Spy Story (11 page)

Ferdy took another glass of champagne and handed it to me, taking my empty in exchange. He said, ‘I keep telling myself that.'

The doorbell sounded. Ferdy looked anxiously at the front door. ‘Kick him in the crutch, you say?'

‘Mind he doesn't grab your ankle.'

He smiled. ‘It's all right, I'll attend to the door,' he called. He picked up his drink and finished it. ‘We're having drinks in the library. See yourself in, will you? I think you know everyone.'

It was a curious evening and yet there is no easy way to convey the atmosphere that was generated. Anyone might have guessed that attention would be on Schlegel. Not because he was Ferdy Foxwell's boss – not everyone present knew that, so perfunctory were Ferdy's introductions – but rather owing to Schlegel's personality. It was not entirely Schlegel's profligate expenditure of energy. Nor was it his resonant voice, that made shouting unnecessary. It was an atmosphere of uncertainty that he generated, and seemed to relish. For instance, there was what Schlegel did to the wood carvings.

Schlegel walked around the library, peering close at the engravings and the furniture and the ornaments and the bookcase. When he got to the medieval wooden pilgrim that stood five feet tall in the corner, Schlegel rapped it with his knuckles. ‘Damn nice, that,' he said in a voice that no one missed.

‘Let me give you a drink,' said Ferdy.

‘Is it real?'

Ferdy gave Schlegel another drink.

Schlegel nodded his thanks and repeated his question. ‘Real, is it?' He rapped the priest on the arm as he'd so often rapped me, and then he cocked his head to listen. Maybe he'd been checking on whether I was real.

‘I believe so,' said Ferdy apologetically.

‘Yeah? Well, they sell plaster jobs in Florence … just like that, you'd never tell.'

‘Really?' said Ferdy. He flushed, as if it might be bad form to have a real one when these plaster ones were so praiseworthy.

‘Fifty bucks apiece, and you'd never tell.' Schlegel looked at the Foxwells.

Teresa giggled. ‘You're a terrible tease, Colonel Schlegel.'

‘So maybe they are a hundred bucks. But we saw a couple of dandy angels – ninety-eight dollars the pair – beauts, I tell you.' He turned and started to examine the Chippendale long-case clock. And people began talking again, in that quiet way they do when waiting for something to happen.

Marjorie took my arm. Mrs Schlegel smiled at us. ‘Isn't this a wonderful house.'

Marjorie said, ‘But I was hearing all about your beautiful thatched cottage.'

‘We love it,' said Mrs Schlegel.

‘By the way,' I said, ‘that thatched roof is beautiful. And it's real, not plastic.'

‘I should think it is real.' She laughed. ‘Chas did ninety-five per cent of that roof with his own bare hands; the local thatcher works in a factory all the week.'

It was then that the butler came to tell Teresa that dinner could be served.

I heard Schlegel say, ‘But as they say in the Coke commercials, you can't beat the real thing, Mrs Foxwell.' She laughed, and the servants folded back the doors of the dining-room and lit the candles.

Schlegel's midnight-blue dinner suit, with braid edge collar, showed his athletic build to advantage, and Mrs Foxwell wasn't the only woman to find him attractive. Marjorie sat next to him at dinner, and hung on his every word. I knew that from now on I'd get little sympathy for my Schlegel horror stories.

There were enough candles on the table to make the silver shine, the women beautiful, and provide light enough for Schlegel to separate pieces of truffle from the egg, and line them up on the edge of his plate like trophies.

There was still a full decanter of wine on the table when the ladies were banished. Each of the men filled his glass and moved along the table nearer to Ferdy. I knew them all. At least, I knew their names. There was Allenby, a young professor of modern history from Cambridge wearing a lacy evening shirt and a velvet tie. He had a pale skin and a perfect complexion, and preceded most of his earnest pronouncements with, ‘Of course, I don't believe in capitalism, as such.'

‘Communism is the opiate of the intellectuals,' Mr Flynn had told us in the soft accent of County Cork. ‘Grown, processed and exported from the USSR.'

The Flynns built harpsichords in a refurbished Shropshire rectory. And there was the taciturn Mr Dawlish, who eyed me with the steely predatory stare that I'd once known so well. He was a high-ranking civil servant who never finished his wine.

