"Spy Hook" - читать интересную книгу автора (Deighton Len)

13

I have always been a light sleeper: it's a part of the job. But it wasn't the low rumble of the motorcycle that awakened me – they come roaring past at all hours of the night – it was the silence that followed its engine being switched off. By the time the garden gate clicked I was fully awake. I heard the footsteps – high heel boots on the stone paving – and I rolled out of bed before the brief ring of the doorbell awakened Gloria.

'Three thirty!' I heard Gloria say sleepily as I went out of the bedroom. She sounded surprised; she had a lot to learn about the demands the Department made on its middle management. I went downstairs two steps at a time, to answer it before Doris and the children were disturbed. But before I got to the bottom of the stairs the caller tried again: more insistent this time, two long rings.

'Okay okay okay,' I said irritably.

'Sorry governor, I thought you hadn't heard.' The caller was a tall thin young man dressed entirely in shiny black leather like some apparition from a bad dream. 'Mr Samson?' Over his arm he had a black shiny helmet, and there was a battered leather pouch slung from his neck.

'Yes?'

'Have you got something to identify yourself, sir?' he said, without saying what I was supposed to produce. That was the way regulations said it should be done, but I'd got used to a more vernacular style from the messengers I knew.

So it was a new man. 'What about this?' I said and, from behind the half-open door, I brought the Mauser 9-mm into view.

He grinned, 'Yeah, I reckon that'll do,' he said. He opened the pouch and from it took one of the large buff envelopes that the Department uses to circulate its bad news.

'Samson, B,' I said just to get him off the hook. 'Any verbal?'

'You're to open it right away. That's all.'

'Why not,' I said. 'I'll need something to help me back to sleep.'

'Goodnight, governor. Sorry to disturb you.'

'Next time,' I said, 'don't ring the bell. Just breathe heavily through the letter-box.'

'What is it, darling?' asked Gloria, coming downstairs slowly like a chorus girl in a Busby Berkeley musical. She was not fully awake. Blonde hair disarranged, she was dressed in the big fluffy white Descamps bathrobe that I'd bought her for Christmas. She looked wonderful.

'A messenger.' I tore open the big brown envelope. Inside there was an airline ticket from London Heathrow to Los Angeles International by the flight that left at nine am – that is to say in less than six hours time – and a note, curt and typed on office paper bearing the usual rubber stamps:

Dear Bernard,

You'll be met on arrival. Sorry about the short notice but the Washington office works five hours later than we do, and someone there arranged with the Deputy that this one should be down to you, and only you,

Yours apologetically,

Harry (N.D.O. Ops.)

I recognized the sprawling handwriting. So poor old Harry Strang was still on the roster for night duty in Operations. I suppose he must have felt sorry for himself too for he'd scribbled on the bottom of the note 'Some people have all the luck!' I suppose for someone sitting up all night in Operations and listening to the rain, the prospect of immediate transportation to sunny California must have seemed attractive.

To me it didn't. At least it didn't until I recalled Werner's threat to go into the office this morning, and tackle the D-G head-on.

'They can't make you go,' said Gloria, who had leaned over my shoulder to read the note.

'No,' I agreed. 'I can always start drawing unemployment benefit.'

'It doesn't even say how long you'll be away,' she said, in such a way as to leave me in doubt about how she would respond to such a peremptory command.

I'm sorry,' I said.

'You promised to look at the garage door.'

'It just needs a new hinge,' I told her. 'There's a place near Waterloo Station. I'll get it next week.'

'I'll pack your bag.' She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. 'It's not worth going back to bed.'

'I said I'm sorry,' I reminded her.

'The weekends are the only time we have together,' she said. 'Why couldn't it wait till Monday?'

'I'll try and find something exciting for Billy's birthday.'

'Bring yourself back,' said Gloria and kissed me tenderly. 'I worry about you… when they send you off on these urgent jobs with that damned "Briefing on Arrival" rubber stamp, I worry about you.'

'It won't be anything dangerous,' I said. 'I'll be sitting beside a pool all weekend.'

'They've specifically asked for you, Bernard,' she said.

