Then, over the past month, the shadow had begun to fall. Kim’s moods of depression, which were frequent but usually short-lived, now sometimes persisted for days on end; and his drinking, which had always been heavy but never offensive, started to get out of control. On several occasions he had been drunk when they met and had passed out before the end of the evening. Sometimes he had been too drunk even to leave his flat, let alone make love; and at times she had noticed a flash of suppressed rage which she found all the more worrying because there seemed no reason for it.
One evening a week ago she had been trying to coax him into the bedroom when he had suddenly lashed out with his fist, hitting the solid wooden door and spraining two fingers. But she had stubbornly consoled herself with the knowledge that her lover was an exceptional man, with exceptional problems. Even in their easiest moments together, Kim never discussed his professional life, and she had been wise enough not to ask. She just hoped, desperately, that it was his employers that were causing him distress, not her: for the thought of losing him made her feel sick.
After the accident with his hand, four days had passed without a word from him; then the day before yesterday the telegram arrived: WOLF ALONE PINING FOR MOUSE STOP HAVE APPLIED TOURNIQUET TO SNAKEBITE STOP EREVAN.
The signature was of the Erevan Restaurant in Moscow, which they used as a convenient rendezvous between her flat and his office in Dzerzhinski Square. When they’d met there that evening at 5.30, Kim had seemed a changed man: a little pale, perhaps, but his eyes had been clear, his hands steady, his mood at once serious and affectionate. He’d started by promising her that he was giving up ‘snakebite’ for good, and made the point by drinking only tea; then, between little hugs and pecks, he’d put his plan to her for the weekend down in Gagra.
For such an enterprise it was surprisingly short notice. For Kim usually planned these weekends, with characteristic precision, at least ten days in advance, giving her time to deceive Lennie with the pretext that she was making one of her regular visits to her brother in Copenhagen. Besides, there was now an added risk. For over the last couple of weeks she had begun to sense that Lennie’s suspicions of her had been somehow confirmed. It was nothing she could put her finger on: just the odd snide remark, the surreptitious way he’d ask where she’d been, where she was going — but enough to make her extra wary.
At this last meeting in the Erevan, however, Kim had dismissed her fears with a pat on the arm and the assurance that she had no more cause to worry about Lennie. Then later, over dinner, he had made an oblique suggestion that she should pack up everything and move in with him; and there was even a hint, offered half-jokingly, that she might seek a divorce from that distant husband of hers, whom she’d last heard of running a hotel in Torquay.
When they’d parted, she had almost broken down and wept with joy. But his manner had remained quiet and business-like, as he produced her air ticket to Sochi and her first-class train reservation on to Gagra. His instructions had been clear, and he’d repeated them twice: she was to check into the Grand Hotel and wait for him down in the lobby, not in their suite. He had promised to join her before evening.
She had waited till after eight o’clock.
The chandeliers were turned on, reflected a hundred times in galleries of ormolu mirrors. A bald man in striped pyjamas appeared, shouted at an invisible waiter, then went out again. From the esplanade came the last wailings of private enterprise: crones in white shawls like headstones, hawking fruit and fish and ballpoint pens.
At 8.15 a party of men in brown suits and dark glasses filed through to the dining-room. Natives, as well as visitors to Gagra, were too used to Western tourists to give more than a glance at the woman sitting alone on the satin couch in the corner.
By the norm of most Soviet women, Mrs Joyce Warburton still looked young. She had a good skin, under rather too much make-up, large features and eyes the colour of weak tea. Her clothes were unostentatious, with the hemline slightly longer than the Western fashion so as to conceal her somewhat stout legs. At a cocktail party in the English Home Counties she might have been thought a trifle common; but alone in the forlorn elegance of a one-time Imperial palace on the Black Sea she had a certain chic.
Philby spotted her at once, and crossed over with a
