A Perfect Spy (57 page)

“Old enough.”

“How old was he when he started here?”

“Look it up. Don't know.”

“I'm Pym's friend too. There are worse people than me coming looking for him. Ask him. If he agrees, I agree. I'll keep your name out of it. Just give him to me and you and Steggie need never hear from him or me again.”

“Sounds to me as though you've more to lose than we have,” said Sir Kenneth, surveying the results of his manicure.

“I doubt it.”

“Question of what we've all got left, I suppose. Can't lose what you haven't got. Can't miss what you don't care about. Can't sell what isn't yours.”

“Pym can, apparently,” said Brotherhood. “He's been selling his nation's secrets by the looks of it.”

Sir Kenneth continued to admire his fingernails. “For money?”

“Probably.”

Sir Kenneth shook his head. “Didn't care about money. Love was all he cared about. Didn't know where to find it
.
Clown really. Tried too hard.”

“Meanwhile he's wandering around England with a lot of papers that aren't his to give away, and you and I are supposed to be patriotic Englishmen.”

“Lot of chaps do a lot of things they shouldn't do. That's when they need their chums.”

“He wrote to his son about you. Do you know that? Some drivel about a penknife. Does that ring a bell?”

“Matter of fact it does.”

“Who's Poppy?”

“Never heard of her.”

“Or him?”

“Nice thought, but no.”

“Wentworth?”

“Never been there. Hate the place. What about it?”

“There was a girl called Sabina he apparently got caught up with in Austria. He ever mention her?”

“Not that I remember. Pym got caught up with a lot of girls. Not that it did him much good.”

“He rang you, didn't he? On Monday night, from a callbox.”

With startling abruptness, Sir Kenneth flung up one arm in pleasure and gave a hoot of merriment. “Pissed out of his skull,” he declared, very loud. “Ossified. Haven't heard him so pissed since Oxford when six of us put away a case of his father's port. Pretended some queen from Merton gave it to him, I don't know why. There weren't any queens in Merton in those days. Not rich ones. We were all at Trinity.”

 

It was after midnight. Back in the confinement of his Shepherd Market flat with the pigeons on the parapet Brotherhood poured himself another vodka and added orange juice from a carton. He had thrown his jacket on the bed, his pocket tape-recorder lay before him on the desk. He was jotting as he listened.

“. . . don't go to Wiltshire a lot as a rule while Parliament's in session but Sunday was my second wife's birthday and our boy was down from school so I went and did my stuff and thought I'd stay on for a day or two and see what gives in the constituency. . . .”

Forward again: “. . . don't normally answer the phone in Wiltshire but Monday's her bridge night and I was in the library playing a game of backgammon so when the phone rang I thought I might as well take it rather than spoil her four. Half past eleven it must have been but Jean's bridge nights go on for ever. Chap's voice. Must be her boyfriend, I thought. Bloody cheek, really, this time of night. ‘Hullo? Sef? That Sef?' ‘Who the hell's that?' I said. ‘It's me. Magnus. My father's died. Over here to bury him.' I thought, Poor old chap. Nobody likes to have his old man die on him. . . . That right for you? More water? Help yourself.”

Brotherhood hears himself roar “Thanks” as he leans towards the water jug. Then the sounds of a flood as he pours.

“‘ How's Jem?' he says. Jemima's my sister. They had a dingdong once, never came to much. Married a florist. Extraordinary thing. Chap grows flowers all along the road to Basing-stoke. Puts his name up on a board. Doesn't seem to bother her. Not that she sees much of him. Navigational problems, our Jem. Same as me.”

Forward again: “. . . pissed. Couldn't tell whether he was laughing or crying. Poor chap, I thought. Drowning his sorrows. I'd do the same. Next thing I know, he's prosing on about our private school. I mean Christ, we'd done two or three schools together, Oxford, not to mention a couple of holidays, yet all he wants to talk about forty years later, on the blower middle of the night, party going on, is how he carved my initials in the staff loo at our private and got me flogged for it. ‘Sorry I carved your initials, Sef.' All right. He did it. He carved'em. I never doubted he carved 'em. Cocked it up too. He would. Know what he did? Bloody fool put a hyphen between the ‘S' and the ‘B' where we don't have one. I told old Grimble, the headmaster. ‘Why would I put a hyphen in?' I said. ‘Not how I spell my name,' I said. ‘No hyphen in it. Look at the school list.' Not a blind bit of difference, flogged me. Way it goes, you see. No justice. I don't know I minded much. Everybody flogged everybody in those days. Besides, I wasn't very nice to him myself. Always ragging him about his people. Father was a con man, you know. Nearly ruined my aunt. Had a go at my mother too. Tried to bed her but she was too fly. Some scheme to build a new airport in Scotland somewhere. He'd squared the locals, all he needed was buy the land, get the formal permission, make a fortune. Cousin of mine owns half Argyll. I asked him about it. Hokum, the whole thing. Extraordinary. I stayed with 'em once. Tarts' parlour in Ascot. All these crooks hanging about and Magnus calling them ‘sir'. Father tried to get into Parliament once. Pity he didn't. He'd have been good company. . . .”

