Our Man in Havana

Chapter 3

A great many telegrams were waiting for him when he arrived in Havana in the late afternoon. There was also note a from Milly. ‘What have you been up to? You-know-who’ (but he didn’t) ‘very pressing not in any bad way. Dr Hasselbacher wants to speak to you urgently. Love. P. S. Riding at Country Club. Seraphina’s picture taken by press photographer. Is this fame? Go, bid the soldiers shoot.’ Dr Hasselbacher could wait. Two of the telegrams were marked urgent. ‘No .2 of 5 March paragraph A begins trace of Hasselbacher ambiguous stop use utmost caution in any contact and keep these to minimum message ends.’ Vincent C. Parkman was rejected as an agent out of hand. ‘You are not repeat not to contact him stop probability that he is already employed by American service.’

The next telegram No .1 of 4 March read coldly, ‘Please in future as instructed confine each telegram to one subject.’

No .1 of 5 March was more encouraging. ‘No traces Professor Sanchez and Engineer Cifuentes stop you may recruit them stop presumably men of their standing will require no more than out-of-pocket expenses.’ The last telegram was rather an anticlimax.

,Following from A.O. recruitment of 59200/ 5/1’ -that was Lopez

‘recorded but please note proposed payment below recognized European scale and you should revise to 25 repeat 25 pesos monthly message ends.’ Lopez was shouting up the stairs, ‘It is Dr Hasselbacher.’

‘Tell him I’m busy. I’ll call him later.’

‘He says will you come quick. He sounds strange.’

Wormold went down to the telephone. Before he could speak he heard an agitated and an old voice. It had never occurred to him before that Dr Hasselbacher was old. ‘Please, Mr Wormold…’

‘Yes. What is it?’

‘Please come to me. Something has happened.’

‘Where are you?’

‘In my apartment.’

‘What’s wrong, Hasselbacher?’

‘I can’t tell you over the telephone.’

‘Are you sick… hurt?’

‘If only that were all,’ Hasselbacher said. ‘Please come.’ In all the years they had known each other, Wormold had never visited Hasselbacher’s home. They had met at the Wonder Bar, and on Milly’s birthdays in a restaurant, and once Dr Hasselbacher had visited him in Lamparilla when he had a high fever. There had been an occasion too when he had wept in front of Hasselbacher, sitting on a seat in the Paseo telling him that Milly’s mother had flown away on the morning plane to Miami, but their friendship was safely founded on distance -it was always the closest friendships that were most liable to break. Now he even had to ask Hasselbacher how to find his home. ‘You don’t know?’ Hasselbacher asked in bewilderment.

‘No.’

‘Please come quickly,’ Hasselbacher said, ‘I do not wish to be alone.’ But speed was impossible at this evening hour. Obispo was a solid block of traffic, and it was half an hour before Wormold reached the undistinguished block in which Hasselbacher lived, twelve storeys high of livid stone. Twenty years ago it had been modern, but the new steel architecture to the West outsoared and outshone it. It belonged to the age of tubular chairs, and a tubular chair was what Wormold saw first when Dr Hasselbacher let him in. That and an old colour print of some castle on the Rhine.

Dr Hasselbacher like his voice had grown suddenly old. It was not a question of colour. That seamed and sanguine skin could change no more than a tortoise’s and nothing could bleach his hair whiter than the years had already done. It was the expression which had altered. A whole mood of life had suffered violence: Dr Hasselbacher was no longer an optimist. He said humbly, ‘It is good of you to come, Mr Wormold.’ Wormold remembered the day when the old man had led him away from the Paseo and filled him with drink in the Wonder Bar, talking all the time, cauterising the pain with alcohol and laughter and irresistible hope. He asked, ‘What has happened, Hasselbacher?’

‘Come inside,’ Hasselbacher said.

The sitting-room was in confusion; it was as though a malevolent child had been at work among the tubular chairs, opening this, upsetting that, smashing and sparing at the dictate of some irrational impulse. A photograph of a group of young men holding beer mugs had been taken from the frame and torn apart; a coloured reproduction of the Laughing Cavalier hung still on the wall over the sofa where one cushion out of three had been ripped open. The contents of a cupboard old letters and bills were scattered over the floor and a strand of very fair hair tied with black ribbon lay like a washed-up fish among the debris.

