With his monogrammed silk handkerchief the great statesman magnanimously wipes away the tears of Pym’s rage and impotence.
“Want a good English steak tonight, son?”
“Not much.”
“Old Mattie’s cooking us one with onions. You can invite Judy if you like. We’ll all have a game of chemmy afterwards. She’d like that.”
Raising his head, Pym recovered his marker pen and went back to work.
Extract of Branch minutes of Oxford University Communist Party regretting departure of Comrade M. Pym, tireless worker on behalf of cause. Fraternal thanks for his tremendous efforts. Entered at 24a.
Pained letter from Bursar of Pym’s college enclosing his cheque for his last term’s battles, marked “Refer to Drawer.” Similar letters and cheques from Messrs. Blackwell, Parker (Booksellers), and Hall Brothers (Tailors), entered at 24c.
Pained letter from Pym’s bank manager regretting that following return of cheque drawn in Pym’s favour by the Magnus Dynamic & Astral Company (Bahamas) Ltd., in the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds, he has had no alternative but to refer to drawer the cheques as at 24c.
Extract from London Gazette dated March 29, 1951, appointing official receiver in yet another petition for bankruptcy of R.T.P. and eighty-three associated companies.
Letter from Director of Public Prosecutions inviting Pym to present himself for interview on named date in order to explain his relationship with above companies. Entered at 36a.
Military call-up papers offering Pym sanctuary. Grabbed with both hands.
* * *
“If I could just sit with you for a bit, Miss D,” said Pym, softly pushing open her kitchen door.
But her chair was empty and the fire out. It was not evening as he had thought, but dawn.
CHAPTER 12
It was the same dawn. It was time minus ten minutes. It was the moment Brotherhood had lain wakeful and alone for in his rotten flat that was becoming a solitary cell for him, staring at the images of his past in the restless London sky. It was an outdoor game being played by indoor people who didn’t know they were awake. How many times had he sat like this, in rubber boats, on arctic hillsides, pressing the headphones into his ears with kapok mittens to catch the whisper that meant life was not extinct? Here in the communications room on the top floor of the Head Office there were no headphones, no subzero winds to rip through sodden clothing and freeze the operator’s fingers off, no bicycle generator that some poor bastard had to pump at till his legs failed. No aerial that collapsed on you when you most needed it. No two-ton suitcase to be cached in iron-hard soil while the Huns were breathing down your neck. Up here we have dimpled grey-green boxes freshly dusted, with pretty pin-lights and shiny switches. And tuners and amplifiers. And dials to cut out atmospherics. And comfortable chairs for the barons here assembled to rest their candy arses on. And a mysterious compression of the air that clenches your scalp while you watch the green numerals sliding through their prison window as quickly as the later years of life: now I am forty, now I am forty-five, now I am seventy, now I am ten minutes to being dead.
On the raised platform two boys in headphones were patrolling the dials. They’ll never know what it was like, thought Brotherhood. They’ll go to their graves thinking life came out of a packet. Bo Brammel and Nigel sat below them like producers at a preview. Behind them a dozen shadows that Brotherhood had barely bothered with. He noticed Lorimer, Head of Operations. He saw Kate and thought thank heaven she’s alive. At the edge of the stage, Frankel was lugubriously reporting a string of failures. His mid-European accent has thickened.
“Nine-twenty yesterday morning local time, Prague Station has its chief cut-out dial the Watchman household from a callbox, Bo,” he said. “Number engaged. He makes five calls in two hours from round town. Still engaged. He tries Conger. Number out of order. Everybody vanished, everybody out of touch. Midday the Station sends a little girl they own to the canteen where Conger’s daughter goes for lunch. Conger’s daughter is conscious so maybe she knows where her father is. Our little girl is a sixteen-year-old kid, very small, very hardy. She hangs around two hours, checks both sittings, checks the queue. No daughter. She checks the attendance sheets at the factory gate, tells the guards she is the daughter’s room-mate. She’s so innocent they let her. Conger’s daughter is not reported present, is not reported sicklisted. Vanished.”
In the tension nobody spoke to anybody. Everyone spoke to himself. The room was still filling up. How many people does it take to give a network a decent burial? thought Brotherhood. Eight minutes to go.
Frankel continued his dirge. “Seven o’clock yesterday morning local time, Gdansk Station puts two of their local boys to mend a telegraph pole at the end of the street where Merryman lives. His house is in a cul-de-sac. He’s got no other way out. Every day normally he goes to work by car, leaves his house seven-twenty. But yesterday his car is not outside his house. Every other day it is parked outside his house. Not yesterday. From where the boys work they can see his front door. The front door stays closed. No Merryman, nobody at all leaves or enters that house by that door. Downstairs is curtained, no lights, no fresh tracks in the drive. Merryman’s good friend is an architect. Merryman likes to take a coffee with him sometimes on his way to work. This architect is not a Joe, he is not whitelisted.”
“Wenzel,” said Brotherhood.
“Wenzel is the architect’s name, Jack. One of the boys calls up Mr. Wenzel and tells him Merryman’s mother is ill. ‘Where can I get hold of him to give him this bad news?’ he says. Mr. Wenzel says try the laboratory, how ill? The boy says she’s maybe dying, Merryman ought to get to her fast. ‘Give him this message,’ the boy says. ‘Tell him please that Maximilian says he better get to his mother’s bedside fast.’ Maximilian, that’s the codeword for it’s all over. Maximilian means abort, means run, means get the hell out by any known means, don’t bother with customary procedures, run. The boy is resourceful. When he has ceased to speak to Mr. Wenzel, he calls the laboratory where Merryman works. ‘This is Mr. Maximilian. Where’s Merryman? It’s urgent. Tell him Maximilian got to speak to him about his mother.’ Merryman don’t come in today, they tell him. Merryman got a conference in Warsaw.”
Brotherhood was already objecting. “They wouldn’t say that,” he growled. “The labs don’t give out details of staff movements. They’re a top-secret installation, for Christ’s sake. Somebody’s playing games with us.”
“Sure, Jack. My own reaction entirely. You want I go on?”
A couple of heads turned to locate Brotherhood at the back of the room.
“When the line to Merryman went dead we instructed Warsaw to try to reach Voltaire direct,” Frankel continued. He paused. “Voltaire is sick.”
Brotherhood let out an angry laugh. “Voltaire? He hasn’t had a day’s sickness in his life.”
“His Ministry says he’s sick, Jack, his wife says he’s sick, his mistress says he’s sick. He ate some bad mushrooms, gone to hospital. He’s sick. Official. They all say the same.”
“I’ll say it’s official.”
“What do you want me to do, Jack? Tell me something I should do that you would do yourself and I have not done. Okay? It’s a blackout, Jack. Like a silence everywhere. Like a bomb fell.”