‘London!’ said one of the men. ‘That’s where I first saw that movie. I was a gunner, nineteen – youngest top-kick in the group – and I’d met this shy English kid. We went to a movie with her mother; can you imagine … with her mother! I was crazy about her.’
‘What was her mother like?’ said a second man. The first man laughed politely.
‘I saw it with my Daddy and Ma,’ said another voice. ‘I was a shavetail, just out of pilot training. I was on leave before joining a bomb group in England. My folks just smiled and listened to me tell them how I couldn’t wait to get into the fighting … and all the time they were figuring the odds against my getting killed … it’s only now, when I’ve got kids of my own, that I understand what that cost them.’
‘We all came back,’ said another man. ‘Sometimes I wonder why.’
‘Not all of us,’ said the man who’d been in pilot training. ‘I lost a lot of real good buddies.’
‘They shipped the squadron from England to France without warning,’ said the first man. ‘I forgot how to find the house in Manchester where she lived, and I never took down the address. I went back twice and walked the streets … but it was no use.’
‘Wartime romance,’ said the second man.
‘It was more than that,’ said the first man. ‘I still think about her. Every week or so I remember her. That proves it, doesn’t it.’
The door opened again and some women came out into the yard. ‘What are you doing out here?’ one of them asked shrilly. ‘It’s so cold!’
A second woman said, ‘Telling dirty stories; I know what they were doing. Admit it now, Norm, you were telling dirty stories.’
‘That’s right,’ said the man from pilot training. ‘That’s what we were doing.’
The proprietor’s son was taking down the shutters from the room in which they’d been watching the film. As he did so, the light from inside lit up the yard. It was bright enough to see the men and women standing there. They were all in their late forties or early fifties. The women wore old-fashioned party dresses, and the men were in army uniforms. But the uniforms were not those of the modem army, they were the pink trousers, olive-drab jackets and soft-topped flyers’ caps of the US Army Air Force, circa 1943.
8
It was breakfast-time on Christmas Eve. Low-angled winter-morning sunshine made slatted patterns on the wallpaper. ‘Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be,’ pronounced Mann. He’d been reading aloud from the brochure that was included on our breakfast-table in the sitting-room. ‘Nostalgia Inn’ said the headline and there was a photograph of the hotel taken the previous summer when a vintage-car club used it for a convention. The furnishings, the recorded music, the film shows and even the menus had been chosen to give the clientele a chance to wallow in their memories and their illusions.
‘This month and next month is the World War Two period,’ Mann said. ‘But last Christmas they did a 1914 week, and I hear it was terrific.’ He was wearing a tweed jacket, white roll-neck sweater and khaki cotton trousers. It would do for World War Two.
‘All we’re saying,’ repeated Bessie Mann patiently, ‘is that you should have told us.’
‘And had you buying special gowns and hair-dos.’
‘Well, why not?’ said Bessie.
‘It would have loused up the security,’ said Major Mann. ‘This is supposed to be a way for our Russian friends to stay incognito. You telling every store clerk in Bloomingdales about it would have blown us all wide open.’
‘You never trust me,’ said Bessie Mann.
‘Damn right,’ agreed Mann cheerfully.
‘Give me the car keys,’ she said.
‘Where are you going?’ said Mann.
‘I’m getting a 1940 hair-do and a party dress.’
‘Don’t curb those new radials,’ said Mann. Bessie Mann aimed a playful blow at her husband’s head. He ducked and grinned.
Red touched my hand across the table. ‘Shall I go too? I need cigarettes.’
‘Buy a dress and give me the bill,’ I said. ‘Happy Christmas.’
Red leaned over and kissed me.
‘Break it up, you two,’ said Mrs Mann.
‘Listen, honey,’ said Mann. ‘Take a cab into town just in case I need the car.’
Soon after Mrs Mann and Red departed to go to town, Mrs Bekuv emerged through the connecting door. She was dressed in a blue silk pants-suit. It was a little flashy for my taste but it showed her blonde hair, and full figure, to advantage. Major Mann poured coffee for her, and offered her the butter. Only two warm rolls remained under the starched cloth in the basket. Mrs Bekuv broke one of them open and chewed a piece of its crust. She was still looking down at the plate as she spoke. ‘You’ll never get anywhere with my husband by threats, Major Mann.’