‘Why?’ Wormold asked.

‘This does not matter so much,’ Hasselbacher said, ‘but come here.’ A small room, which had been converted into a laboratory, was now reconverted into chaos. A gas-jet burnt yet among the ruins. Dr Hasselbacher turned it off. He held up a test tube; the contents were smeared over the sink. He said, ‘You won’t understand. I was trying to make a culture from never mind. I knew nothing would come of it. It was a dream only.’ He sat heavily down on a tall tubular adjustable chair, which shortened suddenly under his weight and spilt him on the floor. Somebody always leaves a banana-skin on the scene of tragedy. Hasselbacher got up and dusted his trousers. ‘When did it happen?’

‘Somebody telephoned to me -a sick call. I felt there was something wrong, but I had to go. I could not risk not going. When I came back there was this.’

‘Who did it?’

‘I don’t know. A week ago somebody called on me. A stranger. He wanted

me to help him. It was not a doctor’s job. I said no. He asked me whether my

sympathies were with the East or the West. I tried to joke with him. I said they

were in the middle.’ Dr Hasselbacher said accusingly, ‘Once a few weeks ago you

asked me the same question.’

‘I was only joking, Hasselbacher.’

‘I know. Forgive me. The worst thing they do is making all this suspicion.’ He stared into the sink. ‘An infantile dream. Of course I know that. Fleming discovered penicillin by an inspired accident. But an accident has to be inspired. An old second-rate doctor would never have an accident like that, but it was no business of theirs -was it? -if I wanted to dream.’ ‘I don’t understand. What’s behind it? Something political? What nationality was this man?’

‘He spoke English like I do, with an accent. Nowadays, all the world over, people speak with accents.’

‘Have you rung up the police?’

‘For all I know,’ Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘he was the police.’

‘Have they taken anything?’

‘Yes. Some papers.’

‘Important?’

‘I should never have kept them. They were more than thirty years old.

When one is young one gets involved. No one’s life is quite clean, Mr Wormold. But I thought the past was the past. I was too optimistic. You and I are not like the people here -we have no confessional box where we can bury the bad past.’

‘You must have some idea… What will they do next?’ ‘Put me on a card-index perhaps,’ Dr Hasselbacher said. ‘They have to make themselves important. Perhaps on the card I will be promoted to atomic scientist.’

‘Can’t you start your experiment again?’

‘Oh yes. Yes, I suppose so. But, you see, I never believed in it and now it has gone down the drain.’ He let a tap run to clear the sink. ‘I would only remember all this -dirt. That was a dream, this is reality.’ Something that looked like a fragment of toadstool stuck in the exit pipe. He poked it down with his finger. ‘Thank you for coming, Mr Wormold. You are a real friend.’ ‘There is so little I can do.’

‘You let me talk. I am better already. Only I have this fear because of the papers. Perhaps it was an accident that they have gone. Perhaps I have overlooked them in all this mess.’

‘Let me help you search.’

‘No, Mr Wormold. I wouldn’t want you to see something of which I am ashamed.’

They had two drinks together in the ruins of the sitting-room and then Wormold left. Dr Hasselbacher was on his knee under the Laughing Cavalier, sweeping below the sofa. Shut in his car Wormold felt guilt nibbling around him like a mouse in a prison-cell. Perhaps soon the two of them would grow accustomed to each other and guilt would come to eat out of his hand. People similar to himself had done this, men who allowed themselves to be recruited while sitting in lavatories, who opened hotel doors with other men’s keys and received instructions in secret ink and in novel uses for Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. There was always another side to a joke, the side of the victim. The bells were ringing in Santo Christo, and the doves rose from the roof in the golden evening and circled away over the lottery shops of O’Reilley Street and the banks of Obispo; little boys and girls, almost as indistinguishable in sex as birds streamed out from the School of the Holy Innocents in their black and white uniforms, carrying their little black satchels. Their age divided them from the adult world of 59200 and their credulity was of a different quality. He thought with tenderness, Milly will be home soon. He was glad that she could still accept fairy stories: a virgin who bore a child, pictures that wept or spoke words of love in the dark. Hawthorne and his kind were equally credulous, but what they swallowed were nightmares, grotesque stories out of science fiction.

