John LeCarre - A New Collection of Three Novels Part 17

"No points," said Brotherhood firmly, to Tom's outrage.

"Why not?"

Brotherhood pulled a wolfish smile. "It wasn't his car, was it? How do you know it was the bloke with the moustache who hired it when two other blokes were riding in it? You lost your objectivity, son."

"He was in charge!"

"You don't know that. You're guessing it. You could start a war, making up things like that. Ever met an Auntie Poppy at all, son?"

"No, sir."

"Uncle?"

Tom giggled. "No, sir."

"A Mr. Wentworth a name to you?"

"No, sir."

"No bells at all?"

"No, sir. I thought it was a place in Surrey."

"Well done, son. Never make it up if you think you don't know and ought to. That's the rule."

"You were teasing again, weren't you?"

"Maybe I was at that. When did your dad say he'd see you again?"

"He didn't."

"Does he ever?"

"Not really."

"Then there's no fuss, is there?"

"It's just the letter."

"What about the letter?"

"It's as if he's dead."

"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. You're imagining. Want me to tell you something else you know? That secret hideaway of your dad's that he's gone to. It's all right. We know about it. Did he give you the address?"

"No."

"Name of the nearest Scottish town?"

"No. He just said Scotland. On the sea in Scotland. A place to write where he's safe from everyone."

"He's told you all he can, Tom. He's not allowed to tell you any more. How many rooms has he got?"

"He didn't say."

"Who does his shopping then?"

"He didn't say. He's got a super landlady. She's old."

"He's a good man. And a wise man. And she's a good woman. One of us. Now don't you worry any more." Uncle Jack glanced sideways at his watch. "Here. Finish that up and order yourself a ginger beer. I need to see a man about a dog." Still smiling, he strode to the door marked toilets and telephone. Tom was nothing if not an observer. Points of happy colour on Uncle Jack's cheeks. A sense of merriness like his own and everybody absolutely fine.

Brotherhood had a wife and a house in Lambeth, and in theory he could have gone to them. He had another wife in his cottage in Suffolk, divorced it was true but given notice willing to oblige. He had a daughter married to a solicitor in Pinner and he wished them both to the devil and it was mutual. Nevertheless they would have had him as a duty. And there was a useless son who scratched a living on the stage and if Brotherhood was feeling charitable towards him, which oddly enough these days he sometimes was, and if he could stomach the squalor and the smell of pot, which he sometimes could, he would have been welcome enough to the heap of greasy coverlets that Adrian called his spare bed. But tonight and for every other night until he had had his word with Pym he wanted none of them. He preferred the exile of his stinking little safe flat in Shepherd Market with sooty pigeons humping each other on the parapet and the tarts doing sentry go along the pavement below him, the way they used to in the war. Periodically the Firm tried to take the place away from him or deduct the rent from his salary at source. The desk jockeys hated him for it and said it was his f.u.c.k-hutch, which occasionally it was. They resented his claims for hospitality booze and cleaners he didn't have. But Brotherhood was hardier than all of them and more or less they knew it.

"Research have turned up more stuff about the use of newspapers by Czech Intelligence," Kate said into the pillow. "But none of it's conclusive."

Brotherhood took a long pull of his vodka. It was two in the morning. They had been here an hour. "Don't tell me. The great spy p.r.i.c.ks the letters of his message with a pin and posts the newspaper to his spymaster. Said spymaster holds the newspaper to the light, and reads the plans for Armageddon. They'll be using semaph.o.r.e next."

She lay white and luminous beside him on the little bed, a forty-year-old Cambridge debutante who had lost her way. The grey-pink glow through the grimy curtains cut her into cla.s.sic 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. G.o.d d.a.m.n 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 Bonga-bonga 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 a.s.semble 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, n.o.body 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 t.i.tBits 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 compet.i.tion. 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 compet.i.tion 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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."

"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 gla.s.s 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 h.e.l.l 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 1 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 s.p.a.ce. 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."