The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

‘How?’

‘I’ll send it in a sealed envelope by special messenger; she doesn’t have to know what’s on the sheet of paper you’re reading. And if things get too tough I’ll find a way of separating her from you. But, Denison – don’t blow your cover, whatever you do.’

There was a pleading quality in Carey’s voice and Carey, in Denison’s brief experience of him, was not a man who was used to pleading. Denison thought it a good opportunity to turn the screw. ‘I’ve been given the fast run around by you ever since this … this indecent thing was done to me. Now I want an explanation – a full explanation – and it had better be good.’ He was aware that his voice had risen and that he was in danger of becoming hysterical.

‘You’ll get your explanation today,’ promised Carey. ‘Now do your best to handle that girl.’

‘I don’t know if I can. It’s one thing fooling a stranger and another to try it on a member of Meyrick’s family.’

‘We may be lucky,’ said Carey. ‘I don’t think they were too close. I think she was brought up by her mother.’

Denison turned to face the lobby. ‘I’ll have to go now – the girl’s coming.’ He put down the telephone and heard a faint, squawking noise just before the connection was broken. It sounded as though Carey had said, ‘Good luck!’

He walked away from the telephone as she approached. ‘All finished.’

She fell into step with him. ‘You looked as if you were having an argument.’

‘Did I?’

‘I know you’re an argumentative type, but I wondered who you’d found to argue with at five o’clock in the morning in the middle of Oslo.’

They stopped in front of the lifts and Denison pressed the button. ‘Where have you just come from?’

‘Bergen. I hired a car and drove over. Most of yesterday and all night.’ She sighed. ‘I feel a bit pooped.’

He kept his voice neutral. ‘Travelling alone?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled, and said, ‘Wondering about a boyfriend?’

He nodded towards the thinning group in the lobby. ‘I just thought you were with that lot.’ The lift arrived and they stepped inside. ‘No wonder you’re tired if you did all that driving. What it is to be young.’

‘Right now I feel as old as Methuselah,’ she said glumly. ‘It’s the hunger that does it. I’ll feel better after breakfast, I dare say.’

He risked a probe. ‘How old are you, Lyn? I tend to lose track.’

‘Yes, you do, don’t you? You even forgot my twenty-first – or did you forget?’ There was an unexpected bitterness in her voice. ‘Any father who could do that …’ She stopped and bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry, Daddy. It’s my birthday next week.’

‘That’s all right.’ There was an undercurrent of antagonism Denison did not understand. He hesitated, and said, ‘Anyway, you’re old enough to stop calling me Daddy. What’s wrong with Harry?’

She looked at him in surprise and then impulsively squeezed his hand.

They had arrived at the room door and he unlocked it. ‘Bedroom straight ahead – bathroom to the left.’

She walked ahead of him into the bedroom and put down the travelling bag. ‘The bathroom for me,’ she said. ‘I want to wash off some of the grime.’ She opened the bag, picked out a couple of small articles, and disappeared into the bathroom.

He heard the sound of water as she turned on a tap and then he picked up the telephone. ‘This is room three-sixty. If there are any messages for Meyrick – or anything at all – I want to know immediately.’ He put down the telephone and looked contemplatively at the travelling bag.

The bathroom noises continued so he crossed the room quickly and looked into the bag. It was more neatly packed than he had expected which made it easier to search. He saw the blue cover of a British passport and took it out and turned the pages. It was Lyn Meyrick’s birthday on July 21, and she would be twenty-two. Her occupation was given as teacher.

He put the passport back and took out a book of traveller’s cheques. As he flicked through them he whistled softly; the Meyrick family did not believe in stinting themselves. There was a wallet fitted with acetate envelopes which contained credit cards and photographs. He had no time to examine these in detail because he thought she might come out of the bathroom at any moment.

He thrust back the wallet and zipped open a small interior pocket in the bag. It contained the key for a rented car and a bunch of smaller keys. As he zipped it closed he heard all sound cease in the bathroom and, when she emerged, he was standing by the armchair taking off his jacket.

‘That’s much better,’ she said. She had taken off the motoring coat and, in lime green sweater and stretch pants, she looked very trim. ‘When is the earliest I can order breakfast?’

He checked his watch. ‘Not much before half past six, I think. Perhaps the night porter can rustle up sandwiches and coffee.’

She frowned and sat on the bed. ‘No, I’ll wait and have a proper breakfast.’ Blinking her eyes, she said, ‘I still feel as though I’m driving.’

