Roper’s hiccups suddenly stopped, but the twitch went on. ‘I suppose you could say that Protestantism was the first of the great revolutions. I must think this out when I get time. Somebody said that somewhere, in some book or other, I can’t remember the name. That world peace and the classless society could only come about through the death agony of an older order.’
‘Oh, I can give you all that. Thesis and antithesis and synthesis and all that Marxist nonsense. Socialism had to come out of capitalism. It certainly couldn’t have come out of Catholic Christianity. So you can still go on as you are, you bloody fool. Edward Roper can still go on being a martyr for a historical process that Mary Tudor was trying to hold back. You’re all right, Roper. You don’t have to alter your position. But don’t talk to me about intellectual integrity and the importance of working from incontrovertible data. You came over here for reasons other than the martyrdom of poor bloody Edward Roper. That’s just an emotional booster. You came over here because of a process that began with that German bitch. You needed a faith and you couldn’t have any faith either in religion or what you used to call your country. It’s all been quite logical. I even sympathise. But you’re coming back with me, Roper. That’s what I’ve been sent out for. This is my last job, but it’s still a job. And I’ve always prided myself on doing a good job.’
‘Bravo,’ said a voice from the door. It had opened silently. ‘But, and I’m genuinely sorry about this, nobody’s going back with anybody. I too like to do a good job.’ Hillier frowned, looking up at the man in the white raincoat who pointed, in an attitude of relaxed grace, a gun with a silencer attached. He thought he knew the man but he couldn’t be sure. ‘Wriste?’ he said, incredulous.
‘Mister Wriste,’ smiled the man. ‘The honorific is in order. My stewardship, Mr Hillier, is more exalted than you supposed.’
5
‘I thought,’ said Roper reproachfully, ‘you were the man who was bringing us some coffee.’
‘There was a man,’ said Wriste. ‘His carrying of coffee made him easier to hit. I may have hit him too hard. One always expects Russian skulls to be tough, but one forgets that the Soviet Union comprises many ethnic types. There must be some very delicate skulls, I should think, in a citizenry so various and far-flung. However, this man is sleeping – perhaps for ever, who knows? – in a bower of the most delicious roses. Red roses, Mr Roper.’ He smiled.
‘How do you know about red roses?’ asked Roper.
‘A gentleman called Theodorescu – Mr Hillier knows him well – has a Xerox copy of your autobiography. A work of no great literary merit, Mr Roper, but factually it is not uninteresting. One of the facts that Theodorescu has not, despite his collecting zeal, yet collected is the fact of my identity and office. I cleaned his cabin and found many enlightening things there. As for your autobiography, Mr Roper, I took the opportunity of photostatting some of the later pages. That business of the red-rosed martyrdom was touching but not relevant to my purpose. My purpose was to understand better the reason for what I have to do. I don’t like being a mindless instrument. I like to know why the target chosen is the target chosen.’
‘What’s all this,’ Hillier asked Roper, ‘about an autobiography?’
‘I admire you, Mr Hillier,’ said Wriste. ‘You should by rights be gaping at my transformation, unable to say anything at all. I admire you as I admire Mr Theodorescu – you’re both tough-minded gentlemen not easily surprised. I think perhaps I shall have some small opportunity of admiring Mr Roper before Mr Roper too is laid among the red roses. He, like you, Mr Hillier, seems undisposed to tremble at my gun. And, talking of guns, be good enough, Mr Hillier, to unbuckle that belt and let it drop to the floor.’
‘If I don’t?’
‘If you don’t I shall inflict a painful, though not lethal, wound on Mr Roper here. That wouldn’t be fair, would it?’ Hillier undid the belt and let it fall. Wriste scooped it towards himself with his foot and then bent swiftly, his own gun-point ticking between Hillier and Roper, to draw the Tigr from its open holster and then ram it into his left raincoat pocket. He smiled warmly and said: ‘We might as well all be seated. A man has a right to a certain minimal comfort before transacting a painful task, as, indeed, have the men who complete the predicate of the transaction.’ Hillier sat; Wriste sat; Roper remained seated; one bed only was empty. Hillier studied Wriste. The voice had changed to suit the measured pedantry of his language, which was not unlike that of Mr Theodorescu. There was, thought Hillier, always something of the schoolmaster in the secret agent. The patrician tone that Wriste additionally shared with Theodorescu was not, however, always found in schoolmasters. Wriste’s Harrovian tie now seemed no longer a fake. Had he been to songs with Sir Winston Churchill, wondering, as he sang, what Sir Winston had saved the West for? Wriste now wore teeth. They were the finest false teeth that Hillier had ever seen. They were not merely irregular, they were gapped towards the left upper molars, there was a careful spot of decay on a lower canine, an upper incisor carried a glint of gold.