What was the good of playing a game with half a heart? At least let him

give them something they would enjoy for their money, something to put on their

files better than an economic report. He wrote a rapid draft, ‘Number 1 of 8

March paragraph A begins in my recent trip to Santiago I heard reports from

several sources of big military installations under construction in mountains of

Oriente Province stop these constructions too extensive to be aimed at small

rebel bands holding out there stop stories of widespread forest clearance under

cover of forest fires stop peasants from several villages impressed to carry

loads of stone paragraph B begins in bar of Santiago hotel met Spanish pilot of

Cubana air line in advanced stage drunkenness stop he spoke of observing on

flight Havana-Santiago large concrete platform too extensive for any building

paragraph C 59200/5/3 who accompanied me to Santiago undertook dangerous mission near military H.Q. at Bayamo and made drawings of strange machinery in transport to forest stop these drawings will follow by bag paragraph D have I your permission to pay him bonus in view of serious risks of his mission and to suspend work for a time on economic report in view disquieting and vital nature of these reports from Oriente paragraph E have you any traces Raul Dominguez Cubana pilot whom I propose to recruit as 59200/5/4.’ Wormold joyfully encoded. He thought, I never believed I had it in me. He thought with pride, 59200/5 knows his job. His good humour even embraced Charles Lamb. He chose for his passage page 217, line 12: ‘But I will draw the curtain and show the picture. Is it not well done?’

Wormold called Lopez from the shop. He handed him twenty-five pesos. He said, ‘This is your first month’s pay in advance.’ He knew Lopez too well to expect any gratitude for the extra five pesos, but all the same he was a little taken aback when Lopez said, ‘Thirty pesos would be a living wage.’ ‘What do you mean, a living wage? The agency pays you very well as it is.’

‘This will mean a great deal of work,’ Lopez said.

‘It will, will it? What work?’

‘Personal service.’

‘What personal service?’

‘It must obviously be a great deal of work or you wouldn’t pay me twenty-five pesos.’ He had never been able to get the better of Lopez in a financial argument.

‘I want you to bring me an Atomic Pile from the shop,’ Wormold said.

‘We have only one in the store.’

‘I want it up here.’

Lopez sighed. ‘Is that a personal service?’

‘Yes.’

When he was alone Wormold unscrewed the cleaner into its various parts. Then he sat down at his desk and began to make a series of careful drawings. As he sat back and contemplated his sketches of the sprayer detached from the hose handle of the cleaner, the needle-jet, the nozzle and the telescopic tube, he wondered: Am I perhaps going too far? He realized that he had forgotten to indicate the scale. He ruled a line and numbered it off: one inch representing three feet. Then for better measure he drew a little man two inches high below the nozzle. He dressed him neatly in a dark suit, and gave him a bowler hat and an umbrella.

When Milly came home that evening he was still busy, writing his first report with a large map of Cuba spread over his desk. ‘What are you doing, Father?’

‘I am taking the first step in a new career.’

She looked over his shoulder. ‘Are you becoming a writer?’

‘Yes, an imaginative writer.’

‘Will that earn you a lot of money?’

‘A moderate income, Milly, if I set my mind to it and write regularly. I plan to compose an essay like this every Saturday evening.’ ‘Will you be famous?’

‘I doubt it. Unlike most writers I shall give all the credit to my ghosts.’

‘Ghosts?’

‘That’s what they call those who do the real work while the author takes the pay. In my case I shall do the real work and it will be the ghosts who take the credit.’

‘But you’ll have the pay?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Then can I buy a pair of spurs?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Are you feeling all right, Father?’

‘I never felt better. What a great sense of release you must have experienced when you set fire to Thomas Earl Parkman, junior.’ ‘Why do you go on bringing that up, Father? It was years ago.’

