"This fellow comes with a strong recommendation from Brotherhood." "Picked him up in church in Bern." "He's barely out of school." "Nothing's sacred to Brotherhood." "Behave yourself, Terry." "Brotherhood's a star womaniser and a war hero." "The boy ran a few errands." "Some eavesdropping among the long-hairs at the university." "Good mixer." "Very willing." "Then there's his army service, for what that's worth." " Nice girl you're marrying." " Do you know Belinda?" "Just good reports." " Do you like danger?" " I love it, actually, sir." "Will you adore your country right or wrong so help you God and the Tory Party?" "Yes, of course." "Tell us about your father, will you, Pym?" "He seems a bit of a colourful sort to me." "He's a bit too colourful sometimes, sir." "I don't see a lot of him, to be honest." "We're still friends, but I do rather steer clear." "I feel I have to, actually." "A friend of mine says he knew a Pym." "He kept a dirty great office somewhere in Mayfair." "Best man at his job my friend ever knew." "A con man." "Any relation?" "It must be my distant wicked uncle." "There's no harm in a healthy streak of criminality in a young spy's background." "Positively useful." "Look here, Pym." "You're by way of being a Czecho buff - speak their language, know their people." "What do you say to these purges and mass arrests?" "Appalling, sir, but only to be expected." " It's a rotten system." " What would you do about it?" " In what capacity, sir?" " As one of us, man." "Officer of this service." "Anyone can talk." "We DO." "I'd play their game, sir." "Divide them against themselves." "Spread rumour, false accusations, suspicion." "I'd let dog eat dog." "You wouldn't mind getting innocent men chucked into prison?" " Being a bit harsh, aren't you?" " A bit immoral?" "No, I don't think so, sir." "Not if it shortens the life of the system." "Both eyes out." "It takes no longer than it does to say it." "Or, Belinda, I could break your windpipe with a single blow." "Like this." "I could, Bel." "I was one of the best on the unarmed combat course." "Did you really enjoy it?" "Smashing." "What else did they teach you, or can't you say?" "Well, I shouldn't really." "I mean, if it was anyone else..." "How to use guns, knives, cameras, radios." "We're the chaps who have to do the dirty work so that purer souls can sleep in bed at night." "It's true, Bel." "That's what the Firm's for." "Someone's got to do it." "So you know what you're marrying into." "I'm marrying YOU." "Well, I can see that my new son-in-law Magnus has been giving you all the benefit of his wit and charm." "No doubt about it." "If it's charm that gets a man through the ranks to the top of the Christmas tree, then, no doubt about it, he is Prince Charming himself." "Ask my daughter." "Ask my wife." "Magnus can do no wrong." "And who am I to question the wisdom of the distaff side?" "Magnus is a man of many parts, I'll have you know." "He tells me he's moving on from his government-sponsored language laboratory and he's going into electronics." "Well, I'm sure we all wish him well in his new chosen field." "But this young man IS Mr Success, and, as my wife keeps telling me, it's high time we had some of that in the family." "Which puts me in my place - which is where a father-in-law ought to be, according to the rules of modern family life." "Sorry." "Oh, Daddy, please shut up." " I won't keep you from the feast much longer..." "Hello, old son." "Didn't you expect your old pal?" "Think I'd let you down on your wedding day, hmm?" "Now, son, where's this bride of yours?" "Come here, my dear." "Give your old father-in-law a kiss." "My God, there's some flesh here, son." "Where have you been hiding her all these years?" "You're a lucky fellow." "A match made in heaven if ever I saw one." "Come and see what I've got for you." "Congratulations, Titch." " I wish you everything you wish yourself." " Thanks, Syd." "You know what this is?" "Your old man's gift to the pair of you." "Oh, but it's..." " Mr Pym, it's so expensive!" " Call me Rick." "Ricky, if you like." "Well?" "What do you think of it, old son?" "Will it do for you?" "Did you think your old man would ever let you down?" "Your best pal?" " Of course not." " Course not." " Course not." " Mr Richard Theodore Pym?" "There's some mix-up about the car's registration book." "My father can be a bit careless about things like that." "He'll sort it out." "I think he stole it for us." "I like your father." " You said he was abroad." " I thought he was." "India, actually." "Mummy and Daddy were furious." "Some geezer said to give you these." "He came up whilst I was waiting for you." "Poppies?" "Are