Disorderly Elements (7 page)

“Well, I suppose it can't be helped.”

“I do not propose to keep in contact while I am away. When I have returned you will be presented with a full report of my findings.”

“Good,” said Owen. He approved of written reports.

“I also have a request to make. I have now taken charge of all the documents relating to Grünbaum and his merry men. Before I leave I will lock everything in my office, and I would be grateful if the office remained locked until I return.”

Owen gave Wyman an inquiring look.

“You are taking this very seriously, aren't you? Very well. I see no reason why you can't lock the office.”

“Yes,” Wyman said. “Unlike you and the Minister, I do spy strangers. And when I said I wanted the office locked, I meant that it should be permanently locked. No one should have access to it—not even the secretaries or Mrs Hobbes.”

“I understand,” Owen said curtly. “Is there anything else?”

“No, thank you,” Wyman said. He got up and walked over to the door. Just before opening it he turned and smiled at Owen.

“Wouldn't it be amusing if I'd made one fatal error of judgment?” he asked.

“And what would that be?”

“The childish assumption that you yourself are above suspicion.”

He laughed quietly as he left the room.

W
YMAN FLEW TO ROME on the morning of May 11. He travelled under the assumed name of Edmund Ryle, using a false passport he had acquired when doing field work for the Firm. When its employees have finished their work abroad, the Firm insists on the immediate return of all their bogus documentation. However, Wyman had managed to delay the return of the Ryle passport until it had officially expired. He then applied to have the passport renewed, and upon receipt of the new passport he returned the old one to the Firm. Hence, unknown to his employers, Wyman was able to travel under an assumed name whenever he pleased. Given the nature of Wyman's trip, and his obvious desire that no one but himself and Owen should know what he was doing, keeping the false passport had turned out to be a good idea.

The flight from Heathrow Airport to Rome was brief and comfortable. Wyman sat in the first-class compartment of a British Airways TriStar, sipping brandy and smoking duty-free cigars. About halfway through the journey, the pilot pointed out that they were flying directly above the Alps. Wyman looked out and saw nothing but a thick carpet of cloud. He leaned back in his seat and wondered how Owen would react when presented with his expense account for the trip.

Gradually the weather brightened, and the pilot announced that they would soon be landing at Fiumicino airport. Wyman was reminded to put his watch forward by one hour, and was told that Italian customs would allow him to bring in 300 cigarettes, a bottle of wine and a bottle of spirits. Since all these items were cheaper in Rome than on the plane, Wyman ignored the offer.

Just under three hours had elapsed when the plane landed. Aeroporto Leonardo da Vinci, better known as Fiumicino, consists of two terminals about 18 miles from Rome, on the Tyrrhenian shore. The airport epitomizes the Italian flair for needless bureaucracy, inefficiency and confusion. As Wyman waited to collect his suitcase, he watched the scattered regiment of airport officials run about shouting, cursing, demanding and receiving entire forests of official documentation, annoying travellers and abusing porters.

With a skill born of bitter experience, Wyman managed to escape this confused mêlée with relative ease. He walked out of the airport into a warm sunny day and hailed a taxi. Forty minutes later he was in Rome.

Few cities can be summed up briefly, and Rome defies all concise descriptions. Suffice it to say that Rome is a coffee-coloured city whose exquisite beauty stems from paradox and contradictions. It is both vibrant and sleepy, surging with life twenty-four hours a day, and calmed by indifference to time. It is wildly cosmopolitan and yet typically Italian. It is both tasteful and vulgar, noisy and gentle, elegant and gauche. On a glowing spring day its streets are filled by tourists clutching cameras, fawning shopkeepers who shortchange their customers, plump housewives and their shrill Catholic progeny, wrinkled old men reading newspapers in cafés, slim youths on motorbikes, bronzed workmen, bubbly young virgins, stern priests, nuns with moustaches, homicidal motorists, the pilgrimage to the Vatican, the smell of roasting coffee and pungent cigarettes, blasts of laughter, torrents of abuse, appeals to heaven, shrugs of the shoulder, fury, joy, love and total indifference.

