Atom Bomb Angel

20

I had been in New York during Christmas week two years before, and it all looked familiar to me. It was a bitterly cold, overcast day and sleeting as I sat in the back of the cab in a tail-back on the Triboro Bridge.

The driver watched the jam through a haze of cigarette smoke. He drew on his cigarette in short puffs, inhaled very deeply, and then blew the smoke out quickly in front of him. Every time he blew the smoke out, he would shake his head three or four times and make a tutting sound. The plastic driver-identity card informed me his name was Enzo Roscantino, and the face that stared out from the cheap photo looked glum and faintly startled. It was a greasy, pug-shaped face, with high jowls, thick eyebrows and straight, thinning hair, covered in grease. For a bulky man, he spoke with a surprisingly gentle voice. ‘Fucking Chreesmiss,’ he said, ‘whole of NewYork go fucking crazy at Chreesmiss. Why they don’t stay at home — why they gotta go out block the strits?’

I didn’t know why they had to go out and block tha strits; I told him.

‘Well, I don’t a know either. You home for Chreesmiss?’

If I came here this time of year much more often, it was going to start feeling like home. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not home for Christmas.’

‘You come to NewYork for Christmas? You crazy?’

‘You got it in one.’

We were driving down Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, passing around the edge of Harlem. Across the sidewalk, through a wire fence, I could see into a school playground. A teenage negro was standing there, all alone, watching a ball of paper burn. He looked as cheerful as I felt.

Enzo Roscantino dropped me at the Warwick. He studied the fairly generous tip I gave him carefully, his brow screwed in thought as he did his mental arithmetic; either his arithmetic was bad, or his idea of a generous tip and mine differed widely, but he just gave a curt nod and drove off. ‘And a merry fucking Chreesmiss to you,’ I said to the fast-disappearing, dented rear end of the Plymouth.

The front desk at the Warwick found me a room with a balcony that looked across onto an office block that was having a Christmas party on every floor. It was Wednesday afternoon; Christmas was on Friday. Provided I could get into AtomSled, I would have three clear days to go through Sleder’s business to my heart’s content. My heart didn’t exactly leap with joy at the prospect. I flipped open my suitcase and began to unpack. It was nearly dark outside, and I was tired from my flight. I opened the French windows and stepped out onto the green astroturf on the balcony, leaned over the stone balustrade, and looked down at the traffic queuing up the Avenue of the Americas, and down West Fifty-Fifth Street, and listened to the blaring of the horns as taxi cabs and private cars hurled their mournful insults at each other.

It was bitterly cold, and a few flakes of snow drifted about. Across the street, on the same level as I was, I saw a light come on in an empty office, and a man and a blonde girl stepped in. He shut the door behind them and started kissing her. She resisted for some moments, but he persisted, then suddenly she seemed to fling her reservations to the wind, and started responding equally vigorously. Another affair was no doubt beginning. Another number, or perhaps two numbers, had started their short journey into the vast gullet of the American divorce courts. But that man, who was just disappearing below my eyeline with that blonde girl, right now, I envied him. Maybe she didn’t look so hot close up. Perhaps she had a hooked nose and spots, and bad breath and dirty, scurfy hair, and stank of cheap perfume. Maybe she did, but I had a feeling that she didn’t, and that he and she were having a good time over there, and I wasn’t having a good time over here at all. There was nothing I was going to be able to do about that until I had found what I wanted and got my ass back on a plane to England and presented myself on Gelignite’s doorstep; I hoped that maybe, just maybe, she might forgive me. But from what she’d said when I’d called her from London Airport, it didn’t seem likely that she would.

I went to bed, and bad thoughts crashed around in my head all through the long night. I woke at eleven and thought it was four in the morning, and woke at a quarter to twelve and thought it was seven in the morning, and sat in bed until after midnight, too tired from my jet lag to get out of bed and do anything, and yet not tired enough to sleep.

I felt better after breakfast in the morning, and walked through bitter sleet to the New York headquarters of Gebruder Sleder, at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, where AtomSled was based. I crossed the road and walked up to the entrance of the copper and smoked-glass monolith that surged towards the sky, and in through the revolving door, which was the only entrance in sight. Glancing up and down inside the door, I could see it was fitted with a securi-counter, an electric security device which works on the simple principle of counting all the people that enter and leave the building throughout the day; if by the time the building is due to be locked up at night the counter has on record more people who have entered than have left, it signals an alarm to the security office. A simple and effective end to my plan A.

I looked up at the name boards; Gebruder Sleder and AtomSled occupied the sixty-fourth floor to the seventy-fourth — the top floor. The rest was a mixture of law firms, United Nations offices, and a plethora of anonymous-sounding corporate names.

