Quiller's Run

2 The Worm

'I' can't,' she said. 'I've got to be up bright and early.'

'Are you flying?'

'Not till noon.' She kissed me for the last time, her hair falling across my face, cool and scented.

'Then why not stay the night?'

'I've got an interview at nine. I'm trying to get onto Concorde – wouldn't that be fantastic? I mean, apart from the pay, I'd have the name on my uniform. All the other crews look when you go through the airport. Talk about prestige.' She slipped off the bed and looked across the room. 'Which door is it?'

'That one. Guest towels on the left.'

'God, I can hardly stand up. Are you normally like that?'

'No. It was the way you kissed.'

She stood looking down at me, the light from the street catching the sweat on her skin, turning it to satin.

'I always kiss like that, but it doesn't normally set up a tornado.'

'Then it should.'

She stood smoothing her thighs, maybe considering staying. That would be all right: I was feeling intolerably lonely.

'What are all those bruises?' She'd only just noticed them.

'I looped a motor.'

'Sounds expensive.'

'If you'll stay, I'll cook up some eggs and bacon.'

'That's not what I'd stay for, but anyway I can't. Tomorrow's the chance of a lifetime.' On her way to the bathroom she said over her shoulder, 'But I'm based in London.'

I got off the bed and put some clothes on, with strange thoughts coming into my mind – should I look for someone to marry now, someone like this girl? Settle down, open some kind of business? I'd been getting ideas like those since last night when I'd got back to London in a hired Porsche, but they were alien to me, not because a wife and a normal job wouldn't give me a certain amount of satisfaction but because ideas like that belonged to other people, not to me. It was like having a total stranger trying to get inside my head, and if I started to lose my sense of identity I could finish up in the funny farm.

You'll go mad, out there. Holmes. And possibly that was what I was doing. But marriage wouldn't work, or a normal life. I had to have absolute freedom. Satisfaction wouldn't be enough: I wanted risk, occasional terror, life at the brink. And you couldn't share a life like that with anyone.

'What do you do?' she asked me when she came out of the bathroom.

'I'm between jobs.'

'Are you an actor?' She was watching me in the mirror.

'No.'

'There's something different about you.' She combed her long hair and then began putting it up into a chignon. 'I mean, you looked after me absolutely marvellously in the restaurant, but I had the feeling that there was something on tout mind all the time. Have you been fired?'

'Close. I resigned. Leave -'

'What from?'

'Government work. Terribly dull. Leave your number, will you?'

'If you like.'

It was gone midnight when we went down to the street; the rain had stopped at last, and I managed to flag down a cab straight away.

'I hope you get the Concorde job.'

'God, so do I. Imagine:' She reached up and we kissed, while the cab's diesel went on idling. 'Thanks for such a good time, Martin. Give me a ring if you feel like it – I'll be back in London next week. Next Tuesday.'

The flat felt deserted when I went back, which was odd, because I normally enjoyed its space and its silence. She'd scribbled her phone number on the back of a British Airways check slip; it was lying on the dressing table under the lamp, next to a blond tangle of hairs, and I picked it up and tore it in half, and then in quarters, dropping them into the wastepaper basket and turning off the lamp. I wouldn't be in London next week, next Tuesday. God knew where I'd be, but it wouldn't be here.

'Well, well…'

It was Pepperidge, hunched over the bar with a glass of Mescal in front of him, the worm curled at the bottom.

I didn't want to talk to him, or anyone else; I'd come to the Brass Lamp to be alone, as a change from being alone in the flat; but I couldn't just walk away now that he'd seen me. I asked the man for a tonic and bitters, and looked at Pepperidge.

'How are things?'

He squinted under the brass-shaded light. 'I suppose they'll work out somehow.'

I hadn't seen him for months; he specialised in picking up classified info at ground level – cryptographic key lists and cards, message traffic, communications data, operations orders, whatever he could get, working mostly at the Asian desk at the Bureau.

'What happened?' I asked him.

'Bastards fired me.' He watched me with cynical eyes, his thin hair lying untidily across his scalp, his moustache at a kind of angle, sloppily trimmed, his shoulders hunched. 'I'm like you, old boy – sometimes I won't obey orders.' His hand shook a little as he picked up his drink. 'And I don't regret it, you know that? I don't bloody well regret it. Is that all you're going to drink?'

'For the moment.'

He sat gazing into his small amber glass. 'For the moment. I suppose that means you're working.'

