"You don"t sound convinced. Spit it out, son. She"s our last chance, I"ll tell you that for nothing."

"It"s just I wasn"t quite sure why she hadn"t gone to her own people."

"You don"t know those Jews the way I do. They"re some of the finest people in the world. There"s others, they"d have the coat off her back as soon as look at her. I asked her the same question. I didn"t pull my punches either."

"Who"s Cunningham?" says Pym, barely able to conceal his distaste.

"Old Cunnie"s first cla.s.s. I"m bringing him into the business when this is over. Exports and Foreign. He"ll be a tearaway. His sense of humour alone is worth five thousand a year to us. He wasn"t on form tonight. He was tense."

"What"s the deal?" says Pym.

"Faith in your old man, that"s the deal. "Rickie," she says to me--that"s what she calls me, she doesn"t pull her punches either--"Rickie, I want you get that box for me, sell the contents and invest the money in one of your fine enterprises, and I want you to take the cares off my shoulders and give me ten percent a year for life for as long as I"m spared, with all the necessary provisions of insurance and endowment if you go before me. I want that money to be yours to see the world right in whatever way you deem in your wisdom." That"s a big responsibility, son. If I had a pa.s.sport I"d go myself. I"d send Syd if he was available. Syd would go. Cattle and pigs. That"s what I"m going to do after this. Just a few acres and some livestock. I"m retiring."

"What"s happened to your pa.s.sport?" said Pym.

"Son, I"m going to level with you, which I always do. That airy-fairy school of yours are hard bargainers. They want cash and they want it on the due day and that"s it. You speak her language, that"s the point. She likes you. She trusts you. You"re my son. I could send Muspole but I"d never be sure he"d come back. Perce Loft"s too legal. He"d scare her. Now slip to the window and see if that Riley"s gone. Don"t get the light on your face. They can"t come in. They haven"t got a warrant. I"m an honest citizen."

Half hidden behind the chipped green filing cabinet, Pym squints steeply downward into the street in covert counter-surveillance. The Riley is still there.

There are no blankets for the bed so they make do with curtains and dust-sheets. Pym sleeps fitfully and freezes, dreaming of the baroness. Once Rick"s arm falls violently across him, once he is roused by Rick"s strangled voice calling out invective against a b.i.t.c.h called Peggy. And some time in the early hours he feels the soft female weight of Rick"s nether body in silk shirt and underpants backing inexorably against him, which persuades him it is more restful on the floor. In the morning Rick still will not leave the house, so Pym walks alone to Victoria Station carrying his few possessions in a splendid white box-calf suitcase with Rick"s initials in bra.s.s underneath the handle. He wears one of Rick"s camel-hair coats though it is too large for him. Hie baroness, looking more delectable than ever, is waiting on the platform. Mr. Cunningham is there to wave them off. In the train lavatory, Pym opens the envelope Rick gave him and extracts a wad of white ten-pound notes and his first-ever instructions for a clandestine encounter."You are to proceed to Bern and take Rooms at the Grand Palace Hotel. Mr. Bertl the under-manager is first Rate, the Bill is taken care of. Signor Lapadi will Contact the Baroness and guide you to the Austrian border. When Lapadi has given you the Box and you have Confirmed in our Language that it"s all there, see him right with the Enclosed and not until. This is going to be the Saving of us, son. That Money you are Carrying took a lot of earning, but when this is over none of us will ever have to Worry again."I shall be brisk with the operational details of the Rothschild a.s.signment, Jack--the days of hope, the days of doubt, the sudden leaps from one to the other. And I truly forget which street corners or codewords preceded the slow descent into inconclusion that has been my memory of so many operations since--just as I forget, if I ever knew, in what quant.i.ties of skepticism and blind faith Pym pursued his mission to its inevitable end. Certainly I have known operations since that have been mounted on quite as little likelihood of success, and have cost a great deal more than money. Signor Lapadi spoke only to the baroness, who relayed his information with disdain.

"Lapadi he talk mit his Vertrauensmann, darling." She smiles indulgently when Pym asks what a Vertrauensmann is.

"The Vertrauensmann is man we are trusting. Not yesterday, maybe not tomorrow. But today we are trusting him for ever."

