Reflected there, too, was a bright-red milk float, and I heard it whine to a halt outside in the street. I pulled back the bolts on the front door and let Marjorie pass me. The milkman was putting two crates of milk on the doorstep. He was a young man with a battered United Dairy cap, and a brown warehouse coat. He smiled and spent a moment or two recovering his breath. ‘You’ve only just missed them,’ he said.
‘How long ago?’
‘Best part of half an hour, bit more perhaps.’
‘It was the traffic,’ I said.
‘Poor fellow,’ said the milkman. ‘How did it happen?’
‘How do any of these things happen?’ I said.
‘Ah, you’re right there,’ he said. He took off his hat and scratched his head.
‘Looked bad, eh?’ I said.
‘All drawn up – knees against his chest.’
‘Conscious?’
‘I was right down the end of the street. I saw them putting him in. They had to open both doors to get him through.’
‘What was it: Ambulance Service?’
‘No, a fancy job – painted cream with lettering and a red cross.’
‘If only I knew where they’d taken him,’ I said. ‘This lady is a doctor, you see.’
He smiled at Marjorie and was glad to rest a moment. He put a boot on the crate, plucking at his trouser leg to reveal a section of yellow sock and some hairy leg. He took out a cigarette case, selected one and lit it with a gold lighter. He nodded his head as he thought about the ambulance. ‘It came right past me,’ he admitted. ‘A clinic, it was.’
‘The rest of them went with him, I suppose?’
‘No, in a bloomin’ great Bentley.’
‘Did they!’
‘A Bentley Model T. That’s like the Rolls Silver Shadow, except for the Bentley radiator. Nice job. Green, it was.’
‘You don’t miss much, do you.’
‘I made one, didn’t I? Plastic – two hundred separate parts – took me months. It’s on the tele, you should see it: my missus is afraid to dust it.’
‘Green?’
‘Front offside wing bent to buggery. A recent shunt, not even rusted.’
And the ambulance was from a clinic?’
‘It’s gone right out of my mind. Sorry, Doctor,’ he said to Marjorie. He touched the peak of his cap. ‘I’ve got a terrible memory these days. You’d be National Health, I suppose?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose they can afford a private place.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said the milkman. ‘Little goldmine, that place is.’
‘I’d better run,’ Marjorie said to me.
‘No one here today,’ I said.
‘No, well they don’t do lunches,’ said the milkman. He picked up two crates of empty milk bottles and staggered away.
‘How did you know about the ambulance?’ Marjorie asked me.
‘Ah,’ I said, feeling rather clever.
‘But who was it?’ insisted Marjorie. ‘What happened here?’
‘A Russian admiral with kidney trouble,’ I said.
Marjorie became angry. She stepped out into the road and hailed a cab. It stopped with a squeal of brakes. She opened the door and got in. ‘The incredible amount of trouble you will go to to avoid a serious talk! It’s sick, Patrick! Can’t you see that?’
The cab pulled away before I could answer.
I waited on the pavement, watching the milkman as he staggered under the weight of more crates of milk. Sometimes he put them down and caught his breath for a moment. He was a quick-witted, energetic fellow, whom any dairy would be well advised to employ, but milkmen who lavish hand-made crocodile boots upon themselves do not wear them on their rounds, especially when the boots are new and unbroken. Footwear is always the difficulty in a hasty change of dress but the gold lighter was pure carelessness. It was obvious that The Terrine was staked out, but as the bogus milkman moved down the street I wondered why he should have told me so much, unless a course of action had already been prepared for me.
I crossed the street to an upturned crate from which an old man was selling newspapers. I looked at the crate with its placard on the front, and the tin tray of loose change. I wondered if by kicking it over I might damage a few hundred pounds-worth of two-way radio. Oh yes, The Terrine was staked out all right, and they weren’t bothering about the subtleties.
‘The latest,’ I said automatically. It started to rain again and he pulled a plastic sheet over his papers. ‘Sports edition?’
