Mexico Set. Len Deighton

but now he was looking at me, waiting to hear what I was going to say. I said, ‘Everyone likes a sportsman who can walk out into the middle of a soccer field, exchange a joke with the linesmen and flip a coin for the two team captains. But “enrolling” doesn’t just mean offering a man money to come to the other side; it can mean beating him over the head and shipping him off in a crate. I don’t say that’s going to happen, but Werner and I both know it’s a possibility. And if it does happen I want to make sure that the people in the other team keep thinking that Werner is an innocent bystander who paid the full price of admission. Because if they suspect that Werner is the kind who climbs the fence and throws beer cans at the goalkeeper they might get rough, Mrs Volkmann. And when the KGB get rough, they get very rough. So I advise you most sincerely not to start talking to Erich Stinnes in a way that makes it sound as if Werner is closely connected with the department, or there’s a real risk that they’ll do something nasty to you both.’

      Werner knew I was going to spell it out for her. I suppose he didn’t want her to understand the implications in case she worried.

      I looked at her. She nodded. ‘If Werner wants to talk to Stinnes, I won’t screw it up for you,’ she promised. ‘But don’t ask me to help.’

      ‘I won’t ask you to help,’ I said.

      Werner went over to her and put his arm round her shoulder to comfort her. But she didn’t look very worried about him. She still looked very angry about not getting the money.

       6

      ‘If Zena ever left me, I don’t know what I’d do,’ said Werner. ‘I think I’d die, I really would.’ He fanned away a fly using his straw hat.

      This was Werner in his lugubrious mood. I nodded, but I felt like reminding him that Zena had left him several times in the past, and he was still alive. He’d even survived the very recent time when she’d set up house with Frank Harrington – a married man more than old enough to be her father – and had looked all set to make it permanent. Only Zena was never going to make anything permanent, except perhaps eventually make Werner permanently unhappy.

      ‘But Zena is very ambitious,’ said Werner. ‘I think you realize that, don’t you, Bernie?’

      ‘She’s very young, Werner.’

      ‘Too young for me, you mean?’

      I worded my answer carefully. ‘Too young to know what the real world is like, Werner.’

      ‘Yes, poor Zena.’

      ‘Yes, poor Zena,’ I said. Werner looked at me to see if I was being sarcastic. I smiled.

      ‘This is a beautiful hotel,’ said Werner. We were sitting on the balcony having breakfast. It was still early in the morning, and the air was cool. The town was behind us, and we were looking across gently rolling green hills that disappeared into gauzy curtains of morning mist. It could have been England; except for the sound of the insects, the heavy scent of the tropical flowers, and the vultures that endlessly circled high in the clear blue sky.

      ‘Dicky found it,’ I said.

      Zena had let Werner off his lead for the day, and he’d come to Cuernavaca – a short drive from Mexico City – to tell me about his encounter with Stinnes at the Kronprinz Club. Dicky had decided to ‘make our headquarters’ in this sprawling resort town where so many Americans came to spend their old age and their cheap pesos. ‘Where’s Dicky now?’ said Werner.

      ‘He’s at a meeting,’ I said.

      Werner nodded. ‘You’re smart to stay here in Cuernavaca. This side of the mountains it’s always cooler and you don’t have to breathe that smog all day and all night.’

      ‘On the other hand,’ I said, ‘I do have Dicky next door.’

      ‘Dicky’s all right,’ said Werner. ‘But you make him nervous.’

      ‘I make him nervous?’ I said incredulously.

      ‘It must be difficult for him,’ said Werner. ‘You know the German Desk better than he’ll ever know it.’

      ‘But he got it,’ I said.

      ‘So did you expect him to turn a job like that down?’ said Werner. ‘You should give him a break, Bernie.’

      ‘Dicky does all right,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t need any help. Not from you, not from me. Dicky is having a lovely time.’

      Dicky had lined up meetings with a retired American CIA executive named Miller and an Englishman who claimed to have great influence with the Mexican security service. In fact, of course, Dicky was just trying out some of the best local restaurants at the taxpayer’s expense, while extending his wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Dicky had once shown me his card-index files of contacts throughout the world. It was quite unofficial, of course; Dicky kept them in his desk at home. He noted the names of their wives and their children and what restaurants they preferred and what sort of house they lived in. On the other side of each card Dicky wrote a short résumé of what he estimated to be their wealth, power and influence. He joked about his file cards; ‘he’ll be a lovely card for me,’ he’d say, when someone influential crossed his path. Sometimes I wondered if there was a card there with my name on it and, if so, what he’d written on it.

      Dicky was a keen traveller, and his choice of bars, restaurants and hotels was the result of intensive research through guidebooks and travel magazines. The Hacienda Margarita, an old ranchhouse on the outskirts of town, was proof of the benefits that could come from such dedicated research. It was a charming old hotel, its cool stone colonnades surrounding a courtyard with palmettos and pepper trees and tall palms. The high-ceilinged bedrooms were lined with wonderful old tiles, and there were big windows and cool balconies, for this place was built long before air-conditioning was ever contemplated, built at the time of the conquistadores if you could bring yourself to believe the plaque over the cashier’s desk.

      Meanwhile I was enjoying the sort of breakfast that Dicky insisted was the only healthy way to start the day. There was a jug of freshly pressed orange juice, a vacuum flask of hot coffee, canned milk – Dicky didn’t trust Mexican milk – freshly baked rolls and a pot of local honey. The tray was decorated with an orchid and held a copy of The News, the local English-language newspaper. Werner drank orange juice and coffee but declined the rolls and honey. ‘I promised Zena that I’d lose weight.’

      ‘Then I’ll have yours,’ I said.

      ‘You’re overweight too,’ said Werner.

      ‘But I didn’t make any promises to Zena,’ I said, digging into the honey.

      ‘He was there last night,’ said Werner.

      ‘Did he go for it, Werner? Did Stinnes go for it?’

      ‘How can you tell with a man like Stinnes?’ said Werner. ‘I told him that I’d met a man here in Mexico whom I’d known in Berlin. I said he had provided East German refugees with all the necessary papers to go and live in England. Stinnes said did I mean genuine papers or false papers. I said genuine papers, passports and identity papers, and permission to reside in London or one of the big towns.’

      ‘The British don’t have any sort of identity papers,’ I said. ‘And they don’t have to get anyone’s permission to go and live in any town they like.’

      ‘Well, I don’t know things like that,’ said Werner huffily. ‘I’ve never lived in England, have I? If the English don’t need papers, what the hell are we offering him?’

      ‘Never mind all that, Werner. What did Stinnes say?’

      ‘He said that refugees were never happy. He’d known a lot of exiles and they’d always regretted leaving their homeland. He said they never properly mastered the language, and never integrated with the local