The major wrote down the letter
The next letter located was
“Damned queer,” said Major Holly-Browning. “I should feel joy. Or some such. Triumph. The lightening of the load, all that. Instead, I’m just damned tired.” He had no desire to do anything at all, much less share his triumph with his new partners at MI-5.
“Can I get you some tea, sir?” said Vane.
“No. I think I’ll have some brandy. And I’ll get it. Do sit down, Vane, I insist.”
“Yessir.”
Vane primly arranged himself on the sofa, a study in rectitudinous angles. Holly-Browning rose, feeling the creak and snap in his joints of so much recent disuse, and went to his side table, opened the drawer. But suddenly, he didn’t feel like brandy. He wanted something stronger. He removed a bottle of Bushmill’s and poured two rather large whiskeys.
“There,” he said to Vane.
“But sir?”
“No. I insist. Whiskey, Vane. It’s a celebration.”
“Yessir.”
“Vane, I want you to look at this.”
“Yessir.”
He handed over the sheet to Vane, who read it quickly.
“Well, sir, I should guess that ties it.”
“Yes, it’s what we’ve been looking for: the final, the irrefutable piece of evidence. The last chink in the wall. Florry spotted Raines reporting to his Russian case officer, overheard the conversation, and took notes. Damned fine job, Florry. Florry worked out, Vane, you know he did.”
“Yet sir, if I may, it seems to me we got awfully good service out of our man in Barcelona. Young Sampson.”
“Er, yes, Vane. I suppose I shall have to recommend that he come aboard full time now.”
“Who knows, major? He could end up sitting in your chair someday.”
“Not too bloody soon, I trust, Vane,” said Holly-Browning.
But Vane had lurched on to another topic. “I say, sir, Florry says here, ‘Step to be taken.’ What can that mean?”
“You know damned well what it means, Vane.”
“It’s bloody brilliant, sir. You took a vague young fool and made an assassin of him inside a half-year.”
“So I did, Vane. So I did.”
“I say, sir, could I have another few drops of the bloody whiskey? Crikey, it’s like an old friend coming home after the war, the taste of it.”
“Er, yes, Vane. Please, help yourself.”
Vane went and poured himself a tot, swigged it down aggressively.
He turned. The major had never seen him quite so flushed and mussed before.
“Here’s to hell, sir. Where all the bloody-fookin’ traitors belong so as to roast on a spit into eternity. We sent him there, by damn, and by damn I’m proud to be a bloody-fookin’ part of it. And here’s to Major Jim Holly- Browning, best bloody-fookin’ spy-catcher there ever was.” He laughed abrasively.
“Do you know, Vane, I believe I’ll drink to that,” said Major Holly-Browning.
Levitsky, he thought.
It started in the Lubyanka in 1923. Now on Broadway in 1937, I’ve finished it.
Levitsky: I’ve won.
25
BEHIND THE LINES
There,” said Portela. “Do you see it?”
Florry lay on the pine-needled floor of the forest and studied the Fascist lines across the valley in the fading light. With his German binoculars, he conjured up from the blur a distinct view of the trench running in the low hills, the odd outpost or breastwork. But the terrain was generally bleak and scorched; it had the look of wasted, untilled land, its farmers fled as if from plague.
“It’s quiet here,” said Portela, “with all the fighting up around Huesca or down near Madrid. This is where I cross. Zaragossa is not far. My people wait in the hills beyond. You’ll see, comrades.”
“Good show,” said Julian, theatrically chipper. He stood in the trees like one of Our Gallant Lads at the Front in a 1915 West End melodrama. He had been in such a mood since they left, hearty, solicitous, irrepressibly British. He was almost hysterical with charm.
“Time to go, comrade?” he called to Portela cheerfully.
“Comrade Julian, you are like a hungry dog. I’ve never seen a man so eager. But we must wait until the night.”
Carrying on like a child. Performing antically for anyone who would pay him the faintest attention. Being Brilliant Julian on the center of a stage designed for him and him alone.
Florry issued a deeply insincere smile, as if he, too, were richly amused with Brilliant Julian, but he was so poor an actor he could find no words to speak, out of fear of speaking them transparently. Instead, he turned his back, using his pack as a sort of pillow. He could see through the pine needles above a patch of sweet, crisp blue sky. He hunkered against his pack, thinking how odd it was to be wearing a peasant’s rough garb and boots and be sleeping on a pack that contained a Burberry, a blue suit, and a pair of black brogues. Soon he had fallen asleep.
“Robert?”
Florry started. Julian loomed over him, staring intensely.
“Yes, old man?”
“Look, I want to say something.”
“Yes?”
“Portela’s sleeping. That man can sleep anywhere. Look, old boy, I’ve got an awfully queasy feeling that my luck’s run its string. I don’t think I’m going to make it back.”
You swine, thought Florry. You deserve an award for your performance rather than the four-five-five I’m going to put in your head.
“You’ll make it. The bullet hasn’t been made that could bring down the brilliant Julian.”
“No, no. And my feelings are never wrong about these things. You will. I won’t. Somehow this little gimcrack” ? he held out his father’s wedding ring on its chain ? “has lost its charm. I can feel it. I
He smiled. His teeth were white and beautiful, his face grave and handsome. He had such high, fine cheekbones and glittery blue eyes. Julian, we mere mortals peep about your bloody ankles.
“I wanted to tell you about Sylvia. I want it straight between us. Do you understand there’s nothing between us? She’s yours. I’d never touch her, is that understood? The two of you: it’s so
“Yes, Julian. Yes, I do understand.”
And Florry did. For he knew that Julian could not betray him for love. But as for politics, that was something else. For Florry, over the long day’s drive, had finally reached the final implication of Julian’s treachery. The bridge