Wyman had not been to Rome for eight years, and he was delighted to be back. He was driven through the centre of town and up to his hotel at the top of the Via Veneto.

Rome's hotels are graded deluxe, first, second and third class. Wyman chose to stay at the Hotel Flora, which is graded first class. Its slightly dated décor and excellent service appealed to his collegiate tastes, as did the view it enjoyed of the Villa Borghese, Rome's most famous park.

He was led up to a sumptuous double room, where he unpacked his suitcase and washed off the dust of two airports. He shaved, dressed and smoked a cigarette. At 6.15 he went downstairs, gave in his key, and walked out into the Via Veneto. He saw the Porta Pinciana, two squat sixth-century towers that lead into the Villa Borghese. Opposite him lay Harry's Bar, one of the favourite haunts of the American fraternity. When Wyman had been posted to Rome, Harry's was an excellent source of CIA gossip.

He walked down to the corner of the Via Ludovisi, and smiled with recognition as he saw the Café de Paris over to his right. He made his way past rich tourists, flower vendors and newsstands, down to the intersection with the Via Bissolati. He passed the large, bright Palazzo Margherita, now the United States Embassy, and watched the embassy staff float in and out of the American Library across the road.

After this the Via Veneto quietened down, and Wyman walked a little more swiftly past older hotels, travel agencies and cheaper cafés where low-budget tourists haggled with high-budget whores. Eventually he came to the end of the Via Veneto and into the Piazza Bar-berini. Two centuries ago the Piazza had been a market-place. Now it contained a large hotel, a cinema and an underground station. The only clue to its history lay in the baroque Tritone fountain, which Bernini had chipped out in 1637.

Wyman turned down the Via Sistina and finally arrived at his destination, an unremarkable little street called the Via della Mercede. He stopped at Number 55, a tall grey building bearing a plaque which read “Stampa Estera in Italia”, and went in.

The Stampa is Rome's foreign press centre. It had been given by Mussolini as a gift to the world's journalists. Ostensibly, this was a civilized, benevolent gesture on the part of a great statesman who had once been a journalist himself. In fact, Mussolini's intention had been to put all his rotten eggs in one basket, and the Stampa had been liberally seasoned with phone-taps and other listening devices.

After the war, the Stampa's importance as a press centre grew steadily, until its heyday in the 1960s, when it housed a bizarre collection of international scribes whose professionalism was matched only by their eccentricity.

In those days, Rome was the playground of the rich and famous, and no one was better qualified to report their antics to an incredulous world than the denizens of the Stampa. Hungry for copy, their editors drove these correspondents into the sort of workaholic frenzy that results in heavy drinking, failed marriages, fights, nervous breakdowns, and first-rate newspaper stories.

Presiding over all this mayhem was Frank Schofield, the grand old man of the Stampa. Schofield was a vast edifice of sardonic American lard, famed for his trenchant wit and ferocious drinking. He had corresponded from Rome since the 1930s, and had managed to survive over four decades' worth of social, political and journalistic lunacy. The turbulent 1960s had come and gone, but Schofield was still there, watching the world with cynical detachment.

Wyman had befriended Schofield when working as the Section V (Counter-Intelligence) officer at the MI6 Rome station. Unlike most of his colleagues, Wyman was a true cosmopolitan, and this had earned him Schofield's respect. Wyman had quickly realized that Schofield's caustic, boozy front masked an active, penetrating intellect, and that the two of them had a great deal in common. They shared a mordant sense of humour, as well as a taste for good food, drink and intelligent company. Both men were skilled professionals, and both preferred to hide the fact. Furthermore, they had more in common than was generally supposed. Schofield had been involved in US intelligence during the last world war and he maintained acquaintances in the “Company”, the CIA.

Wyman entered the Stampa and saw Schofield's sixteen-stone frame leaning against the bar. There was no one else there, apart from a long-suffering barman who was already catering for the American's liquid requirements.

“Hello, Frank,” Wyman said. “How are you?”

“About five drinks under par,” said Schofield. “How about you? Still pushing paper in Percy Street?”