The elegant Dr Eichelberger had found literary fortune, if not fame, after writing a scientific paper called ‘The physics of water layering and temperature variations in northern latitudes'. All his subsequent literary output being printed, classified, and circulated to a select few by the underwater weapons research department of the US Navy.

Finally, there was the vociferous guest of honour: Ben Toliver, Member of Parliament, businessman and bon viveur.

His low voice, wavy hair, piercing blue eyes and well-fitting girdle had earned Toliver a starring role in British politics in the late 'fifties and early 'sixties. Like so many ambitious British politicians, he used slogans from John F. Kennedy as his passport to the twentieth century, and expressed belief in both technology and youth. Toliver had long ago discovered that a well-timed banality plus a slow news day equals a morning headline. Toliver was available for any programme from ‘Any Questions' to ‘Jazz at Bedtime', and if he wasn't at home someone knew a number where you'd find him and don't worry about the holding hair spray, he had a can of it in his briefcase.

I suppose all those ‘BT for PM' buttons have been put into the attic along with those suits with Chinese collars, and the hula-hoops. But I still hear people talking about how this Peter Pan, who runs his father's factories at such big profits while expressing loud concern about the workers, might have made the greatest PM since the young Mr Pitt. Personally, I'd sooner dust off the hula-hoops.

‘Full bodied for a Pauillac, and that's what deceived me,' said Toliver, swirling his wine and studying its colour against the candle flame. He looked around inviting comment, but there was none.

‘Space research, supersonic travel and computer development,' said Professor Allenby, resuming the conversation that Toliver had interrupted. ‘Also grown and processed in the USSR.'

‘But not yet exported?' Flynn asked, as if not sure that he was right.

‘Never mind all that crap,' said Schlegel. ‘The simple fact is that it takes five per cent of us Americans to produce such big food surpluses that we sell grain to the Russians. And the Russians use twenty-five per cent of their population in food production and screw it up so bad they have to buy from the United States. So never mind all that crap about what's cultivated in Russia.'

The young professor tweaked the ends of his bow tie, and said, ‘Do we really want to measure the quality of life in output per cent? Do we really want to …'

‘Stick to the point, buddy,' said Schlegel. ‘And pass that port.'

‘Well, Russians might want to measure it like that,' said Flynn, ‘if all they had to eat was American grain.'

‘Look here,' said Professor Allenby. ‘Russia has always been beset by these bad harvests. Marx designed his theories round the belief that Germany – not Russia – would be the first socialist land. A unified Germany would provide a chance to see Marxism given a real chance.'

‘We can't keep on giving it a chance,' said Flynn, ‘it's failed in half the countries of the world now. And the West Zone will swallow the East Zone if they unify. I don't like the idea of it.'

‘East Zone,' said Ferdy. ‘Doesn't that date you?'

‘The DDR, they call it,' said Toliver. ‘I was there with a trade delegation the summer before last. Working like little beavers, they are. They are the Japs of Europe, if you ask me, and equally treacherous.'

‘But would the socialists support a reunification, Mr Toliver?' said Flynn.

‘I don't think so,' said Toliver. ‘Simply because in the present climate of talks it looks like a sell-out. It's a deal between the Americans and the Russians, out of which will come a bigger stronger capitalist Germany – no thanks. Those West German buggers are trouble enough already.'

‘And what's in this deal for us Yanks?' Schlegel asked sarcastically.

Toliver shrugged. ‘I wish I could answer that, but it won't be any comfort for us British, and that you can be sure of.' He looked round the others and smiled.

Professor Allenby said, ‘The official text says federation, not reunification. In the context of history, Germany was born out of a miscellany of principalities gathered around the royal house of Brandenburg. This is nothing new for them. Reunification is a dynamic process of historical reality leading inevitably to Marxism.'

‘You sure use fifty-dollar words,' said Schlegel, ‘but don't talk about historical reality to guys who carried a gun from the beaches to Berlin. Because you might get a swift kick in the principalities.'

The professor was used to flamboyant hectoring. He smiled and continued calmly. ‘The common language of the two Germanys is not a lubricant but an irritant. Most of the East–West tensions are simply extended, amplified versions of purely parochial arguments. Reunification is inevitable – lie back and enjoy it.'

