"I owe you a drink, when all this is over," Hale said to the man.
"Not arak," said his double.
"Right." Hale was aware of being drunk, though the hour could not yet be noon, and he bit his tongue against the urge to ask the man if he had heard from Elena.
"This mistreated gentleman," said Hartsik, waving at Hale's double, "will stay here in my office until nightfall, and then leave in Arab dress, with his face concealed. In the meantime, one of the Rabkrin team has come to the station here to take you back to your hotel." He stared at Hale. "It's the one called Kim Philby."
Hale nodded. "I know what to say to him."
Hartsik unlocked the door and swung it open. "We won't speak again," he said quietly as Hale stepped out into the hall; "if you get into unmapped territory, improvise."
Hale nodded, as much to the two surete officers who stood in the hall as in acknowledgment of Hartsik's remark; and then he was escorted back down the hall to the yellow-painted waiting room. The police did not hold his arms now-Charles Garner had officially proven to be a harmless drunk.
Kim Philby was leaning against the wall by the alley door. He was wearing a sport coat and a tie, but his pouchy face was spotted and pale, and he was frowning.
My half-brother, thought Hale as he walked away from the police, toward the door.
"I was t-told it was you," Philby said. He peered at Hale's face. "They d-did m-mess you up, rather, didn't they? There's no bail to be p-paid-apparently they feel that your mistreatment here has been pa-pa-payment enough. I'd have said you rated another biff or two, but the surete and I d-don't always see eye to eye." He waved toward the wire-mesh glass door. "We'll walk. I was also t-told you're likely to be d-drunk. You can walk, can't you?"
"I can walk."
When they had stepped down to the alley pavement and crossed to the far sidewalk, Philby began talking in a low voice that barely reached Hale's ringing ears. "Your indulgence of t-temper and intemperance th-this morning may have caused this operation to be can-can-canceled," he said, and Hale thought there was a note of suppressed satisfaction in his voice. "You had better h-hope otherwise, because I don't m-mind telling you that Mammalian will simply vv-verify you if he does abort it, casually as swatting a fly. You were always a blundering f-f-fool, Hale, but this-"
Hale was suddenly very tired, and the prospect of walking a mile or so with Philby in this hectoring mode was beyond bearing. Brace him now, Hale thought, if only to change his tone.
"O Fish," Hale interrupted, "are you constant to the old covenant?"
Philby stopped walking, and Hale had to halt and turn around to face him. "I want to buy a couple of guns," Hale added. "Where's the nearest shop for guns?"
"Return, and we return," said Philby hollowly, staring at Hale in evident puzzlement. "Keep faith, and so will we. What do you m-mean?" he added in a cautious tone.
"It's the Rabkrin exchange, Kim. You answered it correctly. We proceed."
Philby stirred and began walking again. "B-But that's-that's old. How l-l-long have you been-? You? And it's very high; not many p-people know that challenge. I don't think Mammalian knows the exchange." Hoarsely he said, "Who-are you?"
"It's higher than you suppose, Kim. I'm not Rabkrin. Have you forgotten the bargain you made with Theodora in '52, at the Turkish-Soviet border? I've been sent to remind you of it. An SIS representative will shortly be contacting you here, offering you immunity in exchange for your total memoirs. You will pretend to cooperate, but you will not tell him anything about Rabkrin or the Ararat operation, and you will not return to England."
Philby had stopped again. "You can get g-guns at one of the import shops on Allenby," he said absently. "Jimmie's anachronistic SOE...that was t-t-ten years ago. And now you-has there truly b-been a British secret s-service that I was not aware of, all along? Was L-Lawrence one of you? How far in-" Philby's pale face had lost all expression, but Hale could recognize baffled rage. "Are you with the fabled D-D-Declare? You?" He held out his hands and slowly closed them into fists. "Cassagnac's murder!-your old ccrimes-your flight from England last week-this has all been c-cover?"
They were on the Weygand Street sidewalk now, and the wind from the north carried the salt smell of the Mediterranean, and Hale stared at Kim Philby in the late-morning sunight and didn't bother to keep scorn out of his voice. "I was recruited by Captain Sir Mansfield Cummings in 1929, when the SIS headquarters was in Whitehall Court. I've been a Declare agent since the age of seven." He held up one hand. "And you have been one, since the SOE doubled you in 1952. You agreed to participate in any operation the Soviets might want you for, as a covert British operative; the alternative offered then was that you would be killed, and that is still the only alternative. Are we clear on that? You won't fly back to England -you won't defect to France -Mammalian won't cancel the Ararat operation-and you and I will go up the mountain with him. And immediately that's done, you will defect to the U.S.S.R.-cross at the Aras River -and live out the rest of your life behind the Iron Curtain." Hale's lip quivered as he resisted an impulse to spit. "There won't be any pay; you won't need it in Utopia."
Philby had recovered himself and begun chuckling while Hale spoke, and now he laughed out loud. "'O Bre'r Fox!'" he said, "'just don' throw me into yonder briar patch!' Defect to France! My dear f-fellow, as I understand this, you're ordering me-on pain of d-death, no less!-to go to Ararat and become something akin to a g-g-god, and then retire to the c-country that has been my motherland since I was a b-boy!"
But Hale had noticed the beads of sweat on Philby's hairline. "A half-wit god," Hale said, not without sympathy, "Pa Fox being dead."
Philby's smile was gone, though his mouth was still open. "True," he snapped finally. "And frankly Moscow d-does sound like 'the house whence no one issues, whose inhabitants live in darkness, dust their bread and clay their meat, where over the bolted gate lie dust and silence.'" He gave Hale a squinting smile as he resumed walking, and in a particularly Oxbridge accent he said, "You seem awfully confident that I will not elect to be killed, rather. Do you remember Thomas Browne's remark in Religio Medici?-'I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof.'"
But Hale remembered the words of the half-stone king of Wabar: I am still secure from judgment. We do not go on, we do not face...leveling. And he guessed that Philby had always arrogantly lived on the assumption that although he might airily betray his country, he would never be so ill-bred as to...use the wrong fork, not be able to hold his liquor, not be able to quote Euripides in a proper Attic accent, be afraid to die. For all his treason, Philby was a product of the old British Raj, a graduate of Westminster and Cambridge accustomed to upper-class privilege, at home in the Athenaeum and Reform clubs of Pall Mall. But Hale suspected that, having renounced loyalty and honesty and faith, Philby would find that courage had correspondingly become an undercut platform, not able to take his weight. Philby might hate the idea of being a living prole in Moscow, but not as much as he hated the idea of being a dead aristocrat in Beirut.
"Yes," remarked Hale, trudging along beside his half-brother, "I am awfully confident of that."
Philby was silent for several steps, and then his only reply was a cry of "Serveece!" to one of the white taxicabs cruising past on Weygand Street; and there were already three Arab passengers in the cab as Hale and Philby climbed into the back seat, so it was only natural that the two spies did not speak until they had alighted on the curb at the Normandy Hotel.
"B-brace yourself for f-forty lashes," said Philby to Hale as they climbed out of the cab.
Hakob Mammalian was waiting for them on the steps to the lobby, but he hurried across the sidewalk to where Hale and Philby stood, and without speaking he took hold of each of them by an elbow and turned them back toward the lanes of the Avenue des Français, and the blue sea beyond.
The three of them strode out across the breezy street, Philby and then Hale waving their free hands in apology as cars honked at them and donkey drivers shouted.