‘You shouldn’t push so hard.’

‘That isn’t what you told me the last time we met.’

Denison did not know what to make of that, so he said neutrally. ‘No.’ The silence lengthened. ‘How’s your mother?’ he asked.

‘She’s all right,’ said Lyn indifferently. ‘But, my God, he’s such a bore.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, he just sits in an office and makes money. Oh, I know you’re rich, but you made money by making things. He just makes money.’

Denison presumed that ‘he’ was John Howard Metford who was ‘something in the City’. ‘Metford isn’t such a bad chap,’ he said.

‘He’s a bore,’ she said definitely. ‘And it isn’t what you said about him last time.’

Denison decided against making gratuitous judgements. ‘How did you know I was here?’ he asked.

‘I got it out of Andrews,’ she said. ‘When he told me you were in Scandinavia I knew you’d be here or in Helsinki.’ She seemed suddenly nervous. ‘Now I’m not sure I should have come.’

Denison realized he was standing over her. He sat in the armchair and, perhaps in response, she stretched out on the bed. ‘Why not?’ he asked.

‘You can’t be serious when you ask that.’ Her voice was bitter. ‘I still remember the flaming row we had two years ago – and when you didn’t remember my twenty-first birthday I knew you hadn’t forgotten. But, of course, you didn’t forget my birthday – you never forget anything.’

He was getting into deep water. ‘Two years is a long time,’ he said platitudinously. He would have to learn how to speak like a politician – saying a lot and meaning nothing.

‘You’ve changed,’ she said. ‘You’re … you’re milder.’

That would never do. ‘I can still be acid when I want to be.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps I’m just becoming older and, maybe, wiser.’

‘You always were wise,’ said Lyn. ‘If only you weren’t so bloody right all the time. Anyway, I wanted to tell you something to your face. I was disappointed when I found you weren’t in England, so I rushed over here.’ She hesitated. ‘Give me a cigarette.’

‘I’ve stopped smoking.’

She stared at him. ‘You have changed.’

‘Temporarily,’ he said, and stretched out his hand to open a drawer in the dressing-table. He took out the gold cigarette case and the lighter and offered her a cigarette. ‘I’ve had a bad head cold.’

She took a cigarette and he lit it. ‘That never stopped you before.’ She drew on the cigarette nervously and blew a plume of smoke. ‘I suppose you’re surprised I’m not smoking a joint.’

Denison suspected that he was encountering something of which hitherto he had only heard – the generation gap. He said, ‘Stop talking nonsense, Lyn. What’s on your mind?’

‘Direct and to the point as usual. All right – I’ve taken my degree.’

She looked at him expectantly and he was aware that she had dropped a bombshell. How he was supposed to react to it he did not know, but the damned thing had better be defused carefully. However, taking a degree was usually a matter for congratulation, so he said, ‘That’s good news, Lyn.’

She regarded him warily. ‘You mean it?’

‘It’s the best news I’ve heard for a long time.’

She seemed relieved. ‘Mother thought it was silly. She said that with all the money I’m going to have why should I worry about working – especially with a lot of snotty-nosed East End kids. You know what she’s like. And the Bore didn’t care one way or another.’ For a moment she sounded pathetic. ‘Do you really mean it?’

‘Of course I do.’ He found he was really glad for her and that put sincerity into his voice.

‘Oh, Daddy; I’m so glad!’ She scrambled off the bed and went to her bag. ‘Look what it says in here. I had to get a new passport, anyway.’ She opened the passport and displayed it ‘Occupation – teacher!’ she said proudly.

He looked up. ‘Was it a good degree?’

She made a wry face. ‘Middling-good.’ There was no smile on her face now. ‘I suppose you think a Meyrick should have passed with honours.’

Mentally he damned Meyrick who, apparently, set a superhuman standard. This girl was set on a hair trigger and his slightest word could cause an explosion in which somebody would get hurt – probably Lyn. ‘I’m very glad you’ve got your degree,’ he said evenly. ‘Where are you going to teach?’

The tension eased from her and she lay on the bed again. ‘First I need experience,’ she said seriously. ‘General experience. Then I want to specialize. After that, if I’m going to have a lot of money I might as well put it to use.’

‘How?’

‘I’ll have to know more about what I’m doing before I can tell you that.’

