Billion-Dollar Brain Read Free

a vast British Military Intelligence operation covering northern Europeand centred in Finland.’ Dawlish smiled as he said this and so did I. The thought of Ross at the War Office master-minding a global network was a little unreal.
    ‘And the clever answer is…?’
    ‘Heaven knows,’ said Dawlish, ‘but one must follow it up. Ross will no doubt send someone. The Foreign Office have been told; O’Brien can hardly ignore the situation.’
    ‘It’s like one of those parties where the first girl to leave will have everyone talking about her.’
    ‘Quite so,’ said Dawlish. ‘That’s why I want you to go tomorrow morning.’
    ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. I knew there were all kinds of reasons why it was impossible, but the alcohol blurred my mind. ‘A passport. Whether we get a good one from the Foreign Office or a quick job from the War Office we will tip our hand and they will delay us if they want to.’
    ‘See our friend in Aldgate,’ said Dawlish.
    ‘But it’s four thirty now.’
    ‘Exactly,’ said Dawlish. ‘Your plane leaves at nine fifty A.M. That gives you well over sixteen hours to arrange it.’
    ‘I’m overworked already.’
    ‘Being overworked is just a state of mind. You do far more work than you need on some jobs, less than you need on others. You should be more impersonal.’
    ‘I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do if I go to Helsinki.’
    ‘See Kaarna. Ask him about this article he’s preparing. He’s been silly in the past; show him a couple of pages of his dossier. He’ll be sensible.’
    ‘You want me to threaten him?’
    ‘Good heavens no. Carrot first: stick last. Buy this article he’s written if necessary. He’ll be sensible.’
    ‘So you keep saying.’ I knew it was no good betraying even the slightest amount of excitement. Patiently I said, ‘There are at least six men in this building who could do this job, even if it’s not as simple as you describe. I speak no Finnish, I have no close friends there, I’m not familiar with the country nor have I been handling any file that might have a bearing on this job. Why do I have to go?’
    ‘You,’ said Dawlish removing his spectacles and ending the discussion, ‘are the one best protected against cold.’
    Old Montagu Street is a grimy slice of Jack-the-Ripper real-estate in Whitechapel. Dark grocers’ shops, barrels of salt herring; a ruin; a kosher poultry shop; jewellers; more ruins. Here and there tiny groups of newly painted shops carry Arabic signs as a fresh wave of underprivileged immigrants probes into the ghetto. Three dark-skinned children on old bicycles pedalled away quickly, circled and stopped. Beyond the tenements the shops began again. One, a printer’s, had fly-specked business cards in the window. The printed letteringhad faded to pale pastel colours and the cards were writhing and twisting with bygone sunlight. The children made another sudden sortie on their bicycles, leaving arabesques in the thin skin of snow. The door was stiff and warped. Above my head a small bell jangled and shed dust. The children watched me enter the shop. Inside the small front office there was an ancient counter, topped with a slab of glass. Under the glass were examples of invoices and business cards: faded ghosts of failed businesses. On a shelf there were boxes of paper clips, office sundries, a notice that said ‘We take orders for rubber stamps’ and a greasy catalogue.
    As the bell echoes faded a voice from the back room called, ‘You the one that phoned?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘Go on up, luv.’ Then very loudly in a different sort of voice she screamed, ‘He’s here, Sonny.’ I opened the counter-flap and felt my way up the narrow stairs.
    At the rear, grey windows looked down upon yards cluttered with broken bicycles and rusty hip-baths all painted with a thin film of snow. The scale of the place seemed too small for me. I’d wandered into a house built for gnomes.
    Sonny Sontag worked at