Our Man In Havana (8 page)

INTERLUDE IN LONDON

In the basement of the big steel and concrete building near Maida Vale a light over a door changed from red to green, and Hawthorne entered. He had left his elegance behind in the Caribbean and wore a grey flannel suit which had seen better days. At home he didn’t have to keep up appearances; he was part of grey January London.

The Chief sat behind a desk on which an enormous green marble paper-weight held down a single sheet of paper. A half-drunk glass of milk, a bottle of grey pills and a packet of Kleenex stood by the black telephone. (The red one was for scrambling.) His black morning coat, black tie and black monocle hiding the left eye gave him the appearance of an undertaker, just as the basement room had the effect of a vault, a mausoleum, a grave.

‘You wanted me, sir?’

‘Just a gossip, Hawthorne. Just a gossip.’ It was as though a mute were gloomily giving tongue after the day’s burials were over. ‘When did you get back, Hawthorne?’

‘A week ago, sir. I’ll be returning to Jamaica on Friday.’

‘All going well?’

‘I think we’ve got the Caribbean sewn up now, sir,’ Hawthorne said.

‘Martinique?’

‘No difficulties there, sir. You remember at Fort de France we are working with the Deuxième Bureau.’

‘Only up to a point?’

‘Oh yes, of course, only up to a point. Haiti was more of a
problem,
but 59200 stroke 2 is proving energetic. I was more uncertain at first about 59200 stroke 5.’

‘Stroke five?’

‘Our man in Havana, sir. I didn’t have much choice there, and at first he didn’t seem very keen on the job. A bit stubborn.’

‘That kind sometimes develops best.’

‘Yes, sir. I was a little worried too by his contacts. (There’s a German called Hasselbacher, but we haven’t found any traces of him yet.) However he seems to be going ahead. We got a request for extra expenses just as I was leaving Kingston.’

‘Always a good sign.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Shows the imagination is working.’

‘Yes. He wanted to become a member of the Country Club. Haunt of the millionaires, you know. Best source for political and economic information. The subscription’s very high, about ten times the size of White’s, but I’ve allowed it.’

‘You did right. How are his reports?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, we haven’t had any yet, but of course it will take time for him to organize his contacts. Perhaps I rather over-emphasized the need of security.’

‘You can’t. No use having a live wire if it fuses.’

‘As it happens, he’s rather advantageously placed. Very good business contacts – a lot of them with Government officials and leading Ministers.’

‘Ah,’ the Chief said. He took off the black monocle and began to polish it with a piece of Kleenex. The eye that he disclosed was made of glass; pale blue and unconvincing, it might have come out of a doll which said ‘Mama’.

‘What’s his business?’

‘Oh, he imports, you know. Machinery, that sort of thing.’ It was always important to one’s own career to employ agents who were men of good social standing. The petty details on the secret file dealing with the store in Lamparilla Street would never, in ordinary circumstances, reach this basement-room.

‘Why isn’t he already a member of the Country Club?’

‘Well, I think he’s been rather a recluse of recent years. Bit of domestic trouble.’

‘Doesn’t run after women, I hope?’

‘Oh, nothing of that sort, sir. His wife left him. Went off with an American.’

‘I suppose he’s not anti-American? Havana’s not the place for any prejudice like that. We have to work with them – only up to a point of course.’

‘Oh, he’s not at all that way, sir. He’s a very fair-minded man, very balanced. Took his divorce well and keeps his child in a Catholic school according to his wife’s wishes. I’m told he sends her greeting-telegrams at Christmas. I think we’ll find his reports when they do come in are a hundred per cent reliable.’

‘Rather touching that, about the child, Hawthorne. Well, give him a prod, so that we can judge his usefulness. If he’s all you say he is, we might consider enlarging his staff. Havana could be a key-spot. The Communists always go where there’s trouble. How does he communicate?’

‘I’ve arranged for him to send reports by the weekly bag to Kingston in duplicate. I keep one and send one to London. I’ve given him the book code for cables. He sends them through the Consulate.’

‘They won’t like that.’

‘I’ve told them it’s temporary.’

‘I would be in favour of establishing a radio-unit if he proves to be a good man. He could expand his office-staff, I suppose?’

‘Oh, of course. At least – you understand it’s not a big office, sir. Old-fashioned. You know how these merchant-adventurers make do.’

‘I know the type, Hawthorne. Small scrubby desk. Half a dozen men in an outer office meant to hold two. Out-of-date accounting machines. Woman-secretary who is completing forty years with the firm.’

Hawthorne now felt able to relax; the Chief had taken charge.
Even
if one day he read the secret file, the words would convey nothing to him. The small shop for vacuum cleaners had been drowned beyond recovery in the tide of the Chief’s literary imagination. Agent 59200/5 was established.

‘It’s all part of the man’s character,’ the Chief explained to Hawthorne, as though he and not Hawthorne had pushed open the door in Lamparilla Street. ‘A man who has always learnt to count the pennies and to risk the pounds. That’s why he’s not a member of the Country Club – nothing to do with the broken marriage. You’re a romantic, Hawthorne. Women have come and gone in his life; I suspect they never meant as much to him as his work. The secret of successfully using an agent is to understand him. Our man in Havana belongs – you might say – to the Kipling age. Walking with kings – how does it go? – and keeping your virtue, crowds and the common touch. I expect somewhere in that ink-stained desk of his there’s an old penny note-book of black wash-leather in which he kept his first accounts – a quarter gross of india-rubbers, six boxes of steel nibs …’

‘I don’t think he goes quite as far back as steel nibs, sir.’

