John LeCarre - A New Collection of Three Novels Part 18

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

"It was trivial, he said. He was very young at the time. A boy still. He'd been running some low-grade Joe into Czechoslovakia. A frontier crosser, I think. Really small stuff. But there was this girl called Sabina who'd got in on the act and wanted to marry him and defected. I didn't listen to it very clearly. He said if anybody picked through his file and came on the episode he'd never make it to the Fifth Floor."

"Well that's not the end of the world now, is it?"

She shook her head.

"Joe have a name, did he?" Brotherhood asked.

"A codename. Greensleeves."

"That's fanciful. I like that. Greensleeves. An all-English Joe. You fished the paper from the file and what did you do with it? Just tell it to me, Kate. It's out now. Let's go."

"I stole it."

"All right. What did you do with it?"

"That's what he asked me."

"When?"

"He rang me."

"When?"

"Last Monday evening. After he was supposed to have left for Vienna."

"What time? Come on, Kate, this is good. What time did he ring you?"

"Ten. Later. Ten-thirty. Earlier. I was watching News at Ten."

"What bit?"

"Lebanon. The sh.e.l.ling. Tripoli or somewhere. I turned the sound down as soon as I heard him and the sh.e.l.ling went on and on like a silent movie. 'I needed to hear your voice, Kate. I'm sorry for everything. I rang to say I'm sorry. I wasn't a bad man, Kate. It wasn't all pretend.'"

"Wasn't?"

"Yes. Wasn't. He was conducting a retrospective. Wasn't. I said it's just your father's death, you'll be all right, don't cry. Don't talk as if you're dead yourself. Come round. Where are you? I'll come to you. He said he couldn't. Not any more. Then about his file. I should feel free to tell everyone what I'd done, not try to shield him any more. But to give him a week. 'One week, Kate. It's not a lot after all those years.' Then, had I still got the paper I took out for him? Had I destroyed it, kept a copy?"

"What did you say?"

She went to the bathroom and returned with the embroidered spongebag she kept her kit in. She drew a folded square of brown paper from it and handed it to him.

"Did you give him a copy?"

"No."

"Did he ask for one?"

"No. I wouldn't have done that. I expect he knew. I took it and I said I'd taken it and he should believe me. I thought I'd put it back one day. It was a link."

"Where was he when he rang you on Monday?"

"A phone box."

"Reverse charges?"

"Middle distance. I reckoned four fifty-pence pieces. Mind you, that could still be London, knowing him. We were on for about twenty minutes but a lot of the time he couldn't speak."

"Describe. Come on, old love. You'll only have to do it once, I promise you, so you might as well do it thoroughly."

"I said, 'Why aren't you in Vienna?'"

"What did he say to that?"

"He said he'd run out of small change. That was the last thing he said to me. 'I've run out of small change.'"

"Did he have a place he ever took you? A hideaway?"

"We used my flat or went to hotels."

"Which ones?"

"The Grosvenor at Victoria was one. The Great Eastern at Liverpool Street. He has favourite rooms that overlook the railway lines."

"Give me the numbers."

Holding her against him, he walked her to the desk and scribbled down the two numbers to her dictation, then pulled on his old dressing-gown and knotted it round his waist and smiled at her. "I loved him too, Kate. I'm a bigger fool than you are." But he won no smile in return. "Did he ever talk about a place away from it all? Some dream he had?" He poured her some more vodka and she took it.

"Norway," she said. "He wanted to see the migration of the reindeer. He was going to take me one day."

"Where else?"

"Spain. The north. He said he'd buy a villa for us."

"Did he talk about his writing?"

"Not much."

"Did he say where he'd like to write his great book?"

"In Canada. We'd hibernate in some snowy place and live out of tins."

"The sea--nothing by the sea?"

"No."

"Did he ever mention Poppy to you? Someone called Poppy, like in his book?"

"He never mentioned any of his women. I told you. We were separate planets."

"How about someone called Wentworth?"

She shook her head.

'"Wentworth was Rick's Nemesis,'" Brotherhood recited. "'Poppy was mine. We each spent our lives trying to put right the wrong we'd done to them.' You heard the tapes. You've seen the transcripts. Wentworth."

"He's mad," she said.

"Stay here," he said. "Stay as long as you like."

Returning to the desk, he wiped the books and papers off it with a single sweep of his arm, switched on the reading lamp, sat down and laid the sheet of brown paper beside Pym's crumpled letter to Tom, postmark Reading. The London telephone directories were on the floor at his side. He chose the Grosvenor Hotel, Victoria, first and asked the night porter to put him through to the room number Kate had given him. A drowsy man answered.

"House detective here," Brotherhood said. "We've reason to believe you've got a lady in your room."

"Of course I've got a f.u.c.king lady in my room. This is a double room I'm paying for, and she's my wife."

It wasn't any of Pym's voices.

He laughed for her, rang the Great Eastern Hotel and got a similar result. He rang Independent Television News and asked for the night editor. He said he was Inspector Markley of Scotland Yard with an urgent enquiry: He wanted the time of transmission of the item on the Lebanese bombing story on Monday night News at Ten. He held on for as long as it took, while he continued to leaf through the pages of Pym's letter. Postmark Reading. Posted Monday night or Tuesday morning.

