A Perfect Spy (66 page)

The description pleased them both so much that they broke out laughing for some while, so that Brotherhood had to laugh with them and keep back his question until Membury was able to hear him clearly.

“You mean you never met Greensleeves? He never came to the rendezvous? I'm sorry, sir,” he said, returning to his notebook, “but didn't you say just now you yourself took over source Greensleeves when Pym left Graz?”

“I did.”

“And now you say you never met him.”

“Perfectly true. I didn't. Stood me up at the altar, didn't he, Hannah? She got me into my best suit, packed together all these stupid special foods he was supposed to like—how that started, God knows—he never turned up.”

“Harrison probably got the wrong night,” said Mrs. Membury, with a fresh gust of laughter. “Harrison's frightful about time, aren't you, darling? He was never
trained
for Intelligence, you know. He was librarian in Nairobi. A jolly good one too. Then he met someone on the ship and got roped in.”

“And out,” said Membury cheerfully. “Kaufmann came along. He was the driver. Charming chap. Well he knew the meeting place like the back of his hand. I didn't get the wrong night, darling. I got the right one, I know I did. Sat in an empty barn all night. No word from him, nothing. We'd no means of getting hold of him, it was all one way. Ate a bit of his stupid food. Drank some of his booze, I enjoyed that. Went home. Same again the next night and the next. I waited for a message of some sort, phone call like the first time. Absolute blank. Chap was never heard of again. We should have had a formal handover with Pym present, of course, but Greensleeves wouldn't allow it. Prima donna, you see, like all agents. ‘One chap at a time.' Iron rule.” Membury absently helped himself from Brotherhood's glass. “Vienna was furious. Blamed it all on me. Then I told them he was no good anyway and that didn't help.” He gave another rich laugh. “I should think it got me sacked if truth were known. They didn't say so, but I'll bet it jolly well helped!”

Mrs. Membury had made a tuna-fish risotto because it was Friday, and a trifle with cherries on it which she refused to let Membury eat. When lunch was over she and Brotherhood stood on the river bank watching Membury hacking cheerfully at the reeds. Nets and fine wires were stretched all ways across the water. Among the breeding boxes, an old punt was sinking at its mooring. The sun, freed of the mist, beat brightly.

“So tell us about the wicked Sabina,” Brotherhood suggested artfully, out of Membury's earshot.

Mrs. Membury couldn't wait. An absolute minx, she repeated: “One look at Magnus and she saw herself with a British passport, a jolly good British husband and nothing to worry about for the rest of her life. But Magnus was a bit too sly for her, I'm pleased to say. He must have stood her up. He never said so, but that was the way we read it. In Graz one day. Gone the next.”

“Where did she go then?” Brotherhood said.

“Home to Czechoslovakia, that was the story. With her tail between her legs was our theory. Left a note for Harrison saying she was homesick and she was going back to her old boyfriend, despite the beastly régime. Well
that
didn't please London, as you can imagine. It didn't raise Harrison's stock one bit. They said he should have seen it coming and done something about it.”

“I wonder what became of her,” Brotherhood mused with an historian's dreaminess. “You don't remember her other name, do you?”

“Harrison. What was Sabina's other name?”

With surprising swiftness the answer rang back across the water. “Kordt. K-O-R-D-T. Sabina Kordt. Very beautiful girl. Charming.”

“Marlow says what became of her?”

“God knows. Last we heard she'd changed her name and landed herself a job in one of the Czech Ministries. One of the defectors said she'd been working for 'em all along.”

Mrs. Membury was not so much astonished as proved right. “Now there you are! Married getting on for fifty years, thirtysomething years since Austria, and he doesn't even tell me she turned up in Czechoslovakia working for one of the Ministries! I expect Harrison had an affair with her himself if truth were known. Practically everybody did. Well my dear she must have been a spy, mustn't she? It sticks out a mile. They'd never have taken her back if they hadn't their hooks on her all along, they're far too vindictive. So Magnus was well rid of her then, wasn't he? Are you sure you won't stay for tea?”

