‘You can stay with David tonight and get some rest, then start tomorrow. But don’t stay in any hotels. And let the office have a PO number where you can be reached. I don’t want to know the address. Just drop a postcard and sign it “Basil”.’
‘Why Basil?’ Cayle growled.
‘Because I like Basil. In my lighter moments I often think of you, Barry, as a latter-day Basil Seal. I’m an Evelyn Waugh fan.’
‘Like Kim’s a Graham Greene fan,’ Cayle sneered. ‘I think we’re both getting pissed.’
‘I didn’t get much sleep myself last night,’ said Harry, folding his napkin. ‘I’m going to ring David now and tell him to get round to the flat and expect us.’
It was much as the editor had predicted. The story appeared in the first edition on Saturday night, and by early morning had been taken up by every other British Sunday paper, as well as radio and TV. It pushed the faltering mystery-story of the hijacked Troika-Caravelle to the inside pages, and by Monday it was leading most of the Press in the non-Communist world. The Foreign Office issued a pithy statement that neither confirmed nor denied the story, and Moscow was silent.
The editor gave a two-minute interview on BBC News, saying that he was satisfied as to the veracity of the interview, though he declined to divulge Cayle’s immediate whereabouts ‘for professional reasons’. There were some rude off-stage noises about the ethics of quoting the views of a confessed traitor; and at least one iron-ribbed backbencher rose in the House to accuse Cayle and Harry of being stooges of the KGB.
But with nothing to go on but Sir Roger Jameson-Clarke’s diffuse speech to Cayle, a frenzied delight seized Press, politicians and public alike. Philby had been bad enough, but at least he’d been slightly bohemian and a heavy drinker. Blake had been half Jew, half foreigner; and Burgess and Maclean had both been alcoholics and homosexuals. But here was Sir Roger Jameson-Clarke — a frequent visitor to the Palace, the silver-haired, silken-tongued stanchion of the Establishment, and a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron Club to boot! It had been bad enough having a Soviet spy in the Athenaeum, but the ‘Squadron’ was unthinkable.
And with the frenzy came the rumours. No name was too high or too revered to escape suspicion, innuendo, even criminal slander. But there were no dramatic resignations; and the men on the Front Bench remained mum, as did the mandarins of Whitehall. And Barry Cayle cooked his food on a primus stove and went for long walks over the rocky hillsides round Rodez, trying to decide whether to get on with the novel which had started it all, or to wait until he heard first from Philby.
But he heard nothing. Every morning he called at the local post office on his way back from the bakery; but apart from a couple of bulky envelopes containing his forwarded mail, which consisted mostly of overdue tax demands and summonses for parking offences, there was one short note from his editor: ‘Patience is a virtue. If you need more money, wire David.’
After five weeks, and in a mood fluctuating between torpor and desperation, he put through a collect-call to his editor. Harry was not over-pleased. Cayle had broken their agreed plan, by which he was always to telephone the private number of the Paris correspondent, who would then call London and arrange for Harry to put through a person-to-person call to Cayle, at the main hotel in Rodez. Harry had explained this was a minor precaution in case the paper’s phones were being tapped, in London, or Paris, or both.
‘Just be a good boy and sit tight,’ said Harry. ‘If your hunch is right, he’ll summon you, don’t worry.’
In the event, it was another two months before the summons came, and in circumstances which even Cayle could not have foreseen.
CHAPTER 22
From his marble perch high above Lake Geneva, Charles Auguste Pol watched the midnight-blue Mercedes 600 slide out of the tunnel of cypress trees and swing round on the gravel forecourt below him, before disappearing into a garage somewhere in the lower reaches of the white mock-Moorish villa.
Pol creaked slowly back and forth in his rocking chair, shaded by a trellis heavy with green grapes. He was loosely wrapped in a massive silk dressing-gown patterned with flame-eating serpents, while on his feet were two tiny pink satin slippers. A bottle of good champagne stood beside him in a silver ice-bucket.
A couple of minutes after the car arrived, he heard footsteps on the patio behind him. He did not turn, but waited until Philby reached a second rocking-chair, then flapped a soft hand at the champagne, his teeth gleaming a roguish welcome: ‘So? Any results?’
Philby sank down with a crackle of wicker. He was no longer wearing his lensless spectacles and his upper lip was again cleanshaven; and although he had put on weight during his stay with Pol, he looked tired and pale. He ignored the champagne.
‘Ah, but of course!’ Pol cried, ‘the Krug is bad for your heart. You’ll have your usual cocktail? Peters!’ His fat fingers made a surprisingly loud snap, and a third man glided out of the shadows of the patio and stood motionless behind the two chairs. He was lean and hard, in a suit the colour of dried mud, with tight curly blond hair and a thin, clean scar down his right cheek.
‘The usual for Mr Philby,’ Pol ordered in French, without moving his head. The blond man turned and walked silently away on his crepe-soled moccasins.
Philby sighed. ‘Well, they’ve bitten — at last.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘Ninety-nine per cent. A white BMW
