A Perfect Spy

Beside experience like this, the inquisition of Pym was watery stuff indeed. Jack Brotherhood was there to defend him. Personnel fussed over him like an old hen, assuring him it was just a matter of answering a few questions. Some chinless flunkey from Treasury kept warning my persecutors they were in danger of exceeding their brief, and my two gaolers insisted on talking to me about their children. After five days and nights of it, Pym felt as spry as if he had been taking a country holiday, and his interrogators were out on their feet.

“Good trip, darling?” Mary asked, back in Georgetown, after a morning in bed in which Pym had temporarily slaked the tension.

“Great,” said Pym. “And Jack sends love.”

But on his walk to the Embassy he saw a new white arrow chalked on the brickwork of the Fayre-deal wine shop, which was Axel’s warning to attempt no contact until further notice.

* * *

And here, Tom, it is time for me to tell you what Rick was doing, for your grandfather had one last trick to play before the end. It was his best, as you would suppose. Rick shrank. He abandoned monstrosity as a way of life, and came weeping and cringing to me like a whipped animal. And the smaller and more encompassable he became, the less secure Pym felt. It was as if the Firm and Rick were closing in on him from either side, each with his regretful, hangdog banality, and Pym, like an acrobat on the high wire between them, suddenly had nothing to support him. Pym implored him in his mind. He screamed at him: Stay bad, stay monstrous, keep your distance, don’t give up! But on Rick came, shuffling and smirking like a pauper, knowing his power was greatest now that he was weak. “I did it all for you, son. It’s thanks to me you’ve taken your place among the Highest in the Land. Got a few coppers for your old man, have you? How about a nice mixed grill, or are you ashamed to take your old pal out?”

He struck first one Christmas Day, not six weeks after Pym had received a formal apology from Head Office. Georgetown had two feet of snow and we had asked the Lederers to lunch. Mary was putting the food on the table as the phone rang. Will Ambassador Pym accept a collect call from New Jersey? He will.

“Hullo, old son. How’s the world using you?”

“I’ll take this upstairs,” says Pym grimly to Mary, and everybody looks understanding, knowing that the secret world never sleeps.

“Happy Christmas, old son,” says Rick as Pym picks up the bedroom phone.

“And Happy Christmas to you, too, Father. What are you doing in New Jersey?”

“God’s the twelfth man on the cricket team, son. It’s God who tells us to keep the left elbow up through life. No one else.”

“So you always said. But it’s not the cricket season. Are you drunk?”

“He’s umpire, judge and jury rolled into one and never you forget it. There’s no conning God. There never was. Are you glad I paid for your education, then?”

“I’m not conning God, Father, I’m trying to celebrate with my family.”

“Say hullo to Miriam,” says Rick, and there is muffled protest before Miriam comes on the line.

“Hullo, Magnus,” says Miriam.

“Hullo, Miriam,” says Pym.

“Hullo,” says Miriam a second time.

“They feed you all right in that Embassy of yours, son, or is it all Thousand Island and French fries?”

“We have a perfectly decent canteen for the lower staff but at the moment I’m trying to eat at home.”

“Turkey?”

“Yes.”

“English bread sauce?”

“I expect so.”

“That grandson of mine all right then, is he? He’s got the forehead, has he, the one I gave you that everybody talks about?”

“He’s got a very good brow.”

“Blue eyes, same as mine?”

“Mary’s eyes.”

“I hear she’s first class, son. I hear first-rate reports of her. They say she’s got a fine piece of property down in Dorset that’s worth a bob or two.”

“It’s in trust,” says Pym sharply.

But Rick has already begun drowning in the gulf of his own self-pity. He weeps, the weep becomes a howl. In the background, Miriam is weeping, too, in a high-pitched whimper, like a small dog locked in a big house.

“But darling,” says Mary as Pym resumes his place as head of the family. “Magnus. You’re upset. What’s the matter?”

Pym shakes his head, smiling and crying at once. He grabs his wineglass and lifts it.

“To absent friends,” he calls out. “To all our absent friends!” And later, for a wife’s ears only: “Just an old, old Joe, darling, who managed to track me down and wish me happy bloody Yule.”

* * *