A Perfect Spy

“. . said he was in secret work. That didn’t surprise me, who isn’t these days?. . Said there was this Englishman he worked for, called him the Brotherhood. I don’t think I listened to all of it, to be honest. There was the Brotherhood and there was this other chap. Said he was working for both of ’em. They were like two parents for him. Kept him going. I said bully for you, if they keep you going, you stick to them. Said he had to write this book about them, put the record right. What record? God knows. He’d write to the Brotherhood, write to the other chap, then he’d take himself off to a secret place and do his number.” Brotherhood heard his own patient murmur in the background. “. . Well maybe I got that one a bit wrong then. Maybe he was going to hunker down in his secret place first and write to them from there. I wasn’t listening to all of it. Drunks bore me. I’m one myself.”

Prompt from Brotherhood.

Long pause.

Renewed prompt from Brotherhood.

Sir Kenneth indistinct: “Said he was his runner.”

“Who was whose runner?”

“Pym was t’other chap’s runner. Not the Brotherhood’s. The other fellow’s. Said he’d crippled him somehow. Pissed, I told you.”

Brotherhood again, riding him a little harder: “. . name for this person?”

“Don’t think so. Don’t think it stuck. Sorry. No, it didn’t.”

“And the secret place? Where was that?”

“Didn’t say. His business.”

Brotherhood let the tape continue. Avalanche as Sefton Boyd lights himself a cigarette. Cannon-blast of the front door being slammed open and shut again, signalling Steggie’s petulant return.

Brotherhood and Sir Kenneth are on the landing.

“What’s that, old boy?” Sir Kenneth very loud.

“I said, so where do you think he might be?” says Brotherhood.

“Upstairs, old boy. That’s what you said.” In his memory’s eye, Brotherhood sees Sir Kenneth’s pouch face approach close to his own, smiling its downward twist. “Get a warrant, maybe you can have a look. Maybe you can’t. Don’t know. Have to see.”

Brotherhood heard his own heels clumping down Sir Kenneth’s stairs. He heard himself reach the hall and Steggie’s lighter footsteps mingle with his own. He heard Steggie’s pointed “Good night” and the clatter of bolts as he unlocks the door for him. Followed by Steggie’s muffled shriek as Brotherhood hauls him out of the house, one hand over his mouth, the other at the back of his head. Then the thump as he taps Steggie’s head against the plaster pillar of Sir Kenneth’s gracious porch, and his own voice, very near to Steggie’s ear.

“Have they done this before to you, have they? Put you up against a wall?”

A whimper for an answer.

“Who else is living in the house, son?”

“No one.”

“Who was on the top floor this evening, back and forth in front of the window?”

“Me.”

“Why?”

“It’s my room!”

“I thought you two would share the bridal chamber.”

“I’ve still got my own room, haven’t I? I’m entitled to my privacy, same as he is.”

“Nobody else in the house at all?”

“No!”

“Not all week?”

“No. I told you. Hey, stop!”

“What’s the matter?” says Brotherhood, already halfway down the path.

“I haven’t got my key. How do I get back in?”

A clang as Brotherhood slams the gate.

* * *

He phoned Kate. No answer.

He phoned his wife. No answer.

He phoned Paddington and wrote down the times and places along the route of the night sleeper from Paddington to Penzance via Reading.

For an hour he tried to sleep, then returned to his desk, pulled Langley’s folder towards him and stared yet again at the eaten-out features of Herr Petz-Hampel-Zaworski, Pym’s presumed controller, lately of Corfu. “. . Real name unknown. . query member Czech archaeological team visiting Egypt 1961 (Petz). . query 1966 att. Czech Military Mission East Berlin (Hampel). . height 6 ft., stoops, limps slightly with left leg. .”

“There was the Brotherhood and there was this other chap,” Sefton Boyd had said. “They were like two parents for him. Said he was his runner.”

“You brought it on yourselves,” he heard Belinda say. “You invented him.”

He continued to stare at the photograph. The down-turned eye-lids. The down-turned moustache. The twinkly eyes. The hidden Slav smile. Who the devil are you? Why do I recognise you when I have never set eyes on you?

* * *

Grant Lederer had never stood so high in the world, or felt so rounded as a human being. Justice lives! he assured himself in the perfect peacefulness of his triumph. My masters are worthy of their authority. A noble service has tried me to the limit and found me worthy of my hire. All round him the sealed operations room on the sixth floor of the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square was filling up with people he had not known existed. They came from the remote corners of London Station, yet each as he entered appeared to bestow a glance of kinship on him. As fine a looking bunch of Americans as you’d wish to meet, he thought. The Agency really knows how to pick us these days. They had hardly settled before Wexler began speaking.