Jean had made herself comfortable in the nonarmy-style wicker chair. She had that quiet, composed, rather stupid look that I had noticed before. It meant she was committing the bulk of the conversation to memory. She came back slowly to life now.
‘You said “at present”. I take it the volume of this stuff is increasing. How fast?’
‘It’s increasing, and fast enough for the whole department to be very worried – can I leave it at that?’ It was a rhetorical question.
Jean asked, ‘When did you first suspect there was a multiple leak? It is a multiple?’
‘A multiple? I’ll say it is – it’s a multiple multiple. It’s from a range of subjects so vast there isn’t one college, let alone one lab, that could have access to it.’
The dark-eyed Dolobowski went for some more ice from the fridge. Skip produced one of those vast cartons of cigarettes and talked Jean into trying a Lucky. He lit his own and Jean’s, and the dark-eyed one gave us more ice and Scotch all round.
‘The first leaks,’ Skip mused. ‘Yes.’
Dolobowski sat himself back in the chair and it was suddenly clear to me that he had some sort of authority over Skip. That was why he’d said nothing while the dark-eyed one was out of the room. He was here to make sure that Jean and I came away with just the amount of information we were allowed. I didn’t blame anyone for this, after all we hadn’t told the Americans that we were having the same problem. In fact, goodness knows what cock-and-bull story Dalby had cooked up to get along here. Skip was staring defensively into space and blowing gently on the ember of his cigarette.
‘With these international conferences it’s difficult,’ the dark-eyed one had decided to answer. His voice, pitched low, came from far away. ‘Scientists use the same sort of jargon, and anyway, discoveries tend to run parallel. We think that eight months cover the broad front leaks. Before that there may have been the odd thing here and there, but now it covers the whole scientific programme – even non-military.’
You could see that the non-military bit really hurt; that was below the belt.
I said that I wouldn’t mind if it was a small one, but that then I had better go, no really – perhaps another time. We fenced off a few questions about leaks in the UK, to persuade them that we didn’t know what was happening. It wasn’t difficult. Skip saw us off down to the little white-painted fence by means of which a considerate army enabled him to feel he had never left New Jersey. He was going back to the States the next day – I said to give my regards to Barney, and he said he would, and did I have plenty of cigarettes. We shook hands and I remembered Skip Henderson as he used to be; with hair to spare for barbers, and a fund of stories upon which every barman in town would refuel. I remember him carrying his old camera, and stopping every pretty girl he saw, saying he was from Life magazine, and how he hoped they didn’t think him rude for speaking to them without being introduced. The pictures he took with that old camera, ‘And now perhaps a really sophisticated shot in case we make the cover again this week.’ I don’t think Skip knew how the film fitted into it even. Everyone in town knew that Skip was always good for a laugh and a couple of dollars.
‘I’m sorry,’ Skip said, ‘for not having sherry. I mean I know you hate whisky before dinner really.’ Skip kicked the toe of his elegant, hand-tooled Italian pointed non-army brogues in the sand. I knew that Skip knew that I knew who dark-eyes was.
I gave him the two-handed pump-handle grip that in the old days we used as a joke. ‘That’s OK, Skip. You’ll find yourself in London anytime, and our liquor supply isn’t all it should be. You know?’ He brightened up a bit and as he said good-bye to Jean I saw a flash of the old technique for an instant. It was almost dusk now. Here and there in the dingy sun-charred palm trees a bird fidgeted, and the waves hit, dragged at and sank into the shingle beach and wore the pebbles smoother. We walked across the sandy compound in silence, Jean and I, and the sun was leaving us to go to India, and the sand was red and the sky was mauve and Jean was beautiful and the wind was in her hair and her hand was in mine.
From half a mile away the juke-box in the officers’ club rubbed the smooth night sky with sandpaper sounds. Inside, the tension bubble of the hard day had burst into the inconsequent chatter of martini-lubricated relaxation. From the far corner a barbecue fire sent up spluttering spitting sounds like a thousand captive kittens to accompany the bright flashes of flame. A white-clad Mephistopheles poked, prodded and mothered the thick slabs of prime American beef, and dabbed at them with the contents of a can of ‘CHARKOL Barbecue flavor dressing’.
A pink-faced boy in a white jacket found us a little check table-cloth in the corner. There was some very old Ellington that some very old fan like me had selected from the juke-box murmuring low. A candle in a chianti bottle flickered across Jean’s pale flat face, and I wondered how many US Officers’ Clubs in France had a Pacific-style décor. Outside, the night was clear and warm.
‘I like your friend Skip.’ Men’s friendships are something that women wonder at and fear slightly. ‘He seemed a little withdrawn, as though …’
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Say it.’
‘I don’t know what I was going to say really.’
‘You know, so say it. We can use a few extra opinions as things are.’ The candlelight swerved across Jean’s face as the candle was lifted away. We both turned to see Dalby lighting a cheroot from it. He drew deeply on the small black leaf. Dalby had changed into a red Hawaiian shirt with large blue and yellow flowers across it; put on a pair of lightweight trousers, and gone to the barber’s shop. Dalby had this knack, or art, or charm for sinking into such a combination without looking different from all the Americans wearing it.
‘You’re making with the native costume.’
He dragged on the cheroot before replying, then carefully put it to rest in an ashtray. It was his claim to a seat at the table. He was just crazy about symbolism, Dalby. He finished looking casually round the room and directed his attention back to us.
‘Are you sure I’m not intruding?’ he said, sliding into the seat beside Jean.
‘Jean was going to give me her opinion of Skip Henderson.’
‘I would be most interested to hear it,’ said Dalby, his small bright eyes looking over the menu carefully. He gave me the creeps when he did this. It was almost Yogi the way he diverted his eyes to an object or a piece of paper to enable him to concentrate. Jean had a similar habit. I wondered if I did the same thing and I wondered if Ross had managed to get hold of him about the file.
‘Well, he looked frightened almost,’ I was watching Dalby; his eyes were fixed on one place on the menu. He was listening.
At the next table I could hear a loud American voice. ‘Soldier, I said, that’s my wife’s personal baggage and you’ll move your tail back into that baggage-room …’
‘Frightened? Of me, you mean?’ I always seemed to get embroiled in nutty conversations when Dalby was with me. I wished Jean would drop it. She just didn’t know a thing about Skip Henderson. Skippie Henderson who went to Korea and let himself be captured just so he could find out about collaborating in the prison camps; who came back to Washington with three bayonet wounds, a lungful of TB and a dossier that put a lot of exprisoner brass into the hot-seat. In a court-martial hot-seat. Skip stayed a captain for a long time after that. Prisoners’ friends had friends. But frightened? Skip? who had the only Negro officer in the CIA as his assistant – Barney Barnes, and kept him against every sort of opposition that could be mustered. She just didn’t know what Skip was like. Smooth smiling Skip. Twenty years and they’d finally made him a major, and detailed a major to listen to his nightmares.
‘No,’ said Jean. ‘And I don’t mean frightened of his tame policeman either. I don’t mean frightened of anything. Sort of frightened for. He kept looking at you like he wanted to save you up, remember you very thoroughly for some reason. A last look