Little Alexandra is with me and she is doing well at school. We have a refrigerator now in the Moscow apartment and we live very well. Always I am thinking of you and your sacrifice for us. The man who came with your letter said he had seen you in New York and you were well. Sometimes at night I think of us in the rue Mouffetard and how you loved the chocolate cake from the pâtisserie across the road.
Some day, perhaps, there will be no more problems for us.
Je t’aime, chéri, jusqu’au dernier jour de ma vie.
Ta Halenka.
Tears were running down his face when the girl walked back into the room.
“Andy, what is it, my love?”
He shook his head, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. The girl saw the letter and the photograph.
She said softly and gently. “Is it from Halenka?”
He nodded.
“Are they both all right?”
“Yes.” He shuddered from crying, as children do. She put her hand on his knee. “Don’t be unhappy, love. She loves you. You can be sure of that.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that, Jen. I miss her so terribly. One morning we got up not knowing it was going to be the last. Eight hours later we were both in jail, and apart from that terrible journey to the airport that was it. Finished. Over.”
“When were you married?”
“A few weeks ago. Viktor arranged it. We were married by proxy.” He looked up at the girl, his face still wet with tears. “I’ve tried to be patient, Jenny … But it doesn’t work. I miss her so.”
“She’ll know how you feel, Andy. It’s the same for her.”
He picked up the photograph. Halenka was smiling at the camera, her thick, dark hair in plaits, her arm curved gently round the waist of the pretty, solemn-eyed girl who was his daughter. He turned it over, but there was nothing on the back. He turned it back to look again. There was no background, nothing to identify where it was taken. Halenka looked just the same. He wondered if she ever protested.
In bed he clung to Jenny like a child in the night, and then lay silent and inert until he fell into uneasy sleep. Jenny slid out of bed and stood by the window, looking out as the false dawn spread across the city. One of Nolan’s surveillance teams reported seeing an unidentifiable figure at the apartment window.
She turned silently to look at the figure on the bed. He was handsome in a rather juvenile fashion. Quick to smile and laugh, but few of his friends would see him as the constant lover. Physically he wasn’t constant. He slept with many girls, and with as much affection as lust, but he was never involved. Not even with her. He recognized that she really cared for him, and her reward was to sometimes share his distress about the girl in Moscow.
CHAPTER 9
MacKay walked from the Central Station and crossed the bridge over the canal and turned into Hendrik Kade. The warehouses and shops served the ships’ crews from the Oosterdok, and number 147 was at the side of the chandlery.
The narrow stairs led steeply upwards from the open door and the doors on the first two landings carried business names on typed postcards as if to emphasize their temporary occupation. Right at the top was a solid oak door whose brass-work shone, catching the colour from geraniums in a large clay pot. A small printed card said “M. van Aker—Painter.” He pressed the porcelain bell-push, and waited.
The girl who opened the door was unexpectedly pretty. She was wearing an oversize sweater and blue denims. She half-smiled as she looked at him, as if she were used to men being silenced by her looks. She spoke softly.
“Can I help you?”
“Miss van Aker?”
“Yes.”
“Could I talk to you for a few moments?”
She made to open the door wider, and then hesitated.
“What about?”
“You.”
She laughed softly and opened the door. The studio was large and bare, except for two easels and the paraphernalia of painting. There was a low divan with a wolfskin cover, and a dozen or so unframed paintings on the walls.
The girl stood, one hand on her hip, sipping coffee slowly as she looked at him over the cup.
“I don’t expect you remember me?”
She shook her head, smiling, as if she had heard that opening gambit before. He went on.
“I was in Paris in ’68. My girlfriend was Adèle de Velancourt.”
She put down the cup and folded her brown arms across her chest. A bad sign when you’re asking questions.
“How is Adèle? I saw a piece in Figaro about her. It seemed she was doing well.”
“Yes, she is doing well. Do you remember Andrew Dempsey?”
She laughed. “Show me a girl who didn’t remember him.”
She pointed to a wicker chair. “Do sit down. What’s your name?”
“James MacKay. I was taking French literature at the Sorbonne.”
She nodded but made no comment. She wasn’t refusing to talk but she wasn’t going to help him either. He looked at the questioning, hazel eyes and accepted the unspoken challenge.
“Can we talk about Viktor Kleppe?”
“I wondered what it was going to be. The answer’s no. We can’t.”
She stood up and brushed imaginary specks from her jeans. MacKay sat, and looked up at her face.
“It would be easier if we could talk here.”
“As an alternative to where?”
“The Central police station.”
“Don’t bluff, mister.”
“I’m not bluffing. Perhaps you’d like to phone Inspector van Rijk at Elandsgracht?”
She walked briskly to the telephone and asked the operator to connect her to police headquarters and when a voice said “Polizei-zentraal” she hung up, swinging round to look at him.
“You weren’t bluffing, were you?”
“No.”
“What’s it all about?”
“Are you a member of the Party?”
She sat down, slowly and carefully.
“No. I’m not a
