Hapgood (eBook)

Blair You’re blown, Joseph.

Kerner I love it. You blew it and I’m blown: well, I’ll be blowed. Nobody teaches that, you know. They teach you so you can almost read David Copperfield and then you find out David talks like a language student, he must have been put in as a sleeper.

Blair Well … you’re blowed, Joseph. Your career is over.

Kerner Except as a scientist, you mean.

Blair Yes, that’s what I mean.

Kerner My career as your man at the Pool.

Blair Or theirs. Just an observation. The meet at the pool came unstuck this morning. We have to consider you blown as our joe. The Russians must consider you blown as their sleeper. Either way your career is over. Which way, is perhaps an academic question.

Kerner And yet, here you are.

Blair One likes to know what’s what.

Kerner Oh, you think there’s a what’s-what? Your joe. Their sleeper. Paul, what’s-what is for zoologists: ‘Oh yes – definitely a giraffe.’ But a double agent is not what’s-what like a giraffe, a double agent is more like a trick of the light.

Blair Joseph –

Kerner Look. (He points.) Look at the edge of the shadow. It is straight like the edge of the wall that makes it. This means light is particles: little bullets. Bullets go straight. They cannot bend round the wall and hit you. If light was waves it would bend round the wall a little, like water bends round a stone in the river.

Blair (irritated) Yes. Absolutely.

Kerner So that’s what. When you shine light through a gap in the wall, it’s particles. Unfortunately, when you shine the light through two little gaps, side by side, you don’t get particle pattern like for bullets, you get wave pattern like for water. The two beams of light mix together and –

Blair Joseph. I want to know if you’re ours or theirs, that’s all.

Kerner I’m telling you but you’re not listening. Now we come to the exciting part. We will watch the bullets to see how they make waves. This is not difficult, the apparatus is simple. So we look carefully and we see the bullets, one at a time. Some go through one gap and some go through the other gap. No problem. Now we come to my favourite bit. The wave pattern has disappeared. It has become particle pattern again.

Blair (obliging) All right – why?

Kerner Because we looked. Every time we don’t look, we get wave pattern. Every time we look to see how we get wave pattern we get particle pattern. The act of observing determines what’s what.

Blair How?

Kerner Nobody knows. Somehow light is continuous and also discontinuous. The experimenter makes the choice. You get what you interrogate for. And you want to know if I’m a wave or a particle. Every month at the pool, I and my friend Georgi exchange material. When the experiment is over, you have a result. I am your joe. But they also have a result: because you have put in my briefcase enough information to keep me credible as a Russian sleeper activated by my KGB control; which is what Georgi thinks he is. So naturally he gives me enough information to keep me credible as a British joe. Frankly, I can’t remember which side I’m supposed to be working for, and it is not in fact necessary for me to know.

Blair It wasn’t Georgi today.

Kerner No?

Blair No, it was different today.

Kerner Today you decided to look. Why was that?

Blair Some of your research has turned up in Moscow. Real secrets, not briefcase stuff.

Kerner Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Blair That’s what the Americans said, roughly.

Kerner The one shaving.

Blair Mm. Ben Wates, CIA.

Kerner I’m sorry, Paul.

Blair (shrugs) Cousin-trouble is nothing new. This thing with you is trouble, though. Oh yes. If the Evil Empire has a tap into you, that’s quite another ballroom as Wates put it –

Kerner Ballgame. I think.

Blair I assure you it wasn’t. Ballpark. Anyway, Wates flies in and says, ‘I have come from Washington to help you. How about Kerner for a start? Do we know anything about Joseph Kerner?’ Well, we do as a matter of fact. He’s Russian from Kaliningrad. The Russians put him in as a sleeper years ago but we turned him round and now he’s really working for us, they only think he’s working for them.

Kerner What did he say?

Blair He said: you guys.

Kerner Poor Paul. What happened at the Pool?

Blair Wates wanted us to abort the meet and put you through the mangle. But Mrs Hapgood insisted you were straight. And she wanted to keep the channel open. She made Wates an offer. She duplicated the contents of your briefcase. So now we had everything twice, in two brief cases. Ridley showed up before you at the Pool –

Kerner What is a mangle?

Blair I’m trying to tell you what happened at the Pool.

Kerner You already did. Your Mr Ridley delivered to my Russian control and I delivered where Ridley put his towel. Quite nice. If I’m putting something extra in my briefcase, you get it all back.

Blair That sort of thing.

Kerner And was there something extra in my briefcase?

Blair No. There was something missing. The computer disc was there but the films were gone.

Kerner A puzzle.

Blair Now we come to the exciting part. Wates had booby-trapped your briefcase. He sprayed the inside with an aerosol can, like radioactive deodorant – did you ever hear of such a thing?

Kerner An isotope solution. If I open the briefcase I give a Geiger reading.

Blair Yes.

Kerner So, did I give a Geiger reading?

Blair No.

Kerner (pleased) Oh, good.

Blair We also had a bleep in your briefcase.

Kerner A bleep?

Blair A radio transmitter.

Kerner Oh – a bug.

Sorry. A bleep in my briefcase. Go on.

Blair Wates tracked the signal all the way to the meet. There the signal died. And the transmitter went missing from the briefcase, which nobody opened. The job was done by Mr Nobody.

Kerner Well I’m blown. Blow me for a monkey’s uncle. Can I say that?

Blair I would avoid it. Any thoughts, Joseph?

Kerner Mr Nobody put something extra in my briefcase. Then he found out my delivery was going to be intercepted. So he had to take it out again.

Blair But why remove our rolls of film? He’d only have to take out what he put in, and we’d be none the wiser.

Kerner Obviously because he put in a...