Mann put his coffee down and turned on his full unabated charm. ‘Threats?’ he said as if encountering the word for the first time. ‘Is that what he told you, Mrs Bekuv? Perhaps he misunderstood. A long drive … all the strain of the last few days … he is looking a little tired.’
‘Neither of us likes threats, Major Mann,’ she said. She buttered her roll.
Mann nodded his agreement. ‘No one does, Mrs Bekuv. No one I’ve ever met.’
‘That’s why we left the Soviet Union.’
Mann raised his hand as if to shield his eyes from a bright light. ‘Now that’s not quite true, Mrs Bekuv. You know it’s not quite true. Your husband defected because he’d been passed over for promotion on four successive occasions, and because he was finally posted to that lousy little job in Mali, where he didn’t get along with his boss.’
‘That boss,’ said Mrs Bekuv with great distaste, ‘was a junior assistant to my husband only five years ago.’
‘Exactly,’ said Mann. ‘And that’s why your husband defected – nothing to do with living in a police state, or being threatened, or wanting to read Solzhenitsyn in the original Swiss.’
‘You have my husband’s defection all worked out, Major,’ said Mrs Bekuv. ‘So what about me? Why do you think I defected?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Mann warily. ‘But you certainly look like a million dollars in that Saks Fifth Avenue pants-suit, and Tiffany’s gold wrist-watch and bangle.’
‘You were having me followed?’ She seemed very surprised.
She turned to see him better. The sunlight made her screw up her eyes, but even squinting into the light she was still a shapely and beautiful woman.
‘Just making sure you weren’t accosted by any strange men, Mrs Bekuv.’ Mann leaned over and moved the slats a fraction to close the sun’s rays out.
‘Men from the Soviet Government, you mean?’
‘Any kind of men, Mrs Bekuv.’
‘It’s not me you need to watch,’ she said. She drank her coffee and put butter on the last piece of roll as if to signal that the conversation had ended.
‘You mean I should be watching your husband?’
‘He will not respond to pressure, Major Mann. Andrei is a gentle person. If you bully him, he will run from you.’
‘You’re asking me to do business through you, Mrs Bekuv?’ Mann had hit it, and she was disconcerted.
‘It would be worth trying,’ she said.
‘Well, you must get your husband to co-operate, Mrs Bekuv.’
‘But he already writes millions of words for you.’
‘He has given us a great deal of scientific material – as close to verbatim as his memory will allow – but that’s not what I call real co-operation, Mrs Bekuv.’
‘What more do you want?’
‘A man like your husband can get a lot of information from the style of the report and the procedure of the experiments and analysis. He knows which of the world’s labs are concerned with the development of masers, and could probably name the men working in them – I think he knows where the leaks are coming from.’
Mrs Bekuv drank some coffee.
Mann continued his thesis. ‘No Soviet
scientist has been allowed more freedom than your husband has over the last few years. He has attended nearly thirty scientific conferences, lectures, seminars and symposiums, outside the Soviet Union – now that’s unusual, Mrs Bekuv, you must admit. It’s tempting to guess that he’s been getting a lot of his material on a person-to-person basis, while talking with other scientists at these international conferences.’
‘I’ll talk to Andrei,’ she promised.
‘Me and my friend here,’ said Mann pointing at me with his spoon as I poured another cup of coffee. ‘We are an easy-going couple of kids. You know we are. But we’ve got to start scribbling a few picture postcards for the fellows in the front office. Otherwise they are going to start wondering if we are on some sort of fun-fest down here. They’ll assign us to permanent night duty guarding the Lincoln Memorial. You get me, Mrs Bekuv?’
From the floor below us someone switched on the radio to hear a Christmas carol service. ‘While shepherds watched their flocks …’ came softly to us at the breakfast-table.
‘I get you, Major Mann,’ she said. I watched her carefully, but the slight smile she gave him revealed nothing but good-natured amusement. Mann picked up his orange juice and sipped some. ‘You know something, Mrs Bekuv. It’s getting so that freshly squeezed orange juice is just not available for love nor money. You’d be amazed at how many five-star hotels serve canned juice.’
