A Perfect Spy

Jack is told to extract a “voluntary but formal” (89) statement from Mary. She tells him about the family holiday on Lesbos. In her recollection, Pym led the family with excitement to a villa on the Greek island, while Mary felt herself bristling with negative feelings, viewing herself as a “traitor.” They traveled under the name Pembroke, though Pym was reluctant to tell Tom about this secret identity. Pym had proposed the long trip as an opportunity to “live life for a change instead of acting it” (93). Mary remembers that he was frustrated by a recent intelligence sharing operation set up between the British and American governments that he believed would never work. However, Jack reveals that the Americans “objected” to Pym’s involvement, just as they did to his presence in Washington earlier. Disliking Americans, Jack refused to remove Pym from the operation, which was shaping up as one of the most comprehensive intelligence sharing schemes in postwar history. Jack says that he ordered Pym to take an extended family holiday, resulting in the Lesbos trip.

Mary returns to telling the story of the trip to Greece. First, they stayed on the Greek island of Corfu with her Aunt Tab, and Pym seemed “closer to Tom than he had ever been” (95). Eventually, however, Pym decided that Corfu was “too damn idyllic” (96) to facilitate his writing ambitions. After they left the island, Tom revealed that Pym’s announcement was preceded by his meeting a mysterious man at a cricket match. Mary became frustrated when Pym refused to discuss the man with her. In Athens, Tom became sick, and Pym stayed in to write for almost a week before he began making unexplained trips outside the hotel. One night, he didn’t return to the hotel, and two days later, Mary found him drunk in a tavern. When she caught him in a lie, Pym told an elaborate story about a former Czechoslovakian agent (with whom he worked in the past) accosting him on the street. Mary accepted his story, but in the ensuing days, as Tom prepared to return to England for school, she quietly resented her husband. They planned to remain in Lesbos without Tom. At the airport, Tom spotted two men who were also in Corfu. They were associated with the mystery man and were “watching” Pym. After Tom left, Mary waited until her husband took one of his mysterious walks and inspected his private office. She felt “strong” as she looked through the sparse furniture, treasured books, and photographs from Pym’s first marriage to a woman named Belinda, and she was careful to place everything back exactly where she found it. In addition, Mary read Pym’s writing. The notes seemed scattered and paranoid—and were addressed to a woman named Poppy. Feeling increasingly overwhelmed, she saw that Pym’s writing focused on the idea of “betrayal.” However, she explains to Jack, Pym appeared in the office doorway and caught her reading his work. He had a telegram with him from Jack, telling them to return to Vienna. Fergus interrupted to tell Jack that the “Station burnbox is missing from the strongroom” (107). Jack prepared to leave and distractedly explained to Mary that a burnbox was a security device that stored important documents. At the push of a button, the burnbox could set fire to everything inside, rendering the documents unreadable. The stolen burnbox contained the real names and false identities of spies. Mary was told to stay at home with Fergus and Georgie—and ordered not to talk to anyone.

Pym walks through the “dark sea rain” (109) falling on the town. He thinks about his father “ghost” and Poppy, deciphering a coded message on a radio broadcast until he’s convinced that he’s reading a message from Poppy. After a conversation with Miss Dubber, he sits down to write to Tom again.

Pym describes reuniting with his father. During a summer between school terms, Rick was released from prison and ran schemes with Pym. In a conversation with one of his father’s friends, Pym discovered that Rick was operating an elaborate “bomb damage compensation” (115) fraud during the final days of World War II. In collaboration with a corrupt architect, he submitted false compensation claims for houses bombed during the war and then pocketed the money. Rick collected profits from this and other schemes, using his ill-gotten gains to pose as a colonel and then a knight. His dream was for Pym to study hard and eventually become “Lord Chief Justice” (116), though Pym secretly convened with left-wing academics and picked up on their socialist ideology. The father and son spent lavishly on expensive holidays, though Pym never completely understood the complexity of his father’s many schemes. One scheme even involved Rick selling his head to medical science after his death, and—at his funeral—Pym had to pay the claimant to go away.

Eventually, the corrupt architect became too bold and “selfish.” He overreached in one fraudulent compensation claim, and the whole scheme was exposed. During this time, Pym frequently heard the term Wentworth but couldn’t determine what it meant. Pym was sent back to boarding school, where he used his father’s techniques of endearment to excel in his teacher’s eyes. His obsequious attitude was relentless but began to pay dividends. He flirted unsuccessfully with his school friend’s sister and met a “plain girl named Belinda” (122) but resented his struggles to understand women. One day, Rick visited, and they met outside the school for a picnic. During their afternoon together, Rick suggested that Pym ask one of his school friends for somewhere to stay over the summer. Pym feigned excitement to disguise his worry that something was “amiss.” When the school staff asked about his parents, Pym lied. He insisted that he knew nothing about the apparent range of companies that listed him as a director. Pym was recommended for a fund that recruited young male students for the clergy, and the resident priest, Father Murgo, invited Pym to stay with him over the summer. Pym accepted, though he had “no intention” of becoming a priest.

A telegram from his father saved Pym from the summer with Murgo. The telegram demanded that he return home on a “MATTER OF VITAL NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL IMPORTANCE” (127). During this time, Pym wrote to his mother and received a response. She asked him to meet her at Euston station, but when Pym saw her there, she seemed old, distant, and unrecognizable. Instead, Pym went to see his father, who introduced Pym to his latest romantic interest, a “noble and heroic lady” (129), Baroness Rothschild. She told Pym a story about how her rich husband lost everything in the war, including his life. In an elaborate and increasingly unbelievable tale, she described the hidden location of her family’s final, untaken treasures. After she left, Rick explained that the baroness was their “last chance” (131). Rick was under surveillance by the police and wanted to perform one last great scheme to allow him to retire. Pym agreed to go to Switzerland, where he’d then travel to the Austrian border with the baroness. He’d use the last of Rick’s money to purchase the baroness’s treasures and bring them back to England, where Rick could sell them for a large profit. Pym went to Switzerland, where the baroness seduced him and stole most of the money.

In his room, Pym pauses his letter writing to examine documents that describe his father’s financial ruination. One document mentions the death in 1948 of John Reginald Wentworth after a long illness—and the arrest of the baroness and her accomplice. Pym makes diligent footnotes and attaches these documents to his letters. He thinks about Poppy.