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"The U.S. government will pick up the drinks tab," added Dr. Tarr cheerfully, "though not precisely in its IRS capacity."
Philby thought the saxophone remark had seemed to jar her; but now she just sighed and said, "No, I don't play any instrument. But-I suppose I can't resist the opportunity to deplete the American treasury." She put her purse back down.
"And we even took your pseudonyms into account," said Professor Feather to Philby. "Charles Garner and all. It still doesn't add up."
Philby had already begun shaking his head dismissively, and he didn't stop now-but he was chilled by this new factor. The CIA knew that Charles Garner was one of his pseudonyms!-and Mammalian's new agent was to be using that identity as cover! Philby wondered if he should warn Mammalian, or let the CIA discover the Garner impostor; if Elena's SDECE people could "exfiltrate" him very soon, it wouldn't matter.
"You obviously know n-nothing about j-journalistic work," said Philby, picking up one of his glasses of gin. "Some of the seeds fall upon st-stony places, and w-wither in the sun because they have no root. For every story I file, a d-dozen prove to be false alarms." He lifted the glass to his lips and swirled the warm liquor over his tongue.
"That's from the thirteenth chapter of Matthew," said Dr. Tarr, "your seed analogy is. It properly refers to people, of course-and do remember the next verse: 'And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up, and choked them.'"
And to Philby's embarrassment, a trickle of the gin slipped down his windpipe, and he coughed gin out through his nostrils; the stinging liquor burned in his nose and brought tears to his eyes, and the CIA men laughed as he continued coughing.
"Oh, a palpable hit!" said Dr. Tarr. "You like to act as if you're out of play these days, Kim-the retired cold warrior-but lately Moscow is scrambling to make the Red Sea a Red Army sea, and make the Persian Gulf a..."
"Potemkin bluff?" suggested Elena. She was staring at Philby with distaste.
"Too reached-for," said Professor Feather, shaking his head.
"Anyway," Dr. Tarr went on, "they were ready to make the Caribbean a Soviet pond too, until Kennedy made them back down two months ago. Now the last time the Soviets tried a big grab like this was in '48, when they blockaded Berlin and incidentally annexed Czechoslovakia and got a Communist Party member in as president of Hungary. Less overtly, there was also some action at that time around the Aras River, between Turkey and Soviet Armenia-specifically in the Ahora Gorge on Mount Ararat. And there are a lot of people in Beirut right now who were there then; including Miss Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga herself."
Elena lifted her glass of pink beer in a tired salute and took a gulp of it.
"A couple of the old cast are not here, though," said Professor Feather, "or not obviously or not yet. Your old housemate Burgess is unlikely to show up, I suppose, Kim; our Brit colleagues would arrest him if he strayed out of the Soviet Union. But Andrew Hale fled England on Wednesday, the second, and the SIS managed to track him to Kuwait, but lost him the next day. It seems timely. Have you heard anything about him?"
"N-no," said Philby, "I s-scarcely remember the boy." But his mind was whirling, trying to figure out how this new piece on the chessboard might change the lines of consequence. Hale was Theodora's star protege, Philby thought, and he appeared to be fired after his failure on Ararat; was that a feint? God help me if Theodora is still in this in any way. Surely that old ultimatum with the SOE no longer applies! He remembered Theodora's words at the Turkish-Soviet border in 1952: Report to us any contact from the Soviets; and participate in any action they order you into; and report it all to us; or die.
Elena took another sip of her polluted beer. "'Fled England,'" she said; "'lost him the next day.' Is he a fugitive?" And with a chill Philby remembered that Hale had been bitterly in love with her, in '48, and he remembered the high-low seven-card stud game he had played with Hale in the Anderson bomb shelter on that last terrible night: Low hand wins Maly's amomon instructions.
"The news is five days old, even at newspaper-level," said Professor Feather; "I'm surprised the SDECE hasn't relayed it to you. Hale was to be arrested for old embezzlements committed during his residency in Kuwait right after the war-on Wednesday MI5 sent an agent to negotiate a possible immunity deal with him, contingent on doing some work for the SIS, and Hale killed the agent and fled. He killed a cop too."
"Claude Cassagnac," said Dr. Tarr.
"What about Claude Cassagnac?" asked Elena quickly.
Philby recalled that she had mentioned the name Cassagnac earlier this evening: Maly did talk to me about this! I will have to tell old Cassagnac that my answer in 1941 was not accurate.
"That was the MI5 agent Hale killed," said Dr. Tarr. "I gather he was more a consultant than an agent, actually."
"What proof is this?" demanded Elena, quaintly using in English what Philby recognized as an old bit of Spanish Civil War slang.
"This is two hundred proof, ma'am, solid spirit right over the top of the still," said Professor Feather, staring curiously at her. "Like I said, it's even newspaper-level." He stood up out of the booth, unblocking her way. "If you're through with your drink, you can leave."
"I'm not through with my drink," she said.
"Kim's not really for sale right now, Miss Ceniza-Bendiga." Professor Feather looked across the table to where Philby sat hemmed in by Dr. Tarr. "We intend to read your non-fiction, Kim. And not as...excerpts, in a French translation."
Right, you haven't got a "special relationship" with the SDECE, thought Philby, the way you have with the SIS. But neither you fellows nor, apparently, my disappointing old SIS colleagues, are offering me any itties. Tout au contraire, in fact.
The prolonged nervous strain of this evening, along with the cumulative effects of drink and his throbbing, wounded head, was goading Philby toward something like hysteria. I've got to end this, he thought.
"Oh well," he said with desperately affected breeziness, "Miss Weiss is only interested in-d-d-domestic reminiscences, human-interest m-material. Travels with my f-father, the traumas of a raw-raw-religious education, the d-death of my pet ffffox-upon my honor, nothing that would attain to your 'n-newspaper level.'" He finished his first gin and picked up the second. "And now if you'll both excuse us..."
Dr. Tarr stood up from beside Philby and leaned down over Philby's bandaged head. "Applewhite doesn't think you were ever a spy for the Soviets," he said; Applewhite was the CIA station chief in Beirut. "The Philbys and the Applewhites go out together for picnics in the mountains by Ajaltoun. Applewhite thinks we're scoundrels for hassling you and rousting you all the time."
Cautiously, Philby allowed himself an indulgent laugh, and it came out convincingly enough; but when he tried to speak he found that he was babbling nervously: "Oh, th-that successive-that's excessive, surely-you s-seem like a couple of clean-cut Woodminster-I mean, Midwestern-"
"But we're not under Applewhite," Dr. Tarr went on almost in a snarl. "We work directly for the Office of Special Operations in Washington. And our boss"-he pressed his lips together-"our boss is very aware of your father, your pet fox."