"Lapadi he need one hundred pound, darling"--a day or two later--"the Vertrauensmann know a man whose sister know the head from customs. Better he pay him now for friendship."

Remembering Rick"s instructions Pym offers token resistance but the baroness already has her hand out and is rubbing her finger and thumb together with delightful insinuation. "You want to paint the house, darling, first you got to buy the brush," she explains and to Pym"s amazement lifts her skirts to the waist and pops the banknotes into the top of her stocking. "Tomorrow we buy you nice suit."

"Gave her the money, son?" Rick roars that night across the Channel. "G.o.d in Heaven, what do you think we are? Fetch me Elena."

"Don"t shout me, darling," the baroness says calmly into the telephone. "You got lovely boy here, Rickie. He very strict with me. I think one day he be great actor."

"The baroness says you"re first rate, son. Are you talking our language with her out there?"

"All the time," says Pym.

"Have you had an honest-to-G.o.d English mixed grill yet?"

"No, we"re sort of saving it."

"Well have one on me. Tonight."

"We will, Father. Thanks."

"G.o.d bless you, son."

"And you too, Father," says Pym politely and, butler-like, keeps his knees and feet together while he puts the phone down.

More important to me by far are my memories of Pym"s first platonic honeymoon with a wise lady. With Elena beside him, Pym wandered Bern"s old city, drank the light small wines of the Valais, watched thes dansants in the great hotels and consigned his past to history. In scented, frilly boutiques that she seemed to find by instinct, they exchanged her battered wardrobe for fur capes and Anna Karenina riding boots that slithered on the frosty cobble, and Pym"s dismal school habit for a leather jacket and trousers without b.u.t.tons for his braces. Even in her disarray, the baroness would insist on Pym"s judgment, beckoning him into the little mirrored box to help her choose, and permitting him, as if unknowingly, delicious glimpses of her Rococo charms: now a nipple, now the cup of a b.u.t.tock carelessly uncurtained, now an amazing shadow at the centre of her rounded thighs as she whisked from one skirt to another. She is Lippsie, he thought excitedly; she is how Lippsie would have been if she hadn"t thought so much of death.

"Gefall" ich dir, darling?"

"Da gefallst mir sehr"

"One day you have pretty girl, you talk to her just like this, she go crazy. You don"t think too tarty?"

"I think perfect."

"Okay, we buy two. One for my sister Zsa-Zsa, she my size."

A tilt of the white shoulders, a careless pull at a straying hem of lingerie, the bill was brought, Pym signed it and addressed it to the provident Herr Bertl, turning his back on her and crouching forward in order to conceal the evidence of his perturbation. From a jeweller in the Herrenga.s.se they bought a pearl necklace for another sister in Budapest and as an afterthought a topaz ring for her mother in Paris which the baroness would take to her on her way home. And I see that ring now, winking on her freshly manicured finger as she traces a trout back and forth across the fish tank in the grill-room of our grand hotel while the headwaiter stands above her with his net poised to strike.

"Nein, nein, darling, nicht this one, that one! Ja, ja, prima."

It was at one such dinner, in the event their last, that Pym was so moved by love and confusion that he felt obliged to confide to the baroness his intention of leading a monastic life. She put down her knife and fork with a clatter.

"Don"t tell me no more from monks!" she commanded him angrily. "I see too many of monks. I see monks of Croatia, monks of Serbia, Russia. G.o.d He ruin the d.a.m.n world with monks."

"Well, it"s not completely certain," said Pym.

It took a lot of funny voices from him, and a lot of intimate fabrications, before the light came cautiously back to her brown eyes.

"And her name was Lippsie?"

"Well that"s what we called her. I mustn"t tell you her real name."

"And she slept with such a young boy like you? You made love with her so young? She was a wh.o.r.e, I think."

"Probably just lonely," said Pym wisely.