The chief sighed and replaced the black lens. The innocent eye had gone back into hiding at the hint of opposition.

‘Details don’t matter, Hawthorne,’ the Chief said with irritation. ‘But if you are to handle him successfully you’ll have to find that penny note-book. I speak metaphorically.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘This business about being a recluse because he lost his wife – it’s a wrong appreciation, Hawthorne. A man like that reacts quite differently. He doesn’t show his loss, he doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. If your appreciation were correct, why wasn’t he a member of the club before his wife died?’

‘She left him.’

‘Left him? Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure, sir.’

‘Ah, she never found that penny note-book. Find it, Hawthorne, and he’s yours for life. What were we talking about?’

‘The size of his office, sir. It won’t be very easy for him to absorb many in the way of new staff.’

‘We’ll weed out the old ones gradually. Pension off that old secretary of his …’

‘As a matter of fact …’

‘Of course this is just speculation, Hawthorne. He may not be the right man after all. Sterling stuff, these old merchant-kings, but sometimes they can’t see far enough beyond the counting-house to be of use to people like ourselves. We’ll judge by his first reports, but it’s always well to plan a step ahead. Have a word with Miss Jenkinson and see if she has a Spanish speaker in her pool.’

Hawthorne rose in the elevator floor by floor from the basement: a rocket’s-eye view of the world. Western Europe sank below him: the Near East: Latin America. The filing cabinets stood around Miss Jenkinson like the pillars of a temple round an ageing oracle. She alone was known by her surname. For some inscrutable reason of security every other inhabitant in the building went by a Christian name. She was dictating to a secretary when Hawthorne entered, ‘Memo to A.O. Angelica has been transferred to C.5 with an increase of salary to £8 a week. Please see that this increase goes through at once. To anticipate your objections I would point out that Angelica is now approaching the financial level of a bus-conductress.’

‘Yes?’ Miss Jenkinson asked sharply. ‘Yes?’

‘The Chief told me to see you.’

‘I have nobody to spare.’

‘We don’t want anybody at the moment. We’re just discussing possibilities.’

‘Ethel, dear, telephone to D.2 and say I will not have my secretaries kept after 7 p.m. except in a national emergency. If a war has broken out or is likely to break out, say that the secretaries’ pool should have been informed.’

‘We may be needing a Spanish-speaking secretary in the Caribbean.’

‘There’s no one I can spare,’ Miss Jenkinson said mechanically.

‘Havana – a small station, agreeable climate.’

‘How big is the staff?’

‘At present one man.’

‘I’m not a marriage bureau,’ Miss Jenkinson said.

‘A middle-aged man with a child of sixteen.’

‘Married?’

‘You could call him that,’ Hawthorne said vaguely.

‘Is he stable?’

‘Stable?’

‘Reliable, safe, emotionally secure?’

‘Oh yes, yes, you may be certain of that. He’s one of those old-fashioned merchant-types,’ Hawthorne said, picking up where the Chief had left off. ‘Built up the business from nothing. Uninterested in women. You might say he’d gone beyond sex.’

‘No one goes beyond sex,’ Miss Jenkinson said. ‘I’m responsible for the girls I send abroad.’

‘I thought you had nobody available.’

‘Well,’ Miss Jenkinson said, ‘I might possibly, under certain circumstances, let you have Beatrice.’

‘Beatrice, Miss Jenkinson!’ a voice exclaimed from behind the filing cabinets.

‘I said Beatrice, Ethel, and I mean Beatrice.’

‘But, Miss Jenkinson …’

‘Beatrice needs some practical experience – that is really all that is amiss. The post would suit her. She is not too young. She is fond of children.’

‘What this station will need,’ Hawthorne said, ‘is someone who speaks Spanish. The love of children is not essential.’

‘Beatrice is half-French. She speaks French really better than she does English.’

‘I said Spanish.’

‘It’s much the same. They’re both Latin tongues.’

‘Perhaps I could see her, have a word with her. Is she fully trained?’

‘She’s a very good encoder and she’s finished a course in
microphotography
at Ashley Park. Her shorthand is weak, but her typewriting is excellent. She has a good knowledge of electrodynamics.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I’m not sure, but a fuse box holds no terrors for her.’

‘She’d be good with vacuum cleaners then?’

‘She’s a secretary, not a domestic help.’

A file drawer slammed shut. ‘Take her or leave her,’ Miss Jenkinson said. Hawthorne had the impression that she would willingly have referred to Beatrice as ‘it’.

‘She’s the only one you can suggest?’

‘The only one.’

Again a file drawer was noisily closed. ‘Ethel,’ Miss Jenkinson said, ‘unless you can relieve your feelings more silently, I shall return you to D. 3.’

Hawthorne went thoughtfully away; he had the impression that Miss Jenkinson with considerable agility had sold him something she didn’t herself believe in – a gold brick or a small dog – bitch, rather.