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When his stinging eyes finally grew too blurry to read the print at all, he found that he had for some minutes been trying to project his thoughts to Elena, perhaps somewhere over Majorca or Sardinia by now-Turn back, turn back.
The passport control officer at the British Embassy in Lisbon was a tired, cheerful man named Philip Johns. His collar was open and his tie was already loosened at eleven in the morning.
"My dear boy," he said to Hale, who was sitting in a straight-backed wooden chair on the other side of the desk, "Special Branch can operate in Malaya and the Far East colonies- Singapore, Hong Kong-but not in Portugal. And," he added, touching Hale's St.-Simon passport on the desk, "they certainly don't operate with phony passports in German-occupied countries. What sort of 'investigation' were you 'assisting' them with?" He sat back and grinned at Hale in irritable puzzlement. "Are you sure it was Special Branch?"
Hale had finally been relayed to Johns by the Repatriation Office on the second floor, and he was afraid that the Embassy staff's next step would be to turn him back out into the street. He wished Theodora had given him a place of conspiracy and a recognition signal, as the Razvedupr had. His only plan was to somehow get word of his situation to the solicitor Corliss in Cirencester, who would in turn surely contact Theodora.
"I'll tell you the truth." His basic cover story was bound to come out soon anyway, so Hale took a deep breath and said, "I was arrested for espionage in London, in September, at a Communist Party meeting in King Street. I was released into the custody of Special Branch, and I eluded them and fled the country. Illegally." He had hardly spoken a dozen words in English since the end of September, and he found that he had to think about his phrasing. "Since then I have been living in Paris. Now I want to go home and...facethemusic."
"I hope you'll forgive me for assuming that you've been working these past three months as a Soviet spy. This passport says you're an employee of Simex. It seems to me I've heard of Simex." He leaned forward and said, clearly, "I am the passport control officer. At the British Embassy. Are you sure you don't have anything to"-he paused, almost seeming embarrassed-"declare?"
Hale realized that Johns must be the British Secret Intelligence Service representative in Lisbon, and that the man was inviting him to admit to working for SIS himself. But in Paris he had learned about hermetic, parallel networks, and he didn't think Theodora would want him sharing any information here.
"Just that Special Branch will want me shipped home." He smiled wanly. "In shackles, I expect."
Johns nodded a number of times, then stood up from his desk and crossed the carpet to the tall window. For several moments he just stared down at the street. "Hitler could take Portugal, you know," he said at last, "just by picking up the telephone. But I suppose the place has its value for Germany too, as a common ground between the occupied countries and the rest of the world. God knows every country in the world has spy networks here, all concentrated and distinct like...bacteria cultures on a petri dish, and the Germans probably do a fair job of infiltrating them, monitoring them."
He slouched back to his desk and sat down. "When I was a boy," he said, not looking at Hale, "we had one of those Russian dolls that twist apart in the middle to reveal a smaller one inside, which also twists apart, and so on ad infinitum; it was years before we discovered that what we had thought was the last, smallest one could be opened too, and that there was one more tiny one inside it. Astonishment, uproar among all of us children...though probably there was still another to be discovered, several more, microscope required finally." He sighed and stared at the ceiling. "There's value in...duplication, in having another, having a more secret one inside the already secret one. You didn't deny being a Soviet spy."
"I'm sorry, I thought denial went without saying. Surely no one admits to that here."
"Surely not. Who is Delphine St.-Simon?"
Hale exhaled so abruptly that it was a grunt. "Have you-detained her?" he asked with sudden hope. Perhaps the Air France clerk had been wrong in saying that she had caught the earlier flight.
Johns's right eyebrow was arched. "No, she was off to Istanbul before we even registered that she had arrived, and we didn't attach any importance to her anyway until you showed up downstairs this morning. So who is she?"
Hale slumped in his chair. "I don't know. I suppose St.-Simon is a common name."
Johns was nodding again, though suddenly he seemed very tired. "Your case is, marginally, interesting enough for me to check your bona fides-or mala fide-with the Security Service, of which Special Branch is the executive arm, in London. Not my outfit, but I'll see who I can reach over the WT. In the meantime I can hardly place you under detention-I don't even have any documentation to indicate that you're a British subject."
"I'd be happy to sign something," said Hale eagerly, "attesting that I am."
"You want to be detained? Is it the Gestapo you're afraid of, or the NKVD?"
"I'd-certainly hate to come to the attention of either agency."
"But you want to go back to England in shackles." He shrugged. "To be preferred, under the circumstances, I do see. Look, sit in the lobby downstairs for a few hours, right? Anybody who queries you can be told that you're waiting for me. If I haven't found grounds to arrest you by nightfall, I'll have security chase you out."
"Fair enough," said Hale, struggling to his feet and wishing he'd had a spare shirt and socks to bring along.
Hale did wear shackles when he flew back to England, accompanied by two British soldiers and the King's Messenger and the diplomatic bag, aboard an RAF Catalina flying boat that took off from the consulate dock at Cabo Ruivo. The seaplane landed six hours later, chopping the tops off the low gray Channel waves just northeast of the Dungeness lighthouse and then chugging up on the plane's pontoons to the RAF dock at New Romney.
Hale was immediately bundled across a chilly, snow-drifted yard into the back of a military lorry, along with two Army corporals who wore automatic pistols on their belts and who had apparently got the idea that he was a German spy; a tarpaulin had been laced over iron poles to make a windowless boxy tent of the truck bed, illuminated by an electric bulb that swung over the benches as the truck's engine ground through the gears along some sequence of icy rural roads, and one of his guards solemnly passed across to Hale an unskilled and obscene pencil caricature of Hitler, and then one of Goebbels, and then one of Goering. Hale simply nodded politely after scrutinizing each one and handing it back with both manacled hands, and when the little ceremony was done his guards sat back with a satisfied air. Hale was nearly choking on the fumes of diesel exhaust, though it was cold enough for him to see his breath.
When the lorry finally halted and the engine was switched off, the tarpaulin was pulled away from the rear of the vehicle and Hale was helped down to stand on the deeply rutted gravel driveway of a sprawling Victorian mansion; a gated iron fence was stitched in black poles and barbed wire across the snow behind him, and a forest of pine trees hid the surrounding countryside. He could hear the stationary roaring motor of a generator, but there were no sounds of city or even suburban traffic. When he was forcibly turned toward the house and kicked into a march, he noticed the bright metal filaments of new aerials sprouting from the snowy roof, and iron bars on several, but not all, of the windows. His manacled hands were clasped in front of him as if in prayer.
He was interrogated in what might have been a dining room-a green baize cloth was draped over a trestle table in front of a tall stone fireplace, and pale sections of the wood floor indicated where vast carpets had once lain; and the empty room echoed when one of the officers at the table asked him for his name and date of birth.
"Andrew Hale," said Hale, swaying with exhaustion and wondering if it would be rude to ask for a chair. "January 6, 1922."
"When did you join the Communist Party?"
"Last semester sometime-spring of last year. At Oxford. My solicitor can clear all this up." Corliss would surely contact Theodora, as he had done before. "His name is Corliss, and he's in Cirencester-"
"Sir!"
Hale blinked at the man, who was apparently a colonel. "Yes?"
