Our Man in Havana

Chapter 3

The situation, whichever way he looked at it, was uncomfortable. Wormold was in the habit now of drawing occasional expenses for Engineer Cifuentes and the professor, and monthly salaries for himself, the Chief Engineer of the Juan Belmonte and Teresa, the nude dancer. The drunken air-pilot was usually paid in whisky. The money Wormold accumulated he put into his deposit-account one day it would make a dowry for Milly. Naturally to justify these payments he had to compose a regular supply of reports. With the help of a large map, the weekly number of Time, which gave generous space to Cuba in its section on the Western Hemisphere, various economic publications issued by the Government, above all with the help of his imagination, he had been able to arrange at least one report a week, and until the arrival of Beatrice he had kept his Saturday evenings free for homework. The professor was the economic authority, and Engineer Cifuentes dealt with the mysterious constructions in the mountains of Oriente (his reports were sometimes confirmed and sometimes contradicted by the Cubana pilot a contradiction had a flavour of authenticity). The chief engineer supplied descriptions of labour conditions in Santiago, Matanzas and Cienfuegos and reported on the growth of unrest in the navy. As for the nude dancer, she supplied spicy details of the private lives and sexual eccentricities of the Defence Minister and the Director of Posts and Telegraphs. Her reports closely resembled articles about film stars in Confidential, for Wormold’s imagination in this direction was not very strong. Now that Beatrice was here, Wormold had a great deal more to worry about than his Saturday evening exercises. There was not only the basic training which Beatrice insisted on giving him in microphotography, there were also the cables he had to think up in order to keep Rudy happy, and the more cables Wormold sent the more he received. Every week now London bothered him for photographs of the installations in Oriente, and every week Beatrice became more impatient to take over the contact with his agents. It was against all the rules, she told him, for the head of a station to meet his own sources. Once he took her to dinner at the Country Club and, as bad luck would have it, Engineer Cifuentes was paged. A very tall lean man with a squint rose from a table near-by. ‘Is that Cifuentes?’ Beatrice asked sharply.

‘Yes.’

‘But you told me he was sixty-five.’

‘He looks young for his age.’

‘And you said he had a paunch.’

‘Not paunch ponch. It’s the local dialect for squint.’ It was a very narrow squeak.

After that she began to interest herself in a more romantic figure of Wormold’s imagination the pilot of Cubana. She worked enthusiastically to make his entry in the index complete and wanted the most personal details. Raul Dominguez certainly had pathos. He had lost his wife in a massacre during the Spanish civil war and had become disillusioned with both sides, with his Communist friends in particular. The more Beatrice asked Wormold about him, the more his character developed, and the more anxious she became to contact him. Sometimes Wormold felt a twinge of jealousy towards Raul and he tried to blacken the picture. ‘He gets through a bottle of whisky a day,’ he said. ‘It’s his escape from loneliness and memory,’ Beatrice said. ‘Don’t you ever want to escape?’

‘I suppose we all do sometimes.’

‘I know what that kind of loneliness is like,’ she said with sympathy.

‘Does he drink all day?’

‘No. The worst hour is two in the morning. When he wakes then, he can’t sleep for thinking, so he drinks instead.’ It astonished Wormold how quickly he could reply to any questions about his characters; they seemed to live on the threshold of consciousness -he had only to turn a light on and there they were, frozen in some characteristic action. Soon after Beatrice arrived Raul had a birthday and she suggested they should give him a case of champagne. ‘He won’t touch it,’ Wormold said, he didn’t know why. ‘He suffers from acidity. If he drinks champagne he comes out in spots. Now the professor on the other hand won’t drink anything else.’

‘An expensive taste.’

‘A depraved taste,’ Wormold said without taking any thought. ‘He prefers Spanish champagne.’ Sometimes he was scared at the way these people grew in the dark without his knowledge. What was Teresa doing down there, out of sight? He didn’t care to think. Her unabashed description of what life was like with her two lovers sometimes shocked him. But the immediate problem was Raul. There were moments when Wormold thought that it might have been easier if he had recruited real agents.

Wormold always thought best in his bath. He was aware one morning, when he was concentrating hard, of indignant noises, a fist beat on the door a number of times, somebody stamped on the stairs, but a creative moment had arrived and he paid no attention to the world beyond the steam. Raul had been dismissed by the Cubana air line for drunkenness. He was desperate; he was without a job; there had been an unpleasant interview between him and Captain Segura, who threatened…. ‘Are you all right?’ Beatrice called from outside. ‘Are you dying? Shall I break down the door?’

He wrapped a towel round his middle and emerged into his bedroom, which was now his office.

‘Milly went off in a rage,’ Beatrice said. ‘She missed her bath.’ ‘This is one of those moments,’ Wormold said, ‘which might change the course of history. Where is Rudy?’

‘You know you gave him week-end leave.’

‘Never mind. We’ll have to send the cable through the Consulate. Get out the codebook.’

‘It’s in the safe. What’s the combination? Your birthday that was it, wasn’t it? December 6?’

‘I changed it.’

‘Your birthday?’

‘No, no. The combination, of course.’ He added sententiously, ‘The fewer who know the combination the better for all of us. Rudy and I are quite sufficient. It’s the drill, you know, that counts.’ He went into Rudy’s room and began to twist the knob four times to the left, three times thoughtfully to the right. His towel kept on slipping. ‘Besides, anyone can find out the date of my birth from my registration-card. Most unsafe. The sort of number they’d try at once.’

‘Go on,’ Beatrice said, ‘one more turn.’

‘This is one nobody could find out. Absolutely secure.’

‘What are you waiting for?’

‘I must have made a mistake. I shall have to start again.’

‘This combination certainly seems secure.’

‘Please don’t watch. You’re fussing me.’ Beatrice went and stood with her face to the wall. She said, ‘Tell me when I can turn round again.’ ‘It’s very odd. The damn thing must have broken. Get Rudy on the phone.’

‘I can’t. I don’t know where he’s staying. He’s gone to Varadero beach.’

‘Damn!’

‘Perhaps if you told me how you remembered the number, if you can call it remembering…’

‘It was my great-aunt’s telephone number.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘95 Woodstock Road, Oxford.’

‘Why your great-aunt?’

‘Why not my great-aunt?’

‘I suppose we could put through a directory enquiry to Oxford.’

‘I doubt whether they could help.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘I’ve forgotten that too.’

‘The combination really is secure, isn’t it?’

‘We always just knew her as great-aunt Kate. Anyway she’s been dead for fifteen years and the number may have been changed.’ ‘I don’t see why you chose her number.’

‘Don’t you have a few numbers that stick in your head all your life for no reason at all?’

‘This doesn’t seem to have stuck very well.’

‘I’ll remember it in a moment. It’s something like 7,7,5,3,9.’

‘Oh dear, they would have five numbers in Oxford.’

‘We could try all the combinations of 77539.’

‘Do you know how many there are? Somewhere around six hundred, I’d guess. I hope your cable’s not urgent.’

‘I’m certain of everything except the 7.’

‘That’s fine. Which seven? I suppose now we might have to work through about six thousand arrangements. I’m no mathematician.’ ‘Rudy must have it written down somewhere.’

‘Probably on waterproof paper so that he can take it in with him bathing. We’re an efficient office.’

‘Perhaps,’ Wormold said, ‘we had better use the old code.’ ‘It’s not very secure. However…’ They found Charles Lamb at last by Milly’s bed; a leaf turned down showed that she was in the middle of Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Wormold said, ‘Take down this cable. Blank of March blank.’

‘Don’t you even know the day of the month?’

‘Following from 59200 stroke 5 paragraph A begins 59200 stroke 5 stroke 4 sacked for drunkenness on duty stop fears deportation to Spain where his life is in danger stop.’

‘Poor old Raul.’

‘Paragraph B begins 59200 stroke 5 stroke ‘Couldn’t I just say “he”?’ ‘All right. He. He might be prepared under these circumstances and for reasonable bonus with assured refuge in Jamaica to pilot private plane over secret constructions to obtain photographs stop paragraph C begins he would have to fly on from Santiago and land at Kingston if 59200 can make arrangements for reception stop.’

‘We really are doing something at last, aren’t we?’ Beatrice said. ‘Paragraph D begins stop will you authorize five hundred dollars for hire of plane for 59200 stroke 5 stroke 4 stop further two hundred dollars may be required to bribe airport staff Havana stop paragraph E begins bonus to 59200 stroke 5 stroke 4 should be generous as considerable risk of interception by patrolling planes over Oriente mountains stop I suggest one thousand dollars stop.’

‘What a lot of lovely money,’ Beatrice said.

‘Message ends. Go on. What are you waiting for?’

‘I’m just trying to find a suitable phrase. I don’t much care for Lamb’s Tales, do you?’

‘Seventeen hundred dollars,’ Wormold said thoughtfully.

‘You should have made it two thousand. The A. O. likes round figures.’ ‘I don’t want to seem extravagant,’ Wormold said. Seventeen hundred dollars would surely cover one year at a finishing school in Switzerland. ‘You’re looking pleased with yourself,’ Beatrice said. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you that you may be sending a man to his death?’ He thought, That is exactly what I plan to do.

He said, ‘Tell them at the Consulate that the cable has to have top priority.’

‘It’s a long cable,’ Beatrice said. ‘Do you think this sentence will do? “He presented Polydore and Cadwal to the king, telling him they were his two lost sons, Guiderius and Arviragus.” There are times, aren’t there, when Shakespeare is a little dull.’