Denison wondered how this youthful idealism would stand up to the battering of the world. Still, a lot could be done with enthusiasm and money. He smiled, and said, ‘You seem to have settled on a lifetime plan. Is there room in the programme for marriage and a family?’

‘Of course; but he’ll have to be the right man – he’ll have to want what I want.’ She shrugged. ‘So far no one like that has come my way. The men at university could be divided into two classes; the stodges who are happy with the present system, and the idealists who aren’t. The stodges are already working out their retirement pensions before they get a job and the idealists are so damned naive and impractical. Neither of them suit me.’

‘Someone will come along who will,’ predicted Denison.

‘How can you be so sure?’

He laughed. ‘How do you suppose the population explosion came about? Men and women usually get together somehow. It’s in the nature of the animal.’

She put out her cigarette and lay back and closed her eyes. ‘I’m prepared to wait.’

‘My guess is that you won’t have to wait long.’ She did not respond and he regarded her intently. She had fallen asleep as readily as a puppy might, which was not surprising considering she had been up all night. So had he, but sleep was the last thing he could afford.

He put on his jacket and took the keys from the zippered compartment of her bag. In the lobby he saw two suitcases standing before the desk and, after checking to make sure they were Lyn’s, he said to the porter, ‘I’d like these taken to my daughter’s room. What’s the number?’

‘Did she have a reservation, Mr Meyrick?’

‘It’s possible.’

The porter checked and took down a key. ‘Room four-thirty. I’ll take the bags up.’

In Lyn’s room Denison tipped the porter and put the two cases on the bed as soon as the door closed. He took out the keys and unlocked them and searched them quickly, trying not to disturb the contents too much. There was little that was of value to him directly, but there were one or two items which cast a light on Lyn Meyrick. There was a photograph of himself – or, rather, of Harry Meyrick – in a leather case. The opposing frame was empty. In a corner of one suitcase was a small Teddy-bear, tattered with much childish loving and presumably retained as a mascot. In the other suitcase he found two textbooks, one on the theory and practice of teaching, the other on child psychology; both heavyweights, the pages sprinkled with diagrams and graphs.

He closed and locked the suitcases and put them on the rack, then went down to his own room. As the lift door opened on to the third floor he saw Armstrong just stepping out of the other lift. Armstrong held out an envelope. ‘Mr Carey told me to give you this.’

Denison ripped open the envelope and scanned the sparse typescript on the single sheet. The only thing it told him that he had not learned already was that Lyn Meyrick’s sport was gymnastics. ‘Carey will have to do better than this,’ he said curtly.

‘We’re doing the best we can,’ said Armstrong. ‘We’ll get more later in the day when people have woken up in England.’

‘Keep it coming,’ said Denison. ‘And don’t forget to remind Carey that I’m still waiting for an explanation.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ said Armstrong.

‘Another thing,’ said Denison. ‘She said she’d find me either here in Oslo or in Helsinki in Finland. That baffled me until I realized I don’t know a bloody thing about Meyrick. Carey mentioned a dossier on Meyrick – I want to see it.’

‘I don’t think that will be possible,’ said Armstrong hesitantly. ‘You’re not cleared for security.’

Denison speared him with a cold eye. ‘You bloody fool!’ he said quietly. ‘Right now I am your security – and don’t forget to tell Carey that, too.’ He walked past Armstrong and up the corridor to his room.

TWELVE

Carey walked past the Oslo City Hall in the warm mid-afternoon sunshine and inspected the statuary with a sardonic eye. Each figure represented a different trade and the whole, no doubt, was supposed to represent the Dignity of Labour. He concluded that the Oslo City Fathers must have been socialist at one time.

He sat on a bench and looked out over the harbour and Oslofjord. A ship slid quietly by – the ferry bound for Copenhagen – and there was a constant coming and going of smaller, local ferries bound for Bygdøy, Ingierstrand and other places on the fjord. Camera-hung tourists strolled by and a tour bus stopped, disgorging more of them.

McCready walked up and sat on the bench. Carey did not look at him but said dreamily, ‘Once my job was easy – just simple eyeball stuff. That was back in the days when Joshua sent his spies into the land of Caanan. Then the bloody scientists got busy and ballsed the whole thing up.’

McCready said nothing; he had encountered Carey in this mood before and knew there was nothing to do but wait until Carey got it off his chest.

‘Do you realize the state we’ve got ourselves into now?’ asked Carey rhetorically. ‘I think you’re George McCready, but I could be wrong. What’s more, you could think you’re George McCready and, if Harding is to be believed, still be wrong. How the hell am I supposed to cope with a situation like that?’

