“He spoke German,” said Tom, next day at breakfast while Magnus was out walking.
“Who did?”
“Dad’s thin friend. The man who picked Dad up at the cricket. And Dad spoke German back to him too. Why did Dad say he was an ancient Brit?”
Mary flew at him. She hadn’t been so angry with him for years. “If you want to listen to our conversations, you bloody well come in and listen to them and don’t skulk outside the door like a spy.”
Then she was ashamed of herself and played tennis with him till the boat left. On the boat Tom was sick as a dog and by the time they reached Piraeus he had a temperature of a hundred and three so her guilt was unconfined. At the Athens hospital a Greek doctor diagnosed shrimp rash which was absurd because Tom loathed shrimps and hadn’t touched a single one; by now his face was swollen like a hamster’s, so they took expensive rooms and put him to bed with an icepack and Mary read fantasy to him while Magnus listened or sat in Tom’s room to write. But mainly he liked to listen because the best thing in his life, he always said, was watching her comfort their child. She believed him.
“Didn’t he go out at all?” Brotherhood asked.
“Not to begin with. He didn’t want to.”
“Make any phone calls?” said Nigel.
“The Embassy. To check in. So that you’d know where he was.”
“He tell you that?” said Brotherhood.
“Yes.”
“You weren’t there when he made them?” Nigel said.
“No.”
“Hear him through the wall?” Nigel again.
“No.”
“Know who he spoke to?” Still Nigel.
“No.”
From his place on the bed Nigel lifted his eyes to Brotherhood. “But he phoned you, Jack,” he said encouragingly. “Little chats from out-of-the-way places with his old boss now and then? That’s practically mandatory, isn’t it? Check on the Joes—‘How’s our old buddy from you-know-where?’”
Nigel is one of the new non-professionals, Mary remembered Magnus telling her. He’s one of the idiots who are supposed to be introducing a breath of Whitehall realism. If ever I heard a contradiction in terms, that’s it, said Magnus.
“Not a peep,” Brotherhood was replying. “All he did was send me a string of stupid postcards saying ‘Thank God you’re not here’ and giving me his latest address.”
“When did he start going out?” said Nigel.
“When Tom’s temperature went down,” Mary replied.
“A week?” said Nigel invitingly. “Two?”
“Less,” said Mary.
“Describe,” said Brotherhood.
It was evening, probably their fourth day. Tom’s face was normal again so Magnus suggested Mary go shopping while he baby-sat Tom to give her a break. But Mary wasn’t keen on braving the Athens streets alone so Magnus went instead; Mary would do a museum in the morning. He came back around midnight very pleased with himself saying he’d found this marvellous old Greek travel agent in a basement opposite the Hilton, a tremendously cultured fellow, and how they had drunk ouzo together and solved the problems of the universe. The old man ran a villa-renting service for the islands and hoped to turn up a cancellation in a week or so when they’d all had enough of Athens.
“I thought islands were out,” Mary said.
For a moment it seemed that Magnus had forgotten the reason they had left Corfu. He smiled lamely and said something about not every island being the same. After that, she seemed to lose count of the days. They moved to a smaller hotel; Magnus wrote and wrote, went out in the evenings and when Tom was well enough took him swimming. Mary sketched the Acropolis and took Tom to a couple of museums but he preferred swimming. Meanwhile they waited for the old Greek to come up with something.
Brotherhood was once more interrupting. “This writing of his. How much did he talk about it exactly?”
“He wanted to preserve his secrecy. Scraps. That was all he gave me.”
“Like his Joes. The same,” Brotherhood suggested.
“He wanted to keep me fresh for when he’d really got something to show me. He didn’t want to talk it out of himself.”
It was a quiet and, as Mary now remembered it, strangely furtive time until one night Magnus vanished. He went out after dinner saying he was going to give the old boy a prod. Next morning he hadn’t come back and by lunchtime Mary was scared. She knew she should phone the Embassy. On the other hand she didn’t want to start a scare unnecessarily or do anything that might get Magnus into trouble.
Yet again Brotherhood cut in. “What sort of trouble?”
“If he’d gone on a bender or something. It wouldn’t exactly have looked well on his file. Just when he was hoping for promotion.”
“Had he gone on benders before?”
“Absolutely not. He and Grant got drunk together occasionally but that was as far as it went.”
Nigel sharply lifted his head. “But why should he be expecting promotion? Who said anything about promotion to him?”
“I did,” said Brotherhood without a whiff of repentance. “I reckoned after all the messing him around he was about owed it with his reinstatement.”
Nigel made a neat little note in his book and smiled mirthlessly as he wrote. Mary went on.
Anyway, she waited till evening then took Tom up to the Hilton and together they explored all the houses opposite until they found the cultured old Greek in his basement, exactly as Magnus had described him. But the Greek hadn’t seen Magnus for a week and Mary wouldn’t stay for coffee. When they got back to the taverna they found Magnus with two days’ beard, dressed in the clothes he had disappeared in, sitting in the courtyard and eating bacon and eggs, drunk. Not silly drunk, he couldn’t do that. Not angry drunk, or maudlin, or aggressive, and least of all indiscreet, because drink only ever fortified his defences. Courteous drunk, therefore, and amiable to a fault as ever, and his cover story perfectly intact except for one rare mistake.
“Sorry, gang. Got a bit pissed with Dimitri. Swine drank me clean under the table. Hullo, Tom.”
“Hullo,” said Tom.
“Who’s Dimitri?” Mary asked.
“You know who Dimitri is. Old Greek travel agent who does his beads across the road from the Hilton.”
“The cultured one.”
“That’s him.”
“Last night?”
“Far as I can remember, old girl, last night as ever was.”
“Dimitri hasn’t seen you since last Monday. He told us himself an hour ago.”
Magnus considered this. Tom had found a copy of the Athens News and was standing at the next table intently studying the film page.
“You checked on me, Mabs. You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I wasn’t checking on you, I was looking for you!”
“Don’t make a scene now, girl. Please. Other people eating here, you see.”
“I’m not making a scene. You are. It’s not me who disappears for two days and comes back with a lie. Tom, go to your room, darling. I’ll be up in a minute.”
Tom left, smiling brightly to show he hadn’t heard anything. Magnus took a long drink of coffee. Then he grasped Mary’s hand and kissed it and gently pulled her down on to the chair beside him.
“Which would you rather I told you, Mabs? I was carousing with a whore or I’ve got problems with a Joe?”
“Why don’t you just tell me the truth?”
The suggestion amused him. Not cruelly or cynically. Merely, he received it with the rueful indulgence that he would show towards Tom when he came through with one of his solutions for ending world poverty or the arms race.
“Know something?” He kissed her hand again and held it against his cheek. “Nothing goes away in life.” To her surprise she felt moisture in his stubble and realised he was weeping. “I’m in Constitution Square, right? Coming out of the Grande Bretagne bar. Minding my own business. What happens? I walk straight into the arms of a Czech Joe I used to run. Real tough egg, fabricator, caused us a lot of problems. Holds my arm like this. ‘Colonel Manchester! Colonel Manchester!’ Threatens to call the police, expose me as a British spy if I don’t give him money. Says I’m the only friend he’s got left in the world. ‘Come and drink with me, Colonel Manchester. Like we used to.’ So I did. Drank him right under the table. Then gave him the slip. I’m afraid I got a bit pissed myself. Line of duty. Let’s go to bed.”