‘Well,’ said Hillier, ‘it seems I was throwing my money away.’
‘It wasn’t going to be any use to you, Mr Hillier, not where you’re going. Where are you going, by the way? Is there anything after death? I often attempt to engage in an eschatological discussion with what I euphemistically term my patients. Most seem frightened of something, else why should they (as they do, believe me, most of them) blubber so? One doesn’t blubber for the loss of life – a few more slices of smoked salmon, an hour more of sun, a session of wick-dipping (forgive the vulgarity: it reminds me of burning the candle at both ends), a few more wine-bubbles up the nose. Perhaps all of us who are engaged in this sort of work – international intrigue, espionage, scarlet pim-pernellianism, hired assassination – seek something deeper than what most people term life, meaning a pattern of simple gratifications.’
‘I could have done with some coffee,’ said Roper.
‘I’m truly sorry about that,’ said Wriste. ‘No viaticum before the journey. But I think Mr Hillier might be allowed one of his shocking Brazilian cigars. Light up, Mr Hillier, rejoicing in the steadiness of your hand. To me the tremor is reserved: I can never approach that moment of truth unmoved.’
Hillier smoked gratefully. The rain had eased. He felt a peculiar peace though many regrets, the chief of which was about Clara. If he was going to be shot he was not going to be shot just yet: this interim was most precious, all responsibility put off, the ticking seconds essential drops of life’s honey, the sweet gold of pure being. He looked almost gently on Wriste. And, of course, something would intervene to scotch the act; something always did. Oneself did not die; that, like the very quiddity of otherness, was for others.
‘If you’re thinking, Mr Hillier, that there will be a last-minute intervention of salvatory forces, I beg you to put off that hopeless, or hopeful, notion. There were three guards. I have dealt with all of them. In the hotel the junketing of scientists is at its height. There are exhibitions of frog-dancing. There is talk of bringing down the chambermaids to join in the revels. I gather there is something to celebrate – isn’t that so, Mr Roper?’
‘Breakthrough on the Beta Plan,’ mumbled Roper. ‘Look here, I think I’ve got a right to know what’s going on. So,’ he afterthought, ‘has Hillier here.’
‘You’re quite right, you have a right. I’m here to kill both of you. Totally, let me make this clear, without personal vindictiveness. I am, as I said, an agent – or, in deference to the myths of your shared religion, let me say an angel – of death. I shoot people for money, but I like to find out why (here’s a Shakespearian touch for you) their names are pricked. That lends an intellectual interest. Now, Mr Roper, your death is a sort of pendent to Mr Hillier’s. My primary assignment is to kill Mr Hillier. I was paid not in roubles nor in dollars but in sterling – good crisp notes I carry on my person at this moment. Who do you think paid me that money, Mr Hillier?’
‘I can’t even
guess.’
‘You can guess, but you don’t wish to. The revelation would be too shocking. Nevertheless, let us have the totality of the moment of truth. You’re going to die very bitterly, Mr Hillier. To be betrayed by the very people you have given your all to, in whose service you have grown gnarled and scarred and seared. That S on your body was a cruel touch. I’ve worked for Soskice. It’s typical of the man. Still, I think you were adequately avenged. One less man for me to work for. I don’t know, though. Others are coming up. That man Grimold promises well. The game goes merrily on.’
‘Do you mean,’ asked Hillier, beginning to feel that he could feel sick, ‘that my own people instructed you to kill me?’
