A Perfect Spy

The Mozart was half empty. Mary sat at a centre table where she could be seen and ordered herself a coffee and a brandy. They’ve watched me arrive and now they’re watching to see whether I am followed. Pretending to consult her diary, she took covert note of the people round her and the parked charabancs and fiacres in the street outside the big windows, looking for anything that could resemble a stake-out. When you’ve got a conscience like mine, everything stinks anyway, she thought: from the two nuns frowning at the stock exchange prices in the window of the bank to the huddle of bowler-hatted young coachmen stamping their feet and watching the girls go by. In a corner of the café, a fat Viennese gentleman was expressing interest in her. I should have worn a hat, she thought. I’m not a respectable single woman. She got up, went to the newspaper rack and without thinking chose Die Presse. Now I suppose I roll it up and take it for a walk in my stockinged feet, she thought stupidly, as she opened it at the film page.

“Frau Pym?”

A woman’s voice, a woman’s bosom. A woman’s deferentially smiling face. It was the girl from the cash desk.

“That’s right,” said Mary, smiling in return.

From behind her back she produced an envelope with “Frau Pym” written on it in pencil. “Herr König left this message for you. He is very sorry.”

Mary gave her fifty schillings and opened the envelope.

“Please pay your bill and leave the café at once, turning right into the Maysedergasse, and remaining on the right-hand pavement. When you reach the pedestrian precinct turn left, and keep to the left side, walking slowly and admiring the shop windows.”

She wanted the loo but she didn’t like to go in case he thought she was tipping someone off. She put the note in her handbag, finished her coffee and took her bill to the cash desk where the girl gave her another smile.

“These men are all the same,” the girl said while the change rattled down the chute.

“You’re telling me,” said Mary. They both laughed.

As she left the café a young couple entered and she had a feeling they were disguised Americans. But then a lot of Austrians were. She turned right and came at once to the Maysedergasse. The two nuns were still at their stock prices. She kept to the right-hand pavement. It was twenty past three and the Wives’ meeting was sure to end by five so that they could all get home to change into halter dresses and sequin handbags for the evening cattle market. But even when everyone had gone and only Mary’s car remained in the Lumsdens’ drive, Fergus and Georgie might well assume she had stayed on for a quiet drink with Caroline on her own. If I make it back by quarter to six I stand a chance, she reckoned. She paused before a woman’s lingerie shop and found herself admiring a pair of tart’s black cami-knickers in the window. Who buys that stuff anyway? Bee Lederer, a pound to a penny. She hoped something would happen soon, before the Ambassadress came out with an armful of the stuff, or one of the many unattached men tried to pick her up.

“Frau Pym? I am from Herr König. Please come quickly.”