you gonna take 'em, then?" "Well, I want them, darling." "Thank you." "There's no card." "No name." "Nothing." "Isn't that funny?" "It was probably meant for another wedding altogether." "Chap got the wrong hotel." "Sales drive?" "My own boy, a commercial traveller selling electric shavers to foreign communists?" "We did all that." "It's over." "What did I buy you an education for?" "They're not electric razors." "I sell oscillators, alternators and sparking plugs." "It's important - opening up the East European market." " Could you stop doing that?" " Where's your patriotism?" "It's a damn shame when a man gives up everything to make his son a great lawyer and he gets into some shady racket, trading with the reds." "How's your glass?" "Magnus Richard Pym?" " You are Magnus Richard Pym?" " Yes." "You are charged with espionage, provocation of the people, incitement to treason and murder and sabotage on behalf of an imperialist power." "Face the wall." "Face the wall, hands on your head." "Hands on your head!" "This is an outrage." " I demand to see a British consul immediately." " Shut up!" "Walk to the stairs." " This is a ridiculous and scandalous act." " If you collaborate, you will not be harmed." "My government will insist that you be punished." "If you try to escape, you will be shot." "You've been watched by the protectors of the people." "Go in." "You are very dangerous friend, Sir Magnus." "Why in God's name couldn't you have used an alias?" "They said I would be better being me." "They call it natural cover." "This was my aunt's house." "Really?" "The aristos I work for, they want me to blackmail you." "That is the only good news I have for you." "Blackmail?" "How?" "They think I should show you the photographs of the two of us coming out of the barn together and play you the recordings of our conversations." "Yes, it's true." "In Austria I set you up." "I entrapped you with a pretty girl." "Crude." "God forgive me." "These guys I work for are very crude people." "This is a very crude country, as you have no doubt noticed on your journeys." "Actually, I rather like it." "Have you got the flowers OK, Sir Magnus?" "They were super." "Best surprise of the wedding." "So what will they find in your room?" " Pretty well everything, I suppose." " What's everything?" "Secret ink." " Film." " Film from your agents?" "Yes." "Like from the dead letter box you cleared yesterday?" "Yes." "Then don't bother to develop it." "It's cheap pedlar material." " Money?" " Some, yes." " Codebooks?" " A couple." "What else?" "There's a concealed camera." "It's hidden in the talcum powder tin." "If you peel the sticky paper off the lid, it makes a lens." "We've got to get ourselves out of this." "Out, Sir Magnus." "We've got to rise in the world." "We have to help each other until we become the aristos ourselves and we can kick the other bastards goodbye." "You make it so difficult for me, you know that?" "They put me in prison because of you." "It gave me bad thoughts about you." "You know what they will do with you, these aristos of mine, unless I make them listen to me?" "They mean to parade you before the world's press." "Have a show trial." "Hang some people." "When they start to do that, it will be sheer oversight if they don't hang me, too." "They would prefer an American, but they will settle for an Englishman until they can get hold of the real thing." "We've got to get out of this, Sir Magnus." "I'm sick of bad superiors." "Bad food." "Bad prisons." "Bad tortures." "It's time I looked after your career and you looked after mine." "And this time, properly." "No bourgeois shrinking back from the big scoops." "This time we are professionals." "I mean it." "Sir Magnus, you have in the past betrayed me." "But more important, you have betrayed yourself." "Even when you are telling the truth, you lie." "You have loyalty and you have affection, but to what, to whom?" "I don't know." "One day maybe you will tell me." "Maybe you have put your love in some bad places now and then." "Yet you also have morality." "You search." "What I'm saying, Sir Magnus... ..is, for once, nature has produced a perfect match." "You are a perfect spy." "All you need is a cause." "I have it." "I know the revolution is young and sometimes the wrong people are running it." "In the pursuit of peace, we are making too much war." "Looking for freedom, we are building too many prisons." "But in the long run, I don't mind." "Because I know this." "All the junk that made you what you are - the privileges, the snobbery, the hypocrisy, the Church, the school, its fathers, the class systems, the historical lies, the little laws of the