“Of course we read it. It was great. Is this genuine, Axel? It isn’t a joke or anything?”
“You think fat Pavel takes a risk like this to bring you a joke? He has a wife who beats him, kids who hate him, Russian bosses who treat him worse than a dog. Are you listening?”
With half his head, yes, Pym is listening. He is reading too.
“Your good friend Axel H, he doesn’t exist. You never met him tonight. In Bern long ago, sure, you met a sickly German soldier who was writing a great book and maybe his name was Axel, what’s a name? But Axel vanished. Some bad guy informed against him, you never knew what happened. Tonight you are meeting fat Sergeant Pavel of Czech Army Intelligence who likes garlic and screwing and betraying his superiors. He speaks Czech and German, and the Russians use him as a dogsbody because they don’t trust the Austrians. One week he’s hanging around their headquarters in Wiener Neustadt playing messenger boy and interpreter, the next he’s freezing his arse off on the zonal border looking for small spies. The week after that he’s back in his garrison in Southern Czecho being kicked around by more Russians.” Axel is tapping Pym’s arm. “See this? Pay attention. Here’s a copy of his paybook. Look at it, Sir Magnus. Concentrate. He brought it for you because he doesn’t expect anybody ever to believe anything he says unless it is accompanied by Unterlagen. You remember Unterlagen? Papers? They are what I didn’t have in Bern. Take it with you. Show it to Membury.”
Reluctantly Pym lifts his eyes from his reading long enough to notice the wad of glossy paper Axel is holding up for him to admire. A photocopy in those days is a big matter: plate photographs, tied into a looseleaf book with bootlaces through the holes. Axel presses it upon Pym and again rouses him sufficiently from the material in the folder to make him study the portrait of the bearer: a piggy, part-shaven little man with puffy eyes and a pout.
“That is me, Sir Magnus,” Axel says, and bangs Pym on the shoulder quite hard to assure his attention, exactly as he used to in Bern. “Look at him, will you? He’s a greedy, grubby fellow. Farts a lot, scratches his head, steals his Commandant’s chickens. But he doesn’t like his country to be occupied by a bunch of sweating Ivans who swagger round the streets of Prague and tell him he’s a stinking little Czech, and he doesn’t like being packed down to Austria at somebody’s whim to play toady to a lot of drunk Cossacks. So he’s brave too, you follow me? He’s a brave little greasy coward.”
Pym again pauses in his reading, this time to register a bureaucratic complaint which later causes him some shame. “It’s all very well inventing this delightful character, Axel, but what am I to do with him?” he reasons in an aggrieved tone. “I’m supposed to produce a defector, not a paybook. They want a warm body back there in Graz. I haven’t got one, have I?”
“You idiot!” cries Axel, pretending to be exasperated by Pym’s obtuseness. “You guileless English baby! Have you never heard of a defector in place? Pavel is a defector! He’s defecting but staying where he is. In three weeks’ time he’ll come here again, bring you more material. He’ll defect not just once but if you are sensible twenty times, a hundred. He’s an intelligence clerk, a courier, a low-grade fieldman, a bottlewasher, a coding sergeant and a pimp. Don’t you understand what that means in terms of access? He will bring you wonderful intelligence again and again. His friends in the frontier unit will help him cross. Next time we meet you will have Vienna’s questions for him. You will be at the centre of a fantastic industry: ‘Can you get us this, Pavel? What does this mean, Pavel?’ If you’re polite to him, if you come alone, bring him a nice present, maybe he’ll answer them.”
“And will it be you — will I see you?”
“You will see Pavel.”
“And will you be Pavel?”
“Sir Magnus. Listen.” Pushing aside the briefcase that lay between them, Axel bangs his glass beside Pym’s and yanks his chair so close that his shoulder is nudging against Pym’s shoulder and his mouth is at Pym’s ear. “Are you being very, very attentive now?”
“Of course I am.”