A week later he took Beatrice out to supper at a fish-restaurant near the

harbour. The authorization had come, though they had cut him down by two hundred

dollars so that the A. O. got his round figure after all. Wormold thought of

Raul driving out to the airport to embark on his dangerous flight. The story was not yet complete. Just as in real life, accidents could happen; a character might take control. Perhaps Raul would be intercepted before embarking, perhaps he would be stopped by a police-car on his way. He might disappear into the torture-chambers of Captain Segura. No reference would appear in the press. Wormold would warn London that he was going off the air in case Raul was forced to talk. The radio set would be dismantled and hidden after the last message had been sent, the celluloid sheets would be kept ready for a final conflagration. Or perhaps Raul would take off in safety and they would never know what exactly happened to him over the Oriente mountains. Only one thing in the story was certain: he would not arrive in Jamaica and there would be no photographs. ‘What are you thinking?’ Beatrice asked. He hadn’t touched his stuffed langouste.

‘I was thinking of Raul.’ The wind blew up from the Atlantic. Moro Castle lay like a liner gale-bound across the harbour. ‘Anxious?’

‘Of course I’m anxious.’ If Raul had taken off at midnight, he would refuel just before dawn in Santiago, where the ground-staff were friendly, everyone within the Oriente province being rebels at heart. Then when it was just light enough for photography and too early for the patrol planes to be up, he would begin his reconnaissance over the mountains and the forest. ‘He hasn’t been drinking?’

‘He promised me he wouldn’t. One can’t tell.’

‘Poor Raul.’

‘Poor Raul.’

‘He’s never had much fun, has he? You should have introduced him to Teresa.’

He looked sharply up at her, but she seemed deeply engaged over her langouste.

‘That wouldn’t have been very secure, would it?’

‘Oh, damn security,’ she said.

After supper they walked back along the landward side of the Avenida de Maceo. There were few people about in the wet windy night and little traffic. The rollers came in from the Atlantic and smashed over the sea-wall. The spray drove across the road, over the four traffic-lanes, and beat like rain under the pockmarked pillars where they walked. The clouds came racing from the east, and he felt himself to be part of the slow erosion of Havana. Fifteen years was a long time. He said, ‘One of those lights up there may be him. How solitary he must feel.’

‘You talk like a novelist,’ she said.

He stopped under a pillar and watched her with anxiety and suspicion.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, nothing in particular. Sometimes I think you treat your agents like lay figures, people in a book. It’s a real man up there -isn’t it?’ ‘That’s not a very nice thing to say about me.’

‘Oh, forget it. Tell me about someone you really care about. Your wife.

Tell me about her.’

‘She was pretty.’

‘Do you miss her?’

‘Of course. When I think of her.’

‘I don’t miss Peter.’

‘Peter?’

‘My husband. The UNESCO man.’

‘You’re lucky then. You’re free.’ He looked at his watch and the sky.

‘He should be over Matanzas by now. Unless he’s been delayed.’

‘Have you sent him that way?’

‘Oh, of course he decides his own route.’

‘And his own end?’

Something in her voice a kind of enmity -startled him again. Was it possible she had begun to suspect him already? He walked quickly on. They passed the Carmen Bar and the Cha Cha Club bright signs painted on the old shutters of the eighteenth-century facade. Lovely faces looked out of dim interiors, brown eyes, dark hair, Spanish and high yellow: beautiful buttocks leant against the bars, waiting for any life to come along the sea wet street. To live in Havana was to live in a factory that turned out human beauty on a conveyor-belt. He didn’t want beauty. He stopped under a lamp and looked directly back at the direct eyes. He wanted honesty. ‘Where are we going?’ ‘Don’t you know? Isn’t it all planned like Raul’s flight?’

‘I was just walking.’

‘Don’t you want to sit beside the radio? Rudy’s on duty.’

‘We won’t have any news before the early morning.’

‘You haven’t planned a late message then the crash at Santiago?’ His lips were dry with salt and apprehension. It seemed to him that she must have guessed everything. Would she report him to Hawthorne? What would be ‘their’ next move? They had no legal remedy, but he supposed they could stop him ever returning to England. He thought: She will go back by the next plane, life will be the same as before, and, of course, it was better that way; his life belonged to Milly. He said, ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’ A great wave had broken against the sea-wall of the Avenida, and now it rose like a Christmas tree covered with plastic frost. Then it sank out of sight, and another tree rose further down the driveway towards the Nacional. He said, ‘You’ve been strange all the evening.’ There was no point in delay; if the game were coming to an end, it was better to close it quickly. He said, ‘What are you hinting at?’ ‘You mean there isn’t to be a crash at the airport -or on the way?’

‘How do you expect me to know?’

‘You’ve been behaving all the evening as if you did. You haven’t spoken about him as though he were a living man. You’ve been writing his elegy like a bad novelist preparing an effect.’

The wind knocked them together. She said, ‘Aren’t you ever tired of other people taking risks? For what? For a Boys’ Own Paper game?’ ‘You play the game.’

‘I don’t believe in it like Hawthorne does.’ She said furiously, ‘I’d rather be a crook than a simpleton or an adolescent. Don’t you earn enough with your vacuum cleaners to keep out of all this?’

‘No. There’s Milly.’

‘Suppose Hawthorne hadn’t walked in on you?’

He joked miserably, ‘Perhaps I’d have married again for money.’

‘Would you ever marry again?’ She seemed determined to be serious. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t know that I would. Milly wouldn’t consider it a marriage, and one can’t shock one’s own child. Shall we go home and listen to the radio?’

‘But you don’t expect a message, do you? You said so.’ He said evasively, ‘Not for another three hours. But I expect he’ll radio before he lands.’ The odd thing was he began to feel the tension. He almost hoped for some message to reach him out of the windy sky. She said, ‘Will you promise me that you haven’t arranged anything?’ He avoided answering, turning back towards the President’s palace with the dark windows where the President had never slept since the last attempt on his life, and there, coming down the pavement with head bent to avoid the spray, was Dr Hasselbacher. He was probably on his way home from the Wonder Bar. ‘Dr Hasselbacher,’ Wormold called to him.

The old man looked up. For a moment Wormold thought he was going to turn tail without a word. ‘What’s the matter, Hasselbacher?’ ‘Oh, it’s you, Mr Wormold. I was just thinking of you. Talk of the devil,’ he said, making a joke of it, but Wormold could have sworn that the devil had scared him.

‘You remember Mrs Severn, my secretary?’

‘The birthday party, yes, and the siphon. What are you doing up so late, Mr Wormold?’

‘We’ve been out to supper… a walk… and you?’

‘The same thing.’

Out of the vast tossing sky the sound of an engine came spasmodically down, increased, faded again, died out into the noise of wind and sea. Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘The plane from Santiago, but it’s very late. The weather must be bad in Oriente.’

‘Are you expecting anyone?’ Wormold asked.

‘No. No. Not expecting. Would you and Mrs Severn care to have a drink at my apartment?’

Violence had come and gone. The pictures were back in place, the tubular chairs stood around like awkward guests. The apartment had been reconstructed like a man for burial. Dr Hasselbacher poured out the whisky. ‘It is nice for Mr Wormold to have a secretary,’ he said. ‘Such a short time ago you were worried, I remember. Business was not so good. That new cleaner…’

‘Things change for no reason.’

He noticed for the first time the photograph of a young Dr Hasselbacher in the dated uniform of an officer in the First World War; perhaps it had been one of the pictures the intruders had taken off the wall. ‘I never knew you had been in the army, Hasselbacher.’

‘I had not finished my medical training, Mr Wormold, when the war came. It struck me as a very silly business curing men so that they could be killed sooner. One wanted to cure people so that they could live longer.’ ‘When did you leave Germany, Dr Hasselbacher?’ Beatrice asked. ‘In 1934. So I can plead not guilty, young lady, to what you are wondering.’

‘That was not what I meant.’

‘You must forgive me then. Ask Mr Wormold there was a time when I was not so suspicious. Shall we have some music?’

He put on a record of Tristan. Wormold thought of his wife; she was even less real than Raul. She had nothing to do with love and death, only with the Woman’s Home Journal, a diamond engagement ring, twilight-sleep. He looked across the room at Beatrice Severn, and she seemed to him to belong to the same world as the fatal drink, the hopeless journey from Ireland, the surrender in the forest. Abruptly Dr Hasselbacher stood up and pulled the plug from the wall. He said, ‘Forgive me. I am expecting a call. The music is too loud.’

‘A sick call?’

‘Not exactly.’ He poured out more whisky.

‘Have you started your experiments again, Hasselbacher?’ ‘No.’ He looked despairingly around. ‘I am sorry. There is no more soda water.’

‘I like it straight,’ Beatrice said. She went to the bookshelf. ‘Do you read anything but medical books, Dr Hasselbacher?’ ‘Very little. Heine, Goethe. All German. Do you read German, Mrs Severn?’

‘No. But you have a few English books.’

‘They were given me by a patient instead of a fee. I’m afraid I haven’t read them. Here is your whisky, Mrs Severn.’

She came away from the bookcase and took the whisky. ‘Is that your home, Dr Hasselbacher?’ She was looking at a Victorian coloured lithograph hanging beside young Captain Hasselbacher’s portrait.

‘I was born there. Yes. It is a very small town, some old walls, a castle in ruins..

‘I’ve been there,’ Beatrice said, ‘before the war. My father took us.

It’s near Leipzig, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Mrs Severn,’ Dr Hasselbacher said, watching her bleakly, ‘it is near Leipzig.’

‘I hope the Russians left it undisturbed.’

The telephone in Dr Hasselbacher’s hall began to ring. He hesitated a moment. ‘Excuse me, Mrs Severn,’ he said. When he went into the hall he shut the door behind him. ‘East or west,’ Beatrice said, ‘home’s best.’ ‘I suppose you want to report that to London? But I’ve known him for fifteen years, he’s lived here for more than twenty. He’s a good old man, the best friend….’ The door opened and Dr Hasselbacher returned. He said, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t feel very well. Perhaps you will come and hear music some other evening.’ He sat heavily down, picked up his whisky, put it back again. There was sweat on his forehead, but after all it was a humid night. ‘Bad news?’ Wormold asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Can I help?’

‘You!’ Dr Hasselbacher said. ‘No. You can’t help. Or Mrs Severn.’ ‘A patient?’ Dr Hasselbacher shook his head. He took out his handkerchief and dried his forehead. He said, ‘Who is not a patient?’ ‘We’d better go.’