He disregarded McCready’s opening mouth. ‘The bloody boffins are lousing up the whole damned world,’ he said violently, and pointed towards the line of statuary. ‘Look at that crowd of working stiffs. There’s not a trade represented there that isn’t obsolete or obsolescent. Pretty soon they’ll put up a statue of me; there’ll be a plaque saying “Intelligence agent, Mark II” and my job’ll be farmed out to a hot-shot computer. Where’s Denison?’

‘Asleep in the hotel.’

‘And the girl?’

‘Also asleep – in her own room.’

‘If he’s had five minutes’ sleep that’s five minutes more than I’ve had. Let’s go and wake the poor bastard up. Mrs Hansen will join us at the hotel.’

He stood up, and McCready said, ‘How much are you going to tell him?’

‘As much as I have to and no more,’ said Carey shortly. ‘Which may be more than I want to tell him. He’s already putting the screws on me through young Ian. He wants to see Meyrick’s dossier.’

‘You can’t expect him to carry out an impersonation without knowing something of Meyrick,’ said McCready reasonably.

‘Why did that damned girl have to turn up?’ grumbled Carey. ‘As though we don’t have enough trouble. I had a row with Harding this morning.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘George – I have no option. With Meyrick gone I have to use Denison. I’ll play fair; I’ll tell him the truth – maybe not all of it, but what I tell him will be true – and let him make up his own mind. And if he wants out that’s my hard luck.’

McCready noticed the reservation and shook his head. The truth, in Carey’s hands, could take on a chameleon-like quality. Denison did not stand a chance.

Carey said, ‘Something Iredale told me gave me the shudders. This silicone stuff that was rammed into Denison’s face is a polymer; it’s injected in liquid form and then it hardens in the tissues to the consistency of fat – and it’s permanent. If Denison wants to get his own face back it will be a major surgical operation – they’ll have to take his face apart to scrape the stuff out.’

McCready grimaced. ‘I take it that’s a part of the truth you’re not going to tell him.’

‘That – and a few other titbits from Harding.’ Carey stopped. ‘Well, here’s the hotel. Let’s get it over with.’

Denison woke from a deep sleep to hear hammering on his door. He got up groggily, put on the bathrobe, and opened the door. Carey said, ‘Sorry to waken you, but it’s about time we had a talk.’

Denison blinked at him. ‘Come in.’ He turned and went into the bathroom, and Carey, McCready and Mrs Hansen walked through into the bedroom. When Denison reappeared he was wiping his face with a towel. He stared at Diana Hansen. ‘I might have known.’

‘You two know each other,’ said Carey. ‘Mrs Hansen was keeping tabs on Meyrick.’ He drew back the curtain, letting sunlight spill into the room, and tossed an envelope on to the dressing-table. ‘Some more stuff on the girl. We have quite a few people in England running about in circles on your behalf.’

‘Not mine,’ corrected Denison. ‘Yours!’ He put down the towel. ‘Any moment from now she’s going to start playing “Do you remember when?” No information you can give me will help in that sort of guessing game.’

‘You’ll just have to develop a bad memory,’ said McCready.

‘I need to know more about Meyrick,’ insisted Denison.

‘And I’m here to tell you.’ Carey pulled the armchair forward. ‘Sit down and get comfortable. This is going to take a while.’ He sat in the other chair and pulled out a stubby pipe which he started to fill. McCready and Diana Hansen sat on the spare bed.

Carey struck a match and puffed at his pipe. ‘Before we start on Meyrick you ought to know that we discovered how, and when, the switch was made. We figured how we’d do a thing like that ourselves and then checked on it. You were brought in on a stretcher on July 8 and put in room three-sixty-three, just across the corridor. Meyrick was probably knocked out by a Mickey Finn in his nightly Ovaltine or something like that, and the switch was made in the wee, small hours.’

‘Meyrick was taken out next morning before you woke up,’ said McCready. ‘He was put into an ambulance, the hotel management co-operating, and driven to Pier Two at Vippetangen where he was put aboard a ship sailing to Copenhagen. Another ambulance was waiting there which took him God knows where.’

Carey said, ‘If you’d contacted the Embassy as soon as it happened we’d have been able to work all that out so damned fast that we could have been waiting at Copenhagen.’

‘For God’s sake!’ said Denison. ‘Would you have believed me any the quicker? It took you long enough to check anyway with your doctor and your tame psychiatrist.’

