Spy Story Read Free Page B

no attempt to lower his voice. He nodded impassively at the two customers by the window. They were looking at large-scale walker’s maps, measuring distances with a tiny wheeled instrument that they rolled along the footpaths.
    â€˜Travellers, walkers and spies,’ said Frazer. The wind banged on the tiny window panes.
    â€˜Ahh, spies,’ said the landlord. He came as near as I’d ever seen him to laughing: the two men in the window seat looked like some inept casting director’s idea of Russian spies. They had black overcoats and dark tweed hats. Both wore coloured silk scarves knotted at their throats and one man had a closely trimmed grizzled beard.
    â€˜We’ll have the other half, Landlord,’ said Ferdy.
    With infinite care the landlord drew three more pints of his special. In the silence I heard one of the other men say, ‘In our own good time.’ His voice was soft but his accent had the hard spiky consonants of the English Midlands. In the context of our remarks the sentence hung in the air like the peaty smoke from the fireplace. What in their own good time, I wondered.
    â€˜Well, what’s been happening out here in the real world?’ said Ferdy.
    â€˜Nothing much,’ said Frazer. ‘Looks like the German reunification talks are going ahead, the papers are full of it. Another car workers’ strike. The Arabs put a bomb in the Tokyo Stock Exchange but it was defused, and Aeroflot has started running its own jumbos into New York.’
    â€˜We get all the big news,’ said Ferdy. ‘And American home-town stuff. I could tell you more about the climate, local politics and football scores of the American heartland than any other Englishman you could find. Do you know that a woman in Portland, Maine, has given birth to sextuplets?’
    It had begun to snow. Frazer looked at his watch. ‘We mustn’t miss the plane,’ he said.
    â€˜There’s time for one from this man’s stone bottle,’ said Ferdy.
    â€˜The stone bottle?’ said MacGregor.
    â€˜Come along, you hairy bastard,’ said Ferdy. ‘You know what I’m talking about.’
    MacGregor’s face was unchanging. It would have been easy to believe him deeply offended, but Ferdy knew him better than that. Without taking his eyes from Ferdy, MacGregor took a packet of Rothmans from his pocket. He lit one and tossed the packet on to the counter.
    MacGregor went into his back parlour and reappeared with a jar from which he poured a generous measure. ‘You’ve a good palate – for a Sassenach.’
    â€˜No one would want the factory stuff after this, Mac,’ said Ferdy. MacGregor and Frazer exchanged glances.
    â€˜Aye, I get my hands on a little of the real thing now and again.’
    â€˜Come along, MacGregor,’ said Ferdy. ‘You’re among friends. You think we haven’t smelled the barley and the peat fire?’
    MacGregor gave a ghost of a smile but would admit to nothing. Ferdy took his malt whisky and tasted it with care and concentration.
    â€˜The same?’ asked MacGregor.
    â€˜It’s improved,’ said Ferdy.
    Frazer came away from the fireplace and took his seat at the counter. MacGregor moved the malt whisky towards him. ‘It will help you endure the cruel blows of the west wind,’ he said.
    So he must have rationalized many such drinks up here on the bare slopes of the Grampians’ very end. A desolate place: in summer the heather grew bright with flowers, and so tall that a hill walker needed a long blade to clear a lane through it. I turned an inch or two. The strangers in the corner no longer spoke together. Their faces were turned to watch the snow falling but I had a feeling that they were watching us.
    MacGregor took three more thimble-sized glasses, and, with more care than was necessary, filled each to the brim. While we watched him I saw Frazer reach out for the packet of cigarettes that