‘Because I admire you for it. Can’t you do it again?’

‘Of course not. I’m too old. Besides, there are no boys in the senior school. Father, one other thing. Could I buy a hunting flask?’ ‘Anything you like. Oh, wait. What are you going to put in it?’

‘Lemonade.’

‘Be a good girl and fetch me a new sheet of paper. Engineer Cifuentes is a man of many words.’

‘Had a good flight?’ the Chief asked.

‘A bit bumpy over the Azores,’ Hawthorne said. On this occasion he had not had time to change from his pale grey tropical suit; the summons had come to him urgently in Kingston and a car had met him at London Airport. He sat as close to the steam radiator as he could, but sometimes he couldn’t help a shiver.

‘What’s that odd flower you’re wearing?’

Hawthorne had quite forgotten it. He put his hand up to his lapel. ‘It looks as though it had once been an orchid,’ the Chief said with disapproval.

‘Pan American gave it us with our dinner last night,’ Hawthorne explained. He took out the limp mauve rag and put it in the ashtray. ‘With your dinner? What an odd thing to do,’ the Chief said. ‘It can hardly have improved the meal. Personally I detest orchids. Decadent things. There was someone, wasn’t there, who wore green ones?’ ‘I only put it in my button-hole so as to clear the dinner-tray. There was so little room what with the hot cakes and champagne and the sweet salad and the tomato soup and the chicken Maryland and ice-cream.. ‘What a terrible mixture. You should travel B. O. A. C.’

‘You didn’t give me enough time, sir, to get a booking.’ ‘Well, the matter is rather urgent. You know our man in Havana has been turning out some pretty disquieting stuff lately.’

‘He’s a good man,’ Hawthorne said.

‘I don’t deny it. I wish we had more like him. What I can’t understand is how the Americans have not tumbled to anything there.’ ‘Have you asked them, sir?’

‘Of course not. I don’t trust their discretion.’

‘Perhaps they don’t trust ours.’

The Chief said, ‘Those drawings -did you examine them?’

‘I’m not very knowledgeable that way, sir. I sent them straight on.’

‘Well, take a good look at them now.’

The Chief spread the drawings over his desk. Hawthorne reluctantly left the radiator and was immediately shaken by a shiver. ‘Anything the matter?’

‘The temperature was ninety-two yesterday in Kingston.’ ‘Your blood’s getting thin. A spell of cold will do you good. What do you think of them?’

Hawthorne stared at the drawings. They reminded him of -something. He was touched, he didn’t know why, by an odd uneasiness. ‘You remember the reports that came with them,’ the Chief said. ‘The source was stroke three. Who is he?’

‘I think that would be Engineer Cifuentes, sir.’

‘Well, even he was mystified. With all his technical knowledge. These machines were being transported by lorry from the army headquarters at Bayamo to the edge of the forest. Then mules took over. General direction those unexplained concrete platforms.’

‘What does the Air Ministry say, sir?’

‘They are worried, very worried. Interested too, of course.’

‘What about the atomic research people?’

‘We haven’t shown them the drawings yet. You know what those fellows are like. They’ll criticize points of detail, say the whole thing is unreliable, that the tube is out of proportion or points the wrong way. You can’t expect an agent working from memory to get every detail right. I want photographs, Hawthorne.’

‘That’s asking a lot, sir.’

‘We have got to have them. At any risk. Do you know what Savage said to me? I can tell you, it gave me a very nasty nightmare. He said that one of the drawings reminded him of a giant vacuum cleaner.’

‘A vacuum cleaner!’ Hawthorne bent down and examined the drawings again, and the cold struck him once more.

‘Makes you shiver, doesn’t it?’

‘But that’s impossible, sir.’ He felt as though he were pleading for his own career, ‘It couldn’t be a vacuum cleaner, sir. Not a vacuum cleaner.’

‘Fiendish, isn’t it?’ the Chief said. ‘The ingenuity, the simplicity,

the devilish imagination of the thing.’ He removed his black monocle and his baby-blue eye caught the light and made it jig on the wall over the radiator. ‘See this one here six times the height of a man. Like a gigantic spray. And this -what does this remind you of?’