“If I could take a few of those old photographs,” Brotherhood said. “We'll give you a credit in the book, naturally.”

 

Mary knew the technique exactly. In Berlin she had watched Jack Brotherhood use it a dozen times, and helped him often. At training camp they had called it paperchasing: how to make an encounter with someone you don't trust. The only difference was, today it was Mary who was the subject of the operation, and the anonymous writer of the note who didn't trust her:

The Mozart was half empty. Mary sat at a centre table where she could be seen and ordered herself a coffee and a brandy. They've watched me arrive and now they're watching to see whether I am followed. Pretending to consult her diary, she took covert note of the people round her and the parked charabancs and fiacres in the street outside the big windows, looking for anything that could resemble a stake-out. When you've got a conscience like mine, everything stinks anyway, she thought: from the two nuns frowning at the stock exchange prices in the window of the bank to the huddle of bowler-hatted young coachmen stamping their feet and watching the girls go by. In a corner of the café, a fat Viennese gentleman was expressing interest in her. I should have worn a hat, she thought. I'm not a respectable single woman. She got up, went to the newspaper rack and without thinking chose
Die Presse.
Now I suppose I roll it up and take it for a walk in my stockinged feet, she thought stupidly, as she opened it at the film page.

“Frau Pym?”

A woman's voice, a woman's bosom. A woman's deferentially smiling face. It was the girl from the cash desk.

“That's right,” said Mary, smiling in return.

From behind her back she produced an envelope with “Frau Pym” written on it in pencil. “Herr König left this message for you. He is very sorry.”

Mary gave her fifty schillings and opened the envelope.

She wanted the loo but she didn't like to go in case he thought she was tipping someone off. She put the note in her handbag, finished her coffee and took her bill to the cash desk where the girl gave her another smile.

“These men are all the same,” the girl said while the change rattled down the chute.

“You're telling me,” said Mary. They both laughed.

As she left the café a young couple entered and she had a feeling they were disguised Americans. But then a lot of Austrians were. She turned right and came at once to the Maysedergasse. The two nuns were still at their stock prices. She kept to the right-hand pavement. It was twenty past three and the Wives' meeting was sure to end by five so that they could all get home to change into halter dresses and sequin handbags for the evening cattle market. But even when everyone had gone and only Mary's car remained in the Lumsdens' drive, Fergus and Georgie might well assume she had stayed on for a quiet drink with Caroline on her own. If I make it back by quarter to six I stand a chance, she reckoned. She paused before a woman's lingerie shop and found herself admiring a pair of tart's black cami-knickers in the window. Who buys that stuff anyway? Bee Lederer, a pound to a penny. She hoped something would happen soon, before the Ambassadress came out with an armful of the stuff, or one of the many unattached men tried to pick her up.

“Frau Pym? I am from Herr König. Please come quickly.”

The girl was pretty and badly dressed and nervous. Following her Mary had an overwhelming memory of being back in Prague visiting a painter the authorities did not approve of. The side street was one minute packed with shoppers, the next empty. All Mary's senses were alight. She smelt delicatessen, frost and tobacco. She glanced into a shop doorway and recognised the man from the Café Mozart. The girl turned left then right, then left again. Where am I? They entered a paved square. We're in the Kärtnerstrasse. We're not. A hippie boy took Mary's photograph and tried to press a card on her. She brushed him aside. A red plastic bear was holding his mouth open for contributions to some charity. An Asian pop group was singing Beatles music. Across the square lay a dual carriageway and at the near side of it a brown Peugeot waited with a man at the wheel. As they approached, he pushed the back door open at them. The girl grabbed the door and said, “Get in, please.” Mary got in and the girl followed. Must be the Ring, she thought. If so it was not a part of the Ring she recognised. She saw a black Mercedes dawdling behind them. Fergus and Georgie, she thought, knowing that it wasn't. Her driver glanced both ways, then pointed the car straight at the central reservation—bump, it's the front tyres, bump, that was my backside you just broke. Everything hooted and the girl peered anxiously through the back window. They left the carriageway and shot down a side street, across a square and as far as the Opera where they stopped. The door on Mary's side opened. The girl ordered her out. Mary had hardly made the pavement before a second woman squeezed past her and took her place. The car drove away at speed, as neat a substitution as Mary had seen. A black Mercedes followed it but she didn't think it was the same one. A dapper, embarrassed young man was guiding her through a wide doorway to a courtyard.

