Billion-Dollar Brain Read Online Free PDF Page B

some?’
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘I just wondered. I’d never had champagne until three months ago. I like it very much. It’s almost my very favourite drink.’
    ‘I’m pleased,’ I said.
    ‘Do you like whisky?’
    ‘I like whisky very much.’
    ‘I like all alcohol. I expect one day I shall become an alcoholic.’ She picked up a handful of snow, compressed it into a snowball and threw it with great energy a hundred yards along the ice. ‘Do you like snow? Do you like ice?’
    ‘Only in whisky and champagne.’
    ‘Can you have ice in champagne? I thought that was wrong.’
    ‘I was just kidding,’ I said.
    ‘I know you were,’ she said.
    We came to the other side of the frozen water and I walked up the embankment. Signe stayed on the ice and fanned her eyelashes.
    ‘What’s the matter?’
    She said, ‘I don’t think I can make it. Could you help me?’
    ‘Stop fooling about. There’s a good girl.’
    ‘OK,’ she said cheerfully and climbed up beside me.
    The city changes slightly on the north side of Long Bridge. Not in the sudden dramatic way thatLondon changes south of the river or Istanbul changes across the Galata Bridge; but on the north side of Long Bridge Helsinki becomes duller, the people are not so smartly dressed and lorries outnumber the cars. Signe took me to a block of flats near Helsinginkatu. She pressed a bell-push in the foyer to announce our arrival but produced a key to let us in. Few of Helsinki’s buildings have the bright newly minted shine that is associated with Finnish design; instead they are well-weathered Victorian hotels. This block was no exception, but inside the air was warm and the carpets soft. The flat we entered was on the sixth floor. There were lithographs on the walls and Artie Shaw on the turntable. The main room was light and large enough to hold a few examples of superb Finnish furniture and still leave room to practise dancing the rumba.
    The man practising the rumba was a short thickset man with thinning brown hair. One hand he held in the air beating time to the music. The other hand held a tall drink. His footwork was adequate, and while we stood in the doorway he treated us to an extra few moments of expertise before looking up and saying, ‘Well, you old Limey sonuvabitch. I knew it was you.’ He took Signe into his arms with an easy movement and they began to dance. I noticed that Signe’s feet were actually standing on his toes, and he waltzed around the floor taking her weight upon his feet as though she was a rag dummy tied to his feet andwrists. The dance ended, and he said, ‘I knew it was you’ again. I said nothing, and he swallowed the remainder of his drink and said to Signe, ‘Oh boy buttercup did you let your pants down for the wrong guy?’ *
    Harvey Newbegin was a neatly dressed man; grey flannel suit, initialled handkerchief in top pocket, gold watch, and a relaxed smile. I had known him for a number of years. He had been with the US Defense Department for four years before transferring to the State Department. I had tried to get him working for us at one time but Dawlish had failed to obtain authority to do it. Under those droopy eyelids Harvey had quick, intelligent eyes. He used them to study me while going to get us all a drink. The music was still thumping out of the radiogram. Harvey poured three glasses of whisky, dropped ice and soda into two of them, then walked across to me and Signe. Halfway across the floor he picked up the beat of the music and did a brief sequence of steps the rest of the way.
    ‘Don’t be such a fool,’ Signe said to him. ‘He’s such a fool,’ she added. Harvey gave her the glass of whisky, let go of it before she grasped it and in mid-fall caught it with the other hand andhanded it to her without spilling it. ‘He’s such a fool,’ she said again with admiration. She shook little droplets of melted snow from her hair. Her hair was much shorter and even more golden today.
    When we were all