‘Yes, go. It is like I said. One ought to be able to cure people so that they can live longer.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Was there never such a thing as peace?’ Dr Hasselbacher asked. ‘I am sorry. A doctor is always supposed to get used to death. But I am not a good doctor.’

‘Who has died?’

‘There has been an accident,’ Dr Hasselbacher said. ‘Just an accident. Of course an accident. A car has crashed on the road near the airport. A young man….’ He said furiously, ‘There are always accidents, aren’t there, everywhere. And this must surely have been an accident. He was too fond of the glass.’

Beatrice said, ‘Was his name by any chance Raul?’

‘Yes,’ Dr Hasselbacher said. ‘That was his name.’

Wormold unlocked the door. The street-lamp over the way vaguely disclosed the vacuum cleaners standing around like tombs. He started for the stairs. Beatrice whispered, ‘Stop, stop. I thought I heard….’ They were the first words either of them had spoken since he had shut the door of Dr Hasselbacher’s apartment. ‘What’s the matter?’

She put out a hand and clutched some metallic part from the counter; she held it like a club and said, ‘I’m frightened.’

Not half as much as I am, he thought. Can we write human beings into existence? And what sort of existence? Had Shakespeare listened to the news of Duncan’s death in a tavern or heard the knocking on his own bedroom door after he had finished the writing of Macbeth? He stood in the shop and hummed a tune to keep his courage up.

‘They say the earth is round My madness offends.’

‘Quiet,’ Beatrice said. ‘Somebody’s moving upstairs.’

He thought he was afraid only of his own imaginary characters, not of a living person who could creak a board. He ran up and was stopped abruptly by a shadow. He was tempted to call out to all his creations at once and have done with the lot of them Teresa, the chief, the professor, the engineer. ‘How late you are,’ Milly’s voice said. It was only Milly standing there in the passage between the lavatory and her room.

‘We went for a walk.’

‘You brought her back?’ Milly asked. ‘Why?’

Beatrice cautiously climbed the stairs, holding her improvised club on guard.

‘Is Rudy awake?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Beatrice said, ‘If there’d been a message, he would have sat up for you.’

If one’s characters were alive enough to die, they were surely real enough to send messages. He opened the door of the office. Rudy stirred. ‘Any message, Rudy?’

‘No.’

Milly said, ‘You’ve missed all the excitement.’

‘What excitement?’

‘The police were dashing everywhere. You should have heard the sirens. I thought it was a revolution, so I rang up Captain Segura.’ ‘Yes?’

‘Someone tried to assassinate someone as he came out of the Ministry of the Interior. He must have thought it was the Minister, only it wasn’t. He shot out of a car-window and got clean away.’

‘Who was it?’

‘They haven’t caught him yet.’

‘I mean the assassinee.’

‘Nobody important. But he looked like the Minister. Where did you have supper?’

‘The Victoria.’

‘Did you have stuffed langouste?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m so glad you don’t look like the President. Captain Segura said poor Dr Cifuentes was so scared he went and wet his trousers and then got drunk at the Country Club.’

‘Dr Cifuentes?’

‘You know the engineer.’

‘They shot at him?’

‘I told you it was a mistake.’

‘Let’s sit down,’ Beatrice said. She spoke for both of them.

He said, ‘The dining-room… ‘

‘I don’t want a hard chair. I want something soft. I may want to cry.’ ‘Well, if you don’t mind the bedroom,’ he said doubtfully, looking at Milly.

‘Did you know Dr Cifuentes?’ Milly asked Beatrice sympathetically.

‘No. I only know he has a ponch.’

‘What’s a ponch?’

‘Your father said it was a dialect word for a squint.’

‘He told you that? Poor Father,’ Milly said. ‘You are in deep waters.’ ‘Look, Milly, will you please go to bed? Beatrice and I have work to do.’

‘Work?’

‘Yes, work.’

‘It’s awfully late for work.’

‘He’s paying me overtime,’ Beatrice said.

‘Are you learning all about vacuum cleaners?’ Milly asked. ‘That thing you are holding is a sprayer.’

‘Is it? I just picked it up in case I had to hit someone.’

‘It’s not well suited for that,’ Milly said. ‘It has a telescopic tube.’

‘What if it has?’

‘It might telescope at the wrong moment.’

‘Milly, please…’ Wormold said. ‘It’s nearly two.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m off. And I shall pray for Dr Cifuentes. It’s no joke to be shot at. The bullet went right through a brick wall. Think of what it could have done to Dr Cifuentes.’

‘Pray for someone called Raul too,’ Beatrice said. ‘They got him.’ Wormold lay down flat on the bed and shut his eyes. ‘I don’t understand a thing,’ he said. ‘Not a thing. It’s a coincidence. It must be.’ ‘They’re getting rough -whoever they are.’

‘But why?’

‘Spying is a dangerous profession.’

‘But Cifuentes hadn’t really… I mean he wasn’t important.’ ‘Those constructions in Oriente are important. Your agents seem to have a habit of getting blown. I wonder how. I think you’ll have to warn Professor Sanchez and the girl.’

‘The girl?’

‘The nude dancer.’

‘But how?’ He couldn’t explain to her he had no agents, that he had never met Cifuentes or Dr Sanchez, that neither Teresa nor Raul even existed:

Raul had come alive only in order to be killed.

‘What did Milly call this?’

‘A sprayer.’

‘I’ve seen something like it before somewhere.’

‘I expect you have. Most vacuum cleaners have them.’ He took it away from her. He couldn’t remember whether he had included it in the drawings he had sent to Hawthorne.

‘What do I do now, Beatrice?’

‘I think your people should go into hiding for a while. Not here, of course. It would be too crowded and anyway not safe. What about that Chief Engineer of yours could he smuggle them on board?’ ‘He’s away at sea on the way to Cienfuegos.’

‘Anyway he’s probably blown too,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder why they’ve let you and me get back here.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They could easily have shot us down on the front. Or perhaps they’re using us for bait. Of course you throw away the bait if it’s no good.’ ‘What a macabre woman you are.’

‘Oh no. We’re back into the Boy’s Own Paper world, that’s all. You can count yourself lucky.’

‘Why?’

‘It might have been the Sunday Mirror. The world is modelled after the popular magazines nowadays. My husband came out of Encounter. The question we have to consider is to which paper they belong.’

‘They?’

‘Let’s assume they belong to the Boy’s Own Paper too. Are they Russian agents, German agents, American, what? Cuban very likely. Those concrete platforms must be official, mustn’t they? Poor Raul. I hope he died quickly.’ He was tempted to tell her everything, but what was ‘everything’? He no longer knew. Raul had been killed. Hasselbacher said so.

‘First the Shanghai Theatre,’ she said. ‘Will it be open?’

‘The second performance won’t be over.’

‘If the police are not there before us. Of course they didn’t use the police against Cifuentes. He was probably too important. In murdering anyone you have to avoid scandal.’

‘I hadn’t thought of it in that light before.’

Beatrice turned out the bedside light and went to the window. She said, ‘Don’t you have a back door?’

‘No.’ w ‘We’ll have to change all that,’ she said airily, as though she were an architect too. ‘Do you know a nigger with a limp?’ ‘That will be Joe.’

‘He’s going slowly by.’

‘He sells dirty postcards. He’s going home, that’s all.’ ‘He couldn’t be expected to follow you with that limp, of course. He may be their tictac man. Anyway we’ll have to risk it. They are obviously making a sweep tonight. Women and children first. The professor can wait.’ ‘But I’ve never seen Teresa at the theatre. She probably has a different name there.’

‘You can pick her out, can’t you, even without her clothes? Though I suppose we do look a bit the same naked, like the Japanese.’ ‘I don’t think you ought to come.’

‘I must. If one is stopped the other can make a dash for it.’

‘I meant to the Shanghai. It’s not exactly Boy’s Own Paper.’

‘Nor is marriage,’ she said, ‘even in UNESCO.’

The Shanghai was in a narrow street off Zanja surrounded by deep bars. A board advertised Posiciones, and the tickets for some reason were sold on the pavement outside, perhaps because there was no room for a box-office, as the foyer was occupied by a pornographic bookshop for the benefit of those who wanted entertainment during the entr’acte. The black pimps in the street watched them with curiosity. They were not used to European women here. ‘It feels far from home,’ Beatrice said.

The seats all cost one peso twenty-five and there were very few empty ones left in the large hail. The man who showed them the way offered Wormold a packet of pornographic postcards for a peso. When Wormold refused them, he drew a second selection from his pocket.

‘Buy them if you want to,’ Beatrice said. ‘If it embarrasses you I’ll keep my eye on the show.’

‘There’s not much difference,’ Wormold said, ‘between the show and the postcards.’

The attendant asked if the lady would like a marijuana cigarette.

‘Nein, danke,’ Beatrice said, getting her languages confused. On either side of the stage, posters advertised clubs in the neighbourhood where the girls were said to be beautiful. A notice in Spanish and bad English forbade the audience to molest the dancers. ‘Which is Teresa?’ Beatrice asked.

‘I think it must be the fat one in the mask,’ Wormold said at random. She was just leaving the stage with a heave of her great naked buttocks, and the audience clapped and whistled. Then the lights went down and a screen was lowered. A film began, quite mildly at first. It showed a bicyclist, some woodland scenery, a punctured tyre, a chance encounter, a gentleman raising a straw hat; there was a great deal of flicker and fog. Beatrice sat silent. There was an odd intimacy between them as they watched together this blueprint of love. Similar movements of the body had once meant more to them than anything else the world had to offer. The act of lust and the act of love are the same; it cannot be falsified like a sentiment. The lights went on. They sat in silence. ‘My lips are dry,’ Wormold said.

‘I haven’t any spit left. Can’t we go behind and see Teresa now?’

‘There’s another film after this and then the dancers come on again.’

