Yesterday's Spy (17 page)

Champion stared at the menu. ‘
Choucroute!
It's a long time since I last had
choucroute garni
,' he said. He pursed his lips as if he was already tasting it. But he didn't order sauerkraut, he had fillet steak and imported asparagus.

It was my idea that Gus – Champion's contact in the Valmy depot – should get a local contractor's pass for me. He had doubts about it, but the application went through within seven days and they gave me the pass the following Monday. With it I was able to crisscross the whole military zone. Providing Gus came down to the door of the administration block, I was also permitted to enter the buildings there.

From the top floor I saw the flash of the guns far away on the other side of the range, and I could look down to the bottom of the old fault on the edge of which Valmy was built. On the firing days, yellow helicopters scoured the range for warheads and the striped dummy atomic shells. They clattered across the rift to deliver the target-graphs to the administration block's front lawn – that is to say, the wind-scoured piece of scrubland where stood two ancient field guns, an old missile ramp, and a sign saying ‘No Admittance'.

‘The French are being very co-operative,' said Schlegel.

‘Too bloody co-operative,' I said. ‘When that pass came through within seven days, this fellow Gus couldn't talk about anything else.'

Schlegel stopped pacing up and down and looked at me. He recognized other unspoken criticisms in my voice.

‘We've got to keep in contact,' said Schlegel defensively. ‘And this was the only place.'

I didn't pursue the argument. Schlegel was right. He looked at his watch. ‘Mustn't keep you too long, or our friend Champion might wonder where you are.' He put the papers that Gus had given me into my document case and clicked the locks closed. ‘Worthless,' he pronounced. ‘If Champion can sell that to the Arabs, he deserves every penny he gets!'

‘A dummy-run perhaps. Just to see if I'm going to blow the works.'

‘What for?' said Schlegel. ‘Who needs you, one way or the other? Why try to convince you that he trusts you – where's the percentage?'

‘That's right,' I agreed.

‘Now don't go all hurt on me. Champion doesn't need you, or any other cut-out. He's met Gus – Gus knows his face – Jesus! It doesn't make sense, does it?'

I blew my nose. Then I walked over to the window and looked down at the other buildings. I was suffering the first symptoms of influenza, and the weather promised nothing but thunder and lightning and endless torrents of rain. I put my hands on the radiator and shivered.

‘Come away from that window, bird-brain,' said Schlegel. ‘You want your pal Gus to see you?'

‘It
could
make sense,' I said, moving away from the window. ‘It would make sense, if there was something very big coming up. Something that the French don't want to talk about.'

Schlegel pulled a horrified face and waved his flattened hands at me to warn me to stop.

‘I know, I know, I know!' I said. I looked round at the soft furnishings, the hand-tinted portraits of nineteenth-century generals and the faded plastic flowers. Such a reception room – in such a place – was sure to have electronic plumbing, but I continued anyway. ‘If they are putting something really important through the Atelier in the near future, Champion will get his hands on it.'

Schlegel shrugged at what most people in the department would have considered a major breach of security. ‘Not if our pal Gus goes into the cooler. That's the way they'd reason.'

‘And perhaps that's the way Champion hopes they will reason.'

Schlegel sucked his teeth in a gesture that was as near as he ever came to admiration. ‘You have your lucid moments, fella. For a Brit, I mean.' He nodded. ‘You mean he might have
two
contacts here.'

‘Champion was brought up on second network techniques.'

‘Well, you should know. You were with him, weren't you.' He walked over to the plastic flowers, took one and snapped its petals off one by one, tossing them into an ashtray. ‘There are still some questions, though.' He looked down at the broken pieces of plastic that remained in his hand and dropped them as if they were red hot. ‘I'm trying to give up smoking,' he said. ‘It's tough!'

‘Yes,' I said.

Schlegel pulled a face, trying not to sneeze; sneezed, and then wiped his nose carefully. He went over to the radiator to see if the heat was on. It wasn't. ‘You want to give me one of those aspirins? I think maybe I'm getting your virus.'

