The Harry Palmer Quartet. Len Deighton

big V8 engine warmed to the rich mixture. I saw Dalby pull over to the left and head along the coast road. This road was less carefully made since only certain lorries carrying supplies were normally allowed to use it. To the left only a hundred metres of sea separated us from the Shot Island. Had it been a better night the ‘mountain’ would have been clearly visible. Dalby was drawing even farther ahead and must have been doing sixty in spite of the road. I hoped he’d be able to talk us out of trouble if any of the road sections were closed. The forty-foot towers at about 300-yard intervals reflected back the sound of the car in roars. Most of the towers held only infra-red TV cameras, but every third tower was manned. I hoped none would phone ahead to stop us taking this obvious short cut from the General’s party. Odd tangles of brush obscured Dalby’s lights now and again. I was peering at the blackerty that sat upon the windscreen when I caught sight of the red ‘CAUTION HALT AT 25 YDS’ sign. I stopped the car. It was 2.12 A.M.

      They had closed this section ahead of me with only three miles of forbidden road to traverse. Dalby was nowhere in sight, he had slipped through.

      As I felt for my spare cigarettes my hand touched a coarse fabric. I switched on the dashboard light. Someone had left a pair of heavy asbestos insulation gauntlets on the seat. I wondered if Barney had been in the car; he was doing the ‘power’ act. Then I found my Gauloises.

      I clicked the cigarette lighter on and waited for it to glow red.

      I was still waiting when the sky exploded into daylight – except that daylight and I had, neither of us, been so bright lately.

¹ Combined Services Information Clearing House.

       22

      I opened the car door and rolled out into the white frozen day-like night. It suddenly became very quiet until from the far side of the island I heard a siren wailing pitifully.

      Overhead two police helicopters chug-chugged towards Shot Island, and began dropping hand grenades into the sea. Under each, a huge spotlight waved an erratic beam.

      The Air Police had located, recognized and flown towards the light of the large flare, while I was still expecting my eyeballs to melt.

      One of the ‘choppers’ stopped, did an about turn and came back to me. The flare spluttered and faded, and now the glare of the spotlight blinded me. I sat very still. It was 2.17. Against the noise of the blades a deeper resonant sound bit into the chill black air. From a loudspeaker, mounted with the light, a voice spoke from the air. I didn’t hear or make sense of the words at first, although I was trying hard. They had a strong accent.

      ‘Just don’t move a muscle, boy!’ the voice said again.

      The two beaters were really close to the car; the one that had spoken held its light about six feet away from my eye sockets – it inched around the car keeping well off the ground. The other ’copter ran its light over the high tension lines and the camera tower. The light looked yellow and dim after the intensity of the high-pitched, almost green, light of the flare. The beam sliced the darkness, it moved up the steel ladder of the tower. Way before the top was reached I saw the dead soldier in the penumbra of the searchlight: he was hanging half out of the smashed glass window. That he was dead came as no surprise. No one could stay alive in a metal tower connected to the high tension power line, connected by angle irons and bolts in the most professional way.

      It was about 2.36 A.M. when a Provost-Colonel arrived to arrest me. At 2.36½ I remembered the big insulating gauntlets. But even had I remembered before, what could I have done?

       23

      I opened my eyes. A 200-watt light bulb hung from the centre of the ceiling. Its light scaled my brain. I closed my eyes. Time passed.

      I opened my eyes again; slowly. The ceiling almost ceased to flutter up and down. I could probably have got to my feet but decided not to try for a month. I was very very old. The soldier I’d seen outside the General’s office was now sitting across the room, still reading the same copy of Confidential. On the front cover large print asked, ‘Is he a broad-chasing booze-hound?’

      I’d tell you whose face the cover featured, but I can’t afford a million-dollar law suit the way they can. The soldier turned over the page and gave me a glance.

      I remembered arriving in this room at 2.59 one night. I remembered the Sergeant who called me names: mostly Anglo-Saxon monosyllabic four-letter ones with the odd ‘Commie’ thrown in for syntax. I remembered that it had been 3.40 when he said, ‘You needn’t keep looking at your watch, Colonel. Your pals are well away by now.’ It was 3.49 when he hit me because of the 200 times I had said ‘I don’t know.’ He hit me a lot after that. He hurt me to the point where I wanted to tell him something. My watch said 4.22 now. It had stopped. It was smashed.

      I hoped they would follow standard interrogation techniques so that the good one would appear soon. I lay on a US Army stretcher. Above me the window shutters were locked with a padlock. The room was a big one. The cream paint looked faintly green in the light of the fluorescent tubes. I guessed we were in one of the single-storey buildings of the Administration block on the north end of the island. The room was empty except for a phone, over which was a chair, upon which was my guard. He was unarmed. A sure sign that they weren’t kidding.

      That hard metal stretcher felt wonderful. I flexed my torn bruised muscles and tried to reopen my swollen eyes. My companion wrenched himself away from Confidential magazine – he walked across to me. I feigned death – perhaps I have a natural talent for it: I found it very easy. He gave me a kick in the leg. It wasn’t a hard blow but it sent molten pain through every nerve-end from knee to navel. I bottled up my groaning and somehow wasn’t sick, but it was very difficult. The very young soldier reached into his shirt pocket. I heard the sound of a match striking. He gently eased a cigarette into my mouth.

      ‘If this is Ellis Island I’ve changed my mind,’ I said.

      The soldier smiled gently then kicked my leg again. He had a great sense of humour that kid; fine repartee.

      I was very hungry. The kid had finished Confidential, Screen Romances, Gals and Gags, and Reader’s Digest before they took me out. I read ‘WAITING-ROOM No. 3’ on the outside of my door. We went a short distance down the hall.

      Behind a door marked ‘Medical Officer Security Division’ was a dark, cosy womb-warm room; well-furnished, the handsome brass lamp marshalled light into a bright circle on the mahogany desk.

      In the circle of light stood a stainless-steel percolator of hot aromatic coffee, a blue jug of hot milk, toast, butter, crispy grilled streaky bacon, egg en cocotte, marmalade, some waffles and a little jug of hot resinous corn syrup. Behind the desk was an elderly man in a brigadier’s uniform; I recognized the crown of his short-cropped head. It was the Brigadier that Dalby and I had been talking with. He was well enough involved in eating not to look up as I was brought in. He passed bacon into his mouth and pointed to a soft leather armchair with a fork.

      ‘Cup of coffee, son?’ he said.

      ‘No thanks,’ I said. My voice was strange and distorted as it left my swollen mouth. ‘I’ve eaten just about all the rich chow I can hold for one day.’

      The Brigadier didn’t look up. ‘You’re a real tough kid, eh sonny?’ He poured a coffee into a black Wedgwood cup and put four sugars in. ‘Raise the sugar count,’ he said.

      I drank the sweet black coffee; it washed the dried blood out of my mouth. ‘Good china, I mean really good, is essential in a home, a really nice home, I always say,’ I told him.

      The Brigadier picked up the phone. ‘Let’s have some hot soup and a bacon sandwich