Billion-Dollar Brain

‘Do you like whisky?’

‘I like whisky very much.’

‘I like all alcohol. I expect one day I shall become an alcoholic.’ She picked up a handful of snow, compressed it into a snowball and threw it with great energy a hundred yards along the ice. ‘Do you like snow? Do you like ice?’

‘Only in whisky and champagne.’

‘Can you have ice in champagne? I thought that was wrong.’

‘I was just kidding,’ I said.

‘I know you were,’ she said.

We came to the other side of the frozen water and I walked up the embankment. Signe stayed on the ice and fanned her eyelashes.

‘What’s the matter?’

She said, ‘I don’t think I can make it. Could you help me?’

‘Stop fooling about. There’s a good girl.’

‘OK,’ she said cheerfully and climbed up beside me.

The city changes slightly on the north side of Long Bridge. Not in the sudden dramatic way that London changes south of the river or Istanbul changes across the Galata Bridge; but on the north side of Long Bridge Helsinki becomes duller, the people are not so smartly dressed and lorries outnumber the cars. Signe took me to a block of flats near Helsinginkatu. She pressed a bell-push in the foyer to announce our arrival but produced a key to let us in. Few of Helsinki’s buildings have the bright newly minted shine that is associated with Finnish design; instead they are well-weathered Victorian hotels. This block was no exception, but inside the air was warm and the carpets soft. The flat we entered was on the sixth floor. There were lithographs on the walls and Artie Shaw on the turntable. The main room was light and large enough to hold a few examples of superb Finnish furniture and still leave room to practise dancing the rumba.

The man practising the rumba was a short thickset man with thinning brown hair. One hand he held in the air beating time to the music. The other hand held a tall drink. His footwork was adequate, and while we stood in the doorway he treated us to an extra few moments of expertise before looking up and saying, ‘Well, you old Limey sonuvabitch. I knew it was you.’ He took Signe into his arms with an easy movement and they began to dance. I noticed that Signe’s feet were actually standing on his toes, and he waltzed around the floor taking her weight upon his feet as though she was a rag dummy tied to his feet and wrists. The dance ended, and he said, ‘I knew it was you’ again. I said nothing, and he swallowed the remainder of his drink and said to Signe, ‘Oh boy buttercup did you let your pants down for the wrong guy?’

Harvey Newbegin was a neatly dressed man; grey flannel suit, initialled handkerchief in top pocket, gold watch, and a relaxed smile. I had known him for a number of years. He had been with the US Defense Department for four years before transferring to the State Department. I had tried to get him working for us at one time but Dawlish had failed to obtain authority to do it. Under those droopy eyelids Harvey had quick, intelligent eyes. He used them to study me while going to get us all a drink. The music was still thumping out of the radiogram. Harvey poured three glasses of whisky, dropped ice and soda into two of them, then walked across to me and Signe. Halfway across the floor he picked up the beat of the music and did a brief sequence of steps the rest of the way.

‘Don’t be such a fool,’ Signe said to him. ‘He’s such a fool,’ she added. Harvey gave her the glass of whisky, let go of it before she grasped it and in mid-fall caught it with the other hand and handed it to her without spilling it. ‘He’s such a fool,’ she said again with admiration. She shook little droplets of melted snow from her hair. Her hair was much shorter and even more golden today.

When we were all seated Harvey said to Signe, ‘Let me tell you something, doll, this guy is a hot tamale: he works for a very smart little British Intelligence outfit. He’s not as dopey as he looks.’ Harvey turned to me. ‘You’ve been tangling with this guy Kaarna.’

‘Well …’

‘OK, OK, OK, you don’t have to tell me. Kaarna is dead.’

‘Dead?’

‘DED dead. It’s here in the newspaper. You found him dead. You know it, pal.’

‘I give you my word I didn’t,’ I said.

We looked at each other for a minute, then Harvey said, ‘Well anyway he’s joined the major leagues, there’s nothing we can do about that. But when Signe was hustling you yesterday it was because we urgently need someone to carry between here and London. Could you take on a part-time job for the Yanks? The pay is good.’

‘I’ll ask the office,’ I said.

‘Ask the office,’ he said scornfully. He tapped his toe on the carpet. ‘You’re a big boy with a mind of your own. Why ask anyone?’

‘Because your smart organization might just let the word slip, that’s why.’