‘I’m not sure I can tell the difference,’ I said, but I took the early news, and for a few moments stood there reading it.
The woman leading the Russian delegation to the German reunification talks was fast becoming a cult figure in the West. Women’s Liberation supported her nomination for chairman above any claim by British, French or American male delegates. Her brief appearance on TV news was helping the media to sell this otherwise dull conference to a public who didn’t give a damn about Germany’s eastern border. Now here was Katerina Remoziva in a three-column photo on the front page. She was a thin elderly spinster with an engaging smile, her hair in a bun, her hand raised in a gesture somewhere between workers’ solidarity and papal blessing.
The caption said, ‘For Madame Katerina Remoziva, the Copenhagen talks represent repayment for six years’ behind-the-scenes work, and nearly a hundred semi-official meetings. Next Monday we begin to tell the story of this amazing woman and her hopes for permanent European peace and prosperity.’
Nice work, comrades, a propaganda triumph in the making. It was raining faster now and I put the paper over my head.
15
Global commitment negative: A game with global commitment negative is restricted to the military forces on the board. Global commitment positive: A game in which either or both sides will be reinforced by land sea or air forces from other theatres of war. E.g. during a Northern Fleet war game Soviet naval units might be reinforced by elements of Baltic Fleet or Polish naval units. NB – Such introduced elements can be larger than the sum of forces available at game opening.
GLOSSARY. ‘NOTES FOR WARGAMERS’. STUDIES CENTRE. LONDON
If you measure power and success by the time taken to move in comfort to or from a city centre – and many use that criterion – then the next couple of hours was the pace-setter by which all London’s tycoons and politicians must measure themselves.
The police car stopped outside The Terrine at one forty-five. ‘Mr Armstrong?’ He was a man of about forty. His coat was unbuttoned and revealed a police uniform that had been tailored to put the top button high. His shirt was white linen, its collar fastened with a gold pin. Whoever he was, he didn’t have to line up on parade each morning and be checked by the station sergeant. The driver also was wearing a civilian coat, and only his blue shirt and black tie suggested that he was a constable.
‘Perhaps,’ I said. I held the newspaper over me to keep the rain off.
‘Colonel Schlegel’s compliments, and we are to take you to Battersea. There is a helicopter waiting to connect with the airport.’ He didn’t get out of the car.
‘Do you come with a book of instructions?’
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘Why would I want to go to London airport … Why would anyone?’
‘It’s something to do with this restaurant, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s a Special Branch matter. I was just the nearest available spare bod.’
‘And if I don’t want to go with you?’
‘The helicopter has been there an hour, sir. It must be urgent.’ He looked up at the sky. The rain continued.
‘Suppose I was afraid of heights?’
He began to understand. He said, ‘We were just told to bring you the message, and give you a lift if you wanted it. As long as you identify yourself, that will get me out of trouble …’ He lifted a hand awkwardly to show that he had no instructions about collaring me.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’ He smiled and unlo
cked the passenger door for me.
The helicopter was a museum piece: a Westland Dragonfly painted in the Royal Navy livery of dark steel blue. There were no roundels on it, and no lettering except for a civil registration number painted no larger than the ‘Beware of the Rotor’ sign at the back.
The pilot’s appearance was similarly discreet. He wore military flyer’s overalls, with maggots of cotton outlining clean patches from which the badges had been removed. He was in the left-hand seat by the time the car was parked, and as I climbed aboard the main rotor was spinning. The noise of the blades, and the old piston engine, inhibited conversation. I contented myself with looking out at the tall chimneys of Fulham making billowing white gauze curtains that closed across the river behind us. We passed over Wandsworth Bridge, keeping to the course of the river, as the safety regulations specify for everyone except royalty.
