Our Man in Havana

Chapter 4

At every corner there were men who called ‘Taxi’ at him as though he were a stranger, and all down the Paseo, at intervals of a few yards the pimps accosted him automatically without any real hope. ‘Can I be of service, sir?’ ‘I know all the pretty girls.’

‘You desire a beautiful woman.’

‘Postcards?’

‘You want to see a dirty movie?’ They had been mere children when he first came to Havana, they had watched his car for a nickel, and though they had aged alongside him they had never got used to him. In their eyes he never became a resident; he remained a permanent tourist, and so they went pegging along -sooner or later, like all the others, they were certain that he would want to see Superman performing at the San Francisco brothel. At least, like the clown, they had the comfort of not learning from experience. By the corner of Virdudes Dr Hasselbacher hailed him from the Wonder Bar. ‘Mr Wormold, where are you off to in such a hurry?’ ‘An appointment.’

‘There is always time for a Scotch.’ It was ob-Vj0US from the way he pronounced Scotch that Dr Hasselbacher had already had time for a great many. ‘I’m late as it is.’

‘There’s no such thing as late in this city, Mr Wormold. And I have a present for you.’

Wormold turned in to the bar from the Paseo. He smiled unhappily at one of his own thoughts. ‘Are your sympathies with the East or the West, Hasselbacher?’

‘East or West of what? Oh, you mean that. A plague on both.’

‘What present have you got for me?’

‘I asked one of my patients to bring them from Miami,’ Hasselbacher said. He took from his pocket two miniature bottles of whisky: one was Lord Calvert, the other Old Taylor. ‘Have you got them?’ he asked with anxiety. ‘I’ve got the Calvert, but not the Taylor. It was kind of you to remember my collection, Hasselbacher.’ It always seemed strange to Wormold that he continued to exist for others when he was not there. ‘How many have you got now?’

‘A hundred with the Bourbon and the Irish. Seventy-six Scotch.’

‘When are you going to drink them?’

‘Perhaps when they reach two hundred.’

‘Do you know what I’d do with them if I were you?’ Hasselbacher said.

‘Play checkers. When you take a piece you drink it.’

‘That’s quite an idea.’

‘A natural handicap,’ Hasselbacher said. ‘That’s the beauty of it. The better player has to drink more. Think of the finesse. Have another Scotch.’ ‘Perhaps I will.’

‘I need your help. I was stung by a wasp this morning.’

‘You are the doctor, not me.’

‘That’s not the point. One hour later, going out on a sick call beyond the airport, I ran over a chicken.’

‘I still don’t understand.’

‘Mr Wormold, Mr Wormold, your thoughts are far away. Come back to earth. We have to find a lottery-ticket at once, before the draw. Twenty-seven means a wasp. Thirty-seven a chicken.’

‘But I have an appointment.’

‘Appointments can wait. Drink down that Scotch. We’ve got to hunt for the ticket in the market.’ Wormold followed him to his car. Like Milly, Dr Hasselbacher had faith. He was controlled by numbers as she was by saints. All round the market hung the important numbers in blue and red. What were called the ugly numbers lay under the counter; they were left for the small fry and the street sellers to dispose of. They were without importance, they contained no significant figure, no number that represented a nun or a cat, a wasp or a chicken. ‘Look. There’s 2 7 4 8 3,’ Wormold pointed out. ‘A wasp is no good without a chicken,’ said Dr Hasselbacher. They parked the car and walked. There were no pimps around this market; the lottery was a serious trade uncorrupted by tourists. Once a week the numbers were distributed by a government department, and a politician would be allotted tickets according to the value of his support. He paid $18 a ticket to the department and he resold to the big merchants for $21. Even if his share were a mere twenty tickets he could depend on a profit of sixty dollars a week. A beautiful number containing omens of a popular kind could be sold by the merchants for anything up to thirty dollars. No such profits, of course, were possible for the little man in the street. With only ugly numbers, for which he had paid as much as twenty-three dollars, he really had to work for a living. He would divide a ticket up into a hundred parts at twenty-five cents a part; he would haunt car parks until he found a car with the same number as one of his tickets (no owner could resist a coincidence like that); he would even search for his numbers in the telephone-book and risk a nickel on a call. ‘Senora, I have a lottery-ticket for sale which is the same number as your telephone.’ Wormold said, ‘Look, there’s a 37 with a 72.’

‘Not good enough,’ Dr Hasselbacher flatly replied.

Dr Hasselbacher thumbed through the sheets of numbers which were not considered beautiful enough to be displayed. One never knew; beauty was not beauty to all men -there might be some to whom a wasp was insignificant. A police siren came shrieking through the dark round three sides of the market, a car rocked by. A man sat on the kerb with a single number displayed on his shirt like a convict. He said, ‘The Red Vulture.’

‘Who’s the Red Vulture?’

‘Captain Segura, of course,’ Dr Hasselbacher said. ‘What a sheltered life you lead.’

‘Why do they call him that?’

‘He specializes in torture and mutilation.’

‘Torture?’

‘There’s nothing here,’ Dr Hasselbacher said. ‘We’d better try Obispo.’

‘Why not wait till the morning?’