'Not really. I walked out.'

He swung his head up to squint at me with his yellow eyes, taking time to focus. 'Walked out?'

'A little disagreement.' I didn't want to talk about it; the whole thing had been tearing at my mind for the last ten days like a pack of dogs.

'Walked out of the Bureau?

'It can happen to anyone, for Christ's sake.'

He went on watching me. 'But you're one of their top shadows.'

'Tell me about yourself.'

He ignored that. 'You'll go back, of course. I mean, after a while. Won't you?'

'No.' I picked up my drink. I'd give him another three minutes for old times' sake, and then out.

'When did you leave?' he asked me.

'Ten days ago.'

'You must have been going mad.'

'Probably.'

'That's what I should've done, before they had a chance to fire me. I know what it feels like. I mean, I know what it feels like to me. What's it feel like to you?'

'None too funny. Aren't you afraid of swallowing that bloody thing?'

He looked into his drink, rather fondly. 'But I always do, old boy. He's my little friend, you see. Poor little perisher, died of drink, and you know something? So will I. Eventually.' He straightened up on the stool, making an effort, glancing across my eyes. 'Of course I don't really mean that. But Christ, you know what I did the day I walked out of there? I put down half a bottle of Black Label and went along to the funfair and bought every bloody seat on the roller-coaster and tried to see if I could hop from the front to the back before it came in again. Fucking near fell off- there's a really rotten bend on that thing. The next day I took a .38 up there with me and had a go at shooting out the bulbs on the tower in the middle. Got most of them. Arrested me for public endangerment, or some such thing.' He gave a short laugh that turned into a cough, 'You should do something like that, you know, get it out of your system.'

'I did.'

'Jolly good show. Stick a piss-pot on top of the palace gates or something? I've always wanted to do that, you know.'

'Nothing so fancy.' The cop hadn't been able to put the actual speed down on the ticket because the needle in the Jensen had been tight against the 120 mark when the front end had started aquaplaning on the wet road somewhere past Windsor and the whole thing had taken off. I'd been lucky the cop had found me: there was a bit of concussion involved.

'I suppose Scobie's after you, is he?'

'What?'

'Scobie.'

'Yes.' I'd got the letter a week ago, three days after I'd left the Bureau. Scobie worked fast. There was an official crest at the top of the paper, and the name of a department which didn't in fact exist: Coordination Staff- Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

It has been suggested to me that you might be interested in a discussion with us about appointments in government service in the field in foreign affairs, which occasionally arise in addition to those covered by the Diplomatic Service Grades 7 and 8.

The letter was signed illegibly over the title Recruiting Officer.

Scobie ran an undercover staffing operation for the British Secret Intelligence Service from Warwick Square, and he'd picked up the vibrations at once when I'd walked out of the Bureau. The next thing would be an invitation to lunch at the Travellers' Club in St James to sound me out.

'You won't take up with that gang, of course.' Pepperidge was watching me steadily now. 'Will you?'

'Not really.'

'Too much bloody red tape.' He finished his drink, and I looked away. He's my little friend, you see… 'But then, where else is there? There is nowhere, of course, or I wouldn't be sitting here… sitting here wishing to Christ -' he squeezed his eyes shut and sat rocking gently on his stool for almost half a minute, then let his shoulders go slack and gave a short laugh – 'wishing to Christ I wasn't. Because I had an offer, too. Not from Scobie.' He swung his head to look for the barman. 'Not from Scobie.'

'Same again, Mr Pepperidge?'

'Yes. That is to say, no.' He looked into the shadows behind him and touched my arm. 'Let's go and sit over there.'

Every table had a small brass lamp on it, burning dimly; between them it was almost dark. You didn't come here to be seen, or to see anyone. I nearly said I'd got to go, but changed my mind, in case there was any small thing I could do for him – because in the last ten minutes I'd been chilled, appalled. Pepperidge had been first class in the field before he'd come home to the Asian desk. He'd never touched booze, he'd kept in training at Norfolk and he could take on anything they gave him – a totally shut-ended checkpoint situation without papers or contacts – and get away with it; he could stalk, infiltrate, kill if he had to, and get out with the product. Ferris had run him in Sapphire, Croder had run him in Foxtrot, two of the major ones, and now he was sitting here with his thin blue hands restless on the polished oak of the table, his eyes needing time to focus, his memory slow, a burnout, finished, and not yet forty.

