Samson 05 - Hope, page 30
‘The coast,’ shouted the Swede. ‘Order your duty-free.’
‘We might get shot at again,’ I told George. ‘And he’ll throw the plarie around. They don’t like unidentified aircraft flying low at night, and you can’t get insured against flak.’ George showed no reaction. I looked out the window. The gray Baltic Sea is a daunting prospect in winter when seen from spumed wave-top height. I thought about George and about the night in London when he collected that injured man and took him off to see a doctor. George had obviously done a useful job for the regime when he became a generous supporter of Polish expatriate organizations. I wondered how the gold from the moneybelt fitted into the picture. Perhaps it was the way in which George was funded. Perhaps some enterprising expatriate had grabbed the gold for himself. I pushed it out of my mind; the interrogators would get it out of him, I was sure of that.
As we crossed the Swedish coast the sky was streaked with sunlit red clouds. ‘Home sweet home,’ said the Swede. It was a private airfield built alongside the extensive buildings of the Schliemann company, which once made wooden office furniture and exported its entire production to Russia. I’d never been able to fully understand why the USSR, a vast land covered in forest, imported not only wooden furniture but lumber too. But it did. Now however the Russians had little money to import anything from anywhere. Mr. Schliemann’s factory was boarded up and most of the machinery sold. Mr. Schliemann lived in Antibes and rented his airstrip, and an outbuilding, to three middle-aged pilots who shared the costs of this funny old Trislander plane and had printed notepaper that claimed they were an ‘all-Sweden air service.’ They had Panamanian passports, a registered office in the Cayman Islands, took payments through a bank in Luxembourg and did any kind of work that came along.
‘You’ve got a welcoming party,’ the Swede called to me as we were taxiing back to the shed he used as an office.
‘You did good, you old bastard,’ I said feelingly. The Swede smiled.
There were three of them: a doctor, a man from the embassy and a woman in a smart new coat and a fur hat. She was waving furiously as I climbed out of the plane.
Gloria!
While we exchanged hellos the Swede went to examine the bullet holes in the tall. George climbed into a Saab with diplomatic license plates. The embassy doctor got in too. There was also an embassy official who shook hands through the lowered car window. He didn’t want to get out of the car because it was too cold. George would have a physical examination and then be photographed for a locally issued UK passport. George slumped back in his seat and looked at me through the frosty glass. He gave no sign of recognition. His long wavy hair, usually so carefully arranged, was in total disarray, his skin was pale, his eyes shiny, his whole expression lifeless, like an unwanted waxwork dummy headed for the storeroom. There wasn’t room for me in the car but I had Gloria looking at me and grinning as if she’d caught me doing something foolish.
‘Hello, Bernard,’ she said.
‘Hello, Gloria.’
‘Mr Rensselaer sent me to meet you.’ Her cheeks were glowing and her eyes soft and moist. These were of course the marks of a young woman in love, but standing on an airfield in the northern wind in December could also redden the cheeks and make the eyes water.
‘Did you bring money?’ I said, forgetting that my pockets were bulging with Rupert’s money.
‘There are more important things in life than money, Bernard,’ she said.
‘Prove it,’ I told her.
On the far side of the landing space, crouching low and ready to spring, there was a sleek and shiny twin-turbofan Learjet: the sort of thing the presidents of big international corporations buy for themselves because they think their shareholders wouldn’t like them to be standing in line at airports. What a machine it was, compared with the slab-sided little British-built plane that the Swede had used to collect us. That was the difference between the Brets of the world, and the Bernard Samsons.
Gloria, having watched the others climb into the Saab and drive away, turned to me and said, ‘Thank God you’re safe. Bret was worried. So was I?’ She looked at me. ‘You are all right?’
‘Yes, I’m fine. ‘ She glanced again at the departing car, and she looked at me. I suppose she could see some kind of reservation in my face. George was the third one to go. Tessa was dead, Fiona was a hollow shell, and George was going to face a lot of hard questions. He’d never be the same man again, and I wondered if he knew that. ‘It went better than I hoped,’ I said.
In my pockets I still had the bundle of dollar bills and the zlotys and the roll of gummed plastic tape for gagging and binding George. I hadn’t used any of it. ‘Everything went according to plan,’ I said.
She said, ‘Perhaps we should have crowded into the car with them. They said there would be two embassy cars.’
‘What are you supposed to do now?’
‘Bret was certain that Kosinski was going to arrive injured. In that case he was to go back to London directly. Bret didn’t want him in a hospital here. Not even a private clinic.’
‘He’s okay,’ I said.
‘He looked like hell.’
‘He thought he’d found a home in Poland but he hasn’t got a home anywhere. It’s tough.’
‘I know,’ said Gloria. ‘I thought I was English once, but the girls at school made sure I knew I was a foreigner. It’s what we have in common.’
‘You and me?’
‘You’ve lived all your life in Germany but you are not German. Are you really English?’
‘At least I know which side I’m on,’ I said. ‘George Kosinski never decided.’
‘He came out here because of his wife, didn’t he? Was that so bad?’
‘Oh, he loved Tessa. Perhaps that was the only genuine thing about him.’
‘Not his religion?’
‘Perhaps. But I suspect that his devout churchgoing, and all that counting his rosary, was a part of his cover as an anti-communist.’
‘I can’t believe he was working against us,’ said Gloria.