Hawthorne said unhappily. ‘A two-way nozzle.’

‘What’s a two-way nozzle?’

‘You sometimes find them with a vacuum cleaner.’

‘Vacuum cleaner again. Hawthorne, I believe we may be on to something so big that the H-bomb will become a conventional weapon.’ ‘Is that desirable, sir?’

‘Of course it’s desirable. Nobody worries about conventional weapons.’

‘What have you in mind, sir?’

‘I’m no scientist,’ the Chief said, ‘but look at this great tank. It must stand nearly as high as the forest-trees. A huge gaping mouth at the top, and this pipe-line the man’s only indicated it. For all we know, it may extend for miles -from the mountain to the sea perhaps. You know the Russians are said to be working on some idea something to do with the power of the sun, sea-evaporation. I don’t know what it’s all about, but I do know this thing is Big. Tell our man we must have photographs.’

‘I don’t quite see how he can get near enough…’

‘Let him charter a plane and lose his way over the area. Not himself personally, of course, but stroke three or stroke two. Who is stroke two?’ ‘Professor Sanchez, sir. But he’d be shot down. They have air-force planes patrolling all that section.’

‘They have, have they?’

‘To spot for rebels.’

‘So they say. Do you know, I’ve got a hunch, Hawthorne.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘That the rebels don’t exist. They’re purely notional. It gives the Government all the excuse it needs to shut down a censorship over the area.’ ‘I hope you are right, sir.’

‘It would be better for all of us,’ the Chief said with exhilaration, ‘if I were wrong. I fear these things, I fear them, Hawthorne.’ He put back his monocle and the light left the wall. ‘Hawthorne, when you were here last did you speak to Miss Jenkinson about a secretary for 59200 stroke 5?’ ‘Yes, sir. She had no obvious candidate, but she thought a girl called Beatrice would do.’

‘Beatrice? How I hate all these Christian names. Fully trained?’

‘Yes.’

‘The time has come to give our man in Havana some help. This is altogether too big for an untrained agent with no assistance. Better send a radio-operator with her.’

‘Wouldn’t it be a good thing if I went over first and saw him? I could take a look at things and have a talk with him.’

‘Bad security, Hawthorne. We can’t risk blowing him now. With a radio he can communicate direct with London. I don’t like this tie-up with the Consulate, nor do they.’

‘What about his reports, sir?’

‘He’ll have to organize some kind of courier service to Kingston. One of his travelling salesmen. Send out instructions with the secretary. Have you seen her?’

‘No, sir.’

‘See her at once. Make sure she’s the right type. Capable of taking charge on the technical side. You’ll have to put her au fait with his establishment. His old secretary will have to go. Speak to the A. O. about a reasonable pension until her natural date for retirement.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Could I take one more look at those drawings?’

‘That one seems to interest you. What’s your idea of it?’

‘It looks,’ Hawthorne said miserably, ‘like a snap-action coupling.’ When he was at the door the Chief spoke again. ‘You know, Hawthorne, we owe a great deal of this to you. I was told once that you were no judge of men, but I backed my private Judgement. Well done, Hawthorne.’ ‘Thank you, sir.’ He had his hand on the door-knob.

‘Hawthorne.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Did you find that penny note-book?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Perhaps Beatrice will.’

It was not a night Wormold was ever likely to forget. He had chosen on Milly’s seventeenth birthday to take her to the Tropicana. It was a more innocent establishment than the Nacional in spite of the roulette-rooms, through which visitors passed before they reached the cabaret. Stage and dance-floor were open to the sky. Chorus-girls paraded twenty feet up among the great palm-trees, while pink and mauve searchlights swept the floor. A man in bright blue evening clothes sang in Anglo-American about Paree. Then the piano was wheeled away into the undergrowth, and the dancers stepped down like awkward birds from among the branches.

