A Perfect Spy

by John le Carré

  “From what my masters say, it will start out as a work of internal reference,” Brotherhood said. “Then afterwards they’ll publish a sanitised version for the open market.”

  “You’re not M. R. D. Foot, are you?” said Mrs. Membury. “No, you can’t be. You’re Marlow. Well I think they’re inspired, anyway. So sensible to get hold of the actual people before they peg out.”

  “Who did you troop with?” Membury said.

  “Let’s just say I did a little of this and a little of that,” Brotherhood suggested with deliberate coyness, while he pulled on his reading glasses.

  “There he is,” said Mrs. Membury, stabbing a tiny finger at a group photograph. “There. That’s the young man you were asking about. Magnus. He did all the really brilliant work. That’s the old Rittmeister, he was an absolute darling. Harrison, what was the mess waiter’s name—the one who ought to have become a novice but didn’t have the gump?”

  “Forget,” said Membury.

  “And who are the girls?” said Brotherhood, smiling.

  “Oh my dear, they were all sorts of trouble. Each one dottier than the next and if they weren’t pregnant they were running off with unsuitable lovers, cutting their wrists. I could have opened a Marie Stopes clinic for them full time if we’d believed in birth control in those days. Now we’re hybrids. Our girls are on the pill, but they still get pregnant by mistake.”

  “They did the interpreting for us,” Membury said, filling himself a pipe.

  “Was there an interpreter involved in the Greensleeves operation?” Brotherhood said.

  “No need,” said Membury. “Chap spoke German. Pym handled him alone.”

  “Completely alone?”

  “Solo. Greensleeves insisted on it. Why don’t you talk to Pym?”

  “But who took him over when Pym left?”

  “I did,” said Membury proudly, brushing wet tobacco from the front of his disgraceful pullover.

  There is nothing like a red-backed notebook to instill order into desultory conversation. Having spread one very deliberately among the débris of several meals, and shaken out his big right arm as a prelude to becoming what he called a little bit official, Brotherhood drew a pen from his pocket with as much ceremony as a village policeman at the scene of the occurrence. The grandchildren had been removed. From an upper room came the sounds of someone trying to coax religious music from a xylophone.

  “If we could get it all down first I can come back to the individual specifics later,” said Brotherhood.

  “Jolly good idea,” said Mrs. Membury sternly. “Harrison, darling, listen.”

  “Unfortunately, as I have already told you, most of the raw material on Greensleeves has been destroyed, lost or misplaced, which puts even greater responsibility on the shoulders of surviving witnesses. That’s you. Now then.”

  For a while after this forbidding warning there was relative sanity while Membury with surprising accuracy recalled the dates and content of Greensleeves’ principal triumphs and the part played by Lieutenant Magnus Pym of the Intelligence Corps. Brotherhood wrote diligently and prompted little, only pausing to wet his thumb and turn the pages of his notebook.

  “Harrison, darling, you’re being slow again,” Mrs. Membury interposed occasionally. “Marlow hasn’t got all day.” And once: “Marlow’s got to get back to London, darling. He’s not a fish.”

  But Membury continued swimming at his own good pace, now describing Soviet military emplacements in southern Czechoslovakia; now the laborious procedure for prising small gold bars out of the Whitehall war chests which Greensleeves insisted on receiving in payment; now the fights he had had with Div. Int. to protect his pet agent from being overused. And Brotherhood, despite the little tape-recorder that nestled once more in his wallet pocket, set it all out for them to see, dates left, material centre.

  “Greensleeves didn’t have any other codename at any time, did he?” he asked casually as he jotted. “Sometimes a source gets rechristened for security reasons or because the name’s already been bagged.”

  “Think, Harrison,” Mrs. Membury urged.

  Membury took his pipe from his mouth.

  “Source Wentworth?” Brotherhood suggested, turning a page.

  Membury shook his head.

  “There was also a source”—Brotherhood faltered slightly as if the name had nearly escaped him—“Serena, that was it—no it wasn’t—Sabina. Source Sabina, operating out of Vienna. Or was it Graz? Maybe it was Graz before your time. Used to be a popular thing that, anyway, mixing up the sexes with the cover names. A quite general trick of disinformation, I’m told.”

  “Sabina?” cried Mrs. Membury. “Not our Sabina?”

