Twinkle Twinkle Little Spy. Len Deighton
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house is ‘twinned’ in the CIA style – divided vertically – so that the back of the house, shuttered against telescopes and double-glazed against focusing microphones, is all offices, while the front half provides apartments for the staff, and so presents all the outward appearance of domesticity.
I lived on the second floor. Bekuv lived above me. Bekuv’s appearance had changed during those few days in New York City. His hair had been cut by some fancy barber, and he’d had enough sleep to put some colour back into his cheeks. His clothes were transformed too: tailored trousers, a blue lambswool shirt and bright canvas shoes. He was sitting on the floor, surrounded by loudspeakers, records, amplifier components, extra tweeters, a turntable, a soldering iron and hi-fi magazines. Bekuv looked despondent.
‘Andrei was screwed,’ Mann told me as I went in. I found it hard to believe that Mann was sorry about it.
‘In what way?’
‘Coffee on the warmer,’ said Bekuv.
I poured myself a cup and took a blini.
‘All this damned hi-fi junk,’ said Mann.
Bekuv applied the pick-up to one of his records and suddenly the whole room was filled with music.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Mann shouted angrily.
Delicately Bekuv lifted the pick-up and the music ceased. ‘Shostakovich,’ he said to anyone who was seeking that information.
Mann said, ‘Andrei spent nearly two thousand dollars on all this stuff, and now he’s been reading the discount-house adverts.’
‘I could have got it for five hundred dollars less,’ Bekuv told me. I noticed that several of the hi-fi magazines were marked with red pentel, and there were little sums scribbled on the back of an envelope.
‘Well, perhaps we can do something about that,’ I said vaguely, while I drank my coffee and thought about something else.
‘Andrei is not going downtown,’ said Mann, ‘and that’s that.’ I realized they had been arguing about whether Bekuv was allowed to go out on the street again.
‘Now this loudspeaker is buzzing,’ said Bekuv.
‘Listen, dummy,’ Mann told him, bending forward from his chair, so that he could speak close to Bekuv’s ear. ‘There are citizens out there waiting to ice you. Didn’t you hear what I told you about the shooting last night? We spent the small hours downtown in the city morgue – I don’t recommend it, not even for a stiff.’
‘I’m not frightened,’ said Bekuv. He put the pick-up arm back on the record. There was a loud hissing before he reduced the volume a little. It was still very loud. Mann leaned forward and lifted the pick-up off the record. ‘I don’t give a good goddamn whether you are frightened or not frightened,’ he said. ‘In fact I don’t give a damn whether you are alive or dead, but I’m going to make sure it happens after you are moved out of here, and I’ve got a receipt for you.’
‘Is that going to happen?’ asked Bekuv. He began looking through his loose-leaf notebook.
‘It might,’ said Mann.
‘I can’t go anywhere for the time being,’ said Bekuv. ‘I have work to do.’
‘What work?’ I said.
Bekuv looked at me as if only just realizing that I was present. ‘My work on interstellar communication,’ he said, sarcastically. ‘Have you forgotten that I have a chair at New York University?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘I’ve calculated for the initial programme of transmissions. It would cost very little money, and it will focus attention on the work we are doing.’
‘Transmissions?’ said Mann.
‘In space there are clouds of hydrogen. They vibrate to make a hum of radio noise. You pick it up on any radio set at 1,420 megacycles. My theory is that this would be the best frequency to use for our first messages to outer space. Other civilizations are certain to notice any change in that hum of hydrogen vibrations.’
‘Sure to,’ said Mann.
‘Not on that exact wavelength,’ added Bekuv. ‘They would be obliterated. We must transmit near to the wavelength, not on it.’
‘Near to it; not on it,’ said Mann. He nodded.
‘It would cost very little,’ said Bekuv. ‘And I could have it working inside six months.’
‘That’s well before the flying-saucer men go to summer camp,’ said Mann.
Bekuv looked up at Mann. His voice was harsh, and it was as if he was answering a long list of unspoken questions when he shouted, ‘Twice I have attended meetings of the 1924 Society. Only twice! The last time was nearly five years ago. Science is not the cosy little club you believe it is. Don’t keep pressurizing me. I recognized no one, and we did not exchange names and addresses, for obvious reasons.’
‘For obvious reasons,’ said Mann. ‘Because those sons of bitches were betraying the whole of America’s military electronics programme.’
‘And will it get your secrets back if you keep me a prisoner here?’ yelled Bekuv. ‘Not allowed to go out … Not allowed to make phone calls.’
Mann walked quickly to the door, as if frightened he would lose his temper. He turned. ‘You’ll stay here as long as I think fit,’ he said. ‘Behave yourself and I’ll send you a packet of phonograph needles and a subscription to Little Green Men Monthly.’
Bekuv spoke quietly. ‘You don’t like cosmology, you don’t like high-fidelity, you don’t like Shostakovich, you don’t like blinis …’ Bekuv smiled. I couldn’t decide whether he was trying to needle Mann or not.
‘I don’t like Russians,’ explained Mann. ‘White Russians, Red Russians, Ukrainians, Muscovite liberals, ballet dancers or faggy poets – I just don’t like any of them. Get the picture?’
‘I get it,’ said Bekuv sulkily. ‘Is there anything more?’
‘One thing more,’ said Mann. ‘I’m not an international expert on the design of electronic masers. All I know about them is that a maser is some kind of crystal gimmick that gets pumped up with electronic energy so that it amplifies the weakest of incoming radio signals. That way you get a big fat signal compared with the background of electronic static noise and interference.’
‘That’s right,’ said Bekuv. It was the first time he’d shown any real interest.
‘I was reading that your liquid helium bath technique, that keeps the maser at minus two hundred and sixty-eight degrees centigrade, will amplify a signal nearly two million times.’
Bekuv nodded.
‘Now I see the day when every little two-bit transistor could be using one of these gadgets and pulling in radio transmissions from anywhere in the world. Of course, we know that would just mean hearing a DJ spinning discs in Peking, instead of Pasadena, but a guy collecting a royalty on such a gadget could make a few million. Right, Professor?’
‘I didn’t defect for money,’ said Bekuv.
Major Mann smiled.
‘I didn’t defect to make money,’ shouted Bekuv. If Mann had been trying to make Bekuv very, very angry, he’d discovered an effective way to do it.
Mann took my arm and led me from the room, closing the door silently and with exaggerated care. I didn’t speak as we both walked downstairs to my sitting-room. Mann took off his dark raincoat and bundled it up to throw it into a corner. From upstairs there came the sudden crash of Shostakovich. Mann closed the door to muffle it.
I walked over to the window, so that I could look down into Washington Square. It was sunny: the sort of New York City winter’s day when the sun coaxes you out without your long underwear,