is he Russian. On graduating from sleeper school he has been reinvented as a Pole named Strelsky, a technology graduate at the London School of Economics admitted on a student visa. According to his application he speaks Russian, English and perfect German, having studied at the universities of Bonn and Zurich, and his first name is not Felix but Mikhail, defender of mankind. To Russia department he is therefore a creature of great interest, since he belongs to a new wave of spies who, far removed from the clunking methods of the old KGB, speak our Western languages to mother-tongue standards and parrot to perfection our little ways.
In the Haven’s decrepit safe house in Camden Town, Sergei and Denise squat side by side on a lumpy sofa. Seated in the one armchair, I open up Tadzio’s mobile phone, which technical department has in the meantime made temporarily inactive, fish out the strip of microfilm and lay it under the enlarger. With Sergei’s one-time pad to guide us, we decode Moscow’s latest instructions. They are in Russian. As usual I prevail on Sergei to translate them into English for me. At this late hour I can’t risk letting him discover that I have been deceiving him from the day we met.
As usual the instructions are flawless or, as Arkady would have it, too perfect. Sergei will affix a ‘No Nukes’ flyer in the top-left corner of the sash window in his basement apartment. He will confirm by return that it is visible to passers-by in both directions, and from what distance. Since no such flyer is available from known protest outlets, the preference these days being for ‘No Fracking’, Forgery department runs one up for us. Sergei will also purchase an ornamental Victorian pottery Staffordshire dog of between twelve and eighteen inches in height. eBay is awash with them.
*
And didn’t Prue and I nip over to Panama a couple of times during these happy, hectic, sun-washed days? Of course we did, in a succession of hilarious nocturnal Skypes, now with Steff alone while Juno is out on bat safari, now with the two of them together, because even when you are surrounded by Stardust, the real world, as Prue insists on calling it, has to go on.
The howling monkeys start beating their breasts at two in the morning and wake the entire camp, Steff tells us. And giant bats switch off their radar when they know their flight paths, which is why it’s a doddle to catch them in nets stretched between palm trees. But when you disentangle and tag them, you’ve really, really got to look out, Mum, because they bite and they’ve got rabies and you have to wear fucking great thick gloves like the sewage man, and their babies are just as bad. Steff’s a child again, we tell each other gratefully. And Juno, as far as we dare believe, is a decent, sincere young man who makes a good show of loving our daughter, so world hold still.
But nothing in life is without its consequences. An evening comes – it is now by my shaky reckoning Stardust-night minus eight – when the house phone rings. Prue takes the call. Juno’s mother and father have flown to London on a whim. They’re staying at an hotel in Bloomsbury owned by a friend of Juno’s mother and they’ve got tickets for Wimbledon and tickets for the one-day England–India cricket international at Lord’s. And they would be greatly honoured to meet the parents of their future daughter-in-law ‘at any time convenient to the Commercial Counsellor and your good self’. Prue collapses in mirth as she struggles to impart this news to me. And well she might since I’m sitting in the back of Percy Price’s surveillance van at Ground Beta and Percy is explaining to me where he proposes to position his static posts.
Nevertheless, two days later – S-night minus six – I miraculously contrive to present myself in a smart suit in front of the gas fireplace in our drawing room with Prue at my side, and in my persona of British Commercial Counsellor discuss with our daughter’s future parents-in-law such issues as Britain’s post-Brexit trade relations with the sub-continent and the tortuous bowling action of India’s spin bowler Kuldeep Yadav, while Prue, who has as good a poker face as any lawyer when she needs it, comes as close as she ever did to exploding into giggles behind her hand.
*
As to my essential evening badminton sessions with Ed