‘In the Soviet Union every hotel and restaurant serves freshly squeezed orange juice,’ said Mrs Bekuv.
For a moment I thought Mann was going to challenge that contention but he smiled his most ingratiating smile and said, ‘Is that so, honey. Well, I always knew there must be something good about that crummy wasteland.’
Mrs Bekuv pushed her cup aside and got to her feet.
‘See you later,’ said Mann affably.
Mrs Bekuv left the room without replying.
We were still sitting there when Bessie and Red phoned us from Waterbridge. They were almost through at the hairdressers, and the new dresses were gift-wrapped and ready for collection. All we had to do was to bring our chequebooks into town, and take them somewhere smart for lunch. To my surprise Mann readily agreed. He even invited the Bekuvs to go with us, but Andrei was going to record a Christmas concert on his Sony radio-recorder and Mrs Bekuv shook her head without looking up from Dr Zhivago.
Downstairs in the dining-room the hotel staff were hanging ancient tin toys and celluloid dolls upon a Christmas tree. On the stage a ten-piece orchestra from Chicago were arguing with Mr Pierce about where the coloured spotlights should point.
Mann drove all the way to the end of the property and half-way up the hill before speaking. ‘You don’t approve of my little talk with Frau Bekuv?’
‘I wouldn’t put it into an anthology of psychological triumphs.’
‘What did I do wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘You obviously want her to put the finger on the 1924 Society, so that you’ve got an excuse to turn them over. Well, I’m sure she got the message and she will probably oblige you.’
‘Why would that make you so mad?’
‘If you are sure that the leak is through the crackpots on the 1924 Society, why not move in on them right away? If you are not sure, you are only confusing the situation by using Mrs Bekuv like a glove puppet.’
‘Ah!’ said Mann. ‘Why not move in on the 1924 Society right away, you say. Well, I knew it was only a matter of time before you handed me a question I could answer.’ He turned his eyes away from the road long enough to stare at me. ‘The 1924 Society is a secret society, kiddo. No one’s exactly sure who is a member of the 1924 Society.’
‘Except the other members.’
‘Like the Bekuvs. Yes, well now you’re getting the idea, pal.’
‘Suppose that, while we’re all away, the Bekuvs call a cab and scram?’
Mann smiled as we pulled to a halt in a newly vacated parking-space in front of a pawnshop filled with saxophones and shotguns. I could see the hairdressers’ a few doors away. ‘You got a couple of quarters?’ he said.
I gave him some change for the meter but he didn’t get out of the car immediately. He said, ‘I’ve put a couple of my boys to watch the back door.’
‘You’d like them to skip,’ I said accusingly.
‘It would simplify things,’ said Mann.
‘Unless they succeeded,’ I said.
Mann pulled a face and got out.
The Bekuvs were still in the hotel when we arrived back. Mozart’s Jupiter was on the hi-fi. Andrei was still doing the calculations that would put messages into outer space and his wife was sleeping with Dr Zhivago. Mann dropped on to the sofa and heaved a sigh.
It’s one of the many things I don’t understand about women that the moment they return from some expensive hair-crimping parlour they stand in front of a mirror and comb the whole thing out again. Red and Bessie did that while Mrs Bekuv, evidently having decided that she’d missed out on a good thing, joined in the fun.
With seeming reluctance, she allowed herself to be persuaded into a new hair-style too. Red swept her hair up into a styling of the ’forties, and held it while they both admired it. Deftly Red pinned it into position and arranged the curls and the fringe with loving care.
Mann watched it all with interest, but his wife seemed strangely disquieted. It provided a revealing insight into Mrs Bekuv – and a portent of Red too, but I didn’t see that at the time.
