Tapestry of Spies

green, rolling slower and slower, its energy decreasing until at last it came to a halt about six feet from the flag.

“Pretty shot, sir,” said Davis.

“Thank you, Davis,” said Holly-Browning, handing back the club.

“Sir, may I say, it’s an honor to see a man who knows how to play the game.”

“Thank you, Davis,” said Holly-Browning.

It was a bonny bright day full of elms and summer under a lilac English sky. Major Holly-Browning’s spikes gripped the moist turf as he walked.

“I say, Holly-Browning, well-struck,” C called out, not without some bitterness, for his own second shot had come to rest a good twenty-five feet below the green. But that was as it had been and should be.

“Thank you, sir,” said the major.

In the past, Holly-Browning, an excellent golfer, had held back when playing with his service chief, out of respect for the protocols of rank. It was how one rose, or so many believed. But not today.

“Well, Holly-Browning, I daresay you’re playing well,” said C, falling into step beside him.

“I seem to be, for some reason, sir.”

“Good to get you out on the links after all that time hibernating in the office. Now that awful business in Spain is finished and we are well quit of our bad apple.”

They reached C’s ball. The old man took an eight iron from his boy and, with a great, grunting effort, chopped a shot too high; it rolled way beyond the cup, coming to rest on the apron at the far side of the green, easily (given C’s gracelessness) three putts’ distance off.

“Damned bad luck, sir.”

“Ah, bloody gone. Sometimes it’s there, sometime’s it’s not.”

“You’re out, sir.”

“Yes, I am.”

C took the putter and went to his ball. After what seemed an interminable period bent over studying a trajectory whose subtleties he could never hope to master, he rose, addressed the ball, and, with a show of concentration, patted at it weakly. The ball rose over a hump in the green, picked up speed, and began to veer crazily off, finally petering out still a good ten feet from the cup.

“Blast!” said C. “It’s certainly not my day! Go on, putt out, Holly-Browning.”

Holly-Browning moved to his ball and crouched to study his own course to the cup. Then, having swiftly settled on a strategy, he climbed back up and faced the little white thing, crisp and immaculate as a carnation before him. He tucked his elbows and locked his wrists and willed his chin to sink, almost submerge, into his chest, and with the barest, most imperceptible of motions, he tapped the ball toward the cup. It hugged the contours of the green, seemed to roll and glide of its own volition, and once almost died, but then picked up a final spurt on the downward side of the green’s last little bulge and dropped in with the sound of a wooden spoon falling onto a wooden floor.

“Good heavens, you’re playing well today, Holly-Browning. Been taking lessons?”

“Actually, I haven’t touched a club since July of last year,” said Holly-Browning.

If C caught the reference to the beginning of the Spanish War and the defector Lemontov’s flight to the Americans, he didn’t show it. He bent and patted out another dud of a putt, which still left him a solid three feet shy.

“Damn. My chap keeps telling me to keep my head locked but I always seem to look up. What do you recommend, Holly-Browning? What’s your secret?”

“Just hard work, sir. Practice, all that.”

“Yes, indeed. By the way, James, I thought I ought to tell you. It seems there may be a bit of a stink.”

“Oh?”

“Oh, nothing really. It’s that MI-5 bunch. They seem to have found out all about it. I thought I was done with them.”

“I thought in principle they agreed with our handling of the case, sir.”

“It’s not a question of that, old man. It’s just that their interrogators never got a crack at the inside part of Julian’s head. Now bloody Sir Vernon has his dander up. A terrible bother.”

Holly-Browning didn’t say anything.

“They’ve put it out that it was a personal thing between you and Raines, with poor Florry just the errand boy in the middle.”

“That quite simplifies things, sir,” said Holly-Browning, stung at the injustice of it all.

“I know that, Holly-Browning. But that’s what these damned security people are: simplifiers. Everything’s black and white to them.”

“Yessir.”

“And, I should tell you, there are those in our own house who think Section V ought to leave the red lads alone and concentrate on the gray lads. Jerry’s the next big show, eh?”

“Yessir, I suppose Jerry is.”

They had reached the next tee. Birds sang, tulips bloomed, still ponds reflected the sun’s gold touch, and vivid butterflies hung in the light. The sky was cobalt blue, a purity the bizarre English clime permits rarely enough. Ahead, several argyle-clad figures in plus-fours and caps putted out on a par three, 108 yards out.

“Damn this fellow Hitler. He really has confused the world, hasn’t he?”

“Yessir, he has.”

C planted his ball on the tee, took his three wood, and addressed the thing with a waggle of his rear end, knotting his fingers into a confusion of sausages about the club.

“And that’s why I’m placing you in charge of a key operation, James. It’s a big move, James.”

Holly-Browning showed nothing on his face. He simply nodded.

“It’s a big job, James. Take your wife and daughters out if it suits. It’ll get you away from Broadway. Most bracing change, I say. You shall have Jamaica station. Damn, I must say, I envy you. Jamaica!”

The bloody colonies! An island full of niggers and flowers!

C swung. The ball popped off the tee, bending oddly in the air, its flight weirdly crippled, and sank itself in a trap with a puff of sand.

“Damn! Damn!” said C. “I simply wasn’t meant to play this bloody game. In any event, I suppose I’ll have to boost your fellow Vane up to Section V head. He’s the right chap, don’t you think?”

Holly-Browning shuddered at the idea of Vane as V (a).

“A splendid idea,” he said.

“And I’ll bring this young Sampson in to help him. He’ll be V (b), eh? He’s a bright chap; he can handle London, don’t you think?”

“Yessir,” said Holly-Browning, addressing his ball. “Yes. Very good, sir.” He drew back and seemed to lose himself in the rush of the stroke, and felt his four iron meet the ball with the authority of an edict from Stalin. It rose, a pill, white and nearly invisible against the bright sky, and then fell as if dropped from the Almighty Himself. It landed square on the green perhaps two feet above the pin and began to describe a spin-crazed curlicue over the short grass in the general vicinity of the …

“Good Christ,” said C, “it went in! Holly-Browning, it went in the bloody hole.”

“Yes, yes, it did, didn’t it, sir?” said Holly-Browning, handing his club to Davis.

43 THE HANGAR

The old man grew stronger with remarkable swiftness and was well enough to travel within seven days. The speed of the recovery stunned the British-educated doctor. Pavel Romanov, however, something of a scholar of the lives and times of Emmanuel Ivanovich Levitsky, was not particularly amazed; he knew the old agent to be a man of