‘I’m not tough enough for another film,’ Beatrice said.

‘They won’t let us go behind until the show’s over.’

‘We can wait in the street, can’t we? At least we’ll know then if we’ve been followed.’

They left as the second film started. They were the only ones to rise, so if somebody had tailed them he must be waiting for them in the street, but there was no obvious candidate among the taxi-drivers and the pimps. One man slept against the lamp-post with a lottery-number slung askew round his neck. Wormold remembered the night with Dr Hasselbacher. That was when he had learnt the new use for Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. Poor Hasselbacher had been very drunk. Wormold remembered how he had sat slumped in the lounge when he came down from Hawthorne’s room. He said to Beatrice, ‘How easy is it to break a book-code if once you’ve got the right book?’

‘Not hard for an expert,’ she said, ‘only a question of patience.’ She went across to the lottery-seller and straightened the number. The man didn’t wake. She said, ‘It was difficult to read it sideways.’

Had he carried Lamb under his arm, in his pocket, or in his brief-case? Had he laid the book down when he helped Dr Hasselbacher to rise? He could remember nothing, and such suspicions were ungenerous. ‘I thought of a funny coincidence,’ Beatrice said. ‘Dr Hasselbacher reads Lamb’s Tales in the right edition.’ It was as though her basic training had included telepathy.

‘You saw it in his flat?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he would have hidden it,’ he protested, ‘if it meant anything at all.’

‘Or he wanted to warn you. Remember, he brought us back there. He told us about Raul.’

‘He couldn’t have known that he would meet us.’

‘How do you know?’

He wanted to protest that nothing made sense, that Raul didn’t exist, and Teresa didn’t exist, and then he thought of how she would pack up and go away and it would all be like a story without a purpose. ‘People are coming out,’ Beatrice said.

They found a side-door that led to the one big dressing-room. The passage was lit by a bare globe that had burned far too many days and nights. The passage was nearly blocked by dustbins and a negro with a broom was sweeping up scraps of cotton-wool stained with face powder, lipstick and ambiguous things; the place smelled of pear-drops. Perhaps after all there would be no one here called Teresa, but he wished that he had not chosen so popular a saint. He pushed a door open and it was like a medieval inferno full of smoke and naked women.

He said to Beatrice, ‘Don’t you think you’d better go home?’

‘It’s you who need protection here,’ she said.

Nobody even noticed them. The mask of the fat woman dangled from one ear and she was drinking a glass of wine with one leg up on a chair. A very thin girl with ribs like piano-keys was pulling on her stockings. Breasts swayed, buttocks bent, cigarettes half finished fumed in saucers; the air was thick with burning paper. A man stood on a stepladder with a screwdriver fixing something. ‘Where is she?’ Beatrice asked.

‘I don’t think she’s here. Perhaps she’s sick, or with her lover.’ The air flapped warmly round them as someone put on a dress. Little grains of powder settled like ash.

‘Try calling her name.’

He shouted ‘Teresa’ half-heartedly. Nobody paid any attention. He tried again and the man with the screwdriver looked down at him. ‘Paso algo?’ he asked.

Wormold said in Spanish that he was looking for a girl called Teresa. The man suggested that Maria would do just as well. He pointed his screwdriver at the fat woman.

‘What’s he saying?’

‘He doesn’t seem to know Teresa.’

The man with the screwdriver sat down on top of the ladder and began to make a speech. He said that Maria was the best woman you could find in Havana. She weighed one hundred kilos with nothing on.

‘Obviously Teresa is not here,’ Wormold explained with relief.

‘Teresa. Teresa. What do you want with Teresa?’

‘Yes. What do you want with me?’ the thin girl demanded, coming forward holding out one stocking. Her little breasts were the size of pears. ‘Who are you?’

‘Soy Teresa.’

Beatrice said, ‘Is that Teresa? You said she was fat-like that one with the mask.’

‘No, no,’ Wormold said. ‘That’s not Teresa. She’s Teresa’s sister. Soy means sister.’ He said, ‘I’ll send a message by her.’

He took the thin girl’s arm and moved her a little away. He tried to explain to her in Spanish that she had to be careful.

‘Who are you? I don’t understand.’

‘There has been a mistake. It is too long a story. There are people who may try to do you an injury. Please stay at home for a few days. Don’t come to the theatre.’

‘I have to. I meet my clients here.’

Wormold took out a wad of money. He said, ‘Have you relations?’

‘I have my mother.’

‘Go to her.’

‘But she is in Cienfuegos.’

‘There is plenty of money there to take you to Cienfuegos.’ Everybody was listening now. They pressed close around. The man with the screwdriver had come down from the ladder. Wormold saw Beatrice outside the circle; she was pushing closer, trying to make out what he was saying. The man with the screwdriver said, ‘That girl belongs to Pedro. You can’t take her away like that. You must talk to Pedro first.’ ‘I do not want to go to Cienfuegos,’ the girl said.

‘You will be safe there.’

She appealed to the man. ‘He frightens me. I cannot understand what he wants.’ She exhibited the pesos. ‘This is too much money.’ She appealed to them. ‘I am a good girl.’

‘A lot of wheat does not make a bad year,’ the fat woman said with solemnity.

‘Where is your Pedro?’ the man asked.

‘He is ill. Why does the man give me all this money? I am a good girl.

You know that my price is fifteen pesos. I am not a hustler.’ ‘A lean dog is full of fleas,’ said the fat woman. She seemed to have a proverb for every occasion.

‘What’s happening?’ Beatrice asked.

A voice hissed, ‘Psst, psst!’ It was the negro who had been sweeping the passage. He said, ‘Policia!’

‘Oh hell,’ Wormold said, ‘that tears it. I’ve got to get you out of here.’ No one seemed unduly disturbed. The fat woman drained her wine and put on a pair of knickers; the girl who was called Teresa pulled on her second stocking.

‘It doesn’t matter about me,’ Beatrice said. ‘You’ve got to get her away.’

‘What do the police want?’ Wormold asked the man on the ladder.

‘A girl,’ he said cynically.

‘I want to get this girl out,’ Wormold said. ‘Isn’t there some back way?’

‘With the police there’s always a back way.’

‘Where?’

‘Got fifty pesos to spare?’

‘Yes.’

‘Give them to him. Hi, Miguel,’ he called to the negro. ‘Tell them to stay asleep for three minutes. Now who wants to be treated to freedom?’ ‘I prefer the police-station,’ the fat woman said. ‘But one has to be properly clothed.’ She adjusted her bra.

‘Come with me,’ Wormold said to Teresa.

‘Why should I?’

‘You don’t realize they want you.’

‘I doubt it,’ said the man with the screwdriver. ‘She’s too thin. You had better hurry. Fifty pesos do not last for ever.’

‘Here, take my coat,’ Beatrice said. She wrapped it round the shoulders of the girl, who had now two stockings on but nothing else. The girl said, ‘But I want to stay.’

The man slapped her bottom and gave her a push. ‘You have his money,’ he said. ‘Go with him.’ He herded them into a small and evil toilet and then through a window. They found themselves in the street. A policeman on guard outside the theatre ostentatiously looked elsewhere. A pimp whistled and pointed to Wormold’s car. The girl said again, ‘I want to stay,’ but Beatrice pushed her into the rear seat and followed her in. ‘I shall scream,’ the girl told them and leant out of the window.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Beatrice said, pulling her inside. Wormold got the car started.

The girl screamed but only in a tentative way. The policeman turned and looked in the opposite direction. The fifty pesos seemed to be still effective. They turned right and drove towards the sea-front. No car followed them. It was as easy as all that. The girl, now that she had no choice, adjusted the coat for modesty and leant comfortably back. She said, ‘Hay niucha corriente.’ ‘What’s she saying?’

‘She’s complaining of the draught,’ Wormold said.

‘She doesn’t seem a very grateful girl. Where’s her sister?’ ‘With the Director of Posts and Telegraphs, at Cienfuegos. Of course I could drive her there. We’d arrive by breakfast time. But there’s Milly.’ ‘There’s more than Milly. You’ve forgotten Professor Sanchez.’

‘Surely Professor Sanchez can wait.’

‘They seem to be acting fast, whoever they are., ‘I don’t know where he lives.’

‘I do. I looked him up in the Country Club list before we came.’

‘You take this girl and wait there.’

They came on to the front. ‘You turn left here,’ Beatrice said.

‘I’m taking you home.’

‘It’s better to stay together.’

‘Milly..

‘You don’t want to compromise her, do you?’

Reluctantly Wormold turned left. ‘Where to?’

‘Vedado,’ Beatrice said.

The skyscrapers of the new town stood up ahead of them like icicles in the moonlight. A great H. H. was stamped on the sky, like the monogram on Hawthorne’s pocket, but it wasn’t royal either -it only advertised Mr Hilton. The wind rocked the car, and the spray broke across the traffic-lanes and misted the seaward window. The hot night tasted of salt. Wormold swung the car away from the sea. The girl said, ‘Hace demasiado calor.’

‘What’s she saying now?’

‘She says it’s too hot.’

‘She’s a difficult girl,’ Beatrice said. ‘Better turn down the window again.’

‘Suppose she screams?’

‘I’ll slap her.’

They were in the new quarter of Vedado: little cream-and-white houses owned by rich men. You could tell how rich a man was by the fewness of the floors. Only a millionaire could afford a bungalow on a site that might have held a skyscraper. When he lowered the window they could smell the flowers. She stopped him by a gate in a high white wall. She said, ‘I can see lights in the patio. Everything seems all right. I’ll guard your precious bit of flesh while you go in.’

‘He seems to be very wealthy for a professor.’

‘He’s not too rich to charge expenses, according to your accounts.’

Wormold said, ‘Give me a few minutes. Don’t go away.’ ‘Am I likely to? You’d better hurry. So far they’ve only scored one out of three, and a near miss, of course.’

He tried the grilled gate. It was not locked. The position was absurd. How was he to explain his presence? ‘You are an agent of mine without knowing it. You are in danger. You must hide.’ He didn’t even know of what subject Sanchez was a professor.