I gave him two tablets. He swallowed them.

He said, ‘Champion has been made a colonel in the Egyptian Army.'

I stared at him in disbelief.

‘It's true,' he said. ‘It's not promulgated, or even distributed, but it's official all right. You know how these army chiefs like to get their claws into promising sources.'

I nodded. The army would want to get the allegiance of a man like Champion, rather than let his reports go back to the politicians. Giving him a colonelcy was a simple way of doing it.

‘A colonel of the propaganda division, with effect from January the tenth.' Schlegel folded his handkerchief into a ball and pummelled his nose with it, as if trying to suppress another sneeze. ‘Propaganda division! You think that could be on the level? You think this could all be a propaganda exercise?'

‘Propaganda? A sell so soft that it's secret, you mean?' I asked sarcastically.

‘He's not through yet,' said Schlegel, with some foreboding.

‘That's true,' I said.

‘You'd better move,' said Schlegel. ‘I know Champion likes you back there in time to dress for dinner.'

‘You're a sarcastic bastard, Colonel.'

‘Well, I'm too old to change my ways now,' he said.

There was a tiny mark on Schlegel's face, where I had punched him in the fracas at Waterloo Station. ‘That other business …' I said.

‘My Waterloo,' said Schlegel. He smiled his lopsided smile, and explained, ‘That was Dawlish's joke.'

‘It wasn't like me,' I said apologetically.

‘Funny you should say that,' said Schlegel. ‘Dawlish said it was
exactly
like you.'

‘So this is the south of France?' I said, as the servant took my coat. Champion leaned forward in his big wing armchair, and reached for a log. He placed it upon the fire before looking up at me. The logs were perfect cylinders cut from young trees, a degree of calculation that extended to everything in the house. The three matching antique corner cupboards, with their japanned decoration, fitted exactly to the space outside the carpet, and the colours harmonized with the painting over the fireplace and with the envelope card table. It was the sort of home you got from giving an interior decorator a blank cheque. After a lifetime of bedsitters and chaotic flats I found the calculated effect disconcerting. Champion had the whisky decanter within arm's reach. That morning it had been full. Now it was almost empty.

Billy was full-length on the floor, drawing monsters in his animal book. He got to his feet and advanced upon me with an accusing finger.

‘The fishes can't
hear
when you call them.'

‘Can't they?' I said.

‘No, because they have no ears. I spent hours and hours today, calling to the fishes, but Nanny says they can't hear.'

‘So why do they follow me?'

‘My nurse says you must have thrown bread into the pond.'

‘I hope you didn't tell her I did, because she gets angry if I don't eat all my bread.'

‘Yes, I know,' said Billy wistfully. ‘I won't tell her, you needn't worry.'

Champion was watching the exchange. He said, ‘You'll give him a complex.'

‘What's a complex?' Billy said.

‘Never mind what it is,' said Champion. ‘You go with Nurse now, and I'll come up and say goodnight.'

Billy looked at me, and then at his father, and back to me again. ‘I'd like a complex,' he said.

‘Don't worry, Billy,' I said. ‘I know a man who can get them wholesale.'

There was a discreet tap at the door. Topaz entered. She wore a white apron. Her face had no make-up, and her blonde hair was drawn tight into a chignon high on the back of her head. I knew it was what she always wore when giving Billy his bath but it made her look like some impossibly beautiful nurse from one of those hospital films.

She nodded deferentially to Champion, and smiled at me. It was the same warm friendly smile that she gave me whenever we saw each other about the house, but she had not visited my room since that first night together.

Love has been defined as ‘a desire to be desired'. Well, I'd been in love enough times to think it unlikely that I was falling in love with Topaz. And yet I knew that curious mixture of passion and pity that is the essence of love. And, in spite of myself, I was jealous of some unknown man who might deprive her of this exasperating composure.

I looked at Champion and then I looked back to her, always watchful for a hint of their relationship. But the secret smile she gave me was more like the
rapport
two sober people share in the presence of a drunken friend.

