thing: “Stand by for freedom and coke.” They have a mass of computer equipment and a training school back in the States. Maybe they will send you for training, but if they do I’ll make sure it’s kept plushy for you. And the money.’ Harvey poured me a huge drink to demonstrate that aspect of my new employer. ‘When do you plan to return to London?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘That’s great. This is your first task: stay to lunch.’ Harvey Newbegin laughed. ‘When you get to London go to the phone booth in Trinity Church Square, South-east one, take the L to R book and make a small pencil dot beside the Pan American entry. Go back next day and on the same page margin there will be a phone number written in pencil. Phone that number. Say you are a friend of the people at the antique shop and you have something you would like to show them. If anyone at the other end asks who you want to speak to, you don’t know, you were given this number and told there was someone there interested in buying antiques. When the people at the other end make an appointment, be there twenty hours later than that time. Got that?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘If there is any kind of snarl up, ring off. Standard control meeting procedure: that is to say, return and do the whole thing again twenty-fourhours later. OK?’ Harvey held up his glass of vodka and said, ‘This is something those Russkies do damn well. Pip, pip, down the hatch.’ He swallowed the rest of the vodka in one gulp, then clutched at his heart and pulled a pained face. ‘I have heartburn,’ he explained. He took his wallet out, removed a five-mark note and ripped it into two pieces in a very irregular tear. He gave half of it to me. ‘The man you meet will want your half of this before he parts with his package, so look after it.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you will explain what it is I have to collect.’
‘It’s simple,’ said Harvey Newbegin. ‘You go empty-handed. You bring back half a dozen eggs.’
----
* Like many modern espionage terms this comes from the German: ‘die Hosen herunterlassen’—to take one’s trousers off. This means to reveal that you are an agent and attempt to recruit someone into your organization. The older term for this was ‘moment of truth’.
SECTION 2
London
A master I have, and I am his man, Gallopy dreary dun.
NURSERY RHYME
Chapter 4
When I got back to London I put spots in telephone directories and went through the rest of Harvey Newbegin’s party games for the under-fives. A stuffy voice on the phone said, ‘Don’t worry about that twenty hours nonsense that they told you at the other end. You get along here now. I’m waiting to go down to my boat for a couple of days.’
So I went to King’s Cross; Bed and Breakfast cards jammed into grimy windows and novelty shops that sell plastic faeces and musical toilet-roll holders. There was a brass plate outside number fifty-three: ‘Surgery. Dr Pike.’ The plate was garnished with qualifications. Near the front door there were two dented dustbins and about thirty old milk bottles. A cold wet sleet was beginning to fall.
The door was unlocked, but a small buzzer sounded as I pushed it open. The waiting-room was a large Victorian room with a decoratedceiling. There was a wide selection of slightly broken furniture with disembowelled copies of Woman’s Own strategically placed under notices about ante-natal clinics and repeat prescriptions. The notices were penned in strange angular lettering and held in place by crisp pieces of ancient sticking plaster.
In one corner of the waiting-room, painted white with the word ‘Surgery’ on it, was a hardboard box. It was large enough to contain a desk and two chairs. One chair was large, leather-covered and swivelled smoothly on ball-bearings; the other was narrow, sickly and lame in one leg. Dr Pike counted his fingertips methodically and revolved towards me. He was a large, impeccably groomed man of about fifty-two.
‘Tomorrow.’
‘That’s great. This is your first task: stay to lunch.’ Harvey Newbegin laughed. ‘When you get to London go to the phone booth in Trinity Church Square, South-east one, take the L to R book and make a small pencil dot beside the Pan American entry. Go back next day and on the same page margin there will be a phone number written in pencil. Phone that number. Say you are a friend of the people at the antique shop and you have something you would like to show them. If anyone at the other end asks who you want to speak to, you don’t know, you were given this number and told there was someone there interested in buying antiques. When the people at the other end make an appointment, be there twenty hours later than that time. Got that?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘If there is any kind of snarl up, ring off. Standard control meeting procedure: that is to say, return and do the whole thing again twenty-fourhours later. OK?’ Harvey held up his glass of vodka and said, ‘This is something those Russkies do damn well. Pip, pip, down the hatch.’ He swallowed the rest of the vodka in one gulp, then clutched at his heart and pulled a pained face. ‘I have heartburn,’ he explained. He took his wallet out, removed a five-mark note and ripped it into two pieces in a very irregular tear. He gave half of it to me. ‘The man you meet will want your half of this before he parts with his package, so look after it.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you will explain what it is I have to collect.’
‘It’s simple,’ said Harvey Newbegin. ‘You go empty-handed. You bring back half a dozen eggs.’
----
* Like many modern espionage terms this comes from the German: ‘die Hosen herunterlassen’—to take one’s trousers off. This means to reveal that you are an agent and attempt to recruit someone into your organization. The older term for this was ‘moment of truth’.
SECTION 2
London
A master I have, and I am his man, Gallopy dreary dun.
NURSERY RHYME
Chapter 4
When I got back to London I put spots in telephone directories and went through the rest of Harvey Newbegin’s party games for the under-fives. A stuffy voice on the phone said, ‘Don’t worry about that twenty hours nonsense that they told you at the other end. You get along here now. I’m waiting to go down to my boat for a couple of days.’
So I went to King’s Cross; Bed and Breakfast cards jammed into grimy windows and novelty shops that sell plastic faeces and musical toilet-roll holders. There was a brass plate outside number fifty-three: ‘Surgery. Dr Pike.’ The plate was garnished with qualifications. Near the front door there were two dented dustbins and about thirty old milk bottles. A cold wet sleet was beginning to fall.
The door was unlocked, but a small buzzer sounded as I pushed it open. The waiting-room was a large Victorian room with a decoratedceiling. There was a wide selection of slightly broken furniture with disembowelled copies of Woman’s Own strategically placed under notices about ante-natal clinics and repeat prescriptions. The notices were penned in strange angular lettering and held in place by crisp pieces of ancient sticking plaster.
In one corner of the waiting-room, painted white with the word ‘Surgery’ on it, was a hardboard box. It was large enough to contain a desk and two chairs. One chair was large, leather-covered and swivelled smoothly on ball-bearings; the other was narrow, sickly and lame in one leg. Dr Pike counted his fingertips methodically and revolved towards me. He was a large, impeccably groomed man of about fifty-two.
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