Hawthorne now felt able to relax; the Chief had taken charge. Even if one day he read the secret file, the words would convey nothing to him. The small shop for vacuum cleaners had been drowned beyond recovery in the tide of the Chief’s literary imagination. Agent 59200/5 was established.
‘It’s all part of the man’s character,’ the Chief explained to Hawthorne, as though he and not Hawthorne had pushed open the door in Lamparilla Street. ‘A man who has always learnt to count the pennies and to risk the pounds. That’s why he’s not a member of the Country Club – nothing to do with the broken marriage. You’re a romantic, Hawthorne. Women have come and gone in his life; I suspect they never meant as much to him as his work. The secret of successfully using an agent is to understand him. Our man in Havana belongs – you might say – to the Kipling age. Walking with kings – how does it go? – and keeping your virtue, crowds and the common touch. I expect somewhere in that ink-stained desk of his there’s an old penny note-book of black wash-leather in which he kept his first accounts – a quarter gross of india-rubbers, six boxes of steel nibs …’
‘I don’t think he goes quite as far back as steel nibs, sir.’
The chief sighed and replaced the black lens. The innocent eye had gone back into hiding at the hint of opposition.
‘Details don’t matter, Hawthorne,’ the Chief said with irritation. ‘But if you are to handle him successfully you’ll have to find that penny note-book. I speak metaphorically.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘This business about being a recluse because he lost his wife – it’s a wrong appreciation, Hawthorne. A man like that reacts quite differently. He doesn’t show his loss, he doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. If your appreciation were correct, why wasn’t he a member of the club before his wife died?’
‘She left him.’
‘Left him? Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure, sir.’
‘Ah, she never found that penny note-book. Find it, Hawthorne, and he’s yours for life. What were we talking about?’
‘The size of his office, sir. It won’t be very easy for him to absorb many in the way of new staff.’
‘We’ll weed out the old ones gradually. Pension off that old secretary of his …’
‘As a matter of fact …’
‘Of course this is just speculation, Hawthorne. He may not be the right man after all. Sterling stuff, these old merchant-kings, but sometimes they can’t see far enough beyond the counting-house to be of use to people like ourselves. We’ll judge by his first reports, but it’s always well to plan a step ahead. Have a word with Miss Jenkinson and see if she has a Spanish speaker in her pool.’
Hawthorne rose in the elevator floor by floor from the basement: a rocket’s-eye view of the world. Western Europe sank below him: the Near East: Latin America. The filing cabinets stood around Miss Jenkinson like the pillars of a temple round an ageing oracle. She alone was known by her surname. For some inscrutable reason of security every other inhabitant in the building went by a Christian name. She was dictating to a secretary when Hawthorne entered, ‘Memo to A.O. Angelica has been transferred to C.5 with an increase of salary to £8 a week. Please see that this increase goes through at once. To anticipate your objections I would point out that Angelica is now approaching the financial level of a bus-conductress.’
‘Yes?’ Miss Jenkinson asked sharply. ‘Yes?’
‘The Chief told me to see you.’
‘I have nobody to spare.’
‘We don’t want anybody at the moment. We’re just discussing possibilities.’
‘Ethel, dear, telephone to D.2 and say I will not have my secretaries kept after 7 p.m. except in a national emergency. If a war has broken out or is likely to break out, say that the secretaries’ pool should have been informed.’
‘We may be needing a Spanish-speaking secretary in the Caribbean.’
‘There’s no one I can spare,’ Miss Jenkinson said mechanically.
‘Havana – a small station, agreeable climate.’
‘How big is the staff?’
‘At present one man.’
‘I’m not a marriage bureau,’ Miss Jenkinson said.
‘A middle-aged man with a child of sixteen.’
‘Married?’
‘You could call him that,’ Hawthorne said vaguely.
‘Is he stable?’
‘Stable?’
‘Reliable, safe, emotionally secure?’
