It said something about the conflict Eddie felt between his very vocal complaints and his oft-silent loyalty that they were on a plane over the Irish Sea before he said, “Why do you need me in Dublin?”
“I can talk Bernard into this. He may not take much convincing, but if he’s left alone … it’s his nature to look at things from half a dozen different angles, like a threepenny bit, and that’s the precursor to worry. So we won’t leave him alone. I need to be in Berlin. I don’t want Bernard in Berlin until the last minute. If the Russians get preemptive and try a snatch we’ll have nothing to trade. It’s not as if they’d have any difficulty finding him in Berlin. So you sit with him—in Dublin.”
“I’d be his minder?”
“Yes. Keep him occupied. He likes a game of chess. You like a game of chess. That ought to work. He’s hard to beat, by the bye.”
Eddie just said, “A threepenny bit has twelve sides.”