by Jonathan Coe
‘Involved?’ repeated Mr Radford.
‘Implicated?’ echoed Mr Wayne.
‘Well, of course she’s involved.’
‘Naturally she’s implicated.’
‘You know that better than anybody.’
‘You’re involved too, after all.’
‘And implicated, if it comes to that.’
‘You had a role to play in the whole scheme.’
‘And you played it very well.’
‘In fact, one might almost go so far as to say that we couldn’t have done it without you.’
‘What scheme?’ Thomas asked. ‘Couldn’t have done what without you?’
Mr Radford and Mr Wayne exchanged questioning glances, as if finally seeking confirmation from one another that they should let Thomas further into the secret. Now, apparently having reached agreement, they inched themselves forward, and Mr Radford began his narration in a low voice.
‘Well, it all started right at the beginning of the fair. Even in the very first days, it became obvious that there was a . . . leakage of information, from the American pavilion. Certain pieces of confidential data were being passed to the Soviets. So the Americans came over and set up camp in that nice old country house you visited, and they started looking into it.’
‘That was where Miss Parker came in.’
‘Not her real name, you understand.’
‘She was an American agent, of course.’
‘But you knew that already.’
‘No? Well, I would have thought it was obvious.’
‘How could it be obvious?’ said Thomas, in exasperation. ‘You told me she was an actress from Wisconsin.’
‘Oh, you don’t want to take everything we say at face value.’
‘That was just her cover. We assumed you’d worked that out for yourself.’
‘Anyway. Before long, even though she couldn’t see where the leak was coming from, she could see where the information was ending up.’
‘With Mr Chersky.’
‘And she could also see where he was receiving it.’
‘At the Britannia.’
‘The Britannia?’
‘Yes. Your precious pub. That was the drop-off point. That was where everything was happening.’
Thomas could not restrain himself any longer: the whisky was too tempting. He picked up the glass and drained half of it in one draught. He could already feel every belief he had entertained about his time at Expo 58 tilting, being slowly inverted. A whole world of assumptions turned upside-down.
‘But how?’ he said. ‘How was it being dropped off?’
‘Ah – well, that was the beauty of it, you see.’
‘That was the genius of the whole operation.’
‘They had an accomplice, clearly.’
‘Someone to do their dirty work.’
‘And you know who it was, I imagine?’
‘You can probably guess.’
But Thomas couldn’t.
‘Well, it was the barmaid, you see.’
He gaped back at them. ‘The barmaid? Surely not!’
‘Yes – Shirley Knott. Precisely.’
‘You’ve got it in one, old boy.’
‘You’re beginning to cotton on, at last.’
Thomas sat back, and sipped at the whisky. Armed with this crucial new piece of the puzzle, he was starting to see the full picture take shape.
‘Then the man who was passing things on to her,’ he said, ‘must have been that American who was always hanging around the place. Mr Longman.’
‘That’s right. The two of them were in cahoots.’
‘In it together.’
‘Up to their necks.’
‘Both members of the Communist Party, as it turns out.’
‘And of course, you know how they did it?’
‘The beauty of the whole thing.’
‘The fiendish ingenuity of it.’
‘Well, Miss Parker worked it out just in the nick of time.’
‘They were using these.’
Mr Radford lifted up the packet of crisps and held it aloft.
‘Look,’ he said, tearing the packet open. ‘Inside every one of these is a little blue paper sachet, for the salt. Longman was using his position to get access to documents in the American pavilion offices, then transferring them onto microfilm, then putting them into one of these little sachets and passing them on to the barmaid . . .’
. . . and she would slip them into a packet of crisps, and serve it to Mr Chersky.’
The two men shook their heads, in genuine admiration.
‘Brilliant.’
‘First class.’
‘You have to hand it to them.’
‘Then,’ said Mr Radford, shaking salt onto his own crisps and offering them around, ‘things finally came to a head. It happened one Friday afternoon – your last day at the Expo, as it happens.’
‘Word reached Miss Parker that a new document had gone missing. A big one, this time.’
‘The biggest of the lot.’
‘It was a directory –’
‘A list –’
‘An index –’
‘Of every American agent currently operating on Russian soil.’
‘There were about fifty names –’
‘Addresses –’
‘Personal details – ’
‘And if this fell into the wrong hands . . .’
‘. . . every one of those people was as good as dead.’
‘However, by an amazing stroke of good fortune . . .’
‘Not really – I mean, it was damn clever of her to work it out for herself.’
‘Point taken, old man. That evening, you see, Miss Parker was having a drink with you at the Britannia, and she suddenly realized how it was being done.’
‘The barmaid handed the packet over to Mr Chersky, with his beer, and she said something that made Miss Parker prick up her ears.’
‘Something about a “special delivery”.’
‘And a “jumbo-sized” packet.’
‘And that was when she saw it.’
‘In a moment of inspiration.’
‘In a flash.’
Thomas cast his mind back to that evening. It was true: Emily had been grabbing fistfuls of those crisps as if she couldn’t get enough of them. It had amazed him at the time. And Andrey as well. They had been racing through the packet, each one trying to be the first to reach the salt sachet at the bottom.
