A Perfect Spy

I remember asking what crowd you fought with, sir, expecting you to say “Fifth Airborne,” or “Artists’ Rifles” so that I could look suitably awed. Instead you went a bit gruff and said, “General List.” I know now that you were exercising the double standard of diplomatic cover: you wanted it to cover you, but you also wanted Pym to see through it. You wanted him to know you were an irregular, and not one of those intellectual little ponces from the Foreign Office, as you call them. You asked him whether he got around the country and suggested that, on occasions when you were making an official car journey somewhere, he might like to come aboard and amuse himself the other end. The two of us put on boots and went for what you called a bash: meaning a forced march through the Elfenau woods. In the course of it you told Pym he needn’t call you “sir,” and when we came back, Felicity had fed Adrian, and there was an older, smirking man sitting talking to her. You introduced him as Sandy from the Embassy and Pym sensed you were colleagues and vaguely that Sandy was your boss. I know now that he was your Station Head and you were his number two, and that he was performing his standard task of looking over the property before allowing you to buy your way any further in. But at the time Pym just thought of Sandy as headmaster and you as housemaster, a construction you would not have disapproved of.

“How good’s your German, by the by?” Sandy asked Pym through his smirk while the three of us munched Felicity’s mince pies. “Bit hard to learn here, isn’t it, with all this Swissie dialect about?”

“Magnus knows rather a lot of university émigrés,” you explained for me, underlining a selling point. Sandy let out a silly laugh and slapped his knee.

“Does he, does he though? I’ll bet there’s some rum characters among that crowd!”

“He could probably tell us a good deal about them too, couldn’t you, Magnus?” you said.

“You wouldn’t mind?” said Sandy quizzically, still smirking.

“Why should I?” said Pym.

Sandy forced the card cleverly. He sensed that Pym liked taking rash decisions in front of people, and he used this knowledge to press a commitment out of him before he knew what he was committing to.

“No high-minded scruples about the sanctity of academic study or anything like that?” Sandy insisted.

“None at all,” said Pym boldly. “Not if it’s for my country,” and was rewarded by Felicity’s smile.

What version of himself Pym supplied that day, and had to live with for the coming months, I do not remember, which means it must have been a fairly restrained one, short on those awkward story-points that too often had to be paid for later. As best he could, he gave you what he thought you were looking for. He was prudent enough not to admit he was earning money, which went down well with you, for you knew already he was working “black,” as the Germans call it — meaning illegally, and at night. Shrewd chap, you thought; resourceful; not above a bit of larceny. He played down family life with the Ollingers since proxy parents undermined his self-image as a mature exile. When you asked him whether he knew any girls — the shadow of homosexuality, is he one of those? — Pym got the message at once, and wove a harmless fantasy around an Italian beauty called Maria whom he had met at the Cosmo Club and was keen on, but only as a stopgap for his regular girlfriend Jemima, back in England.

“Jemima who?” you asked, and Pym said Sefton Boyd, which produced an audible sigh of social satisfaction. A real Maria did indeed exist and was indeed beautiful but Pym’s adoration of her was private to himself, for he had never spoken to her.

“Cosmo?” said you. “Don’t think I’ve heard of that one. Have you, Sandy?”

“Can’t say I have, old boy. Sounds fishy to me.”

Pym explained that the Cosmo was a sort of foreigners’ political forum, and Maria was some sort of officer of it, like treasurer.

“Any particular complexion?” Sandy asked.