‘Last day before the draw. Besides, what kind of cold blood runs in your veins, Mr Wormold? When fate gives you a lead like this one -a wasp and a chicken -you have to follow it without delay. One must deserve one’s good fortune.’

They climbed back into the car and made for Obispo. ‘This Captain Segura’ -Wormold began.

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing.’

It was eleven o’clock before they found a ticket that satisfied Dr

Hasselbacher’s requirements, and then as the shop which displayed it was closed

until the morning there was nothing to do but have another drink. ‘Where is your

appointment?’

Wormold said, ‘The Seville-Biltmore.’

‘One place is as good as another,’ Dr Hasselbacher said.

‘Don’t you think the Wonder Bar…?’

‘No, no. A change will be good. When you feel unable to change your bar you have become old.’

They groped their way through the darkness of the Seville-Biltmore bar. They were only dimly aware of their fellow-guests, who sat crouched in silence and shadow like parachutists gloomily waiting the signal to leap. Only the high proof of Dr Hasselbacher’s spirits could not be quenched. ‘You haven’t won yet,’ Wormold whispered, trying to check him, but even a whisper caused a reproachful head to turn towards them in the darkness. ‘Tonight I have won,’ Dr Hasselbacher said in a loud firm voice. ‘Tomorrow I may have lost, but nothing can rob me of my victory tonight. A hundred and forty thousand dollars, Mr Wormold. It is a pity that I am too old for women I could have made a beautiful woman very happy with a necklace of rubies. Now I am at a loss. How shall I spend my money, Mr Wormold? Endow a hospital?’

‘Pardon me,’ a voice whispered out of the shadows, ‘has this guy really won a hundred and forty thousand bucks?’

‘Yes, sir, I have won them,’ Dr Hasselbacher said firmly before Wormold could reply, ‘I have won them as certainly as you exist, my almost unseen friend. You would not exist if I didn’t believe you existed, nor would those dollars. I believe, therefore you are.’

‘What do you mean I wouldn’t exist?’

‘You exist only in my thoughts, my friend. If I left this room..

‘You’re nuts.’

‘Prove you exist, then.’

‘What do you mean, prove? Of course I exist. I’ve got a first-class business in real estate: a wife and a couple of kids in Miami: I flew here this morning by Delta: I’m drinking this Scotch, aren’t I?’ The voice contained a hint of tears.

‘Poor fellow,’ Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘you deserve a more imaginative creator than I have been. Why didn’t I do better for you than Miami and real estate? Something of imagination. A name to be remembered.’ ‘What’s wrong with my name?’

The parachutists at both ends of the bar were tense with disapproval; one shouldn’t show nerves before the jump.

‘Nothing that I cannot remedy by taking a little thought.’

‘You ask anyone in Miami about Harry Morgan…’

‘I really should have done better than that. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘I’ll go out of the bar for a minute and eliminate you. Then I’ll come back with an improved version.’

‘What do you mean, an improved version?’

‘Now if my friend, Mr Wormold here, had invented you, you would have been a happier man. He would have given you an Oxford education, a name like Pennyfeather…’

‘What do you mean, Pennyfeather? You’ve been drinking.’ ‘Of course I’ve been drinking. Drink blurs the imagination. That’s why I thought you up in so banal a way: Miami and real estate, flying Delta. Pennyfeather would have come from Europe by K. L. M., he would be drinking his national drink, a pink gin.’

‘I’m drinking Scotch and I like it.’

‘You think you’re drinking Scotch. Or rather, to be accurate, I have imagined you drinking Scotch. But we’re going to change all that,’ Dr Hasselbacher said cheerily. ‘I’ll just go out in the hall for a minute and think up some real improvements.’

‘You can’t monkey around with me,’ the man said with anxiety. Dr Hasselbacher drained his drink, laid a dollar on the bar, and rose with uncertain dignity. ‘You’ll thank me for this,’ he said. ‘What shall it be? Trust me and Mr Wormold here. A painter, a poet -or would you prefer a life of adventure, a gun-runner, a Secret Service agent?’

He bowed from the doorway to the agitated shadow. ‘I apologize for the real estate.’

The voice said nervously, seeking reassurance, ‘He’s drunk or nuts,’ but the parachutists made no reply.

Wormold said, ‘Well, I’ll be saying good night, Hasselbacher. I’m late.’

‘The least I can do, Mr Wormold, is to accompany you and explain how I

came to delay you. I’m sure when I tell your friend of my good fortune he will

understand.’

‘It’s not necessary. It’s really not necessary,’ Wormold said. Hawthorne, he knew, would jump to conclusions. A reasonable Hawthorne, if such existed, was bad enough, but a suspicious Hawthorne… His mind boggled at the thought.

He made towards the lift with Dr Hasselbacher trailing behind. Ignoring a red signal light and a warning Mind the Step, Dr Hasselbacher stumbled. ‘Oh dear,’ he said, ‘my ankle.’

‘Go home, Hasselbacher,’ Wormold said with desperation. He stepped into the lift, but Dr Hasselbacher, putting on a turn of speed, entered too. He said, ‘There’s no pain that money won’t cure. It’s a long time since I’ve had such a good evening.’

‘Sixth floor,’ Wormold said. ‘I want to be alone, Hasselbacher.’

‘Why? Excuse me. I have the hiccups.’

