A Perfect Spy (33 page)

“How about someone called Wentworth?”

She shook her head.

“‘ Wentworth was Rick's Nemesis,'” Brotherhood recited. “‘ Poppy was mine. We each spent our lives trying to put right the wrong we'd done to them.' You heard the tapes. You've seen the transcripts. Wentworth.”

“He's mad,” she said.

“Stay here,” he said. “Stay as long as you like.”

Returning to the desk, he wiped the books and papers off it with a single sweep of his arm, switched on the reading lamp, sat down and laid the sheet of brown paper beside Pym's crumpled letter to Tom, postmark Reading. The London telephone directories were on the floor at his side. He chose the Grosvenor Hotel, Victoria, first and asked the night porter to put him through to the room number Kate had given him. A drowsy man answered.

“House detective here,” Brotherhood said. “We've reason to believe you've got a lady in your room.”

“Of course I've got a fucking lady in my room. This is a double room I'm paying for, and she's my wife.”

It wasn't any of Pym's voices.

He laughed for her, rang the Great Eastern Hotel, and got a similar result. He rang Independent Television News and asked for the night editor. He said he was Inspector Markley of Scotland Yard with an urgent enquiry: He wanted the time of transmission of the item on the Lebanese bombing story on Monday night
News at Ten.
He held on for as long as it took, while he continued to leaf through the pages of Pym's letter. Postmark Reading. Posted Monday night or Tuesday morning.

“Ten-seventeen and ten seconds. That's when he rang you,” he said, and glanced round to make sure she was all right. She was sitting up against the pillow, head back like a boxer between rounds.

He rang the post office investigation unit and got the night officer. He gave her the Firm's codeword and she responded with a doom-laden “I hear you,” as if the third world war was about to happen.

“I'm asking the impossible and I want it by yesterday,” he said.

“We'll try our best,” she said.

“I want a backtrack on any cash call to London made from a Reading area telephone box between ten-eighteen and ten-twenty-one on Monday night. Duration around twenty minutes.”

“Can't be done,” she said promptly.

“I love her,” he told Kate over his shoulder. She had rolled over and was lying on her stomach with her face buried in her arm.

He rang off and addressed himself in earnest to Kate's purloined pages from Pym's personal file. Three of them, extracted from the army record of First Lieutenant Magnus Pym, number supplied, of the Intelligence Corps, attached No. 6 Field Interrogation Unit, Graz, described in a footnote as an offensive military intelligence-gathering unit with limited permission to run local informants. Dated 18 July 1951, writer unknown, relevant passage sidelined by Registry. Date of entry to Pym's P.F., 12 May 1952. Reason for entry, Pym's formal candidature for admission to this service. The extract was from his commanding officer's conduct report at the close of Pym's tour of duty in Graz, Austria: “. . . exceptional young officer . . . popular and courteous in the mess . . . earned a high reputation for his skilful running of source GREENSLEEVES who over the last eleven months has supplied this unit with secret and top-secret intelligence on the Soviet Order of Battle in Czechoslovakia.”

“You all right there?” he called to Kate. “Listen. You did nothing wrong. Nobody even missed this stuff. Nobody would have been the wiser for it. Nobody ever tried to follow it up.”

He turned a page: “. . . close personal relationship established between source and case officer . . . Pym's calm authority during crisis . . . source's insistence on operating through Pym only . . .” He read fast to the end then began again at the beginning more slowly.

“His C.O. was in love with him too,” he called to Kate. “‘ . . . his excellent memory for detail,'” he read, “‘. . . lucid report writing, often done in the early hours of the morning after a long debriefing . . . high entertainment value...'

“Doesn't even mention Sabina,” he complained to Kate. “Can't see what the devil he was so worried about. Why risk his hotline to you to suppress a bit of paper from the dark ages that did him nothing but credit? Must be something in his own nasty little mind, not ours at all. That doesn't surprise me either.”

The phone was ringing. He glanced round. The bed was empty, the bathroom door closed. Scared, he sprang up and pulled it quickly open. She was standing safely at the basin, chucking water in her face. He closed the door again and hastened back to the telephone. It was a mossy green scrambler with chrome buttons. He picked up the receiver and growled “Yes?”

