“And why now?”
“I think we’ve waited long enough and I don’t think that you need me any more.”
“Tell me about him. What sort of man is he? He must love you very much to have waited so long.”
“He’s very gentle. He is dedicated to his music.” She smiled. “A bit like you.”
“Does it mean you’ll leave here?”
“Yes, we’ve got rooms near Prospect Park. But I’ll go on working in the shop if you want me to.”
He nodded. “When can I meet him?”
She shrugged. “Any time.”
“There’s no need for you to be involved in my work but we need the income from the bookshop and I’d be grateful if you carried on working here.”
“Of course I will.” She paused. “Can I ask you something? Something personal.”
“Try me.”
“You must miss Chantal a lot.”
“I do, Anna. It haunts me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I feel I didn’t do enough to help her.”
“What else could you have done?”
“The doctor told me of a hospital in Manhattan that specialised in treating patients with consumption. I didn’t have enough money to pay for it and I asked my people in Moscow if I could borrow the money from my funds.”
“And what did they say?”
“Nothing. They didn’t reply one way or another.”
“Are you sure they got your message?”
“Quite sure.”
“So what could you have done?”
“I could have just borrowed the money or used the money. Without their permission.”
“So why didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “Some people I have to deal with will only do the work for money. They squeeze us dry. I despise them for abusing the Party.”
“Go on.”
“I thought she was all right in the local hospital. I didn’t realise how bad she was.”
She saw the tears on his cheeks and moved over to sit beside him, taking his hand in both of hers. “You couldn’t have known. How could you? I’m sure that they did all that could be done.”
“I wasn’t even there when she died.”
“Andrei, she was unconscious for three days before she died. You couldn’t have comforted her.”
“It was unforgivable.”
“Nothing’s unforgivable. Grieve you must but your life has to go on. You have so much to do.”
“I know. I’ll get on with it.”
“Just remember one thing, Andrei. There are no experts in loving and no scholars of living. We all just do our best.” She kissed him gently on his cheek.
But as she went to the kitchen to make his hot chocolate she wondered how he could still serve those monsters in Moscow, who so abused the people they pretended to protect.
A week after Anna’s announcement Aarons got the orders to go to Vienna.
He travelled by bus to Toronto then by plane to Paris, where he had to wait for two days for a Soviet transport plane that was taking relief supplies of medical stores to Vienna. A car was waiting for him at Schwechat and as the driver tossed Aarons’ bag onto the back seat he said to Aarons, “It’s a long time ago, comrade.” Then, seeing Aarons’ blank look he held out his hand. “Spassky, Gene Spassky. Saw you off at the station when you were on your way back to Paris. And I’ve been handling a lot of your traffic from New York. Welcome to Vienna.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t recognise you.”
“Jump in, we don’t want to hang around. There’s always people watching who comes in on Soviet planes.”
“Nice car—what is it?”
Spassky grinned. “Nearly new BMW, we took it over from the deputy head of the Vienna Gestapo.”
As they turned onto the main road Spassky said, “It’s about eleven miles to the city centre. Have you been to Vienna before?”
“No.”
“We took it over in 1945 and now it’s divided into five zones for the four Occupying Powers. One zone, the central First District is the International Bezirk. Outside the city boundary we control everything. The British are in the old embassy area and in Heitzing, the Yanks are in the best mansions and we’re in two hotels on the Ringstrasse. That’s where you’ll be staying. A bit crowded but not bad.” He laughed. “Trust the spies to get a good billet.”
“Do you know why they want me here?”
“Lensky’s coming from Moscow to talk with you and I think he’ll want you to go back to Moscow with him for a week or so. They want to talk to you about the Americans. They reckon you know them better than any of the diplomats.” He laughed. “You should do. You actually live with the bastards, not in some bloody embassy.”
“What’s Lensky doing now?”
“You’d better ask him, comrade. I know that he and some of the others rate you as our number one agent in the States. You’ll get the red carpet treatment, don’t worry.”
“And what do you do these days?”
“Much the same as way back. A kind of trouble-shooter. Plugging the holes in Churchill’s Iron Curtain.”
Aarons was given a spacious room at the Imperial Hotel which looked over the Ringstrasse to the Soviet’s other HQ in Vienna in the Grand Hotel. There were flowers and a bowl of fruit on the sideboard and an envelope with a red wax seal with his name on it. When he opened it there was a thick wad of 50 schilling notes and a message saying that Lensky would be seeing him the next day.
Spassky had introduced him to the senior officers of the Vienna Residency and he had been invited to eat with them in the evening. He had been taken to a conference room where agents were being lectured about the American and British agents in the city. A projector throwing photographs onto a screen. Men’s faces with their names and the lecturer giving details of the kind of work that they did. Some in uniform and some in civilian clothes.
He listened with interest to the details of one man. The picture on the screen was of a young man in his early twenties. A pleasant open face, hair blowing in the wind and sergeant’s stripes on his battle-dress sleeve.
“The name is Williams. Trevor Williams. Twenty-four years old.