‘Well . . .’ Mr Radford finished his whisky, and signalled to the steward for three more. ‘Now, as you can imagine, she was in a quandary.’
‘Mr Chersky had the sachet.’
‘He had the sachet and the packet.’
‘He had the sachet and the packet in his pocket.’
‘He had the sachet and the packet in the pocket of his jacket.’
‘So she couldn’t afford to let him out of her sight. Not for a moment. She had to get it back off him, before he could pass it on to anybody else.’
‘And this is where she really showed her mettle.’
‘The stuff she was made of.’
‘Because she took him back to the Astoria Hotel and . . .’
‘Well, you can guess the rest.’
‘She did the necessary thing.’
As the steward poured three more glasses of whisky, Thomas tried to recall where he had heard that phrase before, and realized, with a shiver, that it had come from Emily’s lips, on the day of the picnic. That awful story she had told: about her father, the mild-mannered scientist, seizing hold of a fallen branch and using it to bludgeon a timber rattlesnake to death, driven to a frenzy of violence by the impulse to protect his own daughter’s life. Had it been something like tha
t? Had she used her own brute strength to kill a man? Or had she fired a bullet into his chest, stuck a dagger in his heart? Strangled Andrey with his own necktie? ‘When it comes to safeguarding the things that are most precious to you,’ she had told him, ‘there can’t be any limit on what you’re prepared to do.’
‘It was easily managed,’ Mr Wayne now told him, in a tone of voice that was almost – almost – kindly and reassuring. ‘She had a cyanide capsule.’
‘They provide them with these things, you know. Standard issue, I believe.’
‘She slipped it into his champagne glass.’
‘Piece of cake, when you think about it.’
Thomas did think about it. And now, instead of picturing Emily, her face contorted with anger and revulsion, raining lethal blows down on Andrey’s head, he found himself prey to another vision: a memory: a memory of Emily sitting opposite him in the bar of the Grand Auditorium, looking down into a glass of pale effervescent liquid and saying, ‘I just adore champagne . . . I love to watch the way the bubbles dance in the glass.’ Her eyes sparkling, her cheeks dimpled into a smile. No wonder Andrey had been distracted. No wonder he had not guessed what was coming to him . . .
‘But I still don’t understand,’ he said, swallowing hard, ‘how I got involved in any of this. You told me a pack of lies out at that house, and acting on your information – or rather, misinformation – I proceeded to behave like an idiot, and . . . I don’t see how that can have helped you at all.’
‘My dear fellow,’ said Mr Wayne, ‘you underestimate yourself.’
‘Your part was absolutely vital.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, because there came a moment, in the whole operation, when it all looked like going wrong. The Russians were getting more and more suspicious about Miss Parker’s cover story. Mr Chersky was getting to know her rather too well, and was beginning to wonder if she was really a naive young actress at all, or indeed really the daughter of the famous Professor Parker from Wisconsin. These people are temperamentally programmed to mistrust anything they are told –’
‘Not such a bad idea, when you think about it.’
‘And so somehow the Americans knew that they had to do something to convince him. To re-convince him, if you like.’
‘And that was when we offered to engage you.’
‘Engage me?’
‘Yes. Engage you to take Miss Hoskens out to dinner, at the restaurant of the Czech pavilion, and tell her precisely what we wanted you to tell her.’
‘And precisely what we wanted Mr Chersky to hear.’
‘Namely, that Emily Parker was falling in love with him.’
Thomas looked from Mr Wayne, to Mr Radford, and back again, as the penny finally began to drop.
‘That restaurant . . .’ he said. ‘That private room . . . it was bugged?’
‘Of course it was.’
‘And you knew it was bugged?’
‘Of course we did.’
‘So you knew that . . . everything I said in there . . .’
‘Would go straight back to the Russians . . .’
‘And straight back to Mr Chersky . . .’
‘Which was just where we wanted it to go.’
‘Simple,’ said Mr Radford, spreading his hands.
‘Easy as pie,’ said Mr Wayne, shrugging his shoulders.
‘And that was it? That was all you wanted from me?’
They nodded, in unison. And for the last time, another of Emily’s once-mysterious utterances came back to him. The words she had spoken as they said goodbye after the concert, on the footbridge overlooking the lake in the Parc d’Osseghem: ‘You’ve already done your duty,’ she had said. And then, when he had protested at the word: ‘You can consider your mission accomplished.’
He stared out of the train window for a long time. They were travelling through Buckinghamshire, one of England’s most nondescript counties, but even this unremarkable landscape looked attractive at this time of year, in the late-afternoon sunshine. Thomas wished that he was out in those fields, feeling the moist and springy soil beneath his feet, breathing in the cool air instead of this foul cigarette smoke. Anything to clear his head, to give himself the time and space to think about all that he had been told.
‘Anyway,’ said Mr Radford, breaking the heavy silence at last. ‘The point is, old man, that we’re eternally grateful for your help.’