From the private aircraft park at London Heathrow, the same pilot took a Beagle Pup. Within an hour of leaving Marjorie outside The Terrine I was over Rugby at eight thousand feet and still climbing. We were heading north-west and, according to the gauges, sufficiently fuelled to get to the last landfall of the Outer Hebrides. The map on the pilot’s knee bore an ancient wax pencil mark that continued in that direction and ended only on the margin. Now and again he smiled and stabbed a finger at the map and at the Plexiglass, to show me the M1 Motorway, or the dark-grey smear on the horizon behind which Coventry coughed. He offered me a cigarette but I declined. I asked him where we were going. He slid his headset back off his head and cupped his ear. I asked again but he shrugged and smiled as if I’d asked him to predict the outcome of the next general election.
A winter’s sun was a carelessly sprayed yellow patch on the hard cumulus clouds that were building up over Ireland. Liverpool – and a Mersey crowded with ships – slid beneath our starboard wing, and ahead the Irish Sea glittered like a cheap brass tray. Flying over the ocean in single-engined light planes could never become a pleasure for me but the pilot smiled, pleased to get clear of the Control Zone and reporting areas, and off the confluence of airways through which came traffic jams of commercial jets. He climbed again, now that he was no longer forced down under the lanes, and that comforted me.
I studied the map. This aircraft’s electronics were primitive. Flying VFR meant he’d have to put it down before dark. The huge shape of the Isle of Man was only just visible in the gloomy ocean to port. He was not going there, nor to the airport at Blackpool, which we’d already passed. The fuel needles were flickering and still we maintained the same course that we’d steered since Castle Donington. It would be the chin of Scotland, or beyond that its nose, drooped down into the Western Isles. After the peninsula of Kintyre our track would be past the Scottish mainland. Then there were just the Islands and the Atlantic and eventually, long after the last drip of fuel had sounded the final beat of the little engine, Iceland. It had to be an island or a piece of peninsula. I just hoped that it would come over the horizon soon.
‘The only way to guarantee privacy, old chap,’ said Toliver. He replenished my tumbler from a decanter of malt whisky. ‘The grass strip and the landing stage were built in 1941. This peninsula and the neighbouring islands were taken over by the military. Some were used for testing biological warfare stuff. Anthrax was the most persistent … won’t be safe for a hundred years, they say. Ours was used for training secret agents: the big manor house, the high cliffs, the ruined villages – there was a good sampling of landscape.’
Toliver smiled. Once, many years before, in the sort of electioneering invective that endears politicians to all of us, his opponent had called Toliver a ‘talking potato’. It was a cruel taunt, for it made one notice the small black eyes, receding hair and oval face that were part of his otherwise boyish features.
He smiled now. ‘What I’m about to tell you comes under the contract. You understand me?’
I understood him well enough. Every time I signed that damned Official Secrets Act I read the fine print. I nodded and turned to look out of the window. It was dark but there remained a watery pink sky in the west, with a pattern of trees drawn on it. Beyond them, I knew the aircraft was pegged down tightly against the chance of winds that came off the Atlantic with a sudden and terrible fury. But I could see more reflected in the leaded window than I could see through it. The flames flickered in the open hearth behind me, and men were seated around it drinking and speaking softly so that they could half listen to the words that Toliver spoke to me.
‘It’s too late to leave,’ I said. ‘You’d have to be damned inhospitable for me to want to face a take-off in this … and positively hostile before I’d brave the water.’
‘Splendid,’ said Toliver. ‘That’s all we ask. Take a look at what we’re doing – no less, no more. Should you want no part of it – no hard feelings.’
I turned away from the window. This sober Toliver was a different man from the one I’d seen the other night at Ferdy’s. It had become understood between us that the dinner party was not mentioned, nor the traffic accident that might, or might not, have come after it. ‘It will make a change,’ I said.
‘Exactly. Nice of Colonel Schlegel to let us steal one of his best people … even for a couple of days.’ Toliver touched my elbow and turned me to face the other men in the room.
Among them I recognized Mason. I also saw the tall policeman who had been at number eighteen that night. The others called him Commander Wheeler. They were all talking softly together but the words flared up a little in good-natured argument.
