Declare

pursue separate scores, or as if the pianist himself had devoted one mind to following the notes perfectly and a second mind to catching every syllable of a backstage conversation.
    —sign the Official Secrets Act, for six hundred pounds a year, new bank notes in a blank envelope, no taxes—hurrah—and no pension either!—but I’m free to make pension arrangements with the service’s own Drummond’s in Admiralty Arch, am I? No, thank you, when I retire it will be to the place where nobody needs money.
    It was a voice in Hale’s head, but not his customary one. Even mentally, this one had a much more pronounced Oxbridge drawl, and it was deeper, older, than Hale’s. The challenge of following Elena’s tricky footsteps down the Rue le Regrattier fully occupied Hale’s own attention.
    —Iberian sub-section of Section V, exposing German agents by buying the passenger lists from Aero Portuguesa and Trafico Aero Español, and then matching the Enigma-traffic code names and itineraries to the passengers who consistently took the same flights that were specified in the traffic, Madrid to Barcelona, Madrid to Seville, and alerting Lisbon Station to them. Have to work from out here in the British countryside in St. Albans it’s true, War Station XB, nineteen miles north of London … The alien thoughts were accompanied by the warm, roofing-tar taste of Scotch whisky, and Hale felt drunk from the hallucinated fumes.
    He took several deep breaths of the chilly river air, mostly to establish to himself that he was still in Paris. The world was spinning and he clung desperately to the grip of the radio case, and he was afraid he would somehow lose Elena before they got to the river and were able to look into each other’s eyes again. “Elena!” he called unsteadily, without looking up from her heels. “Marry me.”
    — Marry me? mused the other voice in his head. Well, she’s taken my name by deed-poll, advertised it in the London Gazette. Still, with a child now, and more to come, I ought to do it properly, for them. I can think of nothing more rewarding than the sight of a row of descending heads at the breakfast table.
    Hale was uncomfortable with the other attention’s image. Children… ?A very personal duty, voluntarily undertaken…
    — volunteer for night duty in Broadway, drive down to London once or twice a month and get to read freshly deciphered telegrams from Heads of Station all over the world—stop in at 58 St. James’s Street to say hullo to the MI5 lads, give Dick White a peek at the latest Enigma-Ultra decrypts, in exchange for some gossip—but—
    The emotion that now smoked in Hale’s head was frustrated rage, and his sudden panting through clenched teeth threatened to interfere with his complicated pace.
    — am I even now in the Secret Service, the real one? The SIS Registry is right here in St. Albans, but the German incendiary bomb a year ago supposedly burned up all the old SIS files, all the way back to when the service was called MI-1C. Really? All of them? Even the microfilm copy? Or has a deeper or higher secret service used the bomb as a plausible pretext to spirit those files away to some more secret registry somewhere? How far in have I got to get, to know what Lawrence knew?
    The voice faded, and immediately Hale found its thoughts as hard to remember as the details of a dream, once one has awakened. Lawrence? Something about Drummond’s? He was relieved to see that the Seine embankment was only a few steps ahead of Elena, for he was sure that the clochard effect of their footsteps had ceased and that he could safely look up into the sky now if he cared to— and in fact Elena’s pace had subsided to a normal walk.
    How long have we been walking? he wondered as he finally allowed himself to breathe deeply. I asked her to marry me, at some point! Has she answered yet? Did I even speak the words out loud?
    He opened his mouth to say it again, but in that instant she stepped onto the grass between the riverside chestnut trees and turned around. The moon was behind her, just over her shoulder, and so her face was in darkness.
    “I am glad you ask,” she said, “because you need to understand that I am married to the Communist Party. The Soviet State is my husband, and I am a devoted, obedient wife. In Madrid I made my vows, after my deluded father and mother were killed by the fascists and my aunt Dolores took me in, and showed me the engine of human history, the real