  “He’s talking about a source, darling,” Membury said firmly, coming in much more quickly than was his habit. “Our Sabina was an interpreter, not an agent. Quite different.”

  “Well our Sabina was an absolute—”

  “She wasn’t a source,” said Membury firmly. “Now, come on, don’t tittle-tattle. Poppy.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Brotherhood.

  “Magnus wanted to call him Poppy. We did for a bit. Source Poppy. I rather liked it. Then up came Remembrance Day and some ass in London decided Poppy was derogatory to the fallen—poppies are for heroes, not traitors. Absolutely typical of those chaps. Probably got promoted for it. Total buffoon. I was furious, so was Magnus. ‘Poppy is a hero,’ he said. I liked him for that. Nice chap.”

  “That’s the bare bones done, then,” said Brotherhood, surveying his handiwork. “Now let’s flesh them out, can we?” He was reading from the subject headings he had written at the beginning of his notebook before he came. “Personalities, well, we’re touching on that. Value or otherwise of national servicemen to the peacetime intelligence effort, were they a help or a hindrance—we’ll come to it. Where they all went afterwards—did they attain positions of interest in their chosen walk of life? Well, you may have kept up with them, and there again you may not. That’s more for us to worry about than you.”

  “Yes, well now, whatever did happen to Magnus?” Mrs. Membury demanded. “Harrison was so upset he never wrote. Well so was I. He never even told us whether he converted. He was awfully close, we felt. All he needed was one more shove. Harrison was exactly like that for years. It took a jolly good talking to from Father D’Arcy before Harrison saw the light, didn’t it, darling?”

  Membury’s pipe had gone out and he was peering disappointedly into the bowl.

  “I never liked the chap,” he explained with a kind of embarrassed regret. “Never thought much of him.”

  “Darling, don’t be silly. You adored Magnus. You practically adopted him. You know you did.”

  “Oh Magnus was a splendid chap. The other chap. The source. The Greensleeves chap. I thought he was a bit of a fraud, to be honest. I didn’t say anything—it didn’t seem useful. With Div. Int. and London waving their caps in the air, why should we complain?”

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs. Membury, very firmly indeed. “Marlow, don’t listen. Darling, you’re being far too modest, as usual. You were the linchpin of the operation, you know you were. Marlow’s writing a history, darling. He’s going to write about you. You mustn’t spoil it for him, must he, Marlow? That’s the fashion these days. Put down, put down. I get absolutely sick of it. Look at what they did to poor Captain Scott on the television. Daddy knew Scott. He was a marvellous man.”

  Membury continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “All the brigadiers from Vienna beaming away like sand boys. Roars of applause from the War Office. No point in me killing the golden goose if they were all happy, was there? Young Magnus cocka-hoop. Well I didn’t want to spoil his fun.”

  “And he was taking instruction,” said Mrs. Membury pointedly. “Harrison had arranged for him to go to Father Moynihan twice a week. And he was running garrison cricket. And he was learning Czech. You can’t do that in a day.”

  “A h now, that’s interesting. About the learning Cze
ch, I mean. Was this because he had a Czech source then?”

  “It’s because Sabina set her cap at him, the little minx,” said Mrs. Membury, but this time her husband actually spoke through her.

  “His stuff was all so flashy, somehow,” he was saying, undeterred. “Always looked good on the plate, but when you came to chew it over, nothing really there. That’s how it seemed to me.” He gave a puzzled giggle. “Same as trying to eat a pike. All bones. You’d get a report in, look it over. I say, that’s jolly good, you’d think. But when you took a closer look it was boring. Yes, that’s true because we already know it.... Yes, that’s possible but we can’t verify it because we’ve nothing on that region. I didn’t like to say anything, but I think the Czechs could have been batting and bowling at the same time. I always thought that was why Greensleeves didn’t show up after Magnus went back to England. He wasn’t so sure he could hoodwink an older chap. Mean of me, I expect. I’m just a failed fish freak, aren’t I, Hannah? That’s what she calls me. Failed fish freak.”

  The description pleased them both so much that they broke out laughing for some while, so that Brotherhood had to laugh with them and keep back his question until Membury was able to hear him clearly.

  “You mean you never met Greensleeves? He never came to the rendezvous? I’m sorry, sir,” he said, returning to his notebook, “but didn’t you say just now you yourself took over source Greensleeves when Pym left Graz?”

  “I did.”

  “And now you say you never met him.”

