A Perfect Spy

“Will they find him?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe’s not enough. I’m asking you, Jack. Will they find him? Will you?”

She sounded suddenly imperious and urgent. She took the glass from his hand and drank the rest of his vodka while he watched her. She leaned over the side of the bed and fished a cigarette from her handbag. She handed him the matches and he lit it for her.

“Bo’s put a lot of monkeys in front of a lot of typewriters,” Brotherhood said, still watching her intently. “Maybe one of them will come up with the goods. I didn’t know you smoked, Kate.”

“I don’t.”

“You’re drinking well too, I’m pleased to see. I don’t remember you hitting the vodka as hard as this, I’m sure I don’t. Who taught you to drink vodka that way?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“More to the point is why should you? You’re trying to tell me something, aren’t you? Something I don’t think I like at all. I thought you were spying for Bo for a minute there. I thought you were doing a bit of a Jezebel on me. Then I thought, no, she’s trying to tell me something. She’s attempting a small and intimate confession.”

“He’s a blasphemer.”

“Who is, dear?”

“Magnus.”

“Oh he is, is he? Magnus a blasphemer. Now why is that?”

“Hold me, Jack.”

“Like hell I will.” He pulled away from her and saw that what he had mistaken for arrogance was a stoical acceptance of despair. Her sad eyes stared straight at him, and her face was set in resignation.

“‘ I love you, Kate,’” she said. “‘ Get me clear of this and I’ll marry you and we’ll live happily ever after.’”

Brotherhood took her cigarette and drew on it.

“‘ I’ll dump Mary. We’ll go and live abroad. France. Morocco. Who cares?’ Phone calls from the other end of the earth. ‘I rang to say I love you.’ Flowers, saying ‘I love you.’ Cards. Little notes folded into things, shoved under the door, personal for my eyes only in top-secret envelopes. ‘I’ve lived too long with the what-ifs. I want action, Kate. You’re my escape-line. Help me. I love you. M.’”

Once again, Brotherhood waited.

“‘ I love you,’” she repeated. “He kept saying it. Like a ritual he was trying to believe in. ‘I love you.’ I suppose he thought if he said it to enough people enough times, one day it might be true. It wasn’t. He never loved a woman in his life. We were enemy, all of us. Touch me, Jack!”

To his surprise he felt a wave of kinship overcome him. He drew her to him and held her tightly to his chest.

“Is Bo wise to any of this?” he said.

He could feel the sweat collecting on his back. He could smell Pym’s nearness in the crevices of her body. She rolled her head against him but he gently shook her, making her say it aloud: Bo knows nothing. No, Jack. Bo’s got no idea.

“Magnus wasn’t interested till he was calling the whole game,” she said. “He could have had me any time. That wasn’t enough for him. ‘Wait for me, Kate. I’m going to cut the cable and be free. Kate, it’s me, where are you?’ I’m here, you idiot, or I wouldn’t be answering the phone, would I?. . He doesn’t have affairs. He has lives. We’re on separate planets for him. Places he can call while he floats through space. You know his favourite photograph of me?”

“I don’t think I do, Kate,” Brotherhood said.

“I’m naked on a beach in Normandy. We’d stolen the weekend. I’ve got my back to him, I’m walking into the sea. I didn’t even know he had a camera.”

“You’re a beautiful girl, Kate. I could get quite hot about a picture like that myself,” said Brotherhood, pulling back her hair so that he could see her face.

“He loved it better than he loved me. With my back to him I was anyone — his girl on the beach — his dream. I left his fantasies intact. You’ve got to get me out of it, Jack.”

“How deep in are you?”

“Deep enough.”

“Write him any letters yourself?”

She shook her head.

“Do him any little favours? Bend the rules for him? You better tell me, Kate.” He waited, feeling the increasing pressure of her head against him. “Can you hear me?” She nodded. “I’m dead, Kate. But you’ve got a while to go. If it ever comes out that you and Pym so much as had a strawberry milkshake together at McDonald’s while you were waiting for your bus home, they will shave your head and post you to Economic Development before you can say Jack anybody. You know that, don’t you?”

Another nod.

“What did you do for him? Steal a few secrets, did you? Something juicy out of Bo’s own plate?” She shook her head. “Come on, Kate. He fooled me too. I’m not going to throw you to the wolves. What did you do for him?”

“There was an entry in his P.F.,” she said.

“So?”

“He wanted it taken out. It was from long ago. An army report from his National Service time in Austria.”

“When did you do this?”

“Early. We’d been going for about a year. He was back from Prague.”

“And you did it for him. You raided his file?”