A Perfect Spy (31 page)

“But what about my bells?” said Tom in alarm.

“Carter Major's doing them,” said Uncle Jack, who understood absolutely everything.

He must have rung London too, because he took a long time and gave Mary Lou an extra five pounds to fill what he called her Christmas stocking, which had them both in fits again, and this time Tom joined in.

 

How they came to be talking about Corfu, Tom was afterwards never sure and perhaps there was no real path to their conversation any more; it was just chat about what they had both been up to since they had last met, which after all was before the summer holidays so there was masses to talk about if you were in a talking mood. And Tom was; he hadn't talked like this for ages, maybe ever, but Uncle Jack had the ease, he had that mixture of tolerance and discipline that for Tom was the perfect blend, for he loved to feel the strength of Uncle Jack's frontiers as well as the safe ground inside.

“How's your confirmation going?” Brotherhood had asked.

“All right, thanks.”

“You're of an age now, Tom. Got to face it. In some countries you'd be in uniform already.”

“I know.”

“Work still a problem?”

“A bit, sir.”

“Still got your eye on Sandhurst?”

“Yes, sir. And my uncle's regiment says they'd take me if I do all right.”

“Well you'll have to swot, won't you?”

“I'm really trying actually.”

Then Uncle Jack drew nearer and his voice dropped. “I'm not sure I should tell you this, son. But I'm going to anyway because I think you're ready to keep a secret. Can you do that?”

“I've got lots of secrets I've never told to anyone, sir.”

“Your father is rather a secret man himself actually. I expect you knew that, didn't you?”

“You are too, aren't you?”

“Quite a great man as well, he is. But he's got to keep it quiet. For his country.”

“And for you,” said Tom.

“A lot of his life is blocked off completely. You could almost say from human gaze.”

“Does Mummy know?”

“In principle, yes, she does. In detail, next to nothing. That's the way we work. And if your father has ever given the impression of lying, or being evasive, less than truthful sometimes, you can bet your boots it was his work and his loyalty that were the reason. It's a strain for him. It is for all of us. Secrets are a strain.”

“Is it dangerous?” Tom asked.

“Can be. That's why we give him bodyguards. Like boys on motorbikes who follow him round Greece and hang about outside his house.”

“I saw them!” Tom declared excitedly.

“Like tall thin men with moustaches who come up to him at cricket matches—”

“He did, he did! He had a straw hat!”

“And sometimes what your dad does is so secret he has to disappear completely. And not even the bodyguards can have his address.
I
know. But the rest of the world doesn't and it mustn't. And if that inspector comes to you again, or to Mr. Caird, or if anybody else does, you must tell them whatever you know and report to me immediately afterwards. I'm going to give you a special phone number and have a special word with Mr. Caird too. He deserves a lot of help, your father does. And gets it.”

“I'm really glad,” said Tom.

“Now then. That letter of his he wrote to you. The long one that came after he'd gone. Did it talk about things like that?”

“I don't know. I haven't read it all. There was a whole lot of stuff about Sefton Boyd's penknife and some writing in the staff loo.”

“Who's Sefton Boyd?”

“He's a boy in the school. He's my friend.”

“Is he your dad's friend too?”

“No, but his father was. His father was in the school too.”

“Now what have you done with this letter?”

Punished himself with it. Squidged it up till it was tight and prickly and kept it in his trousers pocket where it jabbed his thigh. But Tom didn't say that. He just handed the remnants gratefully to Uncle Jack, who promised to take proper care of them and talk everything over with him next time—if there was anything that needed talking over, which Uncle Jack very much doubted that there would be.

“Got the envelope, have you?”

Tom hadn't.

“Where did he post it from then? There's a clue there, I expect, if we look for it.”

“The postmark was Reading,” said Tom.

“What day?”

“The Tuesday,” said Tom unhappily, “but it could have been after post on Monday. I thought he was going back to Vienna on Monday afternoon. If he didn't go to Scotland, that is.”

But Uncle Jack didn't seem to hear because he was talking about Greece again, playing what the two of them called report writing about this weedy fellow with a moustache who had shown up at the cricket ground in Corfu.

“I expect you were worried about him, weren't you, son? You thought he was up to no good with your dad, I expect, although he was so friendly. I mean, if they knew each other
that
well, why didn't your dad ask him home to meet your mum? I can see that would have bothered you on reflection. You didn't think it very nice your dad should have a secret life on Mum's doorstep.”

“I suppose I didn't,” Tom admitted, marvelling as ever at Uncle Jack's omniscience. “He held Dad's arm.”

They had returned to the Digby. In the great joy of his release from worry, Tom had rediscovered his appetite and was having a steak and chips to fill the gap. Brotherhood had ordered himself a whisky.

“Height?” said Brotherhood, back at their special game.

“Six foot.”

“All right, well done. Six foot exactly is correct. Colour of hair?”

Tom hesitated. “Sort of mousy fawny with stripes,” he said.

“What the hell's that supposed to mean?”

“He wore a straw hat. It was hard to see.”

“I know he wore a straw hat. That's why I'm asking you. Colour of hair?”

“Brown,” said Tom finally. “Brown with the sun on it. And a big forehead like a genius.”

“Now how the hell does the sun get under the brim of a hat?”

“Grey brown,” said Tom.

“Then say so. Two points only. Hatband?”

“Red.”

“Oh dear.”

“It was red.”

“Keep trying.”

“It was red, red, red!”

“Three points. Colour of beard?”

“He hasn't got a beard. He's got a shaggy moustache and thick eyebrows like yours but not so bushy, and crinkly eyes.”

“Three points. Build?”

“Stoopy and hobbly.”

“What the hell's hobbly?”

“Like chumpy. Chumpy's when the sea is choppy and bumpy. Hobbly is when he walks fast and hobbles.”

“You mean limps.”

“Yes.”

“Say so. Which leg?”

“Left.”

“One more try?”

“Left.”

“Certain?”

“Left!”

“Three points. Age?”

“Seventy.”

“Don't be damn stupid.”

“He's old!”

“He's not seventy. I'm not seventy. I'm not sixty. Well only just. Is he older than me?”

“The same.”

“Carry anything?”

“A briefcase. A grey thing like elephant skin. And he was stringy like Mr. Toombs.”

“Who's Toombs?”

“Our gym master. He teaches aikido and geography. He's killed people with his feet, though he's not supposed to.”

“All right, stringy like Mr. Toombs, carried an elephant skin briefcase. Two points. Another time, omit the subjective reference.”

“What's that?”

“Mr. Toombs. You know him, I don't. Don't compare one person I don't know with another I don't know.”

“You said you knew him,” said Tom, very excited to catch Uncle Jack out.

“I do. I'm fooling. Did he have a car, your man?”

“Volvo. Hired from Mr. Kaloumenos.”

“How do you know that?”

“He hires it to everyone. He goes down to the harbour and hangs about and if anyone wants to hire a car Mr. Kaloumenos gives them his Volvo.”

“Colour?”

“Green. And it's got a bashed wing and a Corfu registration and a fox's tail from the aerial and a—”

“It's red.”

“It's green!”

“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.”

“Bollocks. 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 fuck-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 pricks 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 semaphore next.”

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.”