Proctor-Gould pulled at his ear.
‘I wasn’t empowered to tell you about what I was doing. How could I have been? You know what happens in these cases as well as I do. Where I’ve done wrong is in telling you even now. I regret that. I regret it deeply. However, what’s done is done. I’m sorry I had to involve you, but it’s all over now. We’ll go to the Kiev Station this evening and get the books out. By ten o’clock the one book that matters will be out of our hands.’
‘You’re giving it to someone at Sasha’s dinner for the Faculty this evening?’
‘Let me just say that by the time the dinner is over there will be no more risk of any sort for either of us. Is that all right, Paul?’
Manning felt a profound sense of resentment.
‘It’s not just the risk.’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have agreed to take part in a deception of this sort even if I had been asked. How can there be anything honest in the world if we behave like this?’
‘Come, come, Paul. Even your friend Konstantin can see the value of espionage.’
‘He may be right. But I don’t want to be involved in it myself. The end may be acceptable, but the means are deceitful and mercenary.’
Proctor-Gould looked round, surprise and hurt lengthening his long face.
‘Mercenary?’ he said. ‘Paul, you don’t think I’m being paid for doing this, do you? You don’t think I’m putting not only my safety but my whole career in jeopardy for a few pounds on the side?’
Manning stared at a concrete Apollo Belvedere on the other side of the path. Water dripped like representational blood from the upraised stump of its concrete arm.
‘I suppose not,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’re doing it out of some self-important idea of the public good, as a contribution to improved Anglo-Soviet relations.’
Proctor-Gould frowned.
‘Don’t you know how these things work, Paul?’ he said. ‘Don’t you know how these things are arranged? Let me enlighten you. A man rings you at the office in London one day. He says he works in a department of the Foreign Office concerned with developing unofficial contacts with Russia. Would you be kind enough to meet him for lunch and give him the benefit of your experience in the matter? You have lunch with him. He asks intelligent, sympathetic questions about your job. He expresses surprise at your answers. He makes notes. Then he says, there seems to be a tremendous amount of valuable material here which could help other people who have professional contacts with Russia. Could you perhaps write it down for him in the form of a memorandum? You write the memorandum and send it to him. He rings up to say he is delighted with it. Could you possibly come to dinner some, time the following week at his flat? He has a friend in the department who has read the memorandum and would very much like to meet you and discuss one or two points arising from it. You go to dinner. The friend knows all about you already. He asks after mutual friends from Cambridge. After dinner you sit and drink whisky and soda. The friend starts to talk about your memorandum. It’s so revealing and so perceptive, he says, that it makes him want to know more. What kind of people are these officials you have dealings with in Moscow? What sort of life do they lead? What are their tastes? What do they believe in? What do they want? Could you write a supplementary memorandum going into this sort of biographical detail? Perhaps at this point you begin to demur. They hasten to reassure you. They don’t want the information for any ulterior motive. It’s just that if Britain is to establish a real understanding with Russia, which is the best guarantee of a lasting peace, the Government must have accurate, up-to-date information about the people they are dealing with. That’s all. You write the supplementary memorandum, perhaps in rather cautious terms. They are still delighted. Once again you are invited to dinner at the flat. They tell you your memorandum has gone up to ministerial level, and remark how pleasant it is to know someone who is in Moscow so often. For one thing the postal service is not very reliable. One of them has a friend there he’d like to send a little present to, if he could find someone to take it. Perhaps next time you’re over you’d be kind enough to oblige? You refuse, politely. You point out that you can’t afford to get involved in anything that might make the Soviet authorities suspicious, since your job depends on having their confidence. At this they become rather grave, and look at each other meaningfully. Your attitude creates rather an awkward situation, they say. Unless they continue to take the most scrupulous care to preserve security, the Soviet officials who look into these things will almost certainly discover that you have had three meetings with British intelligence, and submitted two reports to them. British intelligence? Well, they belong to a department of it, certainly – a perfectly innocuous department, of course, dealing with more or less open information about Russia, of the sort provided by returned travellers. All the same, the Russians would probably not make much distinction between one department and another. Your hosts point out that they could scarcely recommend the continued expense of time and manpower on keeping the connexion with you secret if you are no longer working for the department. And the trouble is, they explain, that if the Russians discover you have been approached by British intelligence they will never be able to be sure that you refused to work for them. So you would certainly never get another Soviet visa. Which, they would imagine, might be rather awkward in your line of business.’