‘It’s like the Forest of Arden,’ Milly said ecstatically. The duenna wasn’t there: she had left after the first glass of champagne. ‘I don’t think there were palms in the Forest of Arden. Or dancing girls.’

‘You are so literal, Father.’

‘You like Shakespeare?’ Dr Hasselbacher asked. ‘Oh, not

Shakespeare there’s far too much poetry. You know the kind of thing -Enter a messenger. “My Lord the Duke advances on the right.” “Thus make we with glad heart towards the fight.”

‘Is that Shakespeare?’

‘It’s like Shakespeare.’

‘What nonsense you talk, Milly.’

‘All the same the Forest of Arden is Shakespeare too, I think,’ Dr Hasselbacher said.

‘Yes, but I only read him in Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. He cuts out all the messengers and the sub-Dukes and the poetry.’ ‘They give you that at school?’

‘Oh no, I found a copy in Father’s room.’

‘You read Shakespeare in that form, Mr Wormold?’ Dr Hasselbacher asked with some surprise.

‘Oh no, no. Of course not. I really bought it for Milly.’

‘Then why were you so cross the other day when I borrowed it?’ ‘I wasn’t cross. It was just that I don’t like you poking about… among things that don’t concern you.’

‘You talk as though I were a spy,’ Milly said.

‘Dear Milly, please don’t quarrel on your birthday. You are neglecting Dr Hasselbacher.’

‘Why are you so silent, Dr Hasselbacher?’ Milly asked, pouring out her second glass of champagne.

‘One day you must lend me Lamb’s Tales, Milly. I too find Shakespeare difficult.’

A very small man in a very tight uniform waved his hand towards their table.

‘You aren’t worried are you, Dr Hasselbacher?’

‘What should I be worried about, dear Milly, on your birthday? Except about the years of course.’

‘Is seventeen so old?’

‘For me they have gone too quickly.’

The man in the tight uniform stood by their table and bowed. His face had been pocked and eroded like the pillars on the sea-front. He carried a chair which was almost as big as himself.

‘This is Captain Segura, Father.’

‘May I sit down?’ He inserted himself between Milly and Dr Hasselbacher without waiting for Wormold’s reply. He said, ‘I am so glad to meet Milly’s father.’ He had an easy rapid insolence you had no time to resent before he had given fresh cause for annoyance. ‘Introduce me to your friend, Milly.’ ‘This is Dr Hasselbacher.’

Captain Segura ignored Dr Hasselbacher and filled Milly’s glass. He called a waiter. ‘Bring me another bottle.’

‘We are just going, Captain Segura,’ Wormold said.

‘Nonsense. You are my guest. It is only just after midnight.’

Wormold’s sleeve caught a glass. It fell and smashed, like the birthday party. ‘Waiter, another glass.’ Segura began to sing softly, ‘The rose I plucked in the garden,’ leaning towards Milly, turning his back on Dr Hasselbacher. Milly said, ‘You are behaving very badly.’

‘Badly? To you?’

‘To all of us. This is my seventeenth birthday party, and it’s my father’s party not yours.’

‘Your seventeenth birthday? Then you must certainly be my guests. I’ll invite some of the dancers to our table.’

‘We don’t want any dancers,’ Milly said.

‘I am in disgrace?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah,’ he said with pleasure, ‘it was because today I was not outside the school to pick you up. But, Milly, sometimes I have to put police work first. Waiter, tell the conductor to play “Happy Birthday to You”.’

‘Do no such thing,’ Milly said. ‘How can you be so…. so vulgar?’ ‘Me? Vulgar?’ Captain Segura laughed happily. ‘She is such a little jester,’ he said to Wormold. ‘I like to joke too. That is why we get on so well together.’

‘She tells me you have a cigarette-case made out of human skin.’ ‘How she teases me about that. I tell her that her skin would make a lovely..

Dr Hasselbacher got up abruptly. He said, ‘I am going to watch the roulette.’

‘He doesn’t like me?’ Captain Segura asked. ‘Perhaps he is an old admirer, Milly? A very old admirer, ha, ha!’

‘He’s an old friend,’ Wormold said.

