A Spy in the Family

by Alec Waugh

Would she, she wondered, have looked different to Victor if she had succumbed to that South African?

  Whether she would or would not, she was very certain that Victor looked different to her in the light of the last week. Under the handkerchiefs in her drawer was that little riding switch. Would she ever use it? She could not believe she would, and yet, and yet…

  On his return that evening from his office, he looked so exactly as he had always done, so formal, so correct, in his dark blue pin-stripe suit, his stiff white collar, his Burgundy dark tie with its pearl pin. Was it possible that beneath that stern exterior was a rebel, avid for outrageous practices? Was it? Was it? At any rate, he was going to be shown that whip.

  He was, later that very evening. She was still at her mirror when he came in from his dressing table; he took up a stool and set it by her. He passed his arm around her shoulders, fondling them. His face was reflected beside hers in the mirror. He smiled at her.

  ‘All this trouble to make up a complexion that’s going to be tousled within seven minutes.’

  They laughed together. He was in the right mood to be shown the secret weapon.

  ‘I’ve brought another present too, one that I’m shy of showing you.’

  ‘That sounds intriguing.’

  ‘It’s not actually a present, and it’s not in fact from me. It was given to me, for you, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘Well, it’s like this. There was a woman in the same hotel as me in Malta. She gave me a good deal of advice.’

  ‘What kind of advice?’

  ‘That’s what I’m coming to. She was a German.’

  ‘I see or at least, I don’t.’

  ‘She told me that German men were very much like English men, that the same treatment that suited the one would suit the other.’

  ‘There’s something in that, maybe. But we’re still a long way, aren’t we, from that ambiguous present.’

  ‘I’m coming to that. Be patient. I have to explain how all this came about. What she said was this, that English men, like Germans and Swedes as well, were very correct and disciplined; that at school they were subjected to extreme discipline; and that if they weren’t subjected to strict discipline they felt lost. Would you agree with that?’

  ‘I suppose I would. But then I don’t think that most of us ever get an opportunity of being lost. We are still subjected to discipline. All our lives a man like myself for instance is just as punctilious about punctuality, about being at his office desk on time, as he was in the sixth book at Winchester.’

  ‘I know you are, but that’s not quite what she meant. She was talking about the methods by which this discipline was enforced.’

  ‘I’m still not following you.’

  ‘It’s like this, or rather this is how she said it was.’ She hesitated. She had to bring it out into the open now, to use the actual word. ‘She said that Englishmen were accustomed to being flogged at school, that that was how they became subject to discipline, and if that type of discipline was not continued, they felt lost without it.’

  ‘This is all very complicated. I don’t see what you are leading up to. I thought we were talking about an unusual present.’

  ‘We were. We are.’

  ‘What’s this present?’

  ‘This.’

  She opened the drawer. She slid her hands beneath the pile of handkerchiefs. Her fingers closed around the handle of the whip. ‘Now,’ she thought, ‘Now,’ and pulled it out.

  She noted in the mirror an expression of startled surprise cross his face, startled but at the same time pleased. She noted it with amused relief. Perhaps Naomi was right.

  ‘And what may be the purpose and point of this?’ he asked.

  ‘She said that since a whip was the symbol of an Englishman’s obedience during his ten formative years, he would as a man respond to the influence of this symbol.’

  ‘Like Pavlov’s dogs?’

  ‘I don’t know about them. But this woman said that if a wife wanted to get the best out of her husband, she should introduce this symbol of discipline into her home.’

  ‘Now that is something.’ His eyes were twinkling and a smile was flickering on his lips.

  He’s catching on to this, she thought.

  ‘Did she give you any idea of how a wife was to employ it?’

  ‘Oh, yes, to use it as a threat to start with. She took the example of an unpunctual husband. She should say to him: “Next time you’re late, I’ll have to use this on you.” ‘

  ‘And if he goes on being late?’

  ‘She uses it.’

  ‘Did she give any other examples of its use?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘A husband who was negligent. It sounds rather ridiculous, I know, but Germans are so formal, aren’t they?’

  ‘Negligent in what?’

  ‘The fulfilment of his marital obligations.’

  ‘Is that the way she put it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the way she put it.’

  ‘And that was why she made you a present of this toy?’

  ‘She called it a secret weapon.’

  ‘I once read that Russian women in the Czarist days took a whip with them on their honeymoon.’

  ‘But that was different; that was for their husbands to use on them.’

  ‘You don’t think your German friend had that same idea?’

  ‘No, no. That was not her point at all. Englishmen aren’t like Russians. Englishmen are conditioned to the whip.’

  ‘I see.’

  He frowned thoughtfully. She noted that frown, expectantly. Naomi was right. The idea did appeal to him. She was conscious of her heart beating quickly. He put his arm around her shoulders, caressingly. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said.

  They had been apart for twenty days, the longest time since their marriage. You would expect a young husband to be ardent after a three weeks’ absence. He was. She had never known Victor so ardent since their first weeks of marriage. If there was another woman in his life, he couldn’t have been seeing much of her, she thought; or maybe it was the idea of the whip that had excited him. She’d got to play on this.

