A Perfect Spy

“At that point in time nothing, sir,” Lederer confesses with false humility, stepping in on Wexler’s behalf. “However we had by then established a retrospective link between Pym and Hans Albrecht Petz. At the time of the Salzburg conference, Pym and his wife were attending a music festival there. Petz was staying about two hundred yards from the Pyms’ hotel.”

“Same story over again,” says Brammel doggedly. “It’s a set-up. Sticks out a mile. Right, Nigel?”

“It’s awfully tenuous actually,” Nigel says.

The air pressure again. Maybe the machines kill the oxygen as well as the sound, thinks Lederer. “Do you mind telling us the date when that Athens trace came through?” asks Brotherhood, still on the matter of the timing.

“Ten days ago, sir,” says Lederer.

“Bloody slow about advising us, weren’t you?”

In anger Wexler finds his words faster: “Well now, Jack, we were pretty damn reluctant to present you people prematurely with yet another series of computerised coincidences.” And to Lederer, his whipping boy: “What the hell are you waiting for?”

It is ten days ago. Lederer is crouched in the communications room in the Station in Vienna. It is night and he has bowed out of two cocktail invitations and one dinner by pretending a light flu. He has phoned Bee and let her hear the excitement in his voice and he has half a mind to rush back and tell her then and there, because he has always told her everything anyway — and sometimes when trade was poor a little more than everything in order to keep the image going. But he holds on to himself. And though his fingers are frozen in the joints from the sheer tension of it, he keeps on typing. First he calls up the most recent schedules of Pym’s known movements in and out of Vienna and establishes, almost as a matter of course, that he visited both Salzburg and Linz on precisely the same dates as Petz alias Hampel.

“Linz too?” Brotherhood interrupts sharply.

“Yes, sir!”

“You followed him there, I suppose — contrary to our agreement?”

“No, sir, we did not follow Magnus to Linz. I had my wife Bee call Mary Pym. Bee elicited the information in the course of an innocent conversation, woman to woman, on another matter, Mr. Brotherhood.”

“He might still not have gone to Linz. Could have told his wife a cover story.”

Lederer is at pains to concede that this is possible but gently suggests that it hardly matters, sir, in view of Langley’s signal of that same night, which signal he now reads aloud to his assembled Anglo-American lords of intelligence. “It arrived on my desk five minutes after we had the Linz connection, sir. I quote: ‘Petz-Hampel also identical with Jerzy Zaworski, born Carlsbad 1925, West German journalist of Czech origin who made nine legal journeys to United States in 1981, ’82.’”

“Perfect,” says Brammel under his breath.

“Birthdates are of course approximations in these cases,” Lederer continues undaunted. “It is our experience that alias passports have the tendency to give the bearer a year or two.”

The signal is hardly on Lederer’s desk, he says, before he is typing in the dates and destinations of Herr Zaworski’s visits to America. And then it was — says Lederer, though not in as many words — that with one touch of the button everything came together, continents merged, three journalists in their late fifties became a single Czech spy of uncertain age, and Grant Lederer III, thanks to the flawless insulation of the signals room, was able to scream “Hallelujah!” and “Bee, I love you!” to the padded walls.

“Every American city visited by Petz-Hampel-Zaworski in 1981 and 1982 was visited by Pym on the same dates,” Lederer intones. “During those dates the relevant clandestine transmissions from the Czech Embassy roof were discontinued, the reason in our estimation being that a personal encounter was occurring between the agent in the field and his visiting controller. Radio transmissions were accordingly superfluous.”

“It’s beautiful,” says Brammel. “I’d like to find the Czech intelligence officer who thought this one up and give him my private Oscar immediately.”

With a pained discretion Mick Carver lifts a briefcase gently to the table and extracts a bunch of folders.

“This is Langley’s profile as of now on Petz-Hampel-Zaworski, Pym’s presumed controller,” he explains in the patient manner of a salesman bent on showing off a new technology, despite the obstruction of the older element. “We expect a couple more updates in the next immediate while, maybe even tonight. Bo, when does Magnus return to Vienna, do you mind telling us, please?”

Brammel like all the rest of them is peering into his folder, so it is natural he should not reply at once. “When we tell him to, I suppose,” he says carelessly, turning a page. “Not before, that’s for certain. As you say, his father’s death was rather providential. Old man left quite a mess, I gather. Magnus has a lot to sort out.”

“Where is he now?” says Wexler.

Brammel looks at his watch. “Having dinner, I should imagine. Nearly time, isn’t it?”