Chapter 19: Pericolo di Morte
He found the bench without any trouble. It had not occurred to him that anybody might be sitting on it already, and for a few moments he wondered whether she could be his contact, the woman sitting at the far end, dispensing breadcrumbs to a small flock of pigeons on the ground before her. His eye moved from the woman to the pigeons; they had a dishevelled air to them and he began to look at them, and the woman, with disapproval. These pigeons had become dependent; they were the unintended casualties of the kindness of the woman.
William found himself wanting to warn her of the consequences of her misplaced generosity. “They’ll lose the ability to fend for themselves,” he might say. “They could even forget how to fly.” But he stopped himself; it was none of his business, and it made him sound like some curmudgeonly opponent of welfare schemes, which he was not. And yet these birds were obviously lazy – and opportunistic too, in their greedy devouring of this woman’s largesse. What bird, though, would not take advantage of free food? And what bird actually seeks out a life of hard work? The half-remembered line came back to him: Consider the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns . . .
The birds had been settling into an untroubled feast but they were soon rudely dispersed by Freddie de la Hay. Freddie, who had been gazing at tree trunks in the hope of seeing a squirrel, suddenly noticed the pigeons and uttered a challenging bark. The birds took to the wing in a flutter and squawk, surprising their benefactress, who clasped one hand to her hat and the other to the bag of breadcrumbs. She glowered first at Freddie de la Hay and then at William, before rising to her feet and moving off. That at least solves that, thought William, as he took her place on the bench; she is definitely not MI6.
Ensconced on the bench, William spread himself in a way calculated to discourage any other passerby or feeder of pigeons to join him. He had brought with him a copy of a newspaper, and he now opened it and began to read, while Freddie, rapidly reconciled to the conclusion that this would not be an overly energetic walk, sat down at William’s feet to await developments.
Twenty minutes passed, and William began to regret arriving so early. Not only was it rather boring sitting on the bench with nobody to talk to, but he decided that it was also rather embarrassing. As people walked past him – and the park was by no means empty – they glanced at him, sometimes with looks that struck him as being almost pitying. And then there were others whose glances seemed more enquiring, and these disturbed him. Was this bench a meeting point for people who came to the park for … surely not; surely not in St James’s Park, so close to the centre of government and Churchill’s war rooms and all the rest of it. And yet he had read those odd, salacious reports in the newspapers of goings-on in the royal parks. If one wanted to meet a guardsman, for example, to discuss defence policy or whatever, presumably one came and sat about on benches exactly like this. Or did one lurk in bushes and go “psst” when likely-looking persons walked past? William was not naive, but there were certain parts of the city’s life, perhaps, of which he might be innocent.
And then something happened. William was looking at his watch and wondering whether to call the whole thing off when he became aware that a man was approaching the bench. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that the man, who was somewhere in his forties, was wearing a lightweight grey suit and had a newspaper tucked under his arm. The man drew near and then, without hesitation, sat down. The newspaper was unfolded and he began to read.
William glanced at the paper. So that’s what they read, he thought.
“Bad business,” muttered the man.
William half turned to face his companion.
“No,” whispered the man. “Just look straight ahead.”
William stared at the surface of the lake. A duck, sitting on the bank, decided to launch itself with a little plop.
“Yes, it’s a very bad business,” the newcomer continued.
“What is?” asked William, out of the corner of his mouth.
“This business with the politician,” said the man. “Frightful.”
William said nothing. The situation, he thought, was becoming increasingly ridiculous.
“My name’s Sebastian, by the way,” said the man, turning a page of the newspaper. “Sebastian …” He paused, lowering the newspaper and looking out over the lake. “Sebastian Duck.”
“I see,” said William.
“And I take it that this is Freddie de la Hay?”
William nodded.
“Good,” said Sebastian, folding up his paper. “Now, let’s go for a walk. Normal pace. Not too fast. As if we’re enjoying the sunshine. All right?”
They set off, with Freddie trotting contentedly beside William.
“Angelica says that you’ve accepted our offer,” said Sebastian. “C’s very grateful.”
William frowned. “C?”
“Yes, C himself. He had a word with the head of section, and they’ve both very pleased that you’re on board. C hopes to meet you quite soon, and wonders whether you could meet him for lunch in the Garrick some day. But he’s off to Singapore in a day or two and has rather a hectic month ahead of him.”
“He must be pretty busy,” said William.
Sebastian nodded. “We’re understaffed. Everybody thought that the end of the Cold War would mean considerable reductions in our workload. Hah! For a year or two, maybe, and lots of chaps took early retirement. Then lo and behold, the other side merely changes its colours and a lot of extremists of one sort or another pop up under our noses. So it’s business as usual, and when we take a roll call we discover we’re three hundred people short.”
