‘Just suppose. Say I talk him into it, which I’d have to. And he screws up, or the Russians rumble him, whichever comes first. Then what? He’s blown, he’s used goods, fuck him, he’s on the rubbish heap. Why should he go through all that shit? Why bother? Why not tell you all to take a running jump and just go to jail? Which is worse, finally? Being played by both sides like a fucking marionette and ending up dead in a back street, or paying his debt to society and coming out in one piece?’
Which I take as my cue to bring matters to a head:
‘You’re deliberately ignoring the scale of his crime and the mountain of hard evidence stacked against him,’ I say in my most persuasive and finite tone. ‘The rest is sheer speculation. Your husband-to-be is up to his neck in trouble, and we’re offering you a chance to dig him out. It’s a take-it-or-leave-it, I’m afraid.’
But this only sparks yet another scathing response:
‘So you’re judge and jury now, are you? Fuck the law courts! Fuck fair trials! Fuck human rights and whatever your civil society wife thinks she stands for!’
Only after prolonged thinking time on her part do I secure the grudging breakthrough that she’s made me work so hard for. Yet even now she manages to preserve a semblance of dignity:
‘I’m not conceding anything, right? Not a bloody thing.’
‘Go on.’
‘If, and only if, Ed says: all right, I got it wrong, I love my country, I’ll collaborate, I’ll be a double, I’ll take the risk. I said if. Does he get his amnesty or not?’
I play it long. Promise nothing you can’t take back. A Bryn aphorism.
‘If he’s earned it, and we decide he’s earned it, and if the Home Secretary signs off on it: yes, in all probability he gets his amnesty.’
‘Then what? Does he risk his neck for free? Do I? How about a bit of risk money?’
We’ve done enough. She’s spent, I’m spent. Time to call down the curtain.
‘Florence, we’ve come a long way to meet you. We want unconditional compliance. Yours and Ed’s. In return we offer expert handling and full support. Bryn needs a clear answer. Now. Not tomorrow. It’s either a yes, Bryn, I will. Or it’s no, Bryn, and accept the consequences. Which is it to be?’
‘I need to marry Ed first,’ she says, without lifting her head. ‘Nothing before.’
‘Before you tell him what we’ve just agreed?’
‘Yes.’
‘When will you tell him?’
‘After Torquay.’
‘Torquay?’
‘Where we’re going for our forty-eight-hour fucking honeymoon,’ she snaps in an inspired resurgence of anger.
A shared silence, mutually orchestrated.
‘Are we friends, Florence?’ I ask. ‘I think we are.’
I am holding out my hand to her. Still without raising her head she takes it, first hesitantly then clutches it for real as I secretly congratulate her on the performance of a lifetime.
21
The two and a half days of waiting might as well be a hundred and I remember every hour of them. Florence’s taunts, however wide of the mark, had been drawn from life, and on the rare occasions when I ceased pondering the operational contingencies that lay ahead of us, her searing performance came back to accuse me of sins I hadn’t committed, and quite a few that I had.
Not once since her declaration of solidarity had Prue given the smallest hint of relenting on her commitment. She expressed no pain about my tryst with Reni. She had long ago consigned matters of that sort to the unrecoverable past. When I ventured to remind her of the perils to her legal career she replied a little tartly she was well aware of them, thank you. When I asked her whether a British judge would draw any distinction between passing secrets to the Germans as opposed to the Russians she replied with a grim laugh that in the eyes of many of our dear judges the Germans were worse. And all the while the trained Office spouse in her that she continued to deny went about her covert duties with an efficiency I tactfully took for granted.
For her professional life she had retained her maiden name of Stoneway, and it was in this name that she instructed her assistant to book her a hire car. If the company required licence details, she would supply them when she collected the car.
At my request she twice called Florence, the first time to ask in womanly confidence which hotel the honeymoon couple would be staying at in Torquay because