A Perfect Spy

“He said he was brilliant. Everyone was brilliant for Magnus when they were new.”

“If I said ‘Greensleeves’ to you in a loud voice, would that ring any bells?”

“It would mean English traditional music.”

“Ever hear of a girl called Sabina?”

She shook her head. “He told me I was his first,” she said.

“Did you believe him?”

“It’s hard to tell when it’s the first for you too.”

With Belinda, he remembered, the quiet was always good. If her charges into the lists had something comic about them, there was always dignity to the calm between.

“So Nigel and his friends went away happy,” he suggested. “Did you?”

Her face against the window was in silhouette. He waited for it to lift or turn to him, but it didn’t.

“Where would you look for him?” he said. “If you were me?”

Still she did not move or speak.

“Some place by the sea somewhere? He had these fantasies, you know. He chopped them up and gave a bit to each person. Did he ever give a version to you? Scotland? Canada? The migration of the reindeer? Some kind lady who’d take him in? I need to know, Belinda. I really do.”

“I won’t talk to you any more, Jack. Paul’s right. I don’t have to.”

“Not whatever he’s done? Not to save him perhaps?”

“I don’t trust you. Specially when you’re being nice. You invented him, Jack. He’d have done whatever you told him. Who to be. Who to marry. Who to divorce. If he’s done wrong it’s as much your fault as his. It was easy to get rid of me — he just gave me the latch key and went to a lawyer. How was he supposed to get rid of you?”

Brotherhood moved towards the door.

“If you find him, tell him not to ring again. And Jack?” Brotherhood paused. Her face was soft again, and hopeful. “Did he write that book he was always on about?”

“Which book was that?”

“The great autobiographical novel that was going to change the world.”

“Should he have done?”

“‘ One day I’m going to lock myself away and tell the truth.’ ‘Why do you have to lock yourself away? Tell it now,’ I said. He didn’t seem to think he could. I’m not going to let Lucy marry early. Nor’s Paul. We’re going to put her on the pill and let her have affairs.”

“Lock himself away where, Belinda?”

The light once more faded from her face. “You brought it on yourselves, Jack. All of you. He’d have been all right if he’d never met people like you.”

* * *

Wait, Grant Lederer told himself. They all hate you. You hate most of them. Be a clever boy and wait your turn. Ten men sat in a room inside a room. In the false walls, false windows looked onto plastic flowers. From places like this, thought Lederer, America lost her wars against the little brown men in black pyjamas. From places like this, he thought — from smoked-glass rooms, cut off from humankind — America will lose all her wars except the last. A few yards beyond the walls lay the placid diplomatic backwaters of St. John’s Wood. But here inside they could have been in Langley or Saigon.

“Harry, with the greatest possible respect,” Mountjoy of the Cabinet Office piped with very little respect at all. “These early indicators of yours could perfectly easily have been dumped on us by an unscrupulous opposition, as some of us have been saying all along. Is it really fair to trot them out yet again? I thought we put all this stuff to bed back in August.”

Wexler stared at the spectacles he was holding in both hands. They are too heavy for him, thought Lederer. He sees too clearly through them. Wexler lowered them to the table and scratched his veteran’s crew cut with his stubby fingertips. What’s holding you up? Lederer demanded of him silently. Are you translating English into English? Are you paralysed by jet-lag after flying Concorde all the way from Washington? Or are you in awe of these English gentlemen who never tire of telling us how they set up our service in the first place and generously invited us to sup at their high table? You’re a top man of the best intelligence agency in the world, for Christ’s sake. You’re my boss. Why don’t you stand up and be counted? As if in response to Lederer’s silent pleading, Wexler’s voice started functioning again with all the animation of a machine that speaks your weight.