The car cleared the city and picked up speed along the tree-lined route to Sheremetyevo airport.
Dymshits, the Jewish aerodynamicist who had not been abroad before, was allotted the seat next to him on the Ilyushin.
‘Paris!’ the younger man exclaimed as the plane lifted off, nudging Pavel’s arm in his excitement. ‘How about that? The women, the food. Wine. Aren’t you excited?’
Pavel took several moments to reply, as if the answer needed consideration. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, finally. ‘Yes, excited.’ There was even further thought. ‘And nervous, too.’
But Dymshits was staring from the aircraft and didn’t hear him.
Keeping the habit of the past two weeks, Adrian Dodds went immediately to the single window overlooking one of the innumerable, anonymous Whitehall quadrangles, looking for the pigeon with the broken beak.
The window-sill was empty, like an airstrip with no planes. Adrian sighed, disappointed. No one stayed long, not even pigeons.
He turned back into his office and began his day. He arranged his jacket on a hanger, stored it in the cupboard over the tea-making things and then unlocked his desk drawer. From it he took the felt cushion that protected his trousers from becoming shiny and placed it carefully on his seat, then lifted out his tray containing pens, pencils, paper clips and ink and set it in position at the head of the blotter. My Maginot Line, he thought. Behind the tray, I’m safe.
He was a slight, nondescript man, the sort of person that crowds are made of. He had begun losing his hair when he was twenty-one and still at Oxford and now it receded so much that he was almost bald. It worried him and he combed what little there was left forward, like the senators of ancient Rome. He had considered being fitted with a hairpiece, but then realized that his few acquaintances knew he was bald; they would recognize the wig and laugh at him and he preferred baldness to laughter.
Sometimes, on buses and tubes, he tried to identify people with artificial hair. It was his own, secret game and one that no one else knew about. Occasionally the fixation disturbed him.
Adrian Dodds was a man of no hobbies and little personality who always thought of crushing replies long after he had lost arguments in tongue-tied embarrassment. His genuine kindness was nearly always misinterpreted as lack of character, and consequently he was constantly imposed upon. But, because of his kindness, he rarely protested.
He was proud of one thing, his unrivalled ability to perform an unusual job.
Apart from that, he did not respect himself and knew few others did, either. He had thought of suicide on several occasions and even decided on the method. He would use gas because it would be just like going to sleep and there wouldn’t be any pain. That was important.
Adrian didn’t like pain of any sort, particularly mental pain. That, he felt, was far worse than physical pain, although apart from visits to the dentist and an appendicitis operation when he was seventeen, he had had little experience of physical pain.
He felt he was an expert at the other sort.
Miss Aimes suddenly bustled into the room. Her entry always reminded Adrian of a bird landing for scraps, alert, head to one side, immediately expecting danger. But not a pigeon. Miss Aimes wasn’t a pigeon. A sparrow, perhaps.
She was her customary thirty minutes late and as she did every morning, she said, ‘Sorry I’m late.’
And as he did every morning, Adrian replied, ‘That’s all right, Miss Aimes,’ and he knew she wasn’t sorry and she knew it wasn’t all right. They both accepted that she would be late the following morning and that he would not protest.
‘Has he come back?’ his secretary asked, primping her grey hair into its rigid ruts over her head. Adrian watched her, convinced it was a wig and that she was really bald. A bald sparrow. Very rare. He really would have to curb this mania about baldness. It was almost unhealthy.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Oh.’
‘It’s been two weeks. I don’t think it will. It probably couldn’t survive with a broken beak … couldn’t get enough food.’
‘Probably not.’
Adrian knew she didn’t care and despised her for it.
‘We’ll hear about the report today,’ said Miss Aimes.
‘Yes,’ he said. The reminder was unnecessary. Sir Jocelyn Binns, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, always took two days to consider final debriefing reports, so today was consultation day. Adrian had worn his other suit, the one with the waistcoat.
‘Do you think there’s any point in putting out any more biscuit crumbs?’ asked Miss Aimes.
It had rained during the night, soaking into a messy smear the chocolate digestive bait.
‘No, don’t bother.’
Miss Aimes stop-started around the office and Adrian watched, seeking the gap near her hairline that would confirm his suspicion. Perhaps it was an expensive wig, very well made. Her father had been a colonel with the Indian Rifles and had left her some money, so she could afford it.
Her tea was dreadful, like it always was, and as he always did, Adrian said, ‘It’s very nice. Thank you.’
She smiled, knowing he was lying, and he was glad when the buzzer went, indicating Binns was ready. Adrian put on his jacket, advanced beyond his Maginot Line and left Miss Aimes to her nest and her appalling tea.
The Permanent Secretary was very thin and he stooped, self-consciously trying to reduce his height, even when sitting at his desk. Adrian thought of him as a question mark, a perpetual query. It was a fitting metaphor.
Normally he stuttered, but Adrian had worked with him for fifteen years and in the intimacy of the office, the impediment disappeared.
Adrian had come straight from university with his Triple First in modern languages, an oddity in a department used to oddities, a rare man whose mind could sponge up and retain a foreign tongue with the ease of a child parroting an advertising jingle he has heard only twice.
At first their association had been difficult, both men sheltering behind their permanently erected barriers of shyness, but then each had recognized much of himself in the other, and friendship had replaced the diffidence until there now existed a unique rapport between the permanent civil servant and his assistant.
Adrian still kept a respectful attitude, aware his hesitant relationship with the older man was perhaps the only real friendship he had and frightened of losing it through over-familiarity. Always Sir Jocelyn led and Adrian followed.
Only in their work did the order sometimes change and that was necessary because everything began with Adrian. He and Sir Jocelyn processed every defector to Britain from communist bloc countries, establishing their worth and recommending whether or not they were granted permanent asylum. They had worked as a team for a decade, made only two mistakes and were rated the best there was, even better than anyone in Washington.
‘Alexandra Bennovitch,’ opened Binns, tapping the folder that Adrian had created and which lay between them on the desk.
‘Yes,’ said Adrian.
‘It’s a good report.’
‘Thank you.’
‘He’s important, isn’t he?’
‘Very,’ agreed Adrian. ‘He’s the most important man ever to have come over, in my opinion. And everything he has said checks out. I’ve had several meetings with our people, comparing what he told me with what they already know. They are amazed. They had no idea the Russians were so advanced, either on Mars probes or multi-head re-entry rockets.’
‘No wonder the Soviets are so bloody mad.’
‘What about Washington?’ asked Adrian.
‘The C.I.A. are like dogs on heat,’ chuckled Binns. ‘We get calls about three times a day.’
‘I think Bennovitch will choose to go there eventually,’ said Adrian. ‘He’s reasonably happy here at the moment, but it’s just excitement. It’ll soon wear off. When he begins to think he’ll realize America is the only place for space science, despite their economies.’