A Perfect Spy

Sabina spoke of her own life as if it belonged to someone she hated. Her stupid Hungarian father had been shot at the border. Her fool mother had died in Prague attempting to produce a baby for a worthless lover. Her older brother was an idiot and studying to be a doctor in Stuttgart. Her uncles were drunkards and had got themselves shot by the Nazis and the Communists.

“You want I give you Czech lesson Saturday?” she asked him one evening in an even stricter tone than usual, as they drove home three abreast.

“I would like that very much,” Pym replied, holding her hand at her side. “I’m really beginning to enjoy it.”

“I think we make love this time. We shall see,” she said severely, at which Kaufmann nearly drove into a ditch.

Saturday came and neither Rick’s shadow nor Pym’s terrors could prevent him from ringing Sabina’s doorbell. He heard a footstep softer than her usual practical tread. He saw the light-spots of her eyes regard him through the eye-slit in the door, and did his best to smile in a rugged, reassuring manner. He had brought enough Naafi whisky to banish the guilt of ages, but Sabina had no guilt and when she opened the door to him she was naked. Incapable of speech he stood before her clutching his carrier bag. In a daze he watched her reset the security chain, take the bag from his lifeless hands, stalk to the sideboard and unpack it. The day was warm but she had lit a fire and turned back the bedcovers.

“You have had many women, Magnus?” she demanded. “Women in regiments like your bad friend?”

“I don’t think I have,” said Pym.

“You are hommsexual like all English?”

“I’m really not.”

She led him to the bed. She sat him down and unbuttoned his shirt. Severely, like Lippsie when she needed something for the laundry van outside. She unbuttoned the rest of him and arranged his clothes over a chair. She guided him on to his back and spread herself over him.

“I didn’t know,” said Pym aloud.

“Please?”

He started to say something, but there was too much to explain and his interpreter was already occupied. He meant: I didn’t know, for all my longing, what I was longing for till now. He meant: I can fly, I can swim on my front and on my back and on my side and on my head. He meant: I’m whole and I’ve joined the men at last.

* * *

It was a balmy Friday afternoon in the villa six days later. In the gardens below the windows of Membury’s enormous office, the Rittmeister in his lederhosen was shelling peas for Wolfgang. Membury sat at his desk, his battledress unbuttoned to the waist while he drafted a questionnaire for trawler captains that he proposed to send in hundreds to the major fishing fleets. For weeks now he had set his heart on tracing the winter routes of sea trout, and the unit’s resources had been hard pressed to accommodate him.

“I’ve had a rather rum approach made to me, sir,” Pym began delicately. “Somebody claiming to represent a potential defector.”

“Oh but how interesting for you, Magnus,” Membury said politely, prising himself with difficulty from his preoccupations. “I hope it’s not another Hungarian frontier guard. I’ve rather had my fill of them. So has Vienna, I’m sure.” Vienna was a growing worry to Membury, as Membury was to Vienna. Pym had read the painful correspondence between them that Membury kept safely locked at all times in the top left drawer of his flimsy desk. It might be only a question of days before the captain of Fusiliers arrived in person to take charge.

“He’s not Hungarian, actually, sir,” said Pym. “He’s Czech. He’s attached to HQ Southern Command based outside Prague.”

Membury tilted his large head to one side as if shaking water out of his ear. “Well that’s heartening,” he remarked doubtfully. “Div. Int. would give their eye-teeth for some good stuff about Southern Czecho. Or anywhere else in Czecho for that matter. The Americans seem to think they have a monopoly of the place. Somebody said as much to me on the telephone only the other day, I don’t know who.”

The telephone line to Graz ran through the Soviet Zone. In the evenings Russian technicians could be heard on it, singing drunken Cossack music.

“According to my source he’s a disgruntled clerk sergeant working in their strongroom,” Pym persisted. “He’s supposed to be coming out tomorrow night. If we’re not there to receive him he’ll go to the Americans.”

“You didn’t hear of him through the Rittmeister, did you?” said Membury nervously.

With the skill of long habituation, Pym entered the risky ground. No, it was not the Rittmeister, he assured Membury. At least it didn’t sound like the Rittmeister. The voice sounded younger and more positive.

Membury was confused. “Could you possibly explain?” he said.

Pym did.

It was just an ordinary Thursday evening, he said. He’d been to the movies to see Liebe 47, and on his way back he thought he’d drop in at the Weisses Ross for a beer.

“I don’t think I know the Weisses Ross.”