“That's right. But not for much longer, I'm afraid.”

“Fired?”

“The English call it redundancy. It amounts to the same thing.”

Schofield shook his head and emitted a low whistle.

“I heard they're economizing.”

“Yes,” Wyman said. “I've heard the same thing.”

Schofield grinned.

“Drink?”

“Scotch please.”

The barman poured out the drink and gave it to Wyman.

“Were you prepared for it?” Schofield asked.

“I have to confess that I wasn't. Cheers.”

“Still,” Schofield observed, “I suppose you can go back to your university now.”

Wyman shook his head.

“No I can't. The College is taking similar steps. Very soon I shall be entirely without work.”

“Nobody likes an old-timer, Mike. What are you going to do?”

“God knows. I haven't really had time to think about it. Something rather unexpected has cropped up in the Firm, and I'm supposed to sort it out before I leave. That's why I've come to see you.”

“I didn't think you came here to exchange pleasant reminiscences. What can I do for you?”

“I'd prefer to talk about it elsewhere, if that's all right.”

Schofield's eyebrows lifted inquiringly.

“Oh, it's like that, is it? Is there any money in this?”

“Only my expense account.”

“That'll do. I presume we can talk over a quiet meal, thanks to the munificence of the Firm?”

“I don't see why not. It's the least they can do, isn't it?”

“Too damn right,” Schofield growled. “I might be cheap, but I don't work for free.”

“That,” Wyman observed, “should be the motto on your coat of arms.”

W
YMAN AND SCHOFIELD left the Stampa and walked down to the Via del Corso. The main streets were still full of people, so they turned off into a series of small lanes that led to the Piazza Navona.

“It's much quieter nowadays, Mike,” Schofield said. “No more big parties, crazy film stars, all that crap. Rome still makes for good stories, but I think it's sobering up.”

Wyman gave a sly grin.

“Are you talking about Rome or Frank Schofield?”

“Both, I guess. You know, I think I've become just another tourist attraction. People put me down on their itineraries, somewhere between Trajan's Column and the Trevi Fountain. I get all these weirdos from the States coming up and telling me how they've heard all about me. It's very disconcerting.

“The other day I got a visit from some girl who works at the US Embassy. She had her speech all ready. ‘Hello,' she said, ‘I've heard all about you. I've always wanted to meet you.' Then she took a good look at me and she said, ‘But Christ, you're so fuckin' old!'”

He exploded into laughter.

“You know,” he continued, “when I die, I think they're going to stuff me and put me in the Vatican Museum. I can think of one or two editors who think that should have happened twenty years ago.”

“Are you still writing?” Wyman asked.

“Officially, I'm retired. I still do an occasional feature for one or two American magazines, but my heart isn't in it any more.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing really,” Schofield sighed. “I guess I suddenly realized that I'm an old man. It's taken a lot of getting used to. Like Edith's death.”

“I was very sorry to hear about that. She was a marvellous lady.”

“She was a drunken old slut,” said Schofield. “But she had her good points.”

They finally came to the Via della Scrofa and went into Alfredo's restaurant. This is one of Rome's more expensive eating spots, made famous by its excellent food and clientele of international celebrities, whose yellowing photographs adorn Alfredo's walls. Wyman reflected that if a great deal of MI6 money was going to be spent, at least it wouldn't be wasted.

The two men began with an
antipasto
of melon and Parma ham. Next came a starter of
fettucine
in a delicate sauce of butter, ham and mushroom, helped on its way with a bottle of
Colli Albani
, a dry amber wine.

After this, Wyman ploughed into a large plate of
abbacchio
, roasted baby lamb, served with a salad of tender greens with an anchovy dressing. Schofield ordered
Pollo Alla Diavola
and
Carciofo Alla Romana
(artichoke sautéed with garlic and mint).

After coffee and a couple of shots of
Sambuca
, the conversation turned to the purpose of Wyman's visit.

“So Mike,” Schofield said, “tell me the big secret. Why are you in Rome?”

Wyman lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. “How much do you remember about the network coding system?”