“Jack? Let's go over. Ready? Now.”

Brotherhood pressed a button and heard the same tenor voice trilling in the electronic storm.

“You'll enjoy this, Jack—Jack, can you hear me? Hullo?”

“I can hear you, Bo.”

“I've just had Carver on the line.” Carver was the American Head of Station in London. “He insists his people have come up with fresh leads concerning our mutual friend. They want to reopen the story on him immediately. Harry Wexler's flying over from Washington to see fair play.”

“That all?”

“Isn't it enough?”

“Where do they think he is?” said Brotherhood.

“That's exactly the point. They didn't ask, they weren't worried. They assume he's still coping with his father's affairs,” said Brammel, very pleased. “They actually made the point that this would be an excellent time to meet. While our friend is occupied with his personal affairs. Everything is still in its place as far as they're concerned. Except for the new leads of course. Whatever they are.”

“Except for the networks,” Brotherhood said.

“I'll want you with me at the meeting, Jack. I want you in there punching for me, just like your usual self. Will you do that?”

“If it's an order, I'll do anything.”

Bo sounded like someone organising a jolly party: “I'm having everyone we'd normally have. Nobody's to be left out or added. I want nothing to stick out, not a ripple while we go on looking for him. This whole thing could still be a storm in a teacup. Whitehall is convinced of it. They argue that we're dealing with follow-on from the last thing, not a new situation at all. They've got some awfully clever people these days. Some of them aren't even civil servants. Are you sleeping?”

“Not a lot.”

“None of us is. We must stick together. Nigel's over at the Foreign Office at this moment.”

“Is he though?” said Brotherhood aloud as he rang off. “Kate?”

“What is it?”

“Just keep your fingers away from my razor blades, hear me? We're too old for dramatic gestures, both of us.”

He waited a second, dialled Head Office and asked for the night duty officer.

“You got a rider there?”

“Yes.”

“Brotherhood. There's a War Office file I want. British Army of Occupation in Austria, old field case. Operation Greensleeves, believe it or not. Where will it be?”

“Ministry of Defence, I suppose, seeing that the War Office was disbanded about two hundred years ago.”

“Who are you?”

“Nicholson.”

“Well, don't bloody suppose. Find out where it is, fetch it and phone me when it's on your desk. Got a pencil, have you?”

“I don't think I have actually. Nigel has left instructions that any request from you has to be processed by Secretariat first. Sorry, Jack.”

“Nigel's at the Foreign Office. Check with Bo. While you're about it, ask Defence to give you the name of the Commandant of Number Six Interrogation, Graz, Austria, on July 18, 1951. I'm in a hurry. Greensleeves, have you got it? Maybe you're not musical.”

He rang off and pulled Pym's battered letter to Tom savagely towards him.

“He's a shell,” Kate said. “All you have to do is find the hermit crab that climbed into him. Don't look for the truth about him. The truth is what we gave him of ourselves.”

“Sure,” said Brotherhood. He set a sheet of paper ready to jot on while he silently read:
“If I don't write to you for a while, remember I'm thinking of you all the time.”
Maudlin slush.
“If you need help and don't want to turn to Uncle Jack, this is what you do.”
He continued reading, writing out Pym's instructions to his son, one by one.
“Don't worry your head so much about religious things, just try to trust in God's goodness.”
“Damn the man!” he expostulated aloud for Kate's sake and, slamming down his pencil, pressed both fists against his temple as the phone rang again. He let it ring a moment, recovered and picked it up, glancing at his watch, which was his habit always.

“Anyway the file you want went missing
years
ago,” said Nicholson with pleasure.

“Who to?”

“Us. They say it's marked out to us and we never returned it.”

“Who of
us
in particular?”

“Czech section. It was requisitioned by one of our own London desk officers in 1953.”

“Which one?”

“M.R.P. That would be Pym. Do you want me to ring Vienna and ask him what he did with it?”

“I'll ask him myself in the morning,” he said. “What about the C.O.?”

“A Major Harrison Membury of the Education Corps.”

“The
what?”

“He was on secondment to Army Intelligence for the period 1950 to '54.”