I nodded. It was not a flattering assumption but she was right. They hadn't asked for me on account of my social contacts or my scholarship. 'I'll wear the water-wings and stay away from the deep end,' I promised.

'What will you do when you get there?'

'It's "Briefing on Arrival", sweetheart. That means they haven't yet decided.'

'Seriously. How will you recognize them?'

'It doesn't work like that, darling. They'll have a photo of me. I won't know them until they come up to me and introduce themselves.'

'And how will you know that person is the genuine contact?'

'He'll show me my photo.'

'It's all carefully arranged,' she said with a note of approval in her voice. She liked everything to be well arranged.

'It's all in the Notes and Amendments,' I said.

'But always the same airline, Bernard? That seems bad security.'

'There must be a reason,' I said. 'How about making me a cup of coffee while I pack my bag?'

'Everything's clean. Your shirts are on hangers in the wardrobe, so don't start shouting when you find the chest of drawers empty.'

'I won't shout about shirts,' I promised, and kissed her. 'And if I do, rip more buttons off.'

'I do love you, Bernard.' She put both arms round me and hugged me tight. 'I want to have you for ever and ever.'

'Then that's the way it will be,' I promised with the sort of unthinking impetuosity that I am prey to when rudely awakened in such early hours of the morning.

For a moment she just held me, crushing me so that I could hardly breathe, then into my ear she said, 'And I love the children, Bernard. Don't worry about them.'

The children missed their real mother, of course, and I knew how hard Gloria worked to replace her. It wasn't easy for her. Cambridge, just unremitting hard work, must have been an attractive prospect at times.

Almost every seat was taken in First Class. Wide-awake young men, with well cut suits and large gold wristwatches, were shuffling papers that came from pigskin document cases, or tapping at tiny portable computers with hinged screens. Many of them declined the champagne and worked right through the meal service: reading reports, ticking at accounts and underlining bits of 'projections' with coloured markers.

The man in the next seat to mine was from the same mould but considerably less dedicated. Edwin Woosnam – 'a Welsh name although I've never been there: can you believe it?' – an overweight fellow with thick eyebrows, thin lips and the sort of nose they create from putty for amateur productions of Julius Caesar. My desire to catch up on lost sleep was frustrated by his friendliness.

He was, he told me, the senior partner of a 'development company' in Glasgow. His firm was building eight 600-room hotels in towns around the world and he told me all about it. 'Outdoor pool, that's important. The hotel owners need a picture on the brochure that makes it look like the weather is good enough for swimming all year round.' Throaty chuckle and a quick sip of champagne. 'Penthouses at the top, leisure centres in the basement and en-suite bathrooms throughout. Find a big cheap site – I mean really big – and after the hotel is up, shops and apartment blocks will follow. The neighbourhood is upgraded. You can't go wrong on an investment like that. It's like money in the bank. As long as the local labour is cheap, it doesn't matter where you site the hotel, half these idiot tourists don't even know which country they're in.'

But otherwise Mr Woosnam proved a congenial companion, with an endless supply of stories. '…You can't tell the Greeks anything. I showed this foreman – Popopopolis, or something, you know what those names are like – I showed him the schedule, and told him the eighth floor should be all complete by now. And he got angry. It was complete, he shouted. He shook his fist and waved his arms and went rushing along the girders, jumped through a doorway and fell all the way into the basement. Eight storeys! Killed of course. We had terrible trouble getting a new foreman at that time of year. Another month and it wouldn't have mattered so much.' He took a drink.

'Ha ha ha. Some people just won't listen. Perhaps you find that in your business too,' said Woosnam, but before I could agree he was off again. 'I was with one of our site surveyors in Bombay and he was laughing and making jokes about the way the Indians build their lashed-up wooden scaffolding. I told him that he'd be laughing on the other side of his face when he put up steel scaffolding and the heat of the sun twisted it into a corkscrew and his project collapsed. Bloody architects! They come straight from college, and they know it all. That's the trouble nowadays. I'll give you another example…' And so it went on. He was good entertainment but his affability precluded all chance of slumber.

'Travel much?' he said as I began to doze.

'No,' I said.

