High Jinx (19 page)

Only one tenant called down to Brian Larwill at the porter's office during the interval to complain about the power failure. The switchboard revealed that it was not apartment 516 calling in. The porter told him that the problem was being looked into, that he was confident the breakdown would be corrected quickly. As indeed it was.

A few minutes after two in the afternoon of the same day, Blackford Oakes, Superintendent Roberts, and Jimmy Moser sat in Brian Larwill's little bedroom behind his office. At a nod from Roberts, Blackford radioed on his walkie-talkie to the electrician in the basement, standing by the controls.

‘Ready Op Ox, go.'

On receipt of the signal, the electrician flipped the switch and the electricity to apartment 516 was cut off.

They waited in silence for the inevitable telephone call. Presumably it would take more than the few minutes such as had been endured that morning without protest, before apartment 516 called in to complain.

They waited, nervously.

The call came seven minutes after the blackout. On the switchboard, number 516 flashed on. Superintendent Roberts's recording machine taped the exchange.

‘Is this Mr. Larwill?… Ah yes. Well, Mr. Larwill, the electricity has gone off in my apartment. It happened also this morning, but the lights came back on in about five minutes. In my business—I am Mr. Editta, and a professional photographer, you may recall—undependable electricity is very serious. Is the whole building without electricity?'

Brian Larwill said not so far as he knew, having received no other complaints. But he would telephone the occupants of apartments 514 and 518 and see if their lights were off. ‘Whatever the problem, Mr. Editta, we will check on it and call you back.'

He waited five minutes and then dialed 516. ‘It appears to be a problem in your place alone, sir. I mean, localised there; 514 and 518 are getting current. I shall send an electrician up to have a look.'

There was a moment's pause. ‘Surely the problem has got to lie elsewhere, Mr. Larwill? I have checked our fuse box in the kitchen, and the fuses are in good condition.'

‘Well, sir, I'll check with the electrician before I send him up. I am not an electrical expert myself, but I don't see how the difficulty could be down here if your neighbours are getting power. Let me talk to him and call you back.'

They had prepared for such a contingency. They would take pains not to show any inappropriate curiosity to visit the apartment. Ten minutes later Larwill dialed 516 again, but this time he said, ‘I'm going to put the electrician on. He can speak to you. Here is Mr. Moser.'

Jimmy Moser took the telephone. ‘Moser 'ere, sir,' Malgamated 'Lectrical Company. Checked below, nothing out of order there—‘as to be a short circuit up where you are. I can come up, sir, but there will be a few minutes' delay. I need to go to the shop and fetch up my toolbox.'

‘Hang on a minute.' Mr. Editta evidently wished to consult someone. In short order he was back on the phone. ‘Very well. But in that case please do hurry up. It is very inconvenient.'

‘Righto, guv. Won't be long.'

Moser waited twenty-five minutes. In his toolbox was a microphone, buried among the expected wires and plugs and tapes and sundry electrical parts. In the little bedroom behind the office, Superintendent Roberts and Blackford Oakes could listen in on the receiver to what was about to happen in number 516.

Jimmy Moser was a short man with a full moustache. He wore a white cotton jacket with deep pockets in which he carried various tools of the trade, and rough brown corduroy trousers. He had spots of grease on his left forehead and over his left arm. In his left hand he carried the large toolbox. In his right, the flashlight, which he held bottom side up.

The ring was answered by a large, dark-haired man wearing a sports shirt and tortoiseshell spectacles. A second man, tall and brawny, was sitting in the corner of the room, his newspaper—in the absence of a functioning reading lamp—angled to receive light from the window. He did not look up when his fellow tenant said, ‘I am Mr. Editta. You are Mr. Moser?'

‘At's right, guv,' said Jimmy Moser, swinging his flashlight about as he spoke and affecting an air faintly dismissive. ‘Sorry about all this. But we'll 'ave it fixed up in a bit. Now, if you'd just show me the fuse box.'

Robert Editta led Moser through the living room and opened the door to the adjacent room. ‘This is my darkroom—my study. Usually'—he pointed to the large window at the far end of the room—‘usually that blind is drawn. But of course right now we need what light we can get.' The window looked out across Grosvenor Square. Large, cumbersome instruments of varied description cluttered up the room. One, pointing toward the window, had the general shape of a cannon and was held in place by metal scaffolding, to the right of which were several large tin receptacles. ‘Enlarger here,' Editta muttered, ducking his head under a wire on which negatives, suspended by clothespegs, were strung out. Jimmy Moser flashed his light about as though to make sure he would not bump into anything and cause a disturbance.

