Horse Under Water

19 Never say this

Dawlish picked it up and held it under the Anglepoise lamp. The burnished metal coruscated in the hard artificial light.

‘Just gave it to you, did he?’ said Dawlish. He flung me a fresh packet of Gauloises. ‘Very good. A stroke of luck.’

The phone rang. Alice said she’d run out of coffee, would Nescafé do. It was 6.25 a.m. and Dawlish told her she’d better go home and get some sleep, but she brought it up for us.

‘New cups and saucers, eh Alice,’ I said. Her smile was like a shaft of Christmas-afternoon sunshine. Dawlish handed her the block of metal. It was eight inches by six and about two and a quarter inches thick. The arcs of milling shone as she twisted it in her bony hands.

A large hole was driven through the carbon steel block. Fitting exactly into the hole were three discs. Two of the discs were over an inch thick. Alice shook them into her open palm. The dies carried a fine intaglio design, on one a man on a prancing horse, on the other a portrait of Queen Victoria. Nestling between them was a shiny sovereign.

Alice studied each one carefully, and looked up at me and then at Dawlish.

‘Isn’t it just as I said, Mr Dawlish?’

‘Yes, you were right, Alice,’ said Dawlish. ‘Excellent quality die for forging sovereigns.’

‘But didn’t I tell you that it would have Queen Victoria on it?’ she asked Dawlish.

‘All right, Alice,’ I said, ‘I was wrong, but we aren’t through diving yet.’

Alice trotted off home at 6.45 a.m. and over our coffee Dawlish and I sat down and talked about staff changes and overseas finance and how many days to Christmas and it didn’t seem like it and it doesn’t interest us but Dawlish’s kids liked it and the expense of it all; until Dawlish suddenly said, ‘You never relax; it’s getting you down, this job?’

It wasn’t that he’d change it if it was, he just liked to know it all. Outside, dawn was bringing the sky to the colour of a mechanic’s handkerchief.

‘I can’t make it fit together,’ I said, ‘and some things are too convenient.’

‘Convenience is just a state of mind,’ said Dawlish. ‘It’s understanding that’s important. Understanding the symptoms you encounter will refer you to just one disease. You find a man with a pain in the foot and the finger and you wonder what he could possibly be suffering from with two such disparate symptoms. Then you find that while holding a nail one day he hit his finger with a hammer, then dropped it on to his toe.’

‘O.K.,’ I said, ‘so much for Emergency Ward Ten. Now listen to my problems. First, I am signing contracts with these rebels who want to take over in Portugal, and since the Foreign Office want to help them along a little I have to dive into an old Nazi sub. to find counterfeit money. So far so good, but while I am doing that damned frogman course two cars follow me down the A3. Whose cars? Mr Elusive Smith, British Cabinet Minister. I ask to see a file about him but it never arrives …’

‘It will,’ said Dawlish, ‘it’s delayed, that’s all.’

I gave Dawlish the curly-lip treatment. ‘O.K., then there’s this man Butcher who sold us the ice-melting file.’

‘And a lot of rubbish it was too,’ said Dawlish.

‘No one thought so at the time,’ I said, ‘and the department paid over six thousand pounds for it.’

‘Five thousand seven hundred,’ said Dawlish.

‘So you looked it up,’ I challenged. ‘So you think it’s dodgy too.’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Dawlish.

‘No,’ I agreed, ‘you’d say “inconsistent with departmental precedent”, but you’d think it was dodgy.’

Dawlish took out a handkerchief and lowered his nose into it, like he was going from a seventh-storey window into something held by eight firemen. He blew his nose loudly. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘Well, I am followed by this dark-blue job from Vernon and this man Butcher. When I get to Gib. they are going through our mail …’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t …’

‘Well, I would,’ I said loudly. ‘And behind all three there is the paternal Mr Henry Smith. When we finally get something out of the submarine the canister is empty except for a piece of paper money. Out of this American clown’s shirt comes another bill within a dozen serial numbers of it.’

‘Yes, that was convenient,’ said Dawlish.

‘Convenient is the word,’ I said, ‘it stinks.’

