A Perfect Spy

“She didn’t mention the book so why should I? She gave me all the necessary instructions in her bloody note.” I’m protesting too much, she thought, cursing herself. I’m putting questions in his mind. “Listen, Fergus. I’m tired and liable to bite, okay? Leave me alone and go back to what you both do best.”

She picked up the book. Nothing, not a book on earth, could have authenticated the sender so perfectly. “De Arte Graphica. The Art of Painting by C. A. DU FRESNOY with REMARKS. Translated into English together with an Original Preface containing a Parallel between Painting and Poetry. By Mr. DRYDEN.” She drained the glass of whisky. It was the same book. She had no doubt. The same book Magnus brought to me in Berlin when I still belonged to Jack. Came bounding up the stairs with it. Knocking on the steel door of Special Ordnance which was our cover while he clutched it in his hand. “Hey, Mary, open up!” It was before we had become lovers. Before he had started to call me Mabs. “Listen I want you to do a rush job for me. Can you put a CD into the binding of this? It’s to take one standard sheet of code cloth. Can you do it by tonight?” Then I staged a misunderstanding because we were already flirting. I pretended I hadn’t heard of CDs except on diplomatic cars, which allowed Magnus to explain to me in his earnest way that CD meant concealment device and Jack Brotherhood had told him Mary was the best person for the job. “We’re using a bookshop as a dead letter box,” Magnus explained. “I’ve got this Joe who’s an antiquarian-book fiend.” Case officers were not usually so generous about their operations.

And I took off the end-paper, she remembered as she began gently prodding the covers. I scraped away a patch of cover board until I was nearly at the hide. Other people would have taken off the hide and gone under it from the front. Not our Mary. For Magnus nothing but perfection would do. Next night he gave me dinner. The night after that we went to bed together. Next morning I told Jack what had happened and he was gallant and sweet and said we were both very lucky, and that he’d withdraw from the field and let us get on with it, if that was what I wanted. I said it was. And I told Jack in my happiness that what had brought me and Magnus together was de Arte Graphica, a Parallel between Painting and Poetry, which was rather extraordinary when you remembered that I was mad about painting and Magnus was hell-bent on writing the great novel of his life.

“Where are you going, Mary?” Fergus said, looming before Mary in the corridor. She had the book in her hand. She shoved it at him. “I can’t sleep. I’m going down to the cellar to fool around with this. Now go back to your nice lady and leave me alone.”

Closing the cellar door she went quickly to the workbench. In minutes Georgie is going to saunter in with a nice cup of tea for me in order to make sure I haven’t defected or cut my wrists. Filling a bowl with warm water she damped a rag and set to work soaking off the end-paper. The writer of the note knew what he was talking about. On a book of that age the original glue was animal and would have crystallised. Mary, when she had doctored it for Magnus, had used animal glue too. But the new paper had been stuck on with flour paste which responded quickly to water. She was using a cloth and scrubbing. Normally she would have used blotting paper and a pressing tin. The end-paper came away. The board remained. Taking a scalpel she began scuffing it with the blade. If they’ve used rope board, I’ve had it. Rope board was made of real old rope taken from a man-of-war. It was tarred and twisted and packed solid. To scrape into it would take hours. She need not have worried. It was modern millboard and disintegrated like dry earth. She kept scuffing and suddenly the code cloth lay before her, flat against the inside of the hide, exactly where she had put it for Magnus. Except that this one had capital letters instead of figure groups. This one began “Dear Mary.” She stuffed it quickly down her front, retrieved the scalpel, and set about removing the rest of the end-paper as if she were going to rebind from the beginning, full hide as Bee had requested.

“I just thought I had to come and see how you do it,” Georgie explained, sitting down beside her. “I really need a hobby like that myself, Mary. I just don’t ever seem able to relax.”

“Poor you,” said Mary.

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