‘Here,' Editta said, opening a door into the kitchen. ‘This is the fuse box.'

Moser shone his flashlight and looked thoughtfully at the fuses, unscrewing them one by one and checking them on his voltmeter. ‘Hmm. These 'ere seem all right. What I need to do now is check the indivigil outlets, see where the trouble is … um … No doubt about it, there's somethin' trippin' up the central power supply. Might as well be systematic and start in the living room.'

Editta seemed fatalistic about it all. ‘Very well.'

They walked back, Moser's flashlight jerking here and there, much as a bobby's truncheon pirouettes about as he does his rounds.

Moser went to the entrance door and said, ‘Right, we'll go clockwise.' He got down on his hands and knees, pulled out the plug that led to a floor lamp, and inserted the prong of his voltmeter into the openings, all the while putting his flashlight to prodigious use. Editta had lost interest, retiring to the desk next to his silent companion and reading, from daylight, the sports pages of the newspaper.

Jimmy Moser moved to the next wall socket. And, a few minutes after testing it, to the socket directly left of where Editta's companion was sitting.

He looked up. ‘Excuse me, guv. I 'ave to ask you to move your chair, just a few inches. There we go.'

In Brian Larwill's bedroom they could hear the sound of a chair grating across the floor, but no voice. Jimmy Moser was clearly attempting to induce Editta's companion to say something.

‘Bit of a bother all this, in'it? You a photographer too?'

‘Get on with your work,' was the abrupt answer.

‘No offence, guvnor,' Jimmy Moser said, involving himself entirely in the test of the circuit. ‘Nothin' wrong 'ere, not that I can see.' And, a few minutes later, ‘This one neither, and that's the last outlet in the living room, Mr. Editta … We'll 'ave to test the outlets in the dark-room. I can find 'em. No need to disturb yourself.'

Editta rose quickly from his chair. ‘No. I will point them out. I—we—must be careful of my equipment.'

And so the tour proceeded. There were half a dozen outlets, one of them reinforced with what appeared to be a large battery complex. ‘Wot's this 'ere, a juice-booster?'

‘Yes. For when I need a very bright light for the enlarger mechanism.'

‘Righto. You see a lot a those these days. But they shouldn't cause any trouble.' Jimmy Moser, again on his hands and knees, plying his flashlight and using the small screwdriver and his voltmeter, said, ‘Aha! I think … I think I've found the bugger. But I'll need to remove the fuses to test it.' He rose, used the flashlight to go back to the kitchen, loosened the fuses, returned to the socket from which the enlarger and its apparatus were fed, and, his head only inches from his toolbox, said bouncily, ‘If I'm right, your lights oughta go on in 'arf a mo.'

In Brian Larwill's bedroom Superintendent Roberts spoke in a husky whisper into the walkie-talkie to the electrician in the basement. ‘Countdown, countdown. When I say go—' his face was turned to Blackford. Blackford, his ear on the little receiver, had his arm held high. He could hear Jimmy's voice sounding a little dimmer as he walked away from the toolbox, where the little microphone lay, to the fuse box.

‘Here we go now, hold your breath.' The word ‘breath' uttered, Oakes brought down his hand sharply, and Superintendent Roberts spoke into the walkie-talkie, ‘Now!'

The lights in the darkroom flashed on.

‘
Well
'en,' said Jimmy Moser, beaming with an I-told-you-so look. ‘There we are. A short circuit in that socket. The wirin' for the booster wasn't quite tight enough. No problem now. I've checked all the others—they're all secure.'

He was putting his tools back in the box, still on his knees. His eyes were suddenly riveted on a pair of stocky brown leather shoes, inches from his face. He looked up into the face of the silent companion of Robert Editta. The man addressed Moser in terse tones.

‘Are you the electrician for this building, Moser?'

‘Our firm looks after this building, guv. I mean, and a lot of other buildings too,' he smiled confidently.

‘Let me see your card.'

‘Pleasure. Just let me …' He closed his toolbox, inserting his flashlight in it. He stood up, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a card.

‘'Ere you are, and at your service, anytime.'