Forward again: “. . . banging in the cash. I asked him where he was, he said London but he had to use phone boxes, he was being followed. I said, ‘Whose initials have you been carving now?' Joke actually, but he didn't see it. I was sorry about his old man, you see. Didn't want him moping. Dramatic chap, always has been. Nothing going on in his life unless he's got some frightful problem on his hands. You could have sold him the Egyptian pyramids long as you said they were falling down. I said, give me the number of your phone, I'll ring you back. He said somebody must have told me to say that. I said, ‘Absolute bilge, hell are you talking about? Half my friends are on the run.' He said his father was dead and he was looking at his life for the first time. Fundamental. Always has been. Then he went back to these initials he'd carved. ‘I'm really sorry, Sef.' I said, ‘Look here, old boy, I always knew it was you and I don't think we should go through life wearing hairshirts about what we did at our private. Do you need cash? Want a bed? Take a cottage on the estate.' ‘I'm really sorry, Sef. Really sorry.' I said, ‘You tell me what I can do, I'll do it. I'm in the book in London, give me a buzz if I can help.' Well, I mean damn it, he'd been on for twenty minutes. I put the phone down and half an hour later he's back. ‘Hullo, Sef. Me again.' Jean was pretty shirty this time. Thought it was Steggie having a tantrum. ‘Got to talk to you, Sef. Listen to me.' Well, you can't ring off on an old chum when he's down, can you?”

Brotherhood heard Sir Kenneth's clock chime twelve. He was jotting fast. Concentric fantasies, he repeated to himself, defining the truth at the centre. He had reached the passage he was waiting for.

“. . . said he was in secret work. That didn't surprise me, who isn't these days? . . . Said there was this Englishman he worked for, called him the Brotherhood. I don't think I listened to all of it, to be honest. There was the Brotherhood and there was this other chap. Said he was working for both of 'em. They were like two parents for him. Kept him going. I said bully for you, if they keep you going, you stick to them. Said he had to write this book about them, put the record right. What record? God knows. He'd write to the Brotherhood, write to the other chap, then he'd take himself off to a secret place and do his number.” Brotherhood heard his own patient murmur in the background. “. . . Well maybe I got that one a bit wrong then. Maybe he was going to hunker down in his secret place first and write to them from there. I wasn't listening to all of it. Drunks bore me. I'm one myself.”

Prompt from Brotherhood.

Long pause.

Renewed prompt from Brotherhood.

Sir Kenneth indistinct: “Said he was his runner.”

“Who was whose runner?”

“Pym was t'other chap's runner. Not the Brotherhood's. The other fellow's. Said he'd crippled him somehow. Pissed, I told you.”

Brotherhood again, riding him a little harder: “. . . name for this person?”

“Don't think so. Don't think it stuck. Sorry. No, it didn't.”

“And the secret place? Where was that?”

“Didn't say. His business.”

Brotherhood let the tape continue. Avalanche as Sefton Boyd lights himself a cigarette. Cannon-blast of the front door being slammed open and shut again, signalling Steggie's petulant return.

Brotherhood and Sir Kenneth are on the landing.

“What's that, old boy?” Sir Kenneth very loud.

“I said, so where do you think he might be?” says Brotherhood.

“Upstairs, old boy. That's what you said.” In his memory's eye, Brotherhood sees Sir Kenneth's pouch face approach close to his own, smiling its downward twist. “Get a warrant, maybe you can have a look. Maybe you can't. Don't know. Have to see.”

