Hope. Len Deighton

collapsed today. In New York the Dow crashed 508 points, the biggest slump on record. By the time the New York market closed it was 22.6 per cent down. Twenty-two point bloody six! The first day of the ’29 crash only went down 12.8 per cent. This is it, Bernard.’

      ‘London too?’

      ‘Tokyo opened first, of course. Selling began with the opening bell. When London opened, everyone began unloading dollar stocks. By the end of the day, London was down more than 10 per cent, the 100-share index dropped 249.6 points.’

      ‘I don’t follow all that financial mumbo-jumbo,’ I said.

      ‘It dropped 249.6 to 2,053.3! You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to see what manner of fall that is,’ said Dicky, who was a well-known mathematical genius.

      ‘No,’ I said.

      ‘Here in Zurich it fell too. Milan, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt… it’s a massacre. When New York opened the blood was already running over the floor.’

      ‘Did they suspend trading?’ I asked in a desperate attempt to sound astute and knowledgeable.

      ‘The Hong Kong market ceased trading,’ said Dicky, who now seemed to be in his element. ‘There’s panic everywhere tonight. The City is getting ready for another onslaught tomorrow. Last Thursday’s hurricane buggered up the computer and prevented some people getting to work. An upset of this magnitude will spill over into politics, Bernard. It’s impossible to guess the implications. Mrs Thatcher has made a pacifying statement about the strength of the economy, and so has Reagan. Bret Rensselaer is sleeping in the Night Duty Officer’s room. The lights are on in every office in Whitehall they tell me. They are on a war footing. My pal Henry, in the embassy here, says the Americans will declare martial law tomorrow, in case of widespread rioting and runs on the banks.’

      ‘Did he really?’ I said, knowing that Henry Tiptree, an employee of the Department, a man with whom I’d crossed swords more than once, was even more excitable and unreliable than Dicky. ‘But what’s this got to do with George Kosinski? He left on Saturday.’

      ‘Yes, Kosinski saw it coming. He sold out everything before coming to live here.’

      ‘He said he had to do that. It was a necessary part of his changing his tax residence.’

      ‘He cleared out and gave you his London apartment.’

      ‘That was in Tessa’s Will; a gift to Fiona,’ I protested. I didn’t like the way that Dicky was implicating me in his theories about George. ‘But why would he run away? These money men like George have all their assets in companies. And George has companies that are registered all over the world. What would he run away from? No one is going to knock on the door and arrest him.’

      ‘It’s a well-known fact that severe psychological stress often provokes people into physical action. Spontaneous physical action.’

      ‘Not George,’ I said.

      ‘He’s a dark horse,’ said Dicky with cautious admiration. ‘And you thought he came here as a reaction to his wife’s death? But he started to sell off his companies two months back. He must have seen this crash coming for ages. Didn’t he warn you about it?’

      ‘He doesn’t confide in me,’ I said. ‘George is his own man.’

      ‘I’d love to know what he’s up to,’ said Dicky, and stared at the phone. ‘I’m running a credit check on him but this stock-market thrashing is going to delay things like that.’

      ‘What about his lovely house on the lake?’

      ‘Rented on a monthly basis. I checked that before we came. He never owned it. Not even the furniture.’

      ‘And you think he ran because he’s deep in debt?’ It seemed more likely that George had found some artful advantage in having corporations own his house and contents.

      ‘Now you see it, do you?’ said Dicky, treating my question like an endorsement. ‘It fits together doesn’t it? You’ve got to know how these financial wizards think. He’s bust. Now you see why he would clear off without notice and leave no forwarding address.’

      ‘Poor George.’

      ‘Yes, poor George,’ said Dicky in a voice not entirely devoid of satisfaction. Dicky loved dramas, especially tragedies: and especially ones that brought disaster to people he envied. He relished reciting it all, and now his tone reproved me for not mirroring his delight. ‘Are you listening, Bernard?’

      ‘I’m listening.’

      ‘Well, don’t sit there with your head in your hands, as if you’re about to break down and weep.’

      ‘No, Dicky.’ But the truth was that I did feel concerned about George. It wasn’t just a matter of money – George would probably find money from somewhere, he always had done. But George had enough worries already. The news of Tessa’s death had made him talk of revenge, and disturbed him in a way I would never have thought possible. All that, and a financial crisis too, might be more than he could handle.

      ‘So you want to go to Warsaw?’ said Dicky.

      ‘Not particularly. But if you want me to go and find him, that’s where I would start.’

      ‘You have contacts there?’

      ‘Yes, but I’m not much good with the language.’ I didn’t want Dicky expecting miracles. If George had fled to Poland it was because Poland’s state of chaos provided a promising place in which to hide. Finding him would not be easy.

      ‘Who is good with the language?’ said Dicky blithely.

      ‘It makes it difficult to work on an investigation if you can’t understand what anyone is saying,’ I said. ‘Polish is not like Italian or Portuguese, where you grab at the root of a couple of words and guess the rest. Polish is impenetrable.’

      ‘We’ll manage,’ said Dicky. ‘I know you; you can always manage in any language. You’ve got a knack for languages.’

      ‘We?’

      ‘I’d better come with you. Two can always do better than one… on a job like this.’

      ‘Yes,’ I said. He was right: unless of course the other one is Dicky. He looked at me and then, after catching my eyes, looked away again. I said: ‘Is this something to do with Daphne?’

      ‘No. Well, yes. In a way. She has a very nervous disposition,’ said Dicky, his eyes narrowing as if suspecting me of being in league with his wife. ‘Edgy. Bitter. Full of wild talk. She keeps digging up silly things that are ancient history. It’s better if she’s on her own for a week or so.’

      So that was it. We weren’t going to Warsaw to hunt down George Kosinski, we were going there to provide a divertissement that might smooth over some domestic rift between Dicky and his long-suffering wife. I had other worries too. Ursi’s facial was going to cost ten times as much as I’d anticipated; I wondered if I could persuade the hotel cashier to pay it, and charge it somewhere deep in Dicky’s room-service bills.

      2

      Warsaw.

      September is the time many visitors choose to visit Poland. It was during September half a century ago that German visitors, with Stukas, Panzers and artillery, came. So devoted were they to this ancient kingdom that they wanted to own it. They chose September because the heavy summer rains had passed by then and the land was firm; the skies were clear enough for the bombers, and the working days were long enough for them to fight their way deep into Poland’s heartland.

      But once September is gone, the days shorten suddenly and the temperature drops. This year, like an omen, the first snow had come unusually early. As the thermometers hovered at zero, the moist air produced the heavy wet snowstorms that come only at the very beginning of the bad weather. The snow and sleet would eventually disappear, of course, as snow, visitors