A Perfect Spy

She lay white and luminous beside him on the little bed, a forty-year-old Cambridge débutante who had lost her way. The grey-pink glow through the grimy curtains cut her into classic fragments. Here a thigh, here a calf, here the cone of a breast or the knifeline of a flank. She had turned her back to him, one leg slightly bent. God damn it, what does she want of me, this sad, beautiful bridge-player of the Fifth Floor, with her air of lost love and her prim carnality? After seven years of her, Brotherhood still had no idea. He’d be out touring the stations, he’d be in Bongabonga land. He’d not speak or write to her for months. Yet he’d hardly unpacked his toothbrush before she was in his arms, demanding him with her sad and hungry eyes. Does she have a hundred of us — are we her fighter pilots, claiming her favours each time we limp home from another mission? Or am I the only one who storms the statue?

“And Bo’s called in some top shrink to join the feast,” she said, in her impeccable vowels. “Somebody who specialises in harmless nervous breakdowns. They’ve thrown Pym’s dossier at him and told him to assemble the profile of a loyal Englishman under severe stress who is arousing anxiety in other people, particularly Americans.”

“He’ll be calling in a medium next,” said Brotherhood.

“They’ve checked flights to the Bahamas, Scotland and Ireland. That’s as well as everywhere else. They’ve checked ships, car-hire firms and goodness knows what. They’ve got warrants running on every telephone he ever used and a blanket warrant for the rest. They’ve cancelled leave and weekends for all transcribers and put the surveillance teams on twenty-four-hour alert, and they still haven’t told anybody what it’s about. The canteen’s a funeral parlour, nobody talking to anybody. They’re questioning anyone who shared an office with him or bought a secondhand car from him, they’ve turned the tenants out of the Pyms’ house in Dulwich and stripped the place from top to bottom pretending to be woodworm experts. Now Nigel’s talking of moving the whole search team to a safe house in Norfolk Street, it’s getting so big. Including the help, that’s about a hundred and fifty staff. What’s in the burnbox?”

“Why?”

“There’s a shadow over it. Not in front of the children. Bo and Nigel clam up as soon as anybody mentions it.”

“Press?” said Brotherhood, as if he had answered her question instead of deflecting it.

“Sewn up as usual. From TitBits downwards. Bo had lunch with the editors yesterday. He’s already written their leaders for them in case anything gets out. How rumours weaken our security. Uninformed speculation as the true Enemy Within. Nigel’s been leaning his full weight on the radio and television people.”

“All two stone of it. What about the phoney copper?”

“Whoever called on Tom’s Headmaster wasn’t family. He wasn’t from the Firm and he wasn’t police.”

“Maybe he was from the competition. They don’t have to ask us first, do they?”

“Bo’s terror is that the Americans are launching their own manhunt.”

“If he’d been American there’d have been three of him. He was a cheeky Czech. That’s the way they work. Same as they used to fly in the war.”

“The Headmaster describes him as up-market English, not a whiff of foreign. He didn’t come or leave by train. He gave his name as Inspector Baring of Special Branch. There isn’t one. The taxi bill return between the station and the school was twelve pounds and he didn’t ask the driver for a receipt. Imagine a policeman not wanting a receipt for twelve pounds. He left a fake visiting card. They’re looking for the printer, the paper-maker and for all I know the ink manufacturers, but they won’t bring in police, the competition or liaison. They’ll make any enquiry they can think of as long as it doesn’t frighten the horses.”

“And the London phone number he gave?”

“Bogus.”

“I could nearly laugh about that if humour was my mood. What does Bo think about the moustachioed gentleman with a handbag who holds Pym’s arm at cricket matches?”

“He refuses to take a view. He says if we all had our friends checked at cricket matches, we’d have no friends and no cricket. He’s drafted extra girls to comb the Czech personalities index and he’s signalled Athens Station to send someone to Corfu to talk to the car-hire man. It’s delay and pray, and Magnus please come home.”

“Where do I stand? In the corner?”

“They’re terrified you’ll pull down the Temple.”

“I thought Pym had done that already.”

“Then perhaps it’s guilty contact,” Kate said in her crisp Queen Bee voice.

Brotherhood took another long swallow of vodka. “If they’d get the bloody networks out. If they’d do the obvious thing, just for once.”

“They won’t do anything that might alert the Americans. They’d rather lie all the way to the grave. ‘We’ve had three major traitors in three minor years. One more and we might as well admit the party’s over.’ That’s Bo speaking.”

“So the Joes will die for the Special Relationship. I like that. So will the Joes. They’ll understand.”