  On their honeymoon, she had felt that one of the pleasantest things about love-making was the quiet talking together afterwards. One of the slightly melancholy things about marriage, she had later come to think, was how very seldom one had that talking together afterwards. Victor was tired after a long day’s work. He usually fell asleep within ten minutes. Another of the pleasant things about that talking together afterwards had been the knowledge that within half an hour or so he would be wanting to make love to her again. The first recognition of that mounting need had made her heart beat faster. Nowadays that hardly ever happened.

  But this night was exceptional. Their talk together lingered on, for fifteen minutes, twenty, half an hour. A mischievous idea occurred to her. During her honeymoon, and on their post-marriage, honeymoon-style holidays, she had lain passive at his side, awaiting the first signal of his need for her; but during the last three nights she had been far from passive. She had learned the magic power that lay within a woman’s fingertips, within her own fingertips. Why ignore that lesson? She turned towards him, on her side. She let her hand slide across his knees. Slowly she drew her fingers upwards, upwards, with the lightest, the most electric of all touches. She remembered how Naomi had asked her whether there was any change in Victor’s love-making, some trick that he had learned from another woman. Myra was on safe ground here. She could not have learned this from another man. Her fingertips fluttered over him. Yes, it was working. It had worked. ‘Darling, oh darling,’ she sobbed, as he turned toward her.

  Afterwards, a long time afterwards, he said, ‘I don’t think, do you, that you would be justified in using that whip on me tonight.’

  She chuckled to herself. The idea had excited him.

  6

  Ten days later Myra was rung up
in the morning by a man who said: ‘You do not know me; you have never heard of me. But I have to see you about something of great importance to you. My name is Montagu Frank. I would like to see you alone, when there is no likelihood of our being disturbed. I shall need half an hour at least to explain the situation to you.’ Myra arranged to see him at three o’clock.

  Recalling it all afterwards, she was to think: If anyone were to say to me, ‘Describe him,’ I don’t know how I’d answer. I don’t know if I’d recognise him in the street.

  Montagu Frank was the most negative person in his appearance that she had encountered. He might have been thirty-five years old, he might have been fifty-five. He was of medium height. He wasn’t heavy, though he had a slightly protuberant paunch. He had no distinguishing features, no moustache, no scar. He was neatly dressed, but without any air of fashion. He looked the kind of man who had been at a minor public school and had made no mark there. He was carrying a small black attaché case. He said, ‘It is very kind of you to grant me this interview.’ He had an educated accent to the extent that it had no provincial inflection. It gave the impression of having at some point had a genuine accent filtered out of it. He tapped on the attaché case. He said, ‘I think I can best explain the purpose of my visit with the contents of this case; or rather I can let this case explain it.’

  He opened the case. He took from it a small tape recorder. He put the machine on the table and turned the switch.

  Two voices came from it, two female voices; one had a German and the other an English accent. The German voice was saying, ‘It wasn’t just vaguely diffused, it was localised too, wasn’t it?’ The English voice answered, ‘It was localised. It was diffused, oh, it was everything.’

  Mr. Frank switched off the machine. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘difficult to recognise one’s own voice when one first hears it on a tape recorder; but I presume you will have no difficulty in recognising the voice of the woman with the German accent.’

  ‘No difficulty whatsoever.’

  ‘No one who knew you would have any difficulty in recognising yours.’

  ‘I accept that.’

  ‘I possess a great many hundred feet of tape of conversations that took place in Malta between you and this woman. What I have brought here this morning is an abridged version containing the more … How shall I put it?’ He hesitated. Was he going to say ‘juicy.’ It was the kind of adjective that a man like this would use. But no, after a pause he found a word that was sufficiently definitive, the word ‘significant.’ Yes, she thought, that gets his message over.

  ‘No one hearing this recording,’ he went on, ‘would have the slightest doubt as to the relations that existed between you and this woman. What your husband’s reaction would be, in his capacity as a husband, I cannot say. There are, I believe, a certain number of husbands who would welcome a situation such as this. It would add a dimension, a fascinating dimension to their marriage.’

  He certainly is a revolting creature, Myra thought.

  ‘But however he might accept this record personally as a husband,’ Mr. Frank went on, ‘there can be no doubt how he would receive it professionally, as a man occupying a prominent position in government service. This record makes him a security risk.’

  He paused. He looked interrogatively at Myra. ‘I am not contradicting you,’ she said.

  ‘The fact that the other woman was a German makes the position the more delicate.’

  He paused again, and again with that interrogative expression on his face.

  I must keep my head, thought Myra. I mustn’t be aggressive. I mustn’t put his back up. At the same time I mustn’t be too docile. ‘I quite agree with you,’ she said. ‘Those tapes could be of the greatest damage to my husband. What price are you putting on them?’

  For the first time Mr. Frank permitted himself to smile. ‘It is a relief to deal with a practical woman of the world, who recognises the point of issue and comes straight to it.’