  “Perfectly true. I didn’t. Stood me up at the altar, didn’t he, Hannah? She got me into my best suit, packed together all these stupid special foods he was supposed to like—how that started, God knows—he never turned up.”

  “Harrison probably got the wrong night,” said Mrs. Membury, with a fresh gust of laughter. “Harrison’s frightful about time, aren’t you, darling? He was never trained for Intelligence, you know. He was librarian in Nairobi. A jolly good one too. Then he met someone on the ship and got roped in.”

  “And out,” said Membury cheerfully. “Kaufmann came along. He was the driver. Charming chap. Well he knew the meeting place like the back of his hand. I didn’t get the wrong night, darling. I got the right one, I know I did. Sat in an empty barn all night. No word from him, nothing. We’d no means of getting hold of him, it was all one way. Ate a bit of his stupid food. Drank some of his booze, I enjoyed that. Went home. Same again the next night and the next. I waited for a message of some sort, phone call like the first time. Absolute blank. Chap was never heard of again. We should have had a formal handover with Pym present, of course, but Greensleeves wouldn’t allow it. Prima donna, you see, like all agents. ‘One chap at a time.’ Iron rule.” Membury absently helped himself from Brotherhood’s glass. “Vienna was furious. Blamed it all on me. Then I told them he was no good anyway and that didn’t help.” He gave another rich laugh. “I should think it got me sacked if truth were known. They didn’t say so, but I’ll bet it jolly well helped!”

  Mrs. Membury had made a tuna-fish risotto because it was Friday, and a trifle with cherries on it which she refused to let Membury eat. When lunch was over she and Brotherhood stood on the river bank watching Membury hacking cheerfully at the reeds. Nets and fine wires were stretched all ways across the water. Among the breeding boxes, an old punt was sinking at its mooring. The sun, freed of the mist, beat brightly.

  “So tell us about the wicked Sabina,” Brotherhood suggested artfully, out of Membury’s earshot.

  Mrs. Membury couldn’t wait. An absolute minx, she repeated: “One look at Magnus and she saw herself with a British passport, a jolly good British husband and nothing to worry about for the rest of her life. But Magnus was a bit too sly for her, I’m pleased to say. He must have stood her up. He never said so, but that was the way we read it. In Graz one day. Gone the next.”

  “Where did she go then?” Brotherhood said.

  “Home to Czechoslovakia, that was the story. With her tail between her legs was our theory. Left a note for Harrison saying she was homesick and she was going back to her old boyfriend, despite the beastly régime. Well that didn’t please London, as you can imagine. It didn’t raise Harrison’s stock one bit. They said he should have seen it coming and done something about it.”

  “I wonder what became of her,” Brotherhood mused with an historian’s dreaminess. “You don’t remember her other name, do you?”

  “Harrison. What was Sabina’s other name?”

  With surprising swiftness the answer rang back across the water. “Kordt. K-O-R-D-T. Sabina Kordt. Very beautiful girl. Charming.”

  “Marlow says what became of her?”

  “God knows. Last we heard she’d changed her name and landed herself a job in one of the Czech Ministries. One of the defectors said she’d been working for ’em all along.”

  Mrs. Membury was not so much astonished as proved right. “Now there you are! Married getting on for fifty years, thirtysomething years since Austria, and he doesn’t even tell me she turned up in Czechoslovakia working for one of the Ministries! I expect Harrison had an affair with her himself if truth were known. Practically everybody did. Well my dear she must have been a spy, mustn’t she? It sticks out a mile. They’d never have taken her back if they hadn’t their hooks on her all along, they’re far too vindictive. So Magnus was well rid of her then, wasn’t he? Are you sure you won’t stay for tea?”

  “If I could take a few of those old photographs,” Brotherhood said. “We’ll give you a credit in the book, naturally.”

  Mary knew the technique exactly. In Berlin she had watched Jack Brotherhood use it a dozen times, and helped him often. At training camp they had called it paperchasing: how to make an encounter with someone you don’t trust. The only difference was, today it was Mary who was the subject of the operation, and the anonymous writer of the note who didn’t trust her:“I have information that could lead us both to Magnus. You will please do the following. Any morning between ten and twelve, you will sit in the lobby of the Hotel Ambassador. Any afternoon between two and six you will take a coffee at the Café Mozart. Any evening between nine and midnight, the lounge of the Hotel Sacher. Mr. König will collect you.”

