“Where am I supposed to have found him?” Pym countered cautiously, for these were delicate decisions, requiring lengthy correspondence with Head Office before the approach to a new potential source was licensed.
The dinner table was laid for three, the candelabra lit. The two men had taken a long, slow walk in the forest and now they were drinking an apéritif before the fire, waiting for their guest.
“How is Belinda?” said Axel.
This was not a subject they often discussed, for Axel had little patience with unsatisfactory relationships.
“Fine, thank you, as always.”
“That’s not what our microphones tell us. They say you fight like two dogs day and night. Our listeners are becoming thoroughly depressed by you both.”
“Tell them we’ll mend our ways,” said Pym with a rare flash of bitterness.
A car was coming up the hill. They heard the footsteps of the old servant crossing the hall, and the rattle of bolts.
“Meet your new agent,” Axel said.
The door banged open and Sabina marched in. A little more matronly, perhaps, at the hips: one or two hard lines of officialdom around the jaw; but his delicious Sabina all the same. She was wearing a stern black dress with a white collar, and clumpy black court shoes that must have been her pride, for they had green brilliants on the straps and the sheen of imitation suède. Seeing Pym, she drew up sharply and scowled at him in suspicion. For a moment, her manner reflected the most radical disapproval. Then to his delight she burst out laughing her crazy Slav laugh, and ran to cover him with her body, much as she had done in Graz when he took his first faltering lessons in Czech.
And so it was, Jack. Sabina rose and rose until she became the head agent of the Watchman network, and the darling of her successive British case officers, though you knew her either as Watchman One or as the intrepid Olga Kravitsky, secretary to the Prague Internal Committee on Economic Affairs. We retired her, if you remember, when she was expecting her third baby by her fourth husband, at a special dinner for her in West Berlin while she was attending her last conference of Comecon bankers in Potsdam. Axel kept her on a little longer, before he decided to follow your example.
“I’ve been posted to Berlin,” Pym told Belinda, in the safety of a public park, at the end of his second tour in Prague.
“Why are you telling me?” said Belinda.
“I wondered whether you’d like to come,” Pym replied, and Belinda began coughing again, her long unquenchable cough that she must have picked up from the climate.
Belinda went back to London and took an Open University course in journalism, though none in silent killing. Eventually, in her thirty-seventh year, she launched herself upon the hazardous path of fashionable liberal causes, where after encountering several Pauls, she married one, and had an unruly daughter who criticised her for everything she did, which gave Belinda the feeling of being reconciled with her own parents. And Pym and Axel embarked on the next leg of their pilgrims’ voyage. In Berlin, a brighter future awaited them, and a maturer treason.
c/o Colonel Evelyn Tremaine, D.S.O.
Pioneer Corps, ret.
P.O. Box 9077
MANILA
To His Excellency Sir Magnus Richard Pym,
Decorations
The British High Mission
BERLIN
My dearest Son,
Merely a note which I hope does not Inconvenience you on your way to the Top, since none should expect gratitude until it is his turn to stand before the Father of us all which I expect to be doing at an early Date. Medical Science being still at a primitive Stage here, it appears notwithstanding that this Cruel summer is likely to be the writer’s Last, despite Sacrifice of alcohol and other Comforts. If you are Sending for Treatment or Funeral be sure to make out cheque and envelope to the Colonel, not Self, as the name of Pym is Persona non Gratis to the natives, and anyway may be Dead.
Praying to be Spared.
Rick T. Pym
P.S. Am advised that 916 Gold may be had in Berlin at knockdown price, the Diplomatic Bag being available to those in High Position seeking opportunity for informal Reward. Perce Loft is at old Address and will assist for ten percent but watch him.
Berlin. What a garrison of spies, Tom! What a cabinet full of useless, liquid secrets, what a playground for every alchemist, miracle-worker, and rat-piper that ever took up the cloak and turned his face from the unpalatable constraints of political reality! And always at the centre, the great good American heart, bravely drumming out its honourable rhythms in the name of liberty, democracy, and setting the people free.
In Berlin, the Firm had agents of influence, agents of disruption, subversion, sabotage and disinformation. We even had one or two who supplied us with intelligence, though these were an underprivileged crowd, kept on more out of a traditional regard than any intrinsic professional worth. We had tunnellers and smugglers, listeners and forgers, trainers and recruiters and talent-spotters and couriers and watchers and seducers, assassins and balloonists, lip-readers and disguise artists. But whatever the Brits had, the Americans had more, and whatever the Americans had, the East Germans had five of it and the Russians ten of it. Pym stood before these marvels like a child let loose in a sweet shop, not knowing what to grab first. And Axel, slipping in and out of the city on any number of false passports, padded softly behind him with his basket. In safe flats and dark restaurants, never the same one twice, we ate quiet meals, exchanged our goods and gazed upon each other with the incredulous contentment that passes between mountaineers when they are standing on the peak. But even then, we never forgot the bigger peak that lay ahead of us as we raised our vodka glasses to each other and whispered, “Next year in America!” across the candlelight.
And the committees, Tom! Berlin was not safe enough to contain them. We assembled in London, in gilded imperial chambers appropriate to players of the world’s game. And such a bold, diverse, brilliantly inventive cross-section of our society’s leaders we were, for these were the new years of England, when the country’s hidden talent would be winkled from its shell and harnessed to the nation’s service. Spies are blinkered! went the cry. Too incestuous. For Berlin we must open the doors to the real world of dons, barristers and journalists. We need bankers and trade unionists and industrialists, chaps who put their money where their mouths are and know what makes the world tick. We need Members of Parliament who can supply a whiff of the hustings and utter stern words about taxpayers’ money!
And what happened to these wise men, Tom, these shrewd no-nonsense outsiders, watchdogs of the secret war? They rushed in where even the spies might have feared to tread. Too long frustrated by the limitations of the overt world, these brilliant, unfettered minds fell overnight in love with every conspiracy, skulduggery and short cut you can imagine.
“Do you know what they’re dreaming up now?” Pym raged, pacing the carpet of the service flat in Lowndes Square which Axel had rented for the duration of an Anglo-American conference on unofficial action.