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

by Alexander McCall Smith

he did entertain the idea, half-seriously, that there should be medals for deserters. Surely they deserved them even more, perhaps, than those who simply obeyed.

Perhaps, he thought, that is what we all do in one way or another: create families for ourselves as we go through life.

And yet he was also a man. He was a man who played the trumpet in a dance band, who had a brother called Ferdi, who doubtlessly was loved by a mother and aunts and a wife or girlfriend; who would not want to die. He was all that too.

The world was so precious, so beautiful—so fragile. Civilization hung by a thread, and had always done so, perhaps, although it was only occasionally that we realised it.

Archie thought, I have just been present at a moment which may have decided the fate of western civilization. His heart gave a lurch. He had always wanted to be at the centre of things—to be in on the making of history. But he had never imagined that it would be like this: a matter of a brief exchange between two men on a path through a Russian forest, with the sky now threatening rain, and the smell of the spruce, that green smell, as he thought of it, mingling with the wisp of cigar smoke from a newly lit cigar; while elsewhere, altogether elsewhere, men fought and died over tracts of land, and flags, and promises that would never be kept.

There is nothing you can teach the Holy See about survival, you know. They are not naïve. Nor are they unworldly. They know where their interest lies and they will pursue that with all the determination of those who are satisfied that right is on their side.”

In Scotland, our Calvinist background underlines that. We still believe that people should pay for their transgressions.

he always diluted whisky with water, an act of chemistry that he said improved both liquids considerably.

“That was before human rights,” said Murdo. “Human rights stopped that sort of…What do they call it? Some fancy name. Community policing?” He sighed. “Changed days. People can do pretty much as they please.”