Brotherhood heard his own heels clumping down Sir Kenneth's stairs. He heard himself reach the hall and Steggie's lighter footsteps mingle with his own. He heard Steggie's pointed “Good night” and the clatter of bolts as he unlocks the door for him. Followed by Steggie's muffled shriek as Brotherhood hauls him out of the house, one hand over his mouth, the other at the back of his head. Then the thump as he taps Steggie's head against the plaster pillar of Sir Kenneth's gracious porch, and his own voice, very near to Steggie's ear.

“Have they done this before to you, have they? Put you up against a wall?”

A whimper for an answer.

“Who else is living in the house, son?”

“No one.”

“Who was on the top floor this evening, back and forth in front of the window?”

“Me.”

“Why?”

“It's my room!”

“I thought you two would share the bridal chamber.”

“I've still got my own room, haven't I? I'm entitled to my privacy, same as he is.”

“Nobody else in the house at all?”

“No!”

“Not all week?”

“No. I told you. Hey, stop!”

“What's the matter?” says Brotherhood, already halfway down the path.

“I haven't got my key. How do I get back in?”

A clang as Brotherhood slams the gate.

 

He phoned Kate. No answer.

He phoned his wife. No answer.

He phoned Paddington and wrote down the times and places along the route of the night sleeper from Paddington to Penzance via Reading.

For an hour he tried to sleep, then returned to his desk, pulled Langley's folder towards him and stared yet again at the eaten-out features of Herr Petz-Hampel-Zaworski, Pym's presumed controller, lately of Corfu. “. . . Real name unknown . . . query member Czech archaeological team visiting Egypt 1961 (Petz) . . . query 1966 att. Czech Military Mission East Berlin (Hampel). . . height 6 ft., stoops, limps slightly with left leg . . .”

“There was the Brotherhood and there was this other chap,” Sefton Boyd had said. “They were like two parents for him. Said he was his runner.”

“You brought it on yourselves,” he heard Belinda say. “You invented him.”

He continued to stare at the photograph. The down-turned eye-lids. The down-turned moustache. The twinkly eyes. The hidden Slav smile. Who the devil are you? Why do I recognise you when I have never set eyes on you?

 

Grant Lederer had never stood so high in the world, or felt so rounded as a human being. Justice lives! he assured himself in the perfect peacefulness of his triumph. My masters are worthy of their authority. A noble service has tried me to the limit and found me worthy of my hire. All round him the sealed operations room on the sixth floor of the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square was filling up with people he had not known existed. They came from the remote corners of London Station, yet each as he entered appeared to bestow a glance of kinship on him. As fine a looking bunch of Americans as you'd wish to meet, he thought. The Agency really knows how to pick us these days. They had hardly settled before Wexler began speaking.

“Time to wrap this thing up,” he said grimly as the door was locked. “Meet Gary, everybody. Gary's head of SISURP. He's here to report an important breakthrough on Pym and discuss action.”

SISURP, Lederer had recently learned, was the acronym for Surveillance Intelligence, Southern Europe. Gary was your typical Kentuckian—tall, spare and amusing. Lederer already admired him intensely. An aide sat at his elbow with a heap of papers, but Gary did not refer to them. Our quarry, he said baldly, was Petz-Hampel-Zaworski, now known to the indoctrinated familiarly as PHZ. A SISURP team picked him up Tuesday 10:12 a.m. emerging from the Czech Embassy in Vienna. Lederer listened enthralled as Gary noted each tiny detail of PHZ's day. Where PHZ took his coffee. Where PHZ took his leaks. The bookshops where PHZ browsed. Who PHZ lunched with. Where. What he ate. PHZ's limp. His ready smile. His charm, particularly with women. His cigars, where he lit them, bought them. PHZ's ease of association, his apparent unawareness that he was being observed by a field force eighteen strong. The two occasions when “wittingly or otherwise” PHZ placed himself in the vicinity of Mrs. Mary Pym. On one of these occasions, said Gary, eye contact was confirmed. On the other, surveillance was inhibited by the presence of a British pair believed to be the escorts of Mrs. Pym. And thence at last to the crowning moment of the operation and the high point of Grant Lederer's brilliant marriage and dazzling career so far, when at 8 a.m. local time today three members of Gary's team found themselves stuck in the rear pews of the English church in Vienna, while twelve more were staked out around the outside of it—mobile units, necessarily, because this was diplomatic-land where loiterers were not well regarded—and PHZ and Mary Pym were placed either side of the aisle. Lederer's cue had arrived. Gary was looking expectantly towards him.