Samson 01 - Berlin Game by Len Deighton

Author:Len Deighton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-04-16T01:17:37+00:00

15

Dicky had Trent taken out to Berwick House, an eighteenth-century manor named after a natural son of James II and the sister of the Duke of Marlborough. It had been taken over by the War Office in 1940 and, like so many other good things seized temporarily by the government, it was never returned to its former owners.

The seclusion could hardly have been bettered had the place been specially built for us. Seven acres of ground with an ancient fifteen-foot-high wall that was now so overgrown with weeds and ivy that it looked more like a place that had been abandoned than one that was secret.

On the croquet lawn the Army had erected black creosoted Nissen huts, which now provided a dormitory for the armed guards, and two prefabricated structures which were sometimes used for lectures when there was a conference or a special training course in the main building. But, despite these disfigurements, Berwick House retained much of its original elegance. The moat was the most picturesque feature of the estate and it still had its bullrushes, irises and lilies. There was no sign of the underwater devices that had been added. Even the little rustic teahouse and gate lodge had been convened to guard posts with enough care to preserve their former appearance. And the infrared beams and sonic warning shields that lined the perimeter were so well hidden in the undergrowth that even the technicians who checked them did not find them of easy access.

‘You’ve got a nerve,’ said Giles Trent. ‘It’s kidnapping, no matter what fancy explanations Dicky gives me.’

‘Your taking an overdose of sleeping tablets upset him,’ I said.

‘You’re a sardonic bastard,’ said Trent. We were in his cramped second-floor room: cream-painted walls, metal frame bed, and a print of Admiral Nelson dying at Trafalgar.

‘You think I should feel sorry for you,’ I said. ‘And I don’t feel sorry for you. That’s why we are at odds.’

‘You never let up, do you?’

‘I’m not an interrogator,’ I said cheerfully. ‘And, unlike you, I never have been. You know most of our interrogation staff, Giles. You trained some of them, according to what I saw on your file. Say who you’d like assigned to you and I’ll do everything I can to arrange that you get him.’

‘Give me a cigarette,’ said Trent. We both knew that there was no question of Trent’s being permitted anywhere near one of the interrogators. Such a confrontation would start rumours everywhere, from Curzon Street to the Kremlin. I passed him a cigarette. ‘Why can’t I have a couple of packets?’ said Trent, who was a heavy smoker.

‘Berwick House regulations forbid smoking in the bedrooms, and the doctor said it’s bad for you.’

‘I don’t know what you wanted to keep me alive for,’ said Trent in an unconvincing outburst of melancholy. He was too tail for the skimpy cotton dressing gown provided by the housekeeper’s department, and he kept tugging at its collar to cover the open front of his buttonless pyjama jacket.

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