Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy

Chapter Nineteen

After the baroque night, a rococo dawn. A boiling sky of turbulent clouds, and a sun that bored a golden tunnel right through it. It needed only a Tiepolo to paint a busty Aurora there, and surround her with naked nymphs and some improbable shepherds.

'What are you looking at?'

'You stay in bed, Professor Bekuv. The doctor says you need a complete rest.'

'This hospital food is terrible. Could you arrange for food to be sent in for me?'

That might be difficult, Professor. You are on maximum security now. The people cooking your food may not be graduates of the cordon bleu, but they are triple-star security cleared.'

'So you think someone might try to poison my food?'

I counted to ten. 'No I don't think anyone will poison your food. It's a routine precaution that always goes with maximum security… people.'

'Prisoners,' said Bekuv. 'You were going to say prisoners.'

'I was going to say patients.'

'No one tells me the truth.'

I turned to face him. I found it difficult to feel sorry for him. The breakfast of which he had complained so bitterly had been entirely eaten. He was now munching expensive black grapes from the fruit-bowl. On the other bedside table his hi-fi controls had been arranged. His condition was a tribute to modern medicine or to the circumspection of his attempt at suicide. Bekuv slotted a cassette into the player. Suddenly four giant loudspeakers, that had been arranged round his bed, filled the little hospital room with the opening bars of the Rosenkavalier waltz.

I walked to the table and switched the music down.

'I want to listen to the music,' said Bekuv. 'I am not feeling well enough to continue talking.'

I looked at him and considered all kinds of responses but I didn't use any of them. 'O.K.,' I said. I went downstairs to talk to Jonathan.

The Strauss music could still be heard. Tell me again about the suicide,' I said.

'He's in good shape, isn't he,' said Jonathan anxiously.

'Are you sure he took an overdose?'

'They pumped him dry and analysed it.'

'You'd better tell me everything that happened just before that.'

'I told you. It was the same routine as every other morning. He got up at six, when the alarm went. He took a shower, shaved and we sat down to breakfast at seven.'

'An hour to shave, shower and dress?'

'He listens to the news and reads his mail.'

'You let him have mail?'

'Hi-fi magazines, Newsweek, Time, two sci-fi magazines advertising crap from the places he bought his record-player and stuff, little notes from his wife, a Russian-language weekly from New York, all of it goes via the accommodation address of course…'

'You keep a photocopy of the notes from his wife?'

'And then the envelope is resealed — he doesn't know, I'm sure.'

'Let me see it.'

'Do you read Russian?'

'And hurry it along, will you.'

'You'd better come down to the microfilm reader.'

The letters from Bekuv's wife — and even all the pages of the magazines etc. - were recorded on microfilm.

'The translator looked at it. He looks at everything. He said it was just the usual sort of thing.'

The spidery writing in the labyrinth of Russian script was made even more difficult to decipher when projected in negative upon the glass screen of the reader.

My love,

I hope you are well. Don't take sleeping tablets every night or you might become dependent on them. A milk drink used to be all you ever needed to sleep, why not try that again.

Here the weather is very cold and there is much rain, but they are being very kind to me. I was wrong about Miss Bancroft, she is a really wonderful girl. She is doing all she can to arrange that you and I can have a serious talk but for the present it is better we are separate. It is important, Andrei.

Your ever loving K.

I read a rough translation aloud to the man they called Jonathan.

'Nothing there — right?'

'Nothing,' I said.

'You don't sound very convinced. You think that they might have some sort of code?' he said.

'Every man and wife talk in code,' I said.

'Don't go philosophical on me, pal. I majored in chemistry.'

'It might mean something to him,' I said.

'Mean something that would make him want to take that whole jar of goofballs?'

'Could be.'

Jonathan sighed. From next door there came the buzz of the telex alarm and the chatter of the printer. He went to answer it.

I began to see Andrei Bekuv in a new light, and I felt a little guilty at the way I'd treated him. His querulous complaints, and the studied interest in music and hi-fi equipment, I saw now as desperate attempts to prevent himself thinking about his lesbian wife, and how much he needed her. This letter/would be more than enough to tell him she was in love with Red Bancroft.

Jonathan interrupted this line of thought with a telex that he'd torn off the printer. It was coded and headed-up with the arranged cipher, but the signature was in clear triplicate.

Acknowledge?' said Jonathan.

'Is there anyone there at the other end?'

'Only the operator.'

'Acknowledge it. Then ask Langley to give us scrambled telex facilities at the airport and some back-up. What have you got here?'

'Two cars and fourteen men, but six are on three-day lay-offs.'

'Armoured cars?'

'Windshield and gas tank — the usual agency design.'

'We'll need more cars. Get a couple of your people to use their own. Don't tell Bekuv what's happening.'

'What is happening?' he asked.

'We're moving, that's what's happening.'

'You know what I think,' Jonathan said. 'I think this is an alarm. I think the Russians are going to hit this place and try snatching the professor from us.'

'Send the acknowledge.'

'You mean don't let Bekuv know until we're ready to go?'

'I mean don't let Bekuv know. You're setting up this wagon-train, and I want you to make it look really impressive. Bekuv will be travelling with me in the Stingray and we won't be anywhere near you.'

'I'll want that in writing, you know. It's dangerous. And on your own, you might have trouble getting Bekuv to move his ass.'

'I don't see why I should,' I said. 'He's going to see his missus, isn't he?'