Yesterday's Spy by Len Deighton

backstamp, and then got stamped at London and Boulogne before arriving in Bordeaux.’ He held it close to the desk light. It was a yellowed piece of paper, folded and sealed so as to make a packet upon which the address had been written. On the back of the folded sheet there was a mess of rubber-stamped names and dates and a cracked segment of a red seal.
    Serge looked at me.
    â€˜He thinks it’s fake?’ I said finally.
    â€˜He says the watermarks on the paper are wrong for this date … And the shape of the Dublin stamp … that too he doesn’t like.’
    â€˜What do
you
say?’ I asked politely.
    He took it by the two top corners and pulled, so that the sheet tore slowly right down the middle. There was an almost imperceptible hesitation at the bottom and then the two halves separated, and the ragged edge flashed in the lamplight.
    â€˜He was quite correct,’ said Serge. ‘It was a forgery.’
    â€˜Did you have to destroy it?’
    â€˜If I kept it here, and a client wanted such a thing … How can I be sure I wouldn’t yield to temptation?’
    I smiled. It was not easy to think of this Spartan yielding to temptation.
    â€˜I was not even fifteen when I first joined the Communist Party. I was so proud. I slept with that card under my pillow, and in the daytime it was pinned inside my vest. I’ve given my whole life to the party. You know I have, Charles. You know I have.’
    â€˜Yes,’ I said.
    â€˜The risks I ran, the times I was beaten with police truncheons, the bullets in my leg, the pneumonia I caught during the Spanish winter fighting … all this I don’t regret. A youth must have something to offer his life to.’ He picked up the torn pieces of paper as if for a moment regretting that he’d destroyed the forged cover. ‘When they told me about the Stalin–Hitler pact I went round explaining it to the men of lesser faith. The war you know about. Czechoslovakia – well, I’d never liked the Czechs, and when the Russian tanks invaded Hungary … well, they were asking for it, those Hungarians – I ask you, who ever met an honest Hungarian?’
    I smiled at his little joke.
    â€˜But I am a Jew,’ said Frankel. ‘They are putting my people into concentration camps, starving them, withdrawing the right to work from anyone who asks to go to Israel. When these pigs who call themselves socialists went to the aid of the Arabs … then I knew that no matter what kind of Communist I was, I was first and foremost a Jew. A Jew! Do you understand now?’
    â€˜And Champion … ?’
    â€˜You come and visit me from time to time. You tell me that you are on vacation – I believe you. But I’ve always wondered about you, Charles. What sort of work does a man like you do in peacetime? You told me once that you were an economist, working for your government. Very well, but now you are asking me discreet questions about Champion, and all the others. So I ask myself if the work you do for your government is perhaps not entirely confined to economics.’
    It was like taking a book down from one of these crowded shelves: you couldn’t read the fine print until the dust settled. ‘What is Champion up to, then?’ I said.
    â€˜You mean, what am I up to?’ said Frankel. ‘Everyone knows what Champion is up to: he’s an Arab.’
    â€˜And you?’
    â€˜I’m a Jew,’ said Frankel. ‘It’s as simple as that.’

9
    Geneva. Calvin’s great citadel is perched precariously between the grey mountains of France and the grey waters of Lake Geneva. The city, too, is grey: grey stone buildings, grey-uniformed cops, even its money and its politics are grey. Especially its politics.
    I looked out through the hotel’s spotlessly clean windows, and watched the plume of water that is Geneva’s last despairing attempt at gaiety. The tall jet fell