A Perfect Spy

“The new committee that your Magnus derided was shaping up to be a very high-powered outfit. Maybe the best potential working relationship at field level that we’ve had with the Americans for years. The name of the game was mutual trust. Not as easy to establish these days as it used to be, but we managed it. Are you going to sleep?”

She nodded.

“Your Magnus was not only aware of this, he was one of the prime movers in getting the committee off the ground. If not the prime mover. He even went so far as to complain to me, when we were negotiating the deal, that London was being small-minded in its interpretation of the barter terms. He thought we should give the Americans more. In exchange for more. That’s number one.”

I have absolutely nothing else to say. You can have my home address, my next of kin and that’s your lot. You taught me that yourself, Jack, in case they ever grabbed me.

“Number two is that for reasons which I regarded at the time as specious and insulting, the Americans objected to your husband’s presence on that committee not three weeks after it met, and asked me to replace him with somebody more to their liking. Since Magnus was kingpin of the Czecho operation and of several other little shows in Eastern Europe besides, this was a totally unrealistic demand. They’d raised the same objections about him in Washington the year before and Bo had bowed to them, in my view mistakenly. I wasn’t about to let them do it again. I happen not to care for American gentlemen or anybody else telling me how to run my shop. I said no and ordered Magnus to take himself off on mid-tour leave and stay clear of Vienna till I told him to come back. That’s the truth, and I think it’s time you heard some.”

“It’s also very secret,” said Nigel.

She waited in vain to be amazed. No surge of protest, no flash of the celebrated family temper. Brotherhood had taken himself to the window and was staring out. Morning had come early because of the snow. He looked old and beaten. His white hair was fluffed against the light and she could see the pink skin of his scalp.

“You defended him,” she said. “You were loyal.”

“Seems as if I was a bloody fool as well.”

The house had turned itself upside down. The thump of shifting furniture came from below them in the drawing-room. The safest place to be was here. Upstairs with Jack.

“Oh don’t be so hard on yourself, Jack,” Nigel said.

* * *

Brotherhood had sat Mary in the chair and handed her a whisky. You get one only, he had said; make it last. Nigel had taken over the bed and was lounging on it with one suited little leg stuck out in front of him as if he’d sprained it trying to get up the steps of his club. Brotherhood had turned his back on both of them. He preferred the view from the window.

“So first you go to Corfu. Your auntie has a house there. You borrowed it from her. Tell that bit. Carefully.”

“Aunt Tab,” said Mary.

“In full, I think,” said Nigel.

“Lady Tabitha Grey. Daddy’s sister.”

“Sometime member of the Firm,” Brotherhood murmured to Nigel. “There’s hardly a member of her family hasn’t been on our books at one time or another, come to think of it.”

She had telephoned Aunt Tab as soon as they got back from their drink that evening, and by a miracle there’d been a cancellation and her house was free. They took it, phoned Tom’s school and arranged for him to fly there direct when term ended. As soon as the Lederers heard, they wanted to come too of course. Grant said he would drop everything but Magnus wouldn’t hear of it. The Lederers are exactly the kind of social prop I need to kick away, he had said. Why the hell should I take my work with me on holiday? Five days later they were settled into Tab’s house and everything was absolutely fine. Tom took tennis lessons at the hotel up the road, swam, fed the landlady’s goats and pottered around the boat with Costas who looked after it and watered the garden. But his best thing was the crazy cricket matches on the edge of town that Magnus took him to in the evenings. Magnus said the Brits had brought the game to the island when they were defending it against Napoleon. Magnus knew those things. Or pretended to.