“I don’t know how you cope,” said William.
Sebastian shrugged. “With difficulty. Here’s me working on a Saturday – just for instance. My wife wanted us to go down to Sussex to see her mother, but we had to beg off because I had to meet you. Not that it’s your fault, of course – it’s the rota. The rota’s a mess.”
William thought for a moment; he felt he should at least try to say something. “Can’t C do something about it?”
Sebastian considered the suggestion. “He could, I suppose, but I don’t think that he should have to concern himself with that sort of stuff. No, the answer’s to recruit more staff. But try telling that to the establishment people. A flat refusal is what you get. Public spending restraints and so on.”
“Everybody’s feeling the pain,” said William. “My own margins are down a lot.”
Sebastian turned to him. “You’re in the booze trade, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I was wondering if you could recommend a not-too-expensive bubbly for an occasion? It’s my mother-in-law’s sixty-fifth coming up, and we need to get something that will keep about forty people – no, maybe a few more – happy. Somebody suggested cava, but frankly I’m not too keen.”
William smiled. The absurdity of what was happening was now complete. “New Zealand produces a number of very good champagne-style wines,” he said. “They’re more expensive than cava, but well worth the extra .” He was on the point of saying something more, but his companion seemed suddenly to have lost interest.
“You do realise that all this is potentially fairly dangerous,” Sebastian said.
William stopped walking. “Dangerous? For me?”
Sebastian shook his head. “No, not for you.” He pointed down at Freddie de la Hay. “Dangerous for him. As our friends in the Italian secret service are rather fond of saying, pericolo di morte.”
Chapter 20: The Open Society and Its Enemies
“Look,” said William. “I agreed to meet you because Angelica asked me and I … well, I suppose I felt it was my duty.”
William wanted to stop walking, but Sebastian Duck, although he inclined his head sympathetically, took hold of his arm and pressed him onwards. “Just make it look natural. Two colleagues taking a stroll during a quiet hour at the office.”
“It’s Sa
turday,” pointed William. “And one of us has a dog. Not very credible, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Sebastian smiled. “Office dog,” he said. “Quite a few places have them these days, I’m told. Helps staff to bond, I believe.”
William said nothing.
“However,” Sebastian continued, “I fully understand your concerns. It probably seems a bit strange to you, meeting me in the park and all this cloak and dagger stuff …”
“Precisely,” said William emphatically. “Ridiculous , if you ask me.”
Sebastian was silent for a moment. Then, when he answered, there was a note of steely seriousness in his voice. “Oh, you think so? You think this is all play-acting? Well, let me tell you something: this isn’t a game. Kipling talked about the Great Game – remember? Kim? You ever read that? Well, it isn’t a game any more, I can assure you. You know the stakes?”
William shook his head. “I know nothing about intelligence work,” he said. “Which makes me wonder what on earth I’m doing here.”
“You’re helping us,” said Sebastian. “And I can assure you, we’re extremely grateful.”
“Well—”
Sebastian cut him short. “The reason I mentioned the stakes is that many people just don’t know what we’re up against. We’re an open society, Mr French. And any open society is in one sense extremely weak – vulnerable, indeed. We have great strengths and resilience because we’re open, but there are numerous people willing to take advantage. People who abuse our hospitality. People who hate us for one reason or another. And then there are people who use this city as a playground for battles which are really nothing to do with us, but which can be fought by proxy on our streets.
“I suspect that you understand all that. What you may not know, though, is that every one of us involved in this work is a potential target. You may think that I’m being unnecessarily furtive, but I assure you I’m not. Over the last three years I’ve lost two people I’ve worked with closely. One drowned in Ireland. Where was his lifejacket? He had it on when he went out in his boat, but he wasn’t wearing it when they fished him out of the water. Another died of food poisoning. Very sudden. Where had he had his last meal? In a restaurant that had opened up at the end of his street the previous month and closed two days after his demise. And where was the proprietor? Nobody knew. One of the staff said that he heard him being addressed by three different names. Interesting.
“So if you think I’m being too careful, let me tell you, I am not. Let me also reveal to you that the woman who was sitting on the bench when you arrived is known to us. She was arrested by the police five minutes after she left the bench – charges of littering – just to get her out of the park and prevent her from witnessing our meeting. Yes. You may well be surprised. And you’d be surprised to know who she works for. Which I can’t tell you, I’m afraid.”
Sebastian paused now and looked at William. “So, does that put a different complexion on the matter?”
William nodded. He was beginning to feel miserable; the farce had turned to dark drama within the space of a few minutes. He had no doubt about the seriousness of these people, but what he did not know was what they wanted of him. Sebastian had said nothing about that.
