The Spy Quartet. Len Deighton

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      1

      The birds flew around for nothing but the hell of it. It was that sort of day: a trailer for the coming summer. Some birds flew in neat disciplined formations, some in ragged mobs, and higher, much higher, flew the loner who didn’t like corporate decisions.

      I turned away from the window. My visitor from the Embassy was still complaining.

      ‘Paris lives in the past,’ said the courier scornfully. ‘Manet is at the opera and Degas at the ballet. Escoffier cooks while Eiffel builds, lyrics by Dumas, music by Offenbach. Oo-là-là our Paree is gay, monsieur, and our private rooms discreet, our coaches call at three, monsieur, and Schlieffen has no plans.’

      ‘They’re not all like that,’ I said. Some birds hovered near the window deciding whether to eat the seed I’d scattered on the window-sill.

      ‘All the ones I meet are,’ said the courier. He too stopped looking across the humpty-backed rooftops, and as he turned away from the window he noticed a patch of white plaster on his sleeve. He brushed it petulantly as though Paris was trying to get at him. He pulled at his waistcoat – a natty affair with wide lapels – and then picked at the seat of the chair before sitting down. Now that he’d moved away from the window the birds returned, and began fighting over the seed that I had put there.

      I pushed the coffee pot to him. ‘Real coffee,’ he said. ‘The French seem to drink only instant coffee nowadays.’ Thus reassured of my decorum he unlocked the briefcase that rested upon his knees. It was a large black case and contained reams of reports. One of them he passed across to me.

      ‘Read it while I’m here. I can’t leave it.’

      ‘It’s secret?’

      ‘No, our document copier has gone wrong and it’s the only one I have.’

      I read it. It was a ‘stage report’ of no importance. I passed it back. ‘It’s a lot of rubbish,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry you have to come all the way over here with this sort of junk.’

      He shrugged. ‘It gets me out of the office. Anyway it wouldn’t do to have people like you in and out of the Embassy all the time.’ He was new, this courier. They all started like him. Tough, beady-eyed young men anxious to prove how efficient they can be. Anxious too to demonstrate that Paris could have no attraction for them. A near-by clock chimed two P.M. and that disturbed the birds.

      ‘Romantic,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what’s romantic about Paris except couples kissing on the street because the city’s so overcrowded that they have nowhere else to go.’ He finished his coffee. ‘It’s terribly good coffee,’ he said. ‘Dining out tonight?’

      ‘Yes,’ I said.

      ‘With your artist friend Byrd?’

      I gave him the sort of glance that Englishmen reserve for other Englishmen. He twitched with embarrassment. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘don’t think for a moment … I mean … we don’t have you … that is …’

      ‘Don’t start handing out indemnities,’ I said. ‘Of course I am under surveillance.’

      ‘I remembered your saying that you always had dinner with Byrd the artist on Mondays. I noticed the Skira art book set aside on the table. I guessed you were returning it to him.’

      ‘All good stuff,’ I said. ‘You should be doing my job.’

      He smiled and shook his head. ‘How I’d hate that,’ he said. ‘Dealing with the French all day; it’s bad enough having to mix with them in the evening.’

      ‘The French are all right,’ I said.

      ‘Did you keep the envelopes? I’ve brought the iodine in pot iodide.’ I gave him all the envelopes that had come through the post during the previous week and he СКАЧАТЬ