Yesterday's Spy by Len Deighton Page B

said.
    â€˜This time I’ve got more to lose than you have.’
    He looked me up and down, from shoes to haircut. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said finally. He sniffed again.
    â€˜Just Champion?’ he said. All these people who sell us information are like that. They categorize it, and husband it, and let it go only grudgingly, as a philatelist disposes of bits of his collection, and tries to get rid of the dud stamps first. Aziz smoothed his hair across the crown of his head. There wasn’t much of it, and he patted it gently. ‘You’ve always played fair with me,’ he said. ‘I’d be the first to admit that.’ I waited while he persuaded himself to tell me what I wanted to know.
    â€˜It’s the same tedious story that we know only too well,’ said Aziz, in his beautifully modulated English public-school accent. ‘London put Champion into some of the rougher bits of the small-arms trade …’
    â€˜Terrorist weapons.’
    â€˜Terrorist weapons. And eventually Champion makes contact with our people.’
    â€˜Political Intelligence.’
    â€˜Political Intelligence,’ repeated Aziz, and nodded. Why the hell he still called them his people, when he’d spent a decade selling them out, was strictly between him and his analyst, but I let him continue uninterrupted. ‘London must have seen what would happen,’ said Aziz. ‘Ask yourself … Champion’s father spent his whole life in Egypt. The Academy gave him a banquet when he retired. Nasser was a student of the old man, you know, as was Sadat. Even the younger Champion has better Arabic than I can put my tongue to.’
    â€˜Do you want to light that cigarette?’ I said, ‘or do you prefer waving it around?’
    He smiled and caught the matches I threw to him. He seemed surprised to find they burned as brightly as a gold lighter. ‘We turned him, of course.’ He blew smoke and took a piece of tobacco off his lip with a long fingernail. ‘At first it was all quite straightforward; London knew he was a double, Cairo knew he was a double. It was a convenient method of communication between Egypt and you …’
    â€˜When was that?’
    â€˜Let’s say until the summer before last. It was just before the Fleet exercises that he delivered the NATO wavelengths to us. That was not part of the plan – as far as London was concerned. They found out when Damascus got the wavelengths. London got a rocket from NATO , or so I heard. Yes, Champion burned his boats when he did that.’
    â€˜Champion did it for money?’
    â€˜My dear fellow …’ he protested. ‘What else?’
    â€˜You seem pretty certain about all this, Aziz. Even you have been known to make a mistake.’
    â€˜Have I?’ He frowned. ‘I certainly don’t remember one.’
    I got up and went back to the window to watch the lake again. I said, ‘Are you just giving me the gossip from the Cairo Hilton?’
    â€˜This is all top-level stuff, old boy. There’s a very limited circulation for Champion’s material – top bloody secret, all the way.’
    â€˜How did you get it?’
    â€˜My brother-in-law, of course.’
    â€˜Of course,’ I said. His brother-in-law was a one-star general in Cairo’s Department of Political Intelligence that fills – and overflows from – a seven-storey building in Heliopolis.
    Aziz was watching me closely as I turned away from the window. ‘I can get you Xerox copies of anything special,’ he offered. ‘But it will take at least two weeks.’
    â€˜We’ll see, Aziz.’
    â€˜Oh, yes, Champion’s deep into it.’ He stubbed out the cigarette and watched me as I figured out what to do next. ‘It’s upset you, hasn’t it,’ said Aziz, with more friendliness than I would have thought him capable of. ‘I’m sorry about