But her thoughtfulness remained and when Pym as usual saw her to her bedroom door she studied him closely before taking his head between her hands and kissing him on the mouth. Suddenly her mouth opened, Pym"s also. The kiss became intense, he felt an unfamiliar mound plying irresistibly against his thigh. He felt its warmth, he felt soft hair slipping against silk as she pressed more rhythmically. She whispered "Schatz," he heard a squeak and wondered whether he had hurt her somehow. Her head twisted, her neck pressed against his lips. With confiding fingers she handed him the key to her bedroom door and looked away while he opened it. He found the keyhole, turned the key and held the door for her. He put the key into her palm and saw the light in her eyes fade.

"So, my dear," she said. She kissed him, one cheek other cheek, she stared at him as if searching for something she had lost. It was not till next morning that he discovered she had been kissing him goodbye."Darling"--she wrote--"You are good man, got body from Michelangelo but your Papi got bad problems. Better you stay in Bern. Never mind. E. Weber love you always."In the envelope were the gold cufflinks we had bought for her cousin in Oxford, and two hundred of the five hundred pounds that Pym had given her for the invisible Mr. Lapadi. I wear the cufflinks as I write. Gold with tiny diamonds in a crown. The baroness always loved a touch of royalty.

It was morning at Miss Dubber"s also. Through the closed curtains, Pym heard the milk van clinking on its rounds. Pen in hand he drew a pink file towards him marked simply "R.T.P.," licked his forefinger and thumb and began methodically turning through the entries until he had extracted some half dozen.

Copy letter Richard T. Pym to Father Guardian, Lyme Regis, dated 1 October 1948, threatening legal proceedings for the abduction of his son Magnus. (Ex R.T.P."s files.) Memorandum of 15 September 1948, Fraud Squad to Pa.s.sport Control Department, recommending impounding of R.T.P."s pa.s.sport pending criminal investigations in the matter of one J.R. Wentworth. (Obtained informally through Head Office police liaison section.) Letter from school bursar to R.T.P. declining to accept either dried fruit, tinned peaches or any other commodity in part or full payment of fees and regretting that the governing board cannot see its way to educating Pym for nothing. "I note also with regret that you refuse to describe yourself as an impecunious parent whose son is destined for the clergy." (Ex R.T.P."s files.) Furious letter from lawyers representing Herr Eberhardt Bertl, sometime under-manager of the Grand Palace Hotel in Bern, addressed to Colonel Sir Richard T. Pym, D.S.O., one of a succession, demanding payment in the order of eleven thousand and eighteen Swiss francs forty centimes, plus interest at four percent per month. (Ex R.T.P"s files.) Extract from London Chronicle dated November 8, 1949, declaring personal bankruptcy R.T.P., and compulsory liquidation of the eighty-three companies of the Pym empire including, no doubt, The Muspole Friendly Academic Ltd.

Extract from Daily Telegraph dated October 9, 1948, recording the death in Truro Hospital, Cornwall, of one John Reginald Wentworth, after a long illness resulting from his injuries, beloved husband to Peggy.

And a quaint little cutting, culled from G.o.d knows where, recording the arrest at sea, on the cruise ship S.S. Grande Bretagne, of the notorious confidence tricksters Weber and Woolfe alias Cunningham, masquerading as the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Seville.

One by one, with a red pen, Pym numbered each doc.u.ment in the top right corner, then entered the same numbers at the appropriate points in his text by way of reference. With a bureaucrat"s neat manners he stapled the exhibits together and inserted them in a file marked "Annexe." Closing the file he stood up, gave an unrestrained sigh and thrust down his arms behind him like a man slipping off a harness. The ghostly formlessness of adolescence was over. Manhood and maturity beckoned, even if he never made the distance. He was in his beloved Switzerland at last, the spiritual home of natural spies. Crossing to the window he made a last inspection of the square, the tired lights of England fading as he watched. Gravely he undressed, drank a last vodka, gravely took a look at himself in the mirror and prepared to put himself to bed. But lightly, very lightly. Almost on tiptoe. Almost as if he were afraid to wake himself up. On his way he paused at the desk and read again the decoded message that for once he had not bothered to destroy.

Poppy, he thought, stay exactly where you are.

7.

