A Perfect Spy by John le Carre

Author:John le Carre
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781101535455
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-06-14T10:00:00+00:00

Artelli uses no notes and has a mathematician’s frugality with words. Despite his name, he speaks with a slight French accent that he disguises beneath a Bronx drawl. “As the indicators continued to multiply,” he says, “my section was ordered to make a reappraisal of clandestine radio transmissions beamed from the roof of the Czech Embassy in Washington as well as from certain other identified Czech facilities in the United States, throughout the years ’81 and ’82, notably their consulate in San Francisco. Our people reconsidered skip distances, frequency variations and probable reception zones. They backtracked over all intercepts of that period though we had not been able to break them at the time of their original transmission. They prepared a schedule of such transmissions so that they could be matched against the movements of eligible suspects.”

“Hold on a minute, will you?”

Little Nigel’s head snaps round like a weathervane in a gale. Even Brammel shows distinct signs of human interest. From his exile at the end of the table, Jack Brotherhood is pointing a .45-calibre forefinger straight at Artelli’s navel. And it is symptomatic of the many paradoxes of Lederer’s life that of all the people in the room, Brotherhood is the one whom he would most wish to serve, if ever he had the opportunity, even though—or perhaps because—his occasional efforts to ingratiate himself with his adopted hero have met with iron rebuff.

“Look here, Artelli,” Brotherhood says. “You people have made rather a lot out of the point that every time Pym left the precincts of Washington, whether on leave or in order to visit another town, a particular series of coded transmissions from the Czech Embassy was discontinued. I suspect you are going to make that point again now.”

“With embellishments, yes, I am,” says Artelli pleasantly enough.

Brotherhood’s forefinger remains trained on its mark. Artelli keeps his hands on the table. “The assumption being that if Pym was out of range of their Washington transmitter, the Czechs wouldn’t bother to talk to him?” Brotherhood suggests.

“This is correct.”

“Then every time he came back to the capital they’d pop up again. ‘Hullo it’s you and welcome home.’ Correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well turn it round for a moment, will you? If you were framing a man, isn’t that precisely what you would do too?”

“Not today,” he says equably. “And not in 1981 or ’82. Ten years ago, maybe. Not in the eighties.”

“Why not?”

“I wouldn’t be that dumb. We all know it’s standard intelligence practice to continue transmitting whether or not the party is listening at the other end. It’s my hunch they—” He stops. “Maybe I should leave this one to Mr. Lederer,” he says.

“No you don’t—you tell it to them yourself,” Wexler orders without looking up.

Wexler’s terseness is not unexpected. It is a feature of these meetings, known to everybody present, that a curse, if not an outright embargo, hangs over the use of Lederer’s name. Lederer is their Cassandra. Nobody ever asked Cassandra to preside over a meeting on damage limitation.

Artelli is a chess-player and takes his time.

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