Читать книгу The Harry Palmer Quartet - Len Deighton - Страница 34

I opened my eyes. A 200-watt light bulb hung from the centre of the ceiling. Its light scaled my brain. I closed my eyes. Time passed.

I opened my eyes again; slowly. The ceiling almost ceased to flutter up and down. I could probably have got to my feet but decided not to try for a month. I was very very old. The soldier I’d seen outside the General’s office was now sitting across the room, still reading the same copy of Confidential. On the front cover large print asked, ‘Is he a broad-chasing booze-hound?’

I’d tell you whose face the cover featured, but I can’t afford a million-dollar law suit the way they can. The soldier turned over the page and gave me a glance.

I remembered arriving in this room at 2.59 one night. I remembered the Sergeant who called me names: mostly Anglo-Saxon monosyllabic four-letter ones with the odd ‘Commie’ thrown in for syntax. I remembered that it had been 3.40 when he said, ‘You needn’t keep looking at your watch, Colonel. Your pals are well away by now.’ It was 3.49 when he hit me because of the 200 times I had said ‘I don’t know.’ He hit me a lot after that. He hurt me to the point where I wanted to tell him something. My watch said 4.22 now. It had stopped. It was smashed.

I hoped they would follow standard interrogation techniques so that the good one would appear soon. I lay on a US Army stretcher. Above me the window shutters were locked with a padlock. The room was a big one. The cream paint looked faintly green in the light of the fluorescent tubes. I guessed we were in one of the single-storey buildings of the Administration block on the north end of the island. The room was empty except for a phone, over which was a chair, upon which was my guard. He was unarmed. A sure sign that they weren’t kidding.

That hard metal stretcher felt wonderful. I flexed my torn bruised muscles and tried to reopen my swollen eyes. My companion wrenched himself away from Confidential magazine – he walked across to me. I feigned death – perhaps I have a natural talent for it: I found it very easy. He gave me a kick in the leg. It wasn’t a hard blow but it sent molten pain through every nerve-end from knee to navel. I bottled up my groaning and somehow wasn’t sick, but it was very difficult. The very young soldier reached into his shirt pocket. I heard the sound of a match striking. He gently eased a cigarette into my mouth.

‘If this is Ellis Island I’ve changed my mind,’ I said.

The soldier smiled gently then kicked my leg again. He had a great sense of humour that kid; fine repartee.

I was very hungry. The kid had finished Confidential, Screen Romances, Gals and Gags, and Reader’s Digest before they took me out. I read ‘WAITING-ROOM No. 3’ on the outside of my door. We went a short distance down the hall.

Behind a door marked ‘Medical Officer Security Division’ was a dark, cosy womb-warm room; well-furnished, the handsome brass lamp marshalled light into a bright circle on the mahogany desk.

In the circle of light stood a stainless-steel percolator of hot aromatic coffee, a blue jug of hot milk, toast, butter, crispy grilled streaky bacon, egg en cocotte, marmalade, some waffles and a little jug of hot resinous corn syrup. Behind the desk was an elderly man in a brigadier’s uniform; I recognized the crown of his short-cropped head. It was the Brigadier that Dalby and I had been talking with. He was well enough involved in eating not to look up as I was brought in. He passed bacon into his mouth and pointed to a soft leather armchair with a fork.

‘Cup of coffee, son?’ he said.

‘No thanks,’ I said. My voice was strange and distorted as it left my swollen mouth. ‘I’ve eaten just about all the rich chow I can hold for one day.’

The Brigadier didn’t look up. ‘You’re a real tough kid, eh sonny?’ He poured a coffee into a black Wedgwood cup and put four sugars in. ‘Raise the sugar count,’ he said.

I drank the sweet black coffee; it washed the dried blood out of my mouth. ‘Good china, I mean really good, is essential in a home, a really nice home, I always say,’ I told him.

The Brigadier picked up the phone. ‘Let’s have some hot soup and a bacon sandwich along here right away.’

‘On toasted brown,’ I said.

‘Sounds good,’ he said to me, then into the phone, ‘Make that two bacon sandwiches on brown and toasted.’

This boyo knew the system. He was going to stay kind and understanding whatever I did. I ate the sandwich and drank soup. He gave no sign of recognition, but as I finished drinking he offered me a cigar. When I declined, he produced a packet of Gauloises and insisted I keep the packet. It was very quiet here. In the gloom beyond his desk I could see a large grandfather clock; it ticked very softly, and as I watched it, it discreetly struck 10.30. Here and there antique furniture and heavy curtains announced a man important enough to have shipping space devoted to his gracious living, even here on Tokwe Atoll. The Brigadier went on writing. He was very quiet, and without looking at me said, ‘Every time some stinking detail comes up I find myself doing it.’ I thought he was referring to me, but he passed some photographs across his desk. One was a sepia-toned vignette such as any small town photo studio would take for a dollar. The other two were official identity photos, full face and side view. Each was a photograph of a corporal about twenty-two–twenty-four years old, fair-haired, open face. I’d guess a mid-west farmer’s son. There was a fourth photo, a poor blurred snapshot. This time with a young girl, pretty in a conventional way – they were standing alongside a new Buick. On the back it said, ‘Schultz Drug Store. 24-Hour Foto Service.’ I handed the pictures back.

‘So?’ I said, ‘a soldier.’

‘A very nice soldier,’ the Brigadier said. ‘He has been in the Army six months. You know something? The first time he saw the ocean he was passing through Frisco last month.’ The Brigadier got slowly to his feet. ‘If you’ve finished your coffee I’ll show you something.’ He waited as I finished.

‘It could easily be a long time before my next,’ I said.

‘It certainly could,’ he agreed, and smiled like the man who’s pleased with himself in the last photo of the Canadian Club ads. ‘We’ll go back to your room,’ he said.

The corridor was lit by blue strip-lights and I found Waiting Room No. 3 unlocked. I opened the door and suddenly it wasn’t 10.40 P.M. any more. It was morning.

The light was blinding: the big shutters had been drawn back letting in midday tropical sunshine. The chair and phone were still there, so were Confidential, Screen Romances, Gals and Gags and two Reader’s Digests. Against the wall was the olive-coloured metal Army stretcher that I had so recently vacated. The blue blanket on the stretcher was still specked with my blood. There would have been no detectable change in the room at all if a horribly scarred, naked corpse had not been occupying the blanket and stretcher.

The Brigadier walked across to the body. ‘This is Corporal Steve Harmon,’ he said. ‘I’m writing to his folks; he’s the boy you killed last night.’