“Because I think you are so fantastically stupid you better not play this game at all. Listen.” Pym is grinning exactly as he used to grin when Axel was explaining why he was a Trottel for not understanding Kant. “What Axel is doing for you tonight, he can never undo in his whole life. I am risking my bloody neck for you. Like Sabina gave you her brother, Axel gives you Axel. Do you understand? Or are you too shit-stupid to recognise that I am putting my future in your hands?”
“I don’t want it, Axel. I’d rather give it back.”
“It’s too late. I have stolen the papers, I have come over, you have seen them, you know what they contain. Pandora’s box cannot be closed again. Your nice Major Membury — those clever aristos in Div. Int. — none of them ever saw such information. Do you follow this?”
Pym nods, Pym shakes his head. Pym frowns, smiles, and tries to look in every way he can the worthy and mature custodian of Axel’s destiny.
“In return, you must swear me one thing. I told you earlier you must not promise. Now I tell you you must. To me, Axel, you must promise loyalty. Sergeant Pavel, he’s a different matter. Sergeant Pavel you can betray and invent as much as you like — he is an invention anyway. But I, Axel — this Axel here — look at me—I do not exist. Not for Membury, not for Sabina, not even for yourself. Even when you are lonely and bored and you need to impress somebody or buy somebody or sell somebody, I am not a creature in your game. If your own people threaten you, if they torture you, you must still deny me. If they put you on the cross in fifty years from now, will you lie for me? Answer.”
Pym finds time to marvel that after energetically denying Axel’s existence for so long he should be promising him to deny it for still longer. And that it must be a very rare thing indeed to be offered a second chance to prove one’s loyalty after failing so miserably at the first attempt.
“I will,” says Pym.
“What will you?”
“I will keep you secret. I’ll lock you in my memory and give you the key.”
“For always. Sabina’s brother Jan also?”
“For always. Jan too. That’s the whole Soviet Order of Battle in Czechoslovakia you’ve given me,” says Pym in a trance. “If it’s genuine.”
“It’s a little bit old, but you British know how to value antiquity. Your maps in Vienna and Graz are older. And they are not so genuine. You like Membury?”
“I think so. Why?”
“Me too. You are interested in fish? You are helping him to restock the lake?”
“Sometimes. Yes.”
“That’s important work. Do it with him. Help him. It’s a lousy world, Sir Magnus. A few happy fish will make it better.”
It was six in the morning when Pym left. Kaufmann had long ago put himself to bed in the jeep. Pym could see his boots sticking over the tailboard. Pym and Axel walked as far as the white stone, Axel leaning on his arm the way he used to when they walked beside the Aare. As they reached it Axel stooped and picked a harvest poppy and handed it to Pym. Then he picked another for himself which on reflection he handed to Pym also.
“There is one of me and one of you, Sir Magnus. There will never be another of either of us. You are the keeper of our friendship. Give my love to Sabina. Tell her that Sergeant Pavel sends her a special kiss to thank her for her help.”
* * *
A man with a highly regarded source is an admired man and a well-fed one, Tom, as Pym quickly discovered in the next few weeks. Visiting Very Senior Officers from Vienna take him to dinner just for the touch of him and the vicarious feel of his achievement. Membury comes too, a grinning, loping Caesar dwarfing his Antony, hauling on his ear, dreaming of fish and smiling at the wrong people. Other officers less senior but still substantial alter their opinion of Pym overnight and send him swarmy notes by interzonal bag. “Marlene sends her love and is so sad that you had to leave Vienna without saying goodbye to her. It looked for a moment as if I might become your C.O. but fate decreed otherwise. M and I hope to be engaged as soon as we get clearance from the War Office.” He is a cult of one and to know him is to be an insider: “The fantastic work young Pym is doing — if I had my way, I’d give him a third pip, national serviceman or not.” “You should have heard London on the scrambler, they’re sending it to the top.” On London’s orders, no less, Sergeant Pavel receives the codename Greensleeves and Pym a commendation. Voluptuous Czech interpreters are proud of him, and demonstrate their pleasure in refined ways.