The Unlikely Spy(119)

"What happened to need to know? I had no need to know all that. You could have tunneled my memo to Schellenberg and never told me about any of it."

"That's true."

"So why did you do it, to impress me?"

"In a way, yes," Boothby said. "You've impressed a great many people with your idea to leave Catherine Blake in place, including me. I realized I've underestimated you, Alfred--your intelligence and your ruthlessness. It takes a coldhearted bastard to send Peter Jordan back into that bedroom with a briefcase full of Double Cross. I wanted to show you the next level of the game."

"Is that how you think of this, Sir Basil, a game?"

"Not just a game, Alfred, the game."

Boothby smiled. It could be his greatest weapon. Vicary, gazing at his face, imagined it was the same smile he used on his wife, Penelope, when assuring her he had given up his latest little love.





The illusion of Kettledrum required Vicary to spend much of his day in his cramped office in St. James's Street--after all, they were trying to convince the Abwehr, and the rest of the department, that Vicary was still pursuing a German agent with access to top-secret material. He closed the door and sat down at his desk. He desperately needed sleep. He laid his head on the desk like a drowsy student and closed his eyes. When he did, he was immediately back in the grimy Hoxton flat. He saw the Pelican and he saw the Hawke. He saw the little boys in the filthy alleyway, pale malnourished legs poking from their shorts. He saw the moth turning to dust. He heard the organ music echoing through the grand cathedral. He thought of Matilda; guilt over missing her funeral flashed over him like hot water poured down his neck.

Damn. Why can't I turn it off just for a few minutes and sleep?

Then he saw Boothby, striding around the flat, telling the story of the Hawke and the Pelican and the elaborate deception he had foisted on Walter Schellenberg. He realized he had never seen Boothby happier: Boothby in the field, surrounded by his agents, Boothby drinking vile coffee from a chipped enamel mug. He realized he had misjudged Boothby or, more accurately, he had been misled by Boothby. The entire department had been. Boothby was a lie. The comic bureaucrat, preening around his grand office, the silly personal maxims, the red light and the green light, the ridiculous fetish about moisture rings on his precious furniture--it was all a lie. That was not Basil Boothby. Basil Boothby was not a pusher of paper. Basil Boothby was a runner of agents. A liar. A manipulator. A deceiver. Vicary, drifting off to sleep, found he loathed Boothby just a little less. But one thing troubled him. Why had Boothby lowered the veil? And why now?

Vicary felt himself descending into a dreamless sleep. In the distance Big Ben tolled ten o'clock. The chimes faded, only to be replaced by the muffled clatter of the teleprinters outside his closed door. He wanted to sleep for a long time. He wanted to forget about it all, just for a few minutes. But after a short while, the shaking began--gentle at first, then violent. Then the sound of a girl's voice--at first downy and pleasant, then slightly alarmed. "Professor Vicary . . . Professor Vicary. . . . Please wake up. . . . Professor Vicary. . . . Can you hear me?"

Vicary, his head still resting on his folded hands, opened his eyes. For an instant he thought it was Helen. But it was only Prudence, a flaxen angel from the typing pool. "I'm so sorry to wake you, Professor. But Harry Dalton's on the line, and he says it's urgent. Let me bring you a cup of hot tea, you poor lamb."





41


LONDON





Catherine Blake left her flat shortly before eleven a.m., a light, cold rain falling. The darkening skies promised worse weather to come. She had three hours before her rendezvous with Neumann. On dreary days like these she was tempted to skip her painstaking ritual sojourns across London and proceed straight to the rendezvous site. It was monotonous, exhausting work, constantly stopping and checking her tail, jumping on and off underground trains and in and out of taxicabs. But it was necessary, especially now.

She paused in the door, knotting a scarf beneath her chin, looking into the street. A quiet Sunday morning, traffic light, shops still closed. Only the cafe across the street was open. A bald man sat in a window table reading a newspaper. He looked up for an instant, turned a page, and looked down again.

Outside the cafe a half dozen people waited for a bus. Catherine looked at the faces and thought she had seen one of them before, maybe at the bus stop, maybe somewhere else. She looked up at the flats across the street. If they're watching you, they'll do it from a fixed position, a flat or a room over a shop. She scanned the windows, looking for any changes, any faces looking back at her. She saw nothing. She finished tying her scarf, put up her umbrella, and started walking through the rain.

She caught her first bus in Cromwell Road. It was nearly empty: a pair of old ladies; an old man who mumbled to himself; a slight man who had shaved poorly, wore a soggy mackintosh, and read a newspaper. Catherine got off at Hyde Park Corner. The man with the newspaper did too. Catherine headed into the park. The man with the newspaper headed in the opposite direction, toward Piccadilly. What was it Vogel had said about the watchers of MI5? Men you would walk past on the street and never give a second look. If Catherine were selecting men to be MI5 watchers, she would have chosen the man with the newspaper.

She walked north on a footpath bordering Park Lane. At the northern edge of the park, at Bayswater Road, she turned around and walked back to Hyde Park Corner. Then she turned around and walked north again. She was confident no one was following her on foot. She walked a short distance along Bayswater Road. She stopped at a letter box and dropped an empty unmarked envelope into the slot, using the opportunity to check her tail once more. Nothing. The clouds thickened, the rain fell harder. She found a taxi and gave the driver an address in Stockwell.