Part 21 (2/2)

”In positive vetting cases, the Pool is obliged to clear all enquiries with the Security Service in advance.”

”a.s.sume it's done.”

”I can't do that unless I have it in writing.”

”Oh yes you can. You're not a Service hack. You're the great Ned. You've broken as many rules as you've stuck to, you have, I've read you up. You know Modrian, too.”

”Not well.”

”How well?”

”I had dinner with him once and played squash with him once. That's hardly knowing him.”

”Squash where?”

”At the Lansdowne.”

”How did that come about?”

”Modrian was formally declared to us as the Emba.s.sy's Moscow Centre link. I was trying to put together a deal with him on Barley Blair. A swap.”

”Why didn't you succeed?”

”Barley wouldn't go along with us. He'd done his own deal already. He wanted his girl, not us.”

”What's his game like?”

”Tricky.”

”Did you beat him?”

”Yes.”

He interrupted his own flow while he looked me over. It was like being studied by a baby. ”And you can handle it, can you? You're not under too much stress? You've done some good things in your time. You've a heart too, which is more than I can say for some of the capons in this outfit.”

”Why should I be under stress?”

No answer. Or not yet. He seemed to be chewing at something just behind his thick lips.

”Who believes in marriage these days, for Christ's sake?” he demanded. His regional drawl had thickened. It was as if he had abandoned restraint. ”If you want to live with your girl, live with her is my advice. We've cleared her, she's n.o.body's worry, she's not a bomb thrower or a secret sympathiser or a druggie, what's your bother? She's a nice girl in a nice way of life, and you're a lucky fellow. Do you want the case, or do you not?”

For a moment I was robbed of an answer. There was nothing surprising in Burr knowing of my affair with Sally. In our world you put those things on record before the record puts them on you, and I had already endured my obligatory confessional with Personnel. No, it was Burr's capacity for intimacy that had silenced me, the speed with which he had got under my skin.

”If you'll cover me and give me the resources, of course I'll take it,” I said.

”So get on with it, then. Keep me informed but not too much don't bulls.h.i.+t me, always give me bad news straight. He's a man without qualities, our Cyril is. You've read Robert Musil, I dare say, haven't you?”

”I'm afraid I haven't.”

He was pulling open Frewin's file. I say ”pulling” because his doughy hands gave no impression of having done anything before: now we are going to see how this file opens; now we are going to address ourselves to this strange object called a pencil.

”He's got no hobbies, no stated interests beyond music, no wife, no girl, no parents, no money worries, not even any bizarre s.e.xual appet.i.tes, poor devil,” Burr complained, flipping to a different part of the file. When on earth had he found time to read it? I asked myself. I presumed the early hours. ”And how the h.e.l.l a man of your experience, whose job is dealing with modern civilisation and its discontentments, can manage without the wisdom of Robert Musil is a question which at a calmer moment I shall require you to answer.”

He licked his thumb and turned another page. ”He's one of five,” he said.

”I thought he was an only child.”

”Not his brothers and sisters, you mug, his work. There's five clerks in his dreary cyphers office and he's one of them. They all handle the same stuff; they're all the same rank, work the same hours, think the same dirty thoughts.”

He looked straight at me, a thing he had not done before. ”If he did it, what's his motive? The writer doesn't say. Funny, that. They usually do. Boredom - how about that? Boredom and greed, they're the only motives left these days. Plus getting even, which is eternal.”

He went back to the file. ”Cyril's the only one not married, notice that? He's a poofter. So am I. I'm a poofter, you're a poofter. We're all poofters. It's just a question which bit of yourself ends on top. He's no hair, see that?”

I caught a flash of Frewin's photograph as he waved it past me and talked on. He had a daunting energy. ”Still that's no crime, I dare say, baldness, any more than marriage is. I should know, I've had three and I'm still not done. That's no normal denunciation, is it? That's why you're here. That letter knows what it's talking about. You don't think Modrian wrote it, do you?”

”Why should he have done?”

”I'm asking, Ned, don't fox with me. Wicked thoughts are what keep me going. Perhaps Modrian thought he'd leave a little confusion in his wake when he went back to Moscow. He's a scheming little monkey, Modrian, when he puts his mind to it. I've been reading him too.”

When? I thought again. When on earth did you find the time? For another twenty minutes he zigzagged back and forth, tossing possibilities at me, seeing how they came back. And when I finally stepped exhausted into the anteroom, I walked straight into Peter Guillam again.

”Who the h.e.l.l is Leonard Burr?” I asked him, still dazed.

Peter was astonished that I didn't know. ”Burr? My dear chap. Leonard was Smiley's Crown Prince for years. George rescued him from a fate worse than death at All Souls.”

Of Sally, my reigning extramarital girlfriend, what should I tell you? She was free, and spoke to the captive in me. Monica had been within my walls. Monica was a woman of the Service, bound and not bound to me by the same set of rules. But to Sally I was just a middle-aged civil servant who had forgotten to have any fun. She was a designer and sometime dancer whose pa.s.sion was theatre, and she thought the rest of life unreal. She was tall and she was fair and rather wise, and sometimes I think she must have reminded me of Stefanie.

”Meet you, skipper?” Gorst cried over the telephone. ”Top up our Cyril? It'll be my pleasure, sir!”

We met the next day in a Foreign Office interviewing room. I was Captain York, another dreary vetting officer doing his rounds. Gorst was head of Frewin's Cypher Section, which was better known as the. Tank: a lecher in a beadle's suit, a waddling, smirking man with prising elbows and a tiny mouth that wriggled like a worm. When he sat, he scooped up the skirts of his jacket as if he were exposing himself from behind. Then he kicked out a plump leg like a chorus girl, before laying it suggestively over the thigh of the other.

”Saint Cyril, that's what we call Mr. Frewin,” he announced blithely. ”Doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, doesn't swear, certified virgin. End of vetting interview.”

Extracting a cigarette from a packet of ten, he tapped the tip of it on his thumbnail, then moistened it with his busy tongue. ”Music's his only weakness. Loves the operate. Goes to the operate regular as clockwork. Never cared for it myself. Can't make out whether it's actors singing or singers acting.”

He lit his cigarette. I could smell the lunchtime beer on his breath. ”I'm not too fond of fat women, either, to be frank. Specially when they scream at me.”

He tipped his head back and blew out smoke rings, savouring them as if they were emblems of his authority.

”May I ask how Frewin gets on with the rest of the staff these days?” I said, playing the honest journeyman as I turned a page of my notebook.

”Swimmingly, your grace. Par-fectly.”

”The archivists, registrars, secretaries-no trouble on that front?”

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