Five years ago Jack Brotherhood had shot his Labrador b.i.t.c.h. She was in her basket, rheumatic and shaking; he"d given her the pills but she"d sicked them up, then shamed herself by messing the carpet. And when he threw on his windcheater and took his 12-bore from behind the door, willing her, she looked at him like a criminal because she knew she was finally too sick to find for him. He ordered her to get up but she couldn"t. When he yelled "Seek!" she rolled herself on to her forepaws and lay down again with her head stuck stupidly over the basket. So he put down the gun and got a shovel from the shed and dug her a hole in the field behind the cottage, a bit up the slope with a decent view across the estuary. Then he wrapped her in his favourite tweed jacket and carried her up there and shot her in the back of the head, smashing the spinal cord at the nape, and buried her. After that he sat beside her with a half-bottle of scotch while the Suffolk dew settled itself over him and he decided she had probably had the best death anyone was likely to have in a world not distinguished by good deaths. He didn"t leave a headstone or a coy wood cross for her but he had taken bearings on the spot, using the church tower, the dead willow tree and the windmill, and whenever he pa.s.sed it by he"d send her a gruff mental greeting, which was as near as he had ever come to pondering on the afterlife, until this empty Sunday morning as he drove through deserted Berkshire lanes and watched the sun lifting on the Downs. "Jack"s had too many miles in the saddle," Pym had said. "The Firm should have retired him ten years ago."

And how long ago should we have retired you, my boy? he wondered. Twenty years? Thirty? How many miles have you had in the saddle? How many miles of exposed film have you rolled into how many newspapers? How many miles of newspaper have you dropped into dead letter boxes and tossed over cemetery walls? How many hours have you listened to Prague radio, seated over your code pads?

He lowered his window. The racing air smelt of silage and wood smoke and it thrilled him. Brotherhood was country stock. His forebears were gypsies and clergymen, gamekeepers and poachers and pirates. With the morning wind pouring into his face, he became a raggedy-a.r.s.ed boy again, galloping Miss Sumner"s hunter bareback across her park and getting the hiding of his life for it. He was freezing to death in the flat mud of the Suffolk fens, too proud to go home without a catch. He was making his first drop from a barrage balloon at Abingdon Aerodrome and discovering how the wind kept his mouth open after he yelled. I"ll leave when they throw me out. I"ll leave when you and I have had our word, my boy.

He had slept six hours in forty-eight, most of them on a lumpy camp bed in a room set aside for typists with the vapours, but he was not tired. "Can we have you for a minute, Jack?" said Kate, the Fifth Floor vestal, with a look that stayed on him a beat too long. "Bo and Nigel would like another small word." And when he wasn"t sleeping or answering the telephone or thinking his usual puzzled thoughts about Kate, he had watched his life go by in a kind of bewildered free fall into enemy territory: so this is what it"s like, this is badland and these are my feet spinning towards it like a sycamore twig. He had contemplated Pym in all the stages he had grown up with him, drunk with him and worked with him, including a night in Berlin he had totally forgotten until now when they had ended up s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g a couple of army nurses in adjoining rooms. He had remembered contemplating his own mangled arm on the winter"s day in 1943 when it had hung beside him embellished with three German machine-gun bullets, and he had experienced the same feeling of incredulous detachment.

"If you could only have let us know a little earlier, Jack. If only you could have seen it coming."

Yes, I"m sorry, Bo. Careless of me.

"But Jack, he was practically your own son, we used to say."

Yes, we did, didn"t we, Bo. Silly really, I agree.

And Kate"s reproving eyes, as ever, saying, Jack, Jack, where are you?

There had been other cases in his lifetime, naturally. Ever since the war had ended, Brotherhood"s professional life had been regularly turned upside down by the Firm"s latest terminal scandal. While he was Head of Station in Berlin, it had happened to him not twice but three times: night telegrams, flash, for Brotherhood"s eyes only. Phone call--where is he? Jack, get off your elbows and get in here now. Race through wet streets, dead sober. Telegram one, the subject of my immediately following telegram is a member of this service and has now been revealed as a Soviet Intelligence agent. You will inform your official contacts of this in confidence before they read it in the morning papers. Followed by the long wait beside the codebooks while you think: is it him, is it her, is it me? Telegram two, spell a name of six letters, who the h.e.l.l do I know who"s got six letters? First group M--Christ, it"s Miller! Second group A--oh my G.o.d, it"s Mackay! Until up comes a name you never heard of, from a section you didn"t know existed, and when the expurgated case history finally arrives on your desk all you have is a vision of an under-welfared little nancy-boy in the cypher room in Warsaw who thought he was playing the world"s game when what he really wanted was to shaft his employers.

