‘Who? Le Hir?’
She shook her head and began to sob.
‘Broussard?’
She gave a choking cry and let go of him, sinking down on to the bed with her face in her hands.
‘Broussard?’ he repeated, almost savagely.
She turned her face up to him, crumpled, desperate, shouting, ‘Go away! Go away, please, before they kill you!’ — then suddenly reached out and touched his hand: ‘You are very sympathique! I like you very much, but go away!’
He turned and poured another brandy. She was sobbing hysterically now, curled up with her face to the wall. He gave her the brandy, but she pushed it away. He drank it himself. There was something here he did not understand: something she was frightened of, and was hiding from him. Perhaps he was not the only one who was in danger.
Telling her about Mount Athos had been a serious error. The only thing he could now do was to wait until she was calmer, then try to persuade her to keep the information to herself. He assumed that she was only a minor figure in the Secret Army: a pretty public relations girl specializing in the foreign Press. He hoped that, like most public relations people, her loyalties could be corrupted.
There was a knock on the door. The same Moslem from yesterday bowed himself in, grinning with gold tusks, and put the dinner tray on the table by the bed. Anne-Marie stirred round and saw him and gave him a venomous look, pointing towards the chair. ‘Take that dress downstairs,’ she ordered, ‘and have it cleaned! I want it by nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’
The man bowed again and collected the dress off the chair. ‘Sale umbe!’ she said, as the door closed. Neil knew the futility of trying to convert her, of trying to defend a hapless servant who was likely to be shot because he stayed at work to keep his family from starving. Nothing he could say would measure up to the gang of Moslems who had hidden three hundred kilos of plastic explosive under the bandstand, fused to go off at the height of thé dansant.
They sat side by side and started on the consommé. ‘You caught the sun today,’ she said, ‘your nose is red.’
He smiled and poured out the Chablis. There was a strained silence between them. The wine had a chilled iron taste, and after the third glass he said, ‘Anne-Marie, you will have to trust me. You will have to believe me — even if your leaders won’t.’
She said nothing, chewing a lump of white lobster meat.
‘I cannot leave this city until the airport opens again. That may not be until tomorrow night — even later. And you realize that if you tell your people about Athos before I can get on to a plane —’ He paused. ‘Well, you know even better than I do what’ll happen.’
She nodded, her black eyes slightly dimmed with wine and cognac. ‘That was a good meal,’ she whispered, pushing the tray away.
‘Anne-Marie, you haven’t answered me. Are you going to tell them about Athos?’
She took a deep breath and stretched out her legs, wriggling her toes: ‘Let’s discuss it tomorrow. I don’t want to talk about it now.’ She looked at him and her mouth turned down into a shy smile: ‘Let’s drink some more wine.’ She leant out and brushed her cheek against his, sliding her mouth round till her tongue touched his teeth.
‘Anne-Marie,’ he murmured, ‘do you really believe I’m a barbouze?’
She drew up her legs, pressing her thighs against him, her face tilted back: ‘I don’t know.’ Her voice had begun to thicken: ‘I don’t want to think about it. Je m’emmerde des barbouzes.’
He pulled her up to him and her mouth opened wide and her body closed against him, his hands rubbing down the rough towelling to the fold of her buttocks. But she broke from him and cried, ‘No, wait, wait! Take away all this food first.’
He carried the tray outside the door. When he came back she was walking naked to the bed. The bathrobe lay over the chair where her dress had been, and she slipped under the single sheet and lay looking at the ceiling. He sat beside her, lit her a cigarette, not very steadily, and passed it down to her, wondering, with a vague sense of dismay, whether this too was part of the Secret Service ritual.
He poured himself another Hine and waited. After a moment she said, ‘You know, if I loved you I would let you do anything to me. Anything you liked.’
He wished he could enjoy this scene more. In less than an hour he would have to dictate 500 words to his office in London, while on his bed lay a beautifully naked girl who needed to say only a couple of sentences to have him shot. She pushed back the sheet and curled against him, and he said, with a sense of tactics, ‘You don’t love me, Anne-Marie.’
‘No.’ She reached up and grabbed him by the neck, pulling his face down clumsily against hers. He remembered her taunts about Anglo-Saxons and kissed her on the mouth, then took hold of her breasts, transparent bluish-white against her dark shoulders and belly, and kissed the hard brown nipples, carefully, till he felt her tremble. He wondered again, with a closed part of his mind, whether she were acting on the orders of Le Hir or Broussard.
‘You are very sensuous,’ she said, ‘I think I am rather drunk. Is there any more cognac?’
‘A little.’ He picked up the bottle. ‘I’ve got some work to do,’ he added.
‘All right, you do some work.’ She lay with her
