“Weak beer with raspberry syrup,” Cassagnac explained.
Hale nodded, comprehending that he had been given a child’s drink. For a moment he was tempted to speak the old code phrase, “Bless me!”-Things are not what they seem-trust me-just to let Elena know that he was in Berlin on covert SIS business; but a moment later he felt himself blushing, for he recognized this impulse as just a vindication of the spirit in which he’d been given the drink.
On the table in front of Elena stood a smaller glass of some brown liquor, and he humbly reached across and picked it up. “I want to drink to your-happiness,” he said, “and not with weak beer. May you-be always contented and often joyful-bueno año, multos buenos años-and may you never forget one who has loved you.”
He took a sip of what proved to be brandy and set the glass back down softly. Then he picked up his mug and swallowed a mouthful of the pink beer-and it was not bad.
“Thank you,” said Elena in a level voice, but Hale saw her blink several times. From the tinny radio speakers on the other side of the room skirled a serpentine violin melody from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.
And Hale remembered the night in Paris when their radio had roared with inorganic chanting, and the garret floor had been scorched by the focus of some terrible attention; afterward Elena had said, Once I would have prayed, and then had quoted a line of verse in English; and now the verse came back to him, and he recalled that it was from Francis Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven.”
“Across the margent of the world I fled,” he recited now, almost idly, since nothing he said could matter anymore here,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon…
Elena frowned deeply, but nodded, and in a whisper recited the next line-“I said to Dawn: be sudden-to Eve: be soon…”
“Finish your drink, young man,” said Cassagnac, briskly tapping ash from his cigarette, “the hour grows late, and-”
A rich, plummy voice interrupted from behind Hale, in English: “Those sh-shoes I left out this afternoon weren’t c-c-cleaned,” said Kim Philby’s well-remembered voice, “and yet I find you here d-drinking, Andrew?”
Hale was jolted by the bench being pulled out, and then Kim Philby had sat down heavily beside him, smelling of tobacco and whiskey and some British after-shave lotion, and crinkling his eyes and showing his teeth in a smile.
Philby’s gaze fell on the mug of pink beer. “And what are you d-drinking, Andrew?” He picked it up in one brown hand and sniffed it. “Is this s-some boche digestive aid? Have you got an upset st-stomach, my boy?”
Cassagnac leaned forward and tossed his cigarette butt under Philby’s nose into the pink beer. “It was someone else’s,” he said in a bored tone. The waiter had walked up at Philby’s arrival, and now Cassagnac said to him in German, “Where is the brandy our friend ordered?” as he pointed at Hale. Turning to Philby, he added, “And for you, sir?”
“A brandy as well. N-no, two glasses of b-brandy for me.” He squinted speculatively at Hale. “You can’t have flown here,” he said. “It was hard enough for me to get a f-flight into the Gatow airport, with our Soviet allies l-laying claim to all altitudes and all directions and all ow-hours for their own scanty flights. Did you d-drive down the hole? Is this more of J-Jimmie’s n-n-nonsense?” Less jovially, he asked, “What is the name and number of your passport here?”
“The name on it?” asked Hale, certain that Theodora would not want Philby to know about the Conway identity. “My own name.” He tried to return Philby’s gaze as if he were expecting, instead of fearing, some further question.
“We have thought it best,” said Cassagnac, “not to discuss our jobs.”
Philby frowned at Hale for another moment, then turned to Cassagnac with a smile. “Oh, that’s all right, Andrew here is just a j-junior f-fetch-and-c-c-errand-boy, in my firm. A c-custodian, actually.” Then Philby glanced back at Hale with mock concern and smacked his forehead. “Oh, I say, I’m sorry-you’ve probably been h-hinting to your friends about b-big secret g-government work! I should have considered your-your fragile young man’s pride.”
Hale took a deep breath, then just leaned back and smiled tiredly at Philby. “I’ll thank you to leave my fragile young man out of this.”
Cassagnac laughed. “Doubtless he has no pride,” he said.
Philby’s gaze fixed on the old Frenchman. “I’m Kim,” he said, reaching across the table to shake hands. “And you are…?”
“Louis Pasteur,” said Cassagnac, smiling.
Philby nodded ponderously and swung his face toward Elena, opening his mouth as if to say something more in the same bantering tone; but then he just exhaled, frowning with what seemed to be surprised and tentative recognition. After two full seconds of staring at her, he closed his mouth, then looked away from her and said to Cassagnac, “And th-this lovely g-girl-is she your w-wife, Mr. Pasteur?”
“Bless me, no!” said Elena suddenly. “Actually I am not married. My name is…Marie Curie.”
The waiter walked up then with a tray and set one glass in front of Hale and two in front of Philby-who emptied one of the glasses in a single gulp.
Hale’s breathing had suddenly gone shallow and a smile was tugging at his lips, and in his head her words were still echoing: Bless me, no! Actually I am not married.
But Philby was still frowning at Elena, and now he said to her, abruptly, “Nineteen-forty…one! New Year’s Eve. I d-do remember you-viv-viva-vividly.” He smiled, then went on quickly, “Who were you with, on that night?”
Hale’s face tingled in sudden alarm, and he concentrated on taking hold of his brandy glass, and lifting it to his lips, and not glancing at Elena. New Year’s Eve of ’41 had been their last night together in Paris, the night he had thought of ever since as their wedding night. What intelligence sources did horrible old Philby have access to? Had he somehow been in Paris then?
Hale heard Elena’s breezy reply: “On New Year’s Eve?-I am sure I was with some handsome young man.”
Peripherally Hale could see Philby nod and turn toward him; but the choppy murmur of conversation in the long room was muted then by the sudden roar of rain falling outside the building, and Hale saw dark lines of water begin to streak the boards across the glassless windows.
Philby shifted on the bench to look toward the leaking windows, and Hale heard him mutter, “Constant to the old covenant.” Philby glanced back and smiled faintly as he met Hale’s startled gaze. “ St. Paul ’s epistle to the Crustaceans,” he said lightly. From his pocket Philby took a corked bottle of some clear fluid, and then he popped it open and poured the liquid into the brandy glass he’d emptied. Hale caught a whiff of something like turpentine and ether. “Flit,” Philby said. “A sample of bug killer, fr-from our American c-cousins.”
Other diners in the room had turned to look at the rain-streaked boards over the windows, and now an unshaven man in a baggy old business suit came shuffling diffidently up to the table. In German he said, “Rain washes away blood.”
Philby frowned at him, and answered in English. “You wish it were so, mein H-Herr Schimpf. I’ve t-told you before to s-sell your f-f-filthy old secrets to the Om-Om-Americans.” He pointed sharply to the street door, and the man shambled away in evident confusion.
Hale knew that schimpf meant disgrace or insult, and he was intrigued to see a dew of sweat on Philby’s forehead.
“The city’s f-full of ex-Abwehr who’ve t-turned into freelance intelligence agents,” said Philby to the table in general, “and the American Counter-Intelligence Corps and OSS are p-paying them; the British s-simply arrest them. Creatures like that f-fellow will sell you a Soviet code book on Monday, and then c-come back on Wednesday to sell you the news that the relevant coded traffic will be all d-deception now, since on Tuesday he sold word of the original tr-transaction to the Russians; and then on Thursday he’ll go b-back to the Russians again.” He scowled in the direction the diffident man had taken. “It’s a g-g-good way to achieve abrupt, total retirement at the hands of some double-crossed g-government agency. ‘There is truth to be found on the unknown shore, and many will find what few would seek.’” With that he snatched up a glass and drained it-and then grimaced and spat, for it had been the glass of insecticide.