But these distant scandals had been till now the gunfire of a war he was certain would never come his way. He had regarded them not as warnings but as confirmation of everything he disliked about the way the Firm was going: its retreat into bureaucracy and semi-diplomacy, its pandering to American methods and example. By comparison his own hand-picked staff had only looked better to him, and when the witch-hunters had gathered at his door, led by Grant Lederer and his nasty little Mormon bag-carriers, baying for Pym"s blood and brandishing fanciful suspicions based on nothing more than a few computerised coincidences, it was Jack Brotherhood who had banged his open hand upon the conference table and made the water-gla.s.ses hop: "Stop this now. There"s not a man or woman in this room who won"t look like a traitor once you start to pull our life stories inside out. A man can"t remember where he was on the night of the tenth? Then he"s lying. He can remember? Then he"s too d.a.m.n flip with his alibi. You go one more yard with this and everyone who tells the truth will become a barefaced liar, everyone who does a decent job will be working for the other side. You carry on like this and you"ll sink our service better than the Russians ever could. Or is that what you want?"

And G.o.d help him, with his reputation and his anger and his connections and with his section"s record, in the modern jargon that he loathed, of low cost and high productivity, he had carried the day, never thinking for a moment that another day might come where he wished he hadn"t.

Closing his window Brotherhood stopped the car in a village where no one knew him. He was too early. He had needed to get out of London, out of touch, away from Kate"s brown stare. Give him one more hopeless damage-limitation conference, one more session on how to keep it from the Americans, one more glance of pity or reproach from Kate, or of plain hatred from Bo"s grey army of suburban mandarins, and possibly, just possibly, Jack Brotherhood might have said things that everyone, but most of all himself, would afterwards have regretted. So he had volunteered for this errand instead, and Bo with rare promptness had said what a good idea, who better? And he knew as soon as he cleared Bo"s doorway that they were as glad to see him go as he was to leave. Except for Kate.

"Just do keep phoning in if you don"t mind," Bo called after him. "Three-hourly at most. Kate will know the score. Won"t you, Kate?"

Nigel followed him down the corridor. "When you phone in, I want you coming through Secretariat. You"re not to use his direct line and I shall need to speak to you first."

"And that"s an order," Brotherhood suggested.

"It"s a temporary licence and it can be withdrawn at any time."

The church had a wooden porch, a footpath led beside a playing field. He pa.s.sed a farmyard with brick barns and smelt warm milk on the autumn air.

"We evacuate them in echelons, Jack," Frankel is saying in his hand-pressed Euro-English. "That"s if we evacuate them at all."

"And on my say-so," Nigel adds from the wings.

The room is low and windowless and overlit. A uniformed guard mans the peephole. s.p.a.ced along the wall sit Frankel"s greying female a.s.sistants at their trestle desks. They have brought thermos flasks and share each other"s cigarettes. They have done it all before, like a day at the races. Frankel is fat and ugly, a Latvian headwaiter. Brotherhood recruited him, Brotherhood promoted him. Now he was taking over Brotherhood"s mess. So it goes. It is three in the morning. It is today, six hours ago.

"Day one, Jack, we move only head agents," says Frankel with a doctor"s false a.s.surance. "Conger and Watchman in Prague, Voltaire in Budapest, Merryman in Gdansk."

"When do we begin?" says Brotherhood.

"When Bo waves the flag, and not before," says Nigel. "We"re still evaluating and we still regard Pym"s loyalties as quite possibly impeccable," says Nigel, like somebody mastering a tongue-twister.

"We move them very quietly, Jack," says Frankel. "No goodbyes, no flowers for the neighbours, no finding somewhere for the cat. Day two radio operators, day three the cut-outs, subagents. Day four whoever"s left."

"How do we reach them?" Brotherhood asks.

