Endings of any kind, though, remain distant for the moment. Behind their doors, behind their windows, the slow horses plough on with their tasks, and if the world wanders past them regardless, this can be counted as success. For spies, unlike books, can be judged by their covers, and this outward show of ordinary boredom is their saving grace; as long as it is maintained, these grunts of the intelligence service are ignorable and unlikely to come to serious harm. But any attempt to shake off anonymity will leave them at the mercy of those lurking on Spook Street’s borders—its scarecrows and hangmen—its hawks and its hoods—and such mercy is frequently withheld. This has happened before. There are only so many times it can happen again, but this is one of them.
It starts like this.
The sky was as blue as an egg, provided the egg was blue. The fields were as yellow as cars. The escarpment whose exit revealed the county spread out like, like, like—he wanted to say
It would be fair to say that River Cartwright was in an uplit mood.
He was heading to Oxford the same day the Brains Trust was convening there in the safe house, though he couldn’t know that at the time. Of more interest to him was the simple state of being alive, and taking in the associated pleasures. Breathing, for example. Breathing was not something he’d take for granted again, or that was how it felt most mornings, when he woke and found himself doing just that: drawing in air, expelling it, his lungs doing their job unassisted, in a room empty of equipment designed to cope with the possibility that they might not. Waking up next to Sid, too. His new life was full of good things; moments he’d never call miracles, because once you did that you were hostage to a belief system, but still: pretty good. He’d been dead, or next worst thing; had spent nine days in a coma. Sid had also been dead; dead to him, and to everyone else, for longer than seemed feasible—and now they were back, and sharing this new chapter together. It shouldn’t surprise anyone, least of all himself, that he had these passages of joy to contend with. Just so long as he kept them quiet.
Good things weren’t the whole story, of course. There was still the occasional convulsion to deal with, meaning make sure nobody noticed—as far as the world was concerned, he was one hundred per cent fit. “The world” meant Regent’s Park. It was just a matter of time, then, before the powers above—before Doctor Desk, the Park’s chief medical officer—passed him ready for the workplace. Whether anyone was ever really ready for Slough House was one for philosophers rather than medics, but even so, what mattered was his physical condition, and occasional convulsion aside, he was fit, he was ready. The rest was paperwork. And having done all he could to chivvy that along, he was just killing time until the documents were signed and stamped.
Which was why he was in the car this morning: because movement beat staying still; it whisked up time, sent it spinning faster. River was heading to Oxford, to discuss the matter of his grandfather’s library, and the book it had contained which had gone missing before turning out not to exist; a puzzle which would either yield to straightforward explanation or wouldn’t. It didn’t much matter either way. But addressing it would keep him busy, and deposit him that much nearer his own actual life, which this time round he would handle with wisdom and finesse, as befitted someone who’d been given a second chance. Slough House was for keeps: The slow horses had heard that so often they’d been beaten hopeless by the knowledge, and barely questioned it any more. But River knew what he was capable of, and while it was true he’d had troubles with Diana Taverner, she was far too canny an operator to deprive herself of a talented agent out of what, pique? They could have a sit-down, or a stand-up. A face-to-face. However it came about, he’d make it work. The sky was still blue; the fields shading to green. As he drove towards Oxford, still uplit, he might not have a song in his heart but he had a radio that worked, and was playing “Solsbury Hill.” That would do for now.
A low-slung waddling creature in a cherry-coloured waistcoat was leading a middle-aged couple along the Barbican terrace, pausing every few yards to catalogue recent canine activity, but there was no one else in sight. Way overhead, a sliding noise was a window opening, too high to be a worry, but she glanced upwards anyway because this was the world Diana Taverner moved in, requiring alertness to the possibility of someone watching, of records being kept. Never was the only right moment to drop your guard.