‘A …’ Dawlish hesitated, ‘… a frame-up,’ he said very proudly.

‘What’s that mean?’ I asked.

‘It’s an expression that American …’ then he saw me grinning and he frowned. I went on, ‘Then finally da Cunha gives me a long lecture about old Portuguese customs like he’s the Horizon Holidays man and this die, and says it’s for a Mr Smith.’

‘So what do you conclude?’ asked Dawlish.

‘I don’t conclude anything,’ I said, ‘but if I see a man with a Union Jack in his buttonhole wearing a deerstalker I begin to wonder if he’s trying to convince me about his national characteristics, and I wonder why.’

‘What about the canister and the grave?’ Dawlish asked.

‘I’m hoping that the canister isn’t as empty as it looks,’ I said.

‘And the grave?’

‘Was never full,’ I said, ‘just a hole in the ground.’

‘I trust you can tell a grave from a hole in the ground,’ said Dawlish sardonically. He was staring out of the window. ‘There’s a new instruction about your diving,’ he said without turning round. I said nothing. ‘Foreign Office is not interested in the currency any more.’ Outside on the window-sill a starling was getting itself a lungful of diesel smoke.

‘O’Brien isn’t interested in the money,’ Dawlish said again.

‘He’s swinging with the syntax,’ I said, ‘but he’s forcing the story line.’

Dawlish tried to touch his nose with his tongue. He said, ‘If there are any containers that might hold scientific papers you are to send them to the Embassy people unopened.’

‘How do I find out what’s inside if I don’t open them? Did they tell you that?’

‘Unopened,’ said Dawlish.

‘So they are worried about the ice-melting stuff after all.’

‘Ice-melting,’ said Dawlish, ‘who mentioned ice-melting? You’ve got ice-melting on the brain. The only ice-melting equipment that they are interested in is a glass of Johnny Walker.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘now try and see this from my point of view. The political people at Lisbon tell us that they’d like this job done and give it a BB8 requirement importance.[16] They tell us they’ve chosen us because it must be completely undercover as far as the Portuguese Government are concerned; that means that I can’t check properly on all these people: da Cunha, Harry Kondit and this small-time éminence grise Fernandes Tomas without risking a leak. You know what will happen the minute I ask 37[17] for a shred of information — every phone in Lisbon will ring.’

‘Well,’ said Dawlish, ‘I can understand their point of view; they don’t want to upset anyone.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘exactly. Now that’s the Embassy position as a rule, isn’t it? Not to upset anyone. Don’t upset all the good work we’re doing — all that crap. Now doesn’t it strike you as odd that the Embassy people at Lisbon not only egg us into this set-up and tell us, mark you, not to let the Portuguese know that we are doing anything down there, but they are all bright smiles and elevator shoes about it. Send us this Singleton character and this girl.’

‘Well,’ said Dawlish, ‘what do you want me to do about Singleton?’

‘Give him back to the Ovaltineys,’ I said.

‘Now then,’ said Dawlish, ‘don’t start on that again. I know you don’t believe it but I’ve checked those answers myself. Absolutely nothing. Singleton may be what you call “a jerk”, but he’s just a junior assistant to the naval attaché and he’s as normal as income tax. Prep, school, Dartmouth, good marks there too. Sea time with Mediterranean fleet. What else do you want me to do?’

‘Just one thing,’ I asked, ‘keep the wraps on that sovereign die find. Don’t say a word about it to anyone without me okaying it. Let’s keep it a nice cosy secret between the people in this office.’

‘And Senhor da Cunha,’ Dawlish said, so I knew he was agreeing to do so. (He would never promise to disobey regulations in so many words.) He continued as though I hadn’t mentioned the die. ‘The girl,’ he said, ‘Admiral’s daughter, right schools, lives in Lisbon except when she goes to Naples with her father. Mediterranean holidays. You should think yourself lucky Lisbon are on their toes. You must admit it was a good idea. You couldn’t have used local labour in the house, the security position being what it was. Why, you’d all have been standing around with damp dishcloths all day.’

I suppose I must have snorted.