There was a silence. The music from the loud-speakers had stopped. Was it the end of the slow movement? Or had the last movement gone by as well, unnoticed?
‘So you take the present?’ said Manning.
‘You may well decide to.’
‘And perhaps bring one back?’
‘Possibly.’
‘How many presents have you taken back and forth?’
‘That doesn’t concern you, Paul.’
The music started again. It was the Komsomol march, ‘Brave Boys.’ The poignant late spring light changed. The day became brisk.
‘I see your difficulty, Gordon,’ said Manning.
‘I’m glad you do, Paul.’
‘But there’s no reason why I should cooperate in your undertaking.’
‘You’re not expected to cooperate, Paul.’
‘Yes, I am, Gordon. I’m expected to return you your books from the Kiev Station. As you remember, I have the ticket.’
Proctor-Gould stared at Manning, his eyes infinitely lugubrious.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘Well,’ said Manning, ‘if you really are in the business you might as well bring a few presents in for Konstantin. I think they might stand a better chance of doing some good.’
Proctor-Gould went on staring at Manning in silence. Manning looked up, caught his eye, and looked away again awkwardly.
‘You’re not thinking of hugging that cloakroom ticket to yourself, are you?’ said Proctor-Gould.
‘No,’ said Manning, ‘I’m thinking of giving it to Konstantin.’
35
Manning had got about four or five hundred yards from the gates of the Park of Culture and Rest when Proctor-Gould’s black Chaika caught up with him. Proctor-Gould held the door open.
‘Jump in, Paul,’ he said.
‘I’ll walk, thanks, Gordon.’
He began to walk again. The driver let in his clutch and cruised along level with him, the door still open like an outspread wing, sweeping people out of the way.
‘There’s something I want to explain to you, Paul,’ said Proctor-Gould.
‘You’ve explained already.’
‘This is something else altogether.’
Manning stopped.
‘Well, for God’s sake get out of that car,’ he said. ‘The whole street’s staring at us.’
Proctor-Gould scrambled out, and planted himself squarely in front of Manning, his hands in his blazer pockets, his great eyes fixed anxiously on Manning’s face.
‘What is it, then?’ said Manning.
‘Paul, I’m afraid I wasn’t really telling you the truth back there in the park.’
‘Oh, Gordon …’
‘I had a very good reason for keeping the real situation to myself, as you’ll see….’
He stopped, and looked round. A small crowd was beginning to collect about them, staring intently into their faces, perhaps thinking, from the manner in which Manning was edging away, and Proctor-Gould crowding in upon him, that they were about to fight. The more private Proctor-Gould’s disclosures became, thought Manning, the more public were the surroundings in which he chose to make them. He would end up telling the ultimate secrets of his heart from the top of the university skyscraper through a public address system. Manning looked round.
‘There’s a beer house just down the road,’ he said. ‘Let’s go there.’
It was crowded inside the beer house. There were no chairs or stools, and the customers stood at shelves along the wall eating bread and cheese and drinking out of paper cups. In one corner two men were embracing each other with laughter and tears. ‘We haven’t seen each other for twenty years,’ they kept explaining to the other customers, who smiled, and wagged their heads, and winked.
‘Abstemious lot here,’ said Proctor-Gould as they queued at the counter. ‘They’re all buying fruit juice.’
‘You haven’t been inside one of these places before?’ said Manning, surprised.
Proctor-Gould shook his head. He looked vaguely round the room. Under the signs saying: ‘It is forbidden to bring and consume spirits,’ the customers were busy emptying their paper cups of fruit juice into the ash-trays, and refilling them from half-bottles of vodka they carried in their pockets. But Proctor-Gould Was already thinking about something else.