Harvey put a finger across his throat. ‘So help me God, they won’t. We are a very neat, tight-fitting department. Guaranteed no snafus. Cash on the barrel-head. What sort of deal have you got with your London set-up anyway?’

I said, ‘I work on a freelance basis. They pay me a fee per assignment; it’s a part-time job.’ I paused. ‘I could handle some extra tasks if the money was right and if you’re quite sure London won’t find out from your own people.’ It wasn’t true but it seemed a suitable answer.

Harvey said, ‘You’ll like working with us and we’d be tickled to have you.’

‘Then it’s a deal,’ I said. ‘Explain my duties, as they say in domestic circles.’

‘Nothing to it. You’ll be carrying materials between here and London. It’ll seldom be anything you can’t declare …’

‘So what’s the catch?’

‘Valuables. We must have somebody who won’t walk off with the consignment. You’ll have your first-class airfare paid. Hotel and expenses. A retainer and a fee per trip. As one pro to another I’ll tell you it’s a good deal.’ Signe gave us drinks, and as she turned towards the kitchen Harvey gave her an affectionate pat on the bottom. ‘The fat of the land,’ he said. ‘I’m living on the fat of the land.’

Signe wrenched Harvey’s hand away from her, snorted and walked out with a beguiling movement of the glutaeus maximus.

Harvey moved his armchair nearer to me. ‘We don’t normally tell our operatives anything about the organization, but I’ll make an exception for you under the old pals’ act. This is a private intelligence unit financed by an old man named Midwinter. Calls himself General Midwinter. He’s from one of those old Texan families that have a lot of German blood. Originally the family came from one of the Baltic states – Latvia or Lithuania – that the Russians now have and hold. This old guy Midwinter has dreams of liberating the territory. I guess he’d like to install himself as a king or something.’

‘Sounds great,’ I said. ‘It’s a long time since I worked for a megalomaniac.’

‘Hell, I’m exaggerating, but he has got an oversimplified mind. Brilliant men often have. He likes to hear that those poor bastards across there are all set to start a revolution …’

‘And you help his illusions,’ I supplied.

‘Look, the guy’s a multi-millionaire, a multi-billionaire maybe. This is his toy. Why should I spoil his fun? He made his money from canned food and insurance; that’s a dull way to make a billion, so he needs a little fun. The CIA siphon a little money to him …’

‘The CIA?’

‘Oh, they don’t take us seriously, but you know how their minds work; stealing hubcaps in Moscow is the CIA’s idea of a blow for freedom. And some of the stunts we pull are pretty good. He has two radio stations on ships that beam into the Baltic states. You know the sort of thing: “Stand by for freedom and coke.” They have a mass of computer equipment and a training school back in the States. Maybe they will send you for training, but if they do I’ll make sure it’s kept plushy for you. And the money.’ Harvey poured me a huge drink to demonstrate that aspect of my new employer. ‘When do you plan to return to London?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘That’s great. This is your first task: stay to lunch.’ Harvey Newbegin laughed. ‘When you get to London go to the phone booth in Trinity Church Square, South-east one, take the L to R book and make a small pencil dot beside the Pan American entry. Go back next day and on the same page margin there will be a phone number written in pencil. Phone that number. Say you are a friend of the people at the antique shop and you have something you would like to show them. If anyone at the other end asks who you want to speak to, you don’t know, you were given this number and told there was someone there interested in buying antiques. When the people at the other end make an appointment, be there twenty hours later than that time. Got that?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘If there is any kind of snarl up, ring off. Standard control meeting procedure: that is to say, return and do the whole thing again twenty-four hours later. OK?’ Harvey held up his glass of vodka and said, ‘This is something those Russkies do damn well. Pip, pip, down the hatch.’ He swallowed the rest of the vodka in one gulp, then clutched at his heart and pulled a pained face. ‘I have heartburn,’ he explained. He took his wallet out, removed a five-mark note and ripped it into two pieces in a very irregular tear. He gave half of it to me. ‘The man you meet will want your half of this before he parts with his package, so look after it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you will explain what it is I have to collect.’

‘It’s simple,’ said Harvey Newbegin. ‘You go empty-handed. You bring back half a dozen eggs.’

SECTION 2 London (#ulink_a701531f-d972-5e1c-986c-147bb32fce49)

A master I have, and I am his man,

Gallopy dreary dun.