‘Never,' said Flynn. ‘A reunited Germany that moved closer to the West would make the Russians very nervous. If Germany moved closer to the East they'd make
us
nervous. If, and this is more likely, Germany decided to play man in the middle, the worst days of the cold war could be remembered with nostalgia.'

‘The Russians have made up their minds,' said Toliver. ‘The Americans don't care. There's not much chance for anyone else. The mere fact that the Russians have agreed to talk in Copenhagen shows how keen they are.'

‘Why?' asked Flynn. ‘Why are they so keen?'

‘Come along, George,' Ferdy coaxed, and everyone turned to look at Dawlish.

‘My goodness,' said the elderly grey-haired man, who had so far said so little. ‘Old codgers like me are not privy to such secrets.'

‘But you were in Bonn last week and Warsaw the month before,' said Ferdy. ‘What are they saying?'

‘Being there and being told anything are two different matters,' he said.

‘A diplomatic offensive,' said Toliver, availing himself of Dawlish's reluctance to explain. ‘A small group of Russian whizz-kids have pushed these proposals. If the unification goes through it will be such a triumph for that faction that they'll assume command of Russian foreign policy.'

‘Surely it should have been debated,' said Ferdy.

‘The Germans have debated it,' said Eichelberger. ‘They want it. Is it right that foreigners should interfere?'

‘You can't trust the Germans,' said Toliver. ‘Let them all get together and they'll be electing another Hitler, mark my words.'

‘We've got to trust someone,' said Professor Allenby, without going further to remind Toliver that in the space of five minutes he'd condemned the Americans, the Russians, the Germans – East and West – and the Japanese. But the taunt was obvious to the men present, and there was a long silence during which Ferdy opened his boxes of cigars and passed them down the table with a maximum of displacement activity.

I resisted and passed them to Schlegel. He took one. He rolled it in his fingers and listened to its sound. Only when he had everyone's attention did he bite the end off it. He lit it with a match that he struck with one hand, using his thumbnail. He fixed me with his beady eyes. ‘Big snafu at the Table today, after you left. Did you hear?'

‘Port for anyone who'd like some,' said Ferdy nervously.

‘My informant said jackpot,' I replied.

‘A host's prerogative,' said Schlegel. He inhaled, nodded and blew a perfect smoke ring. ‘No time now to pull the back off and probe the balance spring.'

Toliver waved away Schlegel's cigar smoke and with measured care sipped enough of the Pauillac to commit its flavour to memory. ‘I'm glad there are still some people who serve a Bordeaux with game,' he said. He finished his wine, then took the port decanter and poured himself some. ‘What kind of a meal can I expect if I visit your Studies Centre? Does your influence obtain there, Foxwell?' He touched his wavy hair and moved it a fraction off his forehead.

‘You needn't worry about the food,' said Schlegel. ‘We don't run tours.'

Toliver's knuckles whitened as he grasped the neck of the decanter. ‘I'm not exactly a
tourist,'
he said. ‘An official visit … on behalf of the House.'

‘No tourists, no journalists, no free-loaders,' said Schlegel. ‘My new policy.'

‘Mustn't bite the hand that feeds you,' said Toliver. Dawlish watched the exchange. Gently he took the port decanter from Toliver's clenched hand, and passed it to Eichelberger.

‘I'm not quite sure I understand your duties at the Studies Centre,' said Dr Eichelberger to Ferdy. He took the decanter, poured himself some port and passed it.

‘War Games,' said Ferdy. He was relieved to deflect the collision course of Toliver and Schlegel. ‘I usually do the Russian Navy side of it.'

‘That's funny,' said Toliver. ‘You don't look Russian.' He looked round and then laughed heartily with every one of his perfect white teeth.

‘But what does he
do
?' Eichelberger asked Schlegel.

‘He introduces the element of human fallibility,' said Schlegel.

‘And very important, too,' said Eichelberger, and nodded seriously.

‘The nuclear submarine,' said young Professor Allenby, ‘is the most perfect symbol of imperialistic aggression. It is designed solely for long-range use to distant countries and can only destroy the civilian populations of large cities.'