‘This is a private meeting.’

‘A lovely woman, Mr Wormold? You shall have some of my winnings to help you stoop to folly.’

‘Of course it isn’t a woman. It’s business, that’s all.’

‘Private business?’

‘I told you so.’

‘What can be so private about a vacuum cleaner, Mr Wormold?’

‘A new agency,’ Wormold said, and the liftman announced, ‘Sixth floor.’ Wormold was a length ahead and his brain was clearer than Hasselbacher’s. The rooms were built as prison-cells round a rectangular balcony; on the ground floor two bald heads gleamed upwards like traffic globes. He limped to the corner of the balcony where the stairs were, and Dr Hasselbacher limped after him but Wormold was practised in limping. ‘Mr Wormold,’ Dr Hasselbacher called, ‘Mr Wormold, I’d be happy to invest a hundred thousand of my dollars…’

Wormold got to the bottom of the stairs while Dr Hasselbacher was still manoeuvring the first step; 501 was close by. He unlocked the door. A small table-lamp showed him an empty sitting room. He closed the door very softly -Dr Hasselbacher had not yet reached the bottom of the stairs. He stood listening and heard Dr Hasselbacher’s hop, skip and hiccup pass the door and recede. Wormold thought, I feel like a spy, I behave like a spy. This is absurd. What am I going to say to Hasselbacher in the morning? The bedroom door was closed and he began to move towards it. Then he stopped. Let sleeping dogs lie. If Hawthorne wanted him, let Hawthorne find him without his stir, but a curiosity about Hawthorne induced him to make a parting examination of the room. On the writing desk were two books identical copies of Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. A memo pad on which perhaps Hawthorne had made notes for their meeting read, ‘1. Salary .2. Expenses .3. Transmission .4. Charles Lamb .5. Ink.’ He was just about to open the Lamb when a voice said, ‘Put up your hands.

Arriba los manos.’

‘Las manos,’ Wormold corrected him. He was relieved to see that it was Hawthorne.

‘Oh, it’s only you,’ Hawthorne said.

‘I’m a bit late. I’m sorry. I was out with Hasselbacher.’ Hawthorne was wearing mauve silk pyjamas with a monogram H. R. H. on the pocket. This gave him a royal air. He said, ‘I fell asleep and then I heard you moving around.’ It was as though he had been caught without his slang; he hadn’t yet had time to put it on with his clothes. He said, ‘You’ve moved the Lamb,’ accusingly as though he were in charge of a Salvation Army chapel. ‘I’m sorry. I was just looking round.’

‘Never mind. It shows you have the right instinct.’

‘You seem fond of that particular book.’

‘One copy is for you.’

‘But I’ve read it,’ Wormold said, ‘years ago, and I don’t like Lamb.’

‘It’s not meant for reading. Have you never heard of a book-code?’

‘As a matter of fact -no.’

‘In a minute I’ll show you how to work it. I keep one copy. All you have to do when you communicate with me is to indicate the page and line where you begin the coding. Of course it’s not so hard to break as a machine-code, but it’s hard enough for the mere Hasselbachers.’

‘I wish you’d get Dr Hasselbacher out of your head.’

‘When we have your office here properly organized with sufficient

security a combination-safe, radio, trained staff, all the gimmicks, then of

course we can abandon a primitive code like this, but except for an expert

cryptologist it’s damned hard to break without knowing the name and edition of the book.’

‘Why did you choose Lamb?’

‘It was the only book I could find in duplicate except Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I was in a hurry and had to get something at the C. T. S. bookshop in Kingston before I left. Oh, there was something too called The Lit Lamp: A Manual of Evening Devotion, but I thought somehow it might look conspicuous on your shelves if you weren’t a religious man.’

‘I’m not.’

‘I brought you some ink as well. Have you got an electric kettle?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘For opening letters. We like our men to be equipped against an emergency.’

‘What’s the ink for? I’ve got plenty of ink at home.’

‘Secret ink of course. In case you have to send anything by the ordinary mail. Your daughter has a knitting needle, I suppose?’ ‘She doesn’t knit.’

‘Then you’ll have to buy one. Plastic is best. Steel sometimes leaves a mark.’

‘Mark where?’

‘On the envelopes you open.’

‘Why on earth should I want to open envelopes?’

‘It might be necessary for you to examine Dr Hasselbacher’s mail. Of course, you’ll have to find a sub-agent in the post office.’ ‘I absolutely refuse…’

‘Don’t be difficult. I’m having traces of him sent out from London. We’ll decide about his mail after we’ve read them. A good tip -if you run short of ink use bird shit, or am I going too fast?’

‘I haven’t even said I was willing..

‘London agrees to $150 a month, with another hundred and fifty as expenses you’ll have to justify those, of course. Payment of sub-agents, etc. Anything above that will have to be specially authorized.’

‘You are going much too fast.’

‘Free of income-tax, you know,’ Hawthorne said and winked slyly. The wink somehow didn’t go with the royal monogram.

‘You must give me time…’

‘Your code number is 59200 stroke 5.’ He added with pride, ‘Of course I am 59200. You’ll number your sub-agents 59200 stroke 5 stroke 1 and so on. Got the idea?’

‘I don’t see how I can possibly be of use to you.’

