A Perfect Spy

A weekday evening, Tom. The traffic in Chester Street burps and crackles in the rain, but inside the Reichskanzlei it is a Green Hill Sunday. Still pious from his monastery Pym presses the bell but hears no answering chime. He drives the great brass door knocker against its stud. A lace curtain parts and closes. The door opens, but not far.

“Cunningham’s the name, squire,” says a heavy man in a thick expatriate cockney, as he shuts the door fast after him as if scared of letting in germs. “Half cunning, half ham. You’ll be the son and heir. Greetings, squire, Salaams.”

“How do you do,” says Pym.

“I’m optimistic, squire, thank you,” Mr. Cunningham replies with a Middle-European literalness. “I think we’re on a road to understanding. Some resistance at first is to be expected. But I believe I see a light begin to shine.”

It is more than Pym does for the passage down which Mr. Cunningham leads him with such assurance is pitch black and the only light comes from the pale patches on the wall left by the departed law books.

“You’re a German scholar, I understand, squire,” says Mr. Cunningham more thickly, as if the exertion has affected his adenoids. “A fine language. The people, I’m not sure. But a lovely tongue in the right hands, you can quote me.”

“Why are we going upstairs?” says Pym, who has by now recognised several familiar omens of impending pogrom.

“Trouble with the lift, squire,” Mr. Cunningham replies. “I understand an engineer has been sent for and is at this moment hastening on his way.”

“But Rick’s office is on the ground floor.”

“But upstairs has the privacy, squire,” Mr. Cunningham explains, pushing open a double door. They enter a gutted State Apartment lit by the glow of street lamps. “Your son, sir, fresh from his worship,” Mr. Cunningham announces, and bows Pym ahead of him.

At first Pym sees only Rick’s brow glinting in the candlelight. Then the great head forms round it, followed by the broad bulk of the body as it advances swiftly to envelop him in a damp and fervent bear-hug.

“How are you, old son?” he asks urgently. “How was the train?”

“Fine,” says Pym, who has hitchhiked owing to a temporary problem of liquidity.

“Did they give you a bit to eat then? What did they give you?”

“Just a sandwich and a glass of beer,” says Pym who has had to make do on a piece of rocklike bread from Murgo’s refectory.

“My own boy, as you see me!” Mr. Cunningham exclaims with zest. “Never satisfied unless he’s eating.”

“Son, you want to watch that drinking of yours,” says Rick in an almost unconscious reflex, as he clutches Pym under the armpit and marches him over bare floorboards towards an imperial-sized bed. “There’s five thousand pounds for you in cash if you don’t smoke or take liquor until you’re twenty-one. All right, my dear, what do you think of this boy of mine?”

A darkly dressed figure has risen like a shade from the bed.

It’s Dorothy, thinks Pym. It’s Lippsie. It’s Jemima’s mother lodging a complaint. But as the darkness lifts, the aspiring monk observes that the figure before him is wearing neither Lippsie’s headscarf nor Dorothy’s cloche hat, nor has she the daunting authority of Lady Sefton Boyd. Like Lippsie she sports the antiquarian uniform of pre-war Europe but there the comparison ends. Her flared skirt has a nipped waist. She wears a blouse with a lace ruff and a feathery bit of hat that makes the whole outfit jaunty. Her breasts are in the best tradition of Amor and Rococo Woman, and the dim light flatters their roundness.

“Son, I want you to meet a noble and heroic lady who has known great advantages and misfortunes and fought great battles and suffered cruelly at the hands of fate. And who has paid me the greatest compliment a woman can pay a man by coming to see me in her hour of need.”

“Rot-schilt, darling,” the lady says softly, lifting her limp hand to a level where Pym may kiss or shake it.

“Heard that name anywhere, have you, son, with your fine education? Baron Rothschild? Lord Rothschild? Count Rothschild? Rothschild’s Bank? Or are you going to tell me you’re not conversant with the name of a certain great Jewish family with all the wealth of Solomon at its fingertips?”

“Well yes, of course I’ve heard of it.”

“Well then. Just you sit yourself here and listen to what she has to say because this is the baroness. Sit down, my dear. Come here between us. What do you think of him, Elena?”

“Beautiful, darling,” says the baroness.

He’s selling me to her, thinks Pym, not at all unwilling. I’m his last desperate deal.