A Perfect Spy

“Wenzel is the architect’s name, Jack. One of the boys calls up Mr. Wenzel and tells him Merryman’s mother is ill. ‘Where can I get hold of him to give him this bad news?’ he says. Mr. Wenzel says try the laboratory, how ill? The boy says she’s maybe dying, Merryman ought to get to her fast. ‘Give him this message,’ the boy says. ‘Tell him please that Maximilian says he better get to his mother’s bedside fast.’ Maximilian, that’s the codeword for it’s all over. Maximilian means abort, means run, means get the hell out by any known means, don’t bother with customary procedures, run. The boy is resourceful. When he has ceased to speak to Mr. Wenzel, he calls the laboratory where Merryman works. ‘This is Mr. Maximilian. Where’s Merryman? It’s urgent. Tell him Maximilian got to speak to him about his mother.’ Merryman don’t come in today, they tell him. Merryman got a conference in Warsaw.”

Brotherhood was already objecting. “They wouldn’t say that,” he growled. “The labs don’t give out details of staff movements. They’re a top-secret installation, for Christ’s sake. Somebody’s playing games with us.”

“Sure, Jack. My own reaction entirely. You want I go on?”

A couple of heads turned to locate Brotherhood at the back of the room.

“When the line to Merryman went dead we instructed Warsaw to try to reach Voltaire direct,” Frankel continued. He paused. “Voltaire is sick.”

Brotherhood let out an angry laugh. “Voltaire? He hasn’t had a day’s sickness in his life.”

“His Ministry says he’s sick, Jack, his wife says he’s sick, his mistress says he’s sick. He ate some bad mushrooms, gone to hospital. He’s sick. Official. They all say the same.”

“I’ll say it’s official.”

“What do you want me to do, Jack? Tell me something I should do that you would do yourself and I have not done. Okay? It’s a blackout, Jack. Like a silence everywhere. Like a bomb fell.”

“You said you’d keep filling the letter boxes,” Brotherhood said.

“We filled for Merryman yesterday. Money and instructions. We filled.”

“So what happened?”

“Still there. Money and instructions so much he want. Fresh papers, maps, you name it. For Conger we put up two visuals, one for call us, one for evacuate. One curtain on a first floor, one light in a basement window. Is that correct, Jack? Does that accord with the agreed procedures?”

“It accords.”

“Okay. So he doesn’t answer. He doesn’t call, he doesn’t write, he doesn’t run.”

For five minutes there was no sound but the sounds of waiting: the sighing of soft chairs, the striking of lights and matches and the squeaky-soled footsteps of the boys. Kate glanced at Brotherhood and he smiled confidence back. Bo said, “We’re thinking of you, Jack,” but Brotherhood did not reply and he was certainly not thinking of Bo. A bell rang. From the platform a boy said, “Conger, sir, on schedule,” and trimmed some dials. A white pin-light winked above his head. The second boy dropped a switch. Nobody clapped, nobody got to his feet or cried, “they’re alive!”

“Conger operator’s come in and say he’s ready to send, Bo,” Frankel said gratuitously. Behind him, the boys were moving automatically, deaf to everything outside their headphones. “Now we make our first transmission. We use all tape, no handwriting. Conger does the same. Accelerated Morse, we unroll it both ends. Transmission takes maybe one and a half minutes, two. Unroll and decode takes maybe five…. See that?. . ‘We are ready to receive you. Talk.’—this is what we say to him. Now Conger is talking again. Watch the red light left, please. It burns, he’s talking — he’s finished.”

“Wasn’t very long, was it?” Lorimer drawled, not to anyone in particular. Lorimer had buried agents before.

“Now we wait for the decode,” Frankel told his audience a little too brightly. “Three minutes, maybe five. Time to smoke a cigarette, okay? Everybody relax. Conger’s alive and well.”

The boys were transferring spools, resetting instruments.

“Let’s just be grateful he’s alive,” said Kate, and several heads turned sharply, remarking this unaccustomed display of feeling from a Fifth Floor lady.

The grey spools were rolling, one on to the other. For a moment they heard the unrhythmic piping of Morse code. It stopped.

“Hey,” said Lorimer softly.

“Run it through again,” said Brotherhood.

“What’s happened?” said Kate.

The boys rewound the spools and switched again to forward. The Morse resumed and stopped as before.

“Could it be a fault the other end?” Lorimer asked.

“Sure,” Frankel said. “Possible his winder’s on the blink, possible he hit some bad ionosphere. In a minute he comes through again. No problem.”

The taller of the two boys was pulling off his headphones. “Mind if we decode, Mr. Frankel?” he said. “Sometimes when they’ve got a hitch they tell us about it in the message.”