‘Oh yes, yes, you may be certain of that. He’s one of those old-fashioned merchant-types,’ Hawthorne said, picking up where the Chief had left off. ‘Built up the business from nothing. Uninterested in women. You might say he’d gone beyond sex.’
‘No one goes beyond sex,’ Miss Jenkinson said. ‘I’m responsible for the girls I send abroad.’
‘I thought you had nobody available.’
‘Well,’ Miss Jenkinson said, ‘I might possibly, under certain circumstances, let you have Beatrice.’
‘Beatrice, Miss Jenkinson!’ a voice exclaimed from behind the filing cabinets.
‘I said Beatrice, Ethel, and I mean Beatrice.’
‘But, Miss Jenkinson …’
‘Beatrice needs some practical experience – that is really all that is amiss. The post would suit her. She is not too young. She is fond of children.’
‘What this station will need,’ Hawthorne said, ‘is someone who speaks Spanish. The love of children is not essential.’
‘Beatrice is half-French. She speaks French really better than she does English.’
‘I said Spanish.’
‘It’s much the same. They’re both Latin tongues.’
‘Perhaps I could see her, have a word with her. Is she fully trained?’
‘She’s a very good encoder and she’s finished a course in microphotography at Ashley Park. Her shorthand is weak, but her typewriting is excellent. She has a good knowledge of electrodynamics.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’m not sure, but a fuse box holds no terrors for her.’
‘She’d be good with vacuum cleaners then?’
‘She’s a secretary, not a domestic help.’
A file drawer slammed shut. ‘Take her or leave her,’ Miss Jenkinson said. Hawthorne had the impression that she would willingly have referred to Beatrice as ‘it’.
‘She’s the only one you can suggest?’
‘The only one.’
Again a file drawer was noisily closed. ‘Ethel,’ Miss Jenkinson said, ‘unless you can relieve your feelings more silently, I shall return you to D. 3.’
Hawthorne went thoughtfully away; he had the impression that Miss Jenkinson with considerable agility had sold him something she didn’t herself believe in – a gold brick or a small dog – bitch, rather.
Part Two
CHAPTER 1
1
WORMOLD CAME AWAY from the Consulate Department carrying a cable in his breast-pocket. It had been shovelled rudely at him, and when he tried to speak he had been checked. ‘We don’t want to know anything about it. A temporary arrangement. The sooner it’s over the better we shall be pleased.’
‘Mr Hawthorne said …’
‘We don’t know any Mr Hawthorne. Please bear that in mind. Nobody of the name is employed here. Good morning.’
He walked home. The long city lay spread along the open Atlantic; waves broke over the Avenida de Maceo and misted the windscreens of cars. The pink, grey, yellow pillars of what had once been the aristocratic quarter were eroded like rocks; an ancient coat of arms, smudged and featureless, was set over the doorway of a shabby hotel, and the shutters of a night-club were varnished in bright crude colours to protect them from the wet and salt of the sea. In the west the steel skyscrapers of the new town rose higher than lighthouses into the clear February sky. It was a city to visit, not a city to live in, but it was the city where Wormold had first fallen in love and he was held to it as though to the scene of a disaster. Time gives poetry to a
battlefield, and perhaps Milly resembled a little the flower on an old rampart where an attack had been repulsed with heavy loss many years ago. Women passed him in the street marked on the forehead with ashes as though they had come up into the sunlight from underground. He remembered that it was Ash Wednesday.
