A Perfect Spy

“Of course I do,” said Pym, and it occurred to him as he watched Axel’s quick hands gesticulating and his dark eyes twinkling that Axel had put aside the German in him and put on the Slav for good. “I had become an aristocrat,” he said. “In the new Czechoslovakia I was Sir Axel suddenly. The old Socialists had loved my father. The new ones had been my friends at school and were already in the Party apparatus. ‘Why do you beat up Sir Axel?’ they asked my guards. ‘He’s got a good brain, stop hitting him and let him out. Okay, so he fought for Hitler. He’s sorry. Now he’ll fight for us, won’t you, Axel?’ ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Why not?’ So they sent me to university.”

“But what did you study?” said Pym amazed. “Thomas Mann? Nietzsche?”

“Better. How to use the Party to advance oneself. How to rise in the Youth Union. Shine in the committees. How to purge the faculties and students, climb over the backs of friends and the reputation of one’s father. Which arses to kick and which to kiss. Where to talk too much and where to shut your mouth. Maybe I should have learned that earlier.”

Feeling he was close to the heart of things, Pym wondered whether it was time for him to take notes but decided not to destroy Axel’s flow.

“Somebody had the nerve to call me a Titoist the other day,” Axel said. “Since ’49 it’s the latest insult.” Pym secretly wondered whether this was why Axel had come over. “Know what I did?”

“What?”

“I informed against him.”

“No! What for?”

“I don’t know. Something bad. It’s not what you say, it’s who you say it to. You should know that. You’re a big spy, I hear. Sir Magnus of the British Secret Service. Congratulations. Is Corporal Kaufmann all right out there? Maybe you should take him something?”

“I’ll deal with him later, thank you.”

There was a hiatus while each in his separate way savoured the effect of this disciplinary note. They drank another toast, shaking their heads at one another over their luck. But inside himself Pym was less at ease than he let on. He had a sense of slipping standards and complicated undertones.

“So what work have you actually been up to these last days?” Pym asked, struggling to reclaim the ascendancy. “How does a sergeant from HQ Southern Command come to be wandering round the Soviet Zone of Austria, planning his defection?”

Axel was lighting himself a fresh cigar so Pym had to wait a minute for his answer.

“A sergeant I don’t know. In my unit we have only aristos. Like you, I am also a great spy, Sir Magnus. It’s a boom industry these days. We did well to select it.”

Needing suddenly to tend his outward appearance, Pym smoothed his hair back in a reflective gesture he was working on. “But you are still proposing to come over to us — assuming that we can offer you the right sort of terms of course?” he asked, with hard-edged courtesy.

Axel waved away such a stupid idea. “I’ve paid my ticket same as you. So it’s not perfect but it’s my country. I’ve crossed my last frontier. They’ve got to put up with me.”

Pym had a sensation of dangerous disconnection. “Then why are you here — if you don’t want to defect — if I may ask.”

“I heard about you. The great Lieutenant Pym of Div. Int., more latterly of Graz. Linguist. Hero. Lover. I was so excited to think of you spying on me. And me spying on you. It was so beautiful to think we were back in our old attic together, just that little thin wall between us — knock, knock! ‘I’ve got to get in touch with this fellow,’ I thought. Shake his hand. Give him a drink. Maybe we can set the world to rights, same as we used to in the old days.”

“I see,” said Pym. “Great.”

“ ‘Maybe we can put our heads together. We are reasonable men. Maybe he doesn’t want to fight any more wars. Maybe I don’t. Maybe we are tired of being heroes. Good men are scarce,’ I thought. ‘How many people in the world have shaken hands with Thomas Mann?’”

“Nobody but me,” said Pym with a burst of real laughter and they drank again.

“I owe you so much, Sir Magnus. You were so generous. I never knew a better heart. I yelled at you, cursed you. What did you do? Held my head when I threw up. Cooked me tea, cleaned the vomit and the shit off me, fetched me books — back and forth to the library — read to me all night. I owe this man, I thought. I owe this man a step or two forward in his career. I should make him a gesture that is painful to me. If I can help him achieve a position of influence in the world, that’s rare, that’s already good. For the world as well as for him. Not many good men achieve a position of influence today. So I’ll play a little trick and go and see him. And shake his hand. And say, thank you, Sir Magnus. And take him a gift to pay my debt to him and help him in his career, I thought. Because I love this man, do you hear?”

He had brought no straw hat filled with coloured packages but from the briefcase at his side he drew a folder and handed it to Pym across the table.