“Really? I thought you had been cleared—”
“Perhaps I have but I haven’t had training in it.”
“Well, this damned security really turns on itself, doesn’t it? We begin by not trusting the enemy, work our way to not trusting the Americans, and now we don’t trust ourselves.”
“Yes, sir.” Ely agreed quietly because it seemed agreement was called for. He rarely understood what the Old Man was saying when he entered into a flight of philosophy.
“Seeker is the highest-level record keeper. Computer. Been on-line, as they say, for two years, goes all the way back now to Crimea… really marvelous, space efficient…”
“Yes.”
“Name of Wickham.”
“Who, sir?”
Q frowned. He was annoyed. “Damn it. The man who disappeared.”
“But what was his inquiry?”
“Tomas Crohan. Wanted to know what we had on Tomas Crohan.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t explain. He talked to George but George thought he was lying. George was going to get to the bottom of it when he disappeared. That very night. Chauffeur came along to pick him up at the usual time and he wasn’t there. Chauffeur waited for an hour, called his wife, great hue and cry, and that’s all we know.”
“Well, you know something more.”
“I do?”
“Tomas Crohan. What was it about?”
“I told you that George—”
“Yes. But why was George so interested?” Ely spoke gently, almost diffidently. George was the code counterpart of Q who ran the electronics retrieval division of Auntie. Q was nominal superior to George but because Q didn’t understand in the slightest what electronics were and how computers operated, George ran his division with some measure of independence.
Q frowned again. “I don’t think I can tell you that right now, Ely. The point is not merely that Wickham has disappeared but that this morning we picked up a routine message from our Dublin station keeper. Same name pops in.”
“Tomas Crohan? In what context?”
“I don’t know. Damned Parker.”
“Penny Parker?”
“Yes, him. Run across him?”
“We were in Czechoslovakia doing a black job ten years ago. Penny Parker is in Dublin?”
“Yes. Listening post. A week ago he justified an expense accounting by sighting a Soviet T-class submarine off the Blaskets.”
“Island?”
“Yes. About five miles from Great Blasket.”
“Justified his expenses?”
“Talking out of shop, I suppose. The trouble with agents in the field is that they become so accustomed to pulling the wool over the eyes of the Opposition that they come to think we are the Opposition as well.”
“You don’t believe him.” Again, gently.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. There’s hardly any secret that the Soviet Navy is operating in the northern Atlantic, even off our dear cousins’ island. What matters is why Parker was in Blasket in some godforsaken part of that country when he should have been attending to duties in Dublin.”
“And what connection is there between his sighting and Tomas Crohan.”
Q swiveled in his chair and regarded the weak, hissing fire behind him. With his back to Ely — a characteristic act of rudeness — he continued in his thin voice.
“It would appear none at all. But there are coincidences inside coincidences. Wickham picked up his name through a test of penetration of American radio traffic. In Scandinavia.”
Ely understood suddenly, understood that a great problem was looming and understood that Q wanted to wash his hands of it. Q did him no favor now; Q wanted something swept under a rug in a room far away.
Still Q ruminated aloud, facing the fireplace, avoiding both the necessity of seeing Ely’s reactions to his words and hiding his face from the agent.
“Our station keeper in Stockholm is looking into the matter there, has been since we first got notice that the Yanks have sent someone special to Helsinki.”
“I don’t quite understand the connections,” Ely said, raising his voice slightly in the event that lack of visual contact between the men had rendered them both somewhat deaf.
“No. Neither does anyone. Even George is puzzled. Imagine puzzling George.” He paused as though he had not considered it before. “This is all a load of rubbish about some… some name out of the past and—”
“Who is Tomas Crohan?”
“Who was Tomas Crohan is more likely.”
“Who was he, then?”
“Irish national, fiercely pro-Nazi before the war. The Americans somehow got to him, used his country’s neutrality, which was really pro-Nazi, sent him into Vienna. Your old bailiwick.”
Q turned rapidly and faced Ely again. He wanted to see if he had scored by mentioning Vienna.
Ely did not respond. If he felt pain over the failure, the pain had burrowed its way inside him. It lived like a tapeworm in his body; it fed on him and wasted his features. But outwardly, Ely was still the professional, still the Fixer. His eyes did not waver. His fierce mustache seemed fiercer still.
“What happened?” Ely inquired in the same even, soft voice.
“Red Army marched into Vienna before Crohan got out. They arrested him, hinting he was an anti-Soviet American spy. Well, he was an American agent of some sort, that’s clear. But the Americans kept saying he was on a humanitarian mission—”
“Like Wallenberg.”
“Yes. Like Wallenberg. There were similarities, I suppose. In any event, he died in Soviet captivity. Nineteen forty-six.”
“And now his name comes up again.”
“Yes. American agents in Helsinki, Penny Parker blathering in Dublin, and this damnable business with Wickham. He was positively vetted just six months ago.”
“And?”
“Nothing. No mistress in Pimlico, no penchants to become a raging queen in Soho. Just a good, dull, sober chap, the sort the service could use more of.”
Again, the implied reprimand; again, Ely did not respond. His blue eyes fixed themselves on the glare of the rimless spectacles that framed the old man’s cold glare. Outside, it began to snow, a brittle, mean snow of mixed sleet and rain, a snow that knocked on windows like a cat scratching its way inside a house.
“I understand the Crohan name in the context of Wickham. But how did Penny Parker send his?”
“Very mysterious, which is typical of Parker, which is the reason I had him posted to Dublin in the first place. The Irish love a conspirator and Parker is one of them. He wasn’t completely clear but it involved a priest, someone who had information on this Crohan fellow.”
“Q?”
“What is it?”
“What do you want done?”
“Information. I don’t know, but we need information.”
“Can I see our files on Crohan? I mean, this was the request Wickham made, wasn’t it?”
“George has charge of them—”
“Will he show me the files?”
There was a long silence which implied the answer. Ely waited, nonetheless.
“They are under fifty-year seal.”
“I am hardly a representative of the Daily Express,” Ely replied.
“I’ve given you the essential story. You can get the rest from our routine reference-and-search.”
“Q, why are we interested?”
“Is this necessary? Suffice we are interested. Terribly. Not so much in Crohan but in why his name suddenly pops up with alarming frequency and why the Yanks are so bloody interested all of a sudden. And just why the hell did Wickham disappear after he made his inquiry.”
“I’ll go to Dublin first. To see Parker,” Ely said.
“Yes.” The director of Auntie leaned forward with his hands folded on his desk in front of him in a gesture of sincerity. The gesture was so obvious that Ely was certain the old man intended to lie to him.