This wouldn't happen to me, I knew that; but I'd have to find a good reason for going on, a new direction. And it would have to take me back to the only life I could live with.

But there is nowhere, of course. ..

Pepperidge had his shoulders against the panelled wall, even this dim light bothering his eyes. The attempt at wry humour was done with now; it had been an act I'd seen through, and he'd dropped it. 'Not from Scobie, no. This came from Cheltenham.'

Government Communications HQ, out in the West Country, the nerve-centre for international classified traffic. So he'd been keeping his ear to the ground, at least.

'It was offered to me personally,' he said, 'under the desk.'

'When?'

'Last week.' His yellow eyes watched me steadily, defiance in them. 'It surprises you, of course, that anyone should offer this . . . this ship-wrecked fucking sailor any kind of mission. I see that. I quite understand. But -'

'Spare me the violins,' I told him, and finished my drink. One more minute, and out. I'd joined him here at the table because the poor bastard had started talking business, but it couldn't add up to anything; he was just wandering in the wastelands of the lost, to pick over the shreds of his pride.

'I will spare you the violins,' he said with heavy articulation, 'yes, of course.' There was a light in his eyes now that carried a warning, and I noted it. But if the poor devil tried coming at me in his besotted rage I'd only have to subdue him, and that would make things worse, humiliating. 'It so happens, you see, that a certain party knew of my accomplishments out East, and thought this one might catch my interest. It's for me to accept or turn down, as I think fit.' He sat with his back straight again, watching me with a dreadful steadiness, waiting to see if he was getting the message across — that he was still on his feet, still in the running, well thought-of.

'Then you're in clover,' I said, and tried to make it sound genuine.

There was a moment's silence and then he gave a kind of sob, squeezing his eyes shut and just sitting there without moving, his fists pressed onto the table to keep him upright, their tremor conveying itself to the brass lamp and setting up a vibration. Then it was over.

Not much above a whisper: 'Don't humour me, you bastard. Spare me that.' Aware suddenly of his clenched fists, he opened them and brought his hands slowly together, as if for comfort. 'Of course you're perfectly right. There's no kind of action I could take on now without getting killed.'

In a moment I said, 'Dry out somewhere.'

'I'm sorry?'

'Go into a clinic and dry out. Then do a bit of training. You'll soon get it back.'

'Yes. Yes, of course. I shall do that. One day.' He drew a slow breath. 'Meanwhile I shall find someone to take this thing over, because it's too good to miss and I'm buggered if I'll give it to the Bureau. They couldn't touch it anyway; it's too sensitive. Have another drink, if that's what you call it.'

'I've got to be going.' It wasn't the first time I'd seen a wrecked spook pushing his doom. He was only just this side of a breakdown, and I didn't want to be here when he pulled something out and blew his head off with it, as North had done.

'You've only just come, for God's sake.' He lifted a hand for the barman. 'You know Floderus, don't you?' he asked me.

'Which one?'

He gave a wintry smile. 'Good question. Charles, of course. Charles Floderus.'

The other one, I remembered, had broken up a courier line through Trieste and wiped out a Queen's Messenger before the Bureau caught a whiff of something rotten: the man had been doubling for five years before he blew his own cover because of a woman. Charles was different; they were distantly related but the blood was thin, and Charles was known for his total integrity throughout the secret services. He was also a very high-echelon director of operations for the SIS.

'What about him?' I asked Pepperidge.

'He was the one who made me this proposal.' He watched some people coming in, behind me. 'I'd done him a bit of good, you see, at one time. Decent of him to remember.'

I'd begun listening. Floderus had approached him? That had been decent of him, yes. He was very cautious, very demanding.

'I got it over the phone,' Pepperidge said. 'We didn't actually meet.' His eyes dipped away. 'He didn't know I was… not quite at my best. Just the main drift, you see, over the blower, no names or anything, absolute security." When the barman came over Pepperidge asked for the same again, and then told me, 'Also, as I said, he knew I'd done quite a bit in Asia.' His head swung up. 'You were out there too, weren't you, a couple of times?'

'Yes. Are they anyone we know?'

'What? Nobody 7 know. Are you worried?'

'No.'

'It's just a man and a woman, holding hands across the table.'

'As long as you're happy.'

He frowned. 'Am I talking too loud?'