'I travel all the time. Flying across the Atlantic is exciting for you of course, but it's just a bore for me.' He looked at me to see my reaction.

'Yes,' I said and tried to look excited.

'And what line are you in? No, don't tell me. I'm good at guessing what people do for a living. Insurance?'

'Chemicals.' I usually say that because it's so vague and also because I have a prepared line of chat about pharmaceuticals should my bluff be called.

'All right,' he said, reluctant to admit to error. 'Not a salesman though. You haven't got the pushy temperament you need for the Sales side.'

'No, not Sales,' I agreed.

'Keep an eye on my briefcase while I go to the toilet will you? Once they start the meal service everyone will jump up and want to go. It's always like that.'

The toy meal came and went. The captain's carefully modulated voice recited the names of places that were hidden far beneath the clouds. The great aluminium tube droned on, its weary cargo of unwashed, red-eyed travellers numbed with alcohol and crippled with indigestion. Duty-free baubles were interminably hustled by stewardesses who went, eyes averted, past bawling babies and harassed mothers. Over the public-address system came more names of equally invisible towns. The shutters were closed against the daylight and the cabin darkened. Blurred ghosts of tiny unrecognizable actors postured on the pale screens while their strident voices assaulted the inner ear from plastic tubes. We raced after the sun and chased a never-ending day. Tortured by the poker-red glare of the sun, dazzled by the white clouds, one by one the heads of the passengers lolled and bent as they succumbed to their misery, and sought escape in fitful sleep.

'This is your captain speaking…'

We'd arrived in Los Angeles: now came the worst part, the line-up at US Customs and Immigration. It took well over an hour standing in line, disconsolately kicking my baggage forward a few inches at a time. But finally I was grudgingly admitted to America.

'Hi there! Mr Samson? Did you have a nice flight?' He was chewing gum, a suntanned man about thirty years old with patient eyes, stretch pants, a half-eaten hamburger and a half-read paperback edition of War and Peace: everything necessary for meeting someone at LAX. We walked through the crowded concourse and into the melee of cabs and cars and buses that served this vast and trainless town.

'Buddy Breukink,' the man introduced himself. He flicked a finger at the dented, unpainted metal case that I'd wrenched from the carousel. 'Is this all your baggage?' If everyone kept saying that to me I was going to start feeling socially disadvantaged.

'That's right,' I said. He took my bag and the corrugated case. I didn't know whether I should politely wrest it from him. There was no way to discover if he was just a driver, sent to collect me, or a senior executive who was going to pick up the bills and give me my orders. The US of A is like that. He marched off and I followed him. He hadn't been through the formalities but I didn't press it. He didn't look the type who would regularly read and update the Notes and Amendments.

'Hungry? We have more than a hour's ride.' He had a sly gap-toothed smile, as if he knew something that the rest of the world didn't know. It wasn't something to be taken personally.

'I'll survive,' I promised. My blood-sugar wasn't so low that I wanted an airport hamburger.

'The buggy's across the street.' He was a coffee-shop cowboy: a tall, slim fellow with a superfluity of good large teeth, tan-coloured tight-fitting trousers, short-sleeve white shirt and a big brown stetson with a bright band of feathers round it. In keeping with the outfit, Buddy Breukink climbed into a jeep, a brand-new Wrangler soft-top complete with phone, personalized plates – BB GUN – and roll bar.

He threw my baggage and Tolstoy into the back before carefully placing his beautiful stetson in a box there. He got in and pushed a lot of buttons, a coded signal to activate his car phone. 'Have to make sure none of these parking-lot jockeys make a long long call to their folks in Bogota,' he said, as if a short freebie hello to Mexico City might be okay with him. He smiled to himself and cleared half a dozen audio cassettes from the passenger seat and dumped them into a box. When he turned the ignition key the tape recorder started playing 'Pavarotti's Greatest Hits' or more specifically 'Funiculi, funicula' delivered in ear-splitting fortissimos. 'It's kind of classical,' he explained with a hint of apology.

He gunned the engine impatiently. 'Let's go!' he yelled even louder than Pavarotti; and even before I was strapped in, the wheels were burning rubber and we were out of the car park and off down the highway.

