“Of course not.”
“And I don’t undertake anything of a questionable nature.”
“This isn’t of a questionable nature, Mrs. Bentham.”
“You have no address.”
“Of course I have. I simply didn’t give it to you.”
She sniffed. “The effect is the same.”
Tarp was trying to think it through. She lived in Croyden, he remembered. “Mrs. Bentham, would it be better for you if I paid you personally and picked up what you’ve done so far?”
“Visit my home?” she said icily.
“Ah, no, I can see that that wouldn’t do. What if you were to bring your materials up to town, and of course I’d pay for your getting here and back. And your time, of course.”
“Tomorrow?” She seemed a little softened.
“Tonight, actually.”
“I never go out at night.” She sniffed. “Except when I am fortunate enough to go the theater, which is pitifully seldom these days. It has become so very expensive!”
Tarp smiled into the mouthpiece. “Mrs. Bentham, it would be my pleasure to let you be my guest at any theater you care to name. Then, let’s say, I could meet you in the interval. In the bar, how would that be?” A theater bar would be good for both of them, crowded, public, utterly without intimacy. “I couldn’t stay, of course, but we’d have time to talk briefly and you could show me what you’ve got so far.”
“You’re a very impatient man,” she said, but the words were not spoken harshly.
“I’d want to pay for a taxi to take you home, naturally. Because of the hour.”
She named a play that she had been longing to see. “May I make a reservation for you?” he said.
“Well…”
“The stalls?”
Her voice became little-girl small. “The stalls would be quite acceptable,” she said.
“Then I’ll meet you in the stalls bar between the first and second acts. If there’s a problem with the ticket, I’ll call back; if you don’t hear from me, we’ll meet there. All right?”
“It seems all right,” she said. Some of her grander manner had been recovered.
Tarp called the theater and reserved her ticket on his Canadian credit card, and then he drove toward Carrington’s club.
Prong’s had occupied the same building for a hundred and thirty years. It had survived’a German bomb and had stood from 1942 to 1946 with two wooden props holding up its eastern wall, a situation that had led to a newspaper cartoon that showed England, as Prong’s, supported by Humour and Determination. Prong’s was an upper-civil-servants’ club, and it had had its share of prime ministers.
“Sir?” the fat porter said when he opened the door.
“I’m meeting Mr. Carrington.” Noise, smell, and heat met him in the open doorway.
“Is it Mr. Tarp, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Go right on up, sir. Third floor. Mind the stairs, they’re ever so steep.”
He had a glimpse of a former kitchen on his left, where a government figure whom he recognized was howling with laughter as he leaned against an old wall oven. Tarp could see part of a bench and the leg of a chair and several pairs of feet. The place was packed, hot, and noisy. Glasses of whiskey were much in evidence; the cigar smoke was thick.
He went up a flight of dangerous stairs and ducked his head under a black beam at the top. Prong’s was, in fact, little more than an eighteenth-century cottage. Elegance was not its attraction — the floors sloped; the ceilings were too low.
There were three doors on the third-floor landing, one to a lavatory from which a red-faced man was just stepping; one to a tiny library that was packed with grinning, shouting men; and one that was closed. He knocked lightly, then opened the door far enough to peer in.
“Aha!”
It was a billiards room hardly big enough for the billiard table. Two lights hung on cords above the green felt. Just at the edge of their brightness, a man was standing, his body in the light up to his chin and his face obscured.
“Come in, Mr. Tarp, come in.”
Tarp stepped in and closed the door. “I was looking for John Carrington.”
“We’ve met before. You don’t remember, I’m sure.”
“Of course I remember. It’s Matthiessen, isn’t it?” And the last words I said to you were, You go to hell. Tarp shook the man’s hand.
He was several inches shorter than Tarp and just slightly plump; he had slicked-back black hair that was growing thin. He was over fifty now, and since Tarp had seen him two years before the blotchy purple places under his eyes had gotten darker and the skin on this cheeks had gone from pink to maroon. Still drinking too much.
“Ramsey Matthiessen,” the man said.
“Number three at MI-Five.”
“Ah, you do remember! I consider myself highly flattered! Whatever do I do to earn such attention?” Matthiessen grinned. He considered himself a wit, one who made his subordinates laugh spontaneously and his superiors admiringly. “Been well, Mr. Tarp?”
“Pretty well.”
“You look very fit — very healthy, very brown. Is that from the sun of Florida, I wonder, or of Cuba?” He seemed to wait for an answer. He produced two cigars. “Cigar?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Ah, yes, that American passion for good health. You don’t mind if I smoke, I hope.”
“I do mind.”
Matthiessen bared his teeth; it could hardly have been called a smile. “You say what you think, yes, I remember.” His cheeks turned to red apples as he made it a wide, false grin. “Very refreshing. I often say to the sad creatures who are forced by circumstance to work for me, Pray, don’t deceive yourselves and me with false modesty; say what you think!” He laughed. “Then if they do, of course, I have them removed. Honesty in a civil servant is the first sign of lunacy. ‘Madness in great ones must not unwatched go,’ hmm?”
“What do you want?”
“More matter, less art?”
“I have to meet Carrington.” Tarp turned to go.
“The substance of your meeting is here with me, Mr. Tarp. Not that young Carrington won’t appear. I wouldn’t deny two old friends the pleasure of each other’s company.” He smiled a perfunctory, professional smile that vanished at once. “This room is secure. The sweepers check it every day. We can talk.”
“Yes?”
Matthiessen pulled himself up straight and put a hand in the small of his back, pushing the pelvis forward as if he might be suffering from some sort of backache. “We understand you’ve gone on the Moscow rolls,” he said, lavishing a care on the vowels and the l sounds of rolls that made the words acutely sarcastic. “We understand you have sold your — shall I say, your services, and not use a more theological term — to Mr. Andropov.”
“Yes?”
Matthiessen made a clicking sound with his tongue. “How very reticent you are! Dear, dear, it’s rather like having discourse with a stone. And a rather tongue-tied stone, at that. People have pet stones in America, I understand. Come, come, do exercise the gift of speech, if only to prove that you are a sentient being, Mr. Tarp. I am only a minor figure in the great scheme of things, I realize, but Her Majesty’s government do entrust me with a certain, shall I say, responsibility, and here I am! I have come here to talk with you. Expressly for the purpose. This is not idle chat.”
“Are you asking me a question?”
“Let us say that I am laying the groundwork.”
“For what?”
“For, let us say, something in the way of an official statement.”
“Make it.”
“I should like some indication that at the very least I am being heard.”