LITMIR.BIZ

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super hush-hush assignment to Honkers. Forty-eight hours’ notice is all they gave him. So he didn’t let you know about the party? Well, it was all a rush for him.’

      ‘What would Hong Kong need him for?’

      ‘No one knows, not even Charles. Hurry and wait. That’s how it goes isn’t it?’

      ‘Maybe the Deputy just wanted to get rid of him,’ I suggested.

      Dicky’s eyes glittered. After his little session on the carpet it probably made him wonder if he might not one day find himself on a fast plane to distant places. ‘Get rid of Charles, why?’

      ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said.

      ‘No. Charles is a good sort.’

      Unbid, Dicky’s secretary arrived with a large silver-plated tray bearing the Spode chinaware and a large pot of freshly ground coffee made just the way Dicky liked it. I suppose she hoped it would put Dicky into a better frame of mind as sometimes a heavy shot of caffeine did. He bent over it and gave low murmurs of approval before pouring some coffee for himself. Then he went and sat down behind the big rosewood table that he used as his desk before he tasted the coffee appreciatively. ‘Damn good!’ he pronounced and drank some more. ‘Pour yourself a cup,’ he said when he was quite sure it was okay.

      I took one of the warmed cups, poured some for myself and added cream. It always came with cream, even though Dicky drank his coffee black. I often wondered why. For a moment we drank our coffee in silence. I had the feeling that Dicky needed five minutes to recover from his meeting.

      ‘He’s become an absolute despot lately,’ said Dicky at last. Having devoured a large cup of coffee he took a small cigar from his pocket, lit it and blew smoke. ‘I wish I could make him understand that it’s not like running his law firm. I can’t get a book down from the shelf and read the answers to him.’

      ‘He’ll get the hang of it,’ I said.

      ‘In time, he will,’ agreed Dicky. ‘But by then I’ll be old and grey.’ That might be quite a long time, for Dicky was young and fit and two years my junior. He flicked ash into the big cut-glass ashtray on his desk and kept looking at the carpet as if lost in thought.

      I pulled my paper-work from its cardboard folder and said, ‘Do you want to run through this stuff?’ I brandished it at him but he continued to stare at the carpet.

      ‘He’s talking about vertical reorganization.’

      I said, ‘What’s that?’

      Dicky, short-listed for the Stalin Prize in office politics, said, ‘Jesus Christ, Bernard. Vertical planning! Dividing the German Desk up into groups region by region. He told me that I’d have Berlin, as if that would make me overjoyed. Berlin! With other desks for Bonn and Hamburg and so on. A separate unit would liaise with the Americans in Munich. Can you imagine it!’

      ‘That idea has been kicking around for ages,’ I said. I began to sort out the work I’d brought for him. I knew that getting him to look at it would be difficult in his present agitated mood, so I put the papers that required a signature on top. There were five of them.

      ‘It’s ridiculous!’ said Dicky so loudly that his secretary looked in through the door to see if everything was all right. She was a new secretary or she would have made herself scarce when there was a chance of encountering Dicky’s little tantrums.

      ‘It will happen sooner or later I suppose,’ I said. I got my pen out so that Dicky could sign while he talked about something else. Sometimes it was easier like that.

      ‘You’d heard about it before?’ said Dicky incredulously, suddenly realizing what I’d said.

      ‘Oh, yes. A year or more ago but it had some other name then.’

      ‘Ye gods, Bernard! I wish you’d told me.’

      I put the papers on his desk and gave him the ballpoint pen and watched him sign his name. I hadn’t heard of the vertical planning scheme before, of course, but guessed that the Deputy had simply invented something that would goad Dicky into more energetic action, and I thought it better not to let the old boy down. ‘And these you should look at,’ I said, indicating the most important ones.

      ‘You’ll have to go and see Frank,’ he said as he signed the final one and plucked at the corners of the rest of the stuff to see if anything looked interesting enough to read.

      ‘Okay,’ I said. He looked up at me. He’d expected me to object to a trip to Berlin but he’d caught me at a good time. It was a month or more since I’d been to Berlin and there were reasons both official and social for a trip there. ‘And what do I tell Frank?’ I wanted to get it clear because we had this absurd system in which Dicky and Frank Harrington – the Berlin ‘resident’ and as old as Methuselah – had equal authority.

      He looked up from the carpet and said, ‘I don’t want to rub Frank up the wrong way. It’s not up to me to tell him how to run his Berlin Field Unit. Frank knows more about the operations side of his bailiwick than all the rest of us put together.’ That was all true, of course, but it wasn’t often the line Dicky took.

      ‘We’re talking about Bizet, I take it?’

      ‘Right. Frank may want to put someone in. After all, Frankfurt an der Oder is only a stone’s throw from where he is.’

      ‘It’s not the distance, Dicky. It’s …’

      He immediately held up his hand in defence. ‘Sure. I know I know I know.’

      ‘Are you hoping he’ll have done something already?’

      ‘I just want his advice,’ said Dicky.

      ‘Well, we both know what Frank’s advice will be,’ I said. ‘Do nothing. Just the same advice that he gives us about everything.’

      ‘Frank’s been there a long time,’ said Dicky, who had survived many a crisis and reshuffle on ‘do nothing’ policies.

      I made sure Dicky had signed everything in the right place. Then I drank the coffee and left it at that for a bit. But this seemed a good opportunity to quiz him about the Prettyman business. ‘Remember Prettyman?’ I said as casually as I could manage.

      ‘Should I?’

      ‘Jim Prettyman: ended up in “black boxes”. Left and went to America.’

      ‘Codes and Ciphers, downstairs?’ It was a not a region into which Dicky ever ventured.

      ‘He was on the Special Operations committee with Bret. He was always trying to organize holidays where you could look at tombs and no one ever put their name down. Wonderful snooker player. Don’t you remember how we went to Big Henty’s one night and he made some fantastic break?’

      ‘I’ve never been to Big Henty’s in my life.’

      ‘Of course you have, Dicky. Lots of times. Jim Prettyman. A young fellow who got that job in Washington.’

      ‘Sometimes I think you must know everyone in this building,’ said Dicky.

      ‘I thought you knew him,’ I said lamely.

      ‘A word to the wise, Bernard.’ Dicky was holding a finger aloft as if testing for the direction of the wind. ‘If I was in this room talking to you about this Prettyman fellow you’d change the subject to talk about Frank Harrington and the Bizet business. No offence intended, old chum, but it’s true. Think about it.’

      ‘I’m sure you’re right, Dicky.’

      ‘You must try and concentrate upon the subject in hand. Have you ever done any yoga?’ He pushed aside the papers that I’d suggested he should read.

      ‘No, Dicky,’ I said.

      ‘I did a lot of yoga at one time.’ He ran a finger across the papers as if reading the contents list. ‘It trains the mind: helps

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