A short path between two palm-trees led to a second grilled gate, and beyond was the little patio where the lights were on. A gramophone was playing softly and two tall figures revolved in silence cheek to cheek. As he limped up the path a concealed alarm-bell rang. The dancers stopped and one of them came out on to the path to meet him.

‘Who is that?’

‘Professor Sanchez?’

‘Yes.’

They both converged into the area of light. The professor wore a white dinner-jacket, his hair was white, he had white morning stubble on his chin, and he carried a revolver in his hand which he pointed at Wormold. Wormold saw that the woman behind him was very young and very pretty. She stooped and turned off the gramophone.

‘Forgive me for calling on you at this hour,’ Wormold said. He had no idea how he should begin, and he was disquieted by the revolver. Professors ought not to carry revolvers.

‘I am afraid I don’t remember your face.’ The professor spoke politely and kept the revolver pointed at Wormold’s stomach. ‘There’s no reason why you should. Unless you have a vacuum cleaner.’ ‘Vacuum cleaner? I suppose I have. Why? My wife would know.’ The young woman came through from the patio and joined them. She had no shoes on. The discarded shoes stood beside the gramophone like mousetraps. ‘What does he want?’ she asked disagreeably.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Senora Sanchez.’

‘Tell him I’m not Senora Sanchez,’ the young woman said. ‘He says he has something to do with vacuum cleaners,’ the professor said. ‘Do you think Maria, before she went away…?’

‘Why does he come here at one in the morning?’

‘You must forgive me,’ the professor said with an air of embarrassment, ‘but this is an unusual time.’ He allowed his revolver to move a little off target. ‘One doesn’t as a rule expect visitors…’

‘You seem to expect them.’

‘Oh, this -one has to take precautions. You see, I have some very fine Renoirs.’

‘He’s not after the pictures. Maria sent him. You are a spy, aren’t you?’ the young woman asked fiercely.

‘Well, in a way.’

The young woman began to wail, beating at her own long slim flanks. Her bracelets jangled and glinted.

‘Don’t, dear, don’t. I’m sure there’s an explanation.’

‘She envies our happiness,’ the young woman said. ‘First she sent the cardinal, didn’t she, and now this man… Are you a priest?’ she asked. ‘My dear, of course, he’s not a priest. Look at his clothes.’ ‘You may be a professor of comparative education,’ the young woman said, ‘but you can be deceived by anyone. Are you a priest?’ she repeated. ‘No.’

‘What are you?’

‘As a matter of fact I sell vacuum cleaners.’

‘You said you were a spy.’

‘Well, yes, I suppose in a sense..

‘What have you come here for?’

‘To warn you.’

The young woman gave an odd bitch-like howl. ‘You see,’ she said to the professor, ‘she’s threatening us now. First the cardinal and then ‘The cardinal was only doing his duty. After all he’s Maria’s cousin.’ ‘You’re afraid of him. You want to leave me.’

‘My dear, you know that isn’t true.’ He said to Wormold, ‘Where is Maria now?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘When did you see her last?’

‘But I’ve never seen her.’

‘You do rather contradict yourself, don’t you?’

‘He’s a lying hound,’ the young woman said.

‘Not necessarily, dear. He’s probably employed by some agency. We had better sit down quietly and hear what he has to say. Anger is always a mistake. He’s doing his duty which is more than can be said of us.’ The professor led the way back to the patio. He had put his revolver back in his pocket. The young woman waited until Wormold began to follow and then brought up the rear like a watchdog. He half expected her to bite his ankle. He thought, Unless I speak soon, I shall never speak.

‘Take a chair,’ the professor said. What was comparative education?

‘May I give you a drink?’

‘Please don’t bother.’

‘You don’t drink on duty?’

‘Duty!’ the young woman said. ‘You treat him like a human being. What duty has he got except to his despicable employers?’ ‘I came here to warn you that the police…’

‘Oh come, come, adultery is not a crime,’ the professor said. ‘I think it has seldom been regarded as that except in the American cobflies in the seventeenth century. And in the Mosaic Law, of course.’ ‘Adultery had got nothing to do with it,’ the young woman said. ‘She didn’t mind us sleeping together, she only minded our being together.’ ‘You can hardly have one without the other, unless you are thinking of the New Testament,’ the professor said. ‘Adultery in the heart.’ ‘You have no heart unless you turn this man out. We sit here talking as though we had been married for years. If all you want to do is to sit up all night and talk, why didn’t you stick to Maria?’

‘My dear, it was your idea to dance before bed.’

‘You call what you did dancing?’

‘I told you that I would take lessons.’

‘Oh yes, so as to be with the girls at the school.’

The conversation seemed to Wormold to be reeling out of sight. He said desperately, ‘They shot at Engineer Cifuentes. You are in the same danger.’ ‘If I wanted girls, dear, there are plenty at the university. They come to my lectures. No doubt you are aware of that, since you came yourself.’ ‘You taunt me with it?’

‘We are straying from the subject, dear. The subject is what action Maria is likely to take next.’

‘She ought to have given up starchy foods two years ago,’ the young girl said rather cheaply, ‘knowing you. You only care for the body. You ought to be ashamed at your age.’

‘If you don’t wish me to love you..

‘Love. Love.’ The young woman began to pace the patio. She made gestures in the air as though she were dismembering love. Wormold said, ‘It’s not Maria you have to worry about.’

‘You lying hound,’ she screamed at him. ‘You said you’d never seen her.’

‘I haven’t.’

‘Then why do you call her Maria?’ she cried and began to do triumphant dance-steps with an imaginary partner.

‘You said something about Cifuentes, young man?’

‘He was shot at this evening.’

‘Who by?’

‘I don’t know exactly, but it’s all part of the same round-up. It’s a bit difficult to explain, but you really seem to be in great danger, Professor Sanchez. It’s all a mistake, of course. The police have been to the Shanghai Theatre too.’

‘What have I to do with the Shanghai Theatre?’

‘What indeed?’ cried the young woman melodramatically. ‘Men,’ she said, ‘men! Poor Maria. She hasn’t only one woman to deal with. She’ll have to plan a massacre.’

‘I’ve never had anything to do with anybody at the Shanghai Theatre.’

‘Maria is better informed. I expect you walk in your sleep.’ ‘You heard what he said, it’s a mistake. After all, they shot at Cifuentes. You can’t blame her for that.’

‘Cifuentes? Did he say Cifuentes? Oh, you Spanish oaf. Just because he talked to me one day at the Club while you were in the shower you go and hire desperadoes to kill him.’

‘Please, dear, be reasonable. I only heard of it just now when this gentleman…’

‘He’s not a gentleman. He’s a lying hound.’ They had again come full circle in the conversation.

‘If he’s a liar we need pay no attention to what he says. He’s probably slandering Maria too.’

‘Ah, you would stick up for her.’

Wormold said with desperation it was his last fling, ‘This has got nothing to do with Maria -with Senora Sanchez, I mean.’ ‘What on earth has Senora Sanchez to do with it?’ the professor asked.

‘I thought you thought that Maria…’

‘Young man, you aren’t seriously telling me that Maria is planning to do something to my wife as well as to my… my friend here? It’s too absurd.’ Until now the mistake had seemed to Wormold fairly simple to deal with. But now it was as though he had tugged a stray piece of cotton and a whole suit had begun to unwind. Was this Comparative Education? He said, ‘I thought I was doing you a favour by coming to warn you, but it looks as if death for you might be the best solution.’

‘You are a very mystifying young man.’

‘Not young. It’s you, Professor, who are young by the look of things.’

In his anxiety he spoke aloud, ‘If only Beatrice were here.’ The professor said quickly, ‘I absolutely assure you, dear, that I know nobody called Beatrice. Nobody.’

The young woman gave a tigerish laugh.

‘You seem to have come here,’ the professor said, ‘with the sole purpose of making trouble.’ It was his first complaint and it seemed a very mild one under the circumstances. ‘I cannot think what you have to gain by it,’ he said and walked into the house and closed the door.

‘He’s a monster,’ the girl said. ‘A monster. A sexual monster. A satyr.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘I know that tag to know all is to forgive all. Not in this case, it isn’t.’ She seemed to have lost her hostility to Wormold. ‘Maria, me, Beatrice I don’t count his wife, poor woman. I’ve got nothing against his wife. Have you a gun?’

‘Of course not. I only came here to save him,’ Wormold said. ‘Let them shoot,’ the young woman said, ‘in the belly -low down.’ And she too went into the house with an air of purpose.

There was nothing left for Wormold to do but go. The invisible alarm gave another warning as he walked toward the gate, but no one stirred in the little white house. I’ve done my best, Wormold thought. The professor seemed well prepared for any danger and perhaps the arrival of the police might be a relief to him. They would be easier to cope with than the young woman.

Walking away through the smell of the night flowering plants he had only one wish: to tell Beatrice everything. I am no secret agent, I’m a fraud, none of these people are my agents, and I don’t know what’s happening. I’m lost. I’m scared. Surely somehow she would take control of the situation; after all she was a professional. But he knew that he would not appeal to her. It meant giving up security for Milly. He would rather be eliminated like Raul. Did they, in his service, give pensions to offspring? But who was Raul? Before h had reached the second gate Beatrice called to him, ‘Jim. Look out. Keep away.’ Even at that urgent moment the thought occurred to him, my name is Wormold, Mr Wormold, Senor Vomell, nobody calls me Jim. Then he ran -hop and skip towards the voice and came out to the street, to a radio-car, and to three police-officers, and another revolver w pointing at his stomach. Beatrice stood on the sidewalk and the girl was beside her,, trying to keep a coat closed which hadn’t been designed that way. ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘I can’t understand a word they say.’ One of the officers told him to get into their car. ‘What about my own?’ ‘It will be brought to the station.’ Before he obeyed they felt him down the breast and side for arms. He said to Beatrice, ‘I don’t know what it’s all about, but it looks like the end of a bright career.’ The officer spoke again. ‘He wants you to get in too.’ ‘Tell him,’ Beatrice said, ‘I’m going to stay with Teresa’s sister. I don’t trust them.’ The two cars drove softly away among the little houses of the millionaires, to avoid disturbing anyone, as though they were in a street of hospitals; the rich need sleep. They had not Ľ far to go: a courtyard, a gate closing behind them, and then the odour of a police-station like the ammoniac smell of zoos all the world over. Along the whitewashed passage the por traits of wanted men hung, with the spurious look of bearded old masters. In the room at the end Captain Segura sat playing draughts. Ľ ‘Huff,’ he said, and took two pieces. Then he looked up at them. ‘Mr Wormold,’ he said with surprise, and rose like a small tight green snake from his seat when he saw Beatrice. He looked beyond her at Teresa; the coat had fallen open again, perhaps with intention. He said, ‘Who in God’s name…?’ and then to the policeman with whom he had been playing, ‘Anda!’

