Paris Spring

by James Naughtie

  On this night, however, he had imbibed a measure of Mungo’s alarm, and, because their closeness had bred such a dislike of disturbance in the weekly routine, his own worry seeped into the conversation and confirmed Mungo in his sudden gloom. The axis had tilted, and in a few minutes Altnabuie had been thrown out of balance.

  Mungo spoke. ‘Their lives have always troubled me – the obligations, the dangers I suppose, too. The way they disappear. You understand why, as well as I do.’

  Babble nodded, and after a little time of silence, he said, ‘What worries you most?’

  ‘That’s quite simple. I worry that he isn’t safe.’

  Mungo said he often wanted to talk to Will’s people – or Abel’s – but it wasn’t easy, nor even proper. They were out of his reach. Babble knew enough of the history to understand. ‘But that’s not how it works, I’m afraid,’ Mungo said.

  Babble, as he began to clear the table, asked him, ‘Is there no one?’

  Mungo had been far away in his mind, but came back to attention at the question. He spoke softly and slowly. ‘There is one man, though I haven’t seen him for long enough. He cares about Will. I know that much. Now may be the moment. What do you think?’

  Babble was leaning over the sink. ‘Of course. Get on with it.’

  And Mungo said, ‘I’ll ring. I have a telephone number upstairs for emergencies. I’ve only used it once, when Mother died.’

  He was looking through the window by the door towards the woods. Darkness had settled but he could see that the trees were bending gently in a west wind that had picked up in the last hour. There was a rattle on the glass. ‘Even when it blows, we’re peaceful here,’ Mungo said. ‘We take the calm for granted, don’t we? The certainty about tomorrow.’

  Babble was at his side. ‘What’s thrown you?’

  ‘His voice,’ Mungo said. ‘A feeling that, for once in my life, I’m not able to read him.’

  Babble said that they had always known that Will and Abel were leading lives that couldn’t be open.

  Mungo spoke with sadness. ‘I understand that. They love their secrets, and I have none. Perhaps that’s why I’m feeling lonely tonight.’

  He turned back from the window. ‘I’m a brother, and I know when something goes wrong with them. I can’t stand back from that.’

  ‘It needn’t be bad,’ said Babble.

  ‘But I’m sure it is.’ Mungo turned to him, and there was no smile. ‘I know Will too well.’

  ‘What kind of badness?’

  Mungo said, ‘I can’t tell. For his sake, I hope he can.’

  *

  Flemyng slept fitfully, rising with the light and finding a café that opened early, where they were still rolling the tables into place on the pavement and wiping them down. He walked to the stand on the corner of the Boul’ Mich to buy his newspapers and spent a minute or two scanning the headlines and covers. Paris-Match had a fashion portrait, and he turned to the news magazines. A byline caught his eye, and he added the magazine to his pile.

  Walking back to the café, he turned to the centre pages, and there was Grace Quincy. It was a valedictory to America at a time of agony before she resumed her European travels, a poem to her own feelings. Assassination and riots, the melodrama of humiliation and wild hope in politics, a wanderer’s picture of home that expressed a child’s feeling of loss and wonder. Flemyng stopped on the corner, leaning on a lime tree, to read to the end. There was a picture of Quincy in Chicago, on a burnt-out street in the dusk with police shields behind her, and he remembered the strength that he had seen in her at Hoffman’s party. He had a habit of talking aloud to himself when it was safe, and as he stepped towards his table at the café, he said, ‘I like you, Miss Quincy.’

  The call from Sandy Bolder came to his apartment in the late morning when he was hoping for more solitude. He had excused himself from church and the ambassador’s drinks, deciding to throw himself into serious work on his French, which he still thought underpowered. He’d been reminded in recent weeks of Bridger’s ease and eloquence in, so it seemed, any language he chose. It persuaded him to improve.

  He had bought an edition of Madame Bovary from a bouquiniste on the Left Bank that pleased him because it seemed to have passed through many hands, although he was finding his progress unsatisfying, and he was working his way into Emma’s first affair with distracting detours to the dictionary he’d placed on the sofa beside him. The sun was filling his drawing room as he tried to find a rhythm in his reading, and he was looking forward to a serene afternoon, alone. When Bolder interrupted he was irritated.