countryside," "the little laws of big business and all the greedy wars that result from them - we are sweeping all that away for ever." "For your sake." "So..." "I have said it." "You are a good man and I love you." "Axel, in Bern when we first met..." " ..were you already...?" " A spy?" "No." "No, Sir Magnus." "I was just Axel." "I wanted to be a poet and a great novelist." "And your friend." "It was Jack Brotherhood who did all this to us." "He recruited us both into the great big game." "The secret world." "The only difference was with me." "He didn't know it." "There's no doubt about it." "It's the same plant the Americans photographed with overflights." "No question." "It's the nuclear plant at Pilsen." "Confirmed." " Important." " Well done." "Very well done." "Those two workmen you gave a lift to, Magnus, did they just start opening their hearts to you?" "Not exactly." "It was seven o'clock in the morning by then, and the rain was piddling down." "They felt like a good old grumble about life in general, and the stuff about them having to handle radioactive material without protective clothing leaked out with the rain, you might say." "You don't think they were a bit too ready to give their names and addresses?" "No." "We were talking about coffee by then." "It's a big grumble in Czecho." "I said I'd take them round a pound or two of decent English stuff next time I was in the area." "They thought their wives would like that." "Or some other chaps' wives!" "What makes you think they won't turn you in if you show up on their doorstep?" "It's a hunch, that's all." "I think they both trusted me, and they hope that I'll play grocer's delivery boy one evening, just as I said I would." "We've run them through." "There's nothing known." "It looks as if you're about to start putting a network together, Magnus." "You'll need official status." "Joined the Foreign Office?" "And how do you do that from a deadbeat electronics firm in Walthamstow?" "Well, well, I must say!" "He's boosting British trade, Daddy." "You wouldn't understand." " I hope he gets a decent cover story!" " It's a contract appointment." "British Embassy in Prague." "Second Secretary Commercial and Visa Officer." " They need Czech speakers." " Sure they do, old boy." "Sure they do!" "The second anniversary of the founding of our first network, Sir Magnus" " Conger." "Our first repertory company of make-believe agents." "We have earned a little celebration." "I shall take you to an enchanted castle set aside by my aristos for people they think the world of." "People like you and me have a right to play the libertine from time to time." "Besides, it's not good if we always look too much on our guard." "Relax, Sir Magnus." "I have a nice surprise lined up for you." "You're sure it's not a torturers' party night?" "Your people haven't called me in to extract a confession out of me?" "Zzz!" "Yes, I am Jack Brotherhood's man!" "Zzz!" "Yes, I am planting disinformation." "Zzz!" "Yes!" "Yes!" "Anything but this!" "I'm delivering so much of the Firm's material to you." "Don't you think I'm too good to be true?" "You told me how much your people admire Jack Brotherhood." "I MUST be suspect." "Of course." "Someone will always suspect you." "And me." "In our world, suspicion is a way of life, but I can protect you because I know my people." "I know when to slam the table and when to threaten." "And you protect me with the product you bring." "They won't risk losing that." "Mutual survival." "Pledged for ever." "Exactly." "And success." "We are aiming for the very top, Sir Magnus." "One day America - land of the free." "Yes, yes." "What are you thinking of, Sir Magnus?" "Two men such as ourselves can live out our lives as spies without ever having spied on the Americans?" " It cannot be!" "Sorry, Bel." "Got to go up country again." "May be a day or two." "Can't help it, Bel." "Duty calls." "You know." "Come on, Bel." "Kiss-kiss." "Be my lovely girl." "I have decided to present you with an excellent new agent - the nice surprise I promised you." " More work?" "Some surprise." " Wait and see." " Which network?" " Watchman." "It's lamentably short of industrial intelligence." "Here we have the Americans devoted to the collapse of my country's economy, but what is the Firm providing to support their optimism?" "Nothing." "You must put that right, Sir Magnus." "Oh, sure." "How would you like the services of a middle executive from our great National Bank of Czechoslovakia with access to some of our most serious mismanagements?" "Where am I supposed to have found him?" "Did I say him?" "Sabina!" "My Sabina from Graz!" "Sir Magnus, meet Olga Kravitsky, who