all helped.’
‘So what was the fadeout?’
Schlegel blew a piece of tobacco off his lip, with enough force to make the bookcase rattle. ‘The feedback of information began to sag. Champion said the French were starting to lean on him, and it was getting too dangerous. It was a top-level decision to let him go. It was the right decision. You Brits are good at bowing out gracefully and you’d done all right out of Champion by that time.’
‘And now?’
‘A guy in German security trying to make a name for himself. He’s dug out some stuff about Champion’s financial affairs. They are asking questions about the guns at Accra.’
‘Bonn gets hysterical – and we have to join in the screaming?’
‘If the Champion business becomes a big scandal, they’ll say we were careless when we let him go.’
‘Perhaps it was a little careless,’ I suggested.
‘Well, maybe it was,’ said Schlegel. He picked up my report exonerating Champion. ‘But your whitewash job isn’t going to help matters.’
‘I’ll take another shot at it,’ I said.
He slid my report across the polished desk. Then from a drawer he got Perrier water and a tiny bottle of Underberg bitters. He shook the bitters into the mineral water and stirred it with a ballpoint pen to make it a delicate brown. ‘Want some?’
‘That’s just for hangovers,’ I said. ‘And even then it’s got to be a pretty damn bad hangover.’
‘I like it,’ said Schlegel, and drank it slowly, savouring each sip.
I took the report and stood up to leave. Schlegel said, ‘This is going to be a lousy rotten miserable bummer. I hate these jobs where we are shaking down our own. So you don’t have to give me a bad time, or give yourself a bad time for not covering up for him.’
‘I had that lecture at Indoctrine Four, when I went to the CIA Communications symposium in 1967,’ I said.
‘Champion saved your life,’ Schlegel reminded me. ‘If you can’t hack it, just say you want out.’
‘I know what kind of out I’d get,’ I said bitterly.
Schlegel nodded. ‘And I’d countersign it,’ he said. In a way, I preferred Schlegel’s New World directness: the others would have tried to persuade me that such a request would have had no effect on my career.
Schlegel stood up to look out of the window. It was still snowing. ‘This isn’t just some kind of fancy positive vetting job,’ he said. ‘This is a hot one.’ Schlegel scratched his behind, and reflected.
‘Someone across the street could lip-read you,’ I warned him.
He turned to look at me pityingly. It was Schlegel’s often expressed belief that we’d get more done here in London if we worried less about such details. ‘The Germans are sending one of their people down to Nice to investigate Champion,’ he said thoughtfully.
I didn’t respond.
‘Have you been taken suddenly drunk or something?’ said Schlegel.
‘I didn’t want to disturb your deductive processes,’ I said. I polished my spectacles and blinked at him.
‘Damned if I understand it,’ he said.
‘You’re in Europe now, Colonel,’ I said. ‘This German scandal has come just when the Bonn government are warming up for an election. When their security people discovered that Champion had once been a British agent it was the answer to all their problems. They wrote “Passed to British security” in the margin and fired it across here. Now the German Defence Minister can refuse to answer any questions about the scandal on the grounds that it would prejudice the security of their British ally. It will give them all they need to stall until the election is over. When they are elected again it will be “Minister requested” and that’s the last we’ll see of it. I’ve been through all this before, Colonel.’
‘Well, you know more about all this European Mickey Mouse than I’ll ever understand,’ said Schlegel. It was a double-edged compliment and he bared his teeth to let me know it. ‘We’ll hold it for the three-month cycle,’ he offered, as if trying to come to terms with me.
‘Don’t do me any favours,’ I told him. ‘I don’t give a good goddamn if you publish it as a whole-page ad in Variety. I’ve done what I was asked. But if the department expected me to return with the synopsis for World War Three, I’m sorry to disappoint. If you want to send me back to spend the rest of the year drinking with Champion at the department’s expense, I’ll be very happy to do so. But Champion is no dope. He’ll tumble what’s going on.’
‘Maybe he already did,’ Schlegel said slyly. ‘Maybe that’s why you got nothing out of him.’
‘You know what to do, then,’ I told him.
‘I already did it,’ he said. ‘A short dark kid. Looks ten years younger than she really is: Melodie Page. Been with the department nearly eight years!’
3
‘William, come to Mother, darling, and let me give you a kiss.’ Champion’s failed marriage was all there in that imperious command. An elegant French wife who persisted in calling their small son Billy ‘William’, and who gave him kisses, instead of asking for them.
She gave Billy the promised kiss, pulled a dead leaf off the front of his sweater and then waited until he’d left the room. She turned to me. ‘All I ask is that you don’t remind me how keen I was to marry him.’ She poured fresh hot water into the teapot, and then put the copper kettle back on the hob. It hummed gently with the heat from the blazing logs. There was a stainless-steel kitchen only a few steps along the carpeted corridor, but she had made the tea and toasted the bread on the open fire in the lounge. From here we could look out of the window and watch the wind ruffling the river and whipping the bare trees into a mad dance. The black Welsh hills wore a halo of gold that promised respite from the dark daylight.
‘I didn’t come down here to talk about Steve, or about the divorce,’ I protested.
She poured tea for me and gave me the last slice of toast. She spiked a fresh piece of bread on to the toasting fork. ‘Then it’s surprising how many times we seem to find ourselves talking about it.’ She turned to the hearth and busied herself with finding a hot place in the fire. ‘Steve has this wonderful knack,’ she continued bitterly, ‘this wonderful knack of falling on his feet … like a kitten.’
It was an affectionate analogy. The rejection had hurt, I could see that. I buttered my toast and put some of Caterina’s homemade jam on it. It was delicious and I ate it without speaking.
‘This damned house,’ she continued. ‘My sister wrote to tell me how much it would be worth if it was in France. But it’s not in France, it’s in Wales! And it costs a fortune to keep the slates on, and mend the boiler, and cut the lawn … and heating oil has nearly doubled in price just since the last delivery.’ The bread started to smoke. She cursed softly, broke the scorched piece off and threw it away into the flames
