A Perfect Spy

Pym confessed that he was.

“You are walking to the Weichsel Hotel?”

Pym said that he did so every evening.

“You allow I walk with you, please, once? Yesterday a man tried to rape me. You will guide me to my door? I am not trouble?”

Soon the intrepid Pym was guiding Marlene to her door each evening and collecting her from it in the mornings. His day unfolded between these radiant interludes. But when he invited her to have dinner with him after payday, he was summoned by a furious captain of Fusiliers who had charge of new arrivals.

“You are a lecherous little swine, do you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Div. Int. subalterns do not, repeat not, fraternise in public with civilian personnel. Not unless they’ve put a lot more service in than you have. D’you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know what a shit is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No, you don’t. A shit, Pym, is an officer whose tie is of a lighter khaki than his shirt. Have you seen your tie recently?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you seen your shirt?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Compare them, Pym. And ask yourself what sort of young officer you are. That woman isn’t even cleared above restricted.”

It’s all training, thought Pym, as he changed his tie. I’m being hardened for the field. Nevertheless it worried him that Marlene had asked him so many questions about himself and he wished that he had not been quite so frank in his replies.

Not long after this, Pym was mercifully deemed to have got the feel of the place. Before departing he was again summoned by the captain who showed him two photographs. One depicted a pretty young man with soft lips, the other a chubby drunk with a sneer.

“If you see either of these men you will report that information to a senior officer immediately, do you hear?”

“Who are they?”

“Hasn’t anyone taught you not to ask questions? If you can’t find a senior officer, arrest them yourself.”

“How?”

“Use your authority. Be courteous but firm. ‘You men are under arrest.’ Then bring them to the nearest senior officer.”

Their names, Pym learned a few days later from the Daily Express, were Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean and they were members of the British Foreign Service. For several weeks, he continued to look for them everywhere, but he never found them because they had already defected to Moscow.

* * *

So which of us is responsible, Tom, tell me? Is it Pym’s wistful soul or God’s wry humour that contrives to deal him a spell of Paradise before every Fall? I told you of the Ollingers in Bern that it was given to us once only in a lifetime to know a truly happy family, but I had forgotten Major Harrison Membury, formerly of the British Library in Nairobi and one-time officer in the Education Corps, who had strayed by a delicious caprice of military logic into the ragtag ranks of Field Security. I had forgotten his beautiful wife and their many grimy daughters who were Fräulein Ollingers in the making, except that they kept goats and a boisterous piglet in preference to making music, which made mayhem of their military hiring, to the rage of the garrison Administration officer, who was powerless because the Memburys were Intelligence and immune. I had forgotten Number 6 Field Interrogation Unit, Graz, a pink baroque villa in a wooded cleft of hills a mile from the city’s edge. Bunches of telephone cable led into it, aerials desecrated the spired roof. It had a gateway with a gatehouse and a wild-eyed blond mess waiter called Wolfgang who rushed down the steps in a pressed white coat to hand you out of your jeep. But the best thing about it as far as Membury was concerned was the lake, which he spent his days stocking, for he was mad on fish and lavished a sizable part of our secret imprest on encouraging rare breeds of trout. You must imagine a big, genial man, quite strengthless, with the elegant gestures of an invalid. And of a dreamy religious eye and disposition. A civilian to his soft fingertips if ever I met one, yet when I see him now it is always in army battledress with worn suède boots and a webbing belt either above his belly or below it, standing amid the dragonflies at the edge of his beloved lake in the heat of a scorching afternoon, exactly as Pym discovered him on the day he reported for duty, poking a thing like a shrimping net into the water while he muttered shy imprecations against a marauding pike.

“Oh my goodness. You’re Pym. Yes, well, so glad you’ve come. Look here, I’m going to clear away the weed and drag the whole bed to see exactly what we’ve got. What do you think of that?”

“It sounds great, sir,” said Pym.

“I’m so glad. Are you married?”

“No, sir.”

“Marvellous. Then you’ll be free at weekends.”