‘Come along, Billy,' she said. But Billy did not go to her; he came to me and put his arms round me and buried his head.

I crouched down to bring our faces level. Billy whispered, ‘Don't worry, Uncle Charlie, I won't tell her about the bread.'

When Billy had finally said goodnight and departed, Champion walked round to the table beside the sofa. He opened the document case I'd brought from Valmy, and flicked his way through it with superficial interest. ‘Crap,' he said. ‘The same old crap. I'll look at it later. No need to lock it away upstairs.'

‘Does Gus know that it's crap?' I said.

‘It makes him feel he's part of the class struggle,' said Champion.

‘He won't feel like that if he gets ten years for stealing secrets.'

‘Then you don't
know
him,' said Champion. ‘I fancy that's his most cherished dream.'

‘What's for dinner?'

‘She's doing that bloody
tripes à la mode
again.'

‘I like that.'

‘Well, I don't,' said Champion. ‘Don't you ever think about anything but food? How about a drink?'

‘You do that journey up the road to Valmy three times a week, in that little Fiat, and maybe you'll start thinking about it, too.' I waved away the decanter he offered.

‘All right. You think it's a waste of time seeing Gus. But we'll need Gus soon – really need him – and I don't want him getting a sudden crisis of conscience then.'

‘This is just to implicate him?'

‘No, no, no. But I don't want him picking and choosing. I want a regular channel out of that place. I'll sort it out when it gets here.'

‘Dangerous way of buying crap,' I said.

‘For you, you mean?'

‘Who else?'

‘Don't worry your pretty little head. If they are going to clamp down, I'll hear about it. I'll hear about it before the commandant.' He gave me a big self-congratulatory smile. I'd never seen him really drunk before, or perhaps until now I'd not known what to look out for.

‘Well, that's wonderful,' I said, but the sarcasm didn't register upon him.

He said, ‘You should have seen Billy this afternoon. Ever seen those toy trains the Germans do? They sent a man from the factory to set it up: goods wagons, diesels, restaurant cars and locomotives – it goes right around the room. Locomotives no bigger than your hand, but the detail is fantastic. We kept it a secret – you should have seen Billy's face.'

‘He wants his mother, Steve. And he needs her! Servants and tailored clothes and model trains – he doesn't give a damn about any of that.'

Steve furrowed his brow. ‘I'm only doing it for the boy,' he said. ‘You know that.'

‘Doing what?'

He drained his Scotch. ‘He wants his mother,' he repeated disgustedly. ‘Whose damn side are you on?'

‘Billy's,' I said.

He got to his feet with only the slightest hint of unsteadiness, but when he pointed at me his hand shook. ‘You keep your lousy opinions to yourself.' To moderate the rebuke, Champion smiled. But it wasn't much of a smile. ‘For God's sake, Charlie. She gets me down. Another letter from her lawyers today … they accuse me of kidnapping Billy.'

‘But isn't that what you did?'

‘Damn right! And she's got two ways of getting Billy back – lawyers or physical force. Well, she'll find out that I can afford more lawyers than she can, and as for physical force, she'd have to fight her way through my army to get here.' He smiled a bigger smile.

‘He wants his mother, Steve. How can you be so blind?'

‘Just do as you're told and keep your nose clean.'

‘
Tripes
à
la mode
, eh,' I said. ‘I like the way she does that. She puts calves' stomach and ox-foot in it, that's what makes the gravy so thick.'

‘Do you want to make me sick!' said Champion. ‘I think I shall have a mushroom omelette.' He walked round the sofa and opened the document case. He shuffled through the Xerox copies that Gus had made at considerable risk. This second look at them confirmed his opinion. He tossed them back into the case with a contemptuous Gallic ‘Pooof!' and poured the last of the Scotch into his glass.

I was surprised to find how much his contempt annoyed me. Whatever Champion felt about my fears, and Gus's motives, we deserved more for our pains than that.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘She puts those garlic croutons into the omelettes. Perhaps I'll have one of those as a starter.'