Vicary could see almost nothing, just the outline of Boothby's broad back and a puddle of listless light leaking from the weak torch. Like a blind man the rest of his senses were suddenly alive. He was treated to a tour of foul odors--urine, stale beer, disinfectant, dried egg frying in old fat. Then the sounds--a parent striking a child, a couple quarreling, another couple noisily copulating. Somewhere he heard notes on an organ and a chorus of male voices. He wondered if there was a church nearby, then realized it was the BBC. Only then did he comprehend that it was Sunday. Kettledrum and the search for Catherine Blake had robbed him of the days of the week.
They reached the landing on the top floor. Boothby shone the torch down the hall. The light reflected in the yellow eyes of a skinny cat. It hissed at them in anger before scurrying away. Boothby followed the sound of the church services. The singing had stopped, and the congregation was reciting the Lord's Prayer. Boothby had a key. He stuck it in the lock and switched off the torch before going inside.
It was a squalid little room: an unmade bed no larger than Vicary's at MI5 headquarters, a tiny galley kitchen where coffee burned on a gas ring, a small cafe table where two men sat still as statues, listening to the radio. Both had vile Gauloise cigarettes in their mouths, and the air was blue with smoke. The lights were doused; the only illumination came from narrow windows that looked over the back of a terrace on the next street. Vicary walked to the window and looked out at an alley strewn with rubbish. Two little boys were tossing tin cans into the air and hitting them with sticks. A wind rose, lifting old newspaper into the air like circling gulls. Boothby was dumping the burnt coffee into two suspect enamel mugs. He gave one to Vicary and kept one for himself. The coffee was vile--bitter, stale, and too strong--but it was hot and it had caffeine.
Boothby used his chipped cup to make the introductions, tipping it first toward the older and larger of the two men. "Alfred Vicary, this is Pelican. That's not his real name, mind you. That's his code name. You don't get to know his real name, I'm afraid. I'm not sure even I know his real name." He tipped his mug at the second man sitting at the table. "And this fellow is Hawke. That's not a code name. That's his real name. Hawke works for us, don't you, Hawke?"
But Hawke gave no indication he had heard Boothby speak. He was not a Hawke--more like a Stick or a Rod or a Cane, cadaverous and painfully thin. His cheap wartime suit hung from his bony shoulders as if it had been thrown over a valet. He had the pallor of someone who worked at night and beneath ground. His blond hair was thinning and going rapidly gray, even though he was no older than the boys Vicary had tutored his last term at the university. He held his Gauloise like a Frenchman, between the tip of his long thumb and forefinger. Vicary had the uncomfortable feeling he had seen him somewhere before--in the canteen, maybe, or leaving Registry with a batch of files beneath his arm. Or was it leaving Boothby's office by the secret passageway, the way he had seen Grace Clarendon leaving that night? Hawke didn't look at Vicary. The only time he moved was when Boothby took a couple of steps toward him. Then he only inclined his head away a fraction of an inch and tightened his face, as if he feared Boothby might strike him.
Vicary looked next at Pelican. He might have been a writer or he might have been a dockworker, he might be German or he might be French. Polish, perhaps--they were everywhere. Unlike Hawke, Pelican stared straight back at Vicary, holding him in a steady, slightly bemused gaze. Vicary couldn't quite see Pelican's eyes because he wore the thickest glasses Vicary had ever seen, tinted slightly, as if he was sensitive to bright light. Beneath his black leather coat he wore two sweaters, a gray rollneck and a frayed beige cardigan that looked as though it had been made for him by a well-meaning relative with eyes as good as his. He smoked his Gauloise to a stub, then crushed it out, using the cracked nail of his thick thumb.
Boothby removed his coat and turned down the radio. Then he looked at Vicary and said, "Well, now. Where should I begin?"
Hawke didn't work for us, Hawke worked for Boothby.
Boothby knew Hawke's father. Worked with him in India. Security. He met young Hawke in Britain in 1935 at a luncheon at the family's Kent estate. Young Hawke was drinking and talking too much, berating his father and Boothby for the kind of work they did, reciting Marx and Lenin like Shakespeare, waving his arms at the splendid gardens as though they were proof of the corruption of the English ruling classes. After lunch Hawke Senior smiled weakly at Boothby to apologize for his son's abominable behavior: children these days . . . you know . . . rot they're learning at school . . . expensive education gone to waste.
Boothby smiled too. He had been looking for a Hawke for a very long time.
Boothby had a new job: keep an eye on the Communists. Especially at the universities, Oxford and Cambridge. The Communist Party of Great Britain, with love and encouragement from its Russian masters, was trolling the universities for new members of the flock. The NKVD was looking for spies. Hawke went to work for Boothby at Oxford. Boothby seduced Hawke. Boothby gave direction to his directionless heart. Boothby was good at that. Hawke ran with the Communists: drank with them, quarreled with them, played tennis with them, fornicated with them. When the Party came for him, Hawke told them to fuck off.