In spite of the school-holiday Milly was not at home when he reached the house – perhaps she was still at Mass or perhaps she was away riding at the Country Club. Lopez was demonstrating the Turbo Suction Cleaner to a priest’s housekeeper who had rejected the Atomic Pile. Wormold’s worst fears about the new model had been justified, for he had not succeeded in selling a single specimen. He went upstairs and opened the telegram; it was addressed to a department in the British Consulate, and the figures which followed had an ugly look like the lottery tickets that remained unsold on the last day of a draw. There was 2674 and then a string of five-figure numerals: 42811 79145 72312 59200 80947 62533 10605 and so on. It was his first telegram and he noticed that it was addressed from London. He was not even certain (so long ago his lesson seemed) that he could decode it, but he recognized a single group, 59200, which had an abrupt and monitory appearance as though Hawthorne that moment had come accusingly up the stairs. Gloomily he took down Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare – how he had always detested Elia and the essay on Roast Pork. The first group of figures, he remembered, indicated the page, the line and the word with which the coding began. ‘Dionysia, the wicked wife of Cleon,’ he read, ‘met with an end proportionable to her deserts.’ He began to decode from ‘deserts’. To his surprise something really did emerge. It was rather as though some strange inherited parrot had begun to speak. ‘No. 1 of 24 January following from 59200 begin paragraph A.’
After working for three-quarters of an hour adding and subtracting, he had decoded the whole message apart from the final paragraph where something had gone wrong either with himself or 59200, or perhaps with Charles Lamb. ‘Following from 59200 begin paragraph A nearly a month since membership Country Club approved and no repeat no information concerning proposed sub-agents yet received stop trust you are not repeat not recruiting any sub-agents before having them properly traced stop begin paragraph B economic and political report on lines of questionnaire left with you should be despatched forthwith to 59200 stop begin paragraph C cursed galloon must be forwarded kingston primary tubercular message ends.’
The last paragraph had an effect of angry incoherence which worried Wormold. For the first time it occurred to him that in their eyes – whoever they were – he had taken money and given nothing in return. This troubled him. It had seemed to him till then that he had been the recipient of an eccentric gift which had enabled Milly to ride at the Country Club and himself to order from England a few books he had coveted. The rest of the money was now on deposit in the bank; he half believed that some day he might be in a position to return it to Hawthorne.
He thought: I must do something, give them some names to trace, recruit an agent, keep them happy. He remembered how Milly used to play at shops and give him her pocket money for imaginary purchases. One had to play the child’s game, but sooner or later Milly always required her money back.
He wondered how one recruited an agent. It was difficult for him to remember exactly how Hawthorne had recruited him - except that the whole affair had begun in a lavatory, but surely that was not an essential feature. He decided to begin with a reasonably easy case.
‘You called me, Señor Vormell.’ For some reason the name Wormold was quite beyond Lopez’ power of pronunciation, but as he seemed unable to settle on a satisfactory substitute, it was seldom that Wormold went by the same name twice.
‘I want to talk to you, Lopez.’
‘Si, Señor Vomell.’
Wormold said, ‘You’ve been with me a great many years now. We trust each other.’
Lopez expressed the completeness of his trust with a gesture towards the heart.
‘How would you like to earn a little more money each month?’
‘Why, naturally … I was going to speak to you myself, Señor Ommel. I have a child coming. Perhaps twenty pesos?’
‘This has nothing to do with the firm. Trade is too bad, Lopez. This will be confidential work, for me personally, you understand.’
‘Ah yes, señor. Personal services I understand. You can trust me. I am discreet. Of course I will say nothing to the señorita.’
‘I think perhaps you don’t understand.’
‘When a man reaches a certain age,’ Lopez said, ‘he no longer wishes to search for a woman himself, he wishes to rest from trouble. He wishes to command, “Tonight yes, tomorrow night no”. To give his directions to someone he trusts …’
‘I don’t mean anything of the kind. What I was trying to say - well, it had nothing to do …’
‘You do not need to be embarrassed in speaking to me, Señor Vormole. I have been with you many years.’
‘You are making a mistake,’ Wormold said. ‘I had no intention …’
‘I understand that for an Englishman in your position places like the San Francisco are unsuitable. Even the Mamba Club.’
Wormold knew that nothing he could say would check the eloquence of his assistant, now that he had embarked on the great Havana subject; the sexual exchange was not only the chief commerce of the city, but the whole raison d’être of a man’s life. One sold sex or one bought it – immaterial which, but it was never given away.