‘You are English, aren’t you?’ Hawthorne said briskly.

‘Of course I’m English.’

‘And you refuse to serve your country?’

‘I didn’t say that. But the vacuum cleaners take up a great deal of time.’

‘They are an excellent cover,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Very well thought out.

Your profession has quite a natural air.’

‘But it is natural.’

‘Now if you don’t mind,’ Hawthorne said firmly, ‘we must get down to our Lamb.’

‘Milly,’ Wormold said, ‘you haven’t taken any cereals.’

‘I’ve given up cereals.’

‘You only took one lump of sugar in your coffee. You aren’t going on a diets are you?’

‘No.’

‘Or doing a penance?’

‘No.’

‘You’ll be awfully hungry by lunch-time.’

‘I’ve thought of that. I’m going to eat a terrible lot of potatoes.’

‘Milly, what’s going on?’

‘I’m going to economize. Suddenly in the watches of the night I realized

what an expense I was to you. It was like a voice speaking. I nearly said, “Who

are you?” but I was afraid it would say, “Your Lord and your God.” I’m about the age, you know.’

‘Age for what?’

‘Voices. I’m older than St Therese was when she went into the convent.’

‘Now, Milly, don’t tell me you’re contemplating..

‘No, I’m not. I think Captain Segura’s right. He said I wasn’t the right material for a convent.’

‘Milly, do you know what they call your Captain Segura?’

‘Yes. The Red Vulture. He tortures prisoners.’

‘Does he admit that?’

‘Oh, of course with me he’s on his best behaviour, but he has a cigarette-case made out of human skin. He pretends it’s calf -as if I didn’t know calf when I see it.’

‘You must drop him. Milly.’

‘I shall -slowly, but I have to arrange my stabling first. And that reminds me of the voice.’

‘What did the voice say?’

‘It said -only it sounded much more apocalyptic in the middle of the night-‘You’ve bitten off more than you can chew, my girl. What about the Country Club?”’

‘What about the Country Club?’

‘It’s the only place where I can get any real riding, and we aren’t members. What’s the good of a horse in a stable? Of course Captain Segura is a member, but I knew you wouldn’t want me to depend on him. So I thought perhaps if I could help you to cut the housekeeping by fasting.. ‘What good…

?’

‘Well, then, you might be able to afford to take a family membership.

You ought to enter me as Seraphina. It somehow sounds more suitable than Milly.’ It seemed to Wormold that all she said had a quality of sense; it was Hawthorne who belonged to the cruel and inexplicable world of childhood.

In the basement of the big steel and concrete building near Maida Vale a light over a door changed from red to green, and Hawthorne entered. He had left his elegance behind in the Caribbean and wore a grey flannel suit which had seen better days. At home he didn’t have to keep up appearances; he was part of grey January London.

The Chief sat behind a desk on which an enormous green marble paper-weight held down a single sheet of paper. A half-drunk glass of milk, a bottle of grey pills and a packet of Kleenex stood by the black telephone. (The red one was for scrambling.) His black morning coat, black tie and black monocle hiding the left eye gave him the appearance of an undertaker, just as the basement room had the effect of a vault, a mausoleum, a grave. ‘You wanted me, sir?’

‘Just a gossip, Hawthorne. Just a gossip.’ It was as though a mute were gloomily giving tongue after the day’s burials were over. ‘When did you get back, Hawthorne?’

‘A week ago, sir. I’ll be returning to Jamaica on Friday.’

‘All going well?’

‘I think we’ve got the Caribbean sewn up ROW, sir,’ Hawthorne said.

‘Martinique?’

‘No difficulties there, sir. You remember at Fort de France we are working with the Deuxi me Bureau.’

‘Only up to a point?’

‘Oh yes, of course, only up to a point. Haiti was more of a problem, but 59200 stroke 2 is proving energetic. I was more uncertain at first about 59200 stroke 5.’

‘Stroke five?’

‘Our man in Havana, sir. I didn’t have much choice there, and at first he didn’t seem very keen on the job. A bit stubborn.’

‘That kind sometimes develops best.’

‘Yes, sir. I was a little worried too by his contacts. (There’s a German called Hasselbacher, but we haven’t found any traces of him yet.) However he seems to be going ahead. We got a request for extra expenses just as I was leaving Kingston.’

‘Always a good sign.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Shows the imagination is working.’

‘Yes. He wanted to become a member of the Country Club. Haunt of the millionaires, you know. Best source for political and economic information. The subscription’s very high, about ten times the size of White’s, but I’ve allowed it.’

‘You did right. How are his reports?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, we haven’t had any yet, but of course it will take time for him to organize his contacts. Perhaps I rather overemphasized the need of security.’

‘You can’t. No use having a live wire if it fuses.’

‘As it happens, he’s rather advantageously placed. Very good business contacts a lot of them with Government officials and leading Ministers.’ ‘Ah,’ the Chief said. He took off the black monocle and began to polish it with a piece of Kleenex. The eye that he disclosed was made of glass; pale blue and unconvincing, it might have come out of a doll which said ‘Mama’. ‘What’s his business?’

‘Oh, he imports, you know. Machinery, that sort of thing.’ It was always important to one’s own career to employ agents who were men of good social standing. The petty details on the secret file dealing with the store in Lamparilla Street would never, in ordinary circumstances, reach this basement-room.

