He found the best technique was to thin the Liquid Paper as far as it would go and then treat it like ink. Fortunately, the empire had only just died-or committed hara-kiri-and he had in his desk drawer two or three dip pens, with nibs, and a dry, clean, cut-glass inkwell that might have graced the desk of the assistant commissioner of Eastern Nigeria in 1910.
And-practice does make perfect. And a copy of a copy of a copy-three passes on the Xerox-makes the perfect into a pleasing blur.
“Titanium” was fairly easily altered to “Plutonium.”
A full stop was added before “Range.”
“12 inch” became “120 miles.”
He stared, willing something to come to him about “Maximum heat dispersal,” and when nothing did concluded it was fine as it was. And 116 units sounded spot-on. A good, healthy number, divisible by nothing.
He looked over his handiwork. It would do. It would… “pass muster,” that was the phrase. And it was pleasingly ambiguous.
FPI Plutonium. Range 120 miles. Maximum heat dispersal.
116 units.
But what if Boris asked what they were?
Boris did, but by then George was ready for him.
“FP means Field Personnel. And I’m sure you know what plutonium is.”
“You cheeky bugger. You think I’m just some dumb Russki? The point is, to what aspect of Field Personnel does this document refer?”
George looked him in the eye, said, “Just put it all together. Add up the parts and get to the sum.”
Boris looked down at the paper and then up at George.
Whatever penny dropped, George would roll with it.
“My God. I don’t believe it. You bastards are upping the ante on us. You’re putting tactical nuclear weapons into Singapore!”
“Well,” George replied in all honesty. “You said it, I didn’t.”
“And they shipped in January. My God, they’re already there!”
George was emboldened.
“And why not-things are hotting up in Vietnam. Or did you think that after Cuba we’d just roll over and die?”
And then he kicked himself. Was Vietnam, either bit of it, within 120 miles of Singapore? He hadn’t a clue.
Mouth, big, shut.
But Boris didn’t seem to know either.
He pushed the Polaroid across the table to him. This time he took his hand off it.
“You will understand. We keep our word.”
George doubted this.
And then Boris reached into his pocket, pulled out a white envelope, and pushed that to George.
“And I am to give you this.”
“What is it?”
“Five hundred pounds. I believe you call it a monkey.”
Good God-here he was betraying his country’s canteen secrets, and the bastards were actually going to pay him for it.
He took it round to Henrietta Street.
He didn’t mention it until after they’d made love.
And she said, “Bloody hell. That’s more’n I make in a month,” and George said, “It’s more than I make in three months.”
They agreed. They’d stash it in the bottom of her wardrobe and think what they might do with it some other time.
As he was leaving for Waterloo, George said, “Do you realize, I don’t know your name.”
“You din’ ask. And it’s Donna.”
“Is that your real name?”
“Nah. S’my workin’ name. Goes with my surname, Need-ham. It’s like a joke. Donna Needham. Gettit?”
“Yes. I get it. You’re referring to men.”
“Yeah, but you can call me Janet if you like. That’s me real name.”
“I think I prefer Donna.”
It became part of the summer. Part of the summer’s new routine.
He would ring home about once a week and tell Sylvia he would be working late.
“The DDT to the DFC’s in town. The brass want me in a meeting. Sorry, old thing.”
Considering that she had been married to a serving army officer for twenty years before she met George, Sylvia had never bothered to learn any army jargon. She expected men to talk bollocks, and she paid it no mind. She accepted it and dismissed it simultaneously.
George would then keep an appointment with Boris in the Berwick Street caff, sell his country up the Swanee, and then go round to the flat in Henrietta Street.
Even as his conscience atrophied, or quite possibly because it atrophied, love blossomed. He was absolutely potty about Donna and told her so every time he saw her.
Boris didn’t use the Berwick Street café every time, and it suited both to meet at Kempton Park racecourse on the occasional Saturday, particularly if Sylvia had gone to a whist drive or taken herself off shopping in Kingston-upon-Thames. Five bob each way on the favorite was George’s limit. Boris played long shots and made more than he lost. It was, George thought, a fair reflection of both their characters and their trades.
As the weeks passed, George doctored more dockets, pocketed more cash-although he never again collected five hundred pounds in one go (Boris explained that this had been merely to get his attention), every meeting resulted in his treachery being rewarded with a hundred or two hundred pounds.
Some deceptions required a bit of thought.
For example, he found himself staring at a docket for saucepans he had shipped to Hong Kong from the makers in Lancashire.
SP3 PRESTIGE Copper-topped 6 inch. 250 units.
Prestige was probably the best-known maker of saucepans in the country. He couldn’t leave the word intact-it was just possible that even old Boris had heard of them.
But once contemplated, his liar’s muse came to his rescue, and it was easily altered to read
FP3 P F T Cobalt-tipped 6 inch. 250 units.
He’d no idea what this might mean, but, once in the caff with two cups of frothy coffee in front of them, as ever, Boris filled in most of the blanks.
Yes, FP meant what it had always meant. He struggled a little with P F T, and George waited patiently as Boris steered himself in the direction of Personal Field Tactical, and as he put that together with cobalt-tipped, his great Russian self-righteousness surfaced with a bang.
“You really are a bunch of bastards, aren’t you? You’re fitting handheld rocket launchers with missiles coated with spent uranium!”
Oh, was that it? George knew cobalt had something to do with radioactivity, but quite what was beyond him.
“Armor-piercing, cobalt-tipped shells? You bastards. You utter fockin’ bastards. Queensberry rules, my Bolshevik arse!”
Ah… armor-piercing, that was what they were for. George hadn’t a clue and would have guessed blindly had Boris asked.
“Bastards!”
After which outburst Boris slipped him a hundred quid and called it a long ‘un.
Midsummer, George got lucky. He was running out of ideas, and somebody mentioned that the army had American-built ground-to-air missiles deployed with NATO forces in Europe. A truck-mounted launcher that went by the code name of Honest John. It wasn’t exactly a secret, and there was every chance Boris knew what Honest John was.
It rang a bell in the great canteen of the mind. A while back, he was almost certain, he had shipped fifty large stew pots out to Aden, bought from a firm in Waterford called Honett Iron. It was the shortest alteration he ever made, and lit the shortest fuse in Boris.
“Bastards!” he said yet again.
And then he paused, and in thinking, came close to unraveling George’s skein of lies. George had thought to impress Boris with a fake docket for a missile that really existed, and it was about to blow up in his face.
“Just a minute. I know this thing, it only has a range of fifteen miles. Who can you nuke from Aden? It doesn’t make sense. Every other country is more than fifteen miles away. There’s nothing but fockin’ dyesert within fifteen miles of Aden.”