attentive mood tonight,’ I said.
‘Tony is keeping an eye on you,’ said Bessie. ‘Tony is remembering that time when you two came here with those drunken musicians from the Village and turned Tony’s party into a riot.’
‘I still say it was Tony Nowak’s rat-fink cousin Stefan who put the spaghetti in the piano,’ said Mann.
Bessie smiled and pointed at me. ‘The last time we talked about it, you were the guilty party,’ she confided.
Mann pulled a vampire face, and tried to bite his wife’s throat. ‘Promises, promises,’ said Bessie and turned to watch Tony Nowak moving among his guests. Mann walked into the dining-room and we followed him. It was all chinoiserie and high camp, with lanterns and gold-plated Buddhas, and miniature paintings of oriental pairs in acrobatic sexual couplings.
‘It’s Red Bancroft,’ said Mann, still looking at the redhead. ‘She’s international standard – you watch this.’
I followed him as he elbowed his way to a view of the backgammon game. We watched in silence. If this girl was playing a delaying game, it was far, far beyond my sort of backgammon, where you hit any blot within range and race for home. This girl was even leaving the single men exposed. It could be a way of drawing her opponent out of her home board but she wasn’t yet building up there. She was playing red, and her single pieces seemed scattered and vulnerable, and two of her men were out, waiting to come in. But for Mann’s remark, I would have seen this as the muddled play of a beginner.
The redhead smiled as her middle-aged opponent reached for the bidding cube. He turned it in his fingers as if trying to find the odds he wanted and then set it down again. I heard a couple of surprised grunts behind me as the audience saw the bid. If the girl was surprised too she didn’t show it. But when she smiled again, it was too broad a smile; and it lasted too long. Backgammon is as much a game of bluff as of skill and luck, and the redhead yawned and raised a hand to cover her mouth. It was a gesture that showed her figure to good advantage. She gave a nod of assent. The man rattled the dice longer than he’d done before, and I saw his lips move as if in prayer. He held his breath while they rolled. If it was a prayer, it was answered quickly and fully – double six! He looked up at the redhead. She smiled as if this was all part of her plan. The man took a long time looking at the board before he moved his men.
She picked up her dice, and threw them carelessly, but from this moment the game changed drastically. The man’s home board was completely open, so she had no trouble in bringing in her two men. With her next throw she began to build up her home board, which had been littered with blots. A four and a three. It was all she needed to cover all six points. That locked her opponent. Now he could only use a high throw, and for this his prayers were unanswered. She had the game to herself for throw after throw. The man lit a cigar with studied care as he watched the game going against him, and could do nothing about it. Only after she began bearing-off did he get moving again.
Now the bidding cube was in her hands – and that too was a part of the strategy – she raised it. The man looked at the cube, and then up to the faces of his friends. There had been side wagers on his success. He smiled, and nodded his agreement to the new stakes, although he must have known that only a couple of high double
s could save him now. He picked up the dice and shook them as if they might explode. When they rolled to a standstill there was a five and a one on the upper side. He still hadn’t got all his men into the home board. The girl threw a double five – with five men already beared-off, it ended the game.
He conceded. The redhead smiled as she tucked a thousand dollars in C notes into a crocodile-skin wallet with gold edges. The bystanders drifted away. The redhead looked up at Bessie and smiled, and then she smiled at Major Mann too.
But for that Irish colouring she might have been Oriental. Her cheekbones were high and flat and her mouth a little too wide. Her eyes were a little too far apart, and narrow – narrower still when she smiled. It was the smile that I was to remember long after everything else about her had faded in my memory. It was a strange, uncertain smile that sometimes mocked and sometimes chided but was nonetheless beguiling for that, as I was to find to my cost.
She wore an expensive knitted dress of striped autumnal colours and in her ears there were small jade earrings that exactly matched her eyes. Bessie brought her over to where I was standing, near the champagne, and the food.
When Bessie moved away, the girl said, ‘Pizza is very fattening.’
‘So is everything I like,’ I said.
‘Everything?’ said the girl.
‘Well … damn nearly everything,’ I said. ‘Congratulations on your win.’
She got out a packet of mentholated cigarettes and put one in her mouth. I lit it for her.
‘Thank you kindly, sir. There was a moment when he had me worried though, I’ll tell you that.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘When you yawned.’
‘It’s nerves – I try everything not to yawn.’
‘Think yourself lucky,’ I said. ‘Some people laugh when they are nervous.’
‘Do you mean you laugh when you are nervous?’
‘I’m advised to reserve my defence,’ I told her.
‘Ah, how British of you! You want to know my weaknesses but you’ll not confide any of your own.’
‘Does that make me a male chauvinist pig?’
‘It shortens the odds,’ she said. Then she found herself stifling a yawn again. I laughed.