A Perfect Spy

“Because I think you are so fantastically stupid you better not play this game at all. Listen.” Pym is grinning exactly as he used to grin when Axel was explaining why he was a Trottel for not understanding Kant. “What Axel is doing for you tonight, he can never undo in his whole life. I am risking my bloody neck for you. Like Sabina gave you her brother, Axel gives you Axel. Do you understand? Or are you too shit-stupid to recognise that I am putting my future in your hands?”

“I don’t want it, Axel. I’d rather give it back.”

“It’s too late. I have stolen the papers, I have come over, you have seen them, you know what they contain. Pandora’s box cannot be closed again. Your nice Major Membury — those clever aristos in Div. Int. — none of them ever saw such information. Do you follow this?”

Pym nods, Pym shakes his head. Pym frowns, smiles, and tries to look in every way he can the worthy and mature custodian of Axel’s destiny.

“In return, you must swear me one thing. I told you earlier you must not promise. Now I tell you you must. To me, Axel, you must promise loyalty. Sergeant Pavel, he’s a different matter. Sergeant Pavel you can betray and invent as much as you like — he is an invention anyway. But I, Axel — this Axel here — look at me—I do not exist. Not for Membury, not for Sabina, not even for yourself. Even when you are lonely and bored and you need to impress somebody or buy somebody or sell somebody, I am not a creature in your game. If your own people threaten you, if they torture you, you must still deny me. If they put you on the cross in fifty years from now, will you lie for me? Answer.”

Pym finds time to marvel that after energetically denying Axel’s existence for so long he should be promising him to deny it for still longer. And that it must be a very rare thing indeed to be offered a second chance to prove one’s loyalty after failing so miserably at the first attempt.

“I will,” says Pym.

“What will you?”

“I will keep you secret. I’ll lock you in my memory and give you the key.”

“For always. Sabina’s brother Jan also?”

“For always. Jan too. That’s the whole Soviet Order of Battle in Czechoslovakia you’ve given me,” says Pym in a trance. “If it’s genuine.”

“It’s a little bit old, but you British know how to value antiquity. Your maps in Vienna and Graz are older. And they are not so genuine. You like Membury?”

“I think so. Why?”

“Me too. You are interested in fish? You are helping him to restock the lake?”

“Sometimes. Yes.”

“That’s important work. Do it with him. Help him. It’s a lousy world, Sir Magnus. A few happy fish will make it better.”

It was six in the morning when Pym left. Kaufmann had long ago put himself to bed in the jeep. Pym could see his boots sticking over the tailboard. Pym and Axel walked as far as the white stone, Axel leaning on his arm the way he used to when they walked beside the Aare. As they reached it Axel stooped and picked a harvest poppy and handed it to Pym. Then he picked another for himself which on reflection he handed to Pym also.

“There is one of me and one of you, Sir Magnus. There will never be another of either of us. You are the keeper of our friendship. Give my love to Sabina. Tell her that Sergeant Pavel sends her a special kiss to thank her for her help.”

* * *

A man with a highly regarded source is an admired man and a well-fed one, Tom, as Pym quickly discovered in the next few weeks. Visiting Very Senior Officers from Vienna take him to dinner just for the touch of him and the vicarious feel of his achievement. Membury comes too, a grinning, loping Caesar dwarfing his Antony, hauling on his ear, dreaming of fish and smiling at the wrong people. Other officers less senior but still substantial alter their opinion of Pym overnight and send him swarmy notes by interzonal bag. “Marlene sends her love and is so sad that you had to leave Vienna without saying goodbye to her. It looked for a moment as if I might become your C.O. but fate decreed otherwise. M and I hope to be engaged as soon as we get clearance from the War Office.” He is a cult of one and to know him is to be an insider: “The fantastic work young Pym is doing — if I had my way, I’d give him a third pip, national serviceman or not.” “You should have heard London on the scrambler, they’re sending it to the top.” On London’s orders, no less, Sergeant Pavel receives the codename Greensleeves and Pym a commendation. Voluptuous Czech interpreters are proud of him, and demonstrate their pleasure in refined ways.

“You must never tell me what happened, it is a rule,” Sabina ordered him, biting him half to death between her deep sad lips.

“I never will.”

“He is handsome, Jan’s friend? He is beautiful? Like you? I would love him immediately, yes?”

“He is tall and beautiful and very intelligent.”

“Sexy also?”

“Very sexy.”

“Hommsexual like you?”

“Totally.”

The description pleased her in some deep and satisfying way.