at it with a tearing sound.
‘Secret Service man?’ thought Hallam. He laughed out loud and the cat looked up in surprise.
‘Upstart,’ said Hallam.
He put a finger against the cat’s ear. The cat purred. An upstart from Burnley – a supercilious, anti-public-school technician who thought he was an administrator.
‘We must do our duty,’ said Hallam quietly to himself. It was the duty of men in Government; they mustn’t be too influenced by the personalities of Government servants. He preferred to think of the Secret Service man as a Government servant rather like the man with the wart who did the savings bank accounts at the Post Office. He said ‘Government servant’ aloud and thought of all the ways he could work the phrase into the next conversation he had with that man.
Hallam put the Player’s No. 3 into his real ebony cigarette holder. He lit it while watching himself in the mirror. He parted his hair a little more towards the centre. He might as well lunch at the coffee bar. They did a very fine egg and chips there. The waiter was Italian and Hallam always ordered in Italian. Not very trustworthy the Italians, Hallam decided, it’s all a matter of breeding. He sorted out his change and put ninepence in his ticket pocket for a tip. He gave a final look round before leaving. Fang was asleep. The ashtray that his visitor had used was brimming with cigarette ends. Foreign, coarse, cheap, inferior cigarettes.
Hallam picked up the ashtray with a shudder and tipped the contents into the little bin where the tea-leaves went. He felt in many ways the type of cigarette that man smoked typified him. So did the man’s clothes, they were mass-produced, off-the-peg clothes. Hallam decided he did not like the man that Dawlish had sent to see him. He didn’t like him at all.
Where pieces are used to protect other pieces, there will be high casualty rate. Better by far to assign only pawns to supporting roles.
Saturday, October 5th
‘Best enzyme man in the world,’ I said.
I heard Dawlish cough.
‘Best what?’ he said.
‘Enzyme man,’ I said, ‘and Hallam would just love him.’
‘Good,’ said Dawlish. I flipped the switch of my squawk box and turned back to the documents on my desk.
‘Edmond Dorf,’ I read.
I riffed through the battered British passport.
‘You are always saying that foreign names are more convincingly English,’ said my secretary.
‘But not Dorf,’ I said, ‘especially not Edmond Dorf. I don’t feel like an Edmond Dorf.’
‘Now don’t go metaphysical on me,’ said Jean, ‘Whom do you feel like?’
I liked that ‘whom’ – you’ve got to pay real money these days to get a secretary that could say that.
‘Eh?’ I said.
‘What sort of name do you feel like?’ said Jean very slowly and patiently. It was a danger signal.
‘Flint McCrae,’ I said.
‘Act your age,’ said Jean and she picked up the Semitsa file and walked towards the door.
‘I’m not being horrible Edmond Dorf,’ I said a little louder.
‘You don’t have to shout,’ said Jean, ‘and I’m afraid the travel vouchers and tickets are ordered. Berlin has been told to expect Edmond Dorf. If you want it changed now you must do it yourself unless I leave the Semitsa work.’
Jean was my secretary, really it was her job to do as I told her.
‘OK,’ I said.
She said, ‘Let me be the first to congratulate you on a wise decision, Mr Dorf,’ and left the room quickly.
Dawlish was my boss. He was around fifty, slim and meticulous like a well-bred boa-constrictor. He moved with languid English grace across the room from his desk and stood staring out into the jungle of Charlotte Street.
‘They thought one wasn’t serious at first,’ he said to the window.
‘Uh huh,’ I said; I didn’t want to appear too interested.
‘They thought I was joking – even the wife thought I wouldn’t go through with it.’ He turned away from the window and fixed me with a mocking gaze. ‘But now I’ve done it and I don’t intend to kill them off.’
‘Is that what they want you to do?’ I said. I wished I had been listening more closely.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and I’m not going to do it.’ He walked across to me in the big leather armchair like Perry Mason appealing to the jury. ‘I like weeds. It’s as simple as that. Some people like one sort of plants and some people like others. I like weeds.’
‘They are easy to cultivate,’ I said.
‘Not really,’ said Dawlish sharply. ‘The most powerful ones tend to strangle the others. I’ve got hedge parsley, comfrey, meadow cranesbill, primroses … it’s just like a country lane, not a damned by-pass. One has wild birds and butterflies. It’s something to walk in; not one of these things with flower-beds, laid out like a cemetery.’
‘I agree,’ I said. I agreed.
Dawlish sat down at his antique desk and arranged some typewritten sheets with file cards that his secretary had brought from the IBM machine. He aligned all the paperwork in geometrical patterns with his pencils and stapling machine and then began to polish his spectacles.
‘And thistles,’ said Dawlish.
‘Pardon?’ I said.
‘I’ve got a lot of thistles,’ said Dawlish, ‘because they attract butterflies. Later we’ll have tortoise-shells, red admirals, yellow brimstones, perhaps even commas. Fabulous. The weed-killers are destroying life in the country – it’s a disgrace.’ He picked up one of the folders and began to read it. He nodded once or twice and then put it down.
‘I rely on you to be discreet,’ he said.
‘That sounds like a change of policy,’ I said. Dawlish sprinkled a cold smile over me. He wore the sort of spectacles that customs men tap for hollow noises. He rested them on his large ears and then tucked a handkerchief as big as a bedsheet into his cuff. It was a signal that we were what Dawlish called ‘on parade’.
Dawlish said, ‘Johnnie Vulkan’. Then he rubbed the palms of his hands together.
I knew the sort of thing Dawlish was going to complain about now. We had other people in Berlin, of course, but Vulkan was the one we always used; he was efficient, understood what we needed, he knew the Berlin layout and, most important, he was noisy enough to draw attention