‘But you and I, Mr Wormold, know that there is no such thing as friendship between a man and a woman.’

‘Milly is not yet a woman.’

‘You speak like a father, Mr Wormold. No father knows his daughter.’ Wormold looked at the champagne bottle and at Captain Segura’s head. He was sorely tempted to bring them together. At a table immediately behind the Captain, a young woman whom he had never seen before gave Wormold a grave encouraging nod. He touched the champagne bottle and she nodded again. She must, he thought, be as clever as she was pretty to have read his thoughts so accurately. He was envious of her companions, two pilots from K. L. M. and an air-hostess.

‘Come and dance, Milly,’ Captain Segura said, ‘and show that I am forgiven.’

‘I don’t want to dance.’

‘Tomorrow I swear I will be waiting at the convent-gates.’

Wormold made a little gesture as much as to say, ‘I haven’t the nerve. Help me.’ The girl watched him seriously; it seemed to him that she was considering the whole of the situation and any decision she reached would be final and call for immediate action. She siphoned some soda into her whisky. ‘Come, Milly. You must not spoil my party.’

‘It’s not your party. It’s Father’s.’

‘You stay angry so long. You must understand that sometimes I have to put work even before my dear little Milly.’

The girl behind Captain Segura altered the angle of the siphon. ‘No,’ Wormold said instinctively, ‘no.’ The spout of the siphon was aimed upwards at Captain Segura’s neck. The girl’s finger was ready for action. He was hurt that anyone so pretty should look at him with such contempt. He said, ‘Yes. Please. Yes,’ and she triggered the siphon. The stream of soda hissed off Captain Segura’s neck and ran down the back of his collar. Dr Hasselbacher’s voice called ‘Bravo’ from among the tables. Captain Segura exclaimed ‘Go-o’.

‘I’m so sorry,’ the young woman said. ‘I meant it for my whisky.’

‘Your whisky!’

‘Dimpled Haig,’ the girl said. Milly giggled.

Captain Segura bowed stiffly. You could not estimate his danger from his size any more than you could a hard drink.

Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘You have finished your siphon, madam, let me find you another.’ The Dutchmen at the table whispered together uncomfortably. ‘I don’t think I’m to be trusted with another,’ the girl said.

Captain Segura squeezed out a smile. It seemed to come from the wrong

place like toothpaste when the tube splits. He said, ‘For the first time I have

been shot in the back. I am glad that it was by a woman.’ He had made an

admirable recovery; the water still dripped from his hair and his collar was limp with it. He said, ‘Another time I would have offered you a return match, but I am late at the barracks. I hope I may see you again?’ ‘I am staying here,’ she said.

‘On holiday?’

‘No. Work.’

‘If you have any trouble with your permit,’ he said ambiguously, ‘you must come to me. Good night, Milly. Good night, Mr Wormold. I will tell the waiter that you are my guests. Order what you wish.’ ‘He made a creditable exit,’ the girl said.

‘It was a creditable shot.’

‘To have hit him with a champagne bottle might have been a bit exaggerated. Who is he?’

‘A lot of people call him the Red Vulture.’

‘He tortures prisoners,’ Milly said.

‘I seem to have made quite a friend of him.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that,’ Dr Hasselbacher said. They joined their tables together. The two pilots bowed and gave unpronounceable names. Dr Hasselbacher said with horror to the Dutchmen, ‘You are drinking Coca-Cola.’

‘It is the regulation. We take off at 3.30 for Montreal.’

Wormold said, ‘If Captain Segura is going to pay, let’s have more champagne. And Coca Cola.’

‘I don’t think I can drink any more Coca Cola, can you, Hans?’

‘I could drink a Bols,’ the younger pilot said.

‘You can have no Bols,’ the air-hostess told him firmly, ‘before Amsterdam.’

The young pilot whispered to Wormold, ‘I wish to marry her.’

‘Who?’

‘Miss Pfunk,’ or so it sounded.

‘Won’t she?’

‘No.’