I had arrived in the New World and was as bemused as Columbus. In this part of the world it was already spring, the air was warm and the sky was that pale shade of blue that portends a steep rise in temperature. The noisy downtown streets were crowded with black roaring Porsches and white Rolls-Royce convertibles, shouting kids rattled round on roller skates and pretty girls preened in sun-tops and shorts.

Up the ramp. On the Freeway that stretches across the city, the anarchy of the busy streets ended. Apart from some kids racing past in a dented pickup, restrained drivers observed lane discipline and moved at a steady pace. The wind roared through the jeep's open sides and threatened to blow me from my seat. I huddled down to shelter behind the windscreen. Buddy turned the music louder and looked at me and grinned.

'Funiculi,' sung Buddy between chewing. 'Funicula.'

Once clear of the 'international airport', its manana-minded airline staff and its hard-eyed bureaucrats, Southern California reaches out to its visitors. The warmth of the sun, the sight of the San Gabriel mountains, dry winds from the desert, the bitter herbal smells of the brushwood flowers, the orange poppies in the bright green landscape that has not yet suffered the cruel heat of summer; at this time of year all these things urge me to stay for ever.

Racing along the road that is slung roof-high above the city, there was a view of the whole of Los Angeles from the ocean to the mountains. Clusters of tall buildings at Century City, and more at Broadway, dominated a town of modest little suburban houses squeezed between pools and palms. Soon Buddy took an off-ramp and cut across town to pick up the Pacific Coast Highway and go north following the signs that point the way to Santa Barbara and eventually San Francisco. At Malibu the traffic thinned, and we sped past an ever more varied selection of elaborate and eccentric beach houses: until houses, and even seafood restaurants, ended and the road followed the very edge of the continent. Here the Pacific Ocean relentlessly assaulted the seashore. Huge green breakers exploded into lacy foam and a mist of water vapour, and roared so loudly that the noise of them could be heard above the sound of the jeep's engine, and that of the music.

Buddy took the gum from his mouth and pitched it out on to the road. 'They told me you'd ask questions,' he confided.

'No,' I said.

'And they said I shouldn't tell you anything.'

'It's working out just fine,' I said.

He nodded, and dodged round a big articulated truck marked Budweiser, before flattening the gas pedal against the floor and showing me what speed his jeep would do.

We passed the place where agile figures dangling from hang-gliders threw themselves off the high cliffs and did figure of eights above the highway and the Pacific Ocean before landing on the narrow strip of beach that provided their only chance of survival. We passed the offshore oil-rigs, standing like anchored aircraft carriers in the mist. By the time we turned off the Pacific Coast Highway into a narrow 'Seven mile canyon' we were well past the county line and into Ventura. And I was getting hungry.

It was a private road, narrow and pot-holed. On the corner a tall wooden post was nailed with half a dozen signs in varying degrees of deterioration: 'Schuster Ranch', 'Greentops quarter-horse Stud – no visits', 'Ogarkov', 'D and M Bishop', 'Rattlesnake Computer Labs' and 'Highacres'. As the jeep climbed up the dirt road into the canyon I wondered which of those establishments we were going to. But as we passed all the mailboxes on the roadside it became clear that we were heading up to some unmarked property nearer the summit.

We were about three miles up the canyon, and high enough to get glimpses of the ocean far below us, when we came to gates in a high chain-link fence that stretched on either side as far as I could see. Alongside the gate a sign said, ' La Buona Nova. Private Property. Beware guard dogs.' Buddy steered the jeep to within reaching distance of a small box on a metal post. He pressed a red button and spoke into the box. 'Hi there! It's Buddy with the visitor. Open up will yuh?'

With a hesitant, jerky motion, and a loud grinding of hidden mechanical devices, the gates slowly opened. From the box a tinny voice said, 'Hang in to see the gates click shut, Buddy. Last week's rain seems to have gotten to them.'

We drove inside and Buddy did as he'd been told. I could see no buildings anywhere but I had the feeling that we were being kept under observation by whoever the tinny voice belonged to. 'Keep your hands inside the car,' Buddy advised. 'Those darn dogs run free in this outer compound.'

