‘What could we do? The evidence seemed …’
He shook his pulpy head in amazement as if the evidence had been as awful and incontrovertible as a quartered body in the well of the court. Whereas it had been as thin as paper, as insubstantial as the blurred photograph of a woman in Moscow in one of Springer’s scandal rags.
‘How could we have seen it?’
‘By looking beyond your nose. If you could.’ McCoy was prodding me, tempting me, searching out the vengeance, blowing the embers. And they were there, too. He knew that. I’d begun to feel the little heats myself.
‘There are mistakes. People —’
‘Lucky they’ve done with the rope then.’
‘People can be wrong. People —’
‘The law is an ass.’
‘One can be made a fool of — I don’t deny it. The Russians, the Americans too —’
‘Twenty-eight years is quite a price to pay — even for a fool.’
‘The evidence —’ he said. I interrupted him. Now I had suddenly found my stride in fury.
‘Fuck the evidence. And four years locked up alone in this place is quite a payment on account. What would you say the interest was on that — my interest? The compensation.’
‘Be reasonable, Marlow. Rationally —’
‘Where’s the application form, McCoy? One of those chits Miss Charlbury dealt with in the annexe? What’s owing this time? “Out-of-pocket expenses”? Right then. Item: to four years wait, sixteen seasons — how many holidays would that make in Normandy? How many lobsters in season with Muscadet? Or even the odd bottle of Guinness in Brighton? Anyway, item: missing the rain, drying in the sun, drinking myself silly — oh yes, McCoy, item: how much will you pay for a thousand opening times and friends in the evening? And how many women, McCoy, could you fit in afterwards, three long winters lying in different beds? Item: to a dozen casual girls — or perhaps one or two real ones — missing. And sometimes, McCoy, oh yes indeed, I used to watch cricket in the summer, tumbling out of bed with someone before lunch on Saturdays. Lords, and even the Oval. And there were the papers on Sundays. You’d have been surprised with my Sundays, McCoy, how little I did with them. But they were mine to lose. Item: to how many lost weekends? How many items for Miss Charlbury, McCoy? How many,howmany?’
And then I was at him, uncontrollably, with what I thought all the precisely dictated fury of an animal. I was standing over him, squeezing his throat dry, my fingers crushing the old starched-white collar. I expected his eyes to bulge and choking noises but there was nothing. He sat on the chair impassively, his suit smelling of too much dry-cleaning, his torso shaking gently under what I felt was a barrage of force. When he started to push me away I thought my grip unbreakable so that I was amazed to see my hands slip from his neck, lightly and easily, as though they were oiled. When the warder came in I was lying on the floor, shouting. ‘When will I be paid, McCoy, for all that, all that …’
And McCoy was happy, helping me back onto the bed. There was lightness in his face, a relief, the expression he’d assumed in the old days when some bureaucratic ploy of his had come off, when someone, like Henry, had just left his office and had started on his long journey down the river. His face reflected a professional’s joy in a point well taken; he had discovered my enmity again, accepted in my lifeless fists the crucial transference which signals a cure. He had wound me up secretly, compressing the vehemence, like a toy. Then he had slipped the catch.
We were alone again. I was cold. Suddenly the quilt had no warmth in it and I wanted sheets and blankets. I drank the coffee and it had a taste The cigarette seemed fragrant as woodsmoke.
‘What were we fighting about, McCoy? I don’t remember. Except that you realise I was framed. You’ve found out about Williams. So now what do you want? I’m free —’
‘Yes, we’ve found out — something. Not about Williams. So don’t jump too soon. That depends about your being free. Depends on you, in fact.’
I could see it already. Another plan, no doubt as careful as the one that had sent me after Henry and given me a life sentence. But in this case it would take me out into a world whose flavours I had just begun to sense again, and I had to remember not to snatch at it, not to show too willing. For the truth was that I’d have done anything to have been in London that weekend, to book a hotel room there and disappear into life.
‘Listen, Marlow, just listen. Then you can take it — or leave it.’ McCoy looked about the cell and up at the small window with its view over the roof of the old laundry if you stood on tiptoe. The day was grey and wet, a smell of sodden ashes coming on the wind from the garbage dumps on the other side of town. I knew what he meant. He went on confidently now, as though recounting an old chestnut that yet never failed to please. ‘A week ago we took a man in London, fellow called George Graham, deep-cover KGB. An illegal. He was on his way to start a satellite circle in the United States, one they have to spy on the spies there. Just a lucky chance, one in a million, that we got on to him. He used to be involved with our circle in Beirut and afterwards in Cairo, but before your time there. His cover till now has been as a Senior Reports Officer with the COI, advising on overseas propaganda, doing radio and television programmes and such like. He’s forty, dark hair, pretty well built, fluent Arabic, few connections — he’s been out of the light for a long time, but he knows the ropes all right. He’s quite a bit like you in fact, Marlow. And he’s going to New York next week …’
‘And he’s dispensable — just like me,’ I said when McCoy had finished outlining his ‘suggestion’ as he put it. ‘The old story, I’ve heard it before. It’s what put me here.’
‘And it will take you out. Dispensable, yes. But that will be up to you. If you survive, you’ll stay out. All this — will be forgotten.’ He looked around him again.
‘I’ll get a medal.’
‘None of us are indispensable,’ McCoy said quickly, as if to forestall an accusation of cheating. And for that moment I believed him, sensed that, at heart, he recognised his own failures intimately.
‘Besides, you’ll survive. You’re just as much an unknown quantity as this other man. Most of your trial was in camera. The photographs the press dug up on you were from five and ten years before. And no one will know you from Adam in the United Nations. Point is, Marlow, we’re going to turn you into a completely new man — new name, new background, new future. That should be your cue — a real chance to start over again.’
‘Jesus, you like the games, don’t you?’
‘You tell me a better way of setting you on your feet? Ten years as Reports Officer with us, Arabic, the right accents — you’ll pass as someone born to the job in the UN. And the Third World they’re always talking about: you know about that too, don’t you? — all those grubby backstreets in Cairo and bilharzia in the canals.’ McCoy raised his eyes again to the high window and the dark grey clouds like smog rolling over the city. ‘That’s what should worry you, Marlow.’ He nodded sagely at the bruised view, curling his lips a fraction, like a picture restorer contemplating a hopeless canvas. ‘That should be your first concern. Fresh fields and that. Isolation kills more than anything. You’ll be doing yourself the favour.’