"Ten-seventeen and ten seconds. That's when he rang you," he said, and glanced round to make sure she was all right. She was sitting up against the pillow, head back like a boxer between rounds.

He rang the post office investigation unit and got the night officer. He gave her the Firm's codeword and she responded with a doom-laden "I hear you," as if the third world war was about to happen.

"I'm asking the impossible and I want it by yesterday," he said.

"We'll try our best," she said.

"I want a backtrack on any cash call to London made from a Reading area telephone box between ten-eighteen and ten-twenty-one on Monday night. Duration around twenty minutes."

"Can't be done," she said promptly.

"I love her," he told Kate over his shoulder. She had rolled over and was lying on her stomach with her face buried in her arm.

He rang off and addressed himself in earnest to Kate's purloined pages from Pym's personal file. Three of them, extracted from the army record of First Lieutenant Magnus Pym, number supplied, of the Intelligence Corps, attached No. 6 Field Interrogation Unit, Graz, described in a footnote as an offensive military intelligence-gathering unit with limited permission to run local informants. Dated 18 July 1951, writer unknown, relevant pa.s.sage sidelined by Registry. Date of entry to Pym's P.F., 12 May 1952. Reason for entry, Pym's formal candidature for admission to this service. The extract was from his commanding officer's conduct report at the close of Pym's tour of duty in Graz, Austria: "... exceptional young officer... popular and courteous in the mess... earned a high reputation for his skilful running of source GREENSLEEVES who over the last eleven months has supplied this unit with secret and top-secret intelligence on the Soviet Order of Battle in Czechoslovakia."

"You all right there?" he called to Kate. "Listen. You did nothing wrong. n.o.body even missed this stuff. n.o.body would have been the wiser for it. n.o.body ever tried to follow it up."

He turned a page: "... close personal relationship established between source and case officer... Pym's calm authority during crisis... source's insistence on operating through Pym only..." He read fast to the end then began again at the beginning more slowly.

"His C.O. was in love with him too," he called to Kate. "'... his excellent memory for detail,'" he read, "'... lucid report writing, often done in the early hours of the morning after a long debriefing... high entertainment value...'

"Doesn't even mention Sabina," he complained to Kate. "Can't see what the devil he was so worried about. Why risk his hotline to you to suppress a bit of paper from the Dark Ages that did him nothing but credit? Must be something in his own nasty little mind, not ours at all. That doesn't surprise me either."

The phone was ringing. He glanced round. The bed was empty, the bathroom door closed. Scared, he sprang up and pulled it quickly open. She was standing safely at the basin, chucking water in her face. He closed the door again and hastened back to the telephone. It was a mossy green scrambler with chrome b.u.t.tons. He picked up the receiver and growled "Yes?"

"Jack? Let's go over. Ready? Now."

Brotherhood pressed a b.u.t.ton and heard the same tenor voice trilling in the electronic storm.

"You'll enjoy this, Jack--Jack, can you hear me? Hullo?"

"I can hear you, Bo."

"I've just had Carver on the line." Carver was the American Head of Station in London. "He insists his people have come up with fresh leads concerning our mutual friend. They want to reopen the story on him immediately. Harry Wexler's flying over from Washington to see fair play."

"That all?"

"Isn't it enough?"

"Where do they think he is?" said Brotherhood.

"That's exactly the point. They didn't ask, they weren't worried. They a.s.sume he's still coping with his father's affairs," said Brammel, very pleased. "They actually made the point that this would be an excellent time to meet. While our friend is occupied with his personal affairs. Everything is still in its place as far as they're concerned. Except for the new leads of course. Whatever they are."

"Except for the networks," Brotherhood said.

"I'll want you with me at the meeting, Jack. I want you in there punching for me, just like your usual self. Will yon do that?"

"If it's an order, I'll do anything."

Bo sounded like someone organising a jolly party: "I'm having everyone we'd normally have. n.o.body's to be left out or added. I want nothing to stick out, not a ripple while we go on looking for him. This whole thing could still be a storm in a teacup. Whitehall is convinced of it. They argue that we're dealing with follow-on from the last thing, not a new situation at all. They've got some awfully clever people these days. Some of them aren't even civil servants. Are you sleeping?"

"Not a lot."

"None of us is. We must stick together. Nigel's over at the Foreign Office at this moment."

"Is he though?" said Brotherhood aloud as he rang off. "Kate?"

"What is it?"

"Just keep your fingers away from my razor blades, hear me? We're too old for dramatic gestures, both of us."

He waited a second, dialled Head Office and asked for the night duty officer.

"You got a rider there?"

"Yes."

"Brotherhood. There's a War Office file I want. British Army of Occupation in Austria, old field case. Operation Greensleeves, believe it or not. Where will it be?"

"Ministry of Defence, I suppose, seeing that the War Office was disbanded about two hundred years ago."

"Who are you?"

"Nicholson."

"Well, don't b.l.o.o.d.y suppose. Find out where it is, fetch it and phone me when it's on your desk. Got a pencil, have you?"