‘A youth needs variety,’ Lopez said, ‘but so too does a man of a certain age. For the youth it is the curiosity of ignorance, for the old it is the appetite which needs to be refreshed. No one can serve you better than I can, because I have studied you, Señor Venell. You are not a Cuban: for you the shape of a girl’s bottom is less important than a certain gentleness of behaviour …’
‘You have misunderstood me completely,’ Wormold said.
‘The señorita this evening goes to a concert.’
‘How do you know?’
Lopez ignored the question. ‘While she is out, I will bring you a young lady to see. If you don’t like her, I will bring another.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. Those are not the kind of services I want, Lopez. I want … well, I want you to keep your eyes and ears open and report to me …’
‘On the señorita?’
‘Good heavens no.’
‘Report on what then, Señor Vommold?’
Wormold said, ‘Well, things like …’ But he hadn’t the faintest idea on what subjects Lopez was capable of reporting. He remembered only a few points in the long questionnaire and none of them seemed suitable, ‘Possible Communist infiltration in the armed forces. Actual figures of sugar- and tobacco-production last year.’ Of course there were the contents of waste-paper baskets in the offices where Lopez serviced the cleaners, but surely even Hawthorne was joking when he spoke of the Dreyfus case – if those men ever joked.
‘Like what, señor?’
Wormold said, ‘I’ll let you know later. Go back to the shop now.’
2
It was the hour of the daiquiri, and in the Wonder Bar Dr Hasselbacher was happy with his second Scotch. ‘You are worrying still, Mr Wormold?’ he said.
‘Yes, I am worrying.’
‘Still the cleaner – the Atomic cleaner?’
‘Not the cleaner.’ He drained his daiquiri and ordered another.
‘Today you are drinking very fast.’
‘Hasselbacher, you’ve never felt the need of money, have you? But then, you have no child.’
‘Before long you will have no child either.’
‘I suppose not.’ The comfort was as cold as the daiquiri. ‘When the time comes, Hasselbacher, I want us both to be away from here. I don’t want Milly woken up by any Captain Segura.’
‘That I can understand.’
‘The other day I was offered money.’
‘Yes?’
‘To get information.’
‘What sort of information?’ br />
‘Secret information.’
Dr Hasselbacher sighed. He said, ‘You are a lucky man, Mr Wormold. That information is always easy to give.’
‘Easy?’
‘If it is secret enough, you alone know it. All you need is a little imagination, Mr Wormold.’
‘They want me to recruit agents. How does one recruit an agent, Hasselbacher?’
‘You could invent them too, Mr Wormold.’
‘You sound as though you had experience.’
‘Medicine is my experience, Mr Wormold. Have you never read the advertisement for secret remedies? A hair tonic confided by the dying Chief of a Red Indian tribe. With a secret remedy you don’t have to print the formula. And there is something about a secret which makes people believe … perhaps a relic of magic. Have you read Sir James Frazer?’
‘Have you heard of a book code?’
‘Don’t tell me too much, Mr Wormold, all the same. Secrecy is not my business – I have no child. Please don’t invent me as your agent.’
‘No, I can’t do that. These people don’t like our friendship, Hasselbacher. They want me to stay away from you. They are tracing you. How do you suppose they trace a man?’
‘I don’t know. Be careful, Mr Wormold. Take their money, but don’t give them anything in return. You are vulnerable to the Seguras. Just lie and keep your freedom. They don’t deserve the truth.’
‘Whom do you mean by they?’
‘Kingdoms, republics, powers.’ He drained his glass. ‘I must go and look at my culture, Mr Wormold.’
‘Is anything happening yet?’
‘Thank goodness, no. As long as nothing happens anything is possible, you agree? It is a pity that a lottery is ever drawn. I lose a hundred and forty thousand dollars a week, and I am a poor man.’
‘You won’t forget Milly’s birthday?’
‘Perhaps the traces will be bad, and you will not want me to come. But remember, as long as you lie you do no harm.’
‘I take their money.’
‘They have no money except what they take from men like you and me.’