The Harry Palmer Quartet. Len Deighton

a big man. Because he wore suits with shoulders six inches outboard of the shoulder bone didn’t mean that he wasn’t beefy enough already. He picked the limp Raven off the big crème de menthe coloured table like a Queen’s scout with a rucksack, and marched off through the far door. I was groaning under the weight of the Olivetti and now I let go. It went through the big six-foot panel without a ripple. The surface shattered into a white opacity except for a large round hole through which I saw the typewriter hit the roulette wheel dead centre and continue its downward path to the floor – the hole in the gaming table mouthed its circular surprise. I kicked the splintery edges of the broken glass but still tore the seat of my trousers as I slid through the panel and dropped on to the gaming table below. I picked myself up and rubbed the torn place in my trousers. Suddenly the music from the loudspeaker ceased, and I heard one of the strippers running upstairs shouting.

      Over the loudspeakers a voice said, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, the police are checking the premises; please remain in your seats …’ By that time I was across the gaming room and through the doorway through which Housemartin and Raven had gone. I went down the stone staircase two steps at a time. There were two doorways, one had ‘emergency exit’ painted on it. I put my weight against the crunch-bars and opened it a couple of inches. I was in a semi-basement. There were four uniformed policemen standing ten feet away along the pavement. I closed the door and tried the other door. It opened. Inside were three middle-aged men in business suits. One was flushing the contents of his pockets down the toilet. One was standing in another toilet helping the third through a very small window. The sight through this window of the point of a blue helmet had me moving back up the stairs again. I had passed a door on the way down. I pushed at it now. It was made of metal, and was very heavy. It moved slowly and I found myself in an alley full of bent dustbins, wet cardboard cartons and crates with ‘No deposit’ stencilled upon them. At the end of the alley was a tall gate with a chain and padlock. Facing me was another metal door. I walked through it into a man in a greasy white jacket shouting ‘Make it spaghetti and chips twice.’ He looked me over suspiciously and said, ‘You want a meal?’

      ‘Yes,’ I said quickly

      ‘That’s all right then, sit down. I’m not doing no more coffee except with food.’ I nodded. ‘I take your order in a minute,’ he said.

      I sat down and felt in my pocket for cigarettes. I had three and a half packets in one pocket and a quarter of a pound of garlic sausage, and a soft metal foil parcel of butter in the other. It was then that I discovered there a brand new hypodermic syringe in a black cardboard box, and I thought, ‘What did that cigarette-girl mean by “Go home. There is nothing to be gained here”?’

       4

      I used the emergency number to go through to our secret exchange: Ghost – which was our section of the special Government telephone exchange: Federal.

      Ghost switchboard gave the usual eighty seconds of ‘Number unobtainable’ signal – to deter callers who dialled it by accident – then I gave the week’s code-words ‘MICHAEL’S BIRTHDAY’, and was connected to the duty officer. He plugged me in to Dalby who might have been anywhere – half-way across the world, perhaps. I conveyed the situation to him without going into details. He felt it was all his fault, and said how pleased he was that I hadn’t got mixed up with the ‘blue pointed head mob’. ‘You will be doing a job with me next week. It might be very tricky.’

      ‘Fine,’ I said.

      ‘I’ll speak to Alice about it, meanwhile I want you to change your papers.’ He rang off. I went home to a garlic sausage sandwich. ‘1,200,’ I thought. ‘That’s twenty-four pounds a week.’

      ‘Changing papers’ is a long and dreary process.

      It meant photographs, documents, finger-prints and complications. A small roomful of civilian clerks at the War Office are busy the whole year through, doing nothing else. On Thursday I went to the little room at the top of the building to the department run by Mr Nevinson. On the door the small white ticket in its painted frame said, ‘Documents. Personnel Reclassifications and Personnel deceased’. Mr Nevinson and his colleagues have the highest security clearance of anyone in government employ and, as they all know very well, they are under continuous security surveillance. Through these hands at some time or other go papers for every important agent in HM Govt employ.

      For example; take the time my picture appeared in The Burnley Daily Gazette in July 1939, when I won the fifth form mathematics prize; the following year the whole of the sixth appeared in a class photograph. If you try to see those issues now at the library, at the offices of The Burnley Daily Gazette, or at Colindale even, you’ll discover the thoroughness of Mr Nevinson. When your papers are changed your whole life is turned over like top-soil; new passport of course, but also new birth-certificate, radio and TV licences, marriage-certificates; and all the old ones are thoroughly destroyed. It takes four days. Today Mr Nevinson was starting on me.

      ‘Look at the camera, thank you. Sign here, thank you; and here, thank you; and again here, thank you; thumbs together, thank you; fingers together, thank you; now altogether, thank you; now you can wash your hands, thank you. We’ll be in touch. Soap and towel on the filing cabinet!’

       5

      [Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) Don’t make hasty decisions about a prospect you have in mind. A difference of opinion may provide a chance for a journey.]

      Monday I got to Charlotte Street usual time. A little grey rusting Morris 1000 knelt at the kerb, Alice at the controls. I was pretending I hadn’t seen her when she called out to me. I got into the car, the motor revved, away we went. We drove in silence a little way when I said, ‘I can’t find the bag of wet cement to put my feet into.’ She turned and cracked her make-up a little. Encouraged, I asked her where we were going.

      ‘To bait a Raven trap, I believe,’ she said.

      There seemed no answer to that. After a few minutes she spoke again. ‘Look at this,’ she said, handing me a felt toy exactly like the one I had declined to buy in the strip club the week before. ‘There.’ She jabbed a finger while driving, talking and tuning the car radio. I looked at the pink spotted felt dog; some stuffing was coming out of its head. I prodded it around. ‘You’re looking for this?’ Alice had a Minox in her hand. She gave me a sour look, or perhaps I already had one.

      ‘I was pretty stupid …’ I said.

      ‘Try not to stay that way,’ she almost smiled. If she went on that way she’d soon have a crackle finish.

      In Vauxhall Bridge Road we pulled into the kerb behind a black Rover car. Alice gave me a buff envelope about 10in by 6in and ¾ in thick sealed with wax, and opened the door. I followed her. She ushered me into the rear seat of the Rover. The driver had a short haircut, white shirt, black tie and navy blue DB raincoat. Alice smacked the roof of the car with the flat of her hand; show jumper style. The car pulled away through the ‘back doubles’ of Victoria. I opened the buff envelope. Inside was a new passport, thumbed, bent and back-dated to look old; two keys; a sheet of paper with typing on it; three passport photos, and one of those multi-leaved airline tickets. I was booked BOAC first-class single LON/BEI. The typewritten sheet gave plane times and said, – ‘BA712. LAP 11.25. Beirut International Airport 20.00. Photo Identity: RAVEN. Juke box. Upstairs. BEI Airport. Destroy by burning immediately.’ It gave no date. Attached to one key was a number: ‘025.’ I looked at the man in the photos, then burned the typewritten sheets and the photos, and lit a cigarette.

      We turned left out of Beauchamp Place on to the all too lavishly tended stretch of road that connects Maidenhead with Harrods. The driver’s first words were spoken at the Airport. ‘The overnight lockers are across the hall,’ he said.

      I left the car and driver, and fitted my key into 025, one