A Perfect Spy

Somehow she stayed in there fighting. “So what is he?” she demanded. “Is he a Communist? He can’t be. It’s too ridiculous.”

He opened his long hands. He smiled again, infectiously, offering an immediate bond of his bewilderment. He was invulnerable. “I’ve asked myself the same question many times. And then I think — well, who believes in marriage these days? He’s a searcher. Isn’t that enough? In our profession I am sure we should not ask for more. Can you imagine being married to a sedentary ideologist? I had an uncle once who was a Lutheran pastor. He bored us all to death.”

She was getting stronger. Less mad. More indignant. “What did Magnus do for you?” she asked.

“He spied. Selectively, it is true. But treasonably it is also true. And often very energetically — something you will understand about him. When his life is happy he believes in God and wants everyone to have a gift. When he is down he will sulk and refuse to go to church. Those of us who run him have to live with that.”

Nothing had happened to her. She was upright and drinking vodka in a stranger’s safe flat. He has pronounced the sentence, she thought calmly, as if she were attending someone else’s trial. Magnus is dead. Mary is dead. Their marriage is dead. Tom is an orphan with a traitor for a father. Everybody’s absolutely fine.

“But then I don’t run him,” she objected, answering his point quite calmly.

He appeared not to notice the new coldness in her voice. “Allow me to sell myself to you a little. I am fond of your husband.”

And so you should be, she thought. After all, he sacrificed us to you.

“I also owe him,” he continued. “Whatever he wants for the rest of his life, I can give it to him. I am greatly to be preferred to Jack Brotherhood and his service.”

You’re not, she thought. You are absolutely not.

“Did you say something?” he asked.

She smiled sadly for him and shook her head.

“Brotherhood wishes to catch your husband and punish him. I am the opposite. I wish to find him and reward him. Whatever he will allow us to give, we will give it.” He drew on his cigar.

You’re a sham, she thought. You seduce my husband and call yourself his friend and mine.

“You know this trade, Mary. I don’t need to tell you that a man in his position is a most desirable commodity. Put more frankly, we cannot afford to lose him. The last thing we want is to have him sitting in an English prison for the rest of his useful life, telling the authorities what he’s been doing these thirty and more years. Nor do we particularly want him to write a book.”

You want, she thought. What about us?

“We would much prefer him to enjoy a well-earned retirement with us — distinction, medals, his family around him if they wish it — where we can still consult him as we need. I can’t guarantee that we will permit him to lead the double life he is accustomed to but in every other respect we shall do our best to meet his needs.”

“He doesn’t want you any more though, does he? That’s why he’s hiding.”

He puffed at his cigar, flapping a hand between them to stop the smoke from bothering her. But it bothered her anyway. It would shame and disgust and accuse her for the rest of her life. He was talking again. Reasonably.

“I am at my wits’ end, to be frank. I have done all I can to put Brotherhood and everyone else off the scent and to find your husband ahead of them. I still have not the least idea where he is and I feel a complete fool.”

“What happened to the people he betrayed?” she said.

“Magnus? Oh he hates bloodshed. He always made that clear.”

“That never stopped anybody yet from shedding blood.”

Once more a pause for his private gravity. “You are right,” he agreed. “And he chose a hard profession. I’m afraid it’s a little late for us all to ponder our moralities.”

“Some of us are rather new to them,” she said. But she could not move him. “Why did you ask me here?”

She met his gaze and saw that though nothing had changed in his expression his face was different, which was what happened sometimes when she looked at Magnus.

“Before you came I had ideas that you and your son might care to start a new life in Czechoslovakia and that Magnus would therefore be strongly tempted to join you.” He indicated a briefcase at his side. “I brought passports for you and all that nonsense. I was absurd. Having met you, I realise you are not defector material. However, it still occurs to me as a possibility that you do know where he is, and that you have managed, because you are a capable woman, not to tell anybody. You cannot suppose he is better off with his pursuers than he would be with me. So if you do know, I think you should tell me now.”

“I don’t know where he is,” she said. And closed her mouth before she could add: and if I did, you would be the last person on earth I would ever tell.

“But you have theories. You have ideas. You have been thinking of nothing else night and day ever since he left, surely. Magnus, where are you? It’s your one thought, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. You know more about him than I do.”