Declare

He hung well back past the western curbing of the square, by the sawed-off tree stumps on the south side of the Charlottenburg Chaussee, but he was able to see red-striped wooden barricades around the patch of wet cement that now covered the shell-crater in the pavement; and he surreptitiously made sketches from several vantage points, indicating the locations of landmarks, so that Theodora would know precisely where the anchor stone had been installed.

Of course the truck, with its flat tires and crushed roof, had been towed away during the night, and from this southern position Hale could see no evidence of lumber-or bones-up at the north end of the broad square, where he remembered the boat overturning. His head throbbed with a mild hangover as he panted in the cool morning air, and he was already beginning to wonder how much of what he seemed to recall could really, literally, have happened.

In a rubble-strewn alley he dropped the Walther pistol down the well of a broken drainage pipe-and then there was no reason to linger. During the walk southwest to the SHAEF U.S. Sector Headquarters, past gutted houses and curbside cooking fires and old women loading broken masonry into wagons, he tried to decide what report he would make to Theodora.

He reclaimed the Renault from the American lot and finally used some of his German marks to refill the petrol tank, and then he drove carefully back down the southwest segment of highway, past a brief view of green woods and the broad sunlit lakes of the Havel River, to the U.S. Sector gates and the Russian checkpoint at the outskirts of Berlin. In the Russian guard shack a taciturn Soviet soldier checked the Conway name and passport number against a posted list, then sighed and stamped the travel order. Hale got back into the idling car and drove on, out of Berlin.

Soviet military lorries passed him in both directions during the two-hour drive west, but he resisted the surprisingly strong impulse to race out of the Russian territory; and before slowing for the final checkpoint at the Helmstedt border crossing, he wiped the sweat from his face and managed to breathe deeply and slowly. A number of German diesel lorries were halted on the shoulder so that the loads could be checked, but when the checkpoint guard looked at Hale's stamped travel order, he simply waved, and the barrier was lifted.

Hale drove through, into the British Zone of conquered Germany. Abandoned brick warehouses fronted the street, and on the nearest curb stood a figure in an overcoat and a homburg hat-Hale recognized Theodora even as the figure began waving. Hale pulled over, and Theodora opened the door and climbed in, setting his hat on his lap.

"Don't talk," the gray-haired man told him shortly, "the Americans probably miked the car. Just drive straight ahead here."

Hale nodded and let out the clutch; and when the road had led them past the last outlying farmhouses of Helmstedt to shaggy green fields, Theodora said, "This will do. Pull over to the shoulder here. I'm not flying back with you, and I might not see you again in London. You'll give me your report now."

Hale nodded and steered the car onto the muddy shoulder, and when it had squeaked to a halt he rocked the shift lever into neutral and set the hand brake, and then clanked open the driver's-side door.

Theodora leaned forward, frowning. "I hope the report will be lengthy enough," he said, "to make it worthwhile turning off the damned engine."

"Oh, yes, sir, of course," said Hale, reaching back to switch off the ignition. In the sudden silence he swung his legs out of the car and straightened up; blinking over the car's roof before Theodora unfolded himself from the passenger seat, Hale looked out across what he now recognized as wheat fields. No farmer was visible, and Hale wondered if there were still working tractors here.

When Theodora had stood up straight and replaced his hat, he strode west along the shoulder, his hands clasped behind the tails of his coat and his head down to be sure of keeping his shoes out of puddles. Hale trudged along after him.

When they had walked a hundred feet away from the Renault, Theodora turned around and fixed Hale with a chilly stare. "Well?"

"The stone is buried under fresh cement, sir," said Hale, "about two hundred feet from the Brandenburg Gate on the western side, pretty much centered. I've done drawings," he added, reaching into his pocket for the diagrams he had made that morning, "indicating the exact position-I can amplify them to make them more precise, now."

Theodora took the papers and glanced at them. "Good, I think this is clear." Again he turned his cold eyes on Hale. "Go on. Tell me every detail."