‘What’s the meaning of all this, Captain Segura?’

‘You are asking me that, Mr Wormold?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wish you would tell me the meaning. I had no idea I should see you

Milly’s father. Mr Wormold, we had a call from a Professor Sanchez about a man who had broken into his house with vague threats. He thought it had something to do with his pictures; he has very valuable pictures. I sent a radio-car at once and it is you they pick up, with the Senorita here (we have met before) and a naked tart.’ Like the police-sergeant in Santiago he added, ‘That is not very nice, Mr Wormold.’

‘We had been at the Shanghai.’

‘That is not very nice either.’

‘I’m tired of being told by the police that I am not nice.’

‘Why did you visit Professor Sanchez?’

‘That was all a mistake.’

‘Why do you have a naked tart in your car?’

‘We were giving her a lift.’

‘She has no right to be naked on the streets.’ The police-officer leant across the desk and whispered. ‘Ah,’ Captain Segura said. ‘I begin to understand. There was a police-inspection tonight at the Shanghai. I suppose the girl had forgotten her papers and wanted to avoid a night in the cells. She appealed to you…’

‘It wasn’t that way at all.’

‘It had better be that way., Mr Wormold.’ He said to the girl in Spanish, ‘Your papers. You have no papers.’

She said indignantly, ‘Si, yo tengo.’ She bent down and pulled pieces of crumpled paper from the top of her stocking. Captain Segura took them and examined them. He gave a deep sigh. ‘Mr Wormold, Mr Wormold, her papers are in order. Why do you drive about the streets with a naked girl? Why do you break into the house of Professor Sanchez and talk to him about his wife and threaten him? What is his wife to you?’ He said ‘Go’ sharply to the girl. She hesitated and began to take off the coat.

‘Better let her keep it,’ Beatrice said.

Captain Segura sat wearily down in front of the draughts board. ‘Mr Wormold, for your sake I tell you this: do not get mixed up with the wife of Professor Sanchez. She is not a woman you can treat lightly.’ ‘I am not mixed up…’

‘Do you play checkers, Mr Wormold?’

‘Yes. Not very well, I’m afraid.’

‘Better than these pigs in the station, I expect. We must play together sometimes, you and I. But in checkers you must move very carefully, just as with the wife of Professor Sanchez.’ He moved a piece at random on the board and said, ‘Tonight you were with Dr Hasselbacher.’

‘Yes.’

‘Was that wise, Mr Wormold?’ He didn’t look up, moving the pieces here and there, playing against himself.

‘Wise?’

‘Dr Hasselbacher has got into strange company.’

‘I know nothing about that.’

‘Why did you send him a postcard from Santiago marked with the position of your room?’

‘What a lot of unimportant things you know, Captain Segura.’ ‘I have a reason to be interested in you, Mr Wormold. I don’t want to see you involved. What was it that Dr Hasselbacher wished to tell you tonight? His telephone, you understand, is tapped.’

‘He wanted to play us a record of Tristan.’

‘And perhaps to speak of this?’ Captain Segura reversed a photograph on his desk -a flashlight picture with the characteristic glare of white faces gathered round a heap of smashed metal which had once been a car. ‘And this?’ A young man’s face unflinching in the flashlight: an empty cigarette-carton crumpled like his life: a man’s foot touching his shoulders. ‘Do you know him?’

‘No.’

Captain Segura depressed a lever and a voice spoke in English from a box on his desk. w ‘Hullo. Hullo. Hasselbacher speaking.’ ‘Is anyone with you, H-Hasselbacher?’

‘Yes. Friends.’

‘What friends?’

‘If you must know, Mr Wormold is here.’

‘Tell him Raul’s dead.’

‘Dead? But they promised…’

‘You can’t always control an accident, H-Hasselbacher.’ The voice had a slight hesitation before the aspirate.

‘They gave me their word..

‘The car turned over too many times.’

‘They said it would be just a warning.’

‘It is still a warning. Go in and tell h-him that Raul is dead.’

The hiss of the tape went on a moment; a door closed.

‘Do you still say you know nothing of Raul?’ Segura asked. Wormold looked at Beatrice. She made a slight negative motion of her head. Wormold said, ‘I give you my word of honour, Segura, that I didn’t even know he existed until tonight.’

Segura moved a piece. ‘Your word of honour?’

‘My word of honour.’

‘You are Milly’s father. I have to accept it. But stay away from naked women and the professor’s wife. Good night, Mr Wormold.’ ‘Good night.’

They had reached the door when Segura spoke again. ‘And our game of checkers, Mr Wormold. We won’t forget that.’

The old Hillman was waiting in the street. Wormold said, ‘I’ll leave you with Milly.’

‘Aren’t you going home?’

‘It’s too late to sleep now.’

‘Where are you going? Can’t I come with you?’

‘I want you to stay with Milly in case of accidents. Did you see that photograph?’

‘Yes.’

They didn’t speak again before Lamparilla. Then Beatrice said, ‘I wish you hadn’t given your word of honour. You needn’t have gone as far as that.’ ‘No?’

‘Oh, it was professional of you, I can see that. I’m sorry. It’s stupid of me. But you are more professional than I ever believed you were.’ He opened the street-door for her and watched her move away among the vacuum cleaners like a mourner in a cemetery.

At the door of Dr Hasselbacher’s apartment house he rang the bell of a stranger on the second floor whose light was on. There was a buzz and the door unlatched. The lift stood ready and he took it up to Dr Hasselbacher’s flat. Dr Hasselbacher too had apparently not found sleep. A light shone under the crack of the door. Was he alone or was he in conference with the taped voice? He was beginning to learn the caution and tricks of his unreal trade. There was a tall window on the landing which led to a purposeless balcony too narrow for use. From this balcony he could see a light in the doctor’s flat and it was only a long stride from one balcony to another. He took it without looking at the ground below. The curtains were not quite drawn. He peered between.

Dr Hasselbacher sat facing him wearing an old pickeihaube helmet, a breastplate, boots, white gloves, what could only be the ancient uniform of a Uhian. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be asleep. He was wearing a sword, and he looked like an extra in a film-studio. Wormold tapped on the window. Dr Hasselbacher opened his eyes and stared straight at him. ‘Hasselbacher.’

The doctor gave a small movement that might have been panic. He tried to whip off his helmet, but the chinstrap prevented him.

‘It’s me, Wormold.’

The doctor came reluctantly forward to the window. His breeches were far too tight. They had been made for a younger man.

‘What are you doing there, Mr Wormold?’

‘What are you doing there, Hasselbacher?’

The doctor opened the window and let Wormold in. He found that he was in the doctor’s bedroom. A big wardrobe stood open and two white suits hung there like the last teeth in an old mouth. Hasselbacher began to take off his gloves. ‘Have you been to a fancy-dress dance, Hasselbacher?’ Dr Hasselbacher said in a shamed voice, ‘You wouldn’t understand.’ He began piece by piece to rid himself of his paraphernalia first the gloves, then the helmet, the breastplate, in which Wormold and the furnishings of the room were reflected and distorted like figures in a hail of mirrors. ‘Why did you come back? Why didn’t you ring the bell?’

‘I want to know who Raul is.’

‘You know already.’

‘I’ve no idea.’

Dr Hasselbacher sat down and pulled at his boots.

‘Are you an admirer of Charles Lamb, Dr Hasselbacher?’ ‘Milly lent it me. Don’t you remember how she talked of it…?’ He sat forlornly in the bulging breeches. Wormold saw that they had been unstitched along a seam to allow room for the contemporary Hasselbacher. Yes, he remembered now the evening at the Tropicana.

‘I suppose,’ Hasselbacher said, ‘this uniform seems to you to need an explanation.’

‘Other things need one more.’

‘I was a Uhian officer -oh, forty-five years ago.’

‘I remember a photograph of you in the other room. You were not dressed like that. You looked more -practical.’

‘That was after the war started. Look over there by my dressing-table

1913, the June manoeuvres, the Kaiser was inspecting us.’ The old brown photograph with the photographer’s indented seal in the corner showed the long ranks of the cavalry, swords drawn, and a little Imperial figure with a withered arm on a white horse riding by. ‘It was all so peaceful,’ Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘in those days.’

‘Peaceful?’

‘Until the war came.’

‘But I thought you were a doctor.’

‘I became one later. When the war was over. After I’d killed a man. You kill a man -that is so easy,’ Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘it needs no skill. You can be certain of what you’ve done, you can judge death, but to save a man -that takes more than six years of training, and in the end you can never be quite sure that it was you who saved him. Germs are killed by other germs. People just survive. There is not one patient whom I know for certain that I saved, but the man I killed I know him. He was Russian and he was very thin. I scraped the bone when I pushed the steel in. It set my teeth on edge. There was nothing but marshes around, and they called it Tannenberg. I hate war, Mr Wormold.’ ‘Then why do you dress up like a soldier?’