‘Why isn’t he already a member of the Country Club?’ ‘Well, I think he’s been rather a recluse of recent years. Bit of domestic trouble.’

‘Doesn’t run after women, I hope?’

‘Oh, nothing of that sort, sir. His wife left him. Went off with an American.’

‘I suppose he’s not anti-American? Havana’s not the place for any prejudice like that. We have to work with them -only up to a point of course.’ ‘Oh, he’s not at all that way, sir. He’s a very fair-minded man, very balanced. Took his divorce well and keeps his child in a Catholic school according to his wife’s wishes. I’m told he sends her greeting-telegrams at Christmas. I think we’ll find his reports when they do come in are a hundred per cent reliable.’

‘Rather touching that, about the child, Hawthorne. Well, give him a prod, so that we can judge his usefulness. If he’s all you say he is, we might consider enlarging his staff. Havana could be a key-spot. The Communists always go where there’s trouble. How does he communicate?’ ‘I’ve arranged for him to send reports by the weekly bag to Kingston in duplicate. I keep one and send one to London. I’ve given him the book code for cables. He sends them through the Consulate.’

‘They won’t like that.’

‘I’ve told them it’s temporary.’

‘I would be in favour of establishing a radio unit if he proves to be a good man. He could expand his office-staff, I suppose?’ ‘Oh, of course. At least -you understand it’s not a big office, sir.

Old-fashioned. You know how these merchant-adventurers make do.’ ‘I know the type, Hawthorne. Small scrubby desk. Half a dozen men in an outer office meant to hold two. Out-of-date accounting machines. Woman-secretary who is completing forty years with the firm.’

Hawthorne now felt able to relax; the Chief had taken charge. Even if one day he read the secret file, the words would convey nothing to him. The small shop for vacuum cleaners had been drowned beyond recovery in the tide of the Chief’s literary imagination. Agent 59200/5 was established.

‘It’s all part of the man’s character, ‘ the Chief explained to

Hawthorne, as though he and not Hawthorne had pushed open the door in Lamparilla Street. ‘A man who has always learnt to count the pennies and to risk the pounds. That’s why he’s not a member of the Country Club nothing to do with, the broken marriage. You’re a romantic, Hawthorne. Women have come and gone in his life; I suspect they never meant as much to him as his work. The secret of successfully using an agent is to understand him. Our man in Havana belongs you might say -to the Kipling age. Walking with kings -how does it go? and keeping your virtue, crowds and the common touch. I expect somewhere in that ink-stained desk of his there’s an old penny note-book of black wash-leather in which he kept his first accounts -a quarter gross of india-rubbers, six boxes of steel nibs…’

‘I don’t think he goes quite as far back as steel nibs, sir.’

The chief sighed and replaced the black lens. The innocent eye had gone back into hiding at the hint of opposition.

‘Details don’t matter, Hawthorne,’ the Chief said with irritation. ‘But if you are to handle him successfully you’ll have to find that penny note-book. I speak metaphorically.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘This business about being a recluse because he lost his wife -it’s a wrong appreciation, Hawthorne. A man like that reacts quite differently. He doesn’t show his loss, he doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. If your appreciation were correct, why wasn’t he a member of the club before his wife died?’

‘She left him.’

‘Left him? Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure, sir.’

‘Ah, she never found that penny note-book. Find it, Hawthorne, and he’s yours for life. What were we talking about?’

‘The size of his office, sir. It won’t be very easy for him to absorb many in the way of new staff.’

‘We’ll weed out the old ones gradually. Pension off that old secretary of his…’

‘As a matter of fact…’

‘Of course this is just speculation, Hawthorne. He may not be the right man after all. Sterling stuff, these old merchant-kings, but sometimes they can’t see far enough beyond the counting-house to be of use to people like ourselves. We’ll judge by his first reports, but it’s always well to plan a step ahead. Have a word with Miss Jenkinson and see if she has a Spanish speaker in her pool.’

Hawthorne rose in the elevator floor by floor from the basement: a rocket’s-eye view of the world. Western Europe sank below him: the Near East:

Latin America. The filing cabinets stood around Miss Jenkinson like the pillars of a temple round an ageing oracle. She alone was known by her surname. For some inscrutable reason of security every other inhabitant in the building went by a Christian name. She was dictating to a secretary when Hawthorne entered, ‘Memo to A .0. Angelica has been transferred to C.5 with an increase of salary to Ł8 a week. Please see that this increase goes through at once. To anticipate your objections I would point out that Angelica is now approaching the financial level of a bus-conductress.’

‘Yes?’ Miss Jenkinson asked sharply. ‘Yes?’

‘The Chief told me to see you.’

‘I have nobody to spare.’

‘We don’t want anybody at the moment. We’re just discussing possibilities.’

‘Ethel, dear, telephone to D.2 and say I will not have my secretaries kept after 7 p.m. except in a national emergency. If a war has broken out or is likely to break out, say that the secretaries’ pool should have been informed.’ ‘We may be needing a Spanish-speaking secretary in the Caribbean.’

‘There’s no one I can spare,’ Miss Jenkinson said mechanically.

‘Havana a small station, agreeable climate.’

