Part 24 (1/2)

Never mind that I am twenty years Pym's junior. What I recognise in Pym is what I recognise in myself: a spirit so wayward that, even while I am playing a game of Scrabble with my kids it can swing between the options of suicide, rape and a.s.sa.s.sination. ”He's one of us, for Christ's sake!” Lederer wants to scream at the sleeping potentates around him. ”Not one of you. One of me. We're howling psychopaths, the both of us.” But of course Lederer doesn't scream that or anything else. He talks sanely and wisely about his computer. And about a man named Petz, also known as Hampel and Zaworski, who travels almost as much as Lederer and exactly as much as Pym, but takes more trouble than either of us to conceal his tracks.

But first, in the same perfectly balanced and dispa.s.sionate voice, Lederer describes the situation as it had stood in August, when it was agreed on both sides--Lederer casts a respectful glance towards his hero Brotherhood--that the Pym case should be abandoned and the committee of investigation dissolved.

”But it wasn't abandoned, was it?” Brotherhood says, not bothering this time to give warning of his interruption. ”You kept a watch going on his house and I don't mind betting you left a few other meters ticking too.”

Lederer glances at Wexler. Wexler scowls into his hands to say keep me ah out of this. But Lederer has no intention of fielding that ball, and waits boorishly for Wexler to do it for him.

”The determination on our side, Jack, was that we should capitalise the ah existing appropriation of resources,” Wexler says reluctantly. ”We opted here for a gradual reduction of a--ah phased and undramatic running down.”

In the silence Brammel gives a sporting smile. ”So you mean you did keep the surveillance going? Is that what you're saying?”

”On a limited basis only, very low key, very minimal at all levels, Bo.”

”I rather thought we said we'd all call off our dogs at once, Harry. We certainly kept our half of the bargain, I know.”

”The ah Agency decided here to honour that agreement in spirit, Bo, but also in light of what was deemed operationally expedient having regard to ah all the known facts and indicators.”

”Thanks,” says Mountjoy and tosses down his pencil like a man refusing food.

But this time Wexler bites back and Wexler can do that: ”I think you may find your grat.i.tude is well placed, sir,” he snaps, and pushes his knuckles combatively across the tip of his nose.

The case of Hans Albrecht Petz, Lederer continues, surfaced six months ago in a context that at first sight had nothing whatever to do with the case against Pym. Petz was simply another Czech journalist who had appeared at an East-West conference in Salzburg and been talent-spotted as a new face. An older man, withdrawn but intelligent, pa.s.sport details supplied. Lederer put his name on watch and signalled Langley for a routine background check. Langley signalled ”nothing recorded against” but warned that it was irregular that a man of Petz's age and profession should not have come to notice. A month later Petz surfaced again in Linz, purportedly to cover an agricultural fair. He didn't hobn.o.b with other journalists, didn't try to ingratiate himself, was seen seldom at the tents and contributed nothing. When Lederer had his press readers comb the Czech press for contributions by Petz, the most they came up with was two paragraphs in the Socialist Farmer, signed ”H.A.P.,” on the limitations of Western heavy tractors. Then, just when Lederer was disposed to forget about him Langley came back with a positive identification. Hans Albrecht Petz was identical with one Alexander Hampel, a Czech intelligence officer, who had recently attended a conference of non-aligned journalists in Athens. Do not approach Petz-Hampel without an authorisation. Stand by for more information.

Hearing himself say ”Athens,” Lederer has a feeling that the air pressure has dropped inside the safe room.

”Athens when?” Brotherhood growls irritably. ”How can we follow this stuff without dates?”

Nigel's hair has become a sudden and intense worry to him. He is shaping the greying horns above one ear again and again with his immaculate fingertips while he frowns in pain.

Wexler once more cuts in, and to Lederer's pleasure he is beginning to shed his shyness and respect. ”Athens conference was July 15 to 18, Jack. Hampel was sighted on the first day only. He kept his hotel room the three nights but didn't sleep in it once. Paid cash. According to Greek records he arrived Athens on July 14 and never left the country. Most likely he went out on a different pa.s.sport. Looks like he flew to Corfu. Greek flight lists are the usual pig's breakfast, but looks like he flew to Corfu,” he repeats. ”By this time we're getting very interested in this man.”

”Aren't we running ahead?” says Brammel, whose sense of the proprieties is never sharper than in moments of crisis. ”I mean d.a.m.n it, Harry, it's the same old game. It's guilt by coincidence. It's no different to the radio stuff. If we were looking to frame a man, we'd play the same game on them. We'd get some old member of the Firm, a bit tarnished but nothing discreditable, and we'd run him parallel to some poor chap's movements and wait for the opposition to say ”Whoo-hoo, our man's a spy.' Get them to shoot themselves in the foot. Dead easy. All right. Hampel is trailing Pym around. But what's to show that Pym's an active partner?”

”At that point in time nothing, sir,” Lederer confesses with false humility, stepping in on Wexler's behalf. ”However we had by then established a retrospective link between Pym and Hans Albrecht Petz. At the time of the Salzburg conference, Pym and his wife were attending a music festival there. Petz was staying about two hundred yards from the Pyms' hotel.”

”Same story over again,” says Brammel doggedly. ”It's a set-up. Sticks out a mile. Right, Nigel?”

”It's awfully tenuous actually,” Nigel says.

The air pressure again. Maybe the machines kill the oxygen as well as the sound, thinks Lederer. ”Do you mind telling us the date when that Athens trace came through?” asks Brotherhood, still on the matter of the timing.