‘I was not dressed up in this way when I killed a man. This was peaceful. I love this.’ He touched the breastplate beside him on the bed. ‘But there we had the mud of the marches on us.’ He said, ‘Do you never have a desire, Mr Wormold, to go back to peace? Oh no, I forget, you’re young, you’ve never known it. This was the last peace for any of us. The trousers don’t fit any more.’ ‘What made you tonight want to dress up like this, Hasselbacher?’ ‘A man’s death.’ ‘Raul?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Did you know him?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Tell me about him.’ ‘I don’t want to talk.’

‘It would be better to talk.’

‘We were both responsible for his death, you and I,’ Hasselbacher ‘said. ‘I don’t know who trapped you into it or how, but if I had refused to help them they would have had me deported. What could I do out of Cuba now? I told you I had lost papers.’

‘What papers?’

‘Never mind that. Don’t we all have something in the past to worry about? I know why they broke up my flat now. Because I was a friend of yours. Please go away, Mr Wormold. Who knows what they might expect me to do if they knew you were here?’

‘Who are they?’

‘You know that better than I do, Mr Wormold. They don’t introduce themselves.’ Something moved rapidly in the next room. ‘Only a mouse, Mr Wormold. I keep a little cheese for it at night.’

‘So Milly lent you Lamb’s Tales.’

‘I’m glad you have changed your code,’ Dr Hasselbacher said. ‘Perhaps now they will leave me alone. I can’t help them any longer. One begins with acrostics and crosswords and mathematical puzzles and then, before you know, you are employed…. Nowadays we have to be careful even of our hobbies.’ ‘But Raul -he didn’t even exist. You advised me to lie and I lied. They were nothing but inventions, Hasselbacher.’

‘And Cifuentes? Are you telling me he didn’t exist either?’

‘He was different. I invented Raul.’

‘Then you invented him too well, Mr Wormold. There’s a whole file on him now.’

‘He was no more real than a character in a novel.’

‘Are they always invented? I don’t know how a novelist works, Mr Wormold. I have never known one before you.’

‘There was no drunk pilot in the Cubana air line.’

‘Oh, I agree, you must have invented that detail. I don’t know why.’ ‘If you were breaking my cables you must have realized there was no truth in them, you know the city. A pilot dismissed for drunkenness, a friend with a plane, they were all invention.’

‘I don’t know your motive, Mr Wormold. Perhaps you wanted to disguise his identity in case we broke your code. Perhaps if your friends had known he had private means and a plane of his own, they wouldn’t have paid him so much. How much of it all got into his pocket, I wonder, and how much into yours?’

‘I don’t understand a word you’re saying.’

‘You read the papers, Mr Wormold. You know he had his flying-licence taken away a month ago when he landed drunk in a child’s playground.’ ‘I don’t read the local papers.’

‘Never? Of course he denied working for you. They offered him a lot of money if he would work for them instead. They too want photographs, Mr Wormold, of those platforms you discovered in the Oriente hills.’ ‘There are no platforms.’

‘Don’t expect me to believe too much, Mr Wormold. You referred in one cable to plans you had sent to London. They needed photographs too.’ ‘You must know who They are.’

‘Gui bono?’

‘And what do they plan for me?’

‘At first they promised me they were planning nothing. You have been useful to them. They knew about you from the very beginning, Mr Wormold, but they didn’t take you seriously. They even thought you might be inventing your reports. But then you changed your codes and your staff increased. The British Secret Service would not be so easily deceived as all that, would it?’ A kind of loyalty to Hawthorne kept Wormold silent. ‘Mr Wormold, Mr Wormold, why did you ever begin?’

‘You know why. I needed the money.’ He found himself taking to truth like a tranquillizer.

‘I would have lent you money. I offered to.’

‘I needed more than you could lend me.’

‘For Milly?’

‘Yes.’

‘Take good care of her, Mr Wormold. You are in a trade where it is unsafe to love anybody or anything. They strike at that. You remember the culture I was making?’

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps if they hadn’t destroyed my will to live, they wouldn’t have persuaded me so easily.’

‘Do you really think…

?’

‘I only ask you to be careful.’

‘Can I use your telephone?’

‘Yes.’

Wormold rang up his house. Did he only imagine that slight click which indicated that the tapper was at work? Beatrice answered. He said, ‘Is everything quiet?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wait till I come. Is Milly all right?’

‘Fast asleep.’

‘I’m coming back.’

Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘You shouldn’t have shown love in your voice. Who knows who was listening?’ He walked with difficulty to the door because of his tight breeches. ‘Good night, Mr Wormold. Here is the Lamb.’ ‘I won’t need it any more.’

‘Milly may want it. Would you mind saying nothing to anyone about this -this costume? I know that I am absurd, but I loved those days. Once the Kaiser spoke to me.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said, “I remember you. You are Captain Muller.”

When the Chief had guests he dined at home and cooked his own dinner, for no restaurant satisfied his meticulous and romantic standard. There was a story that once when he was ill he refused to cancel an invitation to an old friend, but cooked the meal from his bed by telephone. With a watch before him on the bed-table he would interrupt the conversation at the correct interval, to give directions to his valet. ‘Hallo, hallo, Brewer, hallo, you should take that chicken out now and baste it again.’

It was also said that once when he had been kept late at the office he had tried to cook the meal from there, dinner had been ruined because from force of habit he had used his red telephone, the scrambler, and only strange noises resembling rapid Japanese had reached the valet’s ears. The meal which he served to the Permanent Under-Secretary was simple and excellent: a roast with a touch of garlic. A Wensleydale cheese stood on the sideboard and the quiet of Albany lay deeply around them like snow. After his exertions in the kitchen the Chief himself smelt faintly of gravy. ‘It’s really excellent. Excellent.’

‘An old Norfolk recipe. Granny Brown’s Ipswich Roast.’

‘And the meat itself… it really melts…’

‘I’ve trained Brewer to do the marketing, but he’ll never make a cook.

He needs constant supervision.’

They ate for a while reverently in silence; the clink of a woman’s shoes along the Rope Walk was the only distraction.

‘A good wine,’ the Permanent Under Secretary said at last.

‘55 is coming along nicely. Still a little young?’

‘Hardly.’

With the cheese the Chief spoke again. ‘The Russian note -what does the F. O. think?’

‘We are a little puzzled by the reference to the Caribbean bases.’ There was a crackling of Romary biscuits. ‘They can hardly refer to the Bahamas. They are worth about what the Yankees paid us, a few old destroyers. Yet we’ve always assumed that those constructions in Cuba had a Communist origin. You don’t think they could have an American origin after all?’

‘Wouldn’t we have been informed?’

‘Not necessarily, I’m afraid. Since the Fuchs case. They say we keep a good deal under our own hat too. What does your man in Havana say?’ ‘I’ll ask him for a full assessment. How’s the Wensleydale?’

‘Perfect.’

Help yourself to the port.’

‘Cockburn ‘35, isn’t it?’

‘27.’

‘Do you believe they intend war eventually?’ the Chief asked.

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘They’ve become very active in Cuba -apparently with the help of the police. Our man in Havana has had a difficult time. His best agent, as you know, was killed, accidentally of course, on his way to take aerial photographs of the constructions a very great loss to us. But I would give much more than a man’s life for those photographs. As it was, we had given fifteen hundred dollars. They shot at another of our agents in the street and he’s taken fright. A third’s gone underground. There’s a woman too, they interrogated her, in spite of her being the mistress of the Director of Posts and Telegraphs. They have left our man alone so far, perhaps to watch. Anyway he’s a canny bird.’ ‘Surely he must have been a bit careless to lose all those agents?’ ‘At the beginning we have to expect casualties. They broke his book-code. I’m never happy with these book-codes. There’s a German out there who seems to be their biggest operator and an expert at cryptography. Hawthorne warned our man, but you know what these old merchants are like; they have an obstinate loyalty. Perhaps it was worth a few casualties to open his eyes. Cigar?’

‘Thanks. Will he be able to start again if he’s blown?’ ‘He has a trick worth two of that. Struck right home into the enemy-camp. Recruited a double agent in the police-headquarters itself.’ ‘Aren’t double agents always a bit -tricky? You never know whether you’re getting the fat or the lean.’

‘I trust our man to huff him every time,’ the Chief said. ‘I say huff because they are both great draughts players. Checkers they call it there. As a matter of fact, that’s their excuse for contacting each other.’ ‘I can’t exaggerate how worried we are about the constructions, C. If only you had got the photographs before they killed your man. The P. M. is pressing us to inform the Yankees and ask their help.’ ‘You mustn’t let him. You can’t depend on their security.’

‘Huff,’ said Captain Segura. They had met at the Havana Club. At the Havana Club, which was not a club at all and was owned by Baccardi’s rival, all rum-drinks were free, and this enabled Wormold to increase his savings, for naturally he continued to charge for the drinks in his expenses the fact that the drinks were free would have been tedious, if not impossible, to explain to London. The bar was on the first floor of a seventeenth-century house and the windows faced the Cathedral where the body of Christopher Columbus had once lain. A grey stone statue of Columbus stood outside the Cathedral and looked as though it had been formed through the centuries under water, like a coral reef, by the action of insects.

‘You know,’ Captain Segura said, ‘there was a time when I thought you didn’t like me.’

‘There are other motives for playing draughts than liking a man.’

‘Yes, for me too,’ Captain Segura said. ‘Look! I make a king.’

‘And I huff you three times.’

‘You think I did not see that, but you will find the move is in my favour. There, now I take your only king. Why did you go to Santiago, Santa Clara and Ciefuegos two weeks ago?’

‘I always go about this time to see the retailers.’

‘It really looked as though that was your reason. You stayed in the new hotel at Ciefuegos. You had dinner alone in a restaurant on the waterfront. You went to a cinema and you went home. Next morning…’ ‘Do you really believe I’m a secret agent?’

‘I’m beginning to doubt it. I think our friends have made a mistake.’

‘Who are our friends?’

‘Oh, let’s say the friends of Dr Hasselbacher.’