‘He’s right,’ said McCready.

‘Do you think that’s why it was done this way? To buy time?’

‘Could be,’ said McCready. ‘It worked, didn’t it?’

‘Oh, it worked all right. What puzzles me is what happened at the Spiralen the next day.’ Carey turned to Denison. ‘Have you got the doll and the note?’

Denison opened a drawer and handed them to Carey. He unfolded the single deckle-edged sheet and read the note aloud. ‘“Your Drammen Dolly awaits you at Spiraltoppen. Early morning. July 10.”’ He lifted the paper and sniffed delicately. ‘Scented, too. I thought that went out in the 1920s.’

Diana Hansen said, ‘This is the first I’ve heard of a note. I know about the doll, but not the note.’

‘It’s what took Denison to the Spiralen,’ said McCready.

‘Could I see it?’ said Diana, and Carey passed it to her. She read it and said pensively, ‘It could have been …’

‘What is it, Mrs Hansen?’ said Carey sharply.

‘Well, when Meyrick and I went to Drammen last week we lunched at the Spiraltoppen Restaurant.’ She looked a little embarrassed. ‘I had to go to the lavatory and I was away rather a long time. I had stomach trouble – some kind of diarrhoea.’

McCready grinned. ‘Even Intelligence agents are human,’ he said kindly.

‘When I got back Meyrick was talking to a woman and they seemed to be getting on well together. When I came up she went away.’

‘That’s all?’ asked Carey.

‘That’s all.’

He regarded her thoughtfully. ‘I think there’s something you’re not telling us, Mrs Hansen.’

‘Well, it’s something about Meyrick. I was with him quite a lot during the last few weeks and he gave me the impression of being something of a womanizer – perhaps even a sexual athlete.’

A chuckle escaped from McCready. ‘Did he proposition you?’

‘He had as many arms as an octopus,’ she said. ‘I thought I wasn’t going to last out this operation without being raped. I think he’d go for anything on two legs that wore skirts, with the possible exception of Scotsmen – and I wouldn’t be too sure of that.’

‘Well, well,’ said Carey. ‘How little we know of our fellow men.’

Denison said, ‘He was divorced twice.’

‘So you think this note was to set up an assignation.’

‘Yes,’ said Diana.

‘But Meyrick wouldn’t have fallen for that, no matter how horny he was,’ said Carey. ‘He was too intelligent a man. When you and he went to Drammen last week he checked with me according to instructions. Since you were going with him I gave him the okay.’

‘Did Meyrick know Diana was working for you?’ asked Denison.

Carey shook his head. ‘No – we like to play loose. But Meyrick didn’t find the note.’ He pointed his pipe stem at Denison. ‘You did – and you went to the Spiralen. Tell me, did the men who attacked you give the impression that they wanted to capture or to kill you?’

‘I didn’t stop to ask them,’ said Denison acidly.

‘Um,’ said Carey, and lapsed into thought, his pipe working overtime. After a while he stirred, and said, ‘All right, Mrs Hansen; I think that’s all.’

She nodded briefly and left the room, and Carey glanced at McCready. ‘I suppose we must tell him about Meyrick.’

McCready grinned. ‘I don’t see how you can get out of it.’

‘I have to know,’ said Denison, ‘if I’m going to carry on with this impersonation.’

‘I trust Mrs Hansen and she doesn’t know,’ said Carey. ‘Not the whole story. I work on the “need to know” principle.’ He sighed. ‘I suppose you need to know, so here goes. The first thing to know about Meyrick is that he’s a Finn.’

‘With a name like that?’

‘Oddly enough, it’s his own name. In 1609 the English sent a diplomat to the court of Michael, the first Romanov Czar, to negotiate a trade treaty and to open up the fur trade. The courtiers of James I had to get their bloody ermine somewhere. The name of the diplomat was John Merick – or Meyrick – and he was highly philoprogenitive. He left by-blows all over the Baltic and Harry Meyrick is the end result of that.’

‘It seems that Harry takes after his ancestor,’ commented McCready.

Carey ignored him. ‘Of course, Meyrick’s name was a bit different in Finnish, but when he went to England he reverted to the family name. But that’s by the way.’ He laid down his pipe. ‘More to the point, Meyrick is a Karelian Finn; to be pedantic, if he’d stayed at home in the town where he was born he’d now be a Russian. How good is your modern history?’