‘I personally wasn’t instructed. Panleth, our agency – delightful name, isn’t it? Cosy, somehow. Kill all pan-germs with Panleth – Panleth passed on the assignment. It seems to me, having studied the matter, that there’s neither wantonness nor ingratitude in the desire of your late friends to have you killed. I should think you were even given a sporting chance. Naturally, I had a look at that letter I handed to you when you embarked at Venice. I couldn’t be bothered to decipher it, but I guessed at its content. I should think there was an apology there for what was coming. There are gentlemen in England now abed, sleeping sound in the knowledge that the decent thing was done. You should by rights have spent your voyage puzzling out that message, but you decided to dedicate it to a sort of fling. A last fling, as it happens. The pattern of things proves you were right to do that. I would have got you anyway, though not perhaps here. You’ve had a final rich spoonful of life. Gorblimey, sir,’ he added, in his steward voice, ‘that’s a bit of a bleedin’ understatement.’ And, in the Harrow voice, ‘You can be thankful for that.’
‘I still want to know why,’ sweated Hillier.
‘I think I can give the answer,’ said Roper. ‘You know too much.’
‘Too much for what?’
‘You’re being deliberately obtuse,’ said Wriste. ‘Too much to be let loose into a retirement. Mr Roper is perfectly right. I should imagine you’ve already sold information to Theodorescu. That money on your naked lap – what a stupid story you told me about a wager. Your generous hand-outs to me, incidentally, seem to attest a sense of guilt. Anyway, were you to live you’d sell more information or even give it away. That you were brought up a Roman Catholic was always one thing against you. You left your Church, but you’d probably go back to it in retirement. A sort of hobby, I suppose. As with Mr Roper here, that old loyalty tended always to militate against another. You could never be wholly patriotic. Add to this your known sensuality – itself a kind of substitute for faith – and you have, I should have thought, enough grounds for a quiet and regretful liquidation. Think about it, Mr Hillier. Put yourself in the position of those English gentlemen who, when they’re not on the golf-course, worry about security.’
Roper seemed less fearful than interested. He frankly leered his admiration of Wriste’s lucidity of exposition. He said: ‘Where do I come into this?’
‘A pendent, as I told you. It was considered, for obvious reasons, better that Mr Hillier should be given his quietus on Soviet soil. You, Mr Roper, were never thought of as more than a mere pretext for getting Mr Hillier here. This will be unpalatable, I know. You are – and I have this on the highest authority – not wanted back in England.’
Roper, despite all he had spat out at Roper-burning England, now seemed to tamp down indignation. ‘I’m not having that, you know.’
‘Come now, think it over. You’ve already done your best work. Scientists, like poets, mature early and decay early. It is young scientists that are wanted. The stock fictional image of the grey-haired doddering genius being smuggled in or out is totally false. Your value to the Russians is mostly symbolic. The British are more concerned at the moment with luring Alexeyev over to the West than with reclaiming you.’
‘Alexeyev?’ went Roper. ‘But Alexeyev’s only a bloody kid.’
‘It’s the bloody kids that are needed,’ said Wriste. The locution, in Wriste’s pedantic tones, carried connotations of sacrifice. Ritual, it was all ritual. ‘As for the moral implications of your defection, it’s only a vocal minority in Parliament that’s crying out for your head. A treason-trial would spill too much muck into the headlines. That muck has to be buried, not spread.’
Roper went crimson. Hillier asked: ‘What muck?’
‘I don’t know the whole of it,’ said Wriste. ‘Those passages of Mr Roper’s autobiography that I’ve read –’
‘How did he get hold of that?’ asked Roper in red anger. ‘That bugger you mentioned – Theo something-or-other –’
Wriste shrugged. ‘Apparently you’ve had a double agent snooping in your vicinity. Perhaps a lab-boy or room-cleaner or something. He sold a Xerox copy of your completed chapters to a man who sold it to a man who sold it to a man who sold it to Mr Theodorescu. Mr Theodorescu is voracious for information. Of course, a typescript – top copy or carbon – is valueless in any market other than the literary. It’s holographs that are needed. Though to the student of human motivation, the chronicler of that specific kind that produces the traitor, your typescript isn’t without interest. The trouble is that anybody with a moderately inflamed imagination could have written it. And your typescript seems to leave off, as though with fright, on the threshold of the really significant revelation. I should be interested to know why you embarked on this task at all.’