We continued up the dirt road, always climbing and leaving hairpins of dust on the trail behind us. Then suddenly, around a spur, another chain fence came into view. There was another gate and a small hut.

Inside this second perimeter fence there were three figures. At first they looked like a man with his two children, but when I got closer I could see it was a huge man with two Mexicans. They were guards. The white man had his belt slung under a big gut. He wore a stetson, starched khakis, high boots and had a shield-shaped gold badge on his shirt. In his hand he held a small transceiver. The Mexicans wore dark brown shirts and one of them had a shotgun. Like the chainlink fence, the men looked fresh and well cared for. One of the Mexicans opened the gate and the big man waved us through.

It was still another mile or more to where a cluster of low pink stucco buildings with red-tiled roofs sat tight just below the summit of the hill. The buildings were of indeterminate age, and designed in the style that Californians call Spanish. Passing a couple of mud-spattered Japanese pickups, Buddy parked the jeep in a cool barnlike building which already held an old Cadillac Seville and a Lamborghini. Buddy put on his stetson, looked at himself in the wing mirror to adjust the brim, and then took my bags. With my jacket over my arm, and sweating in the afternoon heat, I followed him. The main buildings were two storeys high and provided views westwards to the ocean. On the east side they sheltered a wide patio of patterned tiles and a pool about twenty-five yards along. The pool was blue and limpid, with just enough breeze from the ocean to dimple the surface of the water. There was no one to be seen except in the pool, where a slim middle-aged woman was swimming in the gentle dog-paddle style that ensures that your eye make-up doesn't get splashed. At the side of the pool where she'd been sitting there was a big pink towel, bottles of sun-oil and other cosmetics, a brush and comb and a hand-mirror. Leaning against the chair there was a half-completed watercolour painting of bougainvillaea flowers. Beside it there was a large paint box and a jar of brushes.

'Hello, Buddy,' called the lady in the pool without interrupting her swim. 'What's the traffic like? Hi there, Mr Samson. Welcome to La Buona Nova. '

Without slowing his pace Buddy called, 'We came up the PCH, Mrs O'Raffety, but if you're going to town, go through the canyon.' He swivelled his head for long enough to give her one of his sly, gap-toothed smiles. I waved to her and said thanks but had to hurry to follow him.

He went up two steps to an arcaded passageway which provided shady access to, and held chairs and tables for, three guest suites that occupied one side of the building. One of the outdoor tables still had the remains of breakfast: a vacuum coffee pot, a glass jug of juice and expensive-looking tableware of a sort that Gloria would have liked. Buddy opened the door and led the way into the last suite. It was decorated in a theme of pink and white. On the walls there were three framed landscape paintings, amateurish watercolours of local scenes that I was inclined to authenticate as O'Raffety originals.

'Mrs O'Raffety is my mother-in-law,' Buddy explained without being asked. 'She's sixty years old. She owns this whole setup.' He put the bags down and opening the door of the huge green and white tiled bathroom said, 'This is your suite. Switch the air to the way you want it.' He indicated a control panel on the wall. 'You've got time for a swim before lunch. Swim suits in the closet and a slew of towels in the other room.'

'Lunch? Isn't it a bit late for lunch?' The afternoon had almost gone.

'I guess, but Mrs O' Raffety eats any time. She said she'd wait for you.'

'That's very nice of her,' I said.

The large brown-tinted windows gave a view of the patio area. Mrs O'Raffety was still swimming slowly down the pool. There was a look of stem determination on her face. I watched her as she reached the deep end and steered round majestically, like the Queen Elizabeth coming in to Southampton. I could see her more clearly from here. The swimming produced a look of concentration on her face so that, despite the trim figure, and the Beverly Hills beauty treatments, she looked every bit of her sixty years. 'It's quite a place,' I said, realizing that some such response was expected from me.

'She'd get three million dollars – maybe more – if she wanted to sell. There's all that land.'

'And is she going to sell?' I said, hoping to find out more about my mysterious hostess, and why I had been brought here.

