him back. ‘That’s my manuscript. Sent to me by my author. For my consideration in my good time. You have no right to steal it, read it or keep it. So give me the book and go home to your squalid island.’ He flung out an arm at Bob. ‘And take your Boston Brahmin with you.’
‘ Our island,’ Clive reminded him. ‘The book, as you call it, is not a book at all and neither you nor we have any right to it,’ he continued frigidly and untruthfully. ‘I’m not interested in your precious publishing ethics. Nobody here is. All we know is, the manuscript in question contains military secrets about the Soviet Union that, assuming they are true, are vital to the defence of the West. To which hemisphere you also belong – I take it, thankfully. What would you do in our place? Ignore it? Throw it into the sea? Or try to find out how it came to be addressed to a derelict British publisher?’
‘He wants it published! By me! Not hidden in your vaults!’
‘Quite,’ said Clive with another glance at me.
‘The manuscript has been officially impounded and classified as top secret,’ I said. ‘It’s subject to the same restrictions as this meeting. But even more so.’ My old law tutor would have turned in his grave – not, I am afraid, for the first time. But it’s always wonderful what a lawyer can achieve when nobody knows the law.
One minute and fourteen seconds was how long the silence lasted on the tape. Ned timed it with his stopwatch when he got back to the Russia House. He had been waiting for it, even relishing it, but he still began to fear that he had hit one of those maddening faults that always seem to happen with recorders at the crucial moment. But when he listened harder he caught the grumble of a distant car and a scrap of girl’s laughter carrying to the window, because Barley by then had thrown the curtains open and was staring down into the square. For one minute and fourteen seconds, then, we watched Barley’s strangely articulate back silhouetted against the Lisbon night. Then comes a most frightful crash like the shattering of several window panes at once, followed by an oil gush, and you would suppose that Barley had staged his long-delayed breakout, taking the ornamental Portuguese wall plates and curly flower vases with him. But the truth is, the whole rumpus is only the sound of Barley discovering the drinks table and dumping three cubes of ice into a crystal tumbler and pouring a decent measure of Scotch over them, all within a couple of inches’ range of a microphone that Brock with his characteristic over-production had concealed in one of the richly carved compartments.
4
He had made a base camp at his own end of the room on a stiff school chair as far away from us as he could get. He perched on it sideways to us, stooped over his whisky glass, which he held in both hands, peering into it like a great thinker or at least a lonely one. He spoke not to us but to himself, emphatically and scathingly, not stirring except to take a sip from his glass or duck his head in affirmation of some private and usually abstracted point of narrative. He spoke in the mixture of pedantry and disbelief that people use to reconstruct a disastrous episode, such as a death or a traffic accident. So I was here and you were there and the other chap came from over there .
‘It was last Moscow book fair. The Sunday. Not the Sunday before, the Sunday after,’ he said.
‘September,’ Ned suggested, at which Barley rolled his head around and muttered ‘Thanks,’ as if genuinely grateful to be prodded. Then he wrinkled his nose and fussed his spectacles and began again.
‘We were knackered,’ he said. ‘Most of the exhibitors had got out on the Friday. It was only a bunch of us who hung around. Those who had contracts to tidy up, or no particular reason to get back in a hurry.’
He was a compelling man and he had centre stage. It was difficult not to attach to him a little, stuck out there on
‘ Our island,’ Clive reminded him. ‘The book, as you call it, is not a book at all and neither you nor we have any right to it,’ he continued frigidly and untruthfully. ‘I’m not interested in your precious publishing ethics. Nobody here is. All we know is, the manuscript in question contains military secrets about the Soviet Union that, assuming they are true, are vital to the defence of the West. To which hemisphere you also belong – I take it, thankfully. What would you do in our place? Ignore it? Throw it into the sea? Or try to find out how it came to be addressed to a derelict British publisher?’
‘He wants it published! By me! Not hidden in your vaults!’
‘Quite,’ said Clive with another glance at me.
‘The manuscript has been officially impounded and classified as top secret,’ I said. ‘It’s subject to the same restrictions as this meeting. But even more so.’ My old law tutor would have turned in his grave – not, I am afraid, for the first time. But it’s always wonderful what a lawyer can achieve when nobody knows the law.
One minute and fourteen seconds was how long the silence lasted on the tape. Ned timed it with his stopwatch when he got back to the Russia House. He had been waiting for it, even relishing it, but he still began to fear that he had hit one of those maddening faults that always seem to happen with recorders at the crucial moment. But when he listened harder he caught the grumble of a distant car and a scrap of girl’s laughter carrying to the window, because Barley by then had thrown the curtains open and was staring down into the square. For one minute and fourteen seconds, then, we watched Barley’s strangely articulate back silhouetted against the Lisbon night. Then comes a most frightful crash like the shattering of several window panes at once, followed by an oil gush, and you would suppose that Barley had staged his long-delayed breakout, taking the ornamental Portuguese wall plates and curly flower vases with him. But the truth is, the whole rumpus is only the sound of Barley discovering the drinks table and dumping three cubes of ice into a crystal tumbler and pouring a decent measure of Scotch over them, all within a couple of inches’ range of a microphone that Brock with his characteristic over-production had concealed in one of the richly carved compartments.
4
He had made a base camp at his own end of the room on a stiff school chair as far away from us as he could get. He perched on it sideways to us, stooped over his whisky glass, which he held in both hands, peering into it like a great thinker or at least a lonely one. He spoke not to us but to himself, emphatically and scathingly, not stirring except to take a sip from his glass or duck his head in affirmation of some private and usually abstracted point of narrative. He spoke in the mixture of pedantry and disbelief that people use to reconstruct a disastrous episode, such as a death or a traffic accident. So I was here and you were there and the other chap came from over there .
‘It was last Moscow book fair. The Sunday. Not the Sunday before, the Sunday after,’ he said.
‘September,’ Ned suggested, at which Barley rolled his head around and muttered ‘Thanks,’ as if genuinely grateful to be prodded. Then he wrinkled his nose and fussed his spectacles and began again.
‘We were knackered,’ he said. ‘Most of the exhibitors had got out on the Friday. It was only a bunch of us who hung around. Those who had contracts to tidy up, or no particular reason to get back in a hurry.’
He was a compelling man and he had centre stage. It was difficult not to attach to him a little, stuck out there on
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