Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

“That explains a lot, I guess. I mean, why Maugham has stayed down here for so long.”

“What I want to say to you now, Walter, is this. I really can help. If there’s anything you need to know that you think you can’t ask him, then ask me. The chances are I will know something about it. Like you, I’m an admirer of his. Albeit for different reasons. You just like the man for himself, perhaps. I happen to believe he’s one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. I know I haven’t been very honest with you about all this but for what it’s worth now, I give you my word that anything you tell me will be in confidence until after he’s dead. Or at the very least until you give me permission to use it. Is that fair?”

“I suppose so,” I murmured uncertainly. “I don’t know.”

“I’ll pay you for your help, of course.” She paused. “To cover your expenses.”

“All of a sudden there are so many people trying to pump money into me. I feel like a cigarette machine. And all of them English, too. The odd thing-to me at least-is how little I want it. Look, I’m not doing any of this for money, Anne. Not really. The old man is paying me a basic fee to help him out of a tight spot, and that’s it. And between us, well, what I’m saying is that I’d prefer there was no money at all. If I help you-and I haven’t said I will, yet-it will be because I like you and only because I like you. Nothing else. Money complicates everything. Especially between lovers.”

“Of course. I get that.”

“Do you? I wonder.”

“Look, the files are there if you need to use them. All you have to do is ask.”

“There is something I’d like to know about,” I said.

“Name it.”

“His service with SIS in nineteen seventeen. What can you tell me about that?”

“Actually it was through Syrie that the intelligence connection came about. One of her girlfriends was the mistress of a man in the secret service by the name of Major John Wallinger. It was Wallinger who offered Maugham a job and sent him to Switzerland, in nineteen fifteen. By nineteen sixteen, Maugham was an invaluable field agent working for Sir Mansfield Cumming, who was head of the foreign section of the British secret service and for whom Maugham was running a whole network of spies in southern Germany from the Hotel d’Angleterre in Geneva. Not everyone can do something like that. By nineteen seventeen, after the February Revolution in Russia, he was working out of the British embassy in Petrograd, where he met Alexander Kerensky several times. Kerensky was the leader of the Mensheviks. By now Maugham had several hundred secret agents under his sole control. He left Petrograd two days before the October Revolution, which brought the Bolsheviks to power and which ought to tell you something: that Maugham’s intelligence antennae were very good. Not everyone managed to get out safely. Since then it’s anyone’s guess how much work he’s done for the British, but there’s no doubt that being an internationally famous author is always good cover for a lot of spying. China, Central America, even the United States-Maugham has always maintained a strong connection with his old pals in the British secret service. In many ways he was the ideal agent: He’s an extraordinarily perceptive man, not to mention naturally secretive. He even wrote a novel about spying called Ashenden . I’ll lend it to you if you like.”

“Yes, I’d like to read that.”

She went to the shelves and quickly found me a copy.

Feeling the heat, I took off my jacket and hung it on the back of the door to one of the bathrooms. “I’m impressed,” I said. “At how much you know about him.”

“That’s my job. Tell me, these people from the Foreign Office. Did he say who they are?”

“He mentioned two names. Someone called Sir John Sinclair.”

“Never heard of him.”

“And a man named Blunt. Anthony Blunt.”

“Now, him I’ve heard of. He works for the Queen.”

“Yes, but which one? There are so many queens in this story. I get confused which one’s which.”

She smiled and put her arms around my neck. In the lamplight her brown hair wreathed her face like a lion’s mane. I pushed some of it aside as if it had been a curtain, kissed her tenderly, and pushed my hand between her legs. Gentlemen prefer blondes, alleged a recent movie I’d seen; it was just as well I was no gentleman. She gasped a little and pressed down on my hand. Outside the wild pigs had come back. I could hear them snorting in the trees as they snouted around blindly in the dirt. At least I thought they were the wild pigs; in retrospect they must have been my brain cells.

Under a salmon-pink sky the following evening, Somerset Maugham, Robin, Alan Searle, and I waited for the old man’s chauffeur to fetch the British from their hotel on the Cap. A cold buffet dinner had been prepared and was being laid out on the terrace by the cook, Annette, while the four of us were in the drawing room with cocktails and cigarettes. The Grundig tape recorder remained on the refectory table, ready for action. The atmosphere was tense and expectant and, as usual, more malevolent and cattish than the chorus line in an old Weimar cabaret.

“Look at that sky,” said Robin. “It’s Leander pink, isn’t it?”

“More Garrick Club pink, I’d say,” remarked his uncle. “Not that you’d know the difference, dear.”

“I’ve never been to the Garrick Club,” said Alan. “Willie’s never taken me. Although he is a member.”

“You’re much too young for the Garrick, love,” said Maugham. “You’re not allowed through the door until there is a significant amount of hair growing out of your ears and nostrils. In fact, it’s a condition of membership.”

“Then you ought to be the club secretary,” said Alan.

Maugham turned in his chair to address Annette. “Make sure we use the Victorian champagne glasses,” he instructed her. “One of these men who are coming tonight is a knight of the realm.”

“Oh? Who?” asked Alan. “Who are these people, Willie?”

“Sir John Sinclair and a chap called Patrick Reilly,” said Maugham. “Sinclair’s the current director of MI6 and Reilly’s a Foreign Office mandarin. I believe he used to be chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee. The people who oversee MI5 and MI6. They’re going to make sure I’m not about to buy a pig in a poke and, hopefully, underwrite my purchase.”

“So why if they’re so damned important are they staying at the Belle Aurore?” asked Robin.

“Because it’s a lot cheaper than the Grand or La Voile d’Or,” said Maugham.

“Why aren’t they staying here at the villa? It’s not like there isn’t plenty of room.”

“They’ve brought some thugs from Special Branch with them. Just in case this is all some sneaky Russian plot to kidnap two of our top spooks. But as usual, Her Majesty’s Government is also being tight with money. Besides, Sinbad will much prefer staying at the Aurore. It’s rather more modest and low-key than those other hotels.”

“Who’s Sinbad?” asked Robin.

“Before he was director of MI6, Sir John Sinclair was a major general in Royal Artillery,” said Maugham. “But prior to that he went to Dartmouth Naval College and for two years he was a midshipman in the Royal Navy. Sinbad the sailor. And that’s how I know him. He served with the Murmansk force in northern Russia and for a while, in a small way, was one of my field agents.”

“I don’t even know where the Belle Aurore is,” Searle said peevishly.

“It’s on Avenue Denis Semeria,” I explained. “Just down from the Villa Ephrussi.”

“I say, listen to the hotel concierge,” said Robin.