'Mrs O'Raffety? She'll never sell. She's got all the money she needs.'

'Do you live here too?' I asked. I was trying to guess at his position in the household.

'I have a beautiful home: three bedrooms, pool, Jacuzzi, everything. We passed it on the way up here: the place with the big palm trees.'

'Oh, yes,' I said, although I hadn't noticed such a place.

'My marriage went wrong,' he said. 'Charly – that's Mrs O'Raffety's daughter – left me. She married a movie actor we met at a benefit dinner. He never seemed to get the right kind of parts, so they went to live in Florida. They have a lovely home just outside Palm Beach.' He said it without rancour – or any emotion – as a man might talk of people he'd only read about in the gossip columns.

'But you stayed with Mrs O'Raffety?'

'Well, I had to stay,' said Buddy. 'I'm Mrs O'Raffety's attorney. I handle things for her.'

'Oh, yes, of course.'

'You have your swim, Mr Samson. The water's kept at eighty degrees. Mrs O'Raffety has to swim on account of her bad back, but she can't abide cold water.' He stared through the window to watch her swimming. There was a fixed expression on his face that could have been concern for her.

'And who is Mr O'Raffety?' I said.

'Who is Mr O'Raffety?' Buddy was puzzled by my question.

'Yes. Who is Mr O'Raffety? What does he do for a living?'

Buddy's face relaxed. 'Oh, I get you,' he said. 'What does he do for a living. Well, Shaun O'Raffety was Mrs O'Raffety's hairdresser: L.A…a fancy place on Rodeo Drive.' Buddy rubbed his face. 'Way back before my time, of course. It didn't last long. She gave him the money to buy a bar in Boston. She hasn't seen him in ten years but sometimes I have to go and get him out of trouble.'

'Trouble?'

'Money trouble. Women trouble. Tax return trouble. Bookies or fist-fights in the bar so that the cops get mad. Never anything bad. Old Shaun is an Irishman. No real harm in him. He just can't choose carefully enough: not his clients, his friends or his women.'

'Except in the case of Mrs O'Raffety,' I said.

For a moment I thought Buddy was going to take offence, but he contained himself and said, 'Yeah. Except in the case of Mrs O'Raffety.' The smile was noticeably absent.

'Since you're Mrs O'Raffety's attorney, Buddy, perhaps you could explain why I've been brought here.'

He looked at me as if trying to help, trying to guess the answer. 'Socializing isn't my bag,' said Buddy. He was silent for a few moments, as if regretting telling me about his employer and mother-in-law. Then he said, 'Mrs O'Raffety has a social secretary to handle the invites: weekend guests and cocktails and dinner parties and suchlike.'

'But just between the two of us, Buddy, I've never even heard of Mrs O'Raffety.'

'Then maybe you are here to visit one of Mrs O'Raffety's permanent guests. Do you know Mr Rensselaer? He lives in the house with the big bougainvillaea.'

'Bret Rensselaer?'

'That's correct.'

'He's dead.'

'No sir.'

Everyone knew Bret was dead. If Frank Harrington said he was dead; he was dead. Frank was always right about things like that. Bret died of gunshot wounds resulting from a gun-battle in Berlin nearly three years ago. I was only a couple of yards away. I saw him fall; I heard him scream. 'Bret Rensselaer,' I said carefully. 'About sixty years old. Blond hair. Tall. Thin.'

'You've got him. White hair now but that's him all right. He's been sick. Real bad. An auto accident somewhere in Europe. Mrs O'Raffety brought him here. She had that guest house remodelled and fixed up a beautiful room with equipment where he could do his special exercises and stuff. He could hardly walk when he first arrived. One or other of the therapy nurses comes up here every day, even Sunday.' He looked at the expression on my face. 'You knew him in Europe, maybe?'

'I knew him very well,' I said.

'Isn't that something.' Buddy Breukink nodded. 'Yeah, he's some kind of distant relation to Mrs O'Raffety. Old Cy Rensselaer – the famous one they named the automobile for – was Mrs O'Rafferty's grandfather.'

'I see.' So Bret Rensselaer really was still alive and they'd brought me all this way to see him. Why?