A Perfect Spy

How did he find me? How could it be that his systems of intelligence were better than those of the Agency’s leash dogs who were fast becoming my regular, unwelcome companions? At first I thought he was using private detectives. I began collecting the numbers of suspicious cars, noting the times of dead-end phone calls, trying to distinguish them from Langley’s. I bearded my secretary: has someone calling himself my sick father been pestering you for information? Eventually I discovered that the Embassy travel clerk had an addiction to playing English snooker at some Masonic hostel in the dirty part of town. Rick had found him there and pitched him a fatuous cover story: “I’ve got this dicky heart,” he’d said to the fool. “It could get me any time, you see, but don’t you go telling my boy. I don’t like to bother him when he’s got enough on his plate as it is. What you’re to do, you’re to get on the blower to me and give me the wink whenever that boy of mine leaves town, so that I know where to find him when the end comes.” And no doubt there was a gold watch in it somewhere. And tickets for next year’s Cup Final. And seeing the boy’s dear old mother right next time Rick slipped home for a drop of English air.

But my discovery had come too late. We had had San Francisco by then, and Denver, and Seattle, and Rick had homed on every one of them, weeping and shrinking before my very eyes, until all that was left of Rick was what he owned of Pym; and all that was left of Pym, it seemed to me, as I wove my lies and blandished, and perjured myself before one kangaroo court after another, was a failing con man tottering on the last legs of his credibility.

And that’s how it was, Tom. Betrayal is a repetitious trade and I will not bother you with more of it. We have reached the end, though it seems from here to look quite like the beginning. The Firm pulled Pym out of Washington and sent him to Vienna so that he could take back his networks and so that his growing army of accusers could draw its wretched computer pattern tighter round his neck. There was no saving him. Not in the end. Poppy knew that. So did Pym, though he would never admit it, even to himself. Just one more con, Pym kept saying to himself; one more con will see me right. Poppy pressed him, begged him, threatened him. Pym was adamant: Leave me in place, I’ll win through, they love me, I’ve given my life to them.

But the truth is, Tom, that Pym preferred to test the limits of the tolerance of those he loved. He preferred to sit here in Miss Dubber’s upper room and wait for God to come, while he looked down the gardens to the beach where the best pals ever had kicked a football from one end of the world to the other, and ridden their Harrods bicycles across the sea.

CHAPTER 18

It’s fireworks night at Plush, thought Mary, staring into the darkness of the square. It’s an unlit bonfire waiting for Tom. Through the windscreen of their parked car she gazed at the empty bandstand and pretended she saw the last of her family and retainers crammed into the old cricket pavilion. The muffled footsteps were the footsteps of the gamekeepers as they gathered to her brother Sam, back for his last leave. She pretended she could hear her brother’s voice, a little too parade-ground for her liking, still scratchy from the strain of Ireland. “Tom?” he calls. “Where’s old Tom?”… Not a move. Tom is stuck inside Mary’s sheepskin coat, his head jammed against her thigh and nothing short of Christmas is going to lure him out. “Come on, Tom Pym, you’re the youngest!” cries Sam. “Where is he?… You’ll be too old next year, you know, Tom.” Then his brutal dismissal. “Fuck it. Let’s have someone else.” Tom is shamed, the Pyms are disgraced, Sam as usual is angry that Tom has no taste for blowing up the universe. A braver child puts the match and the world ignites. Her brother’s military rockets race over it in perfect salvoes. Everyone is small, looking at the night sky.