The publican drew the bitter and placed the pint on the bar and then measured a portion of smoky Scotch into the snifter glass.
“Ice, sur?” the publican said.
“No thank you.”
“Americans,” he said.
Gaunt said, “I beg your pardon?”
“The American base, sur. Not far from here. At Mildenhall? We get Americans sometimes, not often, they don’t patronize the village shops, have all their goods brought to them in the PX. Even flour. Don’t like our flour, they say. Everything has to be made with ice. And vodka. They don’t fancy whiskey; everything must be vodka.”
“Yes, isn’t it so?” Pim said brightly. “Ah, well; we have to put up with them.”
“I don’t mind the ones drink quiet and don’t make a fuss.” The publican furrowed his brow. “The local girls. That’s what I can’t stand. They hitch up to the base every Saturday night, want to get themselves a rich American, I suppose. England isn’t good enough—”
“Ah, well, just so,” said Pim.
Gaunt withdrew from the circle of light at the bar. Why did Pim indulge these people? The conversations of rustics were endless, pointless, circles in circles.
“Mind, I don’t have a prejudice against them. Except the blacks, I can’t abide them in my place.”
“Yes, yes, feel just the same.”
“Nothing I like less than to see a black one with one of the local girls. They have no shame.”
“Who? The blacks?” Gaunt could not resist it; the frustrations of the day were piled in his remark.
The publican gave him an angry look and turned away, back to the public bar on the far side of the old house. A game of darts was in progress there, and they could hear the steady thunk thunk as the darts embedded themselves in the board.
“You didn’t have to say that.”
“My God, sit down, Pim, and give a fill and stop this bucolic tour.”
“This is my territory, Gaunt; this is my operation. You can’t come la-di-da from Auntie and queer it for me.” The uninflected voice suddenly found its roots in the East End; it was rough, threatening. The little man who had seemed so ridiculous weeping at church seemed dangerous now.
“Pim, I have been waiting two hours for your fill, and I have endured being prayed over, sung at, and now been the unwilling participant in a blatantly racist conversation that has absolutely no point except to endear you to a half-wit publican and—”
“Careful. Careful.” Softly, dangerously.
Gaunt thought of something more to say and then thought not to say it. The two men sat down at a table removed from the bar in the half-darkness and sipped their beverages for a moment. Gaunt tasted the smoky whisky and felt it warm him.
“Yesterday,” Pim began. “We were supposed to meet at Ely. You see, I had arranged to take some rubbings from the tombs in the cathedral and—”
Gaunt put down his glass heavily. “Damn your brass rubbings and damn your churches. I want to know about Felker.”
“As I was saying.” Pim paused. His voice had resumed its toneless quality. Each word was important because it was half hidden, even as it was uttered; each word counted now. “Ely was safe, I could watch his coming and cover him. Felker didn’t arrive. I waited first at the cathedral and then at the fallback in Ely. Then I went to the third fallback, to the safe house. Felker wasn’t coming; something had gone wrong. You see, we were very close to the Opposition man; very close. Much closer than I could signal you in the reports.”
“Dammit, Pim, I was your control officer.”
“Yes. But you have to have a feeling for this sort of thing. In the field.”
“I’ve been in the field.”
“But you’ve been at Auntie too long. Too long. There was nothing I could explain to you. Not until it happened.”
Auntie. Contempt was mingled in the utterance of the common, ragging nickname adopted by all the field agents for headquarters of the Ministry for External Affairs (Extraordinary). Auntie was so widespread that the word had shown up from time to time in official correspondences between the minister and department heads; naturally, the minister initiated the use of the word in such exchanges. At one time, the intelligence units for internal and external espionage had been coded MI-5 and MI-6 respectively. After the embarrassment of the Philby spy network inside British intelligence and subsequent revelations of other traitors, a housecleaning had thrown out both bathwater and baby in an attempt to restore the prestige of British intelligence. And so the old MI-5 became Ministry for Internal Affairs (Extraordinary) and foreign intelligence became the preserve of Auntie. No one quite knew why “Auntie” was chosen as a nickname; like all nicknames, it came about spontaneously and it was kept because it seemed to fit perfectly.
“And so? Pim? What happened?”
“To Felker, you mean? Why, that’s obvious.”
“Not to me.”
“He bolted.”
There was a long moment of silence. Gaunt felt failure creep around his neck like the chill of the wetlands all around. He brushed at it with his hand and realized he felt choked. It has been his operation, he had been control officer, and yet, at the critical moment he had not been in control at all.
“I ran the checks all night.”
“Through Auntie? Wasn’t that indiscreet? I mean—”
“No, no. I’m not such a fool. He simply took the ferry at Harwich to the Hook of Holland. Somewhere in the Low Countries now, I should guess. Unless he’s made it to Germany. The funny thing is that he did so little to cover his trail. Do you suppose he wants someone to know he’s gone?”
“We know.”
“Not us, Gaunt.”
Another silence. Speech seemed so difficult now, as though both were learning a foreign language.
“You should have notified me right away, it was your—”
“Don’t become tedious.” Again the piggish eyes darted up a warning glance. “By the time I was certain, absolutely rock certain, there was nothing to be done. You see, I thought perhaps Reed had done him in.”
The Soviet agent. The watcher at Mildenhall who had been the object of the operation. The Soviet agent who seemed so in love with the lifestyle of England. The Soviet agent who whored in Piccadilly with the Soho boys; the Soviet agent who liked fast cars and Savile Row clothes. He had been utterly corruptible. They had meant to turn him, and now Felker, their agent at the point of contact, was gone.
“And Reed did not?”
“No. I was certain of that. At the end, I mean. You see, I saw the problem in two ways. If Felker had bolted, there was nothing to be done except to cover the trail. For Auntie and for our Soviet friends. I mean, it would hardly do for the Opposition to think that one of ours could prove less than trustworthy. We’re all done with traitors, ever since the reforms. Auntie says so.”
“Your sarcasm is misplaced. This is so fantastic, I scarcely believe what I’m hearing.”
“‘More things in heaven and earth…’”
“Didn’t you have a clue? I mean, you were the network man. You saw Felker every day.”
“Not every day, but no, I didn’t. Not a flutter, all this time wasted,” Pim said. For the first time, he sounded tired and a trifle sad.
“You should have alerted me.”
“And what would you have done, Gaunt? Raised the hue and cry? Alerted the countryside? ‘Find this man.’ I did what had to be done. I had to be certain.”
Gaunt picked up the glass and sipped. The whisky slid smoothly over his palate and throat, but it did not warm him. He felt the chill of the old building, of the bare flat countryside, of the darkness without.
“I had to be certain about Felker. Why did he leave a trail? And why did he leave at all?” Pim seemed to ask the questions of himself.