”Ten days ago, sir,” says Lederer.

”b.l.o.o.d.y slow about advising us, weren't you?”

In anger Wexler finds his words faster: ”Well now, Jack, we were pretty d.a.m.n reluctant to present you people prematurely with yet another series of computerised coincidences.” And to Lederer, his whipping boy: ”What the h.e.l.l are you waiting for?”

It is ten days ago. Lederer is crouched in the communications room in the Station in Vienna. It is night and he has bowed out of two c.o.c.ktail invitations and one dinner by pretending a light flu. He has phoned Bee and let her hear the excitement in his voice and he has half a mind to rush back and tell her then and there, because he has always told her everything anyway--and sometimes when trade was poor a little more than everything in order to keep the image going. But he holds on to himself. And though his fingers are frozen in the joints from the sheer tension of it, he keeps on typing. First he calls up the most recent schedules of Pym's known movements in and out of Vienna and establishes, almost as a matter of course, that he visited both Salzburg and Linz on precisely the same dates as Petz alias Hampel.

”Linz too?” Brotherhood interrupts sharply.

”Yes, sir!”

”You followed him there, I suppose--contrary to our agreement?”

”No, sir, we did not follow Magnus to Linz. I had my wife Bee call Mary Pym. Bee elicited the information in the course of an innocent conversation, woman to woman, on another matter, Mr. Brotherhood.”

”He might still not have gone to Linz. Could have told his wife a cover story.”

Lederer is at pains to concede that this is possible but gently suggests that it hardly matters, sir, in view of Langley's signal of that same night, which signal he now reads aloud to his a.s.sembled Anglo-American lords of intelligence. ”It arrived on my desk five minutes after we had the Linz connection, sir. I quote: 'Petz-Hampel also identical with Jerzy Zaworski, born Carlsbad 1925, West German journalist of Czech origin who made nine legal journeys to United States in 1981, '82.'”

”Perfect,” says Brammel under his breath.

”Birthdates are of course approximations in these cases,” Lederer continues undaunted. ”It is our experience that alias pa.s.sports have the tendency to give the bearer a year or two.”

The signal is hardly on Lederer's desk, he says, before he is typing in the dates and destinations of Herr Zaworski's visits to America. And then it was--says Lederer, though not in as many words--that with one touch of the b.u.t.ton everything came together, continents merged, three journalists in their late fifties became a single Czech spy of uncertain age, and Grant Lederer III, thanks to the flawless insulation of the signals room, was able to scream ”Hallelujah!” and ”Bee, I love you!” to the padded walls.

”Every American city visited by Petz-Hampel-Zaworski in 1981 and 1982 was visited by Pym on the same dates,” Lederer intones. ”During those dates the relevant clandestine transmissions from the Czech Emba.s.sy roof were discontinued, the reason in our estimation being that a personal encounter was occurring between the agent in the field and his visiting controller. Radio transmissions were accordingly superfluous.”

”It's beautiful,” says Brammel. ”I'd like to find the Czech intelligence officer who thought this one up and give him my private Oscar immediately.”

With a pained discretion Mick Carver lifts a briefcase gently to the table and extracts a bunch of folders.

”This is Langley's profile as of now on Petz-Hampel-Zaworski, Pym's presumed controller,” he explains in the patient manner of a salesman bent on showing off a new technology, despite the obstruction of the older element. ”We expect a couple more updates in the next immediate while, maybe even tonight. Bo, when does Magnus return to Vienna, do you mind telling us, please?”

Brammel like all the rest of them is peering into his folder, so it is natural he should not reply at once. ”When we tell him to, I suppose,” he says carelessly, turning a page. ”Not before, that's for certain. As you say, his father's death was rather providential. Old man left quite a mess, I gather. Magnus has a lot to sort out.”

”Where is he now?” says Wexler.

Brammel looks at his watch. ”Having dinner, I should imagine. Nearly time, isn't it?”

”Where's he staying?” Wexler insists.

Brammel smiles. ”Now Harry, I don't think I'm going to tell you that. We do have some rights in our own country, you know, and your chaps have been a bit overeager on the surveillance stakes.”

Wexler is nothing if not stubborn. ”Last we heard of him, he was at London Airport checking in to his flight to Vienna. Our information is he'd wrapped up his affairs over here and was heading back to his post. What the h.e.l.l happened?”

Nigel has clasped his hands together. He sets them, still clasped, on the table to indicate that, small or not, he is speaking. ”You haven't been following him over here too, have you? That really would be going it.”

Wexler rubs his chin. His expression is rueful but undefeated. He turns again to Brammel. ”Bo, we need a piece of this. If this is a Czech deception operation it's the d.a.m.nedest, most ingenious case I ever heard of.”

”Pym is a most ingenious officer,” Brammel countered. ”He's been a thorn in the Czechs' side for thirty years. He's worth a lot of trouble on their part.”

”Bo, you've got to pull Pym in and you've got to interrogate the living s.h.i.+t out of him. If you don't, we're going to go around and around this thing till we've all got grey hairs and some of us are in our graves. Those are our secrets he's been fooling with as well as yours. We have some very heavy questions to put to him and some fine people trained to put them.”

”Harry, you have my word that when the moment is ripe, you and your people shall have as much of him as you want.”

”Maybe the moment's right now,” Wexler says, sticking out his jaw. ”Maybe we should be there from when he starts to sing. Hit him while he's soft.”

”And maybe you should trust sufficiently in our judgment to bide your time,” Nigel purrs sleekly in reply, and casts Wexler a very rea.s.suring glance over the top of his reading spectacles.