A Perfect Spy

“Where’s he staying?” Wexler insists.

Brammel smiles. “Now Harry, I don’t think I’m going to tell you that. We do have some rights in our own country, you know, and your chaps have been a bit overeager on the surveillance stakes.”

Wexler is nothing if not stubborn. “Last we heard of him, he was at London Airport checking in to his flight to Vienna. Our information is he’d wrapped up his affairs over here and was heading back to his post. What the hell happened?”

Nigel has clasped his hands together. He sets them, still clasped, on the table to indicate that, small or not, he is speaking. “You haven’t been following him over here too, have you? That really would be going it.”

Wexler rubs his chin. His expression is rueful but undefeated. He turns again to Brammel. “Bo, we need a piece of this. If this is a Czech deception operation it’s the damnedest, most ingenious case I ever heard of.”

“Pym is a most ingenious officer,” Brammel countered. “He’s been a thorn in the Czechs’ side for thirty years. He’s worth a lot of trouble on their part.”

“Bo, you’ve got to pull Pym in and you’ve got to interrogate the living shit out of him. If you don’t, we’re going to go around and around this thing till we’ve all got grey hairs and some of us are in our graves. Those are our secrets he’s been fooling with as well as yours. We have some very heavy questions to put to him and some fine people trained to put them.”

“Harry, you have my word that when the moment is ripe, you and your people shall have as much of him as you want.”

“Maybe the moment’s right now,” Wexler says, sticking out his jaw. “Maybe we should be there from when he starts to sing. Hit him while he’s soft.”

“And maybe you should trust sufficiently in our judgment to bide your time,” Nigel purrs sleekly in reply, and casts Wexler a very reassuring glance over the top of his reading spectacles.

A most strange impulse, meanwhile, is taking hold of Lederer. He feels it rising in him and can no more check himself than if it were an urge to vomit. In this self-renewing cycle of compromise and double-think he needs to externalise the secret affinity between himself and Magnus. To assert his monopoly of understanding of the man and underline the personal nature of his triumph. To be at the centre still, and not shoved out to the bleachers where he came from.

“Sir, you mentioned Pym’s father,” he bursts out, talking straight at Brammel. “Sir, I know about that father. I have a father who is not in certain ways dissimilar, only in degree. Mine’s a small-time iffy lawyer and honesty is not his strong suit. No, sir. But that father of Pym’s was a total crook. A con artist. Our psychiatrists have assembled a really disturbing profile of that man. Do you know that when Richard T. Pym was in New York he faked a whole empire of bogus companies? Borrowed money from the most unlikely people, really some important people? I mean listed. There’s a serious strain of controlled instability here. We have a paper on this.” He was overrunning himself but couldn’t stop. “I mean Jesus, do you know Magnus made the most wild pass at my own wife? I don’t grudge him that. She’s an attractive woman. What I mean is the guy’s everywhere. He’s all over the place. That English cool of his is just veneer.”

Not for the first time Lederer has just committed suicide. Nobody hears him, nobody shouts “Wow, you don’t say!” And when Brammel speaks, his voice is as cold as charity and as late in arriving.

“Yes, well, I always assume that businessmen are crooks, don’t you, Harry? I’m sure we all do.” He glances round the table at everyone but Lederer and comes back to Wexler. “Harry, why don’t you and I get our heads together for an hour, shall we? If there’s to be a hostile interrogation at some stage, I’m sure we should agree on some guidelines in advance. Nigel, why don’t you come along to see fair play? The rest of us—” His gaze falls on Brotherhood and he awards him a particularly confiding smile. “Well, we’ll simply say see you all later. You will leave in pairs, won’t you, when you’ve done your reading? Not all at once, it scares the local peasants. Thank you.”

Brammel leaves, Wexler waddles boldly after him, a man who has made his point and doesn’t care who knows it. Nigel waits till they have all left, then like a busy undertaker hastens round the table and takes Brotherhood’s arm in a fraternal gesture.

“Jack,” he whispers. “Well put, well played. We absolutely stymied them. A word in your ear away from the microphones, yes?”

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