Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy

ago.'

'Exactly,' said Mann. 'And that's why your husband defected — nothing to do with living in a police state, or being threatened, or wanting to read Solzhenitsyn in the original Swiss.'

'You have my husband's defection all worked out, Major,' said Mrs Bekuv. 'So what about me? Why do you think I defected?'

'I'm not sure,' said Mann warily. 'But you certainly look like a million dollars in that Saks Fifth Avenue pants-suit, and Tiffany's gold wrist-watch and bangle.'

'You were having me followed?' She seemed very surprised.

She turned to see him better. The sunlight made her screw up her eyes, but even squinting into the light she was still a shapely and beautiful woman.

'Just making sure you weren't accosted by any strange men, Mrs Bekuv.' Mann leaned over and moved the slats a fraction to close the sun's rays out.

'Men from the Soviet Government, you mean?'

'Any kind of men, Mrs Bekuv.'

'It's not me you need to watch,' she said. She drank her coffee and put butter on the last piece of roll as if to signal that the conversation had ended.

'You mean I should be watching your husband?'

'He will not respond to pressure, Major Mann. Andrei is a gentle person. If you bully him, he will run from you.'

'You're asking me to do business through you, Mrs Bekuv?' Mann had hit it, and she was disconcerted.

'It would be worth trying,' she said.

'Well, you must get your husband to co-operate, Mrs Bekuv.'

'But he already writes millions of words for you.'

'He has given us a great deal of scientific material — as close to verbatim as his memory will allow — but that's not what I call real co-operation, Mrs Bekuv.'

'What more do you want?'

'A man like your husband can get a lot of information from the style of the report and the procedure of the experiments and analysis. He knows which of the world's labs are concerned with the development of masers, and could probably name the men working in them — I think he knows where the leaks are coming from.'

Mrs Bekuv drank some coffee.

Mann continued his thesis. 'No Soviet scientist has been allowed more freedom than your husband has over the last few years. He has attended nearly thirty scientific conferences, lectures, seminars and symposiums, outside the Soviet Union — now that's unusual, Mrs Bekuv, you must admit. It's tempting to guess that he's been getting a lot of his material on a person-to-person basis, while talking with other scientists at these international conferences.'

'I'll talk to Andrei,' she promised.

'Me and my friend here,' said Mann pointing at me with his spoon as I poured another cup of coffee. 'We are an easy-going couple of kids. You know we are. But we've got to start scribbling a few picture postcards for the fellows in the front office. Otherwise they are going to start wondering if we are on some sort of fun-fest down here. They'll assign us to permanent night duty guarding the Lincoln Memorial. You get me, Mrs Bekuv?'

From the floor below us someone switched on the radio to hear a Christmas carol service, 'While shepherds watched their flocks…' came softly to us at the breakfast-table.

'I get you, Major Mann,' she said. I watched her carefully, but the slight smile she gave him revealed nothing but good-natured amusement. Mann picked up his orange juice and sipped some. 'You know something, Mrs Bekuv. It's getting so that freshly squeezed orange juice is just not available for love nor money. You'd be amazed at how many five-star hotels serve canned juice.'

'In the Soviet Union every hotel and restaurant serves freshly squeezed orange juice,' said Mrs Bekuv.

For a moment I thought Mann was going to challenge that contention but he smiled his most ingratiating smile and said, 'Is that so, honey. Well, I always knew there must be something good about that crummy wasteland.'

Mrs Bekuv pushed her cup aside and got to her feet.

'See you later,' said Mann affably.

Mrs Bekuv left the room without replying.

We were still sitting there when Bessie and Red phoned us from Waterbridge. They were almost through at the hairdressers, and the new dresses were gift-wrapped and ready for collection. All we had to do was to bring our chequebooks into town, and take them somewhere smart for lunch. To my surprise Mann readily agreed. He even invited the Bekuvs to go with us, but Andrei was going to record a Christmas concert on his Sony radio-recorder and Mrs Bekuv shook her head without looking up from Dr Zhivago. Downstairs in the dining- room the hotel staff were hanging ancient tin toys and celluloid dolls upon a Christmas tree. On the stage a ten- piece orchestra from Chicago were arguing with Mr Pierce about where the coloured spotlights should point.

Mann drove all the way to the end of the property and half-way up' the hill before speaking. 'You don't approve of my little talk with Frau Bekuv?'

'I wouldn't put it into an anthology of psychological triumphs.'

'What did I do wrong?'

'Nothing,' I said. 'You obviously want her to put the finger on the 1924 Society, so that you've got an excuse to turn them, over. Well, I'm sure she got that message and she will probably oblige you.'

'Why would that make you so mad?'

'If you are sure that the leak is through the crackpots on the 1924 Society, why not move in on them right away? If you are not sure, you are only confusing the situation by using Mrs Bekuv like a glove puppet.'

'Ah!' said Mann. 'Why not move in on the 1924 Society right away, you say. Well, I knew it was only a matter of time before you handed me a question I could answer.' He turned his eyes away from the road long enough to stare at me. 'The 1924 Society is a secret society, kiddo. No one's exactly sure who is a member of the 1924 Society.'

'Except the other members.'

'Like the Bekuvs. Yes, well now you're getting the idea, pal.'

'Suppose that, while we're all away, the Bekuvs call a cab and scram?'

Mann smiled as we pulled to a halt in a newly vacated parking-space in front of a pawnshop filled with saxophones and shotguns. I could see the hairdressers' a few doors away. 'You got a couple of quarters?' he said.

I gave him some change for the meter but he didn't get out of the car immediately. He said, 'I've put a couple of my boys to watch the back door.'

'You'd like them to skip,' I said accusingly.

'It would simplify things,' said Mann.

'Unless they succeeded,' I said.

Mann pulled a face and got out.

The Bekuvs were still in the hotel when we arrived back. Mozart's Jupiter was on the hi-fi. Andrei was still doing the calculations that would put messages into outer space and his wife was sleeping with Dr Zhivago. Mann dropped on to the sofa and heaved a sigh.

It's one of the many things I don't understand about women that the moment they return from some expensive hair-crimping parlour they stand in front of a mirror and comb the whole thing out again. Red and Bessie did that while Mrs Bekuv, evidently having decided that she'd missed out on a good thing, joined in the fun.

With seeming reluctance, she allowed herself to be persuaded into a new hair-style too. Red swept her hair up into a styling of the 'forties, and held it while they both admired it. Deftly Red pinned it into position and arranged the curls and the fringe with loving care.

Mann watched it all with interest, but his wife seemed strangely disquieted. It provided a revealing insight into Mrs Bekuv — and a portent of Red too, but I didn't see that at the time.

I ordered tea for us all, but even before I'd put the phone down, Mann's autocratic manner told his wife that he wanted a private word with the Bekuvs. Bessie said she'd prefer to take her tea into her room, and even Red — no admirer of Mann's patriarchal moods — meekly agreed to do the same, even to the extent of leaving Mrs Bekuv's