But the explanation soon came. “Look, William – you don’t mind if I call you William, do you? Look, I can’t tell you absolutely everything, but I can give you the broad outlines. We – that is, my section – are currently involved in watching a group of Russians who have taken a year’s lease on a flat near Notting Hill Gate. These people are simply not who they claim to be. They have form, as we put it – lots of form. We suspect that they’re in this country to buy sensitive commercial and military information. I can’t really say much more than that.”
William shrugged. “I suppose I don’t really need to know.” He was keen not to know, in fact; some information, he thought, was best left well alone.
But Sebastian had more to tell him. “We’ve obtained the flat next door to them and put one of our people in it. A woman. Often women are less the objects of suspicion than men. So as far as they’re concerned she’s just the neighbour – a harmless, middle-aged woman, who likes dogs.” He paused. “Which is what the head Russian likes too. He’s called Anatoly and he’s talked to our woman on a number of occasions. He told her that he had a dog until about eight months ago, when it died. He said it was a Pimlico Terrier.” He stopped, and looked at William. “He said that he could never bring himself to have another breed. It would have to be a Pimlico Terrier. And yet there were so few of them around …”
William held his breath. He glanced down at Freddie de la Hay, who was, of course, a Pimlico Terrier. Freddie gazed back up at him with mild curiosity. He had given up on the hope of finding a squirrel and he was now vaguely thinking of going home, where he might be given something to eat.
“You will no doubt see where this is going,” said Sebastian.
William was not sure. “Well, Freddie’s—”
Sebastian did not let him finish. “Exactly,” he said. “So our woman said that as it happened she was just about to get a Pimlico Terrier, although she was worried about having to put him in kennels when she went off to Swansea to visit her sister, who was not very well.”
Sebastian watched William’s expression as the story unfolded. By now, he thought, it would be obvious what MI6 had in mind, and he was sure that William would pick it up.
He was right. William gasped.
“Yes,” said Sebastian. “Exactly.”
“Exactly what?”
Sebastian smiled. “Well, I assumed that you had worked out what we had in mind, which is to borrow Freddie de la Hay for a while – a couple of months perhaps.”
“And?”
“And get the Russian to look after him for a few days now and then.”
“And put a transmitter on his collar?”
Sebastian inclined his head, as if to acknowledge praise. “Exactly,” he said.
William grimaced. It was very annoying when somebody said exactly all the time. When he was fourteen there had been a boy at school who had said d’accord to virtually everything anybody said to him. Eventually, William had punched him, quite hard, breaking his nose in the process, which was something he had regretted down the years, and still did. He knew that one should not punch people who annoyed one, although there was a case for it at times, a seemingly irresistible case. He wanted to punch this man, this enigmatic Sebastian Duck – if that was his real name – but he knew that he could not. Wine Merchant Punches Duck in Royal Park … that was how his son, Eddie, with his annoying habit of talking in headlines, would put it. No, he could never do it. Wine Merchant Shows Restraint in Meeting with Spy. So he simply said, “Oh well,” and Sebastian Duck, interpreting this as agreement, nodded and said, “Exactly.”
But there was no agreement – at least yet. “I’ll need time to think about it,” William said. “Can you give me a telephone number? I’ll get back to you.”
Sebastian Duck nodded, and took a small card out of his pocket with a telephone number printed on it. “Here,” he said. “Don’t pass it on, though.”
Oh really, thought William. You people are ridiculous. He grunted.
“Exactly,” said Duck. “I’m pleased you understand.”
Chapter 21: Recycled Sandwiches
After his meeting with Sebastian Duck, William walked all the way back to Corduroy Mansions. He wanted to give Freddie the exercise – even though only a small part of the walk would be through the park – and he wanted, too, some time to think. William had always found that walking encouraged thought. Unlike the unfortunate American president who waspish critics said found it difficult to walk and chew gum at the same time, William could walk and think very effectively. He did not chew gum, of course, and indeed chewing gum was one of his pet hates. “People look so bovine when they chew gum,” he said to Marcia once. “Like cows chewing the cud.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” s
aid Marcia. “If people enjoy it, then why shouldn’t they do it?”
Marcia was fundamentally libertarian at heart. She might not have described herself as a Benthamite, but that was what she was, and she would have enthusiastically endorsed Bentham’s view that the only things that should be prohibited are those things that harm others.
“Because it’s disgusting,” said William. “As I said, it makes people look bovine.”
“But if that’s what they want to do,” said Marcia, “why shouldn’t they? If I want to look bovine, then surely I’m entitled to do so. It’s not as if I’m harming anybody by chewing gum. It’s not that—”