at teatime’. It was pretty infuriating, but I didn’t want to start the day’s business by getting mad.
‘Have another coffee.’
‘Black, please.’
‘Which department did you come to us from?’
‘I was already in Dalby’s – I was holding down Macao sub-office.’
She must have seen the ego in my face take a bend. ‘I suppose we’ll have to stop saying Dalby’s now that you’re running us.’
‘That won’t be necessary. He’s only temporarily detached. As far as anyone has told me, anyway.’
She smiled, she had a nice smile.
‘Must be terrible to be back in Europe – even on a fine summer’s day. I remember going to a restaurant in Macao. It was built over a gambling casino. An illuminated sign reported the results at the tables downstairs. The waitresses take the bets, take the money; you eat, the sign shows the results – Bingo! Indigestion!’
She smiled again while shaking her head. I liked sitting here watching her smile her clear white smiles. She managed to let me play at being boss without being obsequious about it. I dimly remember her being in Macao, that is to say I remembered the odd papers and reports from her.
‘I brought my transfer card,’ she said.
‘Let’s look.’ I was beginning to confirm the picture of me that Alice had sketched in roughly. Even though Led’s wasn’t the place, she passed me a pale-green filing card. It was about six by ten inches. It was a personnel-type card, such as any large commercial firm might employ, but in the space for name and address there was only an irregularly spaced series of rectangular holes. Under this in panels was information. Born twenty-six years ago in Cairo. Norwegian father, Scottish mother, probably not short of the stuff since she went to school in Zurich between ’51 and ’52, and decided to live there. Perhaps working for British Diplomatic Service in Switzerland – it wouldn’t be the first time an Embassy typist came into the department. Her brother holds Norwegian citizenship, works for a shipping firm in Yokohama – hence presumably HK then Macao – where she worked part-time for the tourist bureau there – a Portuguese set-up. The panel marked T was bursting with entries. She spoke Norwegian, English, Portuguese, German, French, ‘FSW’, that is ‘fluent in speech and writing’, and Mandarin, Japanese and Cantonese ‘SS, some speaking’. Her security clearance was GH7 ‘non stopped’ which means that nothing had been found to prevent her having a higher clearance if the department wanted to classify her higher.
‘It doesn’t say whether you can sew,’ I said.
‘No,’ she said.
‘Can you?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Trousers?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘You’re in.’
I thanked her and handed the card back. It was fine; she was fine, my very first beautiful spy, always presuming of course that this was Jean Tonnesen’s card, and presuming that this was Jean Tonnesen. Even if she wasn’t, she was still my very first beautiful spy.
She put the card back into her small, for a handbag, handbag.
‘What do you have there?’ I asked. ‘A small snub-nosed, pearl-handled .22 automatic?’
‘No, I’ve got that tucked in my garter. In here I have the flare pistol.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘What do you like for lunch?’
In London with a beautiful hungry girl one must show her to Mario at the Terrazza. We sat in the ground floor front under the plastic grapes and Mario brought us Campari-sodas and told Jean how much he hated me. To do this he had to practically gnaw her ear off. Jean liked it.
We ordered the Zuppa di Lenticchie and Jean told how this lentil soup reminded her of visits with her father to Sicily many years ago. They had friends there, and each year would coincide their visits with the Feast of San Giuseppe on 19th March.
On that day the wealthier families provide gigantic amounts of food and open house to the whole village. Always the feast begins with lentil soup and spaghetti, but on St Joseph’s day no cheese must be eaten, so, instead, a mixture of toasted bread-crumbs, sardines and fennel is sprinkled over the dish.
‘Those days in the hot sun were as perfect as anytime I remember,’ Jean mused.
We ate the Calamari and the chicken deep in which the butter and garlic had been artfully hidden to be struck like a vein of aromatic gold. Jean had pancakes and a thimbleful of black coffee without mentioning calories, and went through the whole meal without lighting a cigarette. This showed virtue enough, she must have some vices.
Mario, deciding that I was on the brink of a great and important seduction, brought us a bottle of cold sparkling Asti ‘on the house’. He filled and refilled Jean’s glass then turned with the bottle still in his hand. He pointed the neck at me. ‘Is good?’
It certainly was. The wine and Jean had conspired to produce in me a gentle euphoria. The sunlight fell in dusty bars across the table-cloth and lit her face as she grinned. I watched her image inverted in the clear coolness of the wine in her glass. Outside, the driver of a wet fish van was arguing violently with a sad traffic warden. The traffic had welded itself into a river of metal, and from a taxi a few yards up the road two men paid off their cab and continued their journey on foot. The glass of the cab permitted only a momentary glimpse, then the traffic moved together; closing like the shutter of a camera.
One of the two men had the build of Jay, the other Dalby’s style in shoes. I was suddenly very wide awake.
1 Director of Special Operations: State Dept. Counter Intelligence Corps US Army.
[Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) This can be a week of scrambled emotions. Seize any opportunities that come your way and be prepared to change your plans.]
On the filing cabinet was a vast jugful of yellow daisies, my new carpet had been tacked into the dry rot, and the window was open for the first time in months. Below in the street a couple of young men, collegiate in a Cecil Gee way, were hammering the neighbourhood eardrums with their motor scooters. There was a colliery brass band in the dispatch office with a xylophone that made my daisies quiver. Alice sent Jean out on some errand or other, then brought me the real file on Jean Tonnesen. A thick foolscap loose-leaf book held together by a brown lace bearing a small metal seal with a number on it.
It followed the transfer card roughly, although this wasn’t always the case with all our people. There was the Zurich business – an affair with a man named Maydew, who had some connection with the US State Department. Her brother in Yokohama worried the author of this file – some anti-nuclear warfare activity, declarations, letters to Japanese papers, etc, but that was all pretty standard stuff nowadays. A brother missing 1943 in German-occupied Norway. On the last summary page there was the word Norway followed by a mathematical plus sign. This meant