'Everything's relative.' If Floderus had really offered him an operation then he should keep it well under cover. A lot of people who came to the Brass Lamp were from the corridors of codes and cyphers, together with a few second or third secretaries of foreign embassies.

Pepperidge kept his eyes on the other table for a bit longer and then said, more quietly, 'They're just spooning. But anyway, old boy, this one isn't for you.' The barman came with their drinks and Pepperidge said, 'Cheers. What've you got, an ulcer or something?'

That's right.'

Reflectively he said, 'It'd mean working for a foreign government, you see, and I'd hardly imagine you ever doing that.'

'Which one?'

'Friendly to the West. Does it matter?'

'Not really.' I shook a few more drops of Angostura into my tonic and watched it fizz. Working for a foreign government would be totally strange. I was used to the ultra-sophisticated services of the Bureau: meticulous briefing, prearranged access to the field – even across the Curtain -a signals board in London with only my name on it and a 24-hour staff and a director in the field who could get me anything 1 needed; contacts, couriers, papers limitless and progressive briefings as the phases of the mission changed, and liaison through GCHQ Cheltenham with the Chief of Control in London and his decision-making authority, which gave him immediate access to the Prime Minister, wherever she might be.

'Fabulous money, of course,' Pepperidge said.

'That's what Loman told me.'

He gave a derisive grunt. 'Loman? He couldn't get you enough to buy a bag of chips. I mean the real thing.'

'I wouldn't know what to do with it.'

'Buy some more Jensens. Aren't they what you use?'

'I mean, apart from toys.'

'Then give it to the dog's home and do it for kicks.' He was watching me steadily again. 'You've got me interested, you know that?'

'What in?'

'Handing this thing over to you.'

'Forget it.' I wouldn't work for Floderus or a foreign government.'

'Have you got a card on you?"

'No.'

'Well, here's mine.'

I took it out of courtesy, and pushed my chair back. I wanted to be out of there before he got down to the bottom of his drink again and swallowed that bloody worm.

You 'II go mad, out there.

Holmes.

Dead right.

It was eight o'clock and a lot of the options had run out: Giselle was playing at Covent Garden but I'd never get in without booking. It'd be the same thing at the theatres: the only shows I could get a ticket for wouldn't be worth seeing. I didn't want to go down to the club because the only people I'd see there would be talking shop, and I'd just had a gutful of that with Pepperidge. Eating out alone was a bleak enough thought: food was a celebration of life and had to be shared. Moira was in Paris and Liz on her way to New York again; Yvonne was in London and might be available, but what was it coming down to – that I had to find a girl because I'd got nothing else to do? Better not tell her that.

I could go along to the dojo and hope to find Tanaka there and knock some of the rough edges off Kanku Dai, but even though I could use the exercise he'd see I was out of condition and that would embarrass me because he wouldn't say anything. I could go up to Norfolk and ask for a session at the long-distance night range and blast Loman's face all over the sandbags — they'd let me in, even if they knew I'd left the Bureau; the bastards would let me do anything I liked in the hope of getting me back. But there wasn't any point in going to Norfolk, as if nothing had changed.

Everything had changed.

I'd known it would feel like this in the first few weeks. I'd cut myself off from a way of life that had exposed me to the most deadly risks, time after time, and pushed me into that frightening, ethereal zone where I had to face those things in myself that in cold blood I'd never have the stomach for: weakness in one form or another, cowardice, a blind eye to the need for mercy, lack of grace. I'd expected, yes, to feel like an electric circus with the plug pulled out, the tension gone and the noise dying away and the dark coming down; but I wasn't ready for this sense of loss, of loneliness.

Bloody shame. Get used to it.

Some time after nine I made some toast and opened a tin of sardines and got out The Too of Physics and wrestled with it, no sound in the room but the occasional muted horn of a taxi and the fretting of a casement as the night wind got up. The phone hadn't rung since I'd got back from the Brass Lamp, and at some time or other I went across and checked to see it was still working. Later I went to the safe behind the sliding Japanese-lacquered panel and took out the experimental cypher grid that Tilney had asked me to evaluate, and slipped it into its black self-destruct container and broke the seal and let the acid go to work. Then I found myself standing in the middle of the room with the book in my hand again, not knowing why I was trying to read it. The weight of the most appalling depression was pinning me down, so at last I forced myself to move, and it was then that I did what I must have known I would do, sooner or later, and dropped the book onto the sofa and picked up the phone and rang Floderus.