‘How big is the staff?’

‘At present one man.’

‘I’m not a marriage bureau,’ Miss Jenkinson said.

‘A middle-aged man with a child of sixteen.’

‘Married?’

‘You could call him that,’ Hawthorne said vaguely.

‘Is he stable?’

‘Stable?’

‘Reliable, safe, emotionally secure?’

‘Oh yes, yes, you may be certain of that. He’s one of those old-fashioned merchant-types,’ Hawthorne said, picking up where the Chief had left off. ‘Built up the business from nothing. Uninterested in women. You might say he’d gone beyond sex.’

‘No one goes beyond sex,’ Miss Jenkinson said. ‘I’m responsible for the girls I send abroad.’

‘I thought you had nobody available.’

‘Well,’ Miss Jenkinson said, ‘I might possibly, under certain circumstances, let you have Beatrice.’

‘Beatrice, Miss Jenkinson!’ a voice exclaimed from behind the filing cabinets.

‘I said Beatrice, Ethel, and I mean Beatrice.’

‘But, Miss Jenkinson..

‘Beatrice needs some practical experience that is really all that is amiss. The post would suit her. She is not too young. She is fond of children.’ ‘What this station will need,’ Hawthorne said, ‘is someone who speaks Spanish. The love of children is not essential.’

‘Beatrice is half-French. She speaks French really better than she does English.’

‘I said Spanish.’

‘It’s much the same. They’re both Latin tongues.’

‘Perhaps I could see her, have a word with her. Is she fully trained?’ ‘She’s a very good encoder and she’s finished a course in microphotography at Ashley Park. Her shorthand is weak, but her typewriting is excellent. She has a good knowledge of electrodynamics.’ ‘What’s that?’

‘I’m not sure, but a fuse box holds no terrors for her.’

‘She’d be good with vacuum cleaners then?’

‘She’s a secretary, not a domestic help.’

A file drawer slammed shut. ‘Take her or leave her,’ Miss Jenkinson said. Hawthorne had the impression that she would willingly have referred to Beatrice as ‘it’.

‘She’s the only one you can suggest?’

‘The only one.’

Again a file drawer was noisily closed. ‘Ethel,’ Miss Jenkinson said, ‘unless you can relieve your feelings more silently, I shall return you to D.3.’ Hawthorne went thoughtfully away; he had the impression that Miss Jenkinson with considerable agility had sold him something she didn’t herself believe in a gold brick or a small dog -bitch, rather.

Wormold came away from the Consulate Department carrying a cable in his breast-pocket. It had been shovelled rudely at him, and when he tried to speak he had been checked. ‘We don’t want to know anything about it. A temporary arrangement. The sooner it’s over the better we shall be pleased.’ ‘Mr Hawthorne said..

‘We don’t know any Mr Hawthorne. Please bear that in mind. Nobody of the name is employed here. Good morning.’

He walked home. The long city lay spread along the open Atlantic; waves broke over the Avenida de Maceo and misted the windscreens of cars. The pink, grey, yellow pillars of what had once been the aristocratic quarter were eroded like rocks; an ancient coat of arms, smudged and featureless, was set over the doorway of a shabby hotel, and the shutters of a nightclub were varnished in bright crude colours to protect them from the wet and salt of the sea. In the west the steel skyscrapers of the new town rose higher than lighthouses into the clear February sky. It was a city to visit, not a city to live in, but it was the city where Wormold had first fallen in love and he was held to it as though to the scene of a disaster. Time gives poetry to a battlefield, and perhaps Milly resembled a little the flower on an old rampart where an attack had been repulsed with heavy loss many years ago. Women passed him in the street marked on the forehead with ashes as though they had come up into the sunlight from underground. He remembered that it was Ash Wednesday. In spite of the school-holiday Milly was not at home when he reached the house perhaps she was still at Mass or perhaps she was away riding at the Country Club. Lopez was demonstrating the Turbo Suction Cleaner to a priest’s housekeeper who had rejected the Atomic Pile. Wormold’s worst fears about the new model had been justified, for he had not succeeded in selling a single specimen. He went upstairs and opened the telegram; it was addressed to a department in the British Consulate, and the figures which followed had an ugly look like the lottery tickets that remained unsold on the last day of a draw.

There was 2674 and then a string of five-figure numerals: 42811 79145 72312

59200 80947 62533 10605 and so on. It was his first telegram and he noticed that

it was addressed from London. He was not even certain (so long ago his lesson

seemed) that he could decode it, but he recognized a single group, 59200, which had an abrupt and monitory appearance as though Hawthorne that moment had come accusingly up the stairs. Gloomily he took down Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare how he had always detested Elia and the essay on Roast Pork. The first group of figures, he remembered, indicated the page, the line and the word with which the coding began. ‘Dionysia, the wicked wife of Cleon,’ he read, ‘met with an end proportionable to her deserts.’ He began to decode from ‘deserts’. To his surprise something really did emerge. It was rather as though some strange inherited parrot had begun to speak. ‘No .1 of 24 January following from 59200 begin paragraph A.’

