Spy hook: a novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

thinks,’ said the Deputy. He had a slim gold pencil in his hand. He was leaning back in his chair, arm extended to his notepad. He looked up from whatever he was writing, stared at me and smiled encouragement. “We’ll have to let it go,” I said finally.
    “Speak up,” said the Deputy in his housemaster voice. I cleared my throat. “There’s nothing we can do,’ I said rather louder. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
    They all turned to see the Deputy’s reaction. “I think that’s sound,” he said at last. Dicky Cruyer smiled with relief at someone else making the decision. Especially a decision to do nothing. He wriggled about and ran his hand back through his curly hair, looking round the room and nodding. Then he looked over to where a clerk was keeping an account of what was said, to be sure he was writing it down. Well I’d earned my wages for the day. I’d told them exactly what they wanted to hear. Now nothing would happen for a day or so, apart from a group of Polish workers having their fingernails torn out under hygienic conditions with a shorthand writer in attendance.
    There was a knock at the door and a tray with tea and biscuits arrived. Billingsly, perhaps because he was the youngest and least arthritic of us or because he wanted to impress the Deputy, distributed the cups and saucers and passed the milk and teapot along the polished table top.
    “Chocolate oatmeal!” said Harry Strang. I looked up at him and he winked. Harry knew what it was all about. Harry had spent enough time at the sharp end to know what I was thinking.
    Harry poured tea for me. I took it and drank some. It turned to acid in my stomach. The Deputy was leaning towards Billingsly to ask him something about the excessive’down time” the computers in the Yellow Submarine were suffering lately. Billingsly said that you had to expect some trouble with these (electronic toys”. The Deputy said not when you paid two million pounds for them you didn’t.
    “Biscuit?” said Harry Strang.
    “No thanks.”
    “You used to like chocolate oatmeal as I remember,” he said sardonically.
    I leaned over to see what the Deputy had written on his notepad but it was just a pattern: a hundred wobbly concentric circles with a big dot in the middle. No escape; no solution; no nothing. It was the answer he wanted to his question, I suppose, and I had given it to him. Ten marks out of ten, Samson. Advance to Go and collect two hundred pounds.
    It was only when the Deputy had finished his tea that protocol permitted even the busiest of us to take our leave. Just when the Deputy was moving towards the door, Morgan – the D-G’s most obsequious acolyte - came in flush-faced and complete with Melton overcoat carrying, like an altar candle, one of those short unfolding umbrellas. He said, in his singsong Welsh accent, “Sorry I’m late, sir. I had the most awful and unexpected trouble with the motorcar.” He bit his lip. Exertion and anxiety had made his face even paler than usual. The Deputy was annoyed but allowed no more than a trace of it to show. “We managed without you, Morgan,” he said. As the Deputy marched out Morgan looked at me with a deep hatred that he made no attempt to hide. Perhaps he thought his humiliation was all my fault or perhaps he blamed me for being there when it happened. Either way, if the Department ever needed someone to bury me Morgan would be an enthusiastic volunteer. Perhaps he was already working on it.
    I went downstairs, relieved to get out of that meeting even if it meant sitting in my cramped little office and trying to see over the top of the uncompleted paper-work. I stared at the cluttered table near the window, and more specifically at two boxes in beautiful Christmas wrappings, one marked “Billy” and the other “Sally”. They’d been delivered by the Harrods van together with the cards that said “With dearest love from Mummy” but not in Fiona’s handwriting. I should have