I stepped into an elevator and noticed it only went up as far as the sixty-fourth floor — no doubt a security precaution on the part of the Sleder organization. I pushed the top button, the doors shut with a swoosh of air, and my stomach dropped to the ground like a balloon filled with water, whilst invisible hands tried to lift my head and neck up off my shoulders. A digital display before my eyes reeled off floor numbers faster than a bookie writing odds, then the water-filled balloon flew up from the floor and into the base of my neck, and a hefty foot trod on my head, and pushed it down into my shoulders. The digital read-out stopped, and the doors opened, and I wanted her, wanted all of her, wanted right now to own her, take her away to a warm, dark nest, to climb into it and never emerge.

She drew me like a magnet, out of the elevator, across the floor and up to the reception desk. I wanted someone to give her to me for Christmas. I stared into her eyes, then down at her body, most of which I could see clearly through the dress she wore, which appeared to have been made from a trawling net, then back into her eyes again. I concentrated hard on remembering that I had come up here on a recce, to take a brief look, not to carry away prizes.

‘Is this Hazier, Cohen and Lipitman?’ I said.

Her dark eyes stared right into the centre of mine, and her mouth opened a fraction. Whatever she was going to be doing for Christmas, she knew, wouldn’t be half so much fun as spending it with me. ‘They’re the fifty-fourth floor — you’ve come to the sixty-fourth.’

‘Stay here tomorrow,’ I wanted to tell her, ‘stay here tomorrow, and wait for me, and we’ll spend Christmas here together on Deke.’ But I hadn’t come here to do that. ‘Oh I’m sorry — I didn’t read the sign right.’ She was still staring at me, staring and smiling. I half-turned to go, swivelled my foot, turned my head, and then stopped. ‘Are you doing anything tonight?’

‘Not a lot.’ She stared into my eyes and smiled a very evil smile.

‘Would you like to come out and have some dinner?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’d just like to come back to your place and screw all night long.’

I gave her a grin that was as evil as hers. ‘I’m at the Warwick, room 2302.’

‘What time will you be there?’

‘Eight o’clock?’

‘I’ll try and wait that long, Max.’

A few minutes later the beam in the revolving door picked me up, registered me as having left the building, notified the computer, and awaited the next person. I walked on air up Thirty-Eighth Street. Life is a cunning creature; it keeps you down in the dumps for days on end, then, just when you’ve had enough of the whole thing, suddenly, for no reason at all, it pats you on the head, like a guilty owner who thinks he’s scolded his dog too much, and gives you a biscuit. Right now, the girl on the sixty-fourth floor wasn’t merely a biscuit: she was Oysters Rockefeller, a haunch of venison, a huge great chunk of raspberry cream pudding, a mountain of ripe camembert, a ’69 Montrachet, a ’62 Latour, a ’67 Sauternes, a Remy Martin and a Romeo and Juliet corona. Two years ago, she had looked pretty damn good; now she was a stunner.

Unluckily for me, luckily for Gelignite, I came out of my thoughts at the very moment I happened to be walking past Tiffany’s, the world’s most famous jewellery corner store — and best avoided for breakfast… unless you happen to be into eating cut glass. Assailed by a potent mixture of guilt and seasonal cheer, I stepped off the New York sidewalk, through the doorway and onto the soft carpet. The shop was busy, but there was a general hush that needed only the clacking of a ball on a slowly spinning roulette wheel to set it off perfectly.

Walking among the glass cabinets, under a high ceiling, I had the feeling that it would make no difference whether I had one hundred pounds, one thousand pounds, one hundred thousand pounds, or even one million pounds. I, or anyone, could spend a whole day in here, writing out cheques non-stop for any sums, however large, and still not make even a tiny dent in the stock of just one department.

There were more rare animal skins on the backs of the women shoppers than you could ever see at a hundred museums, and there were so many cashmere and vicuña coats with velvet collars wrapped around the men, one might have thought someone was issuing them at the doorway as a standard uniform. The battery of lights everywhere wasn’t necessary; there was more than enough light already provided by the reflections of the shining white, capped teeth of the clientele bouncing off the glittering gems and precious metals.

I bought Gelignite a silver bracelet. My American Express card did nicely, but could have done better, the expression on the courteous assistant’s face told me. I left Tiffany’s and took a cab to the City Hall, where I asked to take a look at the architectural plans of 101 Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza.

Five minutes later, I was seated at a desk, trying to pretend I was an architect and struggling to make sure I got the ruddy things the right way up. The floor plans of seventy-four floors take a while to wade through, but it was long before I got to the end of them that I realized that if I was going to get into that building undetected, and have any chance of remaining in it undetected, then I was going to have to find some other means than via the ground floor.