‘It was suggested to me,’ said Roper, mumbling again. ‘Clarify my ideas. Examine myself. It was an exercise. But you still haven’t said why –’
‘I think all that’s clear now, isn’t it? The client I have to serve in respect of you, Mr Roper –’
‘Look,’ said Roper, ‘I’m sick to death of this bloody mister. I’m Doctor Roper, got it? Doctor, doctor, doctor.’ It was like a stoic cry out of Jacobean drama: I am Duchess of Malfi still.
‘Alas, Mister Roper, your doctorate was taken away from you. It was publicly announced, I gather, but you personally evidently weren’t informed. The senate of the university concerned announced that they’d discovered evidences of plagiarism.’
‘That’s a bloody lie.’
‘Probably. But it was in the national interest that you should seem to be a fraud and a fake. The British public could sleep sound. A man of straw had gone over to the Russians. The news of your dedoctorisation, if that’s the right term, never appeared in the Daily Worker, and certainly Pravda wouldn’t mention it. You remained ignorant.’
‘So did I,’ said Hillier. ‘A great deal of what you’re saying grows more and more suspect.’
‘As you please. But you, Mr Hillier, began to opt out of the modern world long before you sent in your resignation. You read mostly menus and the moles on whores’ bellies. All this is unimportant. What I say now is far from unimportant. A certain cabinet minister, Mr Roper, became agitated when he learned, at a little dinner party in Albany, that you were to be forcibly repatriated. About the autobiography he knew nothing. I deduced that he feared revelations which would affect him privily if you should be brought to trial. I can guess at the nature of the revelations. If only you had gone further in your autobiography I should know absolutely how this high personage was involved in your career. But no matter. It was important, so far as he was concerned, that you should not return to England. He had made use of Panleth before. It was a matter of trying to make the last government fall. The government’s majority was down to two; the member of a certain marginal constituency was known to be suffering from heart disease; Panleth arranged for the progress of that ailment to gallop to a premature consummation. When he learned, in the strictest confidence, that you, Mr Roper, were coming home, he contacted Panleth again. Hence my two assignments, their respective provenances quite independent, united only by place. Panleth is an efficient agency. It looks after its clients and consults their convenience. It takes only ten per cent.’
‘Well,’ said Roper, more
cheerfully, ‘you don’t have to do the job, do you? You’re going to kill Hillier, and Hillier won’t be taking me –’ He nearly said ‘home’.
‘Ah, that’s not it.’ Wriste head-shook sadly.
‘You’ve got your money,’ said Hillier. ‘You said so. You don’t have to kill either of us.’
‘I’ve got some money,’ said Wriste. ‘Not all. You paid me at the beginning of your trip, Mr Hillier, and you were presumably going to pay me at the end. So with these two jobs. Before I can receive the balance – from Department X and Mr Y alike – I have to furnish evidence of the satisfactory fulfilment of the assignments. What I normally take back is a finger –’
‘A finger?’
‘Yes. For the fingerprints. Most of my patients are fingerprinted men. Agents and top-level scientists and so on, men with detailed dossiers. Strange, once you have a dossier you seem potentially to have committed a capital crime. This sort of punishment –’ He waved his gun. ‘It always hovers. When you’ve finished that cigar, Mr Hillier, the hawk must swoop.’
‘You could,’ said Roper, ‘cut off a finger and let us go.’ He spoke as dispassionately as if his body were a tree to be pruned.
Wriste again shook his head, more sadly than before. ‘I’ve never yet performed an act of other than terminal surgery, though the request has been made often enough. No, gentlemen both, I have my honour, I have my professional pride. If either of you were ever to appear, finger-less but otherwise whole, walking the world smiling, my career would be at an end. Besides, there’s a man called the Inspector.’
‘Oh, my God,’ groaned Hillier.
‘Yes, the Inspector. Nobody knows his name, I doubt if anyone’s ever seen him, I sometimes doubt whether he really exists. He is perhaps a mere personification of Honour. But it’s convenient to believe in him. No, no, gentlemen, it’s no good.’ He took from an inside pocket a plush case, rather finely made, and clicked it open. ‘I’ve never had occasion to use this before,’ he said. ‘See, there are grooves for two fingers. I have another case, rather well-worn, for the single digit. One man I know, very ambitious, uses a cigar-case, but that seems to me to be crude. I had this specially made by a man in Walthamstow, of all places. I said it was for the accommodation of amputated fingers, and he laughed.’