‘As I said, we couldn’t have done it without you.’
‘Which is why we decided to do you that little favour in return.’
‘What little favour?’ said Thomas, turning away from the window, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.
Mr Wayne coughed. ‘Well, you didn’t exactly have to try very hard for that new job, did you?’
‘More or less walked into it, from what I understand.’
Thomas did not answer. His silence seemed to unnerve them.
‘Least we could do, really,’ Mr Wayne added.
‘Small token of our esteem, and all that,’ said Mr Radford.
Thomas looked away again. ‘I see,’ he said, his voice flat with sarcasm. ‘And you want nothing in return, do you? You’re doing this entirely out of the kindness of your own hearts.’
‘Well.’ Mr Wayne coughed again. ‘I’m not sure you should think of it entirely like that.’
‘Everything comes at a price these days, as you know.’
‘No such thing as a free lunch, as they say.’
‘So?’ He stared at them defiantly, accusingly. ‘What are you after?’
‘Now look, there’s no need to panic . . .’
‘No need to get in a flap about this . . .’
‘We’re reasonable men, after all . . .’
‘We’re not monsters, by any stretch of the imagination . . .’
‘It’s quite simple really. This firm you’re going to be working for. They do quite a lot of business abroad. Some of it in the Eastern bloc. Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia in particular. Occasionally some of the management will be going over there –’
‘Trade delegations, and so forth –’
‘And we think there’s a fair chance you’ll be asked to go with them.’
‘And when you do . . .’
‘Well, there may be some little favours you can do for us, while you’re out there.’
‘Small errands you might be able to run.’
‘Routine jobs that call for a reliable chap like yourself.’
‘You see, Mr Foley, we like your style.’
‘We like the way you operate.’
‘We feel you’re someone we can trust.’
‘And that’s pretty rare, in our line of work, I can tell you.’
Thomas smiled combatively, and shook his head. ‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, gentlemen, but I’m not running any more “errands” for you, or carrying out any “routine jobs”. Once was quite enough, in my opinion. If you had any part to play in getting me that job, you have my heartfelt thanks, but now you can kindly leave me alone, to get on with my life.’ He finished his whisky, set the glass down on the table, and started to get up. ‘I trust I’ve made myself clear.’
For the third time in the last few minutes, Mr Wayne coughed, and then reached into a briefcase under the table. Mr Radford, meanwhile, laid a restraining hand on Thomas’s arm.
‘Just a minute, old man,’ he said. ‘Before you do anything hasty.’
Reluctantly, Thomas sat down again. He tried to see what it was that Mr Wayne was taking out of his briefcase. It appeared to be a set of black-and-white photographs – about twelve of them – but it was hard to be certain, because instead of spreading them out on the table, Mr Wayne fanned them out with their backs to Thomas, and held them jealously in front of his chest, like a bridge player with a particularly choice h
and of cards.
‘Now, we really didn’t want to do this, Foley . . .’ he began.
‘But sadly you give us no choice,’ Mr Radford concurred.
‘You see, on the night that Miss Parker was doing her patriotic duty by dealing with the threat posed by Mr Chersky . . .’
‘It seems that you had very different activities in mind.’
‘You had a rendezvous with Miss Hoskens, I believe . . .’
‘And took her back to the Motel Expo . . .’
‘Where, by an extraordinary coincidence, our colleague Mr Wilkins . . .’
‘You remember Wilkins?’
‘ . . . was roaming around with his camera.’
‘Bit of a loose cannon, old Wilkins . . .’
‘Bit of a lone wolf . . .’
‘Takes a good photograph, mind you.’
‘My word, Radford, have a look at that one.’
‘Good lord. Doesn’t leave much to the imagination.’
‘Nor this.’
They both chuckled.
‘I must say, Foley, you’ve certainly got an inventive approach in these matters.’
‘And a highly versatile partner, I might add.’
‘I wouldn’t overdo this sort of thing, though.’
‘You could put your back out if you’re not careful.’
‘Good grief, what on earth’s that?’
‘Where?’
‘Here.’
Mr Wayne pointed at a detail in one of the photographs, while Mr Radford squinted more closely at it.
‘That’s Wilkins, I think. He’s got his thumb in front of the lens.’
‘Ah.’ Mr Wayne put the pictures face down on the table, and said: ‘Well, you get the general idea. It would be a tragedy if your wife saw any of these. A terrible tragedy. Probably send your whole marriage up the spout.’
‘Of course, a puritan might argue that you should have thought of that before you got involved in any of these . . . shenanigans.’
Mr Wayne replaced all but one of the photographs in his briefcase, and then they both sat back, with their arms folded, smiling at him in the blandest, most infuriating way.
‘By the way,’ Mr Radford said, passing Thomas that one remaining picture, face down. ‘We thought you might like to keep this one. As a souvenir.’
Thomas took the photograph, and slowly turned it over. It was a picture of Anneke, alone. It must have been the last one taken – while he was in the bathroom – just before Wilkins slipped from his perch by the skylight and tumbled down to the ground, waking her up with a thump and a bang.
