The Deceiver

“I am sure we are all deeply grateful,” said Timothy Ed­wards, “to Denis for his excellent presentation. I would suggest that as the hour is late, my colleagues and I mull the matter over between ourselves, to see if there is room for a variation of the Service policy in this matter, and deliver our view in the morning.”

Denis Gaunt had to return his file to the clerk from Records. When he turned around, Sam McCready was gone. He had slipped away almost as Edwards finished speaking. Gaunt traced him ten minutes later to his office.

McCready was still in shirt-sleeves, his creased cotton jacket over a chair, puttering about. Two cardboard wine crates stood on the floor.

“What are you doing?” asked Gaunt.

“Clearing out my bits and bobs.”

There were only two photographs, and he kept them in a drawer, not ostentatiously propped on the desk. One was of May, the other of his son on his graduation day, smiling diffidently in a black academic’s gown. McCready put them into one of the boxes.

“You’re crazy,” said Gaunt. “I think we may have cracked it. Not Edwards, of course, but the two Controllers. I think they may change their minds. We know they both like you, want you to stay.”

McCready took his compact disk player and put it in the other box. Sometimes he liked to play soft classical music when he was deep in thought. There was hardly enough bric-a-brac to fill both the boxes, though. Certainly there were no me-shaking-hands-with-a-celebrity photos on his walls; the few Impressionist prints were service-issue. He straightened up and looked at the two boxes.

“Not a lot, really, for thirty years,” he murmured.

“Sam, for God’s sake, it’s not over yet. They could change their minds.”

McCready turned and gripped Gaunt by his upper arms. “Denis, you’re a great guy. You did a good job in there. You gave it your best shot. And I’m going to ask the Chief to let you take over the desk. But you have to learn on which side of the sky the sun rises. It’s over. Verdict and sentence were handed down weeks ago, in another office, by another man.”

Denis Gaunt sat down miserably in his boss’s chair. “Then what the hell was it all for?”

“The hell it was for was this: Because I care about this fucking Service, and because they’re getting it wrong. Be­cause there’s a bloody dangerous world out there, and it’s not getting less dangerous, but more so. And because dickheads like Edwards are going to be left looking after the security of this old country that I happen to love, and that frightens the shit out of me. I knew I couldn’t change anything in that hearing, but I wanted to make the bastards squirm. Sorry, Denis, I should have told you. Will you have my boxes run over to my flat sometime?”

“You could still take one of the jobs they’ve offered you. Just to spite them,” suggested Gaunt.

“Denis, as the poet said, ‘One wild, sweet hour of glorious life is worth a world without a name.’ For me, sitting down there in the archive library or approving expense accounts would be a world without a name. I’ve had my hour, done my best—it’s over. I’m off. There’s a whole sunny world out there, Denis. I’m going out there, and I’m going to enjoy myself.”

Denis Gaunt looked as if he were attending a funeral. “They’ll see you again around here,” he said.

“No, they won’t.”

“The Chief will give you a farewell party.”

“No party. I can’t stand cheap sparkling wine. Plays merry hell with my gut. So does Edwards being nice to me. Walk me down to the main door?”

Century House is a village, a tiny parish. Down the corridor to the lift, on the ride to the ground floor, across the tiled lobby, colleagues and secretaries called, “Hi, Sam—hallo, Sam.” They did not say, “Bye-bye, Sam,” but it was what they meant. A few of the secretaries paused as if they would like to straighten his tie one last time. He nodded and smiled and walked on.

The main door stood at the end of the tiled hall, beyond it the street. McCready wondered whether he should use his compensation to buy a cottage in the country, grow roses and marrows, attend church on Sunday mornings, become a pillar of the community. But how to fill the days?

He regretted that he had never developed any absorbing hobbies, like his colleagues who bred tropical fish or collected stamps or walked up and down mountains in Wales. And what could he say to the neighbors? “Good morning, my name’s Sam, I’ve retired from the Foreign Office, and no, I can’t tell you a damned thing I did there.” Old soldiers are allowed to write their memoirs and bore tourists in the snug bar. But not those who have spent their lives in the shadowed places. They must remain silent forever.

Mrs. Foy from Travel Documents was crossing the lobby, her high heels clacking on the tiles, a statuesque widow in her late thirties. Quite a number of denizens of Century House had tried their luck with Suzanne Foy, but she was not known as the Fortress for nothing.

Their paths crossed. She stopped and turned. Somehow, McCready’s tie-knot had arrived at the area of the middle of his chest. She reached out, tightened it, and slid it back toward the top shirt button. Gaunt watched. He was too young to remember Jane Russell, so he could not make the obvious comparison.

“Sam, you should have someone take you home for some­thing nourishing,” she said.

Denis Gaunt watched her hips sway across the lobby to the lift doors. He wondered what it would be like to be given something nourishing by Mrs. Foy. Or vice versa.

Sam McCready pushed open the plate-glass door to the street. A wave of hot summer air blew in. He turned, reached into his breast pocket, and brought out an envelope.

“Give it to them, Denis. Tomorrow morning. It’s what they want, after all.”

Denis took it and stared at it.

“You had it all the time,” he said. “You wrote it days ago. You cunning old bastard!”

But he was talking to the closing door.

McCready turned right and ambled toward Westminster Bridge half a mile away, his jacket over his shoulder. He loosened his tie back down to the third shirt button. It was a hot June afternoon, one of those that made up the great heat wave of the summer of 1990. The early commuter traffic poured past him toward the Old Kent Road.

It would be nice out at sea today, he thought, with the Channel bobbing bright and blue under the sun. Perhaps he should take that cottage in Devon, with his own boat in the harbor, after all. He could even invite Mrs. Foy down there. For something nourishing.

Westminster Bridge rose before him. Across it the House of Parliament, whose freedoms and occasional foolishness he had spent thirty years trying to protect, towered against the blue sky. The newly cleaned tower of Big Ben glowed gold in the sunlight beside the sluggish Thames.

Halfway across the bridge, a news vendor stood beside his stand with a pile of copies of the Evening Standard. At his feet stood a placard. It bore the words; BUSH-GORBY—COLD WAR OVER—OFFICIAL. McCready stopped to buy a paper.

“Thank you, guv,” said the news vendor. He gestured toward his placard. “All over, then, eh?”

“Over?” asked McCready.

“Yeah. All them international crises. Thing of the past.”

“What a lovely idea,” agreed McCready, and strolled on.

Four weeks later, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Sam McCready heard the radio bulletin while fishing two miles off the Devon coast. He considered the newsflash, then decided it was time to change his bait.