that isn’t in the script with a rolled umbrella threaded through the top. I pull up a few yards past the bus stop, lower the window and yell, ‘Hey, Jack! Remember me? Peter!’
At first he pretends not to hear me. It’s copybook stuff and so it should be after two years of sleeper school. He turns his head in puzzlement, discovers me, does amazement and delight.
‘Peter! My friend! It is you. I truly don’t believe my eyes.’
Okay, that’s enough, get in the car. He does. We exchange an air-hug for the spectators. He’s wearing a new Burberry raincoat, fawn. He takes it off, folds it and lays it reverently on the back seat but keeps the music case between his knees. As we drive away, a man at the bus stop makes a rude face to the woman standing next to him. See what I saw just then? Middle-aged poofter picks up pretty rent boy in broad daylight.
I’m watching for anyone pulling out behind us, car, van or motorbike. Nothing catches the eye. Under the traditional procedure Sergei isn’t told in advance where he’s going to be taken, and he isn’t being told now. He’s skinnier and more haunted than I remember him from our handover. He has a tousled mop of black hair and doleful bedroom eyes. His spindly fingers are playing a tattoo on the dashboard. In his rooms in college they played the same tattoo on the wooden arm of his chair. His new Harris Tweed sports jacket is too big for his shoulders.
‘What’s in the music case?’ I demand.
‘It is paper, Peter. For you.’
‘Only paper?’
‘Please. It is very important paper.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
He is unmoved by my terseness. Perhaps he was expecting it. Perhaps he’s always expecting it. Perhaps he despises me, as I suspect he despised Giles.
‘Do you have anything on your body, in your clothes or anything else apart from the paper in the music case that I should know about? Nothing that films, records, does anything like that?’
‘Please, Peter, I do not. I have excellent news. You will be happy.’
That’s enough business till we get there. With the din of the diesel engine and the rattly bodywork I’m scared he’s going to come out with stuff I can’t hear and my Office smartphone can’t record or transmit to the Haven. We’re speaking English and we’ll speak it until I decide otherwise. Giles had no Russian worth a damn. I see no value in letting Sergei know that I’m any different. I have chosen a hilltop twenty miles out of town allegedly with a fine view over the moors, but all we can see as I heave the Vauxhall to a halt and switch off the engine is grey cloud below us and driven rain whipping across the windscreen. By the laws of tradecraft we should by now have agreed who we are if we’re disturbed, when and where we’ll meet again, and does he have any pressing anxieties? But he’s put the music case flat on his lap and he’s already undoing the straps and pulling out a brown A4-size padded envelope, unsealed.
‘Moscow Centre has communicated with me at last, Peter. After one whole year,’ he declares with something between academic disdain and clotted excitement. ‘It is evidently momentous. My Anette in Copenhagen wrote me a beautiful and erotic letter in English and, underneath in our secret carbon, a letter from my Moscow Centre controller which I have translated into English for you’ – upon which he affects to make me a presentation of the envelope.
‘Hang on a minute, Sergei.’ I have taken possession of the padded envelope but haven’t looked inside. ‘Let me get this straight. You received a love letter from your lady friend in Denmark. You then applied the necessary compound, raised the secret under-text, decoded it and translated the contents into English for my benefit. All by yourself. Single-handed. That right?’
‘That is correct, Peter. Our combined patience is rewarded.’
‘So when did you receive this letter from Denmark exactly?’
‘On Friday. At midday. I could not believe my eyes.’
‘And today is Tuesday. You waited until yesterday afternoon to contact my office.’
‘All weekend while I worked I was thinking only of you. Night and day I was so pleased I was developing and translating all at once in my mind, wishing only that our good friend Norman was with us to enjoy our success.’
Norman for Giles.
‘So the letter from your Moscow handlers has been in your possession since Friday. Have you