Hale began easily by telling him about his visit with the American Flannery and hearing that Kim Philby was in Berlin; then he recounted the pursuit of the fugitive from the Soviet Sector, and told Theodora how the man had seemed to be herded to the spot where the stone would soon be buried, and how the fugitive had been killed there. Hale became aware of a reluctance when he came to describing meeting Elena and Cassagnac at the restaurant by the Reichstag, and Philby's intrusion and odd behavior with the insecticide. And when his narrative got to the point when he had stood up from the table to go get food, he abandoned the story he had concocted on the drive west to Helmstedt and just stopped talking.

"Food," said Theodora impatiently, "right. Did you get some bloody food, or what?"

"No, sir, not then." Hale felt dizzy, and he didn't even know whether he hoped he was ending his SIS career here, or not. At last, slowly and deliberately, he went on: "There was a radio playing in the restaurant, and the music it had been playing was interrupted by-by an interference which I had learned in Paris meant-supernatural-attention-being paid." He was sweating again, and he discovered that it was no easier going on with this than it had been starting. "Magic, that is, sir," he said, feeling as if the words were coins he had tried to smuggle out, surrendered now as he pushed them out past his lips. "I think I should amplify the report I made to you concerning my three months in occupied Paris in '41," he added, "by the way."

Theodora exhaled, and Hale wondered how long the man had been holding his breath. "Good lad. Good lad. So many promising agents manage to convince even themselves that they didn't see what they saw-but go on. And don't tell me, in tones of apology, that 'It gets more weird'-I do know that."

"Right. Well..." Hale ground out the story of the rest of the night, omitting only the gallows-marriage on the boat and going to bed with Elena-in this version of the story, he and Elena had parted outside the restaurant.

The sun was high when at last, with relief, he described ditching the gun and driving back up the hole to the Helmstedt checkpoint.

Theodora strode away across the mud, careless now of his shoes. He was nodding, and after a few paces he turned around again to face Hale. "Good. I did want to know where the stone was put, and I'm glad to learn of Philby's participation-oh, he was there about the stone too, lad, don't doubt it-and I think I'm alarmed at how aware the French DGSS is-but this was a test, too, to find out if you're worth all the years and money we've expended on you. Happily, you are. And I trust you are discreet with your little Spanish judy, no secrets revealed over the pillow. Eunuchs for agents would be best, I sometimes think. Impossible to get it past the Foreign Secretary, of course. Your work will be-of a different nature, now that you're an initiate. You've learned all you can from the old files, I expect, and it's time to put you in the field. When you get back to Broadway, you'll be sent to Fort Monkton for a six-week training course in the paramilitary arts, and then you'll be posted to the Middle East, Kuwait probably, under the cover of the Combined Research Planning Office, known jocularly as Creepo."

"The Middle East," said Hale thoughtfully. He had been hungry all morning, but now he felt distinctly nauseated; and he knew that it was fear that had quickened his heartbeat-but this was the next step farther in, on the way to learning the very deepest secrets of the world, of the most powerful and most hidden world. He flexed his right hand, remembering how the whirlwind had bowed in the rain when he had waved the ankh...

Theodora nodded. "Not totally a surprise, I daresay. Before you go, I will acquaint you with the big picture, the biggest picture-and then, finally, indoctrinate you for clearance to what we have called Operation Declare."

BOOK TWO. Know, Not Think It

Beirut, 1963

And the two of them, laying him east and west, that the mysterious earth currents which thrill the clay of our bodies might help and not hinder, took him to pieces all one long afternoon-bone by bone, muscle by muscle, ligament by ligament, and lastly, nerve by nerve.

-  Rudyard Kipling, Kim

Chapter Eleven

Kim Philby sat back in his chair by the window-side table in the Normandy Hotel bar, and he licked his lips, tasting her lipstick. The woman on the other side of the table simply stared at him for a moment, then took a long inhalation on her cigarette. Out beyond the window glass the late afternoon sky was gold over the purple sea.