rate. This Parkins fellow has been sitting on it for months, apparently. As soon as we learned of it-"
"You tried to get Reggie Panicker to steal it for you, and sell it to this Mr. Black, who, I suppose, is in your employ."
"Not to my knowledge," the man from London said, and in his tone was the polite suggestion that the ambit of this knowledge well sufficed any purpose of the old man's. "And you're wrong about the Panicker lad. We had nothing to do with that."
"And you don't care who killed your Mr. Shane."
"Oh, we care. Yes, indeed. Shane was a fine man. A skilled operative. His death is most disturbing, not least for its clear implication that someone was sent to retrieve this bird." He did not seem to feel it necessary to suggest who this someone might have been sent by. "He may be lying low in the surrounding countryside. He may be a sleeper, someone who's been here living and working in the village since long before the war began. Or he may be halfway across the North Sea at this moment, on his way home."
"Or he may be in his study in the vicarage, hard at work on a sermon for this Sunday. A sermon whose text is taken from the second chapter of Hosea, verses one through three."
"Perhaps," the man from London said with a dry cough that he seemed to intend to serve as proxy for an actual laugh. "Your young friend the inspector is onto the father now."
"Yes, he would be."
"But that seems unlikely. Chap grows roses, doesn't he?"
"A bitter, disappointed, and jealous man kills the man he believes to be his wife's lover, this you consider to be unlikely. A murderous Nazi spy with orders to abduct a parrot, on the other hand-"
"Yes, well." The colonel peered into the empty glass of whisky, cheeks coloring as if with chagrin. "It's just that, given the opportunity, we would do the same thing, wouldn't we?" Some inward slackening of the cords seemed to have taken place in the colonel, but the old man doubted that the fault lay in a dusty glass of scotch. He had known the flower of British intelligence, from the days of the Great Game through the first echoes of the guns of Mons. In the end their trade boiled down to purest mirror work: inversions and reflections, echoes. And there was always something dispiriting about the things one saw in a looking glass. "If they had a parrot stuffed to the wingtips with our naval cipher, we would certainly make every effort to get it back." The colonel looked up at the old man with a smile that mocked himself and the ministry that employed him. "Or see it roasted on a spit."
He rose from the very hard chair with a cracking of the timbers of his soldierly frame. Then with a last longing look at the bottle of scotch, he went to the door.
"This is a war we are trying extremely hard not to lose," he said. "A learned parrot would be far from the most preposterous thing for it to hinge upon."
"I have promised to find Bruno," the old man said. "And so I shall."
"Should you manage the trick," the colonel said. A long shaft of the summer afternoon reached into the house as he opened the door. The old man could hear the chant of the bees in their cities. The light itself was the color of honey. In the dooryard the driver awoke from his drowse, and the engine of the saloon car rumbled to life. "Thanks of a grateful nation and so forth."
"I shall return him to the boy."
This came out more petulant than the old man would have liked, reedy and cracked, and he regretted having said it. It could not be regarded by his visitor even as the hollow bravado of an old codger.
The man from London frowned, and let out a sigh that might have been embittered or admiring. Then the colonel shook his head once, firmly, in a way that was ordinarily, the old man imagined, sufficient to any nullifying purpose that might arise in the course of a day's work. The colonel took out a scrap of paper and the chewed blue stub of a pencil. He scrawled a number on the back of the scrap and then neatly poked it into
"You tried to get Reggie Panicker to steal it for you, and sell it to this Mr. Black, who, I suppose, is in your employ."
"Not to my knowledge," the man from London said, and in his tone was the polite suggestion that the ambit of this knowledge well sufficed any purpose of the old man's. "And you're wrong about the Panicker lad. We had nothing to do with that."
"And you don't care who killed your Mr. Shane."
"Oh, we care. Yes, indeed. Shane was a fine man. A skilled operative. His death is most disturbing, not least for its clear implication that someone was sent to retrieve this bird." He did not seem to feel it necessary to suggest who this someone might have been sent by. "He may be lying low in the surrounding countryside. He may be a sleeper, someone who's been here living and working in the village since long before the war began. Or he may be halfway across the North Sea at this moment, on his way home."
"Or he may be in his study in the vicarage, hard at work on a sermon for this Sunday. A sermon whose text is taken from the second chapter of Hosea, verses one through three."
"Perhaps," the man from London said with a dry cough that he seemed to intend to serve as proxy for an actual laugh. "Your young friend the inspector is onto the father now."
"Yes, he would be."
"But that seems unlikely. Chap grows roses, doesn't he?"
"A bitter, disappointed, and jealous man kills the man he believes to be his wife's lover, this you consider to be unlikely. A murderous Nazi spy with orders to abduct a parrot, on the other hand-"
"Yes, well." The colonel peered into the empty glass of whisky, cheeks coloring as if with chagrin. "It's just that, given the opportunity, we would do the same thing, wouldn't we?" Some inward slackening of the cords seemed to have taken place in the colonel, but the old man doubted that the fault lay in a dusty glass of scotch. He had known the flower of British intelligence, from the days of the Great Game through the first echoes of the guns of Mons. In the end their trade boiled down to purest mirror work: inversions and reflections, echoes. And there was always something dispiriting about the things one saw in a looking glass. "If they had a parrot stuffed to the wingtips with our naval cipher, we would certainly make every effort to get it back." The colonel looked up at the old man with a smile that mocked himself and the ministry that employed him. "Or see it roasted on a spit."
He rose from the very hard chair with a cracking of the timbers of his soldierly frame. Then with a last longing look at the bottle of scotch, he went to the door.
"This is a war we are trying extremely hard not to lose," he said. "A learned parrot would be far from the most preposterous thing for it to hinge upon."
"I have promised to find Bruno," the old man said. "And so I shall."
"Should you manage the trick," the colonel said. A long shaft of the summer afternoon reached into the house as he opened the door. The old man could hear the chant of the bees in their cities. The light itself was the color of honey. In the dooryard the driver awoke from his drowse, and the engine of the saloon car rumbled to life. "Thanks of a grateful nation and so forth."
"I shall return him to the boy."
This came out more petulant than the old man would have liked, reedy and cracked, and he regretted having said it. It could not be regarded by his visitor even as the hollow bravado of an old codger.
The man from London frowned, and let out a sigh that might have been embittered or admiring. Then the colonel shook his head once, firmly, in a way that was ordinarily, the old man imagined, sufficient to any nullifying purpose that might arise in the course of a day's work. The colonel took out a scrap of paper and the chewed blue stub of a pencil. He scrawled a number on the back of the scrap and then neatly poked it into
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