Declare

eleven in the morning.
    “My dear boy,” he said to Hale, who was sitting in a straight-backed wooden chair on the other side of the desk, “Special Branch can operate in Malaya and the Far East colonies—Singapore, Hong Kong—but not in Portugal. And,” he added, touching Hale’s St.-Simon passport on the desk, “they certainly don’t operate with phony passports in German-occupied countries. What sort of ‘investigation’ were you ‘assisting’ them with?” He sat back and grinned at Hale in irritable puzzlement. “Are you sure it was Special Branch?”
    Hale had finally been relayed to Johns by the Repatriation Office on the second floor, and he was afraid that the Embassy staff’s next step would be to turn him back out into the street. He wished Theodora had given him a place of conspiracy and a recognition signal, as the Razvedupr had. His only plan was to somehow get word of his situation to the solicitor Corliss in Cirencester, who would in turn surely contact Theodora.
    “I’ll tell you the truth.” His basic cover story was bound to come out soon anyway, so Hale took a deep breath and said, “I was arrested for espionage in London, in September, at a Communist Party meeting in King Street. I was released into the custody of Special Branch, and I eluded them and fled the country. Illegally.” He had hardly spoken a dozen words in English since the end of September, and he found that he had to think about his phrasing. “Since then I have been living in Paris. Now I want to go home and… face the music.”
    “I hope you’ll forgive me for assuming that you’ve been working these past three months as a Soviet spy. This passport says you’re an employee of Simex. It seems to me I’ve heard of Simex.” He leaned forward and said, clearly, “I am the passport control officer. At the British Embassy. Are you sure you don’t have anything to”—he paused, almost seeming embarrassed—“declare?”
    Hale realized that Johns must be the British Secret Intelligence Service representative in Lisbon, and that the man was inviting him to admit to working for SIS himself. But in Paris he had learned about hermetic, parallel networks, and he didn’t think Theodora would want him sharing any information here.
    “Just that Special Branch will want me shipped home.” He smiled wanly. “In shackles, I expect.”
    Johns nodded a number of times, then stood up from his desk and crossed the carpet to the tall window. For several moments he just stared down at the street. “Hitler could take Portugal, you know,” he said at last, “just by picking up the telephone. But I suppose the place has its value for Germany too, as a common ground between the occupied countries and the rest of the world. God knows every country in the world has spy networks here, all concentrated and distinct like… bacteria cultures on a petri dish, and the Germans probably do a fair job of infiltrating them, monitoring them.”
    He slouched back to his desk and sat down. “When I was a boy,” he said, not looking at Hale, “we had one of those Russian dolls that twist apart in the middle to reveal a smaller one inside, which also twists apart, and so on ad infinitum; it was years before we discovered that what we had thought was the last, smallest one could be opened too, and that there was one more tiny one inside it. Astonishment, uproar among all of us children… though probably there was still another to be discovered, several more, microscope required finally.” He sighed and stared at the ceiling. “There’s value in… duplication, in having another, having a more secret one inside the already secret one. You didn’t deny being a Soviet spy.”
    “I’m sorry, I thought denial went without saying. Surely no one admits to that here.”
    “Surely not. Who is Delphine St.-Simon?”
    Hale exhaled so abruptly that it was a grunt. “Have you— detained her?” he asked with sudden hope. Perhaps the Air France clerk had been wrong in saying that she had caught the earlier flight.
    Johns’s right eyebrow was arched. “No, she was off to Istanbul before we even registered that she had arrived, and we didn’t attach any importance to her anyway until you showed up downstairs this morning. So who is she?”
    Hale slumped in his chair. “I don’t know. I suppose St.-Simon is a common name.”
    Johns was nodding again, though suddenly he seemed very tired. “Your case is, marginally, interesting enough