After working for three-quarters of an hour adding and subtracting, he had decoded the whole message apart from the final paragraph where something had gone wrong either with himself or 59200, or perhaps with Charles Lamb. ‘Following from 59200 begin paragraph A nearly a month since membership Country Club approved and no repeat no information concerning proposed sub-agents yet received stop trust you are not repeat not recruiting any sub-agents before having them properly traced stop begin paragraph B economic and political report on lines of questionnaire left with you should be despatched forthwith to 59200 stop begin paragraph C cursed galloon must be forwarded kingston primary tubercular message ends.’

The last paragraph had an effect of angry incoherence which worried Wormold. For the first time it occurred to him that in their eyes -whoever they were he had taken money and given nothing in return. This troubled him. It had seemed to him till then that he had been the recipient of an eccentric gift which had enabled Milly to ride at the Country Club and himself to order from England a few books he had coveted. The rest of the money was now on deposit in the bank; he half believed that some day he might be in a position to return it to Hawthorne.

He thought: I must do something, give them some names to trace, recruit an agent, keep them happy. He remembered how Milly used to play at shops and give him her pocket money for imaginary purchases. One had to play the child’s game, but sooner or later Milly always required her money back. He wondered how one recruited an agent. It was difficult for him to remember exactly how Hawthorne had recruited him except that the whole affair had begun in a lavatory, but surely that was not an essential feature. He decided to begin with a reasonably easy case.

‘You called me, Senor Vormell.’ For some reason the name Wormold was quite beyond Lopez’ power of pronunciation, but as he seemed unable to settle on a satisfactory substitute, it was seldom that Wormold went by the same name twice.

‘I want to talk to you, Lopez.’

‘Si, Senor Vomell.’

Wormold said, ‘You’ve been with me a great many years now. We trust each other.’

Lopez expressed the completeness of his trust with a gesture towards the heart.

‘How would you like to earn a little more money each month?’ ‘Why, naturally… I was going to speak to you myself, Senor Vommel. I have a child coming. Perhaps twenty pesos?’

‘This has nothing to do with the firm. Trade is too bad, Lopez. This will be confidential work, for me personally, you understand.’ ‘Ah yes, Senor. Personal services I understand. You can trust me. I am discreet. Of course I will say nothing to the Senorita.’

‘I think perhaps you don’t understand.’

‘When a man reaches a certain age,’ Lopez said, ‘he no longer wishes to search for a woman himself, he wishes to rest from trouble. He wishes to command, “Tonight yes, tomorrow night no”. To give his directions to someone he trusts..

‘I don’t mean anything of the kind. What I was trying to say well, it had nothing to do…’

‘You do not need to be embarrassed in speaking to me, Senor Vemoll, I have been with you many years.’

‘You are making a mistake,’ Wormold said. ‘I had no intention.. ‘I understand that for an Englishman in your position places like the San Francisco are unsuitable. Even the Mamba Club.’

Wormold knew that nothing he could say would check the eloquence of his

assistant, now that he had embarked on the great Havana subject; the sexual

exchange was not only the chief commerce of the city, but the whole raison d’ tre

of a man’s life. One sold sex or one bought it -immaterial which, but it was

never given away.

‘A youth needs variety,’ Lopez said, ‘but so too does a man of a certain age. For the youth it is the curiosity of ignorance, for the old it is the appetite which needs to be refreshed. No one can serve you better than I can, because I have studied you, Senor Vomell. You are not a Cuban: for you the shape of a girl’s bottom is less important than a certain gentleness of behaviour…’ ‘You have misunderstood me completely,’ Wormold said.

‘The Senorita this evening goes to a concert.’

‘How do you know?’

Lopez ignored the question. ‘While she is out, I will bring you a young lady to see. If you don’t like her, I will bring another.’

‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. Those are not the kind of services I want, Lopez. I want… well, I want you to keep your eyes and ears open and report to me…’

‘On the Senorita?’

‘Good heavens no.’

‘Report on what then, Senor Vormell?’

Wormold said, ‘Well, things like…’ But he hadn’t the faintest idea on what subjects Lopez was capable of reporting. He remembered only a few points in the long questionnaire and none of them seemed suitable, ‘Possible Communist infiltration in the armed forces. Actual figures of sugar-and tobacco-production last year.’ Of course there were the contents of waste-paper baskets in the offices where Lopez serviced the cleaners, but surely even Hawthorne was joking when he spoke of the Dreyfus case -if those men ever joked. ‘Like what, Senor?’

Wormold said, ‘I’ll let you know later. G back to the shop now.’

It was the hour of the daiquiri, and in the Wonder Bar Dr Hasselbacher was happy with his second Scotch. ‘You are worrying still, Mr Wormold?’ he said. ‘Yes, I am worrying.’

‘Still the cleaner -the Atomic cleaner?’

‘Not the cleaner.’ He drained his daiquiri and ordered another.

‘Today you are drinking very fast.’

‘Hasselbacher, you’ve never felt the need of money, have you? But then, you have no child.’

‘Before long you will have no child either.’

‘I suppose not.’ The comfort was as cold as the daiquiri. ‘When the time comes, Hasselbacher, I want us both to be away from here. I don’t want Milly woken up by any Captain Segura.’

‘That I can understand.’

‘The other day I was offered money.’

‘Yes?’

‘To get information.’

‘What sort of information?’

‘Secret information.’

