24

I landed in Helsinki with an easy task. Harvey Newbegin must be arrested by the Americans without my being involved in the business. It was a simple enough problem. Any of our most junior operators fresh from the Guildford training school would have been able to do that, see a film, have dinner and still be able to catch the next plane back to London. Within five minutes of landing I knew that Dawlish was right. A new man should have taken over, someone who hadn’t known Harvey for over ten years and who could deliver him to some pink-faced agent from the CIA like a parcel of groceries – sign here please, out-of-pocket expenses three hundred dollars -but I couldn’t do that. I’m an optimist. In the last Act of La Bohème I’m still thinking that Mimi will pull round. In spite of the evidence I didn’t completely believe that he had tried to have me killed by the hold-up men near Riga. I thought I might be able to straighten things out. Well that just goes to show that I should be in some other kind of employment, I’ve suspected it for years.

If the Americans were looking for Harvey they weren’t doing it very well. I was half hoping that they would pick him up when we landed in Helsinki, but Harvey had travel papers that said he was a Swedish national named Eriksson, which meant he didn’t have to show a passport at all. We took the airport bus with only three other passengers and Harvey asked the driver to let us off at a bus shelter about a mile down the road from the airport. The fields were grey with a hard carapace of frozen snow. We waited there only long enough for the bus to disappear, then Signe’s VW tootled up to us. We didn’t waste much time in greetings. We threw the bags behind the rear seat and then Signe drove into town, taking a long detour so that we came in on the Turku road.

‘I did exactly as you asked,’ she said to Harvey. ‘I rented this apartment we’re going to, by post, using a false name and not paying anything in advance. Then I went out and made a big thing of renting a place in Porvoo. I spent every spare moment in Porvoo tidying it up and dusting it and putting in a new bed. Yesterday I ordered flowers and smoked salmon and those lasimestarin silli that you like and extra sheets and said it must all be delivered in three days from now.’ The back wheels of the VW slid a little on the icy road but Signe corrected the slide effortlessly.

‘You’re a sensation,’ said Harvey and he lifted her hand from the steering wheel and kissed the back of it. ‘Isn’t she the inside of a fresh bread-roll?’ Harvey said over his shoulder to me.

‘You took the words right out of my mouth,’ I said.

‘We have a ménage à trois,’ said Signe; she turned to me, ‘You’ll like that?’

I said, ‘My idea of ménage à trois has always been me and two girls.’

Signe said, ‘But with two men you have a richer household.’

‘Man does not live by bread alone,’ I said. Signe kissed Harvey’s ear. When it came to handling Harvey, Signe’s European instinct was worth ten of Mercy’s New World emancipation. Signe never tried to fight Harvey or hit him head on; she gave way and agreed to anything for the sake of a temporary advantage, counting on her skill at making Harvey change his plans later. She was like an army poised to strike: probing and testing the disposition of the enemy. Signe was a born infiltrater; it was almost impossible not to be in love with her, but you’d need a guileless mind to believe half the things she said. When he was with her Harvey had a guileless mind.

We stayed inside the house all the time except for a visit to an old Ingrid Bergman film and a short trip Harvey made to buy two dozen roses at 4FM each for Signe. Harvey never mentioned the fact that the Americans might be looking for him. We had a lot of fun in that apartment even though it was an ugly place where every room smelled of new paint. On the second night there I discovered what lasimestarin silli were. They were sweet pickled raw herring. Harvey ate six of them, followed by steak, fried potato and apple pie; then we sat around and talked about whether Armenians were always short and dark, whether Marlboro cigarettes taste different when made in Finland, would my broken finger heal up as good as new, the sort of sour cream you put into borsch, can workers in America afford champagne, was a Rambler as fast as a Studebaker Hawk, judging a horse’s age by its teeth and should America adopt the metric system. When we had exhausted Signe’s search for knowledge we sank back with reading matter. I was reading an old copy of The Economist, Harvey was picking his way through the Finnish captions in the newspaper and Signe was holding a copy of an English woman’s magazine. She wasn’t reading it, she snatched items from it at random and threw them at us like hoops on a hoop-la stall.

‘Listen,’ Signe said and began reading aloud, ‘“She saw Richard, his misty green eyes and smile were reserved for her alone and held a strange exciting promise. She knew that somewhere in the lonely corners of his heart he had found a place for her.” Isn’t that lovely?’

‘I think it’s wonderful,’ I said.

‘Do you?’ said Signe.

‘Of course he doesn’t,’ said Harvey irritably. ‘When are you going to get it through your skull that he is a professional liar? He’s a deceit artist. What iambic pentameter was to Shakespeare, so lying is to him.’

‘Thanks, Harvey,’ I said.

‘Don’t take any notice of him,’ Signe said. ‘He gets mad because Popeye speaks in Finnish.’

‘Rip Kirby,’ said Harvey. ‘That’s the only comic strip I read.’

About midnight Signe made cocoa and we all went to bed in our various rooms. I left my door ajar and at eleven minutes past one I heard Harvey walking across the living-room. There was a gurgling as he took a swig from one of the bottles on the trolley. He let himself out of the front door as quietly as he could. I watched him from the window; he was alone. I walked to the door of Signe’s room and I could hear her moving restlessly in bed. I decided that it was likely that I would foul matters up by trying to follow Harvey through the empty streets, so I went back to bed and smoked a cigarette and backed my judgement that Harvey would come back for Signe before disappearing for good. I heard footsteps across the living-room and there was a tap at my door. I said, ‘Come in.’