‘And who are they?’

‘It’s my job to know what goes on in Havana,’ said Captain Segura, ‘not to take sides or to give information.’ He was moving his king unchecked up the board.

‘Is there anything in Cuba important enough to interest a Secret Service?’

‘Of course we are only a small country, but we lie very close to the American coast. And we point at your own Jamaica base. If a country is surrounded, as Russia is, it will try to punch a hole through from inside.’ ‘What use would I be or Dr Hasselbacher in global strategy? A man who sells vacuum cleaners. A retired doctor.’

‘There are unimportant pieces in any game,’ said Captain Segura. ‘Like this one here. I take it and you don’t mind losing it. Dr 1-Ilasselbacher, of course, is very good at crosswords.’

‘What have crosswords to do with it?’

‘A man like that makes a good cryptographer. Somebody once showed me a cable of yours with its interpretation, or rather they let me discover it. Perhaps they thought I would run you out of Cuba.’ He laughed. ‘Milly’s father.

They little knew.’

‘What was it about?’

‘You claimed to have recruited Engineer Cifuentes. Of course that was absurd. I know him well. Perhaps they shot at him to make the cable sound more convincing. Perhaps they wrote it because they wanted to get rid of you. Or perhaps they are more credulous than I am.’

‘What an extraordinary story.’ He moved a piece. ‘How are you so certain that Cifuentes is not my agent?’

‘By the way you play checkers, Mr Wormold, and because I interrogated Cifuentes.’

‘Did you torture him?’

Captain Segura laughed. ‘No. He doesn’t belong to the torturable class.’

‘I didn’t know there were class-distinctions in torture.’ ‘Dear Mr Wormold, surely you realize there are people who expect to be tortured and others who would be outraged by the idea. One never tortures except by a kind of mutual agreement.’

‘There’s torture and torture. When they broke up Dr Hasselbacher’s laboratory they were torturing…?’

‘One can never tell what amateurs may do. The police had no concern in that. Dr Hasselbacher does not belong to the torturable class.’ ‘Who does?’

‘The poor in my own country, in any Latin American country. The poor of Central Europe and the Orient. Of course in your welfare states you have no poor, so you are untorturable. In Cuba the police can deal as harshly as they like with emigres from Latin America and the Baltic States, but not with visitors from your country or Scandinavia. It is an instinctive matter on both sides. Catholics are more torturable than Protestants, just as they are more criminal. You see, I was right to make that king, and now I shall huff you for the last time.’

‘You always win, don’t you? That’s an interesting theory of yours.’ ‘One reason why the West hates the great Communist states is that they don’t recognize class-distinctions. Sometimes they torture the wrong people. So too of course did Hitler and shocked the world. Nobody cares what goes on in our prisons, or the prisons of Lisbon or Caracas, but Hitler., was too promiscuous. It was rather as though in your country a chauffeur had slept with a peeress.’

‘We’re not shocked by that any longer.’

‘It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.’ They had another free daiquiri each, frozen so stiffly that it had to be drunk in tiny drops to avoid a sinus-pain. ‘And how is Milly?’ Captain Segura asked.

‘Well.’

‘I’m very fond of the child. She has been properly brought up.’

‘I’m glad you think so.’

‘That is another reason why I would not wish you to get into any trouble, Mr Wormold, which might mean the loss of your residence permit. Havana would be poorer without your daughter.’

‘I don’t suppose you really believe me, Captain, but Cifuentes was no agent of mine.’

‘I do believe you. I think perhaps someone wanted to use you as a stalking-horse, or perhaps as one of those painted ducks which attract the real wild ducks to settle.’ He finished his daiquiri. ‘That of course suits my book. I too like to watch the wild duck come in, from Russia, America, England, even Germany once again. They despise the poor local dago marksman, but one day, when they are all settled, what a shoot I will have.’

‘It’s a complicated world. I find it easier to sell vacuum cleaners.’

‘The business prospers, I hope?’

‘Oh yes, yes.’

‘I was interested that you had enlarged Your staff. The charming secretary with the siphon and the coat that wouldn’t close. And the young man.’ ‘I need someone to superintend accounts. Lopez is not reliable.’ ‘Ah, Lopez. Another of your agents.’ Captain Segura laughed. ‘Or so it was reported to me.’

‘Yes. He supplies me with secret information about the police-department.’

‘Be careful, Mr Wormold. He is one of the torturable.’ They both laughed, drinking daiquiri’s. It is easy to laugh at the idea of torture on a sunny day. ‘I must be going, Mr Wormold.’

‘I suppose the cells are full of my spies.’

‘We can always make room for another by having a few executions.’

‘One day, Captain, I am going to beat you at draughts.’

‘I doubt it, Mr Wormold.’

From the window he watched Captain Segura pass the grey pumice-like figure of Columbus on the way to his office. Then he had another free daiquiri. The Havana Club and Captain Segura seemed to have taken the place of the Wonder Bar and Dr Hasselbacher -it was like a change of life and he had to make the best of it. There was no turning time back. Dr Hasselbacher had been humiliated in front of him, and friendship cannot stand humiliation. File had not seen Dr Hasselbacher again. In the club he felt himself, as in the Wonder Bar, a citizen of Havana; the elegant young man who brought him a drink made no attempt to sell him one of the assorted bottles of rum arranged on his table. A man with a grey beard read his morning paper as always at this hour; as usual a postman had interrupted his daily round for his free drink: all of them were citizens too. Four tourists left the bar carrying woven baskets, containing bottles of rum; they were flushed and cheerful and harboured the illusion that their drinks had cost them nothing. He thought, They are the foreigners, and of course untorturable.

Wormold drank his daiquiri too fast and left the Havana Club with his eyes aching. The tourists leant over the seventeenth-century well; they had flung into it enough coins to have paid for their drinks twice over: they were ensuring a happy return. A woman’s voice called him and he saw Beatrice standing between the pillars of the colonnade among the gourds and rattles and negro-dolls of the curio shop.

‘What are you doing here?’

She explained, ‘I’m always unhappy when you meet Segura. This time I wanted to be sure…’

‘Sure of what?’ He wondered whether at last she had begun to suspect that he had no agents.

Perhaps she had received instructions to watch him, from London or from 59200 in Kingston They began to walk home.

‘Sure that it’s not a trap, that the police aren’t waiting for you. A double agent is tricky to handle.’

‘You worry too much.’

‘And you have so little experience. Look what happened to Raul and Cifuentes.’

‘Cifuentes has been interrogated by the police.’ He added with relief, ‘He’s blown, so he’s no use to us now.’

‘Then aren’t you blown too?’

‘He gave nothing away. It was Captain Segura who chose the questions, and Segura is one of us. I think perhaps it’s time we gave him a bonus. He’s trying to compile a complete list for us of foreign agents here American as well as Russian. Wild duck that’s what he calls them.’

‘It would be quite a coup. And the constructions?’

‘We’ll have to let those rest a while. I can’t make him act against his own country.’

Passing the Cathedral he gave his usual coin to the blind beggar who sat on the steps outside. Beatrice said, ‘It seems almost worth while being blind in this sun.’ The creative instinct stirred in Wormold. He said, ‘You know, he’s not really blind. He sees everything that goes on.’

‘He must be a good actor. I’ve been watching him all the time you were with Segura.’

‘And he’s been watching you. As a matter of fact he’s one of my best informers. I always have him stationed here when I meet Segura. An elementary precaution. I’m not as careless as you think.’

‘You’ve never told H. Q.’

‘There’s no point. They could hardly have traces of a blind beggar, and I don’t use him for information. All the same if I had been arrested you’d have known of it in ten minutes. What would you have done?’ ‘Burnt all records and driven Milly to the Embassy.’

‘What about Rudy?’

‘I’d have told him to radio London that we were breaking off and then to go underground.’

‘How does one go underground?’ He didn’t probe for an answer. He said slowly as the story grew of itself, ‘The beggar’s name is Miguel. He really does all this for love. You see, I saved his life once.’

‘How?’

‘Oh, it was nothing. An accident to the ferry. It just happened that I could swim and he couldn’t.’

‘Did they give you a medal?’ He looked at her quickly, but in her face he could see only innocent interest.

‘No. There was no glory. As a matter of fact they fined me for bringing him to shore in a defence zone.’

‘What a very romantic story. And now of course he would give his life for you.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t go as far as that.’

‘Do tell me have you somewhere a small penny account-book in black wash-leather?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. Why?’

‘With your first purchases of pen-nibs and india-rubbers?’

‘Why on earth pen-nibs?’

‘I was just wondering, that’s all.’

‘You can’t buy account-books for a penny. And pen-nibs nobody uses pen-nibs nowadays.’

‘Forget it. Just something Henry said to me. A natural mistake.’

‘Who’s Henry?’ he asked.

‘59200,’ she said. He felt an odd jealousy, for in spite of security rules she had only once called him Jim.

The house was empty as usual when they came in; he was aware that he no longer missed Milly, and he felt the sad relief of a man who realizes that there is one love at least that no longer hurts him.

‘Rudy’s out,’ Beatrice said. ‘Buying sweets, I suppose. He eats too many. He must consume an awful lot of energy, because he gets no fatter, but I don’t see how.’

‘We’d better get down to work. There’s a cable to send. Segura gave some valuable information about Communist infiltration in the police. You’d hardly believe..

‘I can believe almost anything. Look at this, I’ve just discovered something fascinating in the codebook. Did you know there was a group for “eunuch”? Do you think it crops up often in cables?’

‘I expect they need it in the Istanbul office.’

‘I wish we could use it. Can’t we?’

‘Are you ever going to marry again?’

Beatrice said, ‘Your free associations are rather obvious sometimes. Do you think Rudy has a secret life? He can’t consume all that energy in the office.’

‘What’s the drill for a secret life? Do you have to ask permission from London before you start one?’

‘Well, of course, you would have to get traces before going very far.

London prefers to keep sex inside the department.’