‘Paul,’ he said, in a low voice which made several men in the queue turn round and gaze at them expressionlessly. ‘You didn’t really believe all that stuff I told you about getting involved with British intelligence, did you?’
Manning looked at him carefully.
‘Yes, I did,’ he said.
Proctor-Gould smiled.
‘Rather cloak-and-dagger for your taste, I should have thought,’ he said.
‘It sounded about right to me.’
‘I obviously have a career as a story-teller. Because it wasn’t the truth, Paul. The truth is rather simpler. If I may give you a tip, it usually is.’
They collected two paper cups of beer, and found themselves a space at the shelf.
‘Go on, then,’ said Manning. ‘Let’s have the new version.’
‘It’s soon told, Paul,’ said Proctor-Gould, leaning along the counter towards Manning and talking in the same low voice. ‘As you know, there are a number of what are called “underground” writers in this country. They work in secret, and their manuscripts are smuggled out of the country and published in the West.’
Manning looked up from his beer, met Proctor-Gould’s unblinking gaze, and looked away again, disconcerted.
‘Now,’ said Proctor-Gould, ‘somebody else – I don’t know who – arranges for the manuscripts to be got out. I’m part of a chain which brings the royalties back to the author. That may sound mercenary to you, Paul, like everything else, but these people are no different from any other writers – they have to live. I don’t know the author in question myself – I don’t even know his pen-name in the West. All I know is that I’m given a book with a number of 100 dollar bills made up inside the binding, and that I’m due to hand it over to the next link in the chain tonight. I believe there are some cuttings of reviews with the money, too. I don’t know whether you think this sort of operation is worthwhile, Paul?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘It seems so to me, I must say. I’m glad you agree. I’d be very grateful, Paul, if you’d go to the Kiev Station some time before the dinner this evening and get that case out of the left luggage office for me.’
Manning sipped a little of his beer. It tasted like dilute Syrup of Figs.
‘I’m afraid I don’t believe you, Gordon,’ he said.
‘I think you do, Paul.’
‘Why did you tell me the other version?’
Proctor-Gould sighed.
‘Once I’d admitted that one of the books contained something – which I should never have done – I had to go on and complete the story. At the time it didn’t seem to matter what you thought of me as a result, provided only that (a) you believed the story, and that (b) it wasn’t the truth. I obviously made rather too good a job of it; you not only believed the story – you struck moral attitudes about it. Now that you’ve forced me to tell you the true version I want your solemn oath that you will not divulge it to anyone – not hint at it – not even refer to it obliquely when you are back in England. Will you give it me, please?’
He was leaning close to Manning. It reduced his height, so that he was looking up into Manning’s face, his earnest brown irises underlined by the whites and the pink rim beneath them. On either side of the two Englishmen the line of jawbones champed up and down, the guzzling Adam’s apples wobbled stolidly on.
‘It’s ridiculous to give my word,’ said Manning, ‘if I don’t believe the story.’
‘I want your word whether you believe it or not.’
‘All right, then,’ said Manning reluctantly. It seemed to him that in giving his word he was also implying his acceptance of the story. He would have liked to make it clear to Proctor-Gould that he reserved his opinion, but it seemed a hopelessly complicated point to explain to those straightforward brown eyes.
‘You swear?’ said Proctor-Gould.
‘Yes, yes.’
‘“I swear”?’
‘I swear.’
Proctor-Gould straightened up.
‘Even if you’re not convinced,’ he said, ‘I hope I’ve managed to sow doubts. In any case, Paul, I don’t think you’d really give your pal Konstantin the means of blackmailing me, would you? After all, come wind, come rain, we are fellow-countrymen. In fact we’re fellow-Johnsmen.’
He smiled at Manning ruefully.
‘I’m not coming the old blood-is-thicker-than-water, I assure you,’ he said. ‘All the same, one does have a certain undeniable leaning towards one’s compatriots, doesn’t one? One doesn’t deliberately set out to sell them into the hands of foreigners.’
Manning swallowed the rest of his beer. It made him shudder. Proctor-Gould, he noticed, had not even touched his.
‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.