Signe said, ‘Want a cup of tea?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

She went to the kitchen. I heard the sound of the matches and the kettle being filled. I didn’t move from the bed. Soon Signe appeared with a tray crowded with teapot, milk jug, sugar, toast, butter, honey and some off the gold cups that were marked ‘Special’ on the inventory we had signed.

‘It’s not even two o’clock,’ I protested.

Signe said, ‘I love eating in the middle of the night.’ She poured the tea. ‘Milk or lemon? Harvey’s gone out.’ She was wearing Harvey’s old pyjamas, the jacket fastened by only two buttons. Over it she had a silk housecoat.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Milk.’

‘He’ll be back though. He won’t be long.’

‘How do you know? No sugar.’

‘He didn’t take that old typewriter. He never goes anywhere without that. He wants to marry me.’

‘That’s lovely,’ I said.

‘Of course it isn’t lurvelee,’ she said. ‘You know it isn’t lovely. He doesn’t love me. He’s dotty about me but he doesn’t love me. He said he’d wait for me. What girl would want to waste time with a man who could bear to wait for her? Anyway he’s going to live in Russia.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Russia, do you hear that? Russia.’

‘I heard it,’ I said.

‘Can you imagine me – a Finn – going to live among the Russians?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

She sat down on my bed. ‘On the last day of the Winter War, after the armistice was signed, all shooting was to stop at noon, so during the last hour the Finnish soldiers were collecting up their equipment and the ones that weren’t in the fighting lines were marching back. All the roads in the rear of the armies were crowded with horses and civilians and soldiers, all pleased that the war was over even if we had given the Russians our beautiful Karelia. It was fifteen minutes before noon when the Russian bombardment began. They say it was one of the most intense bombardments ever carried out; thousands of Finns were killed in that last fifteen minutes of the war, many were only crippled and hobbled back to tell us of it.’ She smiled. ‘The only way I want to see a Russian is through a telescopic sight.’

‘Perhaps you should have made your point of view clearer to Harvey instead of encouraging him in his illusions, of every kind.’

‘I didn’t encourage him. I mean, I had an affair with him, but a girl should be able to do that without a man going dotty. I mean he’s dotty, Harvey.’ Signe’s long silk housecoat was black and gold, she got up and shook the skirt of it. ‘Do you think I look like a leopard in this?’

‘A bit like a leopard,’ I said.

‘I am a leopard. I shall spring on you.’

‘Don’t do that, there’s a good girl. Drink your tea before it gets cold.’

‘I’m a leopard. I’m cunning and ferocious.’ Her voice changed. ‘I’m not going to Russia with Harvey.’

‘OK,’ I said.

‘Harvey said you thought it’s a wonderful idea.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘Harvey’s very fond of you, Signe.’

‘Very fond,’ she said scornfully. ‘A leopard wants more than that.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘He’s madly and passionately and desperately in love with you.’

‘Well you don’t have to make it sound so … so eccentric. You don’t have to make it sound like he’s got some sort of disease.’

‘Well I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but if you felt the same way about him I might be a little more enthusiastic.’

‘Oh so that’s it. You’re thinking about Harvey. All this time you’re just feeling sorry for Harvey. Here I am thinking that you’re jealous, thinking that you fancied me yourself and all the time you’re just feeling sorry that Harvey has got himself trapped by a terrible girl like me. So that’s it. That’s it, I might have guessed.’

‘Don’t start crying, Signe,’ I said. ‘Pour me some tea, there’s a good girl.’

‘Don’t you fancy me any more?’

‘Yes I do.’

‘On Sunday,’ Signe said, ‘Harvey goes to Russia on Sunday. He’s going on the midday train to Leningrad. When he’s said goodbye and gone to Russia will things be different then?’

‘In what way?’

‘Will things be different between us? Well you know.’

‘It’s a lovely idea,’ I said. ‘But I’ll be going to Russia with Harvey.’

‘You are a terrible tease,’ she pronounced.

‘Don’t spill the sugar in my bed.’

Signe jumped on to the bed and punched me playfully but with a certain sexual innuendo. ‘I’m a leopard,’ she was shouting. ‘My claws are long and feeerooooocious.’

She put her long fingernails against my spine and counted the thoracic vertebrae as far as the lumbar region. ‘I’m a left-handed leopard,’ she said. Her fingertips moved carefully like an archaeologist disinterring a fragile find. She measured four finger widths to the left and then stabbed me with her fingernail.

‘Ouch,’ I said. ‘Either go to bed, Signe, or put more boiling water in the teapot.’

‘Do you know where Harvey has gone?’ She nuzzled her head against my shoulder; her face was sticky with cold cream.

‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ I said, knowing that she was going to tell me.

‘Gone to see a doctor from England,’ she paused. ‘You are listening now.’

‘I’m listening,’ I admitted.

‘A Mrs Pike – a woman doctor – brought some of those fertile hens’ eggs. The woman thinks that they are going to America but Harvey has to take them to Russia with him or the Russians won’t let him stay.’

She must have collected them from the agent in Porton Experimental Establishment before we took him into custody. Kept at the correct temperature they would be perfectly OK and Mrs Pike would know all about that.

‘Harvey’s crazy to tell you anything,’ I said.

‘I know,’ said Signe. ‘Leopards are cunning, merciless and untrustworthy.’

She reached across me to the bedside light. That damned pyjama-jacket was far too loose on her. The light went out.

‘As one leopard to another,’ I said, ‘remember that baboons are the only animals that can put us to flight.’