The Harry Palmer Quartet. Len Deighton

      This boyo knew the system. He was going to stay kind and understanding whatever I did. I ate the sandwich and drank soup. He gave no sign of recognition, but as I finished drinking he offered me a cigar. When I declined, he produced a packet of Gauloises and insisted I keep the packet. It was very quiet here. In the gloom beyond his desk I could see a large grandfather clock; it ticked very softly, and as I watched it, it discreetly struck 10.30. Here and there antique furniture and heavy curtains announced a man important enough to have shipping space devoted to his gracious living, even here on Tokwe Atoll. The Brigadier went on writing. He was very quiet, and without looking at me said, ‘Every time some stinking detail comes up I find myself doing it.’ I thought he was referring to me, but he passed some photographs across his desk. One was a sepia-toned vignette such as any small town photo studio would take for a dollar. The other two were official identity photos, full face and side view. Each was a photograph of a corporal about twenty-two–twenty-four years old, fair-haired, open face. I’d guess a mid-west farmer’s son. There was a fourth photo, a poor blurred snapshot. This time with a young girl, pretty in a conventional way – they were standing alongside a new Buick. On the back it said, ‘Schultz Drug Store. 24-Hour Foto Service.’ I handed the pictures back.

      ‘So?’ I said, ‘a soldier.’

      ‘A very nice soldier,’ the Brigadier said. ‘He has been in the Army six months. You know something? The first time he saw the ocean he was passing through Frisco last month.’ The Brigadier got slowly to his feet. ‘If you’ve finished your coffee I’ll show you something.’ He waited as I finished.

      ‘It could easily be a long time before my next,’ I said.

      ‘It certainly could,’ he agreed, and smiled like the man who’s pleased with himself in the last photo of the Canadian Club ads. ‘We’ll go back to your room,’ he said.

      The corridor was lit by blue strip-lights and I found Waiting Room No. 3 unlocked. I opened the door and suddenly it wasn’t 10.40 P.M. any more. It was morning.

      The light was blinding: the big shutters had been drawn back letting in midday tropical sunshine. The chair and phone were still there, so were Confidential, Screen Romances, Gals and Gags and two Reader’s Digests. Against the wall was the olive-coloured metal Army stretcher that I had so recently vacated. The blue blanket on the stretcher was still specked with my blood. There would have been no detectable change in the room at all if a horribly scarred, naked corpse had not been occupying the blanket and stretcher.

      The Brigadier walked across to the body. ‘This is Corporal Steve Harmon,’ he said. ‘I’m writing to his folks; he’s the boy you killed last night.’

       24

      [Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) Irksome regulations seem to impede your progress, but do not be impulsive. Chances to meet lots of new exciting friends.]

      Of the next twenty-four hours I probably spent about fourteen with the Brigadier, although doctors and psychiatrists gave me the usual working over. That same evening we were back in his office. There was plenty of hot coffee and plenty of toasted bacon sandwiches. The Brigadier poured himself his sixth cup in half an hour and broke the long silence.

      ‘You’re marked down on my dossier, Colonel, with three stars – like Michelin it’s the highest rating we use. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re good at your job, it means that you are a three-star potential danger to us. As far as I’m concerned though, it’s a rough guide to the fact that you are a skilled investigator. Now I don’t claim to be that. I’m just the feller they send to places like this to check the barbed wire for moth holes. You tell me you didn’t signal to that Russian submarine on Thursday night. I want to believe you. OK. Thread up my information and show me your movie, mister.’

      I appreciated that the old man was being even nicer than his role demanded, especially considering that he was sure I had connected his nice new tower to his nice new electric line, and made a cinder out of one of his policemen.

      ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m not convinced that the submarine didn’t fire its own flare,’ I said.

      ‘Don’t get really smart with me, sonny, it’s obvious that it did.’

      ‘OK. So why does there have to be an agent working here at all?’

      ‘Look at it this way, sonny, we monitored the signal for one thing …’

      ‘I keep asking you what sort of signal but you won’t tell me!’

      ‘The one you sent, sonny, the one you sent … because you’re …’ he searched for a word, ‘just dirty, just dirty.’ He flushed in embarrassment at his outburst and began cleaning his spectacles. ‘I’m too old for your sort of war, I suppose …’

      A good agent follows up any debating advantage, especially when it’s a continuation of his life that’s the subject of discussion. I said, ‘I thought we were pretending that I’m innocent for the purposes of this short interrogation.’

      He nodded and said, ‘The signal was high-speed electrical impulses. Just as Morse can be sent in such high-speed bursts that long messages can be transmitted in seconds, recorded, then read slowly later, so the scanning of a TV picture can be sent. Last night a camera-transmitter, small enough for one man to carry, was directed towards the mountain, and no matter how much the camera was joggled about, the speed of the impulses transmitted clear pictures.’

      ‘Just as a slow-motion movie would be less subject to camera shake,’ I said, just to sound intelligent.

      ‘Exactly,’ said the Brigadier, who had no doubt that I had used this equipment the night before and was just sending him up.

      ‘But last night was really dark. Could it have got pictures in that light?’

      ‘I shouldn’t really tell you but since we’ve started this comedy …’ He lit a cigar from the ivory box. He lit it with a match as a connoisseur does a good cigar, he rolled it in his mouth, then removing it he exhaled and studied the bright red ash ‘… our boys are not really sure: perhaps the high-speed impulse gives an unprecedented aperture enough to photograph in the dark. If not, perhaps the submarine put an infra-red searchlight on to the cloudbase for reflected light. It would be invisible to human eyes of course.’

      ‘Then …’

      ‘Then why the flare? Yes, it’s a contradiction, the flare, but with a zoom lens, one that would change its focal length, at an extreme length, the sort of thing they use at ball games, the light transmitted would be very little. But with the flare and the high-speed transmission, it would be possible to get very close-up pictures of the mountain. Probably the flare was triggered automatically by the reception apparatus as soon as the “picture”, so to speak, was too dark. The camera was held on to the mountain by an electro gyroscope controlled by a compass set to the correct bearing.’

      ‘They don’t leave anything to chance, do they?’ I said. He gave me a sour look. I went on, ‘It’s a wonder they couldn’t do without the flare, then no one would have known about any of it.’

      ‘Not at all, we monitored the whole thing as I keep telling you. I’ll demonstrate if you like. You won’t do anything silly, will you?’ the old man asked. ‘Because …’

      ‘I’m not under-rating you, sir,’ I said.

      ‘Swell,’ he smiled. ‘Nor I you,’ and carried on. ‘Obviously the party last night was because of what we were doing on the mountain. I don’t have to tell you that.’ I tried to look like a man who knew, but in reality kicked myself for being fooled so easily. A party: I should have suspected that it wasn’t that social here. I wondered if Dalby knew that secret experiments were planned for that night of the garden-party. The Brigadier had been there perhaps to make sure we were. It all made sense now. I guessed that it was the neutron bomb