LITMIR.BIZ

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I said.

      ‘I must do my hair. Give me five minutes.’

      ‘I’ll give you six,’ I said. She had been thinking about her hair.

      We lunched at the Trattoria Terrazza: Tagliatelle alla carbonara, Osso buco, coffee. Pol Roger throughout. Mario complimented me on having a birthday and kissed Jean to celebrate it. He snapped his fingers and up came Strega. I snapped my fingers and up came more Pol Roger. We sat there, drinking champagne with Strega chasers, talking, snapping fingers and discovering ultimate truth and our own infinite wisdom. We got back to the office at three forty-five and I realized for the first time how dangerous that loose lino on the stairs can be.

      As I entered my office the intercom was buzzing like a trapped bluebottle. ‘Yes,’ I said.

      ‘Right away,’ said Dawlish, my boss.

      ‘Right away, sir,’ I said, slowly and carefully.

      Dawlish had the only room in the building with two windows. It was a comfortable room, although overcrowded with pieces of not very valuable antique furniture. There was a smell of wet overcoats. Dawlish was a meticulous man who looked like an Edwardian coroner. His hair was grey moving towards white and his hands long and thin. When he read he moved his fingertips across the page as though getting a finer understanding from the sense of touch. He looked up from his desk.

      ‘Was that you falling down the stairs?’

      ‘I stumbled,’ I said. ‘It’s the snow on my shoes.’

      ‘Of course it is, my boy,’ said Dawlish. We both stared out of the window; the snow was falling faster, and great white snakes of it were wriggling along the gutter, for it was still dry enough to be lifted by the wind.

      ‘I’m just sending another 378 file to the PM. I hate this clearance business. It’s so easy to slip up.’

      ‘That’s true,’ I said, and was pleased that I didn’t have to sign that file.

      ‘What do you think?’ asked Dawlish. ‘Do you think that that boy is a security risk?’

      The 378 file was a periodic review of the loyalty of S.1s – important chemists, engineers etc. – but I knew that Dawlish just wanted to think aloud, so I grunted.

      ‘You know the one I’m worried about. You know him.’

      ‘I’ve never handled his file,’ and as long as choice was concerned I’d make damned certain I didn’t. I knew that Dawlish had another nasty little bomb called the 378 file sub-section 14, which was a file about trade-union officials. At the slightest show of intelligent interest I would find that file on my desk.

      ‘Personally: what do you feel about him personally?’ asked Dawlish.

      ‘Brilliant young student. Socialist. Pleased with himself for getting an honours degree. Wakes up one morning with a suede waistcoat, two kids, job in advertising and a ten-thousand-quid mortgage in Hampstead. Sends for a subscription to the Daily Worker just so that he can read the Statesman with a clear conscience. Harmless.’ I hoped that reply carried the right blend of inefficient glibness.

      ‘Very good,’ said Dawlish, turning the pages of the file. ‘We should give you a job here.’

      ‘I’d never get on with the boss.’

      Dawlish initialled a chit at the front of the file and tossed it into the out tray. ‘We have another problem,’ he said, ‘that won’t be solved as easily as that.’ Dawlish reached for a slim file, opened it and read a name. ‘Olaf Kaarna: you know him?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Journalists who have well-placed, indiscreet friends call themselves political commentators. Kaarna is one of the more responsible ones. He’s Finnish. Comfortable.’ (Dawlish’s word for a private income.) ‘He spends a great deal of time and money collecting his information. Two days ago he spoke to one of our embassy people in Helsinki. Asked him to confirm a couple of small technical points before an article is published next month. He’s thinking of sending it to Kansan Uutiset, which is the left-wing newspaper. If it was something harmful to us, that would be a good place to set the fuses. Of course we don’t know what Kaarna has up his sleeve, but he says he can show that there is a vast British Military Intelligence operation covering northern Europe and centred in Finland.’ Dawlish smiled as he said this and so did I. The thought of Ross at the War Office master-minding a global network was a little unreal.

      ‘And the clever answer is …?’

      ‘Heaven knows,’ said Dawlish, ‘but one must follow it up. Ross will no doubt send someone. The Foreign Office have been told; O’Brien can hardly ignore the situation.’

      ‘It’s like one of those parties where the first girl to leave will have everyone talking about her.’

      ‘Quite so,’ said Dawlish. ‘That’s why I want you to go tomorrow morning.’

      ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. I knew there were all kinds of reasons why it was impossible, but the alcohol blurred my mind. ‘A passport. Whether we get a good one from the Foreign Office or a quick job from the War Office we will tip our hand and they will delay us if they want to.’

      ‘See our friend in Aldgate,’ said Dawlish.

      ‘But it’s four thirty now.’

      ‘Exactly,’ said Dawlish. ‘Your plane leaves at nine fifty A.M. That gives you well over sixteen hours to arrange it.’

      ‘I’m overworked already.’

      ‘Being overworked is just a state of mind. You do far more work than you need on some jobs, less than you need on others. You should be more impersonal.’

      ‘I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do if I go to Helsinki.’

      ‘See Kaarna. Ask him about this article he’s preparing. He’s been silly in the past; show him a couple of pages of his dossier. He’ll be sensible.’

      ‘You want me to threaten him?’

      ‘Good heavens no. Carrot first: stick last. Buy this article he’s written if necessary. He’ll be sensible.’

      ‘So you keep saying.’ I knew it was no good betraying even the slightest amount of excitement. Patiently I said, ‘There are at least six men in this building who could do this job, even if it’s not as simple as you describe. I speak no Finnish, I have no close friends there, I’m not familiar with the country nor have I been handling any file that might have a bearing on this job. Why do I have to go?’

      ‘You,’ said Dawlish removing his spectacles and ending the discussion, ‘are the one best protected against cold.’

      Old Montagu Street is a grimy slice of Jack-the-Ripper real-estate in Whitechapel. Dark grocers’ shops, barrels of salt herring; a ruin; a kosher poultry shop; jewellers; more ruins. Here and there tiny groups of newly painted shops carry Arabic signs as a fresh wave of underprivileged immigrants probes into the ghetto. Three dark-skinned children on old bicycles pedalled away quickly, circled and stopped. Beyond the tenements the shops began again. One, a printer’s, had fly-specked business cards in the window. The printed lettering had faded to pale pastel colours and the cards were writhing and twisting with bygone sunlight. The children made another sudden sortie on their bicycles, leaving arabesques in the thin skin of snow. The door was stiff and warped. Above my head a small bell jangled and shed dust. The children watched me enter the shop. Inside the small front office there was an ancient counter, topped with a slab of glass. Under the glass were examples of invoices and business cards: faded ghosts of failed businesses. On a shelf there were boxes of paper clips, office sundries, a notice that said ‘We take orders for rubber stamps’ and a greasy catalogue.

      As the bell echoes faded a voice from the back room called, ‘You the one that phoned?’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘Go

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