The Witches

THE GREATEST SPY IN THE WORLD

I was put into the rear seat of one of the police cars with a man sitting on either side of me, and off we went. There was one police car in front of us and two behind. We made quite a cavalcade. Nobody spoke to me during the journey, which took about three-quarters of an hour. But Bruno kept nudging against my chest with little nudges of encouragement. He wanted to let me know that he was still there, that he was with me and that everything was going just fine.

I recognized Downing Street as soon as we turned into it. The four cars pulled up outside Number Ten and I was told to get out. The two men who had been sitting beside me took hold of one arm each and marched me up to the front door and rang the bell. The door was opened and in we went. I was led upstairs into a sort of waiting room that had several beautiful oil paintings on the walls. They were all of ships at sea. I sat in the waiting room with the two men. Nobody spoke. We waited there for rather a long time.

Then in came a man in a black suit. ‘Hello,’ he said and he shook me by the hand. ‘I am the personal private secretary to the prime minister,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’ And to the two men in mackintoshes who were guarding me, he said, ‘I’ll take him now.’

‘Am I going to see the prime minister?’ I asked.

‘As a matter of fact you are,’ the man in the black suit said. He smiled at me. He seemed far more friendly and gentlemanly than all those policemen in plain clothes. He led me along several passages and through a number of large rooms, then he knocked at a huge polished wooden door.

‘Come in,’ said a voice, and in we went, right into the prime minister’s study.

Mr Ramsay MacDonald had a bristly moustache. He stood up as we entered, and he also shook my hand. ‘Well well well,’ he said, looking down at me from a great height. ‘So this is the fearsome spy who knows all the cabinet secrets.’ He had a strong Scottish accent, and when there was a letter ‘r’ in the word, he would roll it round his tongue with tremendous relish. ‘Sit ye down, young man. You may leave us alone now, Alastair.’

‘Well,’ he said when the man called Alastair had left the room and closed the door behind him, ‘how did ye do it?’

This was Bruno’s great moment. He popped his head up out of my breast pocket and said in a loud human grown-up voice, ‘He didn’t do it, Mr Prime Minister! I did it!’

The prime minister jumped at least six inches out of his chair and fell back again with a thud. He stared at the mouse. He ran his tongue slowly over his lips. ‘Say that again,’ he muttered.

‘I did it!’ Bruno said. I lifted Bruno out of my pocket and held him in my hands.

‘Can I believe my ears?’ the prime minister gasped. ‘Or is this some sort of a ventriloquist’s trick?’

‘It’s no trick, Mr Prime Minister,’ Bruno said. ‘I was under the table in the Cabinet Room all through your meeting this morning, and I heard everything that was said. It was easy.’

There followed a long explanation by Bruno and by me as to how Bruno had become a mouse in the first place. The prime minister was fascinated. ‘I have always believed in witches,’ he said, ‘but up to now I have never dared to admit it. So you got rid of the lot of them, did you? Well done you! That was a triumphant achievement! And now that The Grand High Witch has gone, the witches all over the world will gradually fade away. Is that not so?’

‘That’s exactly what grandmamma told us,’ I said.

‘Mr Prime Minister,’ Bruno said. ‘I expect you are wondering why we pulled that little job on you this morning.’

‘I am,’ he said. ‘I am indeed. Those were very great state secrets you got hold of, and spying is an exceedingly serious matter. I suppose you know that.’

‘We did it,’ Bruno said, ‘simply in order to show you how good we are at spying. We didn’t really want to know your secrets. Why should we? But we did want to show you how expert we are at collecting vital information, even from the most closely guarded places. The point is this, Mr Prime Minister: if we can do it to you, we can do it to anyone in the world.’

I saw the prime minister suddenly sitting up straighter in his chair. He was pretty quick on the uptake and already he was beginning to see what Bruno was driving at.

‘My friend and I,’ Bruno went on, ‘are willing to go to work exclusively and personally for you. If you wish to know what the Russians are saying in their most secret meetings, you have only to send us to Moscow and we will find out for you. Or you can send us to America. I myself can very easily get into the study of the president of the United States and sit quietly in a corner listening for many hours or even for days to what goes on. I can do the same in France or Germany or wherever you wish to send me. But I will not go without my friend. He is my helper and my keeper. The two of us are very close.’

The prime minister rubbed his cheek. He scratched his head. He chewed his moustache. The man didn’t quite know what to say. But in his heart of hearts he knew that Bruno had made him an offer he couldn’t possibly refuse. All countries use spies. But up until this moment, these spies had always been human beings. Human beings are large and clumsy and easily noticeable. Often they get caught and there follows a big ballyhoo. Equally often, they fail to come up with the goods. What’s more, no country had ever managed to put a spy right into the room where the absolute head of state was having his most secret meetings. Bruno could go unseen into places where no human could possibly hope to go.

The prime minister leaned back in his chair and studied the ceiling. He was smiling a little now. The idea of having a mouse-spy working personally for him seemed to be tickling his fancy rather a lot. Suddenly he sat up and banged his fist on the desk and shouted, ‘It’s a deal! You’ve got the job!’