  ‘Will? Sandy here. I think we need to get together this evening. No names, no pack drill’ – Bolder’s patter always made Flemyng wince – ‘but there are things to say. Brasserie Lipp? Nice bustle on a Sunday. A quick something at about eight?’

  And now he was side by side with Bolder in the back room, attended by a cadaverous waiter with a droopy grey moustache who hadn’t smiled since they’d taken their places and who’d slid their table back into place so that they were pinned like a pair of flying ducks against the wall. At least they could see the rest of the mirrored room, Flemyng thought, and their position gave them a little privacy. Bolder had started with office gossip while he poured from a carafe of red wine and broke bread for them both.

  ‘Poor Freddy. It seems to be such a struggle. How long, dear Lord, how long?’

  Flemyng refused the invitation. His mind was flitting from the conversation to Mungo, and he felt flashes of guilt at his dyspeptic phone call the night before. Guilt, and anger at himself. Too much of his anxiety had been on display.

  With Bolder, he had to hide it. They had moved from Freddy to the pernickety habits of Wemyss, the ambassador’s private secretary – ‘Wemyss, sounds like seems’ was the label that Bolder never failed to pin on him – and then he had made Flemyng’s flesh creep with a description of the new librarian, who was less of a bluestocking than her predecessor and therefore, as Bolder put it, held the promise of opportunity. Flemyng avoided his leer by drinking, and thinking of Mungo. He also wondered why Bolder had summoned him.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about your friend on the metro, Will. Not the place for that,’ he said in a schoolboy stage whisper. Flemyng stiffened with annoyance. ‘But we’re hearing a good deal about the other side at the moment. You’ll remember I said in Freddy’s room that Pierce has spotted activity.’

  ‘Even Pierce,’ Flemyng said.

  For ten minutes or so Bolder rehearsed the office view of the NATO negotiations, spoke admiringly of the quality of material finding its way to the station from Prague and Warsaw, and gave a clumsy precis of cables from London about Berlin which Flemyng had digested for himself the previous week. Bolder also made a case for his own contacts in France in circles where sympathy lay with Moscow. Flemyng believed that Bolder could never sustain a conversation with such people without appearing ridiculous, whether in a philosophers’ café or on a trade union march, and concluded that at best he had acquired a useful contact in one of the French agencies who watched Moscow’s friends as best they could.

  There was alarm about Russian intentions in Prague, Bolder said, and as a consequence a fear that France and Italy might face trouble from those whom he described simply as the undesirables. ‘Trouble of a kind we haven’t known,’ he said with satisfaction and his sideways smile. ‘I’m on alert. Standing by my bed.’

  ‘So what’s new?’ Flemyng asked. ‘We know all this, Sandy.’

  Bolder tapped the side of his nose, and Flemyng was unable to prevent himself from laughing.

  ‘Don’t mock, dear boy, please. I do have one titbit. I think it may turn out to be one of the juiciest we’ve had in our time here.’

  They watched the waiter clear their plates without a word, and Bolder waved him away.

  ‘Plans of ours. Important plans. I think they have them,’ he said in a whisper.

  ‘Who?’ said Flemyng, irritated by ‘I’.


  ‘Who do you think? Don’t tease me.’ Bolder’s discomfort verged on anger. ‘The reason I’m choosing you,’ he said, ‘is that you had that brush in the street. We know something, don’t we? That your man and his compatriots, Berliners of the wrong sort, are just Moscow’s cherished message boys. That’s my point. There’s a game afoot.’

  ‘So you’re telling me there’s a leak.’ Flemyng’s incredulity was obvious. ‘Where?’

  Bolder placed both hands on the table, spread apart as if he were poised at a keyboard. ‘There are so many places to choose from, I’m afraid. We may be talking military planning here – movements, how many people in the field…’ and he dropped his voice. ‘The things we’re able to do in a time of trouble, along with our allies. Does the other side know much more than we’ve always thought, and at the worst moment imaginable, when Moscow and Washington are both in a spin? That’s my question.’

  ‘When, Sandy?’ Flemyng said. ‘When did you learn this?’

