Free Visibility by Boris Starling

information was he giving you?”
    “Again, it’s all in there. Party activities. New members. That kind of stuff.”
    Reports in de Vere Green’s fluid handwriting were attached in loose leaf. Herbert flicked through them. Rumors of a strike here and a demonstration there; a trade delegation looking for Moscow’s approval; a clandestine diatribe against the atom bomb. It all seemed pretty standard stuff.
    Too standard, in fact, to be dealt with by someone of de Vere Green’s seniority.
    “I like to keep my hand in, dear boy,” de Vere Greensaid in answer to Herbert’s unasked question. “It’s something I press for at every departmental meeting, in fact; almost every officer should maintain some contact with the grass roots.”
    The only time de Vere Green came into contact with grass roots, Herbert thought, was when he bent down to examine the carcass of a pheasant he had just blasted from the sky.
    Not to mention, of course, that the very qualities that had made Herbert a good follower—specifically, his invisibility—would have mitigated in every way against de Vere Green being a successful field agent. The Great Wall of China was less noticeable than he was.
    Unless—and this was in no way beyond Five—they let de Vere Green operate on the grounds that, since no one in their right mind could possibly believe de Vere Green a spy, that was conversely the best cover of all.
    “How many other informers do you handle?” Herbert asked.
    “Three.”
    “Can I see their files?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because they’re not relevant to this case.”
    “I think you should let me be the judge of that.”
    De Vere Green shook his head. “Dear boy, you should just concentrate on solving your own mystery, not anyone else’s.”
    Herbert felt the muscles in his cheeks tighten, as though he was using them to crack nuts. De Vere Green’s jaunty condescension could still bring his blood to the boil at double speed.
    Herbert exhaled through his nose and, with some effort, kept his voice calm. “How often did you and Stensness meet?”
    “That depended on how much material he had for me.”
    “On average?”
    De Vere Green made a moue. “Once a month. Once every three weeks, perhaps.”
    “Where did you meet?”
    “You remember your tradecraft, Smith.”
    The usual places for agent and handler to cross paths: parks, darkened alleys, the far corners of pubs, anywhere where they could cloak themselves in furtiveness.
    “Did you ever go to his house?”
    “Don’t be absurd.”
    “You weren’t friends, then?”
    “Friends?” De Vere Green gave the word a yard of clean air. “Lordy, no.”
    And there it was; take a man’s information, and despise him for it.
    “You never met any of his friends?”
    “Dear boy, these weren’t social occasions.”
    “His private life?”
    “Was private, I presume.”
    There was no mention of Stensness’ sexuality anywhere in his file.
    On one level, this was odd. Post-Burgess, Five considered homosexuality the very worst of the seven character defects, the others being profligacy, alcoholism, drug-taking, unreliability, dishonesty, and promiscuity.
    Red and pink, Herbert had been told during his Vetting days, red and pink; it was a short step from one to the other. Sodomy equaled heresy, and heresyequaled treachery; whether you were a commie or a bugger, or both, you had chosen to set yourself above society’s clear and unmistakable judgment, and if you could do that, you could do anything. You had lost all mental control. You might love the enemy.
    But equally Herbert knew another golden rule of Five: if ever a situation could be explained either by conspiracy or cock-up, the latter invariably won the day. Five’s image as the acme of domestic espionage services would have been laughable had it not been so tragically wide of the mark. Behind the masks of powerful, heroic crusaders were phalanxes of bumbling loafers.
    Five was a place where everyone seemed to