‘That means he can’t possibly go back to school,’ Bruno said, nodding towards me.

‘Of course he can’t!’ the prime minister said. ‘He is engaged in vital and secret work for the prime minister. I presume you have parents, young man?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My father is in shipping.’

‘Then he will have to stop being in shipping,’ the prime minister said. ‘Both he and your mother will be employed by me personally to travel with you and your mouse friend wherever I may wish to send you.’

‘I don’t think my father would want to give up his job,’ I said.

‘He very soon will,’ the prime minister said, ‘after I have had a word with him. Off you go now. Tell your parents they will be hearing from me tomorrow morning. Talk to nobody about this. You will be dealing exclusively with me all the way along. Not another soul must know what we are up to. I don’t know how much money your father earns, but he is about to earn a great deal more.’ Then he looked at Bruno and said, ‘The British Government has never had a mouse on its payroll before. I don’t quite know how to deal with your particular salary.’

‘Please forget it, Mr Prime Minister,’ Bruno said. ‘What could I do with money?’

‘That’s very generous of you,’ the prime minister said. ‘I think you had now better disappear again into your young friend’s pocket. My secretary is about to come in.’ He pressed a bell on his desk. I popped Bruno back into my breast pocket. The personal private secretary opened the door.

‘Ah, Alastair,’ the prime minister said. ‘Please see that our visitor here is driven home to his parents.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Alastair said. ‘At once.’ I followed him out and was shown into the back seat of a very fine chauffeur-driven Daimler. It was brand new. It was black outside and the seats were made of real leather. There was a glass partition between me and the driver so that he couldn’t hear what was being said behind him.

‘We made it!’ Bruno whispered to me as we drove along. ‘No more school for you!’

‘It’s wonderful!’ I said. ‘You are a fantastic mouse!’

That, told in the shortest possible way, is how the Great Mouse Spy Operation started. It would take another book to tell you all about the fantastic adventures Bruno and I and my parents had over the next five years, and I am not going to do that here.

We went all over the world, to Paris, to Berlin, to Moscow, to Rome, to Madrid, to Washington, USA, to Delhi, to Tokyo and goodness knows where else besides. Bruno was tremendously successful. The prime minister kept telling us how well we were doing every time we went back to see him. My job was always the same, simply to get Bruno as near as possible to the Kremlin entrance or the White House gates or wherever it was he had to go. Nobody ever suspected me. I was just a small boy wandering about and looking at the sights. It was enormous fun.

For five years this went on, and during the whole of that time I never went to school once. But for six days a week I had lessons either with my mother or with Bruno, always in the hotel where we happened to be staying at the time, and I think I learnt more in that way than I would ever have learnt in a crowded classroom at school.

After five years, when Bruno was thirteen, he began to show signs of old age. A mouse of thirteen is, after all, about equal to a human being of ninety. Bruno was now a very old mouse. And one day in 1929, on a very hot August afternoon in Berlin, the awful thing happened. I had picked Bruno up outside the Chancellery in the Reichskanzlerplatz where he had been listening all day to the rulers of Germany talking about their secret plans. Bruno had told me he would be crouching in a certain corner of the pavement where the stone steps joined the wall of the main building right at the main entrance. He was there on time. I picked him up and quickly slipped him into my pocket.

‘Are you all right, Bruno?’ I whispered as I walked back to the hotel.

There was no answer.

‘Bruno!’ I said, talking louder. ‘Are you all right?’

There was still no answer. I reached into my pocket and took him out. He was dead.

I was devastated. He was the best friend I would ever have in my life. He was closer to me than a brother. He was so kind and thoughtful and above all he was brave. Although he used to make light of it, it must have taken a tremendous lot of courage to do the things he did. He was totally defenceless. One kick from a human foot would have killed him at once. But he never got caught, and when he died, thank heavens it was a peaceful death and not a violent one.

I cried and cried all that night, and I must say my parents were pretty shaken as well. They had both become exceedingly fond of the little mouse.

The next day we all travelled back to London by train and boat. I carried Bruno’s body in a cigar box filled with cotton wool.

As soon as we arrived in London, we reported to the prime minister. Mr Ramsay MacDonald had just won another election and was still in power. He was deeply distressed to hear about Bruno’s death.

‘I am afraid we cannot have a public funeral,’ he said, ‘because his very existence was a deep dark secret. But let us bury him privately this evening in the rose garden at the back of Number Ten, Downing Street.’

So that evening, after dark, the prime minister, my mother, my father and I assembled in the rose garden. I was given a trowel and I knelt down and dug a hole in the earth. Into this, I placed the cigar box containing Bruno’s body, then I covered it over with soil.

The prime minister was a religious man and he made a little speech at the funeral. ‘Out of evil cometh good,’ he said. ‘Had it not been for The Grand High Witch and all the witches of England, this brilliant mouse would never have appeared before us. He was brave beyond words and wiser than Solomon. He served his country well and he will never be forgotten. Amen.’