“Take the lift, please, Mary,” said the young man, in Euro-American, handing her a piece of paper. “Apartment six, please. Six. You go up alone. You have that?”

“Six,” Mary said.

He smiled. “Sometimes when we are scared we kind of forget everything.”

“Sure,” she said. She walked to the doorway and he smiled and waved at her. She pushed it open and saw an old lift waiting with its doors open, and an old janitor smiling too. They've all been to the same charm school, she thought. She got into the lift and told the janitor, “Six, please,” and the janitor launched her on her climb. As the doorway sank below her she had a last glimpse of the boy standing in the courtyard still smiling and a couple of well-dressed girls standing behind him, consulting some bit of paper. The bit of paper in her own hand read “Six, Herr König.” Odd, she thought as she slipped it into her handbag. With me it works the other way. When I'm scared I don't forget a damn thing. Like the car number. Like the number of the second Mercedes behind us. Like the fringe of dyed black hair on the driver's neck. Like the Opium perfume that the girl was wearing and Magnus always insists on bringing me when he goes on air journeys. Like the fat gold ring with the red seal on the boy's left hand.

The door to number 6 stood open. A brass plate beside it read “Interhansa Austria A.G.” She walked in and the door closed behind her. A girl again but not pretty. A sullen, strong girl with a flat Slav face and resentful, anti-Party manner. With a scowl she nodded Mary forward. She entered a dark drawing-room and saw nobody. At the far end of it stood another pair of doors, also open. The furnishings were old Vienna, phoney. Phoney old chests and oil paintings slipped by her as she advanced. Phoney lamp brackets reached at her from phoney imperial wallpaper. As she kept walking she had a reprise of the erotic expectation she had felt at the Wives' meeting. He's going to order me to undress and I shall obey. He's going to lead me to a red fourposter and have me raped by footmen for his pleasure. But the second room contained no fourposter, it was a drawing-room like the first, with a desk and two armchairs and a heap of out-of-date
Vogue
s on the coffee table. It was otherwise empty. Angry, Mary swung round intending to say something rude to the flat-faced Slav. Instead she found herself staring at him. He was standing in the doorway smoking a cigar and for a second she was puzzled she couldn't smell it, but in some eerie way she knew that nothing about him was ever going to surprise her. The next moment the aroma had reached her and she was shaking his lazy hand as if this was the way they always greeted each other when they met fully dressed in Viennese apartments.

“You are a courageous woman,” he remarked. “Are they expecting you back soon or what is the arrangement? What can we do to make life easier for you?”

That's perfectly right, she thought in absurd relief. The first thing you always ask your agent is how long you've got him for. The second is whether he needs immediate help. Magnus is in good hands. But she knew that already.

“Where is he?” she said.

He had the authority that enabled him to own to failure. “If only we knew, how happy we would both be!” he agreed as if her question had been a statement of despair, and with his long hand showed her to the chair that he required her to sit on. We, she thought. We are equals yet you are in command. No wonder Tom fell in love with you on sight.

 

They were sitting opposite one another, she on the gilded sofa, he on the gilded chair. The Slav girl had brought a tray of vodka and some gherkins and black bread and her devotion to him was obscene, she preened and smirked so. She's one of his Marthas, thought Mary, which was what Magnus called his Station secretaries. He poured two stiff ones, holding each glass carefully by turn. He drank to her, looking over the brim. That's what Magnus does, she thought. And it's you he learned it from.