A Perfect Spy

I held it against you, Jack, I confess. I argued with you in my head for years, uphill, downhill, and long after I had joined the Firm. Why had you done it to him? He wasn’t English, he wasn’t a Communist, he wasn’t the war criminal the Americans claimed he was. He was nothing to do with you. His only crimes were his poverty, his illegal presence and his lameness — plus a certain freedom in his way of thinking, which in the eyes of some is what we are there to protect. But I did nurse a grudge and I’m sorry. Because now of course I know you hardly gave it a thought. Axel was another bit of barter material. You wrote him up; he came back into your in-tray looking formidable and sinister in Wendy’s flawless type. You lit your pipe and admired your handiwork, and you thought: Hullo, I’ll bet the old Swissies will like a smell of this one; I’ll pop it down to them and earn myself a Brownie point. You made a phone call or two and invited some contact in the Swiss Security Service to join you for an extended luncheon at your favourite restaurant. Over the coffee and the schnapps you slipped him an anonymous brown envelope. As an afterthought you slipped a copy to your American colleague too, because if you’re going to earn one favour, why not earn a second while you’re about it? After all, it was the Yanks who put him in the cooler, even if they got his record wrong.

You were junior then, too, weren’t you? You had your way to make. As we all have. Maturer now, both of us. Sorry to be so lengthy in the remembering, but the episode took me rather a long time to forget. I’ve got it straight now. Served me right for having a friend outside the service.

* * *

“Mr. Canterbury! Mr. Canterbury! You’ve got a man!”

Pym had put down his pen. He had not looked towards the door. Almost before he was aware of it, he had leapt to his slippered feet and was flying across the room to where the metal-lined black briefcase, still locked, stood against the wall. Dropping to a crouch beside it, he inserted the complicated key in the first lock and sprung it. Then the second: anti-clockwise or it fires.

“What man’s that, Miss D?” he said in his softest and most reassuring tone, one hand already in the case.

“With a cabinet, Mr. Canterbury,” Miss Dubber replied with disapproval through the keyhole. “You’ve never had a cabinet before. You’ve never had anything. You’ve never locked your door either. What’s wrong?”

Pym laughed. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s just a cabinet. I ordered it. How many of them are there?”

Taking the briefcase with him, he tiptoed to the window and squared his back against the wall while he squinted cautiously through the gap in the curtain.

“Just one — isn’t that enough? A great green ugly one made of iron. If you’d wanted a cabinet why didn’t you tell me? You could have had Mrs. Tutton’s cupboard from room two.”

“I meant how many men?”

It was daylight. A yellow taxi-truck was parked outside the house, the driver at the wheel. He glanced round the rest of the square. Fast. Checking everything. Then slowly. Checking everything again.

“What does it matter how many men, Mr. Canterbury? Why do we have to count the men when it’s a cabinet?”

Relaxing, Pym replaced the briefcase in its corner and relocked it. Clockwise or it fires. He returned the keys to his pocket. He opened the door.

“Sorry, Miss D. I think I must have been dozing.”

She watched him down the stairs, then went after him and watched again as he looked first at the two men, then shyly at the green cabinet, lightly touching its chipped paintwork, up and down, tugging at each drawer in turn.

“It’s a bloody weight, governor, I’ll tell you,” said the first.

“Who’s it got in it then?” said the second.

She watched him lead the men up to his room, the cabinet between them, and lead them down again. She watched him pay their bill in cash from his back pocket, and give them an extra five pounds for themselves.

“Sorry about that, Miss D,” he said as they drove off. “Some old Ministry archives I’m working on. Here. This is for you.” He handed her a travel brochure he had brought down with him from his room. There was a whiff of Rick about the capitals. “Discover Tunisia in the Luxury of our air-conditioned Coach. Seniors a Speciality. Shades of the East in the Mediterranean. Enough to make your mouth Water.”

But Miss Dubber would not accept the brochure. “Toby and I aren’t going anywhere any more, Mr. Canterbury,” she said. “Whatever’s troubling you won’t go away with us. That’s for sure.”

CHAPTER 9