will rise to become secretary to the Prague Internal Committee on Economic Affairs, or so they will believe in London." "It takes time to build a career." "You are still hommsexual, Magnus." "Berlin." "That's a whole garrison of a Station, Magnus." "Tunnellers." "Smugglers." "Forgers." "Watchers." "Listeners." "Seducers." "Assassins." "And whatever we have, the Yanks have it twice over, the East Germans have five of it and the Russians ten." " You will enjoy yourself, old boy!" " Can't wait, Jack." " Rougher than Prague." " All the same if you get caught." "Depends who catches you, so you watch your step." "We have some very funny committees springing up around the place these days." "Outside talent, supposed to be." "Watchdogs of the secret war." "They reckon we're too blinkered, people like you and me." "Too incestuous." "Interfering little bastards." "They're dangerous." " Committees." "Christ!" "Don't you laugh at me, young Magnus." "Nothing funny about Berlin." "Of course not, Jack." "Why are you telling me?" "I wondered if you'd like to come with me." "No." "What will you do?" "Do you care?" "I'm sorry, Bel, but somehow we never..." "You're sorry you married me, that's all." "We both wanted to marry." "You needed a wife because the bloody Firm likes wives." "All part of the cover." "And you picked me because I was easy." "Available." "And weak." "And I didn't scare you." "And you could leave me on my own whenever you felt like it, and never even think about me." "Five years." "Of nothing!" "Bel, I'm sorry you were so unhappy in Prague, but the job..." "I was just some kind of hiding place for you." "Another hiding place." "How many more are there, Magnus?" "Berlin sounds just the spot." "Your father should never find you there." "Sounds like hiding places all over town!" "Come on, Bel." "What's this about?" "No, he's not here, Rick." "Gone abroad, Rick." "Sorry, Rick." "He's back in London." "Or is it Mars or bloody Timbuktu?" "Anything will do, as long as we keep Rick out of sight and out of mind." "Sad, that, because he actually loves you, if you know what that means." " It's complicated with Rick, you know that." " RickWhat's complicated about Rick?" "He's a con man, that's all, but you..." "What are you?" "You'd come home one person, I'd try to match you, and in the morning, you're someone else." "Go to Berlin." "Leave me alone." "Divorce me." "Bel..." "I'm sorry." "Forgive the bad parts." "Hello, Jack." "Ein Bier." "What's up?" "Why so grumpy-looking?" "These wise men." "These no-nonsense, unfettered, idiot outsiders." "Do you know what they're dreaming up now?" "You won't believe this." "These lunatics are proposing to get us plugged into the Soviet ground control, talk a MiG over allied airspace, blow it out of the sky, and if the pilot survives, offer him the choice of being put on trial for espionage" "or staging a public defection in front of the microphones and cameras." "It's true!" "They'll start a war." "They want to." "Calm yourself, Sir Magnus." "Have another drink." "Jack was right." "We're dealing with madmen!" "The Firm will handle them." "It will close ranks." "You will see." "I'll keep you posted." "Countdown to Armageddon." "God help us!" "You will see." "I have total faith in the great Brotherhood and all the Brotherhoods!" "I hear you are seeing his girlfriend." "I didn't know that." "Mary?" "A couple of times." "When Jack's away." "Nothing heavy." "Tell me about her." "I don't know much." "She's a daughter of the Service." "One of our cleverer forgers." "Good with papers." "Watermarks." "But personally, Sir Magnus." "We're not that close yet." "Jack the Stoat." "Jack the Stripper." " His women don't stray lightly." " I'd like to know about Mary." "Next time, Sir Magnus, yes?" "Herr Pym?" "Herr Pym, wake up, please!" "Just a minute." "Who is it?" "I'll be right with you." "Lieutenant Dollendorf, what's the problem?" "It's two o'clock in the morning." "Forgive us, Herr Pym." "Excuse the disturbances so late." "Our Herr Kommandant asks that you come immediately to headquarters on a personal and urgent matter." "He assures me that everything can be arranged discreetly." "He wishes at this stage to be delicate." "He has made no approach to your superiors." "The Kommandant has high respect for you, Herr Pym." "Yes." "Um..." " I'll have to get dressed." " Yes, but quickly, if you are so kind." "The Kommandant wants the matter to be dealt with before he has to hand it over to someone else." "He means to the day shift, Herr Pym." "I'll get dressed, then." "I may use your telephone?" "Yes." "Go ahead." "The Herr Kommandant will be pleased you are cooperating." "I am a