A Perfect Spy

by John le Carré

  “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.”

  “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 shelling. Tripoli or somewhere. I turned the sound down as soon as I heard him and the shelling 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 fucking 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, h
ead 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 passage 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. Nobody even missed this stuff. Nobody would have been the wiser for it. Nobody 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 buttons. He picked up the receiver and growled “Yes?”

  “Jack? Let’s go over. Ready? Now.”

  Brotherhood pressed a button 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 assume 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 you 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. Nobody’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 bloody suppose. Find out where it is, fetch it and phone me when it’s on your desk. Got a pencil, have you?”

  “I don’t think I have actually. Nigel has left instructions that any request from you has to be processed by Secretariat first. Sorry, Jack.”

  “Nigel’s at the Foreign Office. Check with Bo. While you’re about it, ask Defence to give you the name of the Commandant of Number Six Interrogation, Graz, Austria, on July 18, 1951. I’m in a hurry. Greensleeves, have you got it? Maybe you’re not musical.”

  He rang off and pulled Pym’s battered letter to Tom savagely towards him.

  “He’s a shell,” Kate said. “All you have to do is find the hermit crab that climbed into him. Don’t look for the truth about him. The truth is what we gave him of ourselves.”

  “Sure,” said Brotherhood. He set a sheet of paper ready to jot on while he silently read: “If I don’t write to you for a while, remember I’m thinking of you all the time.” Maudlin slush. “If you need help and don’t want to turn to Uncle Jack, this is what you do.” He continued reading, writing out Pym’s instructions to his son, one by one. “Don’t worry your head so much about religious things, just try to trust in God’s goodness.” “Damn the man!” he expostulated aloud for Kate’s sake and, slamming down his pencil, pressed both fists against his temple as the phone rang again. He let it ring a moment, recovered and picked it up, glancing at his watch, which was his habit always.

  “Anyway the file you want went missing years ago,” said Nicholson with pleasure.

  “Who to?”

  “Us. They say it’s marked out to us and we never returned it.”

  “Who of us in particular?”

  “Czech section. It was requisitioned by one of our own London desk officers in 1953.”

  “Which one?”

  “M.R.P. That would be Pym. Do you want me to ring Vienna and ask him what he did with it?”

  “I’ll ask him myself in the morning,” he said. “What about the C.O.?”

  “A Major Harrison Membury of the Education Corps.”

  “The what?”

  “He was on secondment to Army Intelligence for the period 1950 to ’54.”

  “Christ Almighty. Any address?”

  He wrote it down, remembering a quip of Pym’s, paraphrased from Clemenceau: “Milit
ary intelligence has about as much to do with intelligence as military music has to do with music.”

  He rang off.

  “They haven’t even indoctrinated the poor bloody duty officer!” Brotherhood expostulated, again for Kate.

  He went back to his homework better pleased. Somewhere beyond Green Park a London clock was striking three.

  “I’m going,” Kate said. She was standing at the door, dressed.

  Brotherhood was on his feet in a moment.

  “Oh no you’re not. You’re staying here until I hear you laugh.”

  He went to her and undressed her again. He put her back to bed.

  “Why do you think I’m going to kill myself?” she said. “Has somebody done that to you once?”

  “Let’s just say once would be too often,” he replied.

  “What’s in the burnbox?” she asked, for the second time that night. But for the second time, too, Brotherhood appeared too busy to reply.

  8

  My memory gets selective here, Jack. More than usual. He’s in my sights as I expect he begins to be in yours. But you are in them too. Whatever doesn’t point to you both slips by me like landscape through a railway window. I could paint for you Pym’s distressing conversations with the luckless Herr Bertl in which, on Rick’s instruction, he assured him repeatedly it was in the post, it was taken care of, everybody would be seen right, and his father was on the point of making an offer for the hotel. Or we could have some fun with Pym, languishing for days and nights in his hotel bedroom as a hostage to the mountain of unpaid bills downstairs, dreaming of Elena Weber’s milky body reflected in its many delightful poses in the mirrored changing rooms of Bern, kicking himself for his timidity, living off hoarded continental breakfasts, running up more bills and waiting for the telephone. Or the moment when Rick went off the air. He did not ring and when Pym tried his number the only response was a howl, like the cry of a wolf stuck on one note.

  When he tried Syd he got Meg, and Meg’s advice was strikingly similar to E. Weber’s. “You’re better off where you are, dear,” she said in the pointed voice of someone who is telling you she is overheard. “There’s a heat wave here and a lot of people are getting burned.” “Where’s Syd?” “Cooling himself, darling.” Or the Sunday afternoon when everything in the hotel fell mercifully silent and Pym, having packed together his few possessions, stole heart in mouth down the staff staircase and out through a side door into what was suddenly a hostile foreign city—his first clandestine exit, and his easiest.