“Christ Almighty. Any address?”

He wrote it down, remembering a quip of Pym's, paraphrased from Clemenceau: “Military intelligence has about as much to do with intelligence as military music has to do with music.”

He rang off.

“They haven't even indoctrinated the poor bloody duty officer!” Brotherhood expostulated, again for Kate.

He went back to his homework better pleased. Somewhere beyond Green Park a London clock was striking three.

“I'm going,” Kate said. She was standing at the door, dressed.

Brotherhood was on his feet in a moment.

“Oh no you're not. You're staying here until I hear you laugh.”

He went to her and undressed her again. He put her back to bed.

“Why do you think I'm going to kill myself?” she said. “Has somebody done that to you once?”

“Let's just say once would be too often,” he replied.

“What's in the burnbox?” she asked, for the second time that night. But for the second time, too, Brotherhood appeared too busy to reply.

M
y memory gets selective here, Jack. More than usual. He's in my sights as I expect he begins to be in yours. But you are in them too. Whatever doesn't point to you both slips by me like landscape through a railway window. I could paint for you Pym's distressing conversations with the luckless Herr Bertl in which, on Rick's instruction, he assured him repeatedly it was in the post, it was taken care of, everybody would be seen right, and his father was on the point of making an offer for the hotel. Or we could have some fun with Pym, languishing for days and nights in his hotel bedroom as a hostage to the mountain of unpaid bills downstairs, dreaming of Elena Weber's milky body reflected in its many delightful poses in the mirrored changing rooms of Bern, kicking himself for his timidity, living off hoarded continental breakfasts, running up more bills and waiting for the telephone. Or the moment when Rick went off the air. He did not ring and when Pym tried his number the only response was a howl, like the cry of a wolf stuck on one note.

When he tried Syd he got Meg, and Meg's advice was strikingly similar to E. Weber's. “You're better off where you are, dear,” she said in the pointed voice of someone who is telling you she is overheard. “There's a heat wave here and a lot of people are getting burned.” “Where's Syd?” “Cooling himself, darling.” Or the Sunday afternoon when everything in the hotel fell mercifully silent and Pym, having packed together his few possessions, stole heart in mouth down the staff staircase and out through a side door into what was suddenly a hostile foreign city—his first clandestine exit, and his easiest.

I could offer you Pym the infant refugee, though I never starved, had a valid British passport and in retrospect seldom wanted for a kindly word. But he did dip tallows for a religious candlemaker, sweep the aisle of the Minster, roll beer barrels for a brewer and unstitch sacks of carpets for an old Armenian who kept urging him to marry his daughter, and come to think of it he might have done worse; she was a beautiful girl and kept sighing and draping herself over the sofa but Pym was too polite to approach her. All those things he did and more. All of them at night, a night animal on the run through that lovely candlelit city with its clocks and wells and cobble and arcades. He swept snow, carted cheeses, led a blind dray-horse and taught English to aspiring travel agents. All under cover while he waited for Herr Bertl's hounds to sniff him out and bring him to justice, though I know now the poor man bore me no grudge whatever, and even at the height of his rage avoided mentioning Pym's part in the affair.

I could sing of another great hotel, not a stone's throw from the first, where Pym went to earth as a night waiter and became a schoolboy again, sleeping under avenues of lagged piping in a basement dormitory as big as a factory where the lights never went out; how he took gratefully once more to his little iron bed and how he jollied his fellow waiters as he had jollied his fellow new boys, for they turned out to be peasants from Ticino who wanted only to go home. How he rose willingly with every bell and donned a white dicky that, though thick with last night's grease, was not half as constricting as Mr. Willow's collars. And how he took trays of bubbly and foie gras to ambiguous couples who sometimes wanted him to stay, Amor and Rococo beckoning from their glances. But once again he was too polite and too unknowing to oblige. His manners in those days were a barbed-wire cage. He only lusted when he was alone. Yet even as I allow my memory to brush past these tantalising episodes, my heart is hurtling ahead to the night I met the saintly Herr Ollinger in the third-class buffet of Bern railway station and, through his charity, stumbled into the encounter that altered all my life till here—and I fear your life as well, Jack, though you have yet to learn by how much.