The elder Dutchman said, ‘I have a wife and three children.’ He unbuttoned his breast pocket. ‘I have their photographs here.’ He handed Wormold a coloured card showing a girl in a tight yellow sweater and bathing-drawers adjusting her skates. The sweater was marked Mamba Club, and below the picture Wormold read, ‘We guarantee you a lot of fun. Fifty beautiful girls. You won’t be alone.’

‘I don’t think this is the right picture,’ Wormold said.

The young woman, who had chestnut hair and, as far as he could tell in the confusing Tropicana lights, hazel eyes, said, ‘Let’s dance.’ ‘I’m not very good at dancing.’

‘It doesn’t matter, does it?’

He shuffled her around. She said, ‘I see what you mean. This is meant to be a rumba. Is that your daughter?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s very pretty.’

‘Have you just arrived?’

‘Yes. The crew were making a night of it, so I joined up with them. I don’t know anybody here.’ Her head reached his chin and he could smell her hair; it touched his mouth as they moved. He was vaguely disappointed that she wore a wedding-ring. She said, ‘My name’s Severn. Beatrice Severn.’ ‘Mine’s Wormold.’

‘Then I’m your secretary,’ she said.

‘What do you mean? I have no secretary.’

‘Oh yes you have. Didn’t they tell you I was coming?’

‘No.’ He didn’t need to ask who ‘they’ were.

‘But I sent the telegram myself.’

‘There was one last week but I couldn’t make head or tail of it.’

‘What’s your edition of Lamb’s Tales?’

‘Everyman.’

‘Damn. They gave me the wrong edition. I suppose the telegram was rather a mess. Anyway, I’m glad I found you.’

‘I’m glad too. A bit taken aback, of course. Where are you staying?’

‘The Inglaterra tonight, and then I thought I’d move in.’

‘Move in where?’

‘To your office, of course. I don’t mind where I sleep. I’ll just doss down in one of your staff rooms.’

‘There aren’t any. It’s a very small office.’

‘Well, there’s a secretary’s room anyway.’

‘But I’ve never had a secretary, Mrs Severn.’

‘Call me Beatrice. It’s supposed to be good for security.’

‘Security?’

‘It is rather a problem if there isn’t even a secretary’s room. Let’s sit down.’

A man, wearing a conventional black dinner jacket among the jungle trees like an English district officer was singing: ‘Sane men surround You, old family friends. They say the earth is round My madness offends. An orange has pips, they say, And an apple has rind. I say that night is day And I’ve no axe to grind.

‘Please don’t believe…’

They sat at an empty table at the back of the roulette-room. They could hear the hiccup of the little balls. She wore her grave look again a little self-consciously like a girl in her first long gown. She said, ‘If I had known I was your secretary I would never have siphoned that policeman -without your telling me.’

‘You don’t have to worry.’

‘I was really sent here to make things easier for you. Not more difficult.’

‘Captain Segura doesn’t matter.’

‘You see, I’ve had a very full training. I’ve passed in codes and microphotography. I can take over contact with your agents.’ ‘Oh.’

‘You’ve done so well they’re anxious you should take no risk of being blown. It doesn’t matter so much if I’m blown.’

‘I’d hate to see you blown. Half-blown would be all right.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I was thinking of roses.’

She said, ‘Of course, as that telegram was mutilated, you don’t even know about the radio-operator.’

‘I don’t.’

‘He’s at the Inglaterra too. Airsick. We have to find room for him as well.’

‘If he’s airsick perhaps..

‘You can make him assistant accountant. He’s been trained for that.’

‘But I don’t need one. I haven’t even got a chief accountant.’ ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get things straight in the morning. That’s what I’m here for.’

‘There’s something about you,’ Wormold said, ‘that reminds me of my daughter. Do you say novenas?’

‘What are they?’

‘You don’t know? Thank God for that.’

The man in the dinner jacket was finishing his song.

‘I say that winter’s May And I’ve no axe to grind.’

The lights changed from blue to rose and the dancers went back to perch among the palm trees. The dice rattled at the crap-tables, and Milly and Dr Hasselbacher made their way happily towards the dance-floor. It was as though her birthday had been constructed again out of its broken pieces.