‘… worse in a way – more insidious – pop music and nancy-boy actors.’
‘And most of the big international concerns are American-based.’
‘No doubt about it.’
‘You can’t separate them.’ It was the tall man speaking. ‘Ecology – as they persist in calling it, God knows why – trade unions, big business: all in league, even if unwittingly so.’
‘Growth,’ said Mason, as if they’d had this argument before and each knew his lines.
‘The unions want money for the workers, this forces a policy of growth on the government, so industry pollutes the earth. It’s a vicious circle and all of them too stupid to break it.’
‘It all comes back to the voter.’
‘Yes, it does,’ said Mason regretfully.
They were robust types, with quiet voices that here and there retained a trace of Yorkshire or Scotland. I looked for some strong common denominator in the group and was irritated with myself for finding none. Their clothes were well-fitting tweeds and cords, with the leather patches and frayed cuffs so often affected by prosperous Englishmen. The group suggested to me some provincial dining club, where ambitious young men drank too much wine, and agreed that the workers would be better off without trade unions.
‘You get these damned Huns reunified and you’ll start to see what’s what,’ said Wheeler.
‘Who will?’ said Mason.
‘Everyone,’ said Toliver. He couldn’t resist joining their conversation, even though he’d been about to introduce me. ‘East Germany is largely agricultural. It will knock agriculture for six, and their shipbuilding will close the rest of our yards, mark my words.’
It’s going to turn Europe upside down,’ said another man.
‘The Yanks are behind it,’ said Wheeler. ‘God knows what kind of a deal they are cooking up behind the scenes with the Russians.’
‘This Pat,’ Toliver announced. Pat Armstrong – works at the Studies Centre and …’ Toliver appraised me with a quick glance up and down, ‘… a man who knows how to look after himself if I’m any judge. What?’ He looked at me quizzically.
‘I play a dangerous game of billiards,’ I said.
There were half a dozen of them, aged from middle twenties up to Toliver. Their common interest could have been anything from chess to yachting. I was unsure whether Whitehall was behind them, or just turning a blind eye their way.
‘Commander Wheeler
,’ said Toliver, putting an arm around Wheeler’s shoulder. ‘Our guest would probably like to be put into the picture.’
‘And he’s cleared for Top Secret stuff, is he?’ said Wheeler. He was a tall man, with the kind of ruddy face that comes with those dual benefits of sea-faring: open air and duty-free drinks. He had this deep flag-officer voice, and he bit down hard on his Latin roots. ‘You probably know as much about Rear-Admiral Remoziva as we do,’ he said.
Toliver smiled at me and patted my shoulder. ‘I think Armstrong would agree that the Rear-Admiral would be a strategic asset for us,’ he said.
‘He’s not here then?’ I said.
‘Not yet,’ said Toliver. ‘But very, very soon.’
Wheeler said, ‘The simple fact is, if the Admiral doesn’t get a kidney transplant within the next eighteen months, he’ll be dead a year after.’
‘And he can’t get that in the Soviet Union?’ I asked.
‘The Admiral is an able statistician,’ said Toliver. ‘They started a kidney unit in Leningrad a year ago last July. They are capable of it, yes. But in London we’ve done thousands of such operations. Ask yourself what you’d prefer.’
‘And he’d defect?’
‘To live?’ said Wheeler. ‘A man will go to great lengths to live, Mr Armstrong.’
I suppose I sniffed, or grunted, or made some other noise that fell short of the enthusiasm that Toliver expected. ‘Tell me why not,’ said Commander Wheeler.
‘It’s possible,’ I agreed. ‘But peasant family to Soviet nobility in one generation is quite a jump. They’ve plenty to be grateful for. One brother is planning a new town near Kiev, the elder sister chairing the Copenhagen talks, and getting more publicity than Vanessa Redgrave …’
‘The Admiral is not yet fifty,’ said Wheeler. ‘He has a lot of life ahead of him if he’s wise.’