He handed the card over to the large man, but did not wait for him to examine it, heading instead cheerfully to the door, opening it. He said then without turning around:

‘Afternoon, gentlemen.'

Below, in the crowded little bedroom, Blackford Oakes said to Superintendent Roberts, ‘That was Bertram Heath.'

21

The Russian transport landed at Sheremetyevo Airport sometime after three in the morning, and Fleetwood and Alice Goodyear Corbett did not disguise that they were very fatigued. A car was waiting and drove them to the National Hotel, where Bjorn Henningsen had been pre-registered. After establishing that all was in order, Alice, in the presence of the concierge, said a formal good-night. But he caught the little wink. She would call him at noon the following day, she said.

Alistair Fleetwood and the porter carrying his bag entered the lift. The young man languidly pushed the button marked ‘6.' The lift rose and in due course stopped. But when the door slid open it was obvious that the lift had stopped not at the sixth floor but, so to speak, at floor five and a half. Sir Alistair breathed heavily his exasperation. The porter got down on his knees, pushed open the lift door on the fifth floor, and vaulted down to the fifth-floor landing, and signaled to Sir Alistair that he should do the same, first of all pushing out his bag, which the porter caught in his arms. There being no apparent alternative, Sir Alistair Fleetwood got down on his rump and ejected himself, feet first, through the open cavity, leaping four or five feet to the floor. The porter grabbed him on landing, which was quick thinking because otherwise Sir Alistair Fleetwood would have fallen back under the cab and down five and a half flights of lift shaft.

He entered his room wearily, tried to remember whether tipping was frowned on in Moscow, decided he might as well take the risk since his life had, arguably, been saved, so he gave the porter a rouble and inspected his quarters.

The living room was equipped with heavy furniture, two armchairs, one couch, a heavy bureau of sorts, a solid wooden desk, and three lights, none of them bright enough to suit Fleetwood. Well, he would order larger bulbs in the morning. He went into the bedroom next to the living room and looked out on the few lights then still on, in the city he had not seen since finishing his first year at Cambridge. Wearily he began to undress, first removing the beard in front of the mirror and staring fondly at his repristinated face. It had been rather exciting at first, the beard business. He had been slightly dismayed to learn from Alice that it was expected that he should wear the beard everywhere outside his own room, ‘just in case someone is around who knows you or would recognise you—remember you are a very famous man, my darling.' Well, he would certainly not wear his beard when he was with Beria. When in the inner sanctum, he would take it off and put it in his pocket.

He woke earlier than expected. His watch showed nine o'clock. He struggled, unsuccessfully, to recall the Russian he had so doggedly, under discipline, made himself forget. He picked up the telephone and asked for room service. The operator evidently knew only a single word of English, which sounded like, ‘Outzide outzide.' He essayed first French and then German, to no better end, and then the cinders of his Russian. He thought back to procedures followed on his first trip, put on his bathrobe, and peered outside the door. He saw, sitting at a desk opposite the lift doors and the staircase, a matronly woman, and recalled the system of mini-concierges on every floor. He grabbed the key to his suite, put it in the pocket of his dressing gown, and approached the woman: ‘Do you speak English?'

‘I understand,' she said.

‘I wish some breakfast. Can you order it brought to my room?'

‘Downstairs,' she replied. ‘Floor three.'

‘Yes, I am sure you have a nice dining room. But I am asking whether you can have my breakfast brought up to my room.' He was pronouncing his words very slowly.

The woman turned her head back to the newspaper she had been reading and said, ‘Floor three, breakfast.'

With some exasperation he dressed and, eschewing the lift, walked down to the third floor. He saw, on the right, the glass door that opened onto a cafeteria. He walked in. A dozen men and women were seated here and there, some of them talking, some reading the paper, others doing nothing except eating and drinking their tea. His hand instinctively ran to his chin: yes, he had remembered to put on his beard. He picked up a tray and walked along the open platters, surveying the choice of fare. There was cheese, and bread, and a hot cereal, and ham, and what looked like goose liver, and cold hard-boiled eggs. He saw no fruit, and so took cheese, ham, a hard roll, paused over the coffee, deciding instead to take tea. He paid the bill and considered for a moment the option of taking the tray back to his suite, deciding against it lest the cashier make a fuss. And in any event, Sir Alistair Fleetwood was not used to going up three flights of hotel stairs with a tray of food as if he were a hotel waiter.