From the City Hall, I took another cab, to 355 Park Avenue, the head office of a company called the Intercontinental Plastics Corporation. Intercontinental Plastics Corporation was owned, through a carefully maintained front, by MI5. The company made cabinets for computers, and had offices and factories around the world. Its annual profits paid for nearly half of MI5’s running costs. I asked for, and was taken straight in to see, Ron Hagget, chief of US Operations for MI5.

Hagget granted my request without asking any questions, and I was grateful to him for that; I never liked lying to my superiors.

‘5.00 p.m. tomorrow,’ he said, ‘it’ll be up there.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘How does it feel to be back?’

‘Seems like it’s getting to be a habit.’

‘You’re right, New York is a habit. It’s as addictive as nicotine and ten times as bad for your health. Still — as they say over here — have a nice day, or what’s left of it.’

‘Thank you, sir. And a happy Christmas.’

‘Thank you, Flynn. You too.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘And Flynn—’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I don’t know why you’re over here, and I don’t intend to ask — as you know, I only run this outfit, I don’t ask questions — but just do me one favour? Don’t stir up any flack until after the New Year — I’ve promised my wife a holiday.’

I grinned at him, but then realized he wasn’t smiling. ‘It’s not that kind of a trip,’ I said.

‘That’s what I was told last time. I’m still clearing up the mess, and that was two years ago.’

He was referring to the wrecked car, demolished building and seven dead bodies I’d left behind last time, which he’d had to try and explain away to the authorities. The Americans don’t like the British trampling all over their country, any more than we like them trampling over ours. It’s all right to trample over Russia, or indeed any enemy country, but friendly countries are more sensitive, and none more so than the US of A.

Hagget was a frustrated man in his late fifties, with the ambition to get to the top, but not the brain or the political cunning. He was out of the limelight here, and had no real way of getting back into the limelight; he was nothing more than a Transatlantic courier for Fifeshire, maintaining the front, giving operatives assistance, and clearing up the messes they frequently left behind. And no one had left a bigger mess than I had. I wondered if anyone had ever bothered to explain to him what it had all been about. From the tone of his voice, and from the lack of an offer of a Christmas drink, I had a feeling they hadn’t. It wasn’t my place to tell, even if I had had the inclination, and anyhow, I didn’t want to be late back to the hotel.

There was a knock on the door at a quarter past eight, and I went over to open it. Her Mystère de Rochas perfume plunged into the room ahead of her, through the keyhole and under the door. I turned the handle and pulled, and the perfume completely engulfed me. She stood there in a calf-length silver-fox coat, her neck loosely wrapped in a cashmere scarf, her hands in sensuous Cornelia James gloves and her legs in tall black boots. Her large brown eyes were opened wide, and her soft-red painted lips parted, and she leaned forward and kissed me on my lips for a long, long time; then she stood back and looked at me and grinned.

‘Want to come in, or shall we stay out here?’

She strode into the room and sat down in an armchair, put her arms around her chest and hugged herself. ‘Oooh, it’s good to be in the warm. It’s starting to snow.’ She looked up at me and flashed her eyelids. ‘Well, well, Max Flynn! Life is full of surprises.’

I poured her a glass of champagne and handed it to her.

‘I see,’ she smiled, ‘you’ve really laid on the works!’

‘Want to take your coat off and stay a while?’

‘I’m not going anywhere — I just want to get warm. Cheers!’ She took a sip of the Krug and took a pack of Marlboro out of her handbag. ‘Smoke?’

‘Thanks.’ I took one and held out a light.

She inhaled deeply and grinned. ‘Now, you’re one guy I really didn’t reckon I’d see again.’

‘You figured I’d be dead by now?’

‘No, I didn’t figure that at all. I just didn’t think I’d see you. I mean — there wasn’t any reason to, was there? We didn’t have anything going — you had a girl you were goggle-eyed over, and I was just your humble secretary.’

‘I fancied you like crazy.’

‘I knew you did — but you never asked me out.’

‘Things were very difficult then.’

‘Are they any easier now?’

‘No — but I’m maybe a little wiser!’

‘Cheers,’ she said.

We chinked glasses. It was strange to be having this conversation. Her name was Martha. Two years ago, when I’d been in New York on my previous assignment, she had been allotted to me as my secretary. My cover then was Production Control Analyst for Intercontinental Plastics Corporation, and I had no way of telling then whether Martha was a genuine, innocent secretary, or whether she knew the true nature of both my business and Intercontinental’s. On a number of occasions I had wanted to ask her out, but a steady bird and a busy schedule had prevented it from happening.

‘I just saw Hagget,’ I said, ‘this evening.’

‘How is he?’

‘Sour as usual. Tell me, Martha — what the hell are you doing at AtomSled? How long have you been there?’

‘Good agents don’t talk,’ she said.

‘You want to bet?’

‘Try me,’ she grinned.

I did. She put up a spirited resistance, but at five o’clock in the morning she talked. Then I tried her again once more, for luck.