  ‘I am glad you appreciate that; I will be quite straightforward with you. It would be absurd for me living in a house like this, surrounded with some quite valuable china, pictures, furniture, with my husband receiving a substantial salary, to pretend that I am poor. I am not. Nor is my husband the kind of man who lives above his income. He is prudent and he is cautious. We could, if a crisis arose, raise a considerable amount of money. If, that is to say, it was a crisis in which we could work together as a team. This is not such a case. On the mantelpiece is a rather charming Meissen figurine. I could sell that for a hundred pounds, but it is not mine to sell. I could not explain its absence to my husband. I am sure that you will see my point. What I suggest is that you should name your price and that I should consider if I can meet it.’

  Whatever I do, she told herself, I must not make any deal on the instalment plan. She had read enough novels dealing with blackmail to be assured on that point. Better to throw herself on Victor’s mercy than lead a life of continual deceit, always wondering where she could raise the hundred or so pounds that would keep the transaction fluid. It must be a lump sum down, then the tapes handed over.

  Once again he smiled. ‘That point had occurred to me. I was not planning to ask you for any money. I was going to ask you to perform a service for me.’

  Ah, here it comes. This was how spies got enrolled and enough novels had warned her on that point. Was this Mr. Frank a Soviet spy? He looked the very kind of man who would be—impersonal, negative, hard to identify, a citizen of no man’s land.

  ‘What kind of service would you want of me?’ she asked, though she felt that it was an unnecessary question. Through Victor, if she were adroit, she would surely have access to a considerable amount of information that would be of paramount value to a foreign power. If that was what he wanted—and she was very sure it was—she had her answer ready. ‘No, no, no.’

  But no, that was not the service he required.

  ‘I had better,’ he said, ‘lay my cards upon the table. I am one of the representatives of a small international group whose main activity is the transference of drugs, heroin, hashish, and opium between one country and another. It is a very profitable business. A package of heroin that can be slipped into a handbag is worth several thousand pounds. But it is a very risky business. We have to choose our agents with the greatest care. As you will have realised by now, it is through blackmail that we recruit them.’

  ‘But that’s impossible.’

  She was taken off her guard so completely that she could not maintain her pose of detached, amiable co-operation. To become a drug courier … with all the risks that were attached; sooner or later she would be caught, inevitably. She would not know a second’s peace of mind. No, no no, it was impossible.

  He raised his hand. ‘Please let me explain. I said it was a risky business. It is; that is why we have to employ exceptional precautions, precautions that are extremely costly. You will be aware that it did not cost us nothing to obtain these tapes. But the profits in this business are so great that we can afford to underwrite expenses such as those. And because those profits are so high, we can afford to diminish the risks of discovery, to reduce them to a point where they are non-existent. I will explain to you how we work, or rather by explaining how the police work, I can show you how we outwit them. Police work of this kind comes under the heading of defensive security. The police watch for anything that is unusual. They throw out a net. They check movements across frontiers—roads, trains, ships, airports. They check means of communication. They watch cables. In wartime they impose censorship; they tap telephones. Their effectiveness depends on how tightly the meshes of the net are drawn. You will hear policemen say “The small fish may get through, but we catch the big ones.”

  ‘Now let us see how this affects us. If we had the same courier or couriers working for us all the time, we should awake suspicion. A woman like yourself can make one journey to Malta and no questions are asked. But suppose that you made four or five trips a year, th
at you went to Tangier, Beirut, Alexand-dria, Crete. They would want an explanation. For most of the time since the second war, residents of Great Britain have had a restricted travel allowance. How, they wonder, does she get the currency for this series of trips? They will make inquiries. If it is a question of her health, well, that’s all right. Again she may have a professional reason, she may be a painter or a writer, or she may have a French or Italian lover who can finance her trips. That again is fine. The police are not concerned with private morals. But if there is no obvious reason for her making these excursions, they will search for one; and they will go through her luggage with a magnifying glass. We have found, in consequence, that there is only one way of defeating the police and that is by using the same courier only once. That should be very comforting for you. We will give you one assignment and that is all.’

  He paused. His expression was that of a salesman, who has put over an irresistible proposition. ‘You mean,’ she said, ‘that I will carry out one mission and then you will give me those tapes?’

  ‘Exactly; after that one mission, neither you nor those tapes are of the slightest value to us.’

  ‘You could blackmail me, I suppose.’

  ‘Only in a minor way. We agreed on that a few minutes ago. I don’t say that we don’t use blackmail when it can be profitable—that’s particularly true in the case of men. But in your case, my dear lady, one trip with an envelope of heroin in your handbag will amply repay our trouble.’

  ‘The profits in your business must be considerable.’

  ‘They are, indeed they are.’

  She thought of the trouble and the cost that must have been involved in the acquisition of these tapes.

  ‘By the way,’ she asked, ‘how did you get these tapes?’

  He shrugged. ‘One of the first rules in this kind of game is never to betray the sources of one’s information. More people than you would imagine are in our pay. Bellhops, chambermaids. It isn’t difficult to hide a receiver.’

  Yes, she thought; but who tipped off the chambermaid? It was a line of thought she did not want to pursue. There was only one incident in the whole transaction that disgusted her, one picture that she could not face: Naomi saying to some underling, ‘Tonight in her room and on the following nights.’ She prayed that it was not in that way that it had happened. It was something that she did not want to visualise.