man of the world, Mr Pym." "I'm not didactic, I'm not political." "I do not make moral judgments." "I am conversant with what I call the "intimate sphere"." "Misdeeds, a spectrum running from human error which can be pardoned... to calculated crime." "Do you agree?" "In my experience, foreigners in a strange country often feel a sense of false security when they contemplate performing what might strictly be regarded as a felonious act." "Is that your experience?" "I would say so, yes." "We have a man in our cells, Mr Pym." "When they brought him to me," "I looked at him and I listened to him, and I said, "No." ""This cannot be so." "I do not believe this." ""Not Mr Pym." ""The man is an impostor."" "However, as I continued to listen to him," "I detected a sense of, shall I say, vision." "There's an energy here." "An intelligence." "I may also say charm." "Maybe this man IS what he says he is." "I thought, "Only Mr Pym can tell us."" "I may confront him with you?" "Of course." "Father?" "It's me." "God in heaven, old son!" "What are they trying to do to me?" "Can't an honest fellow do a bit of business in this country?" "Have you seen the food here?" "These German sausages!" "What do we pay our taxes for?" "What did we win the war for?" "What's the good of having a son who's head of the Foreign Office if he can't keep these German thugs away from his old man?" "I knew you wouldn't let me down." "I told them, "My son's damn as near ambassador!"" ""He'll have your hides if you lay a finger on his old man!"" "Two sisters." "Real Prussian nobility." "Old school- you could see the breeding - but don't know the ways of the hard little world of commerce, so I offered to lend a hand." "Got some paintings they wanted to sell and some other stuff - a diamond brooch, a few furs, what have you." "All I was trying to do was to maximise their profit." "You see, I met this fellow who had an aeroplane for sale - fighter-bomber." "Mint condition inside and out." "So I thought, "Good investment for these two nice old dears." ""Use their stuff to buy the kite, then sell it at a decent mark-up," ""and everyone's helping the great wheel of finance to keep turning."" "But the old dears wouldn't give me time to clinch the deal." "Came clamouring for their money." ""Right now." "Pronto." "Instanta."" "They just don't understand the problems of liquidity." "Set the German bobbies on me." "A couple of damn storm troopers hauled me off." "Well, you can't do business from a cell, old son." "Would you like me to go and see these old ladies?" "Do what I can?" "Just this once." "For old times' sake." "I'll see you right in a week or two, of course." "Well, you know that." "Sure, Father, sure." "Listen, old son..." "I understand that 999 Gold can be got here at par." "Now, someone in high position with access to the diplomatic bag could earn himself a nice little informal reward in this sector of international commerce." "Rick." "You'll never let me see you in prison again, will you?" "Do you love your old man?" "Yes." "Well, then." "A long-stemmed English rose." "I have it right?" "Very good, Axel." "Mary's a "Country Life" girl." ""Country Life" magazine - society weddings, hunt balls, desirable country residences for sale." "She is a lady?" " You mean morally?" " If you like." "But by reputation." "Well, she's not an office bicycle." "No ex-husband or nasty business in her cupboard?" "No." "She lost her virginity to the under-gardener at her boarding school at 16." "Since then, she's kept to her own class." "Pretty choosy." "She told you this?" "No." "She told Jack Brotherhood." "Jack told me." " What about her family?" " Soldiers." "Heroic deaths." "Her grandfather at Passchendaele, her father, eventually, from what hit him in North Africa." "He left her a small manor house in Dorset." "She's quite rich." "Good in company?" "She was born to it." "Sir Magnus, she is what we need." "She is the ideal diplomatic wife." "Maybe she's a ticket that will get us to Washington." "Yes!" "Why not?" "You can't move up the ranks without a wife." "You know that." "Mary is made for you." "Court her, Sir Magnus." "Think..." "America." "Home at last!" "Court her." "I shall have to court Jack Brotherhood first." "Sir Magnus and Mary." "And America." "Well, if you ask me, you could travel a lot further and fare a damn sight worse." "She's one of the best girls we've got." "I've never met one who understood the service better, or who could tickle a key out of a concierge the way she can." " I didn't know we used her that way." " Oh, yes." "Once or twice." "You'll have to behave yourself, young Magnus." "Smart girl, Mary." "She doesn't miss much."