Dr Hasselbacher sighed. He said, ‘You are a lucky man, Mr Wormold. That information is always easy to give.’

‘Easy?’

‘If it is secret enough, you alone know it. All you need is a little imagination, Mr Wormold.’

‘They want me to recruit agents. How does one recruit an agent, Hasselbacher?’

‘You could invent them too, Mr Wormold.’

‘You sound as though you had experience.’

‘Medicine is my experience, Mr Wormold. Have you never read the advertisement for secret remedies? A hair tonic confided by the dying Chief of a Red Indian tribe. With a secret remedy you don’t have to print the formula. And there is something about a secret which makes people believe… perhaps a relic of magic. Have you read Sir James Frazer?’

‘Have you heard of a book code?’

‘Don’t tell me too much, Mr Wormold, all the same. Secrecy is not my business I have no child. Please don’t invent me as your agent.’

‘No, I can’t do that. These people don’t like our friendship,

Hasselbacher. They want me to stay away from you. They are tracing you. How do you suppose they trace a man?’

‘I don’t know. Be careful, Mr Wormold. Take their money, but don’t give them anything in return. You are vulnerable to the Seguras. Just lie and keep your freedom. They don’t deserve the truth.’

‘Whom do you mean by they?’

‘Kingdoms, republics, powers.’ He drained his glass. ‘I must go and look at my culture, Mr Wormold.’

‘Is anything happening yet?’

‘Thank goodness, no. As long as nothing happens anything is possible, you agree? It is a pity that a lottery is ever drawn. I lose a hundred and forty thousand dollars a week, and I am a poor man.’

‘You won’t forget Milly’s birthday?’

‘Perhaps the traces will be bad, and you will not want me to come. But remember, as long as you lie you do no harm.’

‘I take their money.’

‘They have no money except what they take from men like you and me.’

He pushed open the half-door and was gone.

Dr Hasselbacher never talked in terms of morality; it was outside the province of a doctor.

Wormold found a list of Country Club members in Milly’s room. He knew where to look for it, between the latest volume of the Horsewoman’s Year Book and a novel called White Mare by Miss ‘Pony’ Traggers. He had joined the Country Club to find suitable agents, and here they all were in double column, over twenty pages of them. His eye caught an Anglo Saxon name -Vincent C. Parkman; perhaps this was Earl’s father. It seemed to Wormold that it was only right to keep the Parkmans in the family.

By the time he sat down to encode he had chosen two other names -an Engineer Cifuentes and a Professor Luis Sanchez. The professor, whoever he was, seemed a reasonable candidate for economic intelligence, the engineer could provide technical information, and Mr Parkman political. With the Tales from Shakespeare open before him (he had chosen for his key passage -‘May that which follows be happy’) he encoded ‘Number 1 of 25 January paragraph A begins I have recruited my assistant and assigned him the symbol 59200/5/1 stop proposed payment fifteen pesos a month stop paragraph B begins please trace the following…’

All this paragraphing seemed to Wormold extravagant of time and money, but Hawthorne had told him it was part of the drill, just as Milly had insisted that all purchases from her shop should be wrapped in paper, even a single glass bead. ‘Paragraph C begins economic report as requested will follow shortly by bag.’

There was nothing to do now but wait for the replies and to prepare the economic report. This troubled him. He had sent Lopez out to buy all the Government papers he could obtain on the sugar and tobacco industries -it was Lopez’ first mission, and each day now he spent hours reading the local papers in order to mark any passage whic1 could suitably be used by the professor or the engineer; it was unlikely that anyone in Kingston or London studied the daily papers of Havana. Even he found a new world in those badly printed pages; perhaps in the past he had depended too much on the New York Times or Herald Tribune for his picture of the world. Round the corner from the Wonder Bar a girl had been stabbed to death; ‘a martyr for love’. Havana was full of martyrs of one kind or another. A man lost a fortune in one night at the Tropicana, climbed on the stage, embraced a coloured singer, then ran his car into the harbour and was drowned.

Another man elaborately strangled himself with a pair of braces. There were miracles too; a virgin wept salt tears and a candle lit before our Lady of Guadalupe burnt inexplicably for one week, from a Friday to a Friday. From this picture of violence and passion and love the victims of Captain Segura were alone excluded -they suffered and died without benefit of Press.

The economic report proved to be a tedious chore, for Wormold had never

learnt to type with more than two fingers or to use the tabulator on his machine. It was necessary to alter the official statistics in case someone in the head office thought to compare the two reports, and sometimes Wormold forgot he had altered a figure. Addition and subtraction were never his strong points. A decimal point got shifted and had to be chased up and down a dozen columns. It was rather like steering a miniature car in a slot machine. After a week he began to worry about the absence of replies. Had Hawthorne smelt a rat? But he was temporarily encouraged by a summons to the Consulate, where the sour clerk handed him a sealed envelope addressed for no reason he could understand to ‘Mr Luke Penny’. Inside the outer envelope was another envelope marked ‘Henry Leadbetter. Civilian Research Services’; a third envelope was inscribed 59200/5 and contained three months’ wages and expenses in Cuban notes. He took them to the bank in Obispo.

‘Office account, Mr Wormold?’

‘No. Personal.’ But he had a sense of guilt as the teller counted; he felt as though he had embezzled the company’s money.