A Perfect Spy

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.

CHAPTER 8