helmet on his head and side arm strapped to his waist. Peter watched him without really seeing him, and behind him the two men at the table exchanged a significant glance.
Colin Nobleasked a silent question and Parker answered with a curt nod of affirmative.
“All right, Peter,” Colin said. “A little while back you asked for hard facts. I promised to give you a few.” Peter turned back from the window and waited.
“Item One. During the time that Gilly O’Shaughnessy held
Melissa-Jane in Laragh, two telephone calls were made from the Old
Manse. They were both international calls.
They both went through the local telephone exchange. The first call was made at seven p.m. local time on the first of this month.
That would have been the first day that they could have reached the hideout. We have to guess it was an “All Well” report to the top management. The second call was exactly seven days later again at seven o’clock local time precisely. To the same number. We have to guess that it was another report, “All is still well”. Both calls were less than one minute in duration. Just time enough to pass a prearranged code message-” Colin broke off and looked again at Kingston
Parker.
“Go on,” Parker instructed.
“The calls were to a French number. Rambouillet 47-87-47.” Peter felt it hit him in the stomach, a physical blow, and he flinched his head, for a moment closing both his eyes tightly. He had called that number so often, the numerals were graven on his memory.
“No.” He shook his head, and opened his eyes. “I’m not going to believe it.”
“It’s true, Peter,” Parker said gently.
Peter walked back to his seat. His legs felt rubbery and shaky under him. He sat down heavily.
The room was completely silent. Neither of the other two looked directly at Peter Stride.
Kingston Parker made a gesture to Colin and obediently he slid the red box file, tied with red tapes, across the cheap vinyl topped table.
Parker untied the tapes and opened the file. He shuffled the papers, scanning them swiftly. Clearly he was adept at speed reading and was able to assimilate each typed double spaced page at a glance but now he was merely waiting for Peter to recover from the shock. He knew the contents of the red file almost by heart.
Peter Stride slumped in the steel-framed chair with its uncushioned wooden seat, staring sightlessly at the bulletin board on the opposite wall on which were posted the Thor rosters.
He found it hard to ride the waves of dismay that flooded over him. He felt chilled and numbed, the depth of this betrayal devastated him, and when he closed his eyes again he had a vivid image of the slim, tender body with the childlike breasts peeping through a silken curtain of dark hair.
He straightened in his seat, and Kingston Parker recognized the moment and looked up at him, half closing the file and turning it towards him.
The cover bore the highest security gradings available to Atlas
Command and below them was typed:
ALT MANN MAG DA IRENE. Born KUTCHINSKY
Peter realized that he had never known her second name was Irene.
Magda Irene. Hell, they were really ugly names made special only by the woman who bore them.
Parker turned the file back to himself and began to speak quietly.
“When last you and I met, I told you of the special interest we had in this lady. That interest has continued, unabated, since then,
or rather it has gathered strength with every fresh item of information that has come to us.” He opened the file again and glanced at it as if to refresh his memory. “Colin has been very successful in enlisting the full cooperation of the intelligence agencies of both our countries, who in turn have been able to secure that of the French and believe it or not the Russians. Between the four countries we have been able to at last piece together the woman’s history-” He broke off.
“Remarkable woman,” and shook his head in admiration. “Quite incredible really.
I can understand how she is able to weave spells around any man she chooses. I can understand, Peter, your evident distress. I am going to be utterly blunt now we have no time nor space in which to manoeuvre tactfully around your personal feelings. We know that she has taken you as a lover. You notice that I phrase that carefully.
Baroness Altmann takes lovers, not the other way around. She takes lovers deliberately -and with careful forethought. I have no doubt that once she has made the decision, she accomplishes the rest of it with superb finesse.” Peter remembered her coming to him and the exact words she had used. “I am not very good at this, Peter, and I want so badly to be good for you.” The words had been chosen with the finesse that Kingston Parker had just spoken of. They were exactly timed to make herself irresistible to Peter and afterwards she had given the gentle lie to them with the skill and devilish cunning of her hands and mouth and body.
“You see, Peter. She had special and expert training in all the arts of love. There are probably few women in the Western world who know as much about reading a man, and then pleasing him. What she knows she did not learn in Paris or London or New York-” Kingston Parker paused and frowned at Peter. “This is all theory and hearsay, Peter.
You are in a better position to say just how much of it is false?”
The ultimate skill in pleasing a man is to fuel his own belief in himself, Peter thought, as he returned Parker’s inquiring gaze with expressionless eyes. He remembered how with Magda Altmann he had felt like a giant, capable of anything. She had made him feel like that with a word, a smile, a gift, a touch that was the ultimate skill.
He did not answer Parker’s question. “Go on please, Kingston,” he invited. Externally, he had himself completely under control now. His right hand lay on the table top, with the fingers half open, relaxed.
“I told you that even as a child she showed special talents. In languages, mathematics her father was an amateur mathematician of some importance chess and other games of skill. She attracted attention. Especially she attracted attention because her father was a member of the Communist Party-” Parker broke off as Peter lifted his head in sharp inquiry. i - I’m sorry, Peter. We did not know that when last we met. We have learned it since from the French, they have access to the party records in Paris it seems, and it was confirmed by the Russians themselves.
Apparently the child used to accompany her father to meetings of the Party, and soon showed a precocious political awareness and understanding. Her father’s friends were mostly party members, and after his death there still remains a mystery around his death.
Neither the French nor the Russians are forthcoming on the subject. Anyway, after his death, Magda Kutchinsky was cared for by these friends. It seemed she was passed on from family to family” Kingston
Parker slid a postcard-sized photograph from a marbline envelope and passed it across the table to Peter, from this period.” It showed a rather skinny girl in short skirts and dark stockings, wearing the yoked collar and straw bonnet of the French schoolgirl. Her hair was in two short braids, tied with ribbons, and she-held a small fluffy white dog in her arms. The background was a Parisian summer park scene, with a group of men playing boule and chestnut trees in full leaf.
The child’s face was delicately featured with huge beautiful eyes,
somehow wise and compassionate beyond her age, and yet still imbued with the fresh innocence of childhood.
“You can see she already had all the markings of spectacular beauty.” Kingston Parker grunted, and reached across to take back the photograph. For a moment Peter’s fingers tightened instinctively; he would have like to have kept it, but he relaxed and let it go. Parker glanced at it again and then slipped it back into the envelope.
“Yes. She attracted much interest, and very soon an uncle from the old country wrote to her. There were photographs of her father and the mother she had never known, anecdotes of her infancy and her father’s youth. The child was enchanted. She had never known she had an uncle.
Her father had never spoken of his relatives, but now at last the little orphan found she had family. It took only a few more letters,
exchanges of delight and affection, and then it was all arranged. The uncle came to fetch her in person and Magda Kutchinsky went back to