‘Him with his brother. They traveled the world servicing the Polish army’s intelligence networks. They are both as guilty as hell.’
‘I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised,’ said Gloria. ‘It’s just what Dicky Cruyer has been saying all along, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’
‘Oh, Bernard, you know it is. He’s been saying it over and over. You argued with him.’
‘Dicky does it again,’ I said, with all the joy I could muster.
‘But you risked your life bringing him out. You had diplomatic cover; you could have just walked past customs and immigration.’
‘I brought him out because I want that bastard sliced open and chopped into pet food. He’s as guilty as anyone could be but he thinks he’s going to sweet-talk his way out of it.’
‘He’s always so sweet … George Kosinski I mean,’ she added hurriedly.
‘He thought spying made him a big man. It helped him overcome the shame he felt at his wife going to bed with other men. God knows what he reported back to Warsaw or Moscow or wherever the best material was ending up.’
‘They use people,’ she said. ‘They are clever at that.’
‘There are no alleviating circumstances,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t intellectual writer Stefan, using his power and influence to protect honest old George Kosinski, capitalist charmer and devout Christian. George was the leader; Stefan the anchor. Between them they kept their old mansion intact and the big estates in his family’s private hands. They did it by spying for their communist masters, for the army and for anyone else who had to be placated. I have a nasty feeling that we’ll discover that George is the tip of something very big and important. He’s been provided with a cover story that will “prove” he was recruited as late as 1983 but he was spying for them for ages before that. It will all come out when they start questioning him. He hasn’t got the guts to resist.’
‘You sound as if you would like to interrogate him personally.’
‘I’d like to hang the little bastard personally.’
‘Did Tessa know what he was doing?’
‘It’s the big question isn’t it? But his Bezpieca masters no doubt convinced George that we killed her for exactly that reason.’
‘And I was feeling sorry for him,’ said Gloria. She took my arm. She knew me well. I was angry and tired and talking too much.
‘I should have dumped him into the Baltic Sea,’ I said. ‘It went through my mind to do it.’
‘You’ll get into trouble one day, saying things like that,’ Gloria warned.
‘And what will they do to me? Send me on a dangerous mission?’
‘Oh, Bernard. I did worry. Bret could see how I felt. He sent me to meet you.’
‘He always was a romantic sort of fellow.’
‘That’s the air-ambulance I came on. A Learjet. Bret rented it from an insurance company he’s connected with. I’ve never been on a private jet before.’ There was a fuel bowser alongside it, and men probing the engines.
‘Is that how you’re getting back to London?’
‘The plane has to return today,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and the crew want to be at home. Come and see it: it’s beautiful.’ She grinned nervously, like a little girl. ‘I don’t think those bloody embassy people are going to send a car for you.’
‘Yes, it’s Christmas Eve, I forgot. Going away?’
‘I’ve nowhere to go. Daddy and Mummy are away. I’ll just stay at home, raid the freezer for food, and watch all those awful television shows. And you?’
‘I can’t go home until I’ve had our engineers to check my apartment for bugs. There’s no telling what George might have planted there when he moved out.’
‘Poor, homeless Bernard. The engineers won’t come out on Christmas Day.’
‘I love you, Gloria,’ I said. I’d been trying not to say it, but I blurted it out. She squeezed my arm without replying.
The Swede finished inspecting the bullet holes and climbed back into the cockpit of the Trislander.
I took Gloria’s hand and we walked in silence towards the jet. ‘My overnight bag is in the plane,’ she said. ‘Do you have luggage?’
‘No. No luggage.’
The Learjet pilot was standing by the wing signing a clipboard for the driver of a fuel bowser. There. was a strong smell of jet paraffin in the air. ‘So what’s the verdict?’ the pilot asked Glori& ‘These Swedes want me to file a flight plan. It’s always the same with these horse and buggy outfits, they always want to do everything by the book. Are you both on diplomatic passports?’
‘Yes, we can leave,’ said Gloria. ‘No need to do any customs and immigration.’
‘Great! I’ll go over to the office and do the airport paperwork,’ said the pilot. He looked at his watch. ‘You may as well get aboard, out of the cold. There’s food in the galley. I’ll be back directly. Then we’ll crank up and get out of here.’
The plane had its own steps and the interior was luxuriously equipped as an air ambulance. Directly behind the flight deck there was a cabin for the nurse, doctor and wealthy relatives, the soft leather seating arranged around a polished table. On the cabin walls, over the tinted windows, there was a drinks cabinet, racks of magazines, and on a polished-wood panel there were instruments and gauges which relayed altitude, airspeed, cabin temperature, and the time in the financial centers throughout the world where ambulances were most needed. Part of the space was a tiny galley no more than a closet really with a sink, a coffee machine and a shelf packed with groceries: shrink-wrapped sliced chicken and bread and canned soup.
I opened a leather-covered door to find another larger cabin. Behind me I heard Gloria putting water into the coffee machine. I went through the door, marveling at the deep carpeting, and at the beds with crisp sheets and pillows. ‘Look at this!’ I called as I went into the main cabin. ‘Big soft beds!’
‘Goodness,’ said Gloria, looking at me and smiling demurely.
‘Did you tell the embassy not to send a car for me?’
‘Beds,’ said Gloria. ‘I never noticed that.’
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Len Deighton, Samson 05 - Hope
