The Private Life of Spies and the Exquisite Art of Getting Even: Stories of Espionage and Revenge

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.Copyright © 2023 by Alexander McCall SmithAll rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in hardcover in two volumes in Great Britain as The Exquisite Art of Getting Even by Polygon Books, an imprint of Birlinn Limited, Edinburgh, in 2022, and The Private Life of Shadows by Abacus, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, a Hachette U.K. company, London, in 2023.Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataName: McCall Smith, Alexander, [date] author.Title: The private life of spies ; and The exquisite art of getting even : stories / Alexander McCall Smith.Description: First American edition. | New York : Pantheon Books, 2023Identifiers: LCCN 2022052431 (print). LCCN 2022052432 (ebook).ISBN 9780593700693 (hardcover). ISBN 9780593700709 (ebook)Subjects: LCGFT: Spy fiction. Short stories.Classification: LCC PR6063.C326 P75 2023 (print) |LCC PR6063.C326 (ebook) | DDC 823/.914—dc23/eng/20221122LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022052431LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022052432Ebook ISBN 9780593700709www.pantheonbooks.comCover illustration by Iain McIntoshep_prh_6.1_143449146_c0_r0 ContentsTHE PRIVATE LIFE OF SPIESAuthor’s NoteNuns and Spies (England, 1943)Syphax and Omar (Algiers, 1924)Ferry Timetable (Scotland, 1984)Donald and Yevgeni (Shanghai, Moscow, Washington, 1934–1947)Filioque (Rome, 2022)THE EXQUISITE ART OF GETTING EVENSweet Vengeance: An IntroductionVengeance Is MineA Melbourne Story: An IntroductionThe Principles of SoapCavalleria Rusticana: An IntroductionMonty, Tiger, Rose, Etc.Dignity & Decency: An IntroductionOne, Two, Three_143449146_ THEPRIVATE LIFEOFSPIES Author’s NoteThese stories are part fiction and part non-fiction. In Nuns and Spies, one of the common legends of World War II—that German spies were dropped into England dressed as nuns—is explored. For further discussion of this widespread belief, see James Hayward, Myths and Legends of the Second World War. Donald and Yevgeni is based on the life of several historical characters, including Archie Clark Kerr, a British ambassador, and Donald Maclean, a British spy. There is a very informative biography of Clark Kerr: Donald Gillies, Radical Diplomat. This biography addresses the question of the unlikely Russian valet, Yevgeni Yost. For further details of the career of Donald Maclean, reference may be made to Roland Phillip’s excellent A Spy Called Orphan. Finally, on the Vatican Secret Service, see the exhaustive treatment of the topic in The Entity by Eric Frattini. There is an immense literature on the filioque controversy. The history of this remarkable issue is discussed in A. Edward Siecienski’s scholarly The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology). Nuns and Spies(ENGLAND, 1943)Conradin Muller was an unusual spy. He was recruited in Hamburg in June 1943, much against his will, and sent on his first, and only, mission in late September that year. He failed to send a single report back to Germany, and when the war came to an end in May 1945, he fell to his knees and wept with relief.“I never wanted any part of this,” he said to his friend, Sister Cecilia. “This whole awful, disastrous mess. Never.”She knew what he meant, and she believed him. “There, there,” she said, patting his wrist, as she often did when things became too much for him. “There, there, dear Conradin. All over now. The Lord works in mysterious ways—few can doubt that—but He usually achieves the results He wants. Of that, there can be no doubt whatsoever.”“I have much to thank the Lord for,” he said to Sister Cecilia. “For this place. For you and the others. For everything that happened to me. I am constantly grateful.”And he was. His gratitude, in fact, knew no bounds, and he reminded himself each morning of his great good fortune. He had been a spy in wartime, and had it not been for the kindness of Cecilia and all the other sisters he would have met the grim fate that such spies meet. He owed them his life. He owed them everything, in fact, and one day, he hoped, he might be able to repay them. They were kind English people, and he would not hear a word against the English. Not one word.Until that fateful day in 1943, Conradin had lived a blameless, if somewhat dull life. He was the only son of Gustav Muller, the owner of a small printing business, and his wife, Monika, a piano teacher and an invalid. Gustav was an alcoholic, and unreliable; Monika could walk, but could do so only with difficulty; she relied on Conradin to do the shopping and the housework. When not helping at home, Conradin, who was naturally gifted when it came to foreign languages, had a part-time job teaching English to science students at the university. He also taught occasional classes in Spanish and French, although English was his main subject. He had studied for three years at King’s College, London, before the war, and before returning to Germany had taught for two years at a boys’ boarding school in Devon, a place of bizarre traditions and minimum academic standards that went bankrupt when Conradin was on the staff. These five years in England meant that he felt perfectly confident in the language, a fact that unfortunately caught the attention of a local Abwehr colonel, whose brother-in-law was a professor of physics at the same university at which Conradin taught.On the outbreak of the war, of which the Muller family thoroughly disapproved, Conradin was thirty-eight years old. Men of that age were being taken for military service, and Conradin was interviewed by the local recruiting office. The interview, however, was conducted by a retired army officer whose wife was distantly related to Conradin’s mother. This relative had explained to her husband that Conradin was the most dutiful of sons and that if he were to be taken by the army, Gustav would be unable to look after Monika. Gustav’s own health was shaky—his drinking had eventually taken its toll—and he, like his wife, relied on