I ordered tea for all of us, but even before I’d put the phone down, Mann’s autocratic manner told his wife that he wanted a private word with the Bekuvs. Bessie said she’d prefer to take her tea into her room, and even Red – no admirer of Mann’s patriarchal moods – meekly agreed to do the same, even to the extent of leaving Mrs Bekuv’s hair-do unfinished. That didn’t please the Russian lady, and after the others had gone she fixed Mann with a steely stare, told her husband to switch the music down, and said, ‘Dr Henry Dean. He lives at a house called La Grange in the village of St Paul Chauvrac, Bretenoux, 46 Lot, France. Do you want to write that down?’
Mann said, ‘Dr Henry Dean, La Grange, St Paul Chauvrac, Bretenoux, 46 Lot, France. No, I don’t want to write it down.’
‘He is not a scientist,’ said Mrs Bekuv, ‘not an important one, anyway. But he is the contact between the 1924 Society and Moscow.’ She smiled and twisted a strand of blonde hair in her fingers. It was the artless gesture of the ingénue, inappropriate for this Rubenesque wife and mother, and yet she had more than enough charm to carry it off.
‘That’s fine,’ said Mann tonelessly. He turned to me. ‘Get on to that, will you.’
I looked at him closely. There was something in his voice that I could not recognize.
‘I’ll do what I can,’ I said. I knew that my request to Langley for archive searches at five o’clock on a Christmas Eve would not be received with great enthusiasm.
‘Don’t try too hard,’ said Mann. ‘I wouldn’t like to be ready to go by tomorrow morning.’
Mrs Bekuv looked from one to the other of us. ‘You will go to France?’
‘Dr Henry Dean, you say. Well, that’s interesting,’ said Mann. He said it in a louder voice. It was obviously intended to bring Andrei Bekuv into the conversation.
Andrei Bekuv nodded but did not turn round to meet Mann’s eyes. He was toying with his new radio-recorder and trying to pretend he was nothing to do with the conversation.
Mrs Bekuv said, ‘Andrei and I were talking about the investigation.’
‘And I appreciate that,’ said Mann.
She ignored his sarcasm. She went on. ‘Our complete co-operation would not only be good for America, it would be very good for you too.’
‘I’m not sure that I’m following your implications,’ said Mann who was not only following the implications but well ahead of them. He pressed a splayed hand upon his heart. I saw now that what I had always thought was a spiritual gesture was done to check that his collar was buttoned down.
br /> ‘Promotion and a better pay-scale, more power, a better posting … you know what I mean,’ said Mrs Bekuv. ‘This first name we give you freely but if you want more we must have a new agreement.’
Mann grinned. ‘You mean you want your share of the prosperity – promotion, and pay-scale.’
‘Otherwise,’ said Mrs Bekuv, ‘we will simply say nothing, until you are fired and a new team sent to work on us.’
‘How do you know that I won’t get out the rubber truncheons long before I get fired?’
Andrei Bekuv shifted uneasily and fiddled with the volume control so that a few chords of Mozart escaped and ran across the carpet. ‘We’ll have to take that risk,’ said Mrs Bekuv.
‘How much?’
‘We didn’t realize how expensive it is to live in New York,’ said Mrs Bekuv immediately. ‘With all those smart people at university, I’m going to have to look my best, you know.’ She smiled as if we all shared some secret joke.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Mann.
‘I couldn’t resist all these new clothes, Major Mann,’ she said. ‘After all those years in the Soviet Union I was dazzled by the shop-windows, and Andrei insisted that I bought a whole new wardrobe, from shoes to underwear. He said it was all part of our starting our new life.’
‘I understand,’ said Major Mann.
‘Forget what I said just now. With or without an increase in the money, we will both help you all we can.’ Mrs Bekuv slapped a menu into Dr Zhivago and slammed the book closed. Then she stood up and smoothed her cornflower-blue silk dress, running her fingers down over hips and thighs in the sort of gesture used by nervous contenders in amateur beauty competitions. She smiled at both of us, and was still smiling as she leaned over her husband and kissed the top of his head.
The waiter arrived with a tray of tea and toast just as Mrs Bekuv went out of the room. Mann took the tray from him and began to pour the milk, and offer the home-made cherry cake. Andrei Bekuv took a slice of lemon in his tea and declined the cake. ‘My wife gets very nervous, Major Mann,’ he said. ‘She misses the boy.’