  The Mozart was half empty. Mary sat at a centre table where she could be seen and ordered herself a coffee and a brandy. They’ve watched me arrive and now they’re watching to see whether I am followed. Pretending to consult her diary, she took covert note of the people round her and the parked charabancs and fiacres in the street outside the big windows, looking for anything that could resemble a stake-out. When you’ve got a conscience like mine, everything stinks anyway, she thought: from the two nuns frowning at the stock exchange prices in the window of the bank to the huddle of bowler-hatted young coachmen stamping their feet and watching the girls go by. In a corner of the café, a fat Viennese gentleman was expressing interest in her. I should have worn a hat, she thought. I’m not a respectable single woman. She got up, went to the newspaper rack and without thinking chose Die Presse. Now I suppose I roll it up and take it for a walk in my stockinged feet, she thought stupidly, as she opened it at the film page.

  “Frau Pym?”

  A woman’s voice, a woman’s bosom. A woman’s deferentially smiling face. It was the girl from the cash desk.

  “That’s right,” said Mary, smiling in return.

  From behind her back she produced an envelope with “Frau Pym” written on it in pencil. “Herr König left this message for you. He is very sorry.”

  Mary gave her fifty schillings and opened the envelope.

  “Please pay your bill and leave the café at once, turning right into the Maysedergasse, and remaining on the right-hand pavement. When you reach the pedestrian precinct turn left, and keep to the left side, walking slowly and admiring the shop windows.”

  She wanted the loo but she didn’t like to go in case he thought she was tipping someone off. She put the note in her handbag, finished her coffe
e and took her bill to the cash desk where the girl gave her another smile.

  “These men are all the same,” the girl said while the change rattled down the chute.

  “You’re telling me,” said Mary. They both laughed.

  As she left the café a young couple entered and she had a feeling they were disguised Americans. But then a lot of Austrians were. She turned right and came at once to the Maysedergasse. The two nuns were still at their stock prices. She kept to the right-hand pavement. It was twenty past three and the Wives’ meeting was sure to end by five so that they could all get home to change into halter dresses and sequin handbags for the evening cattle market. But even when everyone had gone and only Mary’s car remained in the Lumsdens’ drive, Fergus and Georgie might well assume she had stayed on for a quiet drink with Caroline on her own. If I make it back by quarter to six I stand a chance, she reckoned. She paused before a woman’s lingerie shop and found herself admiring a pair of tart’s black cami-knickers in the window. Who buys that stuff anyway? Bee Lederer, a pound to a penny. She hoped something would happen soon, before the Ambassadress came out with an armful of the stuff, or one of the many unattached men tried to pick her up.

  “Frau Pym? I am from Herr König. Please come quickly.”

  The girl was pretty and badly dressed and nervous. Following her Mary had an overwhelming memory of being back in Prague visiting a painter the authorities did not approve of. The side street was one minute packed with shoppers, the next empty. All Mary’s senses were alight. She smelt delicatessen, frost and tobacco. She glanced into a shop doorway and recognised the man from the Café Mozart. The girl turned left then right, then left again. Where am I? They entered a paved square. We’re in the Kärtnerstrasse. We’re not. A hippie boy took Mary’s photograph and tried to press a card on her. She brushed him aside. A red plastic bear was holding his mouth open for contributions to some charity. An Asian pop group was singing Beatles music. Across the square lay a dual carriageway and at the near side of it a brown Peugeot waited with a man at the wheel. As they approached, he pushed the back door open at them. The girl grabbed the door and said, “Get in, please.” Mary got in and the girl followed. Must be the Ring, she thought. If so it was not a part of the Ring she recognised. She saw a black Mercedes dawdling behind them. Fergus and Georgie, she thought, knowing that it wasn’t. Her driver glanced both ways, then pointed the car straight at the central reservation—bump, it’s the front tyres, bump, that was my backside you just broke. Everything hooted and the girl peered anxiously through the back window. They left the carriageway and shot down a side street, across a square and as far as the Opera where they stopped. The door on Mary’s side opened. The girl ordered her out. Mary had hardly made the pavement before a second woman squeezed past her and took her place. The car drove away at speed, as neat a substitution as Mary had seen. A black Mercedes followed it but she didn’t think it was the same one. A dapper, embarrassed young man was guiding her through a wide doorway to a courtyard.