"You don"t, we do," says Nigel. "If and when the Fifth Floor says it"s necessary, which at the moment, I repeat, is pure hypothesis."

Kate has followed them in. Kate is our widowed English spinster, pale and sculptural and beautiful, who at forty mourns the loves she never had. And Kate is still Kate, he can see it as clear as ever in her eyes.

"Maybe we pick them off the street when they go to work," Frankel continues. "Maybe we bang on the door, tell a friend, leave a note somewhere. Just anything we think of, so long as it wasn"t done before."

"That"s where you"ll be able to help if we get that far," Nigel explains. "Telling us what"s been done before."

Frankel has paused before a map of Eastern Europe. Brotherhood waits a step behind him. Head agents red, subagents blue. So much easier to kill a pushpin than a man. Still gazing at the map Brotherhood remembers an evening in Vienna. Pym is playing host, Brotherhood is Colonel Peter bringing London"s thanks for ten years" service. He remembers Pym"s gracious speech in Czech, the champagne and medals, the handshakes, the a.s.surances, the quiet waltzes to the gramophone. And this dumpy couple in brown, he a physicist, she a senior lady in the Czech Ministry of the Interior, lovers in betrayal, their faces glistening with excitement as they whirl round the drawing-room to the strains of Johann Strauss.

"So when do you start?" Brotherhood asks again.

"Jack, that is Bo"s judgment," Nigel insists, dangerously patient.

"Jack, the Fifth Floor has ruled that the most important thing is to look busy, act natural, keep everything normal," says Frankel, picking a sheaf of telegrams from his desk. "They use letter boxes? So clear the letter boxes like normal. They got radio? So send radio like normal, stick to all the normal schedules, hope the opposition are listening."

"That"s the most important thing at the moment," Nigel says, as if anything Frankel says is invalid until he says it too. "Total normality in all areas. One premature step would be fatal."

"So would a late one," Brotherhood says as his blue eyes start to catch fire.

"They"re waiting for you, Jack," Kate says, meaning, come away, there"s nothing you can do.

Brotherhood does not move. "Do it now," he tells Frankel. "Take them into the emba.s.sies. Broadcast a warning. Abort."

Nigel doesn"t say a word. Frankel looks to him for help but Nigel has folded his arms and is looking over the shoulder of one of Frankel"s women while she types a signal.

"Jack, no way do we take those Joes into emba.s.sies or consulates," Frankel says, making faces in Nigel"s direction. "Verboten. The most we can do when we get the order from the Fifth Floor is fresh escape papers, is money, transport, a couple of prayers. That right, Nigel?"

"If you get the order," Nigel corrects him.

"Conger will head east," Brotherhood says. "His daughter"s at university in Bucharest. He"ll go to her."

"Okay, so where does he go from Bucharest?" says Frankel.

Brotherhood is nearly shouting. There is nothing Kate can do to stop him. "South into b.l.o.o.d.y Bulgaria, what do you think! If we give him a date and place, we can put a plane in, hedgehop him into Yugoslavia!"

Now Frankel also lifts his voice. "Jack. Hear me, okay? Nigel, confirm this for me so I don"t sound too negative all the time. No little planes, no emba.s.sies, no frontier crashes of any kind. This is not the sixties any more. Not the fifties, not the forties. We don"t drop planes and pilots around Eastern Europe like birdseed. We are not enthusiastic about reception committees for ourselves or our Joes that are laid on by the opposition."

"He"s got it straight," Nigel confirms with just enough surprise.

"I got to tell you this, Jack. Your networks are so contaminated at this moment that the Foreign Office wouldn"t even drop them in the trash can, would they, Nigel? You are isolated, Jack. Whitehall"s got to cover itself in polythene before it shakes your hand. Is this correct, Nigel?" Frankel hears himself and stops. He looks to Nigel yet again but receives no comforting word. He catches Brotherhood"s eye and stares at him with a long and unexpected fearfulness, the way we look at monuments and find ourselves contemplating our own mortality. "I take orders, Jack. Don"t look at me that way. Cheers."

Brotherhood slowly climbs the stairs. Climbing, them ahead of him, Kate slows down and trails a couple of fingers for him to take hold of. He pretends he hasn"t seen.