Brammel leaves, Wexler waddles boldly after him, a man who has made his point and doesn’t care who knows it. Nigel waits till they have all left, then like a busy undertaker hastens round the table and takes Brotherhood’s arm in a fraternal gesture.
“Jack,” he whispers. “Well put, well played. We absolutely stymied them. A word in your ear away from the microphones, yes?”
* * *
It was early afternoon. The safe house where they had met was a pseudo-Regency villa with jewellers’ screens across the windows. A warm fog hung over the gravel drive and Lederer loitered in it like a murderer waiting for Brotherhood’s hulk to fill the lighted porch. Mountjoy and Dorney passed by him without a word. Carver, accompanied by Artelli and his briefcase, was more explicit. “I have to live here, Lederer. I just hope that this time either you make it stick or they post the hell out of you.”
Bastard, thought Lederer.
At last Jack Brotherhood emerged, speaking cryptically to Nigel. Lederer watched them jealously. Nigel turned and went back inside. Brotherhood walked forward.
“Mr. Brotherhood, sir? Jack? It’s me. Lederer.”
Brotherhood came slowly to a halt. He was wearing his usual grimy raincoat and a muffler, and he had lit one of his yellow cigarettes.
“What do you want?”
“Jack. I want to tell you that whatever happens, and whatever he’s done or not done, I’m sorry it’s him and I’m sorry it’s you.”
“Probably hasn’t done anything at all. Probably recruited one of the other side and hasn’t told us, knowing him. My guess is you’ve got the story inside out.”
“Would he do that, Magnus? Play a lone hand with the enemy and not tell anybody? Jesus, that’s dynamite! If I ever tried that, Langley would skin me.”
Unbidden, he fell in beside Brotherhood. A policeman stood at the gate. They passed the Royal Horse Artillery Barracks. The sound of hoofs clattered at them from the parade ground but the horses were hidden in the fog. Brotherhood was striding fast. Lederer had difficulty keeping up.
“I feel really bad, Jack,” Lederer confessed. “Nobody seems to understand what it’s been like for me to have to do this to a friend. It’s not just Magnus. It’s Bee and Mary and the kids and everybody. Becky and Tom are real sweethearts. It kind of made all of us consider ourselves in many ways. There’s a pub right here. Can I buy you a drink?”
“Got to see a man about a dog, I’m afraid.”
“Can I drop you somewhere? I have a car and driver right here around the corner.”
“Prefer to walk if you don’t mind.”
“Magnus told me a lot about you, Jack. I guess he broke some of the rules but that’s how we were. We really shared. It was a great liaison. That’s the crazy thing. We really were the Special Relationship. And I believe in that. I believe in the Anglo-Saxon alliance, the Atlantic Pact, the whole bit. You remember that burglary you and Magnus did together in Warsaw?”
“Don’t think I do, I’m afraid.”
“Oh come on, Jack. How you lowered him through a skylight? Like in the Bible? And you had these fake Polish cops downstairs on the doorstep in case the quarry came home unexpectedly? He said you were like a father to him. You know how he referred to you once? ‘Grant,’ he said to me. ‘Jack is the true champion of the great game.’ You know what I feel? I think if Magnus’s writing had ever worked for him, he’d have been okay. There’s just too much inside him. He has to put it somewhere.” He was breathing a little hastily between his words, but he insisted on keeping up; he had to get it right with Brotherhood. “You see, sir, I’ve read a great deal recently about the creativity of the criminal mind.”
“Oh he’s a criminal now, is he?”
“Please. Let me quote you something I read.” They had reached a crossing and were waiting for the lights. “‘ What is the difference, in morality, between the totally anarchic criminality of the artist, which is endemic in all fine creative minds, and the artistry of the criminal?’”
“Can’t do it, I’m afraid. Too many long words. Sorry about that.”
“Hell, Jack, we’re licensed crooks, that’s all I’m saying. What’s our racket? Know what our racket is? It is to place our larcenous natures at the service of the state. So I mean why should I feel different about Magnus just because maybe he got the mix a little wrong? I can’t. Magnus is still exactly the same man I spent these great times with! And I’m still the same man who had these times with Magnus. Nothing’s changed except we’ve landed on different sides of the net. You know we talked about defection once? Where we would go if we ever cut and run? Left our wives and kids and work, and just stepped into the blue? We were that close, Jack. We literally thought the unthinkable. We really did. We were amazing.”
They had entered St. John’s Wood High Street, and were heading towards Regent’s Park. Brotherhood’s pace had increased.
“Where did he say he’d go, then?” Brotherhood snapped. “Back to Washington? Moscow?”
“Home. He said there was only ever one place. Home. I mean this shows you. The man loves his country, Mr. Brotherhood. Magnus is no renegade.”
“Didn’t know he had a home,” said Brotherhood. “Vagrant childhood, he always told me.”
“Home is a little seaside town in Wales. It has a very ugly Victorian church. It has a very strict landlady who shuts him in at 10 p.m. And one of these days Magnus is going to lock himself in that upstairs room and write his ass off till he comes out with all twelve volumes of Pym’s answer to Proust.”
Brotherhood might not have heard. He strode faster.
“Home is childhood re-created, Mr. Brotherhood. If defection is a self-renewal, it requires also a rebirth.”
“That his stupid phrase or yours?”
“Mine and his equally. We discussed all this and we discussed much, much more. Know why so many defectors redefect? We had that one straight too. It’s in and out of the womb all the time. Have you ever noticed that about defectors — the one common factor in all that crazy band? They’re immature. Forgive me, they are literally motherfuckers.”
“Have a name, this place?”
“Pardon?”
“This Welsh paradise of his. What’s it called?”
“He never said a name. All he said was it was near the castle where he grew up with his mother, in an area with great houses, where he and his mother used to go to the hunts, dance at the Christmas balls and mix quite democratically with the servants.”
“Have you ever come across Czechs using back numbers of newspapers?” Brotherhood asked.
Momentarily thrown by the change of tack, Lederer was obliged to pause and consider.
“It’s a case a colleague of mine is running,” Brotherhood said. “He asked me. Czech agent always grubbing around for last week’s newspapers before he takes a walk up the road. Why would he do that?”
“I’ll tell you why. It’s a standard thing,” said Lederer, recovering. “Old hat, but standard. We had a Joe like that, a double. The Czechs trained him for days, just in how to roll exposed film into newspaper. Took him out into the streets at night, made him find a dark area. Poor bastard nearly froze his fingers off. It was twenty below.”
“I said back numbers,” Brotherhood said.
“Sure. There’s two ways. One way they use the day of the month, the other way they use the day of the week. Day of the month is a nightmare: thirty-one standard messages to be learned by heart. It’s the eighteenth of the month so it’s ‘Meet me behind the gentleman’s convenience in Brno at nine-thirty and don’t be late.’ It’s the sixth so ‘W here the hell’s my monthly pay cheque?’” He giggled breathlessly but Brotherhood did not reciprocate. “The days of the week, that’s a shortened version of the same thing.”