  ‘Over the course of a week or two, and I think I’ve confirmed it this very weekend. I can tell you this much, Will. The French have found traces of a network. I’m told they have a list. A roster of spies, sent to get inside our secret places.’

  Flemyng said nothing, because Bolder was heading towards his climax.

  ‘They’re not sharing names or places with us – yet. But they will, and I think I can say that it will be through my good offices.’

  ‘The Americans?’ Flemyng said.

  ‘Exactly what I thought you’d ask.’ Bolder was smiling, enjoying his moment. ‘More your territory than mine, of course. Our French friends rather enjoy holding things back from Washington, as you know, but I’m told that the word may be out. I shall be learning more, in time. That’s all I can say. But at this end, of course. I wanted you to be the first to know.’ He ran the back of a hand across his lips. ‘I’m going to London in a day or two. No cable. This is being done in person – solo, you might say.’

  His triumph laid out, Bolder waved to the waiter sitting at his station by the bar and he rose to come to them, a long napkin trailing from his arm. ‘Your ears only, of course.’

  ‘Freddy?’ said Flemyng, watching him.

  ‘Not yet,’ Bolder said and raised a glass, as if no other answer were possible. ‘Only when I see the names.’

  Flemyng concealed most of his shock, but the conversation left him staring at his companion in a state of wonder. Either Bolder was bluffing, in which case he had lost his bearings and was veering towards a cliff edge, or he was handling a precious prize with a fecklessness that Flemyng could barely comprehend. To arrange a rendezvous for such a revelation at Lipp, which Flemyng considered a gathering place for all the disgruntled waiters in Paris and their target customers, was an act of delinquency. To boast of having kept Freddy Craven in the dark was disloyal and shocking, and – Flemyng was cool and honest about himself – to trust him with such a secret before telling London was to court danger with the recklessness of a street drunk. Yet Bolder, summoning cognacs for them both, was oblivious.

  Flemyng knew, too, that later, when he would lie awake as he had done each night for a week, he’d consider another possibility. That Bolder was playing his own game.

  The curse and joy of all their lives.

  He took the only sensible course, and changed the subject. Bolder reacted as if he had expected it.

  ‘The students out at Nanterre?’

  ‘A comic business,’ Bolder said.

  Flemyng smiled. ‘Some of them call themselves situationists, whatever that means.’ He shook his head.

  ‘There you are.’ Bolder was laughing now. ‘Piffle. Some of them are twenty years old. We mustn’t be distracted by them. The old Moscow hands are the real danger. They’ve been at the game a long time. The deeper undercurrents run strong.’

  Flemyng was aware, he went on, as if he were talking to an outsider, that NATO was being tested. Russian intentions were hard to read, and therefore alarming. ‘That is why I believe I have a duty to take myself to London, entertaining though these students may be,’ leaving no doubt about where he stood on the subject of some of Flemyng’s reports.

  As if they were deliberately putting Bolder’s revelation out of their minds as well as their conversation, they paid the bill quickly, Bolder counting out the francs in two piles to get the sums right, and made a hurried exit. Their apartments were only a few streets apart so they walked together on the first part of the journey home, heading west on the boulevard before they turned into a short street that would bring Bolder to his door. After a few minutes in which they’d said nothing, Flemyng stopped and spoke sharply. Bolder was taken aback by his tone.

  ‘Let me be clear, Sandy. Who do you think is on this list that you are told exists but haven’t seen, and why should we believe in it?’

  ‘Please don’t jump on me. I’m like one of your bloody stalkers in Scotland. Advancing slowly on my target, but not there yet.’ He had reddened and anger was showing for the first time. ‘If I knew names, I would be convening meetings with Freddy, unleashing the dogs, wouldn’t I? All I know is that there is evidence of a network of agents who are starting, ever so slowly, to dig deep. The kind of thing we dream about. Except this time it’s the other side doing it to us, and our allies. All of them, because we’re in this together.’

  ‘And you’ve swallowed it in one gulp,’ Flemyng said, drinking.

  The barb hit home and Bolder’s excitement showed its brittle edge. ‘This may be my moment, Will. Trust me to judge if this is the genuine article.’

  ‘I’m simply reflecting,’ Flemyng said, ‘on some of the dud leaks that have been sent our way in recent years. We know what happens when the service is forced to spend time chasing its own tail, and disappearing up its own backside. We’re turned inside out.’

  ‘You can trust me,’ Bolder said, and, for the first time that Flemyng could remember, laid a hand on his shoulder. He was not a toucher, and it was a sign of his need for praise. His anger had passed, and he was the supplicant again.

  ‘I hope you’re right, Sandy. Believe me.’

  They walked for a few minutes in silence, and reached Bolder’s apartment building.

  Flemyng knew what was expected. ‘I’m grateful for your confidence, Sandy, but it’s all rather troubling and puzzling. Let’s talk when you’re back from London. Do be careful there.’

  Bolder looked crestfallen as they parted with a brief handshake. Flemyng watched him fumble for a key before he turned away for the five-minute walk home. Bolder called after him from the doorway as Flemyng pulled his trilby down and reached the corner.

  ‘I’m so grateful, Will. Your trust is important to me.’

  Afterwards, Flemyng reflected that if they had taken another route, a detour round the great bulk of Saint-Sulpice whose bells he could hear from his bedroom, and had walked first to his own apartment instead of to Bolder’s, there would have been a moment of crisis to add to the strangeness of their encounter at the table.

  But he had no warning of that thought as he pulled his jacket tight and wrapped a scarf around his neck, his thoughts elsewhere. First, he pictured Altnabuie where he could see Mungo preparing for bed and saying his prayers – the only one of the boys who had kept the habit – and then, as he found himself veering into a favourite narrow street, he brought to mind his lost love. He thought he would never see Isabel again, but she seemed to walk beside him. Once he had wanted her gone, but would it have been better if she were there? It was a question he believed he would never be able to answer.

  He was passing the piano repair shop that she had loved, where only a few tell-tale fragments on the red cloth in the window hinted at what went on inside. They were never cleared away at the end of the day, and now a street lamp illuminated a tableau that stirred him. A row of felt-covered hammers on a wooden batten taken from a piano’s innards, a thick metal string wound into a coil, two ivory keys side by side and, lying on its own, a shiny brass peda
l that looked like an abandoned shoemaker’s last. They were remnants of their affair, a few glistening shards of memory. He didn’t pause, but found as he stepped towards the corner that the sight had unsettled him.

  He reached his own street, and as he stepped off the pavement he caught a movement in the darkness of the passage that ran alongside his apartment building to the street behind. He stopped, and didn’t move. Watching for a moment, he saw nothing more in the stillness.

  His first instinct was a stab of relief. Bolder had gone. Then he pushed his shoulders back and walked across the roadway, directly into the shadows.

  Kristof said, ‘Thank you, Mr Flemyng.’

  EIGHT

  On the stroke of ten the next morning, Bolder was at Freddy Craven’s door to report the outcome of the inquiries that had occupied his weekend. He was spruced, polished and eager.

  An earlier appearance would have been unwelcome, because Craven took his time in settling into his daily routine, shovelling the books and papers alone in his office and unwilling to be disturbed before he had gone through his mysterious and reassuring paces, but Bolder was determined to be his first Monday business. He gave a sharp double knock, and waited for the call to enter. In his declining days, Craven had rediscovered the advantages of order.

  Bolder’s habit was to open a conversation with an apology. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But I’ve had a busy weekend. I had to.’

  Craven was seated at his desk, leaning over his papers. ‘You’ll have to explain, Sandy.’ He didn’t look up.

  ‘Our talk on Friday was so odd,’ Bolder said, ‘and I could tell that you shared my view. No hint of why Will should be picked up? Not a clue from our East German friend? Freddy, I can’t quite believe it. I care about him as you do, and we must protect him.’

  So he reported that he had set some hares running, although with some regret.

  Sitting down, he said that Freddy would imagine how he’d gone about it, because the old man knew Bolder’s style. But he would describe his preparations nonetheless. He had exchanged messages with their mutual friend Sam Malachy, now a trader in the spies’ bazaar in Vienna, using the NATO imbroglio with the French as the starting point. ‘We had a little talk on the telephone. Carefully, of course. Then some cables. Funnily enough, he’s in London as we speak. More language training, so he says, poor chap. Needs it, mark you.’