‘It certainly would be,’ said Hann, ‘for you. I’ve got diplomatic immunity. Good night, Mr Cayle. I may hear from you tomorrow?’
Cayle watched him walk away into the crowd.
CHAPTER 10
The phone by his bed woke Cayle at eight o’clock next morning. This time the line was clear, but the stammer had returned. ‘B-Barry? S-sorry to wake you so early, but you’ve been d-damned elusive. I c-called you f-five times last night.’
‘I was drinking champagne in the Kremlin,’ Cayle said sleepily. ‘By the way, is this line tapped?’
‘Tapped b-both ends.’ There was a chuckle, then Philby went on: ‘I only heard yesterday that you’re back with us.’ As his voice gained confidence, the stammer subsided. ‘You’ll be checking out of your hotel today. And I want you to call round at four o’clock this afternoon to the travel bureau at the Hotel Intourist. Just show your passport, and you’ll be given your ticket on the Red Arrow Express for Leningrad. You have a sleeper. It leaves at eleven, and a driver will meet you in the lobby at ten-thirty to take you to the station.’
‘Who do I thank for this?’ Cayle asked; and remembered his date to be at the Aeroflot Hotel before six, when Lennie Maddox would call.
Philby said: ‘A French gentleman called Pol. He’s very anxious that you and all your colleagues should be in Leningrad tomorrow for the inaugural flight of his new Troika-Caravelle airbus. I’m sure it’s made a couple of inches on page eight.’
‘You’re very kind,’ said Cayle. ‘It was just what my editor had in mind. Any chance of us meeting again?’
‘I’m sure there is. And, oh, Barry —’ There was a pause, then another chuckle down the line. ‘Congratulations on your visa. I enjoyed that — especially your act with the doctors. What did you use? Cordite?’
‘Soap.’
‘Must have been nice.’
‘Lovely. I just hope it pays off.’
‘Yes,’ said Philby, ‘so do I. By the way, you didn’t b-by any chance b-b…’ again there was a pause — ‘bring me anything for my library?’
‘Yeah, just a paperback this time. I expect you’ve got it — The Heart of the Matter.’
‘Ah, wonderful book! His best, in my view. But it got him into a lot of trouble with his Catholic friends. It was even put on the Index. More censorship and suppression.’
‘How do I get it to you?’ said Cayle.
‘Oh, you can give it to me when we next meet.’
‘When will that be?’
‘Soon, I hope. Well, bye for now. Enjoy Leningrad.’ And he hung up.
CHAPTER 11
M. Pol stood at the window of his office on the ninth floor of the Hotel Intourist and looked down on the evening glow of the city. He looked at the spray of lights at the entrance to the Bolshoi; the pricks of fluorescent blue round Revolution Square; at the four bright numerals of the illuminated digital clock over Karl Marx Prospekt. As he looked, the last numeral flicked from a 2 to a 3. It now read 16.43. Pol consulted his watch and saw that it was running two minutes behind the electric sign below.
He turned slowly and said, ‘It is time you were departing, Monsieur Léonard.’
Lennie Maddox glanced up from an electric typewriter on which he had been addressing envelopes for the past twenty minutes. ‘Oui, Monsieur Pol.’ His relations with his employer were cordial but correct; only occasionally, after a particularly arduous day’s work or to celebrate some business coup, would Pol offer him a drink. But tonight Maddox was dismissed, with instructions to deliver an urgent message by hand to a room-number in the Metropol before five o’clock.
Maddox had switched off the typewriter, and was arranging the finished envelopes into a neat pile, when Pol said, ‘Leave them, Monsieur Léonard. You must hurry.’ There was an unfamiliar note of impatience in the Frenchman’s voice, and he watched with a frown as Maddox pulled on his overcoat.
‘Au revoir, Monsieur Pol. À demain.’
Pol nodded and turned back to the window. The trams along Pushkin Street were packed; there were small crowds waiting for the lights at the corners of Gorki and Petrovska Streets; and the digital clock above Karl Marx Prospekt now read 16.45. Pol heard the door close softly behind Maddox. He waited till the digits changed to 46, then toddled over to the wall-cabinet and poured himself an inch of whisky from a cut-glass decanter, sank into an armchair and stared at his belly. ‘Man is driven by two forces,’ he reflected: ‘Self-interest and fear.’ Both applied in classic measure to Leonard Maddox.
Maddox would be no loss to anyone, Pol decided. Unfortunately, however, it was not merely Maddox who presented the problem. For Maddox had a mistress in Moscow — an insufferably genteel Englishwoman whom Pol had carelessly neglected to find out about when he’d first employed Maddox. She had since become one of the small afflictions in the Frenchman’s professional life, turning up uninvited at his office in the Hotel Intourist, where she was always trying to tempt him with what she claimed was inside information on commodities.
Pol had discovered that she had a part-time job with the English Language department of Radio Moscow, and that she lived with Maddox in a block of flats reserved for foreigners. Maddox had also told him that she’d had experience in a London finance-house, and it was clear to Pol that she had ambitions towards being taken on by Entreprises Lipp. These he had so far firmly resisted.
As for Lennie Maddox, he’d been recommended to Pol by a financier in Geneva who’d assured him that the Englishman had a sharp head for figures and could be relied upon not to be too scrupulous about Pol’s more delicate dealings, provided the money was right; and besides, Maddox had had the advantage of
