A Perfect Spy

“Then sod them,” says Pym gallantly, rejecting the whole fatuous diplomatic world for her with a sweep of his forearm. For a moment Mary fears that Magnus has had one too many. She hopes not for she is not pretending: after the worries and fatuities of the evening she wants him very much. Handing Mary her glass, Magnus raises his own and drinks to her silently: well done, old girl. He is smiling straight down at her, his knees are almost touching hers and steady. Affected by the tension in him Mary wants him urgently here and now and gives him further clear evidence of this with her hands.

“If Grant Lederer is the third,” she asks, thinking again for a moment of that murderous look, “what on earth were the first two like?”

“I’m free,” says Pym.

Mary fails to understand. She thinks he is capping her joke in some way.

“I don’t get it,” she says a little shamefacedly. I’m so slow for him, poor love. A sudden awful thought. “You don’t mean they’ve sacked you?” she says.

Magnus shakes his head. “Rick’s dead,” he explains. “Who?” Which Rick does he mean? Rick from Berlin? Rick from Langley? Which Rick is dead who can be setting Magnus free and, who knows, making space for his promotion?

Magnus begins again. Perfectly reasonably. Clearly the poor girl has not understood. She is tired from her long evening. She’s had a couple too many. “Rick, my father, is dead. He died of a heart attack at six this evening while we were changing. They thought he was okay after the last one but it turns out he wasn’t. Jack Brotherhood phoned from London. Why the hell Personnel gave it to Jack to break to me rather than break it to me themselves is a secret not ours to share, presumably. But they did.”

And Mary even then doesn’t get it right.

“What do you mean — free?” she shouts wildly as all constraint leaves her. “Free of what?” Then very sensibly she bursts out weeping. Loud enough for both of them. Loud enough to drown her own dreadful questions from Lesbos all the way here.

And she has half a mind to weep again now, for Jack Brotherhood, as the front doorbell sounds through the house like a bugle call, three short peals as ever.

* * *

Pym briskly drew the curtains and switched on the light. He had stopped singing. He felt nimble. Setting down his briefcase with a little grunt, he peered gratefully around him, letting everything greet him in its own good time. The brass bedstead. Good morning. The embroidery picture above it exhorting him to love Jesus: I tried, but Rick always got in the way. The roll-top desk. The Bakelite wireless that had listened to dear old Winston Churchill. Pym had imposed nothing of himself on this room. He was its guest, not its coloniser. What had drawn him here, back in those dark ages, all those lives ago? Even now, with so much else clear to him, a sleepiness came over him when he tried to make himself remember. So many lonely journeys and aimless walks in foreign cities led me here, so much fallow, solitary time. He had been catching trains, looking for somewhere, escaping from somewhere else. Mary was in Berlin — no, she was in Prague — they had been transferred a couple of months earlier, and it was being made clear to him even then that if he kept his nose clean in Prague, the Washington appointment would be next on the list. Tom was — good God, Tom was scarcely out of nappies. And Pym was in London for a conference — no, he wasn’t, he was attending a three-day course on the latest methods of clandestine communication in a beastly little training house off Smith Square. The course over, he had taken a cab to Paddington. Mindlessly, the instinct guiding him. His head still crammed with useless knowledge about anodes and squash transmissions. He jumped on a train that was about to pull out and at Exeter crossed the platform and took another. What greater freedom than not knowing where you are going or why? Finding himself in the middle of nowhere, he spotted a bus bearing a vaguely familiar destination and boarded it.

This was granny-land. This was Sunday, when aunts rode to church with collection coins inside their gloves. From his spaceship on the upper deck, Pym gazed down fondly on chimney-pots, churches, dunes and slate roofs that looked as though they were waiting to be lifted up to Heaven by their topknots. The bus stopped, the conductor said “Far as we go, sir,” and Pym alighted with a most curious sense of accomplishment. I’m there, he thought. I’ve found it at last, and I wasn’t even looking for it. The very town, the very beach, exactly as I left them all those years ago. The day was sunny and the world empty. Probably it was lunchtime. He had lost count. What was certain was that Miss Dubber’s steps were scrubbed so white it was a shame to tread on them, and a hymn tune issued from the house, together with a smell of roast chicken, blue bag, carbolic soap